Category Archives: Writing

What’s in a Name, … Anyway?

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Sucleforth Winslow hated his name.  Where the hell did his parents come up with the name Sucleforth anyway?  He’d googled it and had come up with absolutely nothing, which, apparently, had been his parents’ goal.  His nickname, of course … sucked!!!!  And it had gotten him into quite a few physical altercations.  If that’s what his parents had hoped for, that he’d grow up tough, why hadn’t they at least named him “Sue”?  But he guessed that, in today’s “trans is awesome” world, that wouldn’t have worked.  Apparently his parents had foreseen the writing on the wall and acted accordingly.

He’d tried reversing his name, Winslow Sucleforth forth was not great, but it was quite a bit better.  And he’d run with it for a while, several times, but then his parents would introduce themselves as Albert and Agnes Winslow and questions would arise and answers would be given and things would be worse than ever.

Sucleforth refused to ever do any drugs as he firmly believed, and his parents did not deign to deny, that drugs of some sort, or perhaps many sorts, had quite a bit to do with their decision to gift him with a name so utterly unique.  And worse, they expected him to pass it on to his descendants, so that, eventually, there might be a Sucleforth VIII, who put away wives willy nilly, assuming, that with his name, he’d ever be able to acquire any.

His parents were first generation “woke”.  That meant that they engaged in number of somewhat uncomfortable practices, at least to Sucleforth, but obviously, not to them.  They’d both agreed, prior to starting their lives together (they refused to marry, making Sucleforth a bastard), that his father would be a cuckold, but not just any cuckold, as variety was imperative in everything.  So his mother engaged in serial coupling and group coupling with a huge variety of partners, in both gender, orientation, and race, always in front of her submissive husband, who was required to clean any resulting messes.  Notwithstanding her very active sexual life, his mother did not procreate, except in his case, abortion being very, very important to her.  So, she always tried her best to become pregnant, their being no other way to constantly demonstrate her dedication to abortion as a guiding life principle.

His father, on the other hand, having been born a Caucasian male of the protestant variant pejoratively referred to as a Wasp, had to be perpetually punished for sins perpetrated on other races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, nationalities, species, plants, etc., and thus could not engage in any activities that provided fulfillment or satisfaction, not even masochism, which made his wife’s duties a bit complex with respect to assuring that his punishment, on behalf of his race and his religion, etc., was adequate.  But she’d proved up to the task, regardless of the effort required.

The Winslows were well off, having sued their parents for permanent and perpetual support, but has arranged things so that Sucleforth was financially completely dependant on them, without any possibility of ever getting access to their wealth, not even on their demise, their fortune having been pledged in trust to a gazillion unusual causes, many political (to assure the election of woke candidates), but also designed to assure the ever increasing variety of woke entertainment, woke education, woke anything.  They really were very, very woke.  And Sucleforth pitiful periodic stipend would only continue if he procreated with someone from a different race, a different nationality, a different religion, well, someone totally different, and provided a new “Sucleforth”.  Unfortunately, based on his experience with his parents’ “lifestyle”, the idea of a relationship terrified him. 

He really did not need much of a stipend as his parents insisted that he live at home, in his room, which was supplied with every videogame console and every videogame possible that being planned as his access to education.  Athletics were absolutely forbidden but he was expected to attend woke rallies and protests and riots regularly, that was a given, no exceptions tolerated.  And he was also expected to become a connoisseur of drugs at a very early age, the only area where he’d successfully rebelled.  But then again, notwithstanding the irony, his parents expected that he’d turn out rebellious.  As had they.  But not in a way that in any manner threatened their lifestyle.

Sooo, Sucleforth, for some reason, blamed his odd life on his name, for some reason believing that, if he could just somehow discard it, everything would be a bit more, well, bland and normal.  He knew he had a legal right to change his name, but unfortunately, all the lawyers and judges and social workers and bureaucrats he’s ever been able to contact shared his parents’ perspectives, so he was stuck, at least so far.

But he wasn’t getting any younger, and the world, at least the world to which he was allowed access, was not as comforting as a young boy of thirty-seven might hope it would be.

If only he’d had a name like “Schicklgruber”!!!
_______

© 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 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/.

What Was a Schmuck Anyway?

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“Peter the Pretty Good”, as a sobriquet, had not really altogether worked out well.  It didn’t help that his Jewish subjects, an important minority, referred to him as a “nebbish”, whatever that was.  But he couldn’t really get angry with them.  He found Jewish women irascibly irresistible.  It was well known that they were the most talented in the amatory arts, the most flexible, in every sense.  And recognizing that, Jewish men were unusually understanding.  And “pretty good” was not the worst possible suffix.  It could have been “Peter the Petty”, or “Peter the Petulant”, or any other in a long series of adjectives that for some reason, needed to start with a “P”.  That was a family tradition.  Of course, “Peter the Pithy” might have had a bit of flair.

His cousin, “Peter the Great” had it made, made in the shade it was said, whatever that meant.  And he ruled a whole empire, not merely a county.

But Peter’s county was as prosperous as it was peaceful (not very in either case), and he fancied that someday, if it became prosperous enough, perhaps he could be promoted by the Patriarch to Grand Count, instead of merely Count Peter.  That was pretty much the height of Peter’s aspirations, except of course, with respect to Jewish women.  Unfortunately, those with whom he sought intimacy insisted that he be circumcised first, and he found that distasteful, and they claimed that his member was distasteful to them, so long as it remained uncut.  What a quandary.

His cousin evidently did not share that problem, but then, he did not share Peter’s affinity for sabras, as the Jewish women in his county referred to themselves.  His cousin was too caught up with conquests and with modernizing and civilizing his court.  His whole damned country actually, which unfortunately for Peter, included his county.

Peter was more of an orientalist than his cousin, who was apparently besotted with all things European for some reason, and with navies.  Peter’s family had actually gotten on quite well with the Golden horde, although by Peter’s time, the Horde was more akin to a brass horde, or perhaps even a brass plated horde.  But his cousin had pretty much replaced the Horde as suzerain.

Still, his cousin was stuck with Shiksahs to play with.  Although he could actually play with them rather than merely long for them, as Peter was forced to do with the sabras, the sabras who loved to flirt with and tease him, but who then would always bring up the issue of the Moil.  Yuck!!  What a profession!!!

And what was a “schmuck” anyway?
_______

© 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 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/.

“Livermore”

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Jason Livermore wondered how his family had acquired its last name, its family name. 

His research into the matter had found a place by that name in California, in the United States.  Some sort of wine country.  He wondered whether it had been named after a long forgotten relative.  Evidently the name was derived from old English, “Leuuremer”, or some such thing and it was old before the Conqueror invaded in 1066.  Perhaps there’d been a Leuuremer fighting against him at the Battle of Hastings, on the losing side unfortunately.  Evidently the name had been important in the area near the ancient Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.  But still, that did not explain the meaning of “livermore”, although it may have had something to do with lakes and reeds, rather than with “liver”“.  Jason hoped that was the case.

At least in his case, “liver” was not among those things he enjoyed ingesting, although he was, of course, happy that his own liver apparently functioned well.  No liver spots, at least not yet, and he had a fine digestion without problems, even when he partook a bit too much of food or drink.

When he broke his family name into two components, “liver” and “more”, he wondered at what “Livermore” implied in a modern sense, and wondering that, for some reason, put him in mind of ravens, ravens of the type quoted by Edgar Allen Poe.  He recalled that goose livers were a delicacy, one to which he did not subscribe despising liver as a comestible in all its variants, and wondered whether or not the livers of ravens were all that different from those of geese.

He’d sometimes thought of changing his family name.  His given name was fine, he liked it.  But then again, he also liked the sound of the combination of Jason and Livermore, if not its implication.  It sounded aristocratic to him and he did, in fact, perceive of himself as something of an aristocrat, if only for onomatopoeic reasons.  Reasons that may not have made sense to anyone else but which, to him, resonated.

He had no children, nor a wife for that matter.  But he might, someday.  And he sometimes wondered if his lack of success in serious amatory adventures might not have something to do with his last name.  Perhaps “Mrs. Livermore” was not quite as palatable a sobriquet as most women whom he might desire would enjoy porting.  And he was a bit picky, not just any woman would do.  Unfortunately for him, perhaps none that he might pick would reciprocate, or at least, had reciprocated to date, at least not for long.

Jason wondered how his own father had dealt with the issue.  After all, he’d had a wife, Jason’s mother, at least for a while, at least long enough to beget him and to sort of raise him for a while.  He wondered whether or not it might prove wise to raise the issue with her during one of their infrequent visits together.  For some reason, she’d settled in Budapest, alone, after the demise of her marriage to his father when Jason had just turned thirteen.  It had been off to boarding schools then, albeit not prestigious boarding schools, or not all that prestigious, but adequate if a bit lonely as neither his father nor his mother visited him there with any frequency, and he’d all too frequently spent holidays during those formative years pretty much alone, well, with the exception of faculty and staff, and other sort of discarded students, none of whom ever really became friends, at least not real friends, more like polite, superficial acquaintances with whom he had to interact.

But his mother had not changed her name when his father had divorced her so, apparently, the name was not the determinant factor in the failure of their marriage.

He’d no siblings, or aunts or uncles or, of course, cousins.  Just pater and mater and him, each living alone in their own spheres, rarely interacting and, since he’d turned thirteen, never interacting concurrently.  He lived in London and his father in Paris, well there and in Geneva, and in Rome, and sometimes in Madrid.  Not that he was wealthy and had homes in each of those cities, but he tended to move quite a bit, all too frequently having to do with creditors, or unhappy investors, and every once in a while, with furious husbands.  Jason did not take after his father though, or for that matter his mother.

Jason was just Jason; Jason Livermore.

Perhaps he’d get a raven as a pet.  He’d never had a pet and ravens were, he understood, reputed to sometimes acquire the gift of tongues.  It would be interesting to have something, if not someone, with whom to talk.  Something perhaps, on some occasion, to quote.
_______

© 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 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/.

Calcium: a very strange introspective rant

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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 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 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/.

An Interview with Yaʿaqov ben Yosef, the Nazarene; the Son of Mary and …

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[Interview through impenetrable rails in purportedly pearly gates, somewhere outside of time and space]

Interviewer (me): 

Sooo, is it “άκωβος” now, or “Iacobus”?  I’m not sure what they speak in there.  For some reason a lot of people over the years assumed it was Greek and then, Latin, but perhaps its Aramaic, or Hebrew, or perhaps Enochian.  Enochian makes the most sense, but no one understands it where I’m from. You know, there are a lot of strange, maybe even weird rumors about you down below, and definitely weird rumors in the deepest of basements.  Thanks for granting me this exclusive interview to clear things up.  It is exclusive, … right?  I mean, you haven’t really done this before have you.  Given all the stuff written over the years back home, it’s a bit confusing where they got their material. 

Here’s a list of questions, I assume you’ll be able to read them.

יעקב, James, or Jacob, or Santiago, or ….:

Okay, well, not exactly in any order, I have no recollection of ever having granted interviews before, actually, I’d never heard of the concept until you showed up, but I did know quite a few people back in Yerushalayim, and even more people apparently claim to have known me.  Maybe they did, I didn’t really keep records.  You can call me יעקב (Yaʿaqov), but if you can’t pronounce that, then James will do, although I’m sort of partial to “Santiago” although, for the life of me, I can’t fathom how the Spanish got “Santiago” out of Yaʿaqov, or for that matter, where “James” came from.  Is “Yaʿaqov” really that confusing for you English speakers?  It must have had something to do with an ancestor of one of those clowns who worked at the entry desk at Ellis Island.

Don’t look so surprised, we get a lot of news up here, well, at least sometimes.  When the airwaves aren’t clogged up with incessant prayers.

Still, … I can’t really read the list of questions you gave me, I never learned to read in English, we didn’t have it back then, my family only spoke Aramaic most of the time, and we read Hebrew, and understood Greek, and even some Latin.  But I only really read Hebrew.  And anyway, I’m not Joe Biden you know.  I don’t need to have someone prepare cheat sheets for my interviews.

So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just rattle off what we up here refer to as a stream of consciousness, sort of anticipating what I think you probably want to know.  You know, to share with those down there.  Actually, according to my brother, we were expecting a bunch of you up here a while ago.  Maybe you can enlighten as to why the hold up.

Anyway …

During my lifetime I was sometimes referred to as “James (יעקב, Yaʿaqov) the Just”, to which I invariably replied, “just James please”.  Well, in your language.  In mine, at the time, it was “Yaʿaqov”.  But after I’d journeyed beyond the veil, “James the Just” seems to have stuck, … As well as exaggerated rumors concerning my hygiene, or lack thereof, (for the purported sake of piety).  Neither really made sense.  I had to submerge myself in water not infrequently, in conjunction with ritual cleansing required by my Hebrew religious rituals, although it’s true that I rarely cut my hair.  Most of us Jews didn’t, at the time, and never my facial fair, which after a certain length stopped growing of its own volition.  Damned Hegesippus didn’t know anything about the real me, he just made stuff up.  Yeah; I know it was him!  Damned rumor mongering gentile!  And please, don’t think I’m using inappropriate verbiage. “Damned” is exactly the correct adjective when I use it, … especially up here.

It’s not true that I never drank either.  My brother Yeshua, as you know, insisted that we drink in his remembrance, but even as a child, who in Palestine would ever permit their children to drink our water without being treated with wine to avoid disease?  I was a confirmed bachelor though, that part is accurate; Miriam of nearby Magdala was the only woman I was ever drawn to, but she only had eyes, or anything else, for my brother, the prophet, or rabbi, or whatever.  That was for the best anyway.

Bishop?  Me?  We had no priests even, let alone bishops.  We were communists for Heaven’s sake.  Yeshua had made it perfectly clear how he felt about that, although that creep, Saul, seems to have befuddled Simon on that and other points while the two of them were carousing in the Imperial capital.  That damned Saul (and as you know, I mean it literally) perverted everything he touched.  Money, money, money, but it worked.  Simon should have stayed home. 

As for my skydiving off of the Temple roof, well, I can’t really recall doing that but I understand that I was stoned around that time, so, who’s to say.  I understand that being “stoned” has several different connotations nowadays though.

Oh!!!  And yes, Miriam was our mother!!!

Anyway, that’s about it for this interview.  Hope I clarified a few misconceptions, and obviously, I do have a sense of humor.

Interviewer (me): 

Wow!  You pegged the questions, although the answers are a bit unexpected.

You know, lots of us expected your brother to return an awfully long time ago, and to take us up with him.  Any idea where he is now?  A lot of people would like to know.  The delay really caused a lot of confusion, and then, a lot of us sort of lost faith.  But the “Adventists” are great at rationalization, even if not great at math, but even they’re starting to look a bit put off.

יעקב, James, or Jacob, or Santiago, or ….:

Hmmm, well, errr, … time doesn’t really run here, at all, so maybe Yeshua just sort of got carried away, the angels tend to put him to sleep with all those constant hymns and harping, and Dad’s preaching is pretty drawn out.  His Dad I mean.  Mine was Yosef.

But I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by and asked after him.  If I see him that is.  This place has no dimensions or space, so things can get confusing.

Interviewer (me): 

Ahhhh!  Hmmm, well, I guess that’s it then.  But, well, could I ask a huge favor?  Would you please give your brother my regards, and his Dad too, and my mom, please let her now I really miss her, and my grandparents, and ….

_______

© 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 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

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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 81st or 82nd 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 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 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:

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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 82nd 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 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 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/.

A Divine Revelation to a Society of Seekers

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Divinity enjoyed timeless access to everything, eternally, within the perfect balance of absolute, omni-dimensional, omni-universal naught that is best described as absolute zero. That balance was broken when Divinity expired causing the primal omni-explosion that created the omniverse.

Residue of the expired Divinity comprises every component of the omniverse some of which evolved into Divine avatars in the form of gods and demons, their status, attributes and abilities depending in the degree of belief lent to them by sentient entities.

Every aspect of the omniverse bears a portion of the Divine and thus, only in total concert can they reconstitute Divinity, or more accurately, the Divine Ghost. Note that a ghost, the non-physical residue of a formerly living being, is not the same as a spirit, which coexists in a symbiotic relationship with a living component.

Time is the medium in which the Divine Ghost dwells but it streams linearly in all possible directions and at all possible speeds, seeking to reflect, albeit pallidly, the infinite possibilities once latent and inchoate, that once eternally constituted its corpus.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Ocala, Florida, December 4, 2005; 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 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/.

The “Woke” …?

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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 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 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/.

Karma and Me

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Progeny, it turns out, was not all I hoped it would be, what I expected it’d be, all that I worked so hard to make it.  Futility?  Perhaps.  But then again, perhaps not.  Apparently, despite their reflections, opinions and observations concerning me, my three sons are happy with who they are, and, in an important sense, they’ve highlighted the many errors I made.  Not as a father, although they’ve plenty of complaints, but as a son to an amazing mother I too often took too much for granted.  Especially when I was younger.

And then, I wonder. 

I wonder how my mother felt about her own progeny.  Thinking about it objectively, were I her, I would have considered us an ungrateful bunch, too often, in my sister’s case, bitterly critical, and in my brother’s, unable to wean successfully, and in mine, to whom she gave more than to any of my siblings, perhaps too cocky, to sure I was right and she was wrong.  Too distant.  Too much like my own sons.

Karma’s a bitch, but as someone who hates to be indebted, it’s better this way. 

Who knows, perhaps I’ve accumulated a positive balance.  But I so wish I would have been a much better son, a more understanding son, a more accepting son, one who more vocally expressed his love, admiration and gratitude.  Now, given the ways of destiny and time and entropy, it’s too late.  Unless somehow my mother, from far beyond the veil, can sense what I now feel and what I now understand and can enjoy it, revel in it, and somehow grasp and hold it.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to correct all my past mistakes, to have been more understanding, less egocentric, more empathic. 

More like her.
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© 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 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/.