Blithely Travelling on the Road to Perdition

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

This morning I read an article[1] in Consortium News, one of the few reliable sources of objective and critical information on national and international events in a world dominated by manipulative propaganda. I recommend that it be read and shared widely. I’ve provided details in the footnote below. It warms me to think that, although it is perhaps a tiny club, the “sane” still, to some extent exist. It also motivated me to make some observations as to how delusionally we permit ourselves to be governed.

These observations could have been shared at almost any time during the past two hundred years but seem even more relevant today when it seems obvious that the great experiments of 1789 have failed to fulfill their expectations, but that nonetheless, criticizing them is an intolerable heresy. Still, the following question just won’t go away:

How reasonable is it to propagate a dysfunctional system, in this case, the oxymoron which the term democracy has come to represent?

While direct democracy may somewhat function, its oligarchic variants, representative and participatory democracy have been utter failures.

Why?

First of all, as majority-premised representative systems, representative and participatory democracies require widespread participation by the citizenry with citizenship open to at least all adults impacted by governmental decisions. Majority means more than 50% of the total, not more than fifty percent of a fraction, thus, in a real democratic system, non-participation at best qualifies as a negative vote. In most so called democracies, the best that is attained is a plurality of those participating, i.e., a fraction of those participating larger than any other fraction, but all too frequently, less than the combination of all participating fractions and hence, not close to a majority.

Secondly, perhaps the most obvious characteristic of representative and participatory democracies is corruption in an ever expanding plethora of forms ranging from the concept of gerrymandering criticized but frequently implemented in the United States by all major parties, to structural rules designed to facilitate electoral fraud in the name of “counting every vote” (even those of people who don’t exist or vote several times and in diverse jurisdictions). In addition to electoral fraud, there is fraud associated with false electoral promises by those elected, as to which there exist no means of enforcing compliance. Finally, there is the massive use of deception in electoral campaigns by special interest groups meant to perpetuate governance by wealthy economic elites, now expanded beyond electoral campaigns into an omnipresent system of constant organized deception maintained through controlled corporate and social media and heavy handed censorship facilitated by the growth of communicative technology.

Even if representative and participatory democracies functioned as a means to permit rule by majorities, there is little hope that such rule would be just and equitable rather than selfishly oppressive of the rights of individuals and minorities. Democracy is not synonymous with liberty and certainly not synonymous with the concept of individual or group rights. One only has to consider the current “cancel culture” which the purportedly liberal “woke” seek to impose on everyone.

Finally, one has to take into account that political and economic power is not centered in political entities but rather, has been concentrated in systems that not only do not answer to political or judicial institutions, but rather, which effectively own and control them, and which use them to fleece the huge majority of people through endless wars either carried on directly or orchestrated through manipulation. Manipulation through which the majority of the world’s resources are filtered in the form of “defense” expenditures necessary to orchestrate and fund wars. The current United States and NATO orchestrated conflict between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine is only the latest example. Such wars, are, ironically defended, in large part, as necessary, to expand the use of the dysfunctional representative or participatory forms of purported democracy described above.

As individuals at least many of us appear capable of discerning the situation in which we find ourselves. A form of slavery more or less comfortable for some but devastating to a huge segment of the world’s population. As groups, however, sociological dynamics come into play which obfuscate our perceptions and render us all too easy to manipulate. The concept of “others”, our opponents conceived of as brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and friends, seem, to disappear, along with our empathy, and society becomes polarized into an us-versus-them, self-destructive organism, one all too easy to control through tried and true divide-and-conquer strategies and tactics.

Given the foregoing, is there no hope? Are there no better possible systems? The answer is: probably. Some form of meritocracy perhaps (not currently in vogue in the face of a “handicapper general” quota mentality). Plato believed in a benign fascist führer based system led by an all-powerful philosopher king who could own nothing and have no family and would thus be immune to corruption. Indeed, the concept of concentration of power in a dictatorship, not in a pejorative sense but representing the opposite of today’s popular purported division of power systems, was popular for limited periods in Republican Rome and is, in fact, an emergency feature in most modern governments under circumstances where governing efficiency is essential. At the other end of the political spectrum lie anarchism and communism, both predicated on a belief that humans are innately good and that little or no governance is required, a philosophy to some extent shared by libertarians. Somewhere in between one might hope lies an answer. But implementation of reforms is almost impossible given the concentration of power everywhere in the hands of the most selfish, most ruthless and most corrupt who (as Donald Trump may have learned and Vladimir Putin may be learning) are not willing to accept any changes in a system that works so well for them and for their friends and families.

So we vote, at least some of us, then complain about the results; usually all of us. And we continue to fruitlessly spin our wheels while, all around us, millions are murdered or sentenced to unfulfilled lives and early graves to feed the boundless greed of the very worst among us, many of whom are those who, in our ignorance, we most admire.

Like automatons we are programmed through purported entertainment, video games and news programs. We grow to hate those who seem different (although in most cases the differences are illusory or minor), fighting over things that will not change, their continued existence being essential distractions from our real problems. And we blithely continue on the road to perdition.

But to the tune of a Bing Cosby and Bob Hope road movie.
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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 a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.

[1] Brenner, Michael (March 5, 2022). “War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth”, Consortium News, Volume 27, Number 66 — Monday, March 7, 2022.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

“Do as I say, not as I do”, an old parental refrain we kids hated. I assume kids still do although they seem so much different than we were. Of course, Plato made the same refrain two and a half millennia ago.

It’s a pretty day high in the central range of the Colombian Andes from which I view ugly developments far way, but which may all too soon impact us all. The situation today is not the result of sudden, unpredictable events. Rather, it’s as though the Trojan seeress Cassandra had returned to once again prophecy while no one cared or listened. The mad leading the mad to our mutual perdition. Kind of like what Simon and Garfunkel described when they recorded Ian Campbell’s desperately beautiful but horribly sad song, “The Sun is Burning”:

The sun is burning in the sky; strands of clouds go slowly drifting by; in the park the lazy bees are joining in the flowers among the trees; and the sun burns in the sky.

Now the sun is in the West; little kids go home to take their rest; and the couples in the park are holding hands and waiting for the dark. And the sun is in the West.

Now the sun is sinking low; children playing know it’s time to go. High above a spot appears, a little blossom blooms and then draws near. And the sun is sinking low.

Now the sun has come to earth. Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death. Death comes in a blinding flash of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash. And the sun has come to earth.

Now the sun has disappeared. All is darkness, anger, pain and fear. Twisted sightless wrecks of men go groping on their knees and cry in pain. And the sun has disappeared

Since the overthrow of progressives and liberals in the Democratic Party as a result of the Clinton coup of 1992, and the resulting consolidation of the neoconservative-neoliberal Deep State in the United States, the European Union and NATO (now spread substantially outside of its original borders and actively engaged in offensive rather than defensive operations), a number of countries have been dismembered by that unholy alliance. They include Palestine, Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria, while others have been invaded and conquered totally (Iraq and Afghanistan), at least temporarily. In the case of both Iraq and Afghanistan, involuntary dismemberment were seriously considered. In addition, the Soviet Union was, of course, dismembered, but with a promise that NATO would not move in to fill the vacuum, a vacuous promise. Each such disaster involved serious violations of international law, which was shown to be little more than an aspiration and the United Nations Charter just an illusion.

The shoe now seems snuggly ensconced on the other foot, something totally predictable based on the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” school of geopolitics.

One wonders why it is almost always the Democratic Party in the United States that leads us into major wars (major characterized by tens of thousands of United States casualties): World War I, World War II, the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam? And also into other wars, wars that while to us may not seem major, to the countries we’ve destroyed are devastating, wars like the “interventions into Libya and Syria. Not that they’re not backed by the GOP (although it is frequently the GOP that inherits the aftermath). And that of course does not include countless coups throughout the Western Hemisphere, Middle East and Africa orchestrated by the boys from the “Company” (as some call the Central Intelligence Agency and its myriad progeny). Today, it seems that we in what we call “the West” are being led by two stooges the Keystone Cops would not accept, the United States’ Joe Biden and the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson, but there are plenty of bit players in the European Union as well. And of course, there’s the Ukraine’s own autocrat, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On the other side sits Vladimir Putin, apparently holding all the cards and playing chess while Biden, Johnson et. al., play checkers. And on the other side of the world, with another deck of cards at the ready, sits Xi Jinping.

This morning a close and admired friend and Citadel classmate posted a message on Facebook comparing the Russian recognition of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics to Hitler’s forays into formerly German territories lost as a result of the Entente’s victory in World War I, a resemblance which, as a very loyal member of the United States’ Democratic Party, he has not noted with respect to the comparable, earlier situations described above. Of course, not all actions that bear some aspects in common are analogous. Hmmm, unless maybe they are.

A bit of context:

The situation in the Ukraine did not start yesterday but rather in 2014 when the United States, the European Union and NATO orchestrate a coup d’état in the Ukraine, overthrowing a democratically elected pro-Russian president and installing a puppet government tied to their interests, ironically, in the name of democracy and the elimination of corruption. If that was the goal, it’s been an utter failure. Autocracy rather than democracy remains the rule in the Ukraine with opposition media shut down and opposition leaders imprisoned. On the other hand (think sleight of hand) corruption, always endemic in the Ukraine, is at least now shared with the families of Western leaders (think Hunter Biden). The 2014 Ukrainian coup d’état was rejected in the Crimea and in the eastern parts of the Ukraine bordering the Russian federation. There, two regions declared independence, the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics. After a plebiscite overwhelmingly in favor of union with the Russian Federation, the Crimea returned to the status it held prior to its administrative separation from Russia during the middle of the last century. The situations in the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics, however, were not so easily resolved.

Until yesterday, the declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics were not formally recognized anywhere. One wonders what the United States’ founding fathers would think of that, especially Thomas Jefferson, author of the former British colonies’ declaration of independence. The Russian Federation, until yesterday, insisted that the controversy be settled through negotiation and implementation of settlement proposals agreed to by the Ukraine and the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics in 2015 under the mediation of France, Germany and the Russian Federation, the so called Minsk Agreements. However, rather than implementing such agreements (which called for a Ukrainian federation with autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions), Ukrainian government forces, supplemented by highly armed semi-independent anti-Russian militias, have occupied a majority of the disputed territories from which constant low key attacks have been continuously launched against the separatist forces and their civilian populations. No military forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics have engaged in military activities outside the borders of such regions although they frequently exchange fire with occupying Ukrainian and militia forces.

During the current domestic political crisis being suffered by the administrations in power in the United States and the United Kingdom, Ukrainian forces and the related semi-independent anti-Russian militias have been reinforced with substantial military armaments through NATO, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, and such armaments have been supplemented by a constant barrage of anti-Russian propaganda to the effect that the Russian Federation was about to invade and conquer the Ukraine and murder and imprison its anti-Russian leaders. Apparently it was hoped that an international crisis could ameliorate the tenuous domestic political climate in both countries, and it certainly would not hurt Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron’s prospects in the pending French presidential election. In the Ukraine itself, the situation was mare tenuous and confusing. On the one hand, the Ukrainian government sought to distance itself from such propaganda, while on the other, the semi-independent anti-Russian militias fully bought into it and this past week dramatically increased their military activities against the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics.

The consequences have proven completely predictable. Baiting the bear on a consistent basis and crying wolf incessantly led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Russian Federation has, following in a very limited manner the example set by the United States and NATO in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics and entered into related mutual defense treaties. Unlike NATO in the former Yugoslavia however, it is not bombarding Kiev and the other parts of the Ukraine, but that may occur in the not too distant future, depending on how carefully reactions are measured. While the world’s financial markets are generally down, armament industry stocks and gold are flying high, as are oil futures.

The echoes of the summer of 2014 sound all too clearly and things may quickly spiral out of hand, especially given the stupidity and cupidity of the current power mad United States administration and its puppets in Europe. There is a worst case scenario that I hope is improbable. But as in the tumbling dominos of the myriad military alliances that characterized Europe at the beginning of the First World War (some secret and some open), our world presents a bizarre mirror image of that sad season. One mostly orchestrated by the United States which continuously forms alliances and understanding with a large number of countries (against the wishes of most of their citizens) seeking to contain the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China, such alliances now supplemented by de facto economic warfare through “economic sanctions” against a host of countries deemed “enemies”. In addition to the two super powers referenced above, such “enemies” include the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. It reminds me of a clumsy waiter trying to bring a huge pile of dishes to the kitchen, while snickering customers stretch their legs to try and trip her. Only we’re the plates.

Prospects for another world war, to some extent, depend on a mirror image situation on the other side of the planet, the unresolved issue of the estranged Chinese province of Taiwan. That issue is always threatening to blossom into an inferno, more so now that the United States deems the Peoples’ Republic as serious a threat to its economic primacy as the Russian Federation poses to hegemony in Europe, but it is only simmering at present. That could change very quickly and that, in my opinion, depends on whether or not the Peoples’ Republic of China, the Russian Federation’s de facto ally, recognizes the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics and then, whether in retaliation, the United States and its allies recognize the independence of Taiwan. That would almost certainly lead to an invasion of Taiwan by the Peoples’ Republic forcefully reintegrating Taiwan into the Chinese state, somewhat the opposite of what is occurring in the Ukraine.

One would assume Western leaders would not be so abysmally stupid as to make that scenario possible but the hubris of current leaders may be worse than that of Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas, H. H. Asquith, Raymond Poincaré and, of course, the duplicitous Woodrow Wilson.

The situation in the Ukraine is regretful on many fronts, all instigated by the unholy alliance of the governments of the United States, the European Union and NATO (much to the detriment of their people and to the people of the Ukraine). These include the 2014 Maiden Coup, the refusal of the Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements, the abuse of economic sanctions against the Russia Federation and other countries outlawed under the Charter of the United Nations, their constant penchant for foreign intervention and NATO’s disregard for promises made to the Soviet Union with respect to German unification and NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. They have brought us to the brink of disaster. That is as obvious today as the then pending disaster should have been in the summer of 2014, but perhaps nothing was really learned from the War to End all Wars and its sequel, the Second World War, and its sequel, the Cold War, and its sequel, the War on Terror, and its sequel, the Second Cold War, other than perhaps, how to utterly and constantly distort the truth and to pervert journalism, and how to make trillions of dollars for the military industrial complex against which Ike warned us almost sixty-two years ago.

So, here we are, nervously listening to shoes dropping, geese berating ganders and immature adults crying wolf, as the world turns. Not a very comfortable place in which to find ourselves. “The Sun is Burning” is a beautiful song with horrifying lyrics. The same year that it was recorded by Simon and Garfunkel, 1964, the Democratic Party’s National Committee, on behalf of the Lyndon Johnson presidential campaign, produced and played, on one occasion, a political advertisement perhaps inspired by that song, the so called daisy girl ad [1]. It featured a little girl playing with a daisy in a field, then suddenly consumed in a nuclear explosion. The ad was massively successful and changed advertising history. Unfortunately, it was utterly hypocritical as the Johnson administration shortly thereafter orchestrated the infamous Vietnam War.

Perhaps it’s time to take Pete Seeger’s anthem, “When Will they ever Learn” (also known as “Where Have all the Flowers Gone) and Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” seriously. Perhaps it’s time to change the bellicose world order before we, as humans, are unable to change anything again.
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[1] See the following Wikipedia article on point at Daisy (advertisement) – Wikipedia.

Of Happy Days, Intellectual Property and Real Choices

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

As we watch endless reruns on cable, I wonder how they’re selected. The choices get worse every year. For some time, television for me has been pretty much limited to news and sports, well, what passes for “news” and after the recent NFL Pro Bowl, something all too similar is happening to sports. Perhaps this is how “dark ages” start.

Of course, our travails with entertainment are the least of our problems. Today’s problems seem not only existentially dangerous but seemingly irresolvable. Plato thought pretty much the same two and a half millennia ago. “The more things change, the more they stay the same”, but do they have to? Let’s start on a light and superficial note, but one that illustrates our quandary.

To many of us, today’s television programs and movies are insipid, politically motivated, politically correct drivel, but, omnipresent insipid, politically motivated, politically correct drivel. Choice, other than abstention, is pretty much non-existent despite the vast quantities of great material produced during the second half of the 20^th century. How many of us would love to binge watch “All in the Family” or “Sanford & Son” or “Welcome Back Kotter” or “Different Strokes” or “Happy Days” or “Whats Happening” or “WKRP in Cincinnati” or “The Jeffersons” or “Night Court” or “Julia” or “The Wonder Years” or “The Jamie Fox Show” or “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” or “Martin”? And going back even further, “The Ozzie and Harriet Show” or “I love Lucy” or “Amos and Andy” or “Father Knows Best” or “My Three Sons”. The examples are legion!

Admittedly, sitcoms are not a high art form but the programs cited and many others were entertaining and a relief from the stress of daily life rather than superficially disguised demands that we criticize ourselves and our ancestors into oblivion for not having been born perfect. Damn Eve and her apples (hmmm, that may be resundant)! We enjoyed those old sitcoms and would enjoy them still, if we could, if they were available. But as in politics, our choices are all too few; filtered for us for incomprehensible purposes other than that perhaps, entertainment is not about our own preferences but an effective behavioral means of manipulation. Initially to sell products but now, for social control.

A primary tool for the exercise of social as well as economic and political control is the abuse of intellectual property rights. The concept of intellectual property is sound (albeit ironically totally contrary to capitalist theory). Its purported goal is to reward creators for their efforts and thus incentivize innovation. Of course, the “benefits generally go to investors and corporate executives rather than to creators. In any event, the “warehousing” of intellectual property, whether in the field of entertainment or other fields (such as technology, energy, transportation, etc.) has exactly the opposite effect. Indeed, the abuse of intellectual property rights forces consumers to acquire inferior products at inflated prices, all too frequently designed for accelerated obsolescence.

How can something so antisocial exist in a democracy?

Well, the truth is that it couldn’t, and there’s the rub.

The concept of democracy (like the concept of capitalism where the market purportedly makes the decisions) is a ruse and exists in name only. It is no more than a way to placate us and to fool us into thinking that we have control over our own lives when, to an objective observer, it would be obvious that we don’t. Just as government supported monopolies deprive us of choice in all markets, political parties (political monopolies) filter out the leaders we deserve and would chose if given the chance at least as efficiently as do autocratic dictatorships, something a student in a Comparative Politics class I taught once pointed out to me when we were covering governance in contemporary Iran. Constitutions should be the vehicles that resolve the tensions between liberty, democracy and minority rights but instead, they create the organic anomalies that protect the ability of elites to govern us all, as though they possessed Sauron’s One Ring.

Perhaps they do. I can almost hear the echoes of “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them; in the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.”

How is it that nowhere (other than perhaps tiny Iceland and once upon a short time ago, some of the Nordic countries) is there a country where the citizenry takes its political obligations (not political rights) seriously enough to have a serious shot at attaining (rather than fruitlessly pursuing) happiness? How is it that being able to control the right of others to make their own decisions became a higher priority for us collectively than enjoying our individual autonomy? Is there no way out of the incoherent social mess we’ve permitted others to force us to endure?

Strange that the foregoing is so aptly illustrated by the entertainment we watch, not having a viable option to enjoy the entertainment we would prefer, had we the option. The reality is that there are numerous answers to all the socioeconomic problems that we face: to inequity, inequality, injustice, impunity, poverty, etc., had we the collective will to demand their selection and to participate in their implementation. Instead, we seemingly live in a world as controlled and manipulated as the one presented in the Matrix series of movies; and most of us know it, at least most of the time. Unfortunately we tend to forget all semblance of reality during electoral cycles when most of us apparently lose our collective minds under an avalanche of electoral posters, electoral ads and dire warnings of existentially greater evils. And we do so time after time after time, ad nauseaum.

If only the fury and disdain for our political, social and economic leaders that we feel during the years in which elections are not held could be preserved, then we could make make a difference, ….

We do have effective options, elections may be one, although there are serious doubts as to whether legitimate elections are still a viable option, but there are always mass boycotts. Boycotts of all products sold directly and indirectly by mass media advertisers, whether in print, through social media, on television, etc. Interestingly, in response to a question from a former student as to how to identify corrupt politicians during an electoral cycle I replied that those with the most posters and most commercials were in all likely hood, the most corrupt. The same seems true of most advertisers. How much more productive would it be for us, and for our communities if we prioritized local purchasing from family businesses?

Ahhh …. Oh Happy Days!
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Reflections on our Tortured Political Realities

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

It’s 2022. February.

The world is (as has come to be the norm) on the brink of war, with many small conflagrations keeping munitions industry investors busy counting their profits. Massive demonstrations lauded by the corporate media from January of 2017 until January of 2021 are now anathema, despicable and unjustifiable traitorous insurrections. Those who believe that abortion is a right because our bodies are ours to do with as we will now demand that others consume medications they oppose, … well, just because. Political incoherence reigns; truth is irrelevant, hypocrisy has become an art form. In the United States we are more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. The Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” is clearly in place.

But: … who are we and how did we get where we find ourselves? Who or what is responsible? How likely are we to survive as a civil society?

A fundamental analysis may be a good place to start answering these existential questions. As a political analyst, writer, academic and historian, it seems to me that a starting point is exploring the fundamental philosophical tensions that impact our sociopolitical decision making process and that starts with the dual nature each of us shares: we are both individuals and members of concentric rings of collectives, and the stress we place on one or the other of such natures is a dividing point. It seems obvious that reconciliation of both aspects of our nature, when possible, is the best policy. Both our autonomy as individuals and the collaboration required to participate in groups need to be respected in order for collaborative concepts such as the economy, the family, government, religion, education, etc. to function. But what happens when one or the other aspects of our nature conflict in a manner that cannot be resolved and one has to be prioritized over the other?

To collectivists on what has arbitrarily come to be defined as the left wing of the political spectrum, as the fictional character Spock noted, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few); individualists on the right disagree by favoring individual rights. Of course, there are those who react rather than philosophize and to whom logical consistency is irrelevant. Some of those can be classified as a center comprised of a conglomeration of the apathetic and those who have no fixed values but are conflict averse (a good thing). Unfortunately; a dangerous second group, a tiny minority, is comprised of a non-ideological but immensely powerful social cancer that has come to be referred to as a Deep State.

One form of Deep State or another exists everywhere and has probably always existed. There is a political theory that posits that humans are always ruled by an elite minority. Elite theory is superficially dealt with in Wikipedia where, in very general terms, it is defined as: “… a theory of the state that … posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.” As with most articles in Wikipedia, it is subject to manipulation and its accuracy is not assured, but as a broad outline and starting point for research, it is at least adequate. In essence, Elite Theory claims that democracy is at best an illusion and a tool used by elites to manipulate the vast majority into actions of benefit primarily to the small group of dedicated individuals, families and professions who have attained and will not relinquish economic, social and political power. That certainly seems to the society in which we find ourselves; however, because it is so one sided that the gap between the wealthy and everyone else is increasing exponentially (see Piketty, Tomas [2013, English translation 2014], “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674430006), a populist counter reaction has been building and had a very direct impact on the United States presidential election in 2016, from both the left (the Democratic Party’s so called Sanderistas) and on the right (the GOP’s Tea Party). The right wing populist victory threw the Deep State into a panic, forcing it to reveal itself in order to stage a “soft coup” with the assistance of the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans, the corporate media and the newly emergent elite controlled social media platforms, and to impose authoritarian methods in the United States and elsewhere, including large scale censorship in order to prevent a recurrence. Left wing populists, led, in the Democratic Party by Tulsi Gabbard, were successfully contained with the assistance of perceived populist leaders like Bernie sanders and Elizabeth Warren who proved all too willing to work with Deep State elites to derail their own populist revolt.

With the essential assistance of the corporate media and social media platform censorship, Deep State elitists were able to manipulate the Covid 19 pandemic to assume unprecedented control by strategically sabotaging the world economy through socioeconomic lockdowns and medical mandates as well as by divisive social polarization that set the population to bickering over historical events rather than populist solutions to current socioeconomic crises, with race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and religion all used to distract the electorate while concurrently, protecting elite investments in the profitable armaments industry by aggravating international tensions keeping the world on the brink of war, both is a series of local conflicts and the threat of major power nuclear confrontation. But right wing populist resistance, overcome in the United States through media control and electoral gimmicks during the 2018 and 2020 elections, seems to have recovered enough to significantly impact United States congressional elections set for November of this year. Left wing populists, on the other hand, with the exception of followers of Tulsi Gabbard and perhaps Dennis Kucinich, seem quiescent, and are being driven by elitist manipulation into support of the Deep State, of censorship and of restraints on civil liberties, all policies which they have traditionally opposed and abhorred. They are now the “woke”, Cancel Culture warriors, the thought police of whom George Orwell wrote in the late 1940s. Ironically, the elites’ best friends.

It remains to be seen whether those on the “center” will prove as gullible as those on the populist left, as gullible as Abraham Lincoln once noted when he reflected that “you can fool all of the People some of the time and some of the People all of the time” or, whether even the apathetic center is fed up enough to bring the third part of that quotation into play: “but you can’t fool all of the People all of the time”.

It is interesting that right wing and left wing populists, while disagreeing as to policies, have a great deal in common and have usually been able to coexist, with the assistance of the apathetic and disinterested center. But not now, not today. Not when orchestrated polarization by Deep State elites have manipulated them into dysfunction through use of illusory issues, especially abortion and gun control now supplemented by racism, xenophobia and misogyny, issues not meant to be solved but rather, exacerbated for fun and profit. That is where we stand today, a day in February 2022.

Assuming that the electoral process has not been completely compromised through legislation and rules designed to facilitate electoral fraud, perhaps we may once again catch a glimpse of a populist wave this November. Unfortunately, one thing seems sure, elitist Deep Staters will not just sit back and watch, and in the long term, their faith in the usual disinterest of the vast majority of the citizenry in political matters which keeps them from participating as candidates and from even voting, is likely to return the elites to power (should it again be temporarily wrested from them), keeping the rest of us in chains, sometimes velvet but all too often in shades of stainless steel.

Exactly what happened with the socioeconomic revolts in 1776, 1789, 1848 and of course, in the nineteen-sixties!

Most children have beautiful smiles, at least until they are taught to hate. I wonder what kind of people the children born since 2019 will grow into given that hate has been converted into a virtue, given that they have experienced their socially formative years, in large part, in politically imposed isolation, with education limited, with playgrounds closed?

Children tend to be resilient, after all, they survive, even in Yemen and Afghanistan, at least if they’re not killed by drones. Will humankind perhaps have learned that calumny and ridicule and censorship do not change hearts, by the time they’re grown?
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Of Circles and Singularities and Love and Life

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Circles, in some aspects, seem the perfect shape, but they also represent closed systems, at least when considered alone. Spheres add dimension. And groups of spheres, almost infinite groups of spheres, well that is a very different thing. Groups of spheres seem to surround us, from micro, sub atomic structures to the shapes of ever expanding universes. We humans, and perhaps other biological entities, seem trapped in the middle, although, the gift of volition would seem to impact the concept of a closed system, a flaw in the predestination that geometry and mathematics and physics seem to imply. It is interesting to speculate on whether or not there was any volition inherent in the transition from singularity into everything which eventually evolved. That might, to some extent, explain the imperfections in that first great conflagration. Of course, that could imply a demiurge and, to be honest, demiurges are currently out of fashion.

Circes are symbols as well as archetypes, especially when configured in groups. And while the potential configuration of circles is infinite the classification of their configurations are not. They can be singularities (theoretically), solitary circles, groups of solitaries, concentric, overlapping, intersecting, and combinations of the foregoing. As combinations they represent the fascinating possibilities inherent in chaos where all that can be, “is”, and is simultaneously notwithstanding inherent contradictions.

As archetypes, concentric circles represent hierarchies, authoritarian systems, each level encompassing a prior level around a singularity in the middle. Overlapping circles represent interactions among some groups of circles without a hierarchy and without a centric singularity, and, intersecting circles represent interaction among all members of a group, without a hierarchy but with a common nucleus: circles interacting around a central axis with a portion of their circumferences overlaying, generating a small shared area, one that they occupy in common while the rest reflects a sort of independence. The latter variant represents very special things to me on a number of levels. The ideal blend of intimacy and independence in intimate interpersonal relationships, or the ideal relationship among social groups with shared values but also, with treasured differences; the antithesis of the revered melting pot concept much more accurately reflecting the ideal in a multicultural society and a multinational state. No one’s values superimposed over those of others even as important values are shared.

Ideals are such frustrating things though. They posit idealized solutions to intractable problems: unstoppable forces crashing into immovable objects but with the hope that faith can indeed move mountains. Somewhere in chaos, in the multiverse posited by the variant of string theory that encompasses eleven, rather than ten dimensions, somewhere where everything that can happen happens somewhere or some-when, idealized solutions function. But not here, not now.

It is very sad that in today’s polarized world where purported progressives have exchanged almost all of their values in a quest for perpetual power, the balance in my vision of intersecting circles is being brutalized and the quest for individuality, for harmonious liberty, for tolerance and mutual respect is being savaged. It’s as though an intellectual pandemic infected many of the people who once shared my values and my goals and turned them into negative mirror images of what they once were. Inexplicably, at least to me, metaphorically their quest seems to involve converting intersecting circles into concentric circles, and then, into singularities, reversing the tolerance-for-difference humankind once seemed determined to attain into Orwellian conformism.

I recall the hope and love inherent during the chaotic nineteen-sixties, a blend of incoherent emotions demanding change, demanding an end to bellicosity at every level; an end to war; an end to racism, xenophobia and misogyny; an end to intolerance; an end to inequity and injustice, but in each case, endings to be attained through empathy and love rather than conflict, conquest and suppression. However, we lost our way and flower children became politicians and entrepreneurs and journalists and, instead of great writers, many became great publicists, enamored with the apparent magic of the tools behavioral psychology made available, tools that, like the mythical philosopher’s stone, permitted almost total manipulation of feelings and beliefs. And truth became irrelevant, a merely relative concept. Rhetoric became a divinity at whose feet, amidst the sounds of silence, we became that against which we once railed.

As we changed, we propagated and under the leadership and guidance of many of us who, for diverse reasons, like Luke Skywalker aka Darth Vader turned to the dark side, much of our progeny became more and more incoherent, incongruent, vitriolic, violent and intolerant. Slogans replaced goals and to them, the changes in the present we so need required that the historical past be destroyed and replaced: in essence, that our historical mirrors be exchanged for discordant pseudo-art: visual as well as vocal, cinematographic, etc. To them, censorship, rather than the evil we once believed it to be, ought to be imposed in the name of security from discordant opinions, as though rather than the music of the orbs, only a single unending, unwavering, invariable note should be permitted to exist, and that what it lacked in terms of diversity, should be replaced with volume.

In essence, in this temporal instant, in this corner of the multiverse, we are experiencing a battle of discordant circular configurations, perhaps a battle between the armies of chaos (intersecting and overlapping circles, the good guys) and the armies of the concentric circles seeking the singularity we once were. Singularity which provides security through the absence of choices and the absence of opinions but which, in the end, crushes us all.
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A Midwinter Night’s Dream in 2022

Posted on January 27, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Machiavelli and Murphy sip brandy (Cardenal Mendoza) in their comfortable overstuffed chairs at their club at eternity’s end and, playing cards, discuss the latest news. Pseudo-president Biden is in desperate political trouble, as is his political party, and with them the Deep State. Hardly anyone believes the corporate media but its members remain blissfully unaware, of anything, they only need to read from teleprompters: whatever the intelligence agencies wrote.

The two old pals had been laughing at the machinations in the Ukraine when a servitor brought Murphy a news flash. Laughing, he threw down a newly marked card: “Steven Breyer had just announced that he was resigning from the Supreme Court”. Nicholai’s eyes lit up. Oh the opportunities this presented! Murphy looked on slyly, agreeing, … but with plans of his own.

“Michelle Obama” they both whispered. And then they chatted, … although not all that honestly. They had style though.

Nicholai saw her as the answer to the pseudo-president’s problems as well as to those of his party which had been nervously waiting to be slaughtered in November. Oyez vey!! Nancy Pelosi had just announced plans to run again. But, a black woman intimately tied to Obama, what could be better! Competence and experience were irrelevant, only politics mattered. It would also eliminate her from competition for the presidency at the next election, something too many people in his party were apparently considering. And after all, only the next six years really mattered. Kamala would understand, in fact, she might also be thrilled. Anyway, did it really matter what Kamala’d been promised or what she thought (assuming she thought). Blacks loved him no matter what he’d done in the past and now he’d give them a reason to stand up and cheer again.

And it would put the GOP in a horrible spot. If they fought the nomination it would energize the Democrats’ base, and if they acquiesced, it would depress theirs. Check!

But not “mate” Murphy whispered to himself, not mate. Snickering under his breath as he was wont to do, he rubbed his hands in glee and excused himself. A bathroom break but one from which he didn’t return. Lost in his imaginative reverie, Nicholai barely noticed.

Murphy sneaked off to pour even greater delusions into the mind of another former first lady already busy dying her skin a much darker tone and planting evidence, with the connivance of her many friends in the media and her buddy Elizabeth Warren, to prove that she had a number of ancestors of African descent. “After all”, Elizabeth was saying, “don’t we all”? “Think of Lucy after all”?
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Of Colin Rand Kaepernick, Robert E. Lee and Francis Scott Key, the Uncivil Civil War and More on this Day Set Aside to Honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali

Posted on January 17, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Today, January 17, 2022, is a day set aside to honor two famous Americans of African descent, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali. One wonders how Dr. King would view today’s America. I think it is almost as different as possible from what he hoped it would be. Ali might have been less surprised and more sanguine. Perhaps some reality checks are in order, unpleasant reality checks for everyone involved, and I believe Colin Rand Kaepernick is a viable vehicle for such introspection. He is a strange symbol for many concepts, a number of them incoherently inconsistent with others. In essence, like Ali, although to a much lesser extent, he is someone who has been forced to choose between professional and financial success and his conscience. Unlike Ali, he was not the best that ever was at his athletic endevors, he may have become a great quarterback or merely been eventually cast aside as mediocre, but cast aside he was, not by the United States government as was the case with Ali, put by the owners of the National Football League, bowing to pressure from jingoist elements in our society that worship symbols, much as fascists do, without really understanding them. Unfortunately, that pretty much defines the disparate competing elements working to sunder us, to polarize us to lead us once again into violent civil strife as once again, families are torn asunder based on narratives that have little to do with reality.

It is certainly not only right wing, empire loving pseudo-conservatives to blame. For example, the claim by Cancel Culture “Woke” warriors that meritocracy is racist and sexist is a huge insult to minorities of all races, nationalities and genders. It is amazing how blatantly unaware of their condescension those privileged pseudo liberals are. Real liberals and real progressives know better and all we ask is that as Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped, we not be judged by anything other than our character and abilities (“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”).

Meritocracy would seem to have been what would have most benefitted Mr. Kaepernick, but meritocracy not delimited by required political correctness, a social disease that impacts autocratic infected activists in both major parties, none of whom adequately represent either the political right (denominated Paleolithic, fascist, racist and extreme or radical by its opponents in the Democratic Party) or the political left (denominated Communist, socialist and extreme or radical by its opponents in the Republican Party). Interestingly, the sane are not necessarily found in the apathetic center or among those who identify as independent due to lack of interest, but rather, are scattered among the populist fringes, left as well as right, who realize that for a very long time, perhaps forever, we have all been manipulated, used and abused for the benefit of the very few who rule us all as though they owned the One Ring of which JRR Tolkien wrote.

Colin Rand Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco Forty-Niners of the National Football League is famous, or infamous (depending on your perspective) for refusing to honor the playing of the United States’ national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner”, at the start of a professional football game in which he played. His example was subsequently followed by other professional and university football players of African descent, and then by athletes and sympathizers of diverse races. The related symbolic protests further polarized an already divided nation and Mr. Kaepernick has evidently been “blackballed” from playing in the National Football League, although at some point, perhaps his skill had so deteriorated that having placed him on an NFL team roster would have been a mere token gesture.

But what was Mr. Kaepernick’s point?

Apparently, the catalyst was the following line from the third stanza in the poem written by Francis Scott Key in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, and subsequently incorporated into the tune of a British bar song that in 1931 became the national anthem of the United States: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”. According to British historian Robin Blackburn, the phrase referred to the many thousands of African descended slaves who flocked to the British during the War of 1812, where their status as slaves was not recognized by the British, including a number who took service with the British against their American masters in the Corps of Colonial Marines. According to Wikipedia and other more reliable sources[1], Francis Scott Key, when he wrote those verses in 1814, was a slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family who, thanks to that system of human bondage had grown rich and powerful. When he wrote the poem that would, in 1931, become the national anthem proclaiming our nation “the land of the free,” Key, like the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, not only profited from slaves but harbored racist conceptions of American citizenship and human potential. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”

While Key was composing the line “O’er the land of the free,” it is likely that black slaves were trying to reach British ships in Baltimore Harbor. They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Key subsequently used his political office as the district attorney for the City of Washington from 1833 to 1840 to defend slavery, attacking the abolitionist movement in several high-profile cases. Key sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists he believed were riling things up in the city and prosecuted a New York doctor living in Georgetown for possessing abolitionist pamphlets. In the resulting case, U.S. v. Reuben Crandall, Key made national headlines by asking whether the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment, hoping to silence abolitionists who he charged wished to “associate and amalgamate with the Negro.” Though Crandall’s offense was nothing more than possessing abolitionist literature, Key felt that abolitionists’ free speech rights were so dangerous that he sought, unsuccessfully, to have Crandall hanged. Hmmm, that does sound quite a bit like the Democratic Party’s Cancel Culture attitude towards those who oppose compulsory vaccination during the current Covid Crisis. Mr. Key, was, of course, a member of his era’s Democratic Party.

American history is full of irony and hypocrisy but today, none is more blatant than that engaged in today by so called “woke” pseudo progressives waving the Cancel Culture flag. It is not surprising given the pathetic state of education in the United States. This week a “woke” reporter ridiculed a Congressional candidate’s reference to a debate between Abraham Lincoln and former slave and civic leader Frederick Douglas asserting that “the” debate was with Illinois politician Stephen Douglas, as if there had only been one debate between the late president and anyone named Douglas. In fact, there was a huge debate in the White House between Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas and other Black leaders (then referred to as Negroes) concerning Lincoln’s postwar plan to deport all Americans of African descent from the re-United States, Lincoln noting that it was obvious the two races could never live together. Frederick Douglass did not agree. Neither, much later, did Martin Luther King, Jr. Ali’s position on the issue, may have been more complex. Unfortunately, not many people realize that, although opposed to slavery, Abraham Lincoln was an avowed racist. How sad that Americans of African descent today look upon him as their very own hero.

The sad reality is that almost everything taught in the United States concerning its un-civil Civil War is utterly distorted, most especially the claim that the “Union” invaded the States in Secession to “free the slaves”. Nothing could have been further from the truth as then President Lincoln made clear in his first inaugural address when he said ….

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause–as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution–to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause “shall be delivered up” their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

How in good conscience then, can the claim be made that the Civil War was initiated in order to secure freedom from the odious institution of slavery for the millions of enslaved Americans of African descent then held as property not only in the South, but throughout the United States of America? Well, as easily as Jefferson’s claim that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ….” is held as a sacred pillar of American democracy; and as easily as the Confederate Stars and Bars are despised while the Stars and Stripes, which flew over a nation that enforced slavery not only during the Civil War but for the entire period from 1776 until 1866; and as much as the anthem “Dixie” is reviled while Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner, including the lines “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave” are glorified. They are useful lies used not only to maintain most Americans of African Descent in political bondage, but to assure that most of us are also subjected to sugar coated governmental tyranny. Colin Kaepernick was apparently, less ignorant than most when, on that fateful Sunday, he elected to kneel as Mr. Key’s ditty was played before the adoring football crowd in a now ubiquitous Pentagon funded pregame ritual honoring the ongoing murder of millions by a politicized American military machine.

Mr. Kaepernick’s protest involved rare coherence amidst our current politicohistoric incoherence, although perhaps the adjective “current” is misplaced. It is interesting to note that neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson nor Francis Scott Key nor any of the “founding fathers” (other than perhaps Benjamin Franklin) ever did as much for Americans of African descent as did Robert E. Lee after his surrender at Appomattox Court House, but he is the one on whom the purportedly “woke” have focused their disdain. So, Mr. Kaepernick may certainly have had a more than valid point, assuming he is not among the myriads of Americans of African descent who support the Democratic Party: the party of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan, the party of segregation and of the Clinton-Biden welfare and penal reform acts that have destroyed most of the current generation of American Black males. The party that uses and abuses Americans of African descent to stay in power by doing all it can to generate anti-Black sentiment by keeping the issue of racism festering and profitably alive and holding out the worst among American Blacks (think George Floyd) rather than people like Mr. Kaepernick, Dr. King or Muhammad Ali as the persons who Americans of African descent should eulogize and emulate.

As I think today of Dr. King and Muhammad Ali, and yes, of Colin Kaepernick and even George Floyd, I grieve for the reality that Americans of African descent will never be truly free until they discard the emotional, social and political shackles that bind them to the worst among us, until they again develop real leaders, men Like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X, rather than Democratic Party overseers in the Congressional Black Caucus. The Democratic Party is currently seeking to politically enslave Hispanics and immigrants (groups of which I am a member) the way it has way too many Blacks. Hopefully it will not succeed. Certainly not today’s authoritarian, antilibertarian, pro-Cancel Culture Democratic Party so alien from the party of Dennis Kucinich and James Webb and Tulsi Gabbard.

Mr. Kaepernick’s protest and his willingness to sacrifice a professional career ought to be more than merely symbolic. Indeed, merely symbolic actions tend to delay rather than to accelerate the required changes they seek to promote. With respect to racism and xenophobia and misogyny, change require a coming together rather than a drifting apart and those changes can neither be imposed nor legislated, they cannot be attained by fictionalizing history or by deceptive journalism, they cannot be attained by ridiculing those who need to be converted. They can only be attained when empathy replaces apathy and when transparent, honest and competent leadership replaces the snake pit of oligarchic elites who rule and ruin us all now, whether we are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male or female. And that won’t happen as long as members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious and other societal groups continue to be deluded into voting as a block without holding their leaders accountable for failing to meet commitments essential to us all in attaining justice, equity, equality and a real opportunity to not only pursue but attain happiness. It won’t happen unless we rededicate ourselves with the courage of Muhammad Ali to the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Something to seriously consider as we head father and farther away from Dr. King’s dream.
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[1] On which the following information is based.

An Introspective Analysis of Sociopolitical and Economic Perspectives as the Year Morphs from 2021 to 2022

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Or perhaps, merely another much too lengthy diatribe!

On a very personal, intimate level, 2021 was a success for me. I survived somehow. The same was probably true for many people, perhaps for most, despite all the obstacles put in play in order for those in power to maintain their unfettered control. They count on that; keep us at least barely satisfied with our lots and frightened by manufactured crises and we’ll grumble but stay in line. But in 2021, they almost went too far, all too recklessly skating on thin ice. Unfortunately for us, to them that means they did a great job. The ice seemingly held. Their prime tools this time around were:

The generation of hysteria over the January 6 political protests, characterized as an insurrection on the scale of the Civil War and terrorism akin to the attacks on September 11, 2001 and even, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1946. To some extent such comparisons are valid, they all distort reality, ignoring the reasons such events took place and in their stead, manufacturing fictional noble causes; and

The Covid 19 pandemic and its related isolation and economic constraints, especially the false preventive efficiency attributed to purported vaccines and the ostracism that those opposed to vaccinations should be made to suffer.

Each of those tools were amplified thanks to the subservient corporate media and Internet platforms which managed to polarize us more than ever, permitting those who rule us to massively enrich and empower themselves while we were kept busy snapping at each other, a polarized population being, ironically, a docile population as far as those who control us are concerned, easy to confuse and manipulate. An allegory for 2021 might have been a large pack of dogs viciously biting their own tails as each ran around in futile circles while their handlers guffawed.

While it gets tiring (as in the case of quixotic tilting at windmills), for many years I have sought to clarify what real progressives and leftists are about, what they definitively do not embrace, and that the Democratic Party is neither liberal nor progressive nor leftist (even though too many who share those perspectives are perpetually trapped there, spinning their wheels furiously in the futile aspiration of attaining “change from within”). As the year turns from 2021 to 2022, I will once again masochistically share certain premises important to my personal political philosophy, a blend between democratic socialism and libertarianism, knowing that, assuming my views are not censored, they will be trolled and distorted and then, as deformed, ridiculed by the zombie-like-walking-silly (i.e., the purportedly “Woke” cancel culture groupies).

Here goes:; …, one more time!!!

First of all, the foundation. My sociopolitical and economic perspectives are premised on the realization that every human being is both an individual and a member of a concentric series of collectives varying from personal relationships with other individuals to membership in the human species as a whole. Among them are the diverse levels of the State which, for good or ill, is used as a tool to hold our individualistic nature in check. As a result of such dual nature, conflicts requiring resolution arise. Such conflicts should, when possible, be reconciled so that the demands of both natures are met but when they cannot be reconciled, I believe the collective interest must prevail: Libertarians believe the converse. The corrupt believe something else and that third perspective, incoherent and counterproductive, is currently the One Ring that rules us all. The producers of the old television series “Star Trek” put my collectivist perspective well when they had its most popular fictional figure, the Vulcan Spock, state “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. That is even more true, of course, when it involves needs of the many and whims of the privileged few.

Second, on the importance of an open mind willing to listen as well as to pontificate and thus, to grow and improve. The one thing I most admired about the late Ross Perot during his independent candidacy for the presidency of the United States was his defense of his willingness to change his position on diverse issues. The corporate media and most politicians consider that anathema, wishy washy and a sign of hypocrisy and in many cases, they’re right. But Mr. Perot wisely noted that only a fool, and a selfish one at that, is unwilling to admit when he’s wrong, and to seek to correct related errors. Notwithstanding my current strongly held views (they’ve been drastically different in the past), I’ve always felt that an open mind leads to growth (and transition), thus my sociopolitical and economic perspectives are also premised on the reality that almost all political and economic interactions involve pragmatic collectivist “conventions” (as described below) rather than objectively verifiable “truths”. That is the foundation for the “scientific method” of inquiry, a continuing process and work in progress changing with the context and evolving as time and experience change prior realities, as true for the social as for the physical sciences. Interestingly, that was a fundamental premise in Marxist-Hegel influenced ideology involving dialectics. “Conventions” are social constructs created and enforced though our collective natures but impacted in their development by our individuality, as in Galileo and Newton and Einstein revolutionizing previously held beliefs. They are, in essence, a pragmatic solution to the improbability of proving absolute truths predicated on the realization that “faith alone” does not constitute proof. They involve a collectivist agreement to treat something as true, because it works, for so long as it continues to function, something on which both mathematics and physics are premised. But conventions can be easily distorted and manipulated by those who control the mechanisms through which we exchange information, especially through the tools made available to them by behavioral psychology. Consequently, reality can become almost impossible to accurately discern, especially since it is so readily manipulated by those who have cornered the market on power.

Third; on democracy, liberty, pluralism and human rights. In the segment of our planet which, for political purposes, we have arbitrarily denominated the “West” (an illusory concept in a revolving globe), we claim to base our society on “participatory, representative democracy” limited by “human rights”. Unfortunately, neither exist nor have ever existed, not even as conventions.

Democracy has a meaning, government by a majority, but the meaning has been utterly distorted by insisting that it also includes liberty and pluralism, concepts utterly at odds with majority rule. Liberty is that within us which no one can require us to change, no matter what, and pluralism is the opposite of majority rule, it is the right of minorities to establish their own rules. Even if the term “democracy” was given its logical meaning, limited to majority rule, it has rarely if ever functioned because massive participation is required to attain a majority. Majority means more than half, not of those willing to participate, but of everyone impacted. At best we sometimes attain majorities of those who participate, which is not a real majority, and most often we attain mere pluralities, i.e., the largest single number although the combination of those opposed is larger. An example is a field of three candidates where the “victor” receives 35% of the vote and those utterly opposed to the perspectives of the victor divide the remaining 65% of the vote (the majority), with one candidate receiving 33% of the vote and the other, 32%. As a consequence, for example, in the United States, because of political abstention, majorities are rarely if ever attained. Those abstaining frequently do so because the political system enshrined by law gives collectives in the form of political parties a virtual monopoly on selecting candidates and platforms, none of which appeal to them. Consequently, power is held by those opposed by the disunited majority of abstainers and the opposition party or parties. The illusion of democracy (its orchestrated verisimilitude), is used by the tiny groups who long ago consolidated real power, what today is referred to as the “Deep State”, to infuse their use of the monopoly of force embodied in the State with apparent legitimacy in order to “persuade” (more accurately “force”) us to comply with their personal objectives, to our collective detriment. Consequences include:

Futile armed conflicts where we and our families do the suffering, and they profit, and related expenditures on maintaining standing armies equipped with the latest technological toys

Abuse of the concept of intellectual property to generate long term, counter-competitive monopolies and force us to pay for inferior products, with the holders of such rights rarely being those who developed the intellectual property;

Monopolistic control, frequently through government action, over the economy, means of communication, transportation, etc.

Human rights involve a similar illusory construct, a pabulum enunciated based on truths purportedly so obvious that the the need for proof is disdained (e.g., the Declaration of Independence’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident”, penned by slaveholder Thomas Jefferson), an argument ironically based on assertions by empiricist John Locke who wrote that all individuals are equal in the sense that they are born with certain self-obvious (and thus exempt from requirements of proof) “inalienable” natural rights” (i.e., rights that are God-given and can never be taken or even given away, among which are “life, liberty and property”). Other empiricist philosophers including David Hume subsequently demolished such argument noting that nothing was too self-obvious to do away with the need for proof, and then illustrating why that was so. Instead, Hume argued (as previously addressed) that absolute truth being impossible to prove, humans utilize the concept of “conventions”, agreements to treat certain postulates as true because doing so is convenient until proved otherwise.

My sociopolitical and economic perspectives with respect to the concept of so-called rights are premised on the more realistic belief that the illusory concept of rights should become a reality, while recognizing that while we tend to worship the concept of rights, as we do our religions, both are merely collective constructs which we honor most in the breach. That is because, while rights are purportedly inherent rather than granted and thus necessarily unconditional, all interactions involving such concept are in fact conditional (many such conditions being not only reasonable but necessary) and thus none are inherent, much though we may wish they were. They are all merely conditional promises by the State and now the international community, thus, rather than inherent, they are promises of grants from above, either to refrain from acting or promising to act, if certain conditions are met, and if such inaction or actions are convenient at any given time. While the so-called “first generation rights” involved restrictions on action by the State that cost nothing[1], all subsequent generations of rights are not only costly, but require action not only by the State but by everyone and sometimes more recently, by nature and the universe itself. While laudable, none can, in fact, be guaranteed. “Guarantees” (another illusory concept) of what we call rights is impossible, which is why all rights are violated more frequently than they are respected. That is especially true as the concept of rights is expanded to positive actions such as decent housing, decent wages, access to healthcare, access to education, a healthy sustainable environment and peace. Consequently, purported “rights” are merely aspirational deceptions; mere sociopolitical and economic goals that should be governmental priorities but which are usually ignored resulting in popular discontent and in the loss of faith in communal governing structures. That they are embodied at the pinnacle of constitutions does not make them any more real.

Fourth, on constitutions. So, about constitutions, the highest level norms of the land … Unless they’re not. In the best sense, constitutions are the collective conventions we use to try and reconcile opposing concepts by prioritizing them in different context so as to derive the best each has to offer. They do so by establishing organs for collective governance and detailing the broad outlines of how they are supposed to operate, limiting the authority of majorities, and establishing priorities on which the governed are entitled to rely, if they meet designated conditions. However, notwithstanding consistent use of purported “guarantees”, they in fact guarantee nothing, they couldn’t even if their authors truly hoped they would. Even worse, once constitutions are used to centralize power, it becomes almost impossible to compel its appropriate exercise through constitutional means. As in the case of religions and sacred texts, constitutional guarantees too often become extraneous in practice. Being merely social constructs, constitutions, per se, are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Indeed, rather than being the crystallization of norms insisted upon by the populace, i.e., norms percolating from below, they are almost always constructs imposed from above designed to maintain economic elites in power through deception with illusory promises of democracy, rarely if ever kept.

Constitutions are poorly understood, even by academics and jurists, too often because they are drenched in propaganda. Thus, in the purportedly liberal “West”, many assert that without “division of powers”, a national charter cannot properly be denominated a constitution, the same is purportedly true about a constitution that does not specifically “guarantee” human rights. To use an appropriate albeit anachronistic term, “balderdash”! Division of Powers was an eighteenth century concept designed to avoid authoritarian government by dividing political power into three purportedly coequal branches (executive, legislative and judicial) and insisting that no single person or institution could exercise more than one. Several additional branches have emerged over the centuries, most importantly the power of constitutional review, the power to regulate elections and the power to police against governmental corruption but in many countries (e.g., the United States), they are all subsumed among the three traditional branches.

Division of Functions is a slightly similar albeit vastly different concept which recognizes, in essence, that government power comes in three flavors, but does not prohibit their comingling in one person or institution. The fusion of all three flavors in one person or entity has historically been referred to as “dictatorship” but has not been universally or historically been seen as a negative, rather, it is a highly efficient form of government most useful in emergencies. Even dictatorships with power vested in a single person (e.g., Saudi Arabia) honor Division of Functions with power administratively delegated to subordinates.

While most parliamentary (Westminster) systems claim to honor the doctrine of Division of Powers, none do so as the legislative and executive functions both stem from the parliament, from which the executive is selected and serves at the pleasure of the parliamentary majority, and in some cases, the ultimate judicial power as well as the power of constitutional review is also vested in parliament. The United Kingdom is an example as is Israel although neither have formal constitutions embodied in a supreme written charter. Presidential systems such as that established by the United States Constitution of 1787-89 give lip service to the doctrine of Separation of Powers but through huge loopholes denominated “checks and balances” and the power to issue administrative “decrees” create more of an incoherent hybrid system which in practice centralizes power in the executive.

Neither Division of Powers, Division of Functions or dictatorship have anything to do with “democracy”, in the sense of universal participatory government by the majority, which deals only with how those who govern are selected. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis were initially empowered through democratic elections while the Union led by Abraham Lincoln was not, he having been a minority president. Of course, both were dictators. Indeed, most governments identify themselves as democracies insisting that opponents who also identify as democracies are doing so dishonestly. Interestingly, the major blocs in conflict all have a point. Actually, several. First of all, there is no truly democratic constitution anywhere so they’re all half-right. But the issue that divides involves a misinterpretation which, as previously indicated, in the “West”, merges the conflicting concepts of liberty and majority rule. Thus, to “Western” constitutional scholars, the constitutions of, for example, socialist states lack libertarian guarantees and are thus not “democratic. Conversely and more accurately, constitutional scholars in such states stress that they in fact have far greater participation by their citizens in elections, usually in excess of 90%, and that real majorities of all eligible voters are required, although such participation is compelled. Western scholars reply that candidates in socialist states are pre-vetted, but socialist scholars argue that political parties in the West serve the same function. Apparently, the only sure thing is that electoral systems everywhere serve to deprive the electorate of a meaningful voice in candidate selection, hence my assertion that democracy does not exist anywhere. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the fact that in practice there are no truly democratic constitutions, or libertarian constitutions, or pluralistic constitutions, or equitable constitutions, or constitutions that “guarantee” human rights, they are still essential as the means through which such opposing concepts are prioritized, even in a dysfunctional fashion; the organic nature of government is established; and, the manner in which those charged with the power to govern are, at least formally, selected.

Depressing realities, I know. Real progressives and leftists recognize that, as in the case of the illusory concept of rights, the concept of constitutions involves a structure potentially useful in reconciling conflicting interests and thus useful, indeed necessary, to attain progressive and leftist sociopolitical and economic goals. Unfortunately, constitutions are more than anything works of art with beautiful platitudes, such as “constituent power” and sources of constitutional authority based on the People or the Nation and the “consent of the governed” and “representative government”, but little else. Of course, constitutions could serve extremely useful, pragmatic functions, … theoretically. Progressives and leftists recognize that the concepts of majority rule, liberty and minority rights are antagonistic and contradictory and thus difficult to implement concurrently, but that they are all desirable and thus require real supreme norms in the form of constitutions to provide a mechanism to prioritize such concepts in specific instances as a means of resolving their inherent contradictions, and that such mechanisms involve development and implementation of policies, policies that should evolve over time to reflect changing circumstances and that may differ based on geographical values and cultural traditions.

Fifth, on policies.

Personally, I see immense values in two conflicting political schools of thought, democratic socialism and libertarianism, something I believe characterizes real leftists and real progressives. Based on a synthesis of such perspectives, there are a number of policies that I personally currently support which I believe should be implemented through the collective we refer to as the State under the mechanisms we refer to as government. These include, among others: free education at all levels; free healthcare; free insurance against unavoidable risks; equality of opportunity; freedom from discrimination based on gender, race, religion or ethnicity; a guaranteed minimum income adequate to meet basic needs to food, clothing and shelter; freedom of expression, even if one is wrong; equal rights to political participation; protection of personal integrity from assault; a functional system of justice and conflict resolution; and, elimination of corruption at any level. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party, while seemingly supporting them, manipulates the foregoing in a manner that, rather than leading to their implementation, polarizes us all through use of ridicule, virtue shaming and coercion, all in a quest for political dominance.

Notwithstanding claims by the Democratic Party and the corporate media, real progressives and leftists do not support censorship, whether by governments or by private monopolies, nor do we support divisive identity politics or cancel culture. We reject attempts to fictionalize history more than it already is by destroying monuments just as we have always opposed book burnings. We certainly do not support impunity on any level, including the impunity now enjoyed by purported journalists spewing propaganda instead of news, and impunity enjoyed by government officials at any level, including the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, the military or the police. While we believe that we should be free to act, we also believe that we must all be held responsible for the consequences of our actions. We do not believe that corrective reactions to illegal conduct should be punitive but rather, that they should be restorative, corrective and no more harmful to the violator than necessary, and that once the corrective actions demanded have been met, the violator must be fully and unconditionally restored to full status as a member of the collective involved.

Sixth, on the realization that not all solutions involve State action. As a real progressives and leftist, I seek to reconcile libertarian and collective goals prioritizing non-State intervention, recognizing that most conflict resolution should not involve the coercive power of the State. Thus many serious and troubling issues will not have generic solutions but must be left to specific individual and collective interaction. Such issues include medical decisions involving our own bodies such as abortion and vaccination against pandemic diseases where no answer seems right for everyone; issues such as most aspects of consensual sexual practices or use of intoxicants and recreational drugs; issues involving consensual intimate associations among mentally competent adults; issues involving child rearing and education. Those issues should be addressed either individually or by non-governmental collectives such as families, religions, philosophies and other voluntary groupings.

Seventh, on the importance of tolerance and empathy. As a real progressives and leftist, I recognize that the foregoing all involve a permanent experiment and a permanent state of transition all too frequently unsettling and uncomfortable and that as in the case of evolution in nature, our individual and collective interactions sometimes result in negative aberrations that require correction but that transition is essential in a non-static setting such as that in which the human milieu exists. I believe that much of the foregoing does not reflect perspectives exclusive to the left and to progressives but is shared among people of good faith with varying perspectives. I believe that the vast majority of people everywhere share common goals, we want to be happy, healthy and secure, and to make our own decisions without being subjected to ridicule and slander. To be free to say and do what we want while understanding that our liberty and autonomy has boundaries when it negatively impacts others. That were it not for successful efforts to divide and polarize us, most of us are opposed to calcifying permanent authoritarian and totalitarian solutions, especially given the non-absolute and transitory nature of collective conventions. Collective conventions only work when there is adequate communication, transparency and honesty in an empathic setting based on mutual respect, respect for the rights of others to hold and express contrary opinions.

While in many cases for diverse reasons we all reach incorrect conclusions on important issues involving how we attain shared goals, it is very rare for anyone to alter wrongly held views because they are being scorned. All scorn and ridicule do is discourage people from openly and honestly sharing their beliefs making effective dialogue improbable. A great deal of the current social and political polarization is caused by lack of empathy and comprehension of the perspectives of others. We are too insistent on being heard while being unprepared to listen with open minds and in that, too easily manipulated by those for whom our confusion and polarization are all too useful tools.

In conclusion, sort of.

So, … a bit too long (I know) and perhaps easily forgotten amidst the onslaught of truly fake news from every direction and the opiates with which we are distracted from taking meaningful corrective action, opiates that not only include organized religion but also sports and television and action movies and videogames and our pets and our pet peeves and other distractions, I leave you all with this somewhat inappropriate and certain to be unappreciated gift, sort of like underwear and handkerchiefs at Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza, etc.: useful, but not all that much fun.

Things to consider as our artificial calendar once more turns after another very unpleasant and non-productive year.
______

[1] Freedom of expression, religion, assembly, etc., the so called political rights. Noteworthy, the right to political participation was not among such rights (see, for example, the United States Constitution in its original version and the Bill of Rights), despite the American Revolution having purportedly been fought because of “taxation without representation”.

Personal Reflections on the Political Events in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

January 6, 2021 was a day after which incoherence and hypocrisy ran rampant and political protest became anathema, at least for the corporate media, the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and for a vocal segment (probably a minority), of the American citizenry. Most Americans are probably confused given that the United States is a nation born of political protest, articulately if hypocritically crystalized in the Declaration of Independence and in the writings of all the “founding fathers”. Being mistaken (possibly) has become synonymous, according to the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media, with lying, but only when done by others. Conversely, lying, when engaged in by the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media, merely involves misinterpretations.

January 6, 2021 must be seen in context to understand why it occurred.

First, the country was in the midst of rioting, arson and looting justified by the Democratic Party and corporate media as an appropriate response to police misconduct.

Second, electoral safeguards in jurisdictions under Democratic Party control had been minimized, purportedly due to the Covid 19 pandemic, facilitating electoral fraud in a manner unacceptable in most of the world (i.e., eliminating voter identification requirements, mass mailing of ballots and permitting people other than the voter to turn in ballots).

Third, the corporate media and the principal social media platforms had adopted an aggressive political posture interpreted by many, perhaps most, as indicative of a political bias, which culminated in depriving one of the principal candidates of access to the public, a practice traditionally criticized in the United States when engaged in by other countries as autocratic and antidemocratic.

Fourth, for four years the Democratic Party and corporate media had been delegitimizing the 2016 elections as fraudulent on a massive, 24/7 basis, and justifying active “resistance” to the government that assumed office in January of 2017.

The 2020 elections were anomalous in that early in-person results veered in one direction only to be reversed at the last minute when “mail-in ballots” more susceptible to manipulation appeared, in some cases, under questionable circumstances. Allegations of irregularities were virtually ignored, dismissed on procedural grounds, in contrast to the massive four year-long investigations of foreign meddling in the 2016 elections, and persons who honestly believed that the elections had involved electoral fraud where accused of lying, i.e., of knowing that no electoral fraud had been involved but intending to reverse the results by making knowingly false claims. Indeed, anyone who failed to accept the results was branded a traitor, an insurrectionist and a political opportunist who needed to be permanently deprived of the right to participate in future electoral activities. The Democratic Party, on assuming power, immediately initiated related criminal proceedings and Congressional investigations which have resulted in criminal referrals.

The contrast in positions concerning the legitimacy of and appropriate reaction to the 2016 and 2020 elections is startling. The massive, organized resistance to the 2016 elections was deemed not only legitimate but necessary while corresponding attitudes with respect to the 2020 elections were deemed criminal. It is now treason to believe that elections won by the Democratic Party are not legitimate based on perceived electoral fraud, or at least to act on that belief by active protest. It is politically incorrect, racist and xenophobic to believe that safeguards against electoral fraud are necessary although the same safeguards with respect to “vaccination” are existentially necessary. Interestingly, right now, the Republic of Kazakhstan is mired in political violence with real insurrectionist taking over and destroying government buildings and engaging in arson, looting and mayhem, activities the same Democratic Party led United States government that is prosecuting January 6, 2021 “insurrectionists” finds a legitimate exercise of democratic rights.

I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat and frankly, like more and more citizens, abhor both major political parties, but I am certain that electoral fraud is always present to some degree in democratic elections everywhere, not just in the United States. I “know” that there was immense bias against the electoral aspirations of Republicans, and especially Mr. Trump, in both the corporate media and by the owners and operators of all major social media platforms and indeed, active intervention precluding dissemination of accurate information that negatively impacted Democratic Party electoral prospects, and that such activities dwarfed any “meddling” by anyone in the 2016 elections. Because of the absence of any meaningful investigations into electoral irregularities in the 2020 elections, neither I nor anyone else has the ability to positively determine whether active electoral fraud was sufficient to impact the results, but am certain that corporate and social media “meddling” was a major factor. Consequently, for me, January 6 is and will henceforth be a day for reflection on how utterly manipulated the United States citizenry is on political matters, how blatantly hypocritical the corporate media, Democratic Party and traditionalist Republicans are with respect to the electoral process, and how little they think of our cognitive abilities as they hammer us with incoherent and contradictory narratives.

I do not believe that the January 6, 2021 protests in front of the United States Capitol were anything to which the founding fathers would have been opposed, or that they involved treason or insurrection. They were legitimate political protests at the appropriate place which, based on the relaxed standards for protests accepted in conjunction with Black Lives Matter riots, got out of hand, albeit without the arson, murder and mass looting that characterized the latter. Most participants, those that were not outside or government provocateurs, were patriotic Americans exercising what they perceived to be their patriotic duty, and in that sense, perhaps the most important civil right is the right to me mistaken in their conclusions. If mistakes are to be criminalized as treason and as grounds for the loss of political rights, then let it be done across the board. That would politically ostracize virtually the entire political leadership of the United States.

Probably not a bad thing.
_______

The Legend of Will of Clan Wisp

Posted on December 31, 2021 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

William was of clan Wisp, hence will-o’-the-wisp became a moniker with which he became associated, albeit long after his passing beyond the veil, although which veil seems hard to tell, in his case, both time and space being malleable. And it fit.

He’d been (or was or is) a contrarian, a libertarian, a thinker; here and there and in every case, quickly gone before the Deep State beasties could apprehend him. Not the hero-type of which Marvel or DC Comics could make hay but then, their purpose was to distract, delay and obfuscate for the benefit of the unnamable, undisclosed masters. Rather, he was a primordial architype of the kind Joseph Campbell might have been fond, as of course, was Joseph Campbell himself. An architype that has become exceedingly rare although, of course, it’s always been rare. He was (and perhaps still is) the perfect blend of his individual and collectivist natures (natures we all share). Kind and generous but no one’s fool, charitable but seeking no charity for himself; always seeking to attain his better self rather than being critical of the failings of others. He found ridicule as a form of comedy repugnant and praise irrelevant. He tolerated mistakes, whether his or others, as long as they were used as tools from which to learn, knowing they made the best teachers, but he hated to make them. He expressed his views openly and vigorously but had an open mind and was willing to change them if he became convinced they needed changing, and while he willingly shared his views, he never imposed them on others. He led by example and, while he did not seek leadership roles, they somehow all too regularly found him, albeit always informally and never permanently, after all, he was (and perhaps still is) Will-o’-the-wisp.

Will seems gone today, when we most need him. When blaring pseudo victims erase history with poorly structured creative narrative designed to avoid solving the problems reflected in the causes they claim to espouse. After all, if the problems were solved, what would their roles be, roles for which they were richly rewarded with book deals and speaking fees by the unnamable, undisclosed masters. Pithy ridicule rather than logic is their stock and trade, malleable tools facilitating hypocrisy, verisimilitude and deception; after all, the shell game is their favorite modus operandi and the naïve and gullible their stock-in-trade.

Then again, many-and-many were the times that foes thought Will gone for good (and good riddance) only to have him show up unexpectedly. That was his stock-in-trade. So, who knows?

2021 was not his year, but 2022, it has a certain rhythmic quality he’s been known to favor.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2021; 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 a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.

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Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

Category Archives: Political

Blithely Travelling on the Road to Perdition

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Of Happy Days, Intellectual Property and Real Choices

Reflections on our Tortured Political Realities

Of Circles and Singularities and Love and Life

A Midwinter Night’s Dream in 2022

Of Colin Rand Kaepernick, Robert E. Lee and Francis Scott Key, the Uncivil Civil War and More on this Day Set Aside to Honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali

An Introspective Analysis of Sociopolitical and Economic Perspectives as the Year Morphs from 2021 to 2022

Personal Reflections on the Political Events in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021

The Legend of Will of Clan Wisp

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