Category Archives: Political

Damned Trump!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That damned Trump just won’t let sleeping dogs lie!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If I were a believer, which I may or may not be, I’ve never been sure (other than that I am not a believer in the religion “created” by the egregious Saul of Tarsus), I would end this, and perhaps I will, whispering “God Save the King”!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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

Supercilious Sally

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Supercilious Sally is a proud member of the “woke” generation; those morally enlightened and superior intellectuals so willing to sacrifice their time to show others just how evil and mean spirited they are. 

In honor of her non-white brethren, she spends inordinate amounts of time in tanning parlors, and wears expensive designer-ripped jeans and African-style jewelry and sandals.  And she permed her hair too.  She’s a frequent Vegan, but not religious about it, sometimes a great piece of meat really hits the spot, especially if no one is looking, and lobster and crab and shrimp, yummm.

Speaking of religion, she’s not religious, although she is spiritual, … well, … in her own way.    Religion, after all, is a scam, unless it’s way-out, alien oriented religion, then, as long as it’s not Scientology, it’s fine.  Her’s is the inverse “white-man’s-burden”, teaching white men how horrible they are is her primary calling, especially her “white, male-chauvinist” dad from whom she and her mother, his ex-wife, have to extract the money they require to fund their work, teaching others how much further they needed to go to attain enlightenment, and to fund their lifestyles of course.  Okay, they need to extract as much money as possible from him, he doesn’t deserve what he earns anyway, no matter how long and hard he works.  They have much more meaningful uses for his income.  And they really, really need it.  When you want something enough, it’s the same as a need.  And she is kind to her dad, on his birthdays she’s taken to telling him that despite all his faults, she doesn’t hate him.  Not really.  Not all the time.

She does not refer to herself as supercilious, just “Sammy” (she did not like “Sally”, it was way too Caucasian).  It was her mirror which coined that silly “supercilious” sobriquet, and it was only adopted by those around her who were not among the enlightened.  She tells everyone to just call her “Sammy”, for some reason, believing it implies that she’s part black.  She may be right as far as her heart and soul are concerned.  But there are those who just call her “Silly Sally”, something she hates, and she hates them, albeit in a sort benevolent manner, at least in a manner of speaking.

She’s a busy young woman with all her rallies and protests and all, especially those that might get a tiny bit out of control, with a bit of rioting and justified looting, perhaps even a bit of arson, and if some of those white-male-chauvinist small business owners get injured, well, it’s their own damned fault for not having seen the light; for not having grasped the urgency of admitting their moral and ethical inferiority.  Damned money grubbers!  She’s proud not to be among the employed which gives her time for her non-credit, self-improvement classes and social media policing and censoring activities, activities for which she receives a stipend of sorts from generous and enlightened Democratic Party supporters, especially those affiliated with the wonderful Clinton Foundation and the enlightened George Soros. 

She’s sort of sexually promiscuous, when she can find someone woke enough and still capable of performing oral sex for hours on end, an activity she proudly disdains.  She’s usually not into intercourse, she will not contribute to over-population, in fact, she’s a proud abortion veteran having undergone procedures five times already (and she’s not yet twenty-three).  She’s not one of those fake activists who only talk about things, she’s an active participant in the prochoice movement.  If not for her need to engage in abortion generating activities, she’d be a lesbian with a black girlfriend, or better yet, “trans”.  She’s a trans-activist too.

She’s at odds with her mother for not having engaged in more productive interracial, extramarital sexual activities, ones where she might have been born black and perhaps even seemingly poor, not too poor, but poor enough to be able to hold it over other people’s heads at rallies.  And to qualify for minority set asides and affirmative action programs.  Perhaps she’ll find an interactive videogame into which she can subsume herself as the virtual personality she wishes she was, that she imagines she is, that she does all she can to appear to be, but without the related unpleasantness; and as long as it doesn’t take too much effort.

She loves the new trends in entertainment where the new norms require that the cast and characters be totally integrated, racially, religiously, sexually and morally; hopefully sometime soon, society will reflect Hollywood’s new paradigms.  And she’s all for removing all that inconvenient history.  She read somewhere that someone, George something or other, had a character in one of his novels who claimed that “if you can control the past, you can control the present and the future”, so she’s among those who demands that history be changed to suit their whims of the moment, after all, to her and her friends, history should be dynamic rather than static.  And creative history is best of all.

They’re the “woke”, and proud of it!
_______

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

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

Trump, Clinton and the Dystopian New York Penal System

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Former president Donald Trump has been indicted by a politicized Manhattan grand jury handpicked by New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg for misclassifying a purported political expense, a settlement payment to a porn star, as a business and legal expense, while former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff and attorneys, who were in fact sanctioned for classifying the funding and distribution of the infamous Steele dossier as a legal expense, not only got a pass, but publicly revel in the difference.  As does most of the corporate media, as do Democrats everywhere.

So, aside from political affinities, what is the difference between these two situations?

Well, the Trump situation involved an issue not necessarily tied to politics and thus, not illegal in any sense.  It could well have involved an expense classifiable as involving business or personal factors and should perhaps be classified as the response of a victim of blackmail and extortion entitled to protection under the penal system.  On the other hand, there is no doubt about the nature of the Clinton expenditure, a political expense involving a fraudulent campaign disguised as a legal fee, thus, the case against Ms. Clinton and her campaign organization is much stronger.  Other than that, not one thing.  Well, Trump is despised by the Deep State and Mrs. Clinton is their idol although both Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton are unpleasant and unsavory characters.  But justice is supposedly blind, albeit purportedly in a positive sense, stressing its neutrality, not in a negative sense involving utter incoherence, hypocrisy and malfeasance.

The 2016 electoral cycle was a wakeup call, but not in a good way.  The People, fed up, reacted in a manner much different than that anticipated by the corporate media and traditionalist politicians in both major United States political parties.  They made it clear that they were prepared for real change.  But rather than correct the injustice, inefficiency, corruption and misfeasance that led to the revolt by the electorate, from both the left (the Sanderistas) and the right (the Tea Party), a massive reactionary campaign was launched by traditionalist politicians in both major political parties to silence populists of all bents, to censor opposition to Deep State (i.e., Democratic Party) candidates, to facilitate a market in electoral ballots, and thus to assure a satisfactory, predetermined electoral outcome.  Further, in order to preemptively quell furor over the foregoing, a massive prosecutorial campaign was implemented, with agent provocateurs insidiously planted, to insure that electoral protests would not be permitted to spread.  Instead, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the justice system spread a veil of silence, promptly dismissing, usually on procedural grounds, all legal actions seeking to demonstrate the existence of electoral irregularities, making it impossible to determine if enough irregularities took place to change electoral outcomes.  Something we will now never know, although many have strong suspicions.

The results of the 2020 elections were profoundly satisfying to the Deep State.  Mission accomplished.  The attempted mini-revolt that seemed brewing in 2022, was at least minimized.  Now 2024 is looming, and the Deep State, fearful of another revolt in 2024, as implied by most polling data, is seeking to limit opposition to its candidates, not just through control over available information, but also through abuse of the legal system, and it may work. 

Mr. Trump, to the dismay of many, the disgust of some and the panic of others, is once again running for president.  But unlike 2016, he seems a much stronger candidate; certainly within the GOP.  That is in large part because of the horrendous performance of the Biden administration in every possible sense, but, it’s loyalty to the Deep State is unquestionable, hence, Mr. Biden will also apparently run again.  And Mr. Trump may well defeat him, if given a chance to run.  Which is why litigation, both penal and civil, is being resorted to by those who have good cause to fear his return to power.  Mrs. Clinton?  Much as she might wish she were still relevant, she seems to have been consigned to a role as an embittered relic of days we wish were gone-by but which, unfortunately, have just changed some of the cast.  Of course, perhaps one should beware of the “walking dead”.

What a world in which Messers. Trump and Biden and the ghosts conjured by Mrs. Clinton are the candidates offered up to lead the purportedly free world, especially when there are people like Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich and Even, Joseph Kennedy IV available as alternatives, but there you have it; we are collectively up the creek with no paddles in sight.

Sooo, in conclusion, an imprisoned candidate in the United States is precluded from conducting a political campaign, and in many states, from being on the ballot.  That, clearly, seems to be the Deep State’s ultimate backup strategy for 2024. 

Which explains all the Trump related litigation and the dichotomy in Mr. Bragg’s approach to law enforcement.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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

Quizás, quizás, quizás

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For erudite and knowledgeable conservative Republicans of the populist rather than traditionalist bent, it must be shocking to have to admit that Hugo Chavez was dead on with respect to his New Latin American Constitutionalism, a political philosophy premised on the hypotheses that elite control over the judiciary, the media, the bureaucracy and the legislative branch was antithetical to democracy, and especially to democratic reform.

Chavez, in essence, recognized the functioning of Latin America’s version of the “deep state”, a subsidiary of the United States’ own Deep State, and tried his best to dismantle it in Venezuela, impossible given the economic leverage against Chavismo exerted by the United States and its allies, including fifth columnists predominant among the Venezuelan elite, but he at least managed to splinter the preexistent power structure, at least in the public’s perception.

His successor, Nicholas Madura is no Chavez, he is a lightweight caretaker whose replacement never arrived.  He is not an intellectual theorist, or a revolutionary.  But amazingly, notwithstanding the theft of major Venezuelan assets organized in a bipartisan manner by the United States and its allies, especially the United Kingdom, he has hung on.  By his fingernails at times, but he has hung on.

Now the tactics used against Latin American progressives by elites loyal to the United States billionaire class have come home to roost, … in a sense.  The diverse agencies charged with administration of the justice system in the United States, on federal and state levels, including prosecutors, private attorneys and judges are busy investigating and litigating in order to obstruct functional democracy and to deprive voters of choices deemed unacceptable, to exact revenge on political adversaries, while the corporate media is not only cheering them on, but censoring information damaging to predetermined electoral outcomes, predetermined, of course, by the Deep State and its owners.  The mole ridden bureaucracy is a second line of defense, should primary efforts to block an unruly electorate prove insufficient, as occurred in 2016.  Just as Hugo Chavez predicted.  Only the victims now include the American People, and of course, superficially, those rigidly antisocialist populist right wingers beloved by adherents of the philosophies of the non-existent Tea Party.

Unfortunately, victims also include the left wing Cassandra class.  We who’ve been pointing out the dangers of a Deep State dedicated to extracting every penny possible from “ordinary” Americans through taxation and government borrowing, mechanisms for generating and “laundering” extorted wealth through the ill named “defense industry” (what Ike referred to as the “military industrial complex”), now supplemented by the pharmaceutical industry via “blessed” pandemics.

Perhaps, somehow, Latin America can escape the vicious sociopolitical-economic quagmire in which so much of the world finds itself.  Perhaps it can orchestrate such escape through the insights Hugo Chaves tried to weave into an effective oppositional strategy, and if it does, perhaps other countries will follow it and escape the Deep State gravity well whose event horizon seems to have the world trapped in endless war.  Perhaps the BRICS’ efforts to attain a non-hegemonic world power structure will bear fruit, and, echoing the hypothesis on which United States federalism was premised, a multipolar world will experiment with different sociopolitical and economic options resulting in new solutions to age old problems which can then be adopted by others.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, as the wonderful Hispanic song “Quizás, quizás, quizás” croons.

But from where I sit, that seems to be somewhat beyond today’s horizons.
_______

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

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

The Political Fallacy of Right versus Left

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The left-right dichotomy in the political spectrum is greatly exaggerated and manipulated in order to (through the divide and conquer strategy made famous by the British in foreign affairs) keep the most selfish among us in perpetual power.  The infinitesimally tiny billionaire class which owns the corporate media, all major political parties and the leadership of “our” government’s bureaucracy, uses that left-right divide to fuel the polarization essential to maintain itself in power, stressing faux issues such as abortion, gun control and identity politics in order to avoid the issues that really make a difference in our lives, issues like peace, equity, healthcare, education and sustainable family economics.  Issues as to which families on both sides of the left-right political spectrum mostly agree.

The majority of citizen-victims (a more accurate characterization of just what and who we are, except, perhaps, that “subject” might be more accurate than citizen), sense that something is terribly wrong, and so, are more and more drawn to populist figures who, although less articulate and less versed in rhetoric, resonate with them.  And it’s not a United States phenomenon but rather, one spreading throughout the “western” world.  Jair Messias Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodolfo Hernández Suárez in Colombia were analogues to Donald John Trump in the United States, albeit much less experienced or capable than the unpleasant Mr. Trump.  All received significant support from populists on the right.  But other much more palatable choices on the left of the populist spectrum like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have managed to attain power.  Other leftist populists in Latin America attained power briefly but were quickly deposed by United States funded and supported “soft” and hard coups d’état, as was the case recently in Peru, and a few years ago in Bolivia and Honduras.

If populists on the left and on the right, including populists in the United States, e.g., political followers of Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich, etc. (on the left) and the Republican Tea Party (on the right) ever stopped to carefully analyze the current situation and their respective ideals, we’d realize that we have a great deal in common, most importantly, a common foe.  That foe is the billionaire class referenced above, and its tools, are primarily the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans, the corporate media, and moles implanted throughout the federal bureaucracy, especially the intelligence communities, the Department of Justice and the judiciary.  A foe which, however, if we united and respected our right to be different, even our right to be wrong, we could finally render impotent.

The “Deep State” is a term some of us use to identify the informal coalition that comprises our foe.  The foe that bleeds United States tax payers of funds that could be used for universal healthcare, for universal education at all levels, for a meaningful universal social safety net, for decent infrastructure, etc., syphoning such funds into expenditures to fund permanent armed conflict around the world, which, at the costs of millions of lives, funds the lavish lifestyles of the few.  Consider: most of the world’s wealth is owned by sixteen families, while a majority of the world’s people lack adequate food, adequate shelter, adequate clothing, adequate healthcare and adequate education.  Children die every second of every day from United States funded bombs to support the whims of the very worst among us, all with the essential assistance of very foolish voters who feel that by rewriting history, evil history will not have happened.  That through censorship, reality and truth will become irrelevant.  That by insulting, ridiculing and calumnying those with different perspectives we will all finally get along and freedom will finally ring.

All of the foregoing negativity is possible because we are denuded of empathy and common sense through emotional manipulation.  Through what purports to be entertainment but is instead, Orwellian propaganda glorifying villainy, murder, dishonesty and violence; an us versus them disease, with what passes for news being a filter that eliminates that which does not promote Deep State agendas and replaces it with calumny, ridicule and deception (plus a smattering of Pablum to keep us bored).  Some of us remember Pablum, albeit vaguely; tasteless baby food, carefully blended to assure homogeneity.

If we, as a People, in sufficient numbers, ever grasp the foregoing and, taking the time to reflect on it, evaluate it and digest it, unite (despite our superficial differences), and, rejecting polarization, decide to impose rather than merely demand change, our progeny might inherit a world they’ll respect.

And we’d earn their blessings instead of their justified disdain.
_______

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

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

On the Psycho-social Aspects of Sports

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The concept of “sport” involves two principal roles, one is participatory: a physical activity to develop and improve physical skills, sometimes in a competitive fashion, often with health benefits related to attaining physical optimization.  But it also has a non-participatory entertainment aspect, one geared to spectators in general but more frequently to spectators who develop an affinity for a particular person or corporate entity, “corporate” in the sense of entity-continuity notwithstanding changes in its composition.  For example, despite the fact that Babe Ruth died long ago, the Yankees are still the Yankees.  Well, … almost.

The latter variant has interesting psychosocial dynamics with cultural implications that reflect social trends in the interrelationships between the spectators; between the spectators and the participants; between the spectators, the participants and those in charge of training and managing the participants; and, finally, between all of the foregoing and ownership.

Spectators tend to assume two very different roles: passive spectators who cheer on “their” team in a non-critical manner, no matter its performance; and, active, more-involved and more critical spectators, usually much more knowledgeable and frequently having formerly, at one level or another, been active participants.  The two groups have become increasingly polarized as our society has become less cohesive, with the cheer-leading spectators becoming bitterly critical of what they deem to be fair-weather fans, and the more active, critical fans, those who demand quality performance from the teams or players they support, deeming the cheer-leader types idiotic know-nothings.  Sports managers and owners at every level prefer the cheer-leading fan variant, especially those willing to spend on viewing sporting events in person or by subscription, but, in addition, purchasing related branded merchandise.  Some teams apparently go so far as to pay individuals and business involved in the new phenomenon of social media, to use fictional cheer-leader fans (trolls) to purportedly criticize the critical fans as traitors, something, to some extent, also done in the past through less honest sports journalists.

The issue of sports polarization is especially problematic with sports involving children where the “competitive” factor is bitterly debated among parents, some of whom (the “woke”) believe that sports should be fun for all, without winners, or even scores; and, fanatical parents who intervene, at times physically, frequently embarrassing their own children, living out their own frustrated sports fantasies, in quest for victory at any price.  Balance involving competition and development of life and social skills, those once revered concepts of good sportsmanship, seem all too frequently unattainable today.  That, unfortunately, merely reflects trends throughout our diverse social institutions, trends all too often manipulated as a means of maintaining control through polarization and involving issues such as abortion, gun control, political correctness, censorship, etc.

Sports have become a business with massive profits to both teams and players at its highest levels, as well as to broadcast media; ludicrous profits and ludicrous salaries when judged on the basis of comparative social contributions and on the basis of the growing disparity between the wealthiest among us and the rest, especially those who receive the lowest compensation for the most difficult and tedious jobs. The foregoing is true of professional sports, but unfortunately, has also afflicted amateur sports in academic institutions where college football coaches sometimes earn up to ten times what the college president or any academic professor or researcher is paid.

Sports have also become a useful tool for political control, deflecting dissatisfaction with poor political and economic performance, broken promises and inequity, into strong emotional responses to sporting events and activities, redirecting justifiable social anger towards competing sports spectators, whether those who support other teams or those who criticize the performance of teams and players they themselves support.  It is how we “blow off steam”; psychic energy needed to power necessary societal change, leaving us either satiated, exhausted or both, and bitter towards umpires, referees, coaches, players and other fans, instead of against those we most need to replace: our political, media and economic “leaders”.

Sports have evolved from their earliest roles, when they involved non-partisan appreciation of excellence, dexterity and physical abilities (such as in the ancient Olympics), into a social phenomenon much more like the violent partisan events that existed during the Roman imperial period, events centered on chariot racing, where almost the entirety of the population was divided among violent supporters of Greens and Blues, such division flowing into political groupings as well.

International sports can be a unifying force domestically while a divisive force internationally.  For example soccer’s world cup and the modern variant of the Olympic games, international spectacles where international political rivalries now regularly intervene to exclude more capable athletes and teams from competing based on factors totally unrelated to sports, factors such as economic and political rivalries among groups of allied nations.

Notwithstanding the foregoing I am an avid sports enthusiast, perhaps an addict of sorts.  I love sports as an active participant (when possible), but as a spectator as well (admittedly of the more critical variant).  And that’s the case notwithstanding all of the deficiencies, abuses and dangers associated with modern sports that I acknowledge exist.  That’s the case with most of us, although the majority have no idea concerning many of the issues raised in this introspective article.

In short, it seems that as humans, there is nothing we cannot pervert into a polarizing factor, into something to divide us and set us off against each other, into something that can be used to manipulate and control us.  Even something as magnificent as the sports we purport to love.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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

Context on the Current Criminal Case against Former US President Donald John Trump, a Perspective from the Republic of Colombia

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The following is based on an article written by the author for use in the Republic of Colombia trying to contextualize for a Colombian audience the nature of the actions recently brought against former president Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  It contrasts Mr. Trump’s current situation with the similar experiences of Colombia’s current president, a left wing progressive, when he was the mayor of Bogota and a probable contender for the Colombian presidency (which he obviously won, but only after intervention by the Interamerican Human Rights Court, an institution to which the United States does not subscribe).

The recent indictment of former President Donald John Trump by a grand jury convened and controlled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seems very confusing to foreigners, primarily because reports in the traditional United States lack both context and objectivity, and, further, admittedly, because the former president’s personality is so abrasive, self-centered and unpleasant, that it is difficult to feel compassion for him.  However, as indicated in the introduction, for Colombians, some analogies involving their own recent experiences are useful. 

One, involves a political leader who shares Mr. Trump’s aggressive personality, Carlos Felipe Mejía Mejía, a former senator from former president Alvaro Uribe Velez’s ultra-right wing political party, the Centro Democratico (a favorite of the United States’ Deep State), and the other (again as mentioned in the introduction), involves the experiences of current Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s in the face of abuse of the Colombian legal system by his opponents, to prevent him from participating in electoral politics.  Mr. Petro’s struggles were successful only because, unlike the United States, Colombia respects international law and human rights and accepts the decisions of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, an institution established through the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights, which the United States has refused to ratify (that tribunal found the abuse of the legal system to bar Mr. Petro from political activity illegal).  Mr. Petro had been removed from office as mayor of Bogota and barred from future political by the national procurator, a political opponent, pretty much in the manner Democratic prosecutors in Georgia and New York, as well as in the Department of Justice, are seeking to convict Mr. Trump of crimes in order to render him ineligible to engage in political activity, especially with respect to the presidential elections scheduled for 2024.

The following is pretty much how I explained the current situation in the United States to a Colombian audience:

Former president Donald Trump has just been indicted by a grand jury organized by a county attorney within New York City on 34 felony counts. They all have to do with a payment pursuant to a legal settlement and non-disclosure agreement seeking to put an end to accusations by Mrs. Stephanie Gregory Clifford, a former porn star using the name “Stormy Daniels”, to the effect that Mr. Trump had spent a night with her when, although married, he was a private citizen.

Normally, Ms. Clifford’s demands would have involved the crimes of blackmail and extortion and she would have been the person facing criminal prosecution, but the current case is, for purely political reasons, different. The truth is that the alleged crimes attributed to Mr. Trump have never existed in American jurisprudence and, rather, involve an “innovation” by the Manhattan District Attorney focused on the way in which the expenses were reported by Mr. Trump’s employees, i.e., not as donations from Mr. Trump to his own presidential campaign, but as business or personal legal expenses, paid to his attorney, who had paid them to Ms. Clifford.  Indeed, the agreement was between that attorney and Ms. Clifford, for the benefit of Mr. Trump.

If settlement and non-disclosure agreements were a crime, then many American politicians would (or should) be in jail, especially major Trump adversaries, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It also doesn’t matter whether he is eventually found innocent. The mere accusations (indictments are only accusations, after all) are expected to have the desired impact. An electoral victory in 2024 for someone more in accord with current neoconservative politics in the United States.

So, why the current situation? After all, Mr. Trump is clearly a neoliberal capitalist very much in the mold of many of his political opponents.  Well, because “very much” is apparently not enough, especially when it involves rejection of traditional neoconservative tactics.

Former President Trump currently leads presidential preference polls for the 2024 presidential elections in the United States, and that is intolerable to the Democratic Party and to traditional Republicans, not because of his alleged immoral personal conduct, that’s a matter between him and his wife, but because Mr. Trump disagrees with current policies concerning the conflict in the Ukraine, because he wants to end NATO, which he perceives as anachronistic, and also, because he believes that the huge expenditures on “defense” spending, on military bases in other countries and on interventions in foreign affairs should be reduced considerably, with the savings used to improve domestic infrastructure, lower taxes charged to US citizens and reduce the national debt to zero.

For the powers that actually control the American state (which President Dwight David Eisenhower warned against when he alluded to “the military/industrial complex”), that would be intolerable given that such industry “earns” billions of dollars in profits every year. Thus, as was the case for current the Colombian president (prior to intervention by the Interamerican Human Rights Court), Mr. Trump’s opponents are seeking to destroy him politically through constant and consistent abuse of the legal system, abuse orchestrated by Democratic prosecutors in several states, especially in New York and Georgia, as well as in the Department of Justice; prosecutors using all the resources available through the United States criminal justice system (an oxymoron) to convict Mr. Trump of offenses which would make him ineligible to run for or hold public office.

In the case of Colombian President Petro, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights prevented his political opponents from denying the Colombian people the right to elect the candidate of their choice as president, but nothing of that nature exists with respect to the United States, purportedly the land of the free, and Mr. Trump is at the mercy of judges and prosecutors appointed by his political enemies, and a press that hates him.  Not an enviable position for Mr. Trump, but also, not an enviable position for those Americans, perhaps a majority, who see him as their champion.  The United States is currently more polarized than it has been since 1859, and we know what happened then.  This situation is likely to make matters even worse, but then, that’s a future problem and as Louis XV is alleged to have proclaimed: “Let the flood come, as long as I’m no longer here”, which it did.  From this author’s perspective, the issue is not whether Mr. Trump is a good or decent person, he is not a Trump supporter nor does he intend to vote for him, but in a democracy, a real democracy, what is happening to Mr. Trump should not be tolerated.

It should be noted that the author tried to post a Spanish version of this article on Facebook, but it was immediately banned, allegedly for violating the community guidelines against nudity. Judge for yourself what this article has to do with that subject, and then ask yourself what is happening, and why.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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

Now What?

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As I write this, I wonder if it will ever be permitted to see the light of day.  I’m certain that access to this article will be subjected to the de facto censorship limiting its spread and access through algorithms designed to limit postures frowned upon by our Internet censors.  But perhaps some brave souls will share it.  Every once in a while we somehow manage to get our messages heard, after which, of course, they’re distorted.

As usual when I write about abuse of the political, electoral and legal systems by the Deep State and its primary tools, the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media to impact the electoral options of Donald John Trump, I precede by asserting that I do not care for him and do not intend to vote for him, even as a protest.  But Mr. Trump has been indicted through the machinations of a Deep State tool, one of several local attorneys general and federal prosecutors tasked with preventing him for again running for and again possibly winning the United States presidency. 

The action is unprecedented, not only because it involves a former United States president, but because the purported “crime” involves having been the victim of blackmail and extortion.  But the real reason seems obvious to me.  It seems obvious to many who love peace, to the many who really strive for equity and equality, and for a system of governance based on justice and legality.

Mr. Trump has many negative characteristics but also a few saving graces, and it is the latter which have led the Deep State to take this unprecedented action, an action so polarizing that it once again promotes the prospect that American citizens will feel it is their duty to act in an uncivil, possibly violent manner.  The saving graces all involve repudiation of neoconservative military activities abroad, for example, in the Ukraine and in Taiwan; they involve repudiation of the dangerously anachronistic North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the similar web of offensive military alliances and bases around the world designed to promote and preserve political, economic and military hegemony, even at the risk of nuclear war.  They involve a desire to redirect spending on defense towards improved infrastructure.

Mr. Trump’s posture with respect to the foregoing is neither consistent nor coherent given his dedication to Israeli objectives and his intent to do to the Islamic Republic of Iran what his predecessors did to Iraq, nor given his methodology of governance through arrogance and aggressive posturing on economic issues, but it is deeply threatening to those who rule us through proxies, those who rule us through moles scattered throughout the bureaucracy and the judiciary, throughout what used to be a purportedly free press, throughout international institutions.  That is why a minor league functionary has taken the unprecedented, illegal action that confronts the United States today.  The action which will exacerbate the polarization which led to the events of January 6, 2020, and which, step by step, is bringing Americans closer and closer to another disastrous civil conflict.

Some among the American people seem to be waking up to the reality that democracy in the United States is an illusion, too many perhaps.  And the Deep State will not tolerate such independence, not again.  It is hell bent on preventing the miscalculations that led to the disastrous 2016 presidential and Congressional elections, disastrous at least from their perspective.  And no price is too high to pay to avoid them, especially when it is We the People who pay the price, not those who rule us.  Who rule us as though they were the proud owners of Tolkien’s one ring.

Julian Assange sits rotting in a British prison, thanks to the Deep State, in that case including Mr. Trump.  The real criminals, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bush’s and the Bidens (and I don’t mean just Hunter and Jimmy), are free to loot, plunder and cast the world into chaos; a world suffering from the blights of inflation and recession everywhere, and from the violence of the antithesis of Kant’s perpetual peace.  And I’m not at all certain that We the People can do anything about it.  It may already be too late. 

It is certainly way too late to stop the madness through the prophylactic means the Constitution was adopted to provide, means such as limiting the war powers to Congress, an institution which, for more than a century, has abdicated its most important responsibilities, both with respect to peace, and to foreign affairs, and to the wise use of our tax dollars.  And I’m not certain that there are any other constitutional options still open. 

Many of us seriously question the legitimacy of the electoral process, some, because of recent events, but others because the United States has always been a duopoly, a faux democracy with the electoral system rigged in favor of two principal players, both ultimately controlled by the same people.  That leaves us no options that most of us find acceptable, certainly not those options brewing under the surface among left and right wing armed thugs who consider themselves patriots.

So, … “now what”, as Troy’s Cassandra might ask, after having warned us of what was happening for so long?  As Julian Assange might ask, or Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or as the small group of independent journalists exiled from the major media constantly remind us.  Or as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and myriad other authors of dystopian novels illustrated for us.

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

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

Once Again, the Ides of March

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It’s March 15, 2023.  Once again the Ides of March. 

Two millennia, six decades and seven years ago, more or less (given Pope Gregory’s machinations with the calendar), Gaius Iulius Caesar was assassinated by a number of the colleagues he’d pardoned multiple times, including his reputed illegitimate son, Marcus Junius Brutus, as he entered the purportedly sacrosanct Roman Senate.  His crime, protecting the Roman lower classes against those who perceived themselves their betters, and denominated themselves the “boni” (the good).

He was a populist and populists are not well regarded by those who seek permanent power by hiding in the shadows and working through moles in the bureaucracy, the military and in the institutions that operate the economy.

Not that he was a paragon of virtue in all respects, especially shameful was his conduct of the so called Gallic Wars, but he was a fascinatingly complex human being, whose heart, at least with respect to the Roman people, seemed to be in the right place.

Except for the absence of a charismatic and effective populist leader protecting the interests of the most vulnerable among us, little if anything has changed today from the world that Gaius Iulius Caesar left us so long ago.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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