The Last Guardian: A Divine nightmare

Posted on by
Reply

A mote in black on black.  An echo of a shadow of what once might have been once upon a time. 

He was the only thing that remained of the once infinitely expansive multiverse, everything else had withered and disappeared so many eternities ago, that an eternity was infinitely less than a grain of sand in everything that had ever been.  He’d volunteered to stay behind when both he and the multiverse were relatively young, knowing just how lonely he’d eventually be when everything, even time, was so long gone that it was impossible to recall that it had ever been.  But it had, and he remained.  And he recalled, there was nothing else.  The multiverse reduced to his own body or his body expanded to encompass the multiverse, it made no difference.  There was utterly and absolutely nothing else.  The body he’d worn so long ago somehow perfectly preserved and, despite the absence of air or water or sustenance or space, still fully, well, sort of fully, functional.  Despairingly so as it had no functions at all.  A relic.  A memorial of sorts.

His last breath had been an infinity of eons ago, the last trace of long forgotten gasses inhaled, and then, absolutely nothing.  No time, no space.  Just him.  Existing, and watching, although for what he’d no idea.  There was nothing else to see.  He was self-contained.  Only that which he was and would always be but had not always been, now and for very, very long, always conscious.  Eternities’ chosen scapegoat paying for long forgotten sins of long forgotten others.

There was no future, only a long distant past.  And a present out of time.  And the promise he’d made to stay behind so that everything else could end.  He recalled that on the day he’d turned seventy-six, he’d wondered for the first but not the last time, if divinity had once played the role he was now charged with assuming, the sole role at the end of time and space.  If so, that would explain a great deal, perhaps everything.  How could anything remain sane in any sense at all after being so utterly alone, and yet, knowing what awaited, he’d confirmed his commitment, which implied something about his sanity as well.

While still enjoying a normal life span, he’d watched as his contemporaries aged and passed on, and then his descendants.  He’d been there, albeit an oddity, a freak, as species, including humans, evolved and changed, and planets evolved and died, and as different species conquered space and even time, and then they too moved on, but he was cursed with anachronistic eternity, a never ending relic.  And on the last instant of time, everything was gone, everything but him.

The other side of panentheism.  The last guardian, long after the end of time and space.
_______

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

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

Conan the Barber

Posted on by
Reply

He was not related to the much better known Cimmerian after whom he’d been named, although, like him, he was somewhat expert in the use of sharp implements, just not in the same manner.  Actually, in a very different manner with very different goals and very different results.  His only involved butchering when he failed, while his namesake engaged in that activity when he was most successful, at least in his own lights.

Robert E. Howard would probably not have thought much about Conan the Barber, although, perhaps, he might have patronized him, as might his great albeit very different pal, H. P. Lovecraft.  But this Conan also took his profession seriously, and at times engaged in cosmetogolical competitions where, every once in a great while, his creations emerged victorious.

It may well be that he took as much care of his scissors and razors and blades as his namesake did of his swords and spears and lances and arrows, so in that, at least, they were similar.  And of course, they were both Cimmerians, although not many people today know just what that entailed.  For readers who have no idea, well, according to a popular source that will remain unnamed due to its erratic reputation for accuracy, they were “a nomadic Indo-European people, who appeared about 1000 BC”, originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe but subsequently migrating “into Western Asia and into Central and Southeast Europe”.  Interesting definition, especially the part about “originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe”, since it begs the question, … well, where were they before that, did they spontaneously come to life there, perhaps from a bit of molded clay onto which a stray divine wind blew?  I would guess that they were a link in the chain of tribes that for diverse reasons kept pulsing out of central Asia, perhaps out of what is now Mongolia, and scaring the hell out of their neighbors who cascaded south and west.  But that’s just my unsubstantiated guess, which is as good as yours.

One wonders what kind of coiffeurs our Conan specialized in, whether he ever invented any, perhaps the Mohawk, or the Pictian spike look, or, perhaps, the faux bald look so popular nowadays.  I can almost see him, concentrating profoundly and perhaps fantasizing about his name sake as he clipped and scraped and combed and parted and started the process all over again.  One wonders if he had a special flair, perhaps a unique style, and what kinds of faces he made as he worked, perhaps as though he were a bass player in a late twentieth century New Orleans late night dive, lost in his melodies.

Of course, in antiquity and even not so long ago, barbers were also sort of surgeons, and engaged in therapeutic, curative bleeding, hence today’s barber poles.  It would be sort of ironic if our Conan was a healer, rather than one who generated a massive need for healers.  Kind of symbiotic.

What about his clothing?  Was it as minimal as his namesake’s?  Did he wear loincloths or trousers, beads or shirts, and what was his own hair like?  Did he change his look frequently or prefer a classic, easy to recognize look that would identify him?  Was it long, short, or somewhere in between?

Was he a contemporary of his name sake?  Not likely, unless, of course, he was twenty or thirty years younger, a lifetime in those days.  Did his namesake ever meet him, perhaps patronize him, and, if so, in what sense?  Double entendre possibilities abound there.

Interestingly, many millennia later, at least a few people have taken to the name and appellation, check out twitter, and evidently there’s also a current musician who uses that name, and not a few barber shops.  So his legacy too lives on.

“Conan the Barber”, a nice ring.  Was it a given name, an adopted name or, perhaps, a professional moniker?

Guess we’ll never know.  Regardless of how carefully one “combs” through the related chronicles compiled by Messier Howard, not a trace of Conan the Barber can be gleaned.  Then, of course, perhaps one would need a sleuth out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination to take up that particular task, although, why would he.

Wouldn’t it be something if Sherlock Holmes’ creator was somehow distantly related to either of our protagonists?  Of course, after so many generations of intermingled genes, almost anything is possible.
_______

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

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

Alta Rei Publicae et Veritatis Inopia

Posted on by
Reply

Another in a series of probably non-productive rants, — but, … who knows?

How does one capture a reader’s attention enough so that, curious, he or she will at least glance at what one publishes?  The infamous “hook”?  I confess that I may well have no idea, so this time, I thought I’d use a title in Latin.  We’ll see how that works.  In this case, the title deals with the association between the dearth of truth at all levels, and the rise and predomination of “deep states”.

As a young historian during the 1970’s, I first taught history along official lines.  Eventually, however, I came to realize that the “official versions of history” were contradictory and incoherent[1].  My epiphany started, appropriately enough, with the Abrahamic sacred texts (the Talmud, Bible and Koran), in large part, based on observations with which I became acquainted, first by Sigmund Freud in his book, Moses and Monotheism, then in Lloyd M. Graham’s Deceptions and Myths of the Bible and Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and then based on a torrent of other sources which made clear that the Talmud, the Bible and the Koran were, more than anything, fictitious narratives seeking to justify genocide and other aberrations in order to promote the Abrahamic faiths.  Given that such bedrocks of Western civilization seemed fallacies, I followed up with other critical supposedly historical events and found them equally unreliably reported.  That seemed especially true in the areas that I taught at the time with respect to the causes ascribed to armed conflicts such as the American Revolution and subsequent Civil War, the two acknowledged World Wars, the purported Cold War (really a collection of small hot wars interspersed with coups d’état and political interventionism) and the current crises in the Middle East.  In short, just about everything. 

One of my most disturbing epiphanies (or possible epiphanies) is that what we’ve been taught about the horrors of the Nazi regime in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century was only partially accurate, and that the entire truth was much more disturbing.  Clearly, evil lay pretty equally divided on all sides (think Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only the tip of the iceberg).  Like the ancient Hebrews, the British especially, and their progeny, the United States and now NATO, have been especially adept at demonizing their adversaries while whitewashing their own inequity.  For example, taking an extreme case, an objective analysis of Nazi policies during its Third Reich would lead to the conclusion that the regime was extremely successful in social programs, medicine, education, urban and rural renewal, transportation, manufacturing and scientific research but, of course, it is most remembered for its racism, xenophobia and mass murder.  However, the latter also pretty much describes the European-United States-Israeli colonial regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, assuming anyone is daring enough to undertake a similar objective analysis, an analysis that ought to be reflected in future history books (except that, as in the case of journalism, history is rarely if ever accurately or truthfully recorded and taught).  It is only a very efficient system of public relations that whitewashes and distorts the numerous misadventures by the Western Allies (think Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Latin America and Africa in general, and other invasions, interventions and regime changes too numerous to mention), in reality all too similar to purported historical villainies by our adversaries and no different than the horrors visited on all sides during the first and Second World wars, including the Holocaust (See, e.g., Chris Hedges: “NATO — Most Dangerous Military Alliance on Planet”; Consortium News, Volume 27, Number 189–Monday July 11, 2022).

We cannot change history and reporting of current events (our future history) is following historical deficiencies which are, in all likelihood, assuring that historical mistakes will not be corrected, or even acknowledged.  For example, take the current Ukrainian situation, an exercise in destructive fiction if ever there was one.  An objective historian, analyzing the current Ukrainian crisis, would note that it involves the sacrifice of the Ukrainian people and of their infrastructure, wealth and natural bounties in order to derail Russian efforts to attain reasonable security and economic welfare and, as importantly, to prevent Chinese economic progress to predominate, ending the unipolar, hegemonic aspirations of the United States and threatening to derail the economic cornucopia enjoyed by ill named Western “defense” industries.

It seems clear to virtually everyone (except, perhaps to cancel-culture-woke-warriors) that we live in a post truth world, although that begs the question of whether or not truth has ever really been a driving force among our species.  We disagree as to who is deluding whom but we are certain that delusion reigns.  As unfortunate as it’s been predictable, narrative control has become an effective science thanks to behaviorist theories and their manipulative tools made famous by psychologist and author, B.F. Skinner almost a century ago.  For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Skinner, he was Eric Arthur Blair’s (known to us by his pen name, George Orwell) chief intellectual antagonist and believed that the techniques criticized by Orwell in his two most famous dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, were actually beneficent and could be used to mold us into a more humane species (see his answer to Orwell, the novel Walden II), as today’s counter-culture-woke-warriors also seem to believe.  Behaviorism has successfully eliminated empathy from our lives and filled the gap with polarization, to the delight of our “betters” (at least as they perceive themselves), who so adeptly manipulate our emotions and minimize our use of reason.

The foregoing brings us to the concept of “deep states”, a phenomenon forecast by Eric Arthur Blair under the phrase, “Big Brother”.  The concept of “deep states” haunt our realities.  By a “deep state”, I and others apparently afflicted by “civic insomnia” mean that informal complex of government functionaries (elected but also and perhaps especially, unelected), purported journalists, internet platform owners, intelligence agencies, “think” tanks, major universities and, of course, multinational corporations and the elite billionaire class that, in one fashion or another, own them all, and which are the means through which democracy and liberty are rendered into oligarchies subservient to the whims of the few.

Until the right wing populist tide in the United States unexpectedly, indeed shockingly, brought Donald Trump to the verisimilitude of power (real power remained vested in our deep state, as he quickly discovered), the United States’ version of the deep state lay well camouflaged despite the attempt by President Dwight David Eisenhower to expose it in early 1961 (see “President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address”).  Well camouflaged perhaps but successful, with success measured by the increasing accumulation of wealth and power by the unscrupulously at the cost of starvation and poverty for the majority of our planets denizens.  Accumulation so thorough and complete that the vast majority of the world’s wealth is owned by one tenth of one percent of the global population while more than half of the world’s children go to sleep hungry each and every night. 

Such accumulation of wealth is defended by those who possess it as the fruit of diligence, prudence and discipline but, as French economist Thomas Piketty made clear to us in his epic Le Capital au XXIe siècle (Capital in the Twenty-First Century), such wealth was not accumulated through hard work but through fortuitous financial manipulation, inheritance, and the blessings of constant armed conflict (see, Scott Ritter’s latest article, “The Fantasy of Fanaticism” (Consortium News, Volume 27, Number 174–- Saturday, June 25, 2022), as well as that of John J. Mearsheimer, “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis” published in The National Interest based on a speech he made to the European University Institute in Florence on Thursday, June 16, 2022).  For a general description of the morass in which we find ourselves, I recommend Tom Valovic’s article entitled “The Corporatization of Just About Everything” in Consortium News, Volume 27, Number 183–- Tuesday, July 5, 2022.

Deep states are a phenomenon prevalent primarily in states whose governments are superficially structured as “western style democracies” (just as the Roman Empire vestigially maintained the populist institutions prevalent in the Roman Republic) with their democratic aspirations subverted through manipulation of available information.  In such contexts, truth is as elusive today as evil is ubiquitous.  Of course, with so very many of us effectively somnambulant in the United States (the most powerful country controlled by a deep state), those conditions are all too easy to maintain. 

As in the famous foreign policy doctrine of “divide and conquer”, domestic control essential for the implementation of global policies requires the replacement of empathy with polarization through the creation of illusory divisive issues that distract us from solving actual problems to which they are tied.  Thus we rail about abortion and the right to bear arms, and historical monuments and even, the misadventures of our favorite sports teams, while we watch propaganda laced “entertainment” spewing out of Hollywood and we insult each other and donate, a dollar at a time, to purportedly benign existential causes to be decided based on fraudulent elections, as The World Turns”.

With truth passé and replaced by fictitious, manipulative narrative, deep states thrive as we drown.  We have become a diseased society, the collective victims of a sort of social cancer who perhaps do not deserve to survive.  We have been artfully molded into an amazingly gullible and cognitively challenged society whose members refuse to accept their individual and collective responsibility for the consequences of political cowardice and gullibility.  The reality is that, rail as we do against our favorite villains, each of us who shares in the responsibility of political participation but supports a version of the deep state shares in the responsibility for the emerging Holocaust towards which we are racing as though we were Olympic sprinters.  It is claimed that Albert Einstein once defined insanity as continuing to engage in the same conduct while expecting different results.  That is what we do during each purported existential election (they are all characterized in that fashion) where we are required to compromise our values in order to save civilization by electing evil people in order to prevent even more evil people from attaining power, this despite a plethora of other options (e.g., Tulsi Gabbard).

We are being herded to our own metaphorical incineration chambers just as surely as were the Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and Catholics and Slavs (contrary to current dogma, the Holocaust was a multicultural affair) who were gassed and then cremated in Nazi “death camps” (interestingly, in a morbid sense, concentration camps were invented by the British during the Boer Wars and adopted by the United States with respect to its Japanese citizens during World War II, and to Muslims during its more recent Middle East misadventures).  Unfortunately, as in their case and as in the case of today’s Ukrainians, we just can’t believe that it’s true.  So we ignore reality and suffer on, complacent because at last others suffer much more, … because of us.  Besides, we have our sports teams to worry about, and beauty pageants, and soap operas, and Netflix binges, and bingo, etc.  And we also have to meddle in each other’s affairs, finding fault everywhere but in our mirrors.

So, about the relationship of evil to the dearth in veracity?  Pure, undistilled 24 karat evil resides prominently among us and its purest strains exude from those among us, who, without even needing Tolkien’s one ring, rule us all and bind us to their will, albeit with velvet chains, as we sleepwalk where poppies daren’t grow.
_______

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

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

[1] Credible alternative versions of United States history include Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States and the Gore Vidal series of historical novels, Narratives of Empire.

An Objective Rant Pertaining to Abortion and other Issues

Posted on by
Reply

Word games are tempting in a world fraught with apparently imminent disaster (or is that eminent), but they’re not productive by themselves, not if problem resolution is the goal.  Unfortunately, the only problem that really concerns our corporate media and political “leaders” is the maintenance of power, and that requires that polarization be heightened, which in turn requires the “creation” and maintenance of polarizing issues, not their resolution.

Abortion is a great example right now, given the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. ___ [2022]).  The underlying issue seems to me to be irresolvable morally or ethically because it involves the clash of two fundamental social premises (not rights, the concept of rights is incoherent).  First, the purported sanctity of life (notwithstanding our addiction to perpetual wars and the death penalty); and second, the right of humans to control their own bodies (notwithstanding government interference in diverse health related issues, including recent pandemic oriented mandatory measures).  Law, however, is notwithstanding platitudes to the contrary, not bound to moral or ethical factors.  It merely involves the exercise of raw power over individuals based on collective decisions, though it is usually justified using arguments disguised as morality, ethics, justice, equity or pragmatism.  In reality, in fact, a great deal of law involves norms imposed in order to maintain a parasitic minority in permanent power.

For about half a century, the availability of optional abortion in order to eradicate errors of judgment by women was protected by the United States Supreme Court through usurpation of constitutional and legislative powers.  Not a rarity, unfortunately. Men, on the other hand, did not enjoy a related privilege in conjunction with support related obligations based on their own errors of judgment, and of course, embryos, well what the hell are they anyway but inchoate child rearing problems and drains on our personal economy, especially now that the family has broken down and there is no real tradition of progeny caring for their forbearers in old age.  Well, that’s one perspective.  The other focuses on the incoherence of state mandated reproduction without shared responsibility for the consequences, responsibilities such as guaranteeing sustenance, housing, education, freedom from violence and adequate employment.

That abortion was rendered conditionally immune from state imposed prescriptions by inappropriate judicial action did not impact the reality of the important social issues involved.  They should have been dealt with by the People through their representatives; through exercise of constitutional and legislative duties unfortunately abdicated based on fears of ballot box consequences.  They should have been dealt with through constitutional means at the federal level, or constitutional or legislative means at the state level.  Unfortunately, notwithstanding emotional angst and hyperbolic outbursts, those responsibilities were ignored and proponents of abortion on demand were too lazy to undertake the social campaign required to condition society to accept their sociopolitical premises, instead, they resorted to the antithesis of democracy, the unelected, life tenured judiciary to come up with an arbitrary solution.  But recourse to such strategy inherently involved the probability that the judicially crafted solution to a social and constitutional issue, a political issue, would eventually be undone by a future judicial coup de’ grâce, also circumventing democratic institutions and requirements.

The foregoing is problematic but not malevolent, it is merely lazy and inept.  What is malevolent is the use of an issue as important as abortion for purposes of political polarization, specifically, keeping it in constant play as a means to secure political fundraising and political power by those on both sides of the debate, rather than resolving it through democratic decision making.  The recent United States Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, while constitutionally sound, does nothing to resolve the issue, nor do purported opponents of the decision appear interested in taking any meaningful actions to legally resolve it in their favor.  Rather, they are merely using the case in order to salvage the disaster that seemed to await the political party that has made them its captives, its tools, in this autumn’s Congressional elections. 

A lot of noise and fury has been generated, albeit most demanding a continuation in power of a political party that traditionally betrays those who vote in its favor, and protests, a bit of violence and threats of violence, have been omnipresent.  However, no tangible efforts to legally and constitutionally attain that which they claim to be essential are being undertaken.  That would require reconciling diverse societal perspectives and convincing adversaries through education and logic, but we have come to perceive logic as a disease that afflicts an imaginary race we refer to as Vulcans, and education requires empathy, takes too long, and does not yield immediate and ongoing political dividends.  So, riots it is, perhaps with a bit of arson and mayhem thrown in, notwithstanding the platitudes and hypocrisy on display in the so called January 6 Congressional hearings.

And the purported victims?  The women who may be unable to obtain abortions and the unwanted children they will be forced to bear and perhaps raise?  Why, in an exact analogy to what is occurring to the populace and infrastructure of the Ukraine and the two self-proclaimed Donbass republics, they’re being efficiently used and abused for tawdry political purposes by politicians with nothing but disdain for ethics, morality, legality, democracy or constitutional government, caring only for the acquisition, maintenance and abuse of political power.

The foregoing is true regardless of which side of the abortion debate you call your own.  And the same is true with respect to the Second Amendment and gun rights; with respect to superiority hypotheses based on race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identification, nationality, religion, ethnicity, age, etc.; indeed with any of the emotionally polarizing issues used by our unethical and ruthless elites and their minions to keep us divided and docile, too confused by our emotions (especially fear and hate) to defend ourselves from their predations.  The foregoing is true whether you’re a liberal, a progressive, a conservative, a libertarian or addicted to any other ideology.

The real issue today, as it has been through most of history, is the struggle between elite minorities who use their designees to abuse the concept of popular governance for their own greedy ends (today generically identified as “deep states”), and populists on every part of the political spectrum who seek liberation from those ubiquitous predatory parasites by eliminating their monopoly on political power.  Unfortunately, like addicts of all kinds, we are drawn to the issues that most effectively polarize us and are all too easily distracted from those that we really need to address, those issues involving real democratization of our political systems and processes and replacement of the political vultures who inhabit all current major political parties.  Issues we need to address so that we can civilly and efficiently resolve the policies that divide us, and, recognizing that our society is dynamic and our values variable, develop the ongoing mechanisms necessary for us to justly and equitable govern ourselves, permitting us each, individually and collectively, to realize our best potential.

Freed of our predatory political masters, perhaps empathy (the opposite of polarization) could again become a viable attribute in our political discourse and we could disagree without ridiculing and belittling each other and our respective belief’s, and perhaps we could, in good faith, understand that we all have valid points, and that legitimate democratic governance involves finding those perspectives we share, and granting our government the right to regulate them, but retaining individual autonomy with respect to those areas where a reasonable consensus is unattainable, rather than feeling compelled to always have our own way on every issue.  Perhaps someday, hopefully soon, we’ll awake from our induced traces and take our political responsibilities (they’re much more than mere illusory rights) seriously and vote for things in which we believe, rather than against illusory straw arguments crafted to confuse us; vote in favor of candidates in whom we believe rather than against those we’re manipulated into despising, and perhaps then we can cast “lesser evils” into the hells where they belong.  We would make mistakes and not always get our way, but at least it would be, “We the People”, governing ourselves.  We could not do any worse than the deep states that rule us now.

Something to at least think about.
_______

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

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

Brief but Important Reflections on the Fourth of July

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve long believed that holidays, all holidays, are days best suited for introspection, reflection and reevaluation rather than celebration, especially those based on some ethical principle, like today.  So today is a day to reflect on Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisy, which we’ve inherited, but also on the warnings of two presidents in their farewell addresses: Washington’s, to avoid entangling alliances (like NATO, our special status with the United Kingdom and Israel, and our disdain for Muslims, Russia and China); and, Eisenhower’s warning about the deep state which, without the one ring, still manages to rule us all more efficiently that Tolkien’s villain, Sauron, ever dreamed possible. 

Perhaps it’s also a day to reflect on the reality that until we vote our consciences, rather than permit ourselves to be manipulated through orchestrated fears and emotionally polarizing issues, until we develop empathy and tolerance for opposing viewpoints, we will never be truly free, or truly independent. 

Happy Fourth of July!!!
_______

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

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

A Dark and Dystopian Diatribe.  Again.  They’ve become the Norm

Posted on by
Reply

An introductory query might go something like this:  Evil or merely inept? Which is worse?  In what combination?  An initial response might speculate:  Well, inept evil would probably be the least negative.  Unfortunately, evil and inept is what we have, with evil all too apt.  Would a less than perfect divinity find that funny?  Imagine Groucho Marx (or maybe just a grouchy Karl Marx) as God!

Another day, another trillion or so dollars; a few hundred thousand or so lives thrown into the pits needed to feed insatiable armaments industries, but we’re still giving birth to more and more babies so that’s all right: look at the newborns and weep but keep’em coming.  Fortunately (sort of, … at least for a few) there are still plenty of Ukrainians in the wings, and perhaps Lithuanians and Poles as well.  And of course, Muslims: a surfeit of Arabs and Iranians and Palestinians to dispel.  And when they’re gone, well, “first they came for ….” and there’ll be plenty left until, fighting among themselves, like Heinlein’s Igli, they eat themselves into oblivion. 

And then, merry Christmas and a good riddance to all. “Bah humbug”!

But till then we’ve got video games and Hollywood spectacles and Disney and Netflix, and new model cars and designer clothes, and aren’t the Yankees something this year and sure hope the Jets come through this time, perhaps God’s forgotten the promises we made during Super Bowl III.  The latest abortion decision has us up in arms (as did the first), that’s true, and murderous guns and bullets keep attacking our children in schools:  And inflation plus rescission, ain’t they depressing?  And gas prices rising are a pain (for some).  But still, all and all, ain’t life just sort of grand?  After all, we’re lucky to be Americans: the brave and the free (sort of, … at least in the movies and on television) who can solve any problem because we are so exceptional, except for the half that are too stupid to see the light (so sayeth each half).

Anyway, ….

What if synonyms and antonyms decided to have a war?  Or if verbs and adverbs formed a coalition of the willing against nouns and adjectives, with propositions and pronouns sitting on the sidelines confused, while social science majors removed all of those troubling and scary page numbers from their treatises and physics and math majors looked on with vacuous expressions on their faces wondering why mirrors had become anathema?  What would we get if all the odd numbers subtracted all the even numbers?  Would it be different if all the even numbers subtracted all the odd numbers?  And what about those prime numbers, all odd except the number two.  Interesting.  Is there a profound metaphysical meaning there?  Or at least some obscure symbolism?  And just what is a solipsism?

Where are we today anyway? 

Perhaps happily mired in banalities while in a real world, one on the other side of a looking glass, a one way mirror of sorts, sad eyed, lean and hungry people deal with our residue.  An image:  Insane mariners cruising on a ship of fools doomed to disembark onto quicksand flavored shores singing songs about how happy pigs are when they wallow in mud (or less desirable excrement oriented substances), collectively following piebald pied pipers playing merrily discordant tunes, vacuity become an art form.

But out there, rocking boats, a few just won’t let sleeping dogs lie.  The ones who, like that pain-in-the-ass (or is it arse) Cassandra, keep finding dark linings surrounding silvered clouds, insisting on freeing bluebirds from gilded cages, for some reason believing that it would be hard to imagine anyone or anything more troubling than the world around us, a world seemingly careening from crisis to crisis, … but profitably so.

Anyway, … again:

Is pure evil a tangible thing?  As tangible, or perhaps as intangible as truth?  Or are they both moronic oxymorons.  Or perhaps, they’re a curious blend reflected in the eyes of billions of confused beholders, beholden beholders, although beholden to whom may be a puzzle writ by an insane enigma following lemmings of a cliff in Dover.

I can’t really personally vouch for the existence or impossibility of absolute truth, although math seems to echo that something must be at least somewhat accurate, but as to absolute evil, the scent seems omnipresent, and it smells a great deal like rotting corpses doused in expensive perfumes.  Pure evil kind of sounds like an ambivalent oxymoron though, doesn’t it?  Oxymorons seem popular today.

What might it be like to drive to hell in a handbasket?  Perhaps Toto knows which may be why he barks as Momba (more recently renamed Evillene to avoid racist undertones), slowly melts, albeit soaking wet, bemoaning the world in which we live, and Dorothy laughs as Lucy once more pulls away the football and Charley Brown falls flat on his back wondering who the hell “Peanuts” is.

Do you think Biden will really win this time if he runs again against Trump?

Things on which to reflect or introspections to avoid?
_______

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

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

In Defense of Divinity

Posted on by
Reply

What if sentience was first?

Self-awareness with utterly nothing about which to be aware? 

Absolutely nothing existing, no being of any kind in any sense, just the sentience. 

How not to be traumatized, but for the fact that trauma did not exist.  Absolutely nothing did.  Not even timid time.  Certainly not space.  Nor any heaven and, of course, no hells.  Not even an incipient big bang, nor a little one, not even an infinitesimally tiny one.  Not even solitude. 

No right or wrong, no morality or ethics, no echoes or shadows or hints of things to come.  No infinity or eternity.  Nothing. 

Nothing, but a newborn sentience with nothing to sense. 

That’s what it would have been like to be god, in the real beginning. 

No wonder divinity lacks stability and perspective.
_______

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

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

Reminiscences on an Early Summer Day

Posted on by
Reply

For some reason, this morning I was recalling the Christmas season while we were at the Citadel and how our Christmas traditions impacted my whole life, and impacted it profoundly.  I recall that we sold ourselves to the “knobs” in a parody of Saturnalia in order to raise funds to share with the city’ orphans and orphanages, and I recall the visits, especially to the orphanages set aside for black children, and how grateful and warm they were, and how much more I think we appreciated the privilege of sharing with them than they welcomed our gifts.  Not that they were not appreciated!  But it was we who came out ahead I think.  It turned us into real human beings.  In my case, it evaporated any vestiges of the racism in which we were raised.  I hope the tradition prevails there but I tend to doubt it, although I’m pretty sure it is imbedded in each and every one of our hearts.  

We each recall many things about our times at our alma mater, and there are many, many things that bear recalling.  It was a very full season of years, and it certainly made us who we are.  But which of us would have thought way back then that love would be its principle legacy, love for each other and for all of our fellow alumni, love of truth as something tangible, and of honor, and of our fellow men and women, and of the world in which we live, and of tradition, and of the future we hope to bequeath to our posterity.  The world is vastly changed from what it was then, in some ways, for the better, but in too many ways for the worst.  Polarization and greed have become the rule and empathy the exception.  But to some extent, I think we are immune from that. 

Just wanted to share with those I most respect.
_______

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

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

Reflections on an Early Summer’s Eve in June, 2022

Posted on by
Reply

(A satire out of sorts)

The lid on Pandora’s Box refuses to budge and out pops an explosive date, apparently somehow akin to July 4, 1776: January 6, 2021, and now a judicial decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, all joining the Black Lives matter movement, the Cancel Culture movement, the dozing Woke movement, the Second Amendment (pro and con) movements, the Covid 19 “pandemic”, etc., in a constant stream of pejorative laced diatribes next to which putrescence seems a delightful desert.  And just when the Democratic Party Congressional majority and its allies were regaling us on public and commercial television, on all available channels, about how noble and just they’ve always been.  But I’m confused.  Are protests and riots and arson and mayhem permissible indicia of a vibrant libertarian democracy or not?  Or are they, as most philosophers believe about most things, as relative and inconsistent as truth or the “currently recognized laws” of physics.  Is two plus two four, or isn’t it?

Black lives matter protests and riots and arson and mayhem are good!  Challenges to the validity of elections are bad, at least if they involve voters who reject Democratic Party victories (think 2020).  If they reject Republican Party victories (think 2016), they’re good.  Destruction of government legacy property, say, in the Capitol, is bad, treason and sedition even.  Destruction of legacy monuments honoring historical figures is good, positive, a sign of more tolerant times around the corner.

Apparently, the answers, “depend”, and the “depends” are variable.  Hmmm, “depends” good name for an adult diaper. 

So, with what depends are we dealing?

Evidently, as long as the protests and riots and arson and mayhem deal with pre-approved themes, they are good.  But only if they deal with themes sacrosanct to the conglomeration of government functionaries (most unelected), traditionalist politicians of diverse political parties, the corporate media and the Internet “mogulith”.  If not, if they oppose the themes dear to the conglomeration of government functionaries (most unelected), traditionalist politicians of diverse political parties, the corporate media and the Internet “mogulith”, they are horrid.  A manual on the issue should be coming out of the United States Printing Office any decade now, with regular amendments and supplements to follow.

The foregoing is not as unreasonable as some of the treasonous and seditious among us may believe.  After all, our form of government is best described, not as a democracy but as a hypocrisy.  Poor confused me, for some reason thinking of geese and ganders and believing that there is an underlying equivalency in the right of the citizenry (in whom, purportedly, governmental authority rests, at least according to the Declaration of Independence) to protest and even, to change the nature of their government when it fails to meet the premises on which it was established.  But as the conglomeration of government functionaries (most unelected), traditionalist politicians of diverse political parties, the corporate media and the Internet mogulith make clear to us (sort of), only power counts, and its exercise  need be neither logical nor consistent.  Just loud, with a monopoly on the use of force and on the right to manipulate the justice system to suit its purposes.  Especially if it is reinforced with obligatory viewing of legislative proceedings run by kangaroos.

Soooo:

All together now: God bless America (unless the concept of “god” is anathema to you), the home of the brave (unless being brave contradicts the day’s acceptable norms) and the land of the free (assuming “free” means free to follow orders). 

As Yakov Smirnoff says “what a country!!”
_______

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

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

Observations on the Supreme Court’s Decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Posted on by
Reply

In the cases of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), the United States Supreme Court rendered ill-considered decisions that have polarized the United States electorate for half a century.  They involved lazy, ill-conceived and hasty jurisprudence designed to address important moral questions through legal rather than philosophical or religious channels at a time when a national consensus had not been attained.  The underlying moral and ethical issues have always remained unresolved and, perhaps, that is appropriate.  To an objective and honest person, the concept of abortion would seem to involve irreconcilable issues, the right to life on the one hand, versus the right of women to make fundamental decisions involving their health and welfare on the other.  A third element is rarely considered although it may be equally important, and that involves the right of a man to participate in a decision that materially impacts his financial and moral obligations.  A critical element in all three is the concept of what constitutes a right in the first place, and a second related and more tangible issue involves the appropriate scope of governmental authority within the context of a constitutional system and in this case, specifically, the United States Constitution, as amended to date.  A third element involves the concept of federalism in the United States context and a fourth, the doctrine of separation of powers.

The third, which is probably the best starting point for an analysis of the issues involved, would seem to turn on the usually ignored ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution which provide as follows:

The Ninth Amendment says, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People”.

The Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the People”.

The United States are an experiment in shared and fragmented sovereignty on both geographical and thematic bases with the principal role of the Constitution being identification of the frontiers of the complex jurisdictional boundaries thus created.  In essence, all governmental power is retained by the People except such as is specifically allocated by them to the various states, and, of the power allocated by the People to the various states, such as is allocated by them to the federal government.  The idea was that a competition among the various states for differing schemes of governance would identify those most beneficent and lead to their being adopted elsewhere, a process expected to be dynamic in order to deal with changing values and problems.  It was an interesting, percolate from below, concept contrasting with the traditional perspective that government was imposed from above, either from deities or humans endowed for one reason or another, either individually or collectively, with sovereignty superior in authority to individual autonomy.  The concept has never really worked, although politicians, lawyers, journalists and philosophers use tortured reasoning and rhetoric to make it seem otherwise, in order to impose their values over those which we, as a collective, are willing to accept, or might be willing to reject, but for compulsive coercion from those who deem themselves more morally and ethically suited to make our decisions, or, just much more powerful.

In the system of governance adopted in the Constitution but never really implemented, if social norms were not addressed in the federal Constitution, they were beyond the federal government’s power to regulate, but the federal Constitution could be amended by three quarters of the states in order to devolve additional powers, powers within the states’ competence, to the federal government, just as state constitutions could be amended by the People, to devolve additional powers to the states.

The fourth factor referenced above (important only because we as a People purportedly decided that it was), involved division of legislative, executive and judicial powers among separate branches based on the determination that government efficiency was much less important than preservation of the autonomy that liberty guaranteed.  As in the former case, it is a theory that has never really worked as the allocation of power in the Constitution itself violated the doctrine through the contemporaneous contrary doctrine of checks and balances.  The judiciary further eroded separation of powers when, in the Supreme Court case of Marbury versus Madison, it usurped the power of constitutional control (in a decision as unartfully reasoned as were those in Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey).  That decision eviscerated the concept of democracy, concurrently rendering the Constitution virtually moot, as the Constitution, and hence the entire artfully crafted scheme of governance designed for the allocation of governmental authority among the United States, came to be whatever, at any given moment, a majority of the unelected and life tenured members of the Supreme Court thought it should be, regardless of the perception of the Congress, or the President, or the People, or all three.  And thus we inevitably faced situations such as those decided in Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, as well as that now decided in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

But, for the sake of argument, assuming the schemes of governance reflected in the Constitution, as amended, were to apply, what would the correct decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization be?  Well, first, we need to clarify, correct in what context because, if the answer is in a legal and constitutional context, the answer might be different than if the context were socio-moral, the latter being the context in which policies should be designed and implemented.  But perhaps a more important question would be, is there a rational means to help resolve the quandary in which this issue has placed us.

In the first instance, the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization seems sound.  There is no debate that neither the Constitution nor the 14th amendment to the Constitution nor any other amendment thereto in any manner refers to abortion in any manner, thus, at best, it is an issue reserved to the states, assuming that the People in any state have conferred such issue for determination at a state level, and if not, it is left to the individual consciences of the people involved.  That is what federalism is all about.  In the latter case, no state in which the power to regulate abortion has not been constitutionally delegated by the People to that state would seem to have authority to prohibit it.  An interesting logical situation which the Supreme Court, were logic an important element in its decisions, might have considered way back in 1972.  Thus, it could be argued that while there is no right to abort, states have no power to regulate the issue, absent specific state constitutional authorization.

In the absence of a nationwide constitutional “right” vested in women to an abortion, proponents could develop such a right, even if none now exists, by first creating it at a state constitutional levels which might thereafter permit the states, by a three fourths majority, to amend the federal Constitution to incorporate such right there.  Case closed.  In such a context, perhaps serious discussions and research could precede such policy determinations leading to a reasonable balancing of interests embodied in a rational policy that could take into account the rights of unborn children, the rights of women, but also the rights of men (who might be forced to support a child they do not want).  Conversely, perhaps, in states that decline to accept a woman’s right to abort at will, policies might also consider what role such state should bear with respect to the financial and custodial responsibility for the resulting progeny.  Those kinds of decisions are not, however, the province of the judiciary but rather, of the electorate and of its legislatures.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization should not be the final word on point.  The issue requires rational, not just legalistic resolution, and the citizenry has the constitutional tools at state and federal levels to meet that responsibility.  Unfortunately, the issue has, during the past half century, as in the case of the purported right to bear arms, been too appetizing a political tool for political fund raising and appeals to emotion rather than good sense and logic.  Hence it is more politically pragmatic to leave the issue unresolved regardless of how much suffering it causes children and women and men; and how much it polarizes our society.

Some concluding thoughts:

The issue of abortion is too serious an issue to ignore or to leave to unelected, all too frequently jaded elites, responsible to no one but their whims of the moment.  Perhaps the answer ought to follow the federalist ideal, with different states having different rules, and people free to live in those states that best reflect their values, but perhaps it really may prove, after serious deliberation and serious, well thought out and good faith proposals, to rise to something involving rights, either for the unborn, for women, and even, perhaps, for men.

Things to consider as the United States is once again thrown into politically opportunistic bedlam.
_______

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

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