Future Ain't What it Was

 The 1950’s were a totally unprecedented period in the history of the world.

When I was a child, back in those days, less than a decade after the most destructive world war in human history, I got habitually hooked, like millions of other baby boomers, on TV. It was the latest and greatest—the most amazing—at that time— invention of all time: Television! (haha!)

We were the first generation to grow up with an electronic fantasy-box glowing in the living room. In the afternoons, after  school, we were affixed to it, most every day and night of every week.

This development would certainly change the world as we know it, but nobody knew how it would change the world. 

We watched Davy Crockett, Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody; we watched Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans.  

Along came Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Minnie, with their cartoon buddies. . . Pluto,  Donald Duck, Cinderella, and a host of Disney-fied critters and characters conjured up from ancient European fairytales, along with a host of American Uncle Remus critters—Br’er Rabbit, B’rer Fox. A bunch of ancient fairytales and folk tales  were modified-- electronified, 20th-century-style— for us clueless kids to watch on  our new-fangled miracle TV-tubes, television. 

Prior to that development, nothing in the world had ever existed like it. And we had no idea whatsoever how TV would change the world.

We were growing up, baby boomers, in the great American land of unprecedented progress and prosperity. 

We just knew we had a great Future ahead of us.

Then along came Walt Disney. He and his Dream crew began—with their cartoonizing worldview—putting the Disneyland dream together.

So it wasn’t  just on those magic TV screens. The Disney crews built a whole theme park in California, a fantasy land that would change American vacationing forever. . .  and twenty years later they built another—even bigger and fancier DisneyWorld—on a huge tract of land in Florida.

Within that dream world, they built a Tomorrowland, a futuristic, progress-fantasizing entertainment theme park with an eye toward the Future. 

But yesterday, my idealized theme-park future world was unexpectedly darkened while touring the latest disney cinema set of future past.

What does it say about our great American expectations for the future when we find, instead of Buzz Lightyear, the Jetsons, or Tomorrowland, a bunch of clueless, vacationing mousekateers wandering in a darkened dystopia of future-past decay and decline?

. . . even if it is, cinematically, from a galaxy long, long ago and far, far away.

Glass half-Empty

Future Insurrection Prevention

In the wake of donald trump’s attempt to launch a Jan6 insurrection on our Congress, a trail of criminal destruction was left behind. Now We the People are trying to clean up the mess  and find a way to impose Justice on the criminals who tried to steal our .gov from US, the People.

The first thing we learn is that We the People must not allow trump to occupy the oval office again. Now we discover that our US Constitution has already prescribed a legal means by which the chief insurrectionist of Jan6 can be legally and officially removed permanently from any further occupancy in the White House.

Our Constitutional Amendment XIV, Section 3 forbids any person who has aided insurrection from ever again having a public office.

The only question that arises is how, exactly, will this Constitutional prohibition be set in place. 

Recently two of our wisest legal authorities have weighed in on the issue. Judge Michael Luttig and Professor Lawrence Tribe have expressed their opinion that this Constitutional principle is “self-executing.”

Who determines that any particular person is guilty of aiding/abetting insurrectionists? These two experts, and many others, speculate that the  Secretaries of State who serve in our fifty states, will make the decision, whether trump’s name can legally be included on the ballot, or whether trump will be disqualified from candidacy, due to inciting and aiding the Jan6 insurrection.

Now we discover that there is legal precedent for this procedure. 

You can learn about it here:

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPjLIzh6HHE

Jessica Denson, hosting the LIGHT ON podcast on YouTube, Meidas Touch network, interviews Donald Sherman, Chief Counsel  of CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON (CREW).

Mr. Sherman explains that his experience with this issue started in the wake of a disputed New Mexico election in which CREW won a precedent case in New Mexico where Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was applied. 

Regarding this present situation, and the question that is raised whether or not the Jan6 riot was (legally speaking) an insurrection,  Mr. Sherman explains:

“donald trump’s  lawyers (have already .ed.) referred to January 6 as an insurrection. There have already been votes in the House and Senate calling Jan6 an insurrection. The Jan6 comittee reached this conclusion and recommended pursuing enforcement of Section 3 (of Amendment XIV) against the insurrectionists.”

Furthermore, Donald Sherman continues:

“Section 3 was designed, specifically, for the moment we find ourselves in.” . . .

“In the aftermath of Jan6, I feel fortunate that we could look to this document and find an answer, a clear and unambiguous answer, in that there was precedent that we could look to.” (CREW’s New Mexico case).

And Donald Sherman continues:

“. . . and  if we don’t enforce Section 3 (of Amendment XIV) in this moment, it is hard to imagine a situation where we would, in the future.”

“This is the moment that Section 3 was designed to help us respond to. There was precedent after the civil war (prompting the Fourteenth Amendment) legislation demonstrating that these confederates. . . that people who engaged in insurrection against the Constituion of the US. . . were disqualified from office. The only question for us is, is there going to be precedent. . . an historical record that we leave behind . . . for generations yet unborn to ensure that this kind of insurrection that donald trump fomented-- to overturn a free and fair election--does not happen again.”

“We (CREW ) have been and we are preparing to bring litigation as soon as it is is legally allowable and strategically viable, to do so. We plan to pursue litigation to bar trump from the ballot in a number of states, based on his engagement against the Constitution of the US.”

So we learn from Donald Sherman's explanation here that there is already a legal precedent for applying Section 3 of Amendment XIV to disqualify donald trump from ever occupying a public office again. 

Glass half-Full 

It's Fourteenth Amendment Time

 Georgia tells the story, ya’ll, 

how trump sent out the call

cuz the donald called down to Georgia and 

he was lookin’ for some votes to steal,

 but the Georgians wouldn’t let him 

‘cuz they didn’t want no artful  deal.

They wanted a new President

one who would do right

not a dealer who’d deal up a national fight!

Read it aloud, y’all, and you shall hear

of the Jan6 attack and the Congressional fear. 

But hey, here’s the thing:

A Constitutional point  we do bring.

The Georgia indictment  tells the story, y’all,

 plain and simple, of an insurrectionist call!  

From Eastman to Chesebro to Sidney and Rudy

they’d whip up some grand ole conspiratorial booty.

It’s all there in the Georgia indictment

from trumpian disgruntal to riot-incitement!

Now seems to me . . . I remember somewhere

our Constitution says somethin’ ‘bout what happened there.

Oh yeah, its in Amendment fourteen, 

in the bottom of section three, oh yes, we have seen:

No person whose done insurrection can hold

any civil or military office, we are told!

No person who in rebellion has engaged,

especially if they’ve drummed up such a rage

that stopped Congress from doing their duty

so trump could artfully deal up some more  booty!

Georgia tells the story, y’all

how trump sent out the call

when the donald called down to Georgia

and he was lookin’ for some votes to steal.

Such an artful deal!

Listen, ye citizens and you shall hear

how thugs and destroyers drummed up such fear

with insurrection rebellion in that Jan6 riot

cuz the donald couldn’t keep his mouth quiet!

 

Glass half-Full

Lamenting Lahaina

While pondering the destruction of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, a place we have visited, I recall words from a song, Deep Green, I wrote many moons ago. Here are the concluding words of that tune: 

". . . asking for redemption, having no plan. . .

but to strum a melody out of the stars. . .

and pray for rain. . .

to wash away our fears.

May God help  us . . . 

keep our Deep Green .

Glass Chimera 

The Woke Abscondance

 For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to figure out what Woke is.

The word has been thumped around like a volley ball. After being served by the LEFT team, the ball crosses the net and the RIGHT team bops it around and then whops it back over the net where LEFTies get their chance to renew their served-up volley of political correctness. After a moment of passing the buck, er excuse me, passing the ball back over to the Righties and this exchange goes on for a while until somebody drops the ball and then it all starts again.

But of course, that is  not what Woke is. Now I find out that it’s more like a political football in which whichever team has the ball carries it as far as he can toward the Goal, until the ball-carrier gets taken down. I also noticed that when the game is played in the rain, everybody gets muddy, with the mud getting slung around, far-flung mud.

But, hey, all that sport-allegory aside, I have finally learned what Woke really is. Mr. N. S. Lyons has identified it. Wokeism is a political device for the managerial elite (State, Corporate and Academic) to advance their core tenets of societal control: scientism, utopianism, meliorism, liberationism, hedonism, cosmopolitanism, dematerialism and its accompanying safetyism, with the goal being to “instantiate a new victimizological consciousness” and thereby reconstruct  human nature to facilitate and advance the objectives of the therapeutic state.

If you’re wondering what the “therapeutic state” is, you can read Mr. Lyons’ explanation.

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence?

But I can provide a helpful image for you: George Orwell it called “Big Brother.”

I’m oversimplifying here, but that’s what you have to do in the age of twitter or X or whatever it is that trivializes everything that happens on the planet and converts it into God-only-knows-what instead of what used to be civilized debate.

But now,  meanwhile back at the ranch we Americans have a situation.

We don’t like socialism and/or communism. So we’re not generally BigBrother-friendly. But Big Brother, whether you like him  or not, is a force to be reckoned with, even here in America, in this here 21st-century.

Here’s an example: China. China had a Communist (Big Brother) system that they had set up in 1949. But in the mid-1960’s, China had a problem. The founder, Mao, didn’t like the way things had turned out, so he started a Cultural Revolution, which would try to force the people back to his original plan, because after all he was, you know, Big Brother. So to speak.

Anyway, Mr. Lyons explains Mao’s great second (the Cultural) effort this way:

“. . . like (the dialectical Marxist philosopher,  Max) Hegel, Mao thought the Revolution must never end because all progress (towards New Socialist Man and communism, but mainly towards more power) was the product of the transformation produced by struggle between opposing forces in society. If there was no struggle, there could be no progress, as all  progress was produced through through the same process: unity -> dusunity -> unity.”

Now here in America, we don’t subscribe to Mao’s doctrine of communism and his  belated Cultural revolution to re-instate his original plan. 

Even so, in America we find that sh*t happens. In our efforts to sustain a democratic republic, we do get a little off course sometimes. We had a pretty good thing going until the 21-century rolled around and we started screwing up. 

Here in America, we have two great freedoms: political liberty and economic liberty. The lefty Libs put all their stock in political liberty, while the righty neo-Cons put their stock in  commercial liberty. 

These two got along just fine for most of our history. But then, one fella came along who had made it big (and I mean really big!) in the economic ( i.e. capitalist) side of Americana. He made it so big that he got himself elected president in 2016. 

But four years later, the sh*t hit the fan when We the People showed him the Exit from the White House. And the problem was: he wouldn’t take his ball and go home. Instead, kinda like Mao, he tried to start a maga Revolution.

 He had gotten all hot and bothered by the Woke delusion that the Dems had promulgated and so he mustered all his proud, oathy, 3%  thugs to steal the 2020 election. His main excuse was (get this!): Uncle Joe (Big Brother and the DeepState) had stolen the election!  

Who’da thunk it?! a BigBrother-hating mega-maga tried to do a Lenin/Mao heist job on the U.S Capitol and steal the .gov away from US!

What a whack job! You can’t make this stuff up.

Glass half-Full

The Beast Goes On

 War v Piece

Rebel v Yank

The beast goes on.

In our escalating cultural war, the piece-writing minions of informed governance are now being ferociously attacked by the warmongering herds of magadomia.

In the court of public opinion, perhaps the piece-niks are, in their minds, winning.

But, but on the other side, the wild side, the Rebs are surrepticiously taking possession of more low ground  than they had started with in the winter of 2021.

Genteel exchanges between piece-niks are still predictively ongoing as civilized literati conduct public discourse among themselves, piece by piece, while the rebels prepare for football season and fox-hunting sport.

Commentaries bloom as piece-nik Tom mentions in media discourse that he gleans cogent analysis from Dick’s piece about  Harry as he’s headed for the potter’s field.

Then Harry shows up at Westminster escorting himself in as if he were crashing a party sans comment. The Queen is dead; long live the queen of hearts, trumped by the ace of sorrows while the royal wish ran away with the doom. Good luck with that, Charles. Stay away from French tunnels and you’ll do fine.

All the while, them grassy-knoll obsessors persist in tossing  their two-cents worth of smoking gun speculations. Where’s Uncle Walter when you need him to explain . . .

 But back in the here and now, Vlad the mad attacks Sudetan Donbas-land.

 Red rover, red rover, send the lawyers right over, saith the magamob, as the weird sisters mumbojumbo backstage, double double royal and trouble. . .

magawood doth move against courthouse games while the weird sisters MTG wail hail hail Donaldduff who shall be king hereafter. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, monster-truck master Donaldud rounds up his herd for the fall market.  Backstage, the weird sisters mumble double double royal and trouble. Unbeknownst to most piece-loving dorks, magawood doth move against legal-games as the weird sisters chant hail hail Donaldduff who shall be king hereafter. 

Meanwhile methinks Uncle Joe oughta stay away from ford’s theatre as magamobs gather for trumpian trashtalk insurrection reruns, ’23 version.

Court-jester in Chief cranks up his motor-mouth again, just as he did in Jan6 mumbo-jumbo. All hell breaks loose as all magas hail the chief insurrectionist.

Glass half-Full

Judge Luttig's Counsel

 On January 6, 2021, just as he was about to supervise the counting of Electoral votes, our Vice President Mike Pence had to flee the Senate suddenly. He had to flee for his life. As donald trump’s attackers were threatening to hang him, Pence’s secret service protectors ushered him to a secure location where he remained, steadfast in his duty, until the danger had passed. 

During those fateful January 6 hours of peril and uncertainty, our Vice President sought counsel from friends whose opinions he knew he could trust. 

He called former Vice President Day Quayle for advice. He also called another good friend, one of our country’s most esteemed conservative jurists, Judge J. Michael Luttig. Both of them urged Vice President Pence to stay the course, which had already been Constitutionally set: the course of counting Electoral votes that had already been delivered to Congress by the fifty state legislatures. 

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee, investigating the January6 insurrection, questioned former Judge Michael Luttig about the events surrounding that fateful day.

I remember, vividly, watching Judge Luttig’s testimony on that day. Among his many statements, was this one:

“  Today, almost two years after that fateful  day in January 2021, still, donald trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”

Now, just this week, Washington Post editor David Shipley interviewed Judge Luttig. I watched and listened on Youtube.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecjvi8XtM00

Here are few notable words of experienced judicial  wisdom from Judge Luttig:

“ The former president forced this indictment, this prosecution, this trial, on the nation for his own personal and political ambitions.”

“ Had Jack Smith charged  the former president with . . . insurrection against the United States, he would have been met with a President defense under the first amendment. As it was, Jack Smith scrupulously wrote the indictment around any possible 1st amendment  defence that the former President  could have. In the language of the Law, . . . the former President now stands charged only with conduct that offends federal criminal statutes.  The indictment makes crystal clear in its opening paragraph that the President was not being charged in any way whatsoever with regard to his 1st amendment rights  to speak.”

(I added the bold type for emphasis.)

Sure enough, if you read  the Introduction in the indictment document, you will read  that  paragraph 3 states:”

     3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.” 

Furthermore, we see  in  the Justice Department’s indictment: donald trump’s speeches and public announcements are not the basis for his criminality. Rather, trump’s rebellious criminality will be exposed by prosecutors presenting evidence of his criminal actions, not his rebellion-inciting public speeches.

It's plain to see,  donald trump acted rebelliously. He instigated a criminal conspiracy against us, the  voters of  the United States. This treason will be proven, even without presenting all the evidence of his verbal poison. 

Furthermore, in the big picture, looking ahead, we read in our US Constitution, Amendment XIV, Section 3:

"No person shall . . .hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, who . . . having previously taken an oath, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion . . ."

donald's lawyers won't be calling in an insurrection, but that's what it was. People died at our Capitol on that day. Even so,  Vice President Pence was able to complete his Constitutional duty in spite of being issued a death sentence by the trumpian mob. 

Glass half-Full