Thinking politically.

Small minded people will always prey on the weak minded to divide unity in the open democratic society. The world seems to have voted for closed societies, not based on democracy. According to Wikipedia only 6.4% of the population are under a full democracy. 37% of the people in the world are ruled by authoritarian regimes. Finland, Norway and Sweden lead the world in democracy. Afghanistan leads the world in lack of democracy, followed by Myanmar and North Korea.

It's no wonder that someone has the fantasy of a startup tech CEO dictatorship. Not surprisingly the author of the blog touting this brand of monarchy is himself a startup CEO. In the USA he slots right in with the right wing. People like Elon Musk, but most people the shine has worn off his ascent based on reading his tweets. Jeff Bezos has stepped down in favor of riding around in a yacht. Zuckerberg sunk his capital into something even his own employees are not interested in. Steve Jobs is dead, and he gave a Buddhist flavored speech in recognition of his limited life. The CEO of Twitter got a 60 million dollar plus golden parachute when Musk fired him.

The USA's democracy rating is slipping. Apathy, selfishness, bewilderment and confusion have eroded my assumptions about how strong America's democracy is. Jimmy Carter called in malaise when we lost our shit during gas prices rising. Gas prices rising is a lose our shit trigger. Nobody wants to think about how to use less gas. I find it utterly shocking. I'm gobsmacked. Democracy is fragile.

I want to read Julius Caesar. He wasn't a dictator yet in 55 BCE (B.E. 2565), but they were afraid he wanted to be, and could dupe the people into a dictatorship. So he was killed. To save democracy.

We don't have to kill the populist leaders on the right to save democracy this time, we could just strip them of their power, make it impossible to run on a ballot, strip them of their financial means, deplatform their anti-democratic rhetoric, their violent rhetoric. Career murder is enough. It will just take some guts, elbow grease, and fortitude. Who's going to be the hero of our reassertion of democracy?

When faced with an enemy who stop at nothing, you must stop at nothing to snuff them out. These traitors will go down in history as losers.

Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

movie versus book

I'm watching the movie a second time, and I'm halfway through the book. Among the movie's differences from the book. Sortilege starts off narrating. The movie doesn't have the school bell for the phone either, just a regular ring. It's really weird the way Doc shouts when he sees the photo of Amethyst as a baby. I guess it's to dramatize the negative impact of being pregnant and using, but the child we see looks pretty healthy. The child doesn't huff out because they're boring like she did in the book. Superficially The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice are similar but it's a completely different style of narrative. The Coen brothers are amazing, they have a very witty movie that I have loved for a long time. Pynchon is a whole other realm of fiction, and this conversion is fairly faithful, taking out the best lines and making it more compact. The audio book is 15 hours, the movie is 2 hours. Anyway, I like the different movies for different reasons. T...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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