Numerous longstanding economic, social, political, and military issues are coming home to roost once again around Spaceship Earth. Earthian humans are caught between the proverbial rock and hard spot. The fly caught in the spider’s web entangles itself more and more as it struggles to free itself. Global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP) hang over the heads of Earthian humans like clouds of doom. The Malthusian Concept may have been right after all.
“Now we are running into a serious shortfall of crude oil. We can expect a new set of problems, including far more conflict. Wars are likely. Debt defaults are likely. Political parties will take increasingly divergent positions on how to work around current problems. News media will increasingly tell the narrative that their owners and advertisers want told, with little regard for the real situation.
“About all we can do is enjoy each day we have and try not to be disturbed by the increasing conflict around us. It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue, except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.”
One can build a case based on Google-searched facts and information that a cause of the USian-NATO-Russian-Ukrainian War is that the USian deep state does not want Russian oil and gas to be sold in Europe because it would enrich the Russian economy and make Russia a more powerful global economic competitor; and the USian deep state is using Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia to shut off the flow of Russian oil and gas into European markets.
It’s depressing to think the USian-NATO-Russian-Ukrainian showdown might escalate into WWIII and nuclear war; but it’s also depressing to consider that if Earthian humans do not significantly reduce the fossil fuel they burn in coming years Global warming might cause the extinction of Earthian human life.
If Earthian humans increase the oil supply and burn it all to feed the growth of the Earthian economy in the next decade as much as possible as it now technologically functions they might render themselves extinct by raising global Earthian temperature past the tipping point. Conversely, Earthian humans will weaken the Earthian economy, decrease the Earthian production of goods and services, and probably lower the quality of human life by significantly cutting the production and burning of oil and gas in the next decade to reduce global warming.
It would seem the latter choice is the lesser evil.
One can build a case that Tverberg might be right in the last sentence of her second paragraph above about the need for a religion for most Earthian humans that promises eternal well-being and fulfillment after death if they cannot experience happiness and peace aboard Spaceship Earth during their infinitesimally-short natural lives.
Earthian humans have been told the narrative since WWII by USian politicians, generals, parents, teachers, preachers, writers, talk show hosts, lobbyists, public relations experts, advertising experts, and others employed in the USian education/information/propaganda/infotainment system that the US had no choice after WWII but to militarily contain and restrain Russia with NATO in Eastern Europe, and to bomb and/or invade North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and to undermine, bomb, and/or sanction numerous countries around Spaceship Earth, while establishing some eight hundred USian military bases in over one hundred countries around Spaceship Earth, to prevent the spread of atheistic communism and socialism.
Is this narrative still true? Was it ever true?
Usian army four-star general Wesley Clark dropped an information bombshell in his published memoirs that a senior general sitting at his desk in the Pentagon as Clark walked by his office in the hall during one of Clark’s visits to the Pentagon in 2001 two weeks after 9/11 called Clark into his office and showed him a “memo” outlining a USian military plan to “take out seven countries in five years,” which had nothing to do with containing or restraining atheistic communism or socialism. Read about this memo at https://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/.
What this memo did have something to do with was oil. All seven countries on the list were oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and most of their governments have by now been “taken out” and replaced with new governments one way or the other. One of the governments on the list not “taken out” was the Syrian government. One can build a case the USian deep state tried to take out the Syrian government by fostering, supporting, and using a New Syrian Army proxy force ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorist groups in Syria, that would also serve as proxy fighters to take out Assad’s Syrian government; but it failed to take out Assad and his government because Russia militarily fought on their side. If this narrative is true, the USian deep state was also fighting Russia in Syria.
The USian deep state did not “win” wars by “taking out” the governments of most of the seven countries in the memo, destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Earthian humans in the process, but most likely it did gain more control over the Earthian oil supply than it otherwise would have had.
President Dwight Eisenhower, a USian five-star army general and supreme commander of allied forces during WWII, warned USians in his farewell address January 17, 1961 as he left office as USian president about the establishment of a USian “military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower said every dollar spent on the USian military could have been spent to alleviate poverty and suffering among civilians in the US. The USian government now spends more on its military than on anything else in the USian federal government discretionary budget, almost one trillion dollars per year, several times more per year than any other Earthian government spends on its military. Much of that money is funneled into the coffers of large USian private sector defense corporations to produce military weapons, equipment, and supplies. The USian economy is now the largest arms dealer around Spaceship Earth, generating revenues that increase USian GDP selling weapons, equipment, and services to customers in numerous countries around Spaceship Earth. Whether the USian deep state generates an accounting profit for ordinary USian taxpayers doing this is probably incalculable. Accountants have given up trying to audit the USian Pentagon.
What would a narrative say that explains why USian governments did what they did militarily after WWII? Doing what they did to contain communism is obviously not the full story. The USian deep state tried to constrain, restrain, and reduce Russia in Eastern Europe after Russia eliminated its communist government through internal political processes in 1991. The Russian government is now a fascist authoritarian oligarchy, using a capitalist economic system, supposedly holding democratic elections, loosely analogous to what exists in the US, that uses the traditional Russian Orthodox Christian Church as a tool to manipulate and control its middle and lower classes, much like authoritarian Russian czars did before the Russian Communist Revolution in 1917. Meanwhile Putin and his oligarch cronies have become some of the richest Earthian humans after taking ownership control of Russian assets that presumably belonged to the Russian people under communism.
The old USian deep state narrative that the USian military had to constrain and restrain Russia to prevent the spread of communism is now obsolete, since Russian governments got rid of communism and atheism themselves.
One can build a case all USian governments since WWII, dealing with matters of war and peace, with the possible exception of the government of John F. Kennedy during 1961-1963, who was assassinated before his first term ended, adhered to policies generated by the USian deep state; and the main reason USian governments did what they did militarily after WWII was to increase USian GNP and civilian and military employment, and to ensure necessary resources and raw materials would be available for the USian corporate deep state. Ensuring plenty of oil and gas at low prices would be available for the USian deep state had to have been high on the list of reasons explaining why the USian deep state did what it did militarily after WWII.
According to the standard USian deep state narrative about why and how John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was shot by a lone insane USian gunman who had ties to Russia.
But the narrative based on the story that JFK was assassinated by a lone insane gunman is now out of date. The official US government narrative was written by the Warren Commission in 1963 and did state this position. Subsequent developments however changed this original official narrative, at least in the National Archives, if not in the minds of most USians. For the full story go to the National Archives JFK Assassination Records at https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1 .
Here is now an updated narrative of the USian government regarding the JFK assassination, pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, according to the Assassination Records Review Board, at https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board :
“Findings
“The Committee believes on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.
I got involved in a discussion last week on my Facebook page about USians traveling around Spaceship Earth acting as if they are the only “Americans” inhabiting the American Continent, comprising North America, Central America, South America, and Caribbean Islands. I posted and shared a meme on Facebook that I saw on my Facebook newsfeed showing the American Continent on one side of the page and USian territory on the other. The USian land mass in the meme appeared to be about one-fifth of the total landmass of the American Continent. I wrote the following comment at the top of the shared meme: “But most Earthian humans living in the US think they are entitled to consider and refer to themselves as the only Americans, or at least the only Americans that count.”
The post generated 13 likes, 19 comments, and 2 shares. Some of the comments generally agreed with my comment, but most of them ignored the logic of what I said; instead, they attacked my character in ad hominem illogical arguments, accusing me of being a socialist, communist, or liberal, deflecting attention from the point I tried to make about the attitudes of USian humans with respect to their actual social and geographic position on the American Continent. I responded with another comment in the thread of comments pointing out most of them had missed the point of my original comment. This prompted a new commenter to enter the discussion saying he had not missed the point of my original comment but he had “destroyed” it. He accused me of thinking I was morally and intellectually superior, which he said was not true, and he was not “having” it. He said I was a son of the failed liberal global world order. He said he was “Nation First”, and wore a Trumpian MAGA red cap in Canada. He said he loved telling his liberal Canadian friends how stupid they were. He said the US had kept sea lanes free for international trade and had contained six or so nuclear-armed countries, and was the only country on the American Continent that counted. I responded to him saying he was entitled to his opinion, telling him I did not agree, but so what? He then responded that he would have none of this, saying I should “take some responsibility”, among other things. It seemed to me he was psychologically advocating violence of one kind or another. I deleted his second post from my Facebook page and temporarily blocked him from my page, thinking there was no way he would cease his arguing in the thread in an OK way. I unblocked him from my Facebook page two days later. He seemed to be an OK human.
This First Nation thinking and believing modus operandi in my opinion is one of the primary causes of dangerous polarizations around Spaceship Earth, and always has been. Nobody can prove his or her opinion about pychological, social, economic, and political states of affairs is absolute truth; but some humans, maybe over half the Earthian human population, believe fact and reason-based relative truth is irrelevant, believing rather what counts are memorized opinions, dogmas, doctrines, and slogans, that they and their kind believe, which they believe they have a right, perhaps duty, to impose on others, as if their dogmas and doctrines were absolute truth.
A poignant current case in point is USian right-wing states recently blocking abortions with new laws in their states in the US and then beseeching the stacked deck of biased and prejudiced authoritarian right-wing USian Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Supreme Court judge Alito in essence argued in writing for the majority 5-4 court, citing the due process clause, that since the USIAN Constitution does not mention abortions then technically the Supreme Court did not have a right to allow abortions throughout the US with Roe v. Wade in the first place. This argument seems specious and irrelevant to me but having a grain of technical logic, albeit not enough to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I disagree based on Alito’s reasoning that USian states should have a right to enact state laws that disallow abortions. Most likely their constitutions do not mention abortions either.
Abortions in my opinion should be legally treated like any other medical procedure. Should USian humans with no medical training have a right to enact state or federal laws allowing or disallowing any medical procedure they “feel” like allowing or disallowing? Are trained, qualified, and certified medical doctors less qualified to make decisions about abortions than medically unqualified biased and prejudiced right wing voters, politicians, and judges?
Should USian states or the federal government have the right to force all citizens of a state or the nation to accept subjective arbitrary unprovable opinions, dogmas, and doctrines regarding medical procedures by enacting laws based on biased and prejudiced party line votes that are enforceable on everyone with police force arrests and serious fines and punishments?
No, in my opinion.
It seems to me up to seventy percent or so of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth believe some fascist dogmas and doctrines, and many true believers believe they have a right or duty to fight, kill if necessary, those who do not believe the opinions, dogmas, and doctrines they do. They believe believing the opinions, dogmas, and doctrines they believe makes them morally and intellectually special and entitles them to outlandish rewards, such as eternal bliss in some sort of heaven.
Trump struts around on stage at political rallies in the US exhorting followers to chant USA! USA! USA! over and over again. The discussant from Canada on Facebook last week taught me what this USA chanting is about. Trump’s supporters are psychologically expressing Trump’s “America First” doctrine while psychologically proving how courageous, patriotic, heroic, superior, and deserving they are. They are psychologically saying We’re OK, but you are Not-OK if you do not believe what we believe. Trump’s America First doctrine is a variant of the Canadian’s Nation First doctrine.
Fascists who took full control of their countries around Spaceship Earth throughout Earthian human history, such as Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Pinochet in recent decades, let their Victims know if they did not submit to, believe, and conform to what they the fascists said they would fine them, beat them up, put them in prison, disappear them, starve them, crucify them, burn them alive at the stake, stone them, and torture them using various sadistic techniques and devices before killing them, which they did with hundreds, thousands, and millions of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth.
Fascist dictators may have enabled their cronies and followers to experience psychological highs in the beginnings of their regimes, but none of their governments lasted very long in Earthian time. Rationality prevailed, and sooner or later their countries got rid of their true-believer fascist governments.
Unfortunately, fascism is now far from dead around Spaceship Earth despite its track record, and several current pseudo-fascist dictators might blossom into full-blown fascist dictators around Spaceship Earth. Fascism has selling points that appeal to a high percentage of Earthian humans. Its main appeal to lower classes is that it promises opportunities for obedient followers to receive strokes and rewards for memorizing, obeying, and promoting fascist opinions, doctrines, and dogmas, and for doing what they are told by their supposedly-superior supervisors, managers, and commanders. A selling point for upper classes is fascist dictators promising to help them perpetuate their superior social, economic, and political positions.
The Canadian on Facebook caused me to do some research into fascist doctrines. I did a Google internet search, asking Google “What is the Nation First doctrine?” I got ninety-two million results. I read or perused several of them, including an essay written by Mussolini, titled “The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932).
Unlike the barely-literate MAGA red baseball cap-wearing former USian president Donald Trump, Mussolini, assuming he wrote “The Doctrine of Fascism,” was an articulate polished well-read sophisticated thinker and writer. The essay is worth a read (https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf ).
The Nation First doctrine the Canadian brought to my attention on Facebook is about as depressing as global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP).
Here are the last two paragraphs of my recently published novel, As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases:
“As states of affairs worsen in the meantime, relatively-OK Game-free Adult–Adult I’m OK–You’re OK Earthian humans should just say “go jump in the lake” to all hardened Not-OK one-up Parent–Child psychological Game-players, letting them know they will remain Not-OK until their group imagoes, personalities, ego states, transactions, life positions, scripts, Games, and rackets are somehow caused to be more OK.
“If most Earthian humans have become extinct because of global warming or nuclear war as you lie dying, having done what you could to eradicate the probability of imminent human extinction, just say “tough luck” and let the remaining chips fall where they may.”
Perhaps Earthian humans should start chanting “EARTH!, EARTH!, EARTH!” over and over again at political rallies around Spaceship Earth.
––––––––––––––––––––––––
RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, PhD, CTA, an emeritus professor of management, consultant, and author, is the founder and editor of the Effective Learning Report and The Earthian. For more on his cultural, educational, and professional experiences go to www.blog.effectivelearning.net.
THE EARTHIAN, Number Thirty, May 20, 2022, Effective Learning Publications https://blog.effectivelearning.net/ , 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA.
THE EARTHIAN is an approximately monthly digest of articles written by free-thinking truth-seeking critical-thinking creative-thinking truth-accepting hard-hitting independent writers in linked Internet journals containing facts, perspectives, theories, models, analyses, and recommendations concerned about psychological, moral, ethical, philosophical, social, economic, political, military, scientific, religious, and ecological states of affairs affecting the existential well-being of all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth, focusing on the human species.
“ASK LESS WHAT YOUR NATION CAN DO FOR YOU–ASK MORE WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR SPACESHIP EARTH“
“INDIVIDUALS ARE NOT TO PRAISE OR BLAME FOR HOW EARTHIAN ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL STATES OF AFFAIRS EVOLVE”
“YOU ARE ENTITLED TO EXPLAIN YOUR OPINION TO ME, AND I AM ENTITLED TO EXPLAIN MY OPINION TO YOU; BUT NEITHER YOU NOR I ARE ENTITLED TO TELL THE OTHER WHAT HER OR HIS OPINION MUST BE”
EARTHIAN HUMANS EXPERIENCE LESS OKNESS
By Richard John Stapleton
Numerous longstanding economic, social, psychological, political, and military issues are coming home to roost once again around Spaceship Earth. Earthian humans are caught between the proverbial rock and hard spot. The fly caught in the spider’s web entangles itself more and more as it struggles to free itself. Global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP) hang over the heads of Earthian humans like clouds of doom. Covid-19 may flare up again this winter. The Malthusian Concept was probably right after all.
“Now we are running into a serious shortfall of crude oil. We can expect a new set of problems, including far more conflict. Wars are likely. Debt defaults are likely. Political parties will take increasingly divergent positions on how to work around current problems. News media will increasingly tell the narrative that their owners and advertisers want told, with little regard for the real situation.
“About all we can do is enjoy each day we have and try not to be disturbed by the increasing conflict around us. It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue, except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.”
One can build a case based on Google-searched facts and information that a cause of the USian-NATO-Russian-Ukrainian War is that the USian deep state does not want Russian oil and gas to be sold in Europe because it would enrich the Russian economy and make Russia a more powerful global economic competitor; and the USian deep state is using Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia to shut off the flow of Russian oil and gas into European markets.
It’s depressing to think the USian-NATO-Russian-Ukrainian showdown might escalate into WWIII and nuclear war; but it’s also depressing to consider that if Earthian humans do not significantly reduce the fossil fuel they burn in coming years Global warming might cause the extinction of Earthian human life.
If Earthian humans increase the oil supply and burn it all to feed the growth of the Earthian economy in the next decade as much as possible as it now technologically functions they might render themselves extinct by raising global Earthian temperature past the tipping point. Conversely, Earthian humans will weaken the Earthian economy, decrease the Earthian production of goods and services, and probably lower the quality of human life by significantly cutting the production and burning of oil and gas in the next decade to reduce global warming.
It would seem the latter choice is the lesser evil.
One can build a case that Tverberg might be right in the last sentence of her second paragraph above about the need for a religion for most Earthian humans that promises eternal well-being and fulfillment after death if they cannot experience happiness and peace aboard Spaceship Earth during their infinitesimally-short natural lives.
Earthian humans have been told the narrative since WWII by USian politicians, generals, parents, teachers, preachers, writers, talk show hosts, lobbyists, public relations experts, advertising experts, and others employed in the USian education/information/propaganda/infotainment system that the US had no choice after WWII but to militarily contain and restrain Russia with NATO in Eastern Europe, and to bomb and/or invade North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and to undermine, bomb, and/or sanction numerous countries around Spaceship Earth, while establishing some eight hundred USian military bases in over one hundred countries around Spaceship Earth, to prevent the spread of atheistic communism and socialism.
Is this narrative still true? Was it ever true?
Usian army four-star general Wesley Clark dropped an information bombshell in his published memoirs that a senior general sitting at his desk in the Pentagon as Clark walked by his office in the hall during one of Clark’s visits to the Pentagon in 2001 two weeks after 9/11 called Clark into his office and showed him a “memo” outlining a USian military plan to “take out seven countries in five years,” which had nothing to do with containing or restraining atheistic communism or socialism. Read about this memo at https://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/.
What this memo did have something to do with was oil. All seven countries on the list were oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and most of their governments have by now been “taken out” and replaced with new governments one way or the other that are more acceptable to the USian deep state. One of the governments on the list not “taken out” was the Syrian government. One can build a case the USian deep state tried to take out the Syrian government by fostering, supporting, and using a New Syrian Army proxy force ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorist groups in Syria, that would also serve as proxy fighters to take out Assad’s Syrian government; but it failed to take out Assad and his government because Russia militarily fought on their side. If this narrative is true, the USian deep state was also fighting Russia in Syria.
The USian deep state did not “win” wars by “taking out” the governments of most of the seven countries in the memo, destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Earthian humans in the process, but most likely it did gain more control over the Earthian oil supply than it otherwise would have had.
President Dwight Eisenhower, a USian five-star army general and supreme commander of allied forces during WWII, warned USians in his farewell address January 17, 1961 as he left office as USian president about the establishment of a USian “military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower said every dollar spent on the USian military could have been spent to alleviate poverty and suffering among civilians in the US. The USian government now spends more on its military than on anything else in the USian federal government discretionary budget, almost one trillion dollars per year, several times more per year than any other Earthian government spends on its military. Much of that money is funneled into the coffers of large USian private sector defense corporations to produce military weapons, equipment, and supplies. The USian economy is now the largest arms dealer around Spaceship Earth, generating revenues that increase USian GDP selling weapons, equipment, and services to customers in numerous countries around Spaceship Earth, and the USian military is a major contributor to global warming, burning as much fossil fuel every year as some countries, such as Sweden. Whether the USian deep state generates an accounting profit for ordinary USian taxpayers producing and selling arms and war materials is probably incalculable. Accountants have given up trying to audit the USian Pentagon.
What would a narrative say that explains why USian governments did what they did militarily after WWII? Doing what they did to contain communism is obviously not the full story. The USian deep state tried to constrain, restrain, and reduce Russia in Eastern Europe after Russia eliminated its communist government through internal political processes in 1991. The Russian government is now a fascist authoritarian oligarchy, using a capitalist economic system, supposedly holding democratic elections, loosely analogous to what exists in the US, that uses the traditional Russian Orthodox Christian Church as a tool to manipulate and control its middle and lower classes, much like authoritarian Russian czars did before the Russian Communist Revolution in 1917. Meanwhile Putin and his oligarch cronies have become some of the richest humans aboard Spaceship Earth after taking ownership control of Russian assets that presumably belonged to the Russian people under communism.
The old USian deep state narrative that the USian military had to constrain and restrain Russia to prevent the spread of communism is now obsolete, since Russian governments got rid of communism and atheism themselves.
One can build a case all USian governments since WWII, dealing with matters of war and peace, with the possible exception of the government of John F. Kennedy during 1961-1963, who was assassinated before his first term ended, adhered to policies generated by the USian deep state; and the main reason USian governments did what they did militarily after WWII was to increase USian GNP and civilian and military employment, and to ensure necessary resources and raw materials would be available for the USian corporate deep state. Ensuring plenty of oil and gas at low prices would be available for the USian deep state had to have been high on the list of reasons explaining why the USian deep state did what it did militarily after WWII.
According to the standard USian deep state narrative about why and how John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was shot by a lone insane USian gunman who had ties to Russia.
But the narrative based on the story that JFK was assassinated by a lone insane gunman is now out of date. The official US government narrative was written by the Warren Commission in 1963 and did state this position. Subsequent developments however changed this original official narrative, at least in the National Archives, if not in the minds of most USians. For the full story go to the National Archives JFK Assassination Records at https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1 .
Here is now an updated narrative of the USian government regarding the JFK assassination, pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, according to the Assassination Records Review Board, at https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board :
“Findings
“The Committee believes on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.
I got involved in a discussion last week on my Facebook page about USians traveling around Spaceship Earth acting as if they are the only “Americans” inhabiting the American Continent, comprising North America, Central America, South America, and Caribbean Islands. I posted and shared a meme on Facebook that I saw on my Facebook newsfeed showing the American Continent on one side of the page and USian territory on the other. The USian land mass in the meme appeared to be about one-fifth of the total landmass of the American Continent. I wrote the following comment at the top of the shared meme: “But most Earthian humans living in the US think they are entitled to consider and refer to themselves as the only Americans, or at least the only Americans that count.”
The post generated 13 likes, 19 comments, and 2 shares. Some of the comments generally agreed with my comment, but most of them ignored the logic of what I said; instead, they attacked my character in ad hominem illogical arguments, accusing me of being a socialist, communist, or liberal, deflecting attention from the point I tried to make about the attitudes of USian humans with respect to their actual social and geographic position on the American Continent. I responded with another comment in the thread of comments pointing out most of them had missed the point of my original comment. This prompted a new commenter to enter the discussion saying he had not missed the point of my original comment but he had “destroyed” it. He accused me of thinking I was morally and intellectually superior, which he said was not true, and he was not “having” it. He said I was a son of the failed liberal global world order. He said he was “Nation First”, and wore a Trumpian MAGA red cap in Canada. He said he loved telling his liberal Canadian friends how stupid they were. He said the US had kept sea lanes free for international trade and had contained six or so nuclear-armed countries, and was the only country on the American Continent that counted. I responded to him saying he was entitled to his opinion, telling him I did not agree, but so what? He then responded that he would have none of this, saying I should “take some responsibility”, among other things. It seemed to me he was psychologically advocating violence of one kind or another. I deleted his second post from my Facebook page and temporarily blocked him from my page, thinking there was no way he would cease his arguing in the thread in an OK way. I unblocked him from my Facebook page two days later. He seemed to be an OK human.
This First Nation thinking and believing modus operandi in my opinion is one of the primary causes of dangerous polarizations around Spaceship Earth, and always has been. Nobody can prove his or her opinion about psychological, social, economic, and political states of affairs is absolute truth; but some humans, maybe over half the Earthian human population, believe fact and reason-based relative truth about these matters is irrelevant, instead believing what counts are memorized fact-free opinions, dogmas, doctrines, and slogans that they and their kind believe, which they believe they have a right, perhaps duty, to impose on others, as if their opinions, dogmas, and doctrines were absolute truth.
A poignant current case in point is USian right-wing states recently blocking abortions with new laws in their states in the US and then beseeching the stacked deck of biased and prejudiced authoritarian right-wing USian Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Supreme Court judge Alito in essence argued in writing for the majority on the court, citing the due process clause, that since the US Constitution does not mention abortions then technically the Supreme Court did not have a right to allow abortions throughout the US with Roe v. Wade in the first place. This argument seems specious and irrelevant to me but having a grain of technical logic, albeit not enough to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I disagree that USian states should have a right to enact state laws that disallow abortions. Most likely their constitutions do not mention abortions either.
Abortions in my opinion should be legally treated like any other medical procedure. Should USian humans with no medical training have a right to enact state or federal laws allowing or disallowing any medical procedure they “feel” like allowing or disallowing? Are trained, qualified, and certified medical doctors less qualified to make decisions about abortions than medically unqualified biased and prejudiced right wing voters and politicians?
Should USian states or the federal government have the right to force all citizens of a state or the nation to obey subjective arbitrary opinions, dogmas, and doctrines regarding medical procedures by enacting laws based on biased and prejudiced party line votes that are enforceable on everyone with police force arrests and serious fines and punishments?
No, in my opinion.
It seems to me up to seventy percent or so of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth fervently believe some fascist dogmas and doctrines, and many fascist true believers believe they have a right or duty to fight, kill if necessary, those who do not believe the dogma and doctrines they do. They believe believing the dogmas and doctrines they believe makes them morally and intellectually special and entitles them to outlandish rewards, such as eternal bliss in some sort of heaven.
Trump struts around on stage at political rallies in the US exhorting his excited cult-like followers to chant USA! USA! USA! over and over again. The discussant from Canada on Facebook last week taught me what this USA chanting is about. Trump’s followers are reifying his “America First” doctrine while psychologically proving how courageous, loyal, patriotic, heroic, brave, superior, and deserving they are. They are psychologically saying We’re OK, but you are Not-OK, if you do not believe what we believe. Trump’s America First doctrine is a variant of the Nation First doctrine.
Fascists who took full control of their countries around Spaceship Earth throughout Earthian human history, such as Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Pinochet in recent decades, let their Victims know if they did not submit to, believe, and conform to what they the fascists said they would fine them, beat them up, put them in prison, disappear them, starve them, crucify them, burn them alive at the stake, and torture them using sadistic techniques and devices before killing them, which they did with hundreds, thousands, and millions of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth.
Fascist dictators may have enabled their cronies and followers to experience psychological highs in the beginnings of their regimes, but none of their governments lasted very long in Earthian time. Rationality prevailed, and sooner or later their countries got rid of their fascist governments.
Unfortunately, fascism is now far from dead around Spaceship Earth despite its track record, and several current pseudo-fascist dictators might blossom into real fascist dictators and take full control of several countries around Spaceship Earth. Fascism has selling points that appeal to a high percentage of Earthian humans. Its main appeal to lower classes is that it promises opportunities for obedient followers to receive strokes and rewards for memorizing, obeying, and promoting fascist doctrines and dogmas, and for doing what they are told by their supposedly-superior supervisors, managers, and commanders. A selling point for upper classes is fascist dictators promising to help perpetuate the superior social, economic, and political positions of the elite.
The Canadian on Facebook caused me to do some research into fascist doctrines. I did a Google internet search, asking Google “What is the Nation First doctrine?” I got ninety-two million results. I read or perused several of them, including an essay supposedly written by Mussolini, titled “The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932).
Unlike the barely-literate MAGA red baseball cap-wearing former USian president Donald Trump, Mussolini, assuming he wrote “The Doctrine of Fascism,” was an articulate polished well-read sophisticated thinker and writer. The essay is worth a read (https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf ).
The Nation First doctrine is about as threatening and Not-OK as global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP).
Here are the last two paragraphs of my recently published novel, As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases:
“As states of affairs worsen in the meantime, relatively-OK Game-free Adult–Adult I’m OK–You’re OK Earthian humans should just say “go jump in the lake” to all hardened Not-OK one-up Parent–Child psychological Game-players, letting them know they will remain Not-OK until their group imagoes, personalities, ego states, transactions, life positions, scripts, Games, and rackets are somehow caused to be more OK.
“If most Earthian humans have become extinct because of global warming or nuclear war as you lie dying, having done what you could to eradicate the probability of imminent human extinction, just say “tough luck” and let the remaining chips fall where they may.”
Perhaps Earthian humans should start chanting “EARTH!, EARTH!, EARTH!” over and over again at political rallies.
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RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, PhD, CTA, an emeritus professor of management, consultant, and author, is the founder and editor of the Effective Learning Report and The Earthian. For more on his cultural, educational, and professional experiences go to www.blog.effectivelearning.net.
SOURCES FOR THIS EDITION OF THE EARTHIAN:
May 17, 2022
Here’s the gist of it.
“Consider Enrico Fermi’s famous paradox: In simple words, where are they? A distinguished astrophysicist, Fermi knew that there are a huge number of planets within the reach of potential contact that have the conditions to sustain life and higher intelligence. But with the most assiduous search, we can find no trace of their existence. So where are they?
“One response that has been seriously proposed, and cannot be dismissed, is that higher intelligence has developed innumerable times, but has proven to be lethal: It discovered the means for self-annihilation but did not develop the moral capacity to prevent it. Perhaps that is even an inherent feature of what we call “higher intelligence.”
“We are now engaged in an experiment to determine whether this grim principle holds of modern humans, a very recent arrival on Earth, some 200,000-300,000 years ago, a flick of an eye in evolutionary time. There is not much time to find the answer – or more precisely, to determine the answer, as we will do, one way or the other. That is unavoidable. We will either act to show that our moral capacity reaches as far as to control our technical capacity to destroy, or that it does not.”
Had never heard or read anything about this before reading this article. Some folks in the North wanted to secede from the South before the Civil War because of slavery.
“The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that 100 million Americans – roughly 30 percent of the population – will get infected with the coronavirus this fall and winter,” reports The New York Times. “The 100 million figure, which the official described as a median of what could be expected, also assumes a lack of federal resources if Congress does not approve any more money for tests, therapeutics and vaccines, and that many vaccinated and previously infected people would become infected again.”
Right on. The most relevant question is why the US did not want Russia to join NATO after the fall of communism in Russia? Would that not have ensured world peace? Was it because USians were afraid to compete against Russians in a free European market that included Russia as a fellow player? And was it not that the US deep state needed an enemy to justify the USian military industrial intelligence banking complex and to maintain USian military bases around Spaceship Earth, to maintain full employment in the US making war-making goods such as tanks, airplanes, ships, bombs, etc. under supposed free enterprise global capitalism?
This novel is about a fictional management professor and consultant Dr. Rout Logger who secured funding from wealthy donors for an on-going discussion process that was conducted in central city hotels in randomly-selected cities of the US on the first Saturday of the month starting in October 2019.
Forty participants were randomly-selected from pools of USian citizens based on demographic criteria designed to maximize diversity among the group members, including members living in and identified with widely divergent psychological, social, economic, political, religious, educational, and philosophical states of affairs.
The major purpose of the process was to increase the OKness of the group members by forcing them to engage in rational Adult ego state democratic discussions of serious problems facing all Earthian humans. The group members were paid five thousand dollars per Saturday session in which they participated. The meetings entailed morning and afternoon sessions of three hours. Each session was started by a roulette-like spinner, a copper rooster, called the Truther rooster, that would spin and crow when twirled. Whomever was sitting at the end of an imaginary straight line of fire extending from the rooster’s beak to the circle of forty participants would be randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment, proving true democracy can happen. Each Leader of the Moment was required to answer three existential questions: What do you think is the most serious problem right now? what do you think the alternatives are for dealing with the problem? and what do you recommend for dealing with the problem?
The story includes dialogues between Rout Logger and the group members and between group members dealing with the issues the randomly selected members brought up answering the existential questions and dealing with psychological and social problems group members had adjusting to the group process.
The process lasted six months, to March 2020. Rout told the group members at the outset that the process might be continued for a year or more. Instead, it was terminated after the March meeting because of Covid-19.
Rout was convinced the process did increase the OKness of the group members in six months. How much would be impossible to prove but he was convinced their OKness level went up, as he defined OKness. His donors were also convinced OKness increased based on data and information Rout furnished them. Rout used some transactional analysis lingo and jargon in the process but he also explained how it could be understood by all members. The story ended with Rout and his donors working on a new computer-based Game-free democratic discussion system based on zoom technology that could be rolled out around Spaceship Earth.
Seems to me a case can be made existential threats posed by global warming and nuclear weapons require the construction of a new global order to save Earthian humans from extinction, as I have depicted in my novel As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.
Here’s the most depressing but relevant article I have read in some time. The comments about the article are also depressing but relevant. Read at your own risk to your mental health.
“Now we are running into a serious shortfall of crude oil. We can expect a new set of problems, including far more conflict. Wars are likely. Debt defaults are likely. Political parties will take increasingly divergent positions on how to work around current problems. News media will increasingly tell the narrative that their owners and advertisers want told, with little regard for the real situation.
“About all we can do is enjoy each day we have and try not to be disturbed by the increasing conflict around us. It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue, except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.”
Bitcoins are hard to keep track of and keep from losing on the internet, requiring maintaining imaginary digital wallets, passwords, codes and such, making them hard to transfer to others who know nothing about such things, assuming you have the time, specialized knowledge, and energy to keep track of these sorts of things yourself. Seems to me they are more trouble than they are worth, but nobody knows for sure what they will be worth in the long run.
“A participant in a seminar like the one I (Rout Logger) conducted in Richard John Stapleton’s novel As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases, asked a participant last weekend how the new Earthian management system Spaceship Earth, Inc. recommended in the Rooster novel could possibly be implemented. I did not know at the time how it could be done. I still do not know of course, but I have by now at least imagined a system that should have some chance of working.”
Here’s a disturbing but cogent u tube video interview about what is going on around Spaceship Earth politically and militarily with some relevant recommendations by a retired USian colonel.
Here’s more than you ever wanted to know about the doings of Elon Musk. As Rout Logger pointed out in my novel As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases, Elon Musk may be the most successful entrepreneur in Earthian human history, doing what pathological entrepreneurs do under capitalism. Starting out with degrees in physics and economics, he created and managed cutting-edge corporations in high-tech manufacturing industries with no bankruptcies, and is now at age 50 supposedly the richest man on Earth. He is far and away more successful as an entrepreneur than the barely-literate fellow pathological entrepreneur former US president Donald Trump, who cheated his way through a finance degree, operated in low-tech rentier industries, started with over four hundred million dollars of inherited family money, who went bankrupt numerous times, who at age 75 may be worth less now in inflation-adjusted dollars than he started out with.
“This illustrates the fallacy of defining a war as just or unjust purely on the basis of who began it. No – a war is unjust not only if it is wrongly started, but also if it is wrongly escalated and prolonged. The origins of a conflict alone do not determine its ethical or unethical content. If Putin now offered a ceasefire in order to negotiate the status of the Donbass republics and to assert other Russian needs and interests, would the U.S. and Ukraine be justified in refusing to talk in order to punish or “weaken” him? Of course not! In a world of competitive nations, “weakening” Russia as some Bidenites propose really means eliminating that nation as a significant player in international politics. If this is the nature of the threat now posed by the new U.S. war aims, Russians will naturally consider raising the ante by making new threats of their own.”
Yes, it is beginning to feel like the 1950s and 60s again to me too, at age 81. I included some of these sorts of sentiments in my recently released novel, As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. What I call in the novel the two horsemen of the modern apocalypse, global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP) are breathing down the necks of Earthian humans. MNWP is easier to eradicate than GWCC. MNWP could be eradicated overnight by all Earthian governments simply declaring peace against one another, waging peace instead of war, and destroying all nuclear weapons.
“Economically, global capitalism faces what is known in technical language as “overaccumulation”: a situation in which the economy has produced – or has the capacity to produce – great quantities of wealth but the market cannot absorb this wealth because of escalating inequality. Capitalism by its very nature will produce abundant wealth yet polarize that wealth and generate ever greater levels of social inequality unless offset by redistributive policies. The level of global social polarization and inequality now experienced is without precedent. In 2018, the richest 1 percent of humanity controlled more than half of the world’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent had to make do with just 5 percent. The international development agency Oxfam reported in January that during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the 10 richest men in the world more than doubled their fortunes, from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, while 99 percent of humanity saw a fall in their income and 160 million more people fell into poverty.”
Tech social media giants like Google and Facebook have done more good than harm facilitating democracy in my opinion and neither they nor ordinary USian civilians should be censored by fed politicians. i would trust a tech exec more than these two to do the right thing for we the people, or trust Trump, or Biden, or just about any federal politician to do the right thing for we the people for that matter. Tech social media giants provide ordinary USian civilians like me a way to access many more large data bases and to express our political views free of charge to a much larger audience than would otherwise be the case. Read my recently released book As the Rooster Crows Earthian Okness Increases for more detail and background about this issue.
“Research shows the U.S. military produces at least 59 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually – more greenhouse gas emissions than industrialized countries including Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. The fact that the Defense Department doesn’t report its own emissions and has no decarbonization targets is something VFP National President Susan Schnall, who helped organize the Tax Day protest, says her organization wants to change.”
This is a major issue in the lives of USian winner-survivors and USian loser-survivors. Read my book As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases for more details about this problem. Over seventy percent of USian civilians may now be loser-survivors, caused by economic, political, educational, and social changes in USian culture since 1950 or so.
Here’s an interesting perspective on how to end the Ukraine war
“As it happens, though, there is a blindingly obvious path to payment. Just as a U.S. municipal court can garnish the wages of a deadbeat dad who won’t pay child support, so the European Court of Human Rights could garnish the gas income of the world’s ultimate deadbeat dad, Vladimir Putin. In its first five weeks, Putin’s war of choice inflicted an estimated $68 billion dollars of damage on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure (its homes, airports, hospitals, and schools), along with other losses worth about $600 billion or three times that country’s total gross domestic product.
“But how would Ukraine collect such a sum from Russia? Any Ukrainian party that has suffered damage – whether individuals, cities, or the entire nation – could petition the European Court of Human Rights to enforce its judgement in Ukraine v. Russia (X) by awarding damages. The Court could then instruct the Council of Europe to direct all European corporations buying gas from Gazprom, the Russian state monopoly, to deduct, say, 20% from their regular payments for a Ukraine compensation fund. Since Europe is now paying Gazprom about $850 million daily, such a court-ordered deduction, would allow Putin to pay off his initial $600 billion war-damage debt over the next eight years. As long as his invasion continued, however, those sums would only increase in a potentially crippling fashion.”
So are, according to Michael Every in this article, the European and British dreams of middle-and-lower class civilians, maybe all middle-and-lower class civilians living west of China, including USians and Russians. Most Russian oligarchs will also receive big income and wealth cuts but they stole so much from the Russian people after the collapse of Russian communism the cuts won’t matter much to them personally. Most USian oligarchs however probably won’t feel a thing for some time to come, their biggest threat being pitchforks brandished by their impoverished renters
Here is what long-term contributor to the Effective Learning Report Courtenay Barnett had to say about the Ukraine showdown.
“In the wider scheme of things it seems to me that the available oil and gas which the countries of Iran, Venezuela, Iran and Russia combined, command, constitutes a substantial portion of global oil supplies. Thus, if the aggregate of that oil and gas supply were released and made available on the world market, the consequence, I assume, would be to reduce the cost of energy, which would be a desirable result for the US and the rest of the world. Surely, if Europe, and especially Germany, were thinking in clear and enlightened economic terms then Nordstream 11 and quite affordable Russian oil and gas would be a rational decision for Germany and the rest of Europe to make. So, last but not least, the appeal by the US to moral conduct, principles and pure values seems to me to be laughable, if one but reflects on the number of illegal wars the US has launched – not least in Iraq and bombed Libya to smithereens while still being illegally in Syria and continuing active oil trading with Saudi Arabia. Why, I ask myself, would any rational European leader want to harm the welfare of their own people? Come winter, is it Putin to pay the price – or – will the suffering be felt to greater degree by the mass of the European population? Do the sanctions not actually negatively impact the innocent civilian populations within the sanctioned countries?”