tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254976932024-03-18T20:21:04.432-04:00DARK AGES AMERICAThis is the Blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of "Dark Ages America". It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others.
A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of "Wandering God" and "The Twilight of American Culture". Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Feel free to write and participate.Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.comBlogger478125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-58970784315556951802024-02-22T17:44:00.000-05:002024-02-22T17:44:12.625-05:00Displacing Your RageWell, Wafers, What's New?!<code><br></code>
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I've been listening to Neil Young's "Harvest" album, 1972. God, those were such different years. How many Americans today are miners for a heart of gold? 20? Instead, we have hearts of bitterness. But instead of Americans turning their rage against the real enemy, which they can't really identify, they attack Jews, Muslims, elderly Asian women, anyone whom they regard as different. They map their hatred onto innocent people. Bill Maher recently said on his show that "we've become shittier"--verbatim quote, my friends. "Depraved" would have been more accurate. We are a sick society, getting sicker every day. Trump in the White House will be the capstone of our collapse, and it's less than a year away.<code><br></code>
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com189tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-50822600961016573762024-01-27T10:59:00.002-05:002024-01-27T10:59:20.418-05:00The Crisis of Our TimeWafers-<code><br></code>
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Here it is: my latest. Hope you all enjoy it.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTFF8JKF?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com190tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-34049434267588747082024-01-22T18:50:00.002-05:002024-01-22T18:50:30.660-05:00Interview with Sasha Whitehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJwE2rxvIsc
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I look like a moron, but I suppose that's OK. Enjoy!
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-12969176085985635702023-12-13T01:51:00.006-05:002023-12-13T01:51:47.770-05:00The Charge of the Douche BrigadeWafers-<code><br></code>
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I tell ya, I think I'm outta words this time around. What can one say? It's sorta like Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," just a bit modified: "Douchebags to the right of us/Douchebags to the left of us/Douchebags in front of us/And yet the brave Wafers sallied forth..."<code><br></code>
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This is no exaggeration. You look around, and you see the US, Israel, and the Ukraine doing precisely the opposite of what they should be doing. Is it stupidity, or the strange attraction of these countries to self-destruction? Or is that the same thing as stupidity? I don't know, anymore. But I do know that there is one place we can all go if we are interested in reality rather than insanity and douchebaggery: right here, this blog. The one shining light in a world gone mad. So welcome!, and let us continue our discussion.
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com199tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-36264755891999399592023-11-05T17:09:00.000-05:002023-11-05T17:09:55.889-05:00Taking a BreatherWafers-<code><br></code>
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I'd like to switch subjects for a moment, and take a breather from our discussion of the events going down in the Middle East, which has left most of us, I'm guessing, pretty depressed. The following essay is something I wrote a few months ago. I sent a memo about it to American and British journals, and (here's a shocker) got no reply. So I'm going to post it here. Meanwhile, my Mexican editor is going to translate it into Spanish; I'm guessing some journal in Mexico City will pick it up. But here's the original version, in any case; hope you all enjoy it.<code><br></code>
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<b>The Never-Ending Conflict: Tribalism Versus Rationalism in Human History</b><code><br></code>
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"[O]pposing forces routinely coexist in biological systems."—Bessel van der Kolk, <i>The Body Keeps the Score</i><code><br></code>
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A number of years ago I wrote an essay called “Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition.”(1) In this essay, I was following the thesis proposed by Neal Stephenson in his novel <i>Snow Crash</i>, which is in turn based on the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ concept of the meme: “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Less charitably, we might describe the process of diffusion as a kind of viral infection, or perhaps as brainwashing. It is essentially a blind process, an unthinking one—a tribal consciousness, as it were, which could also be compared to a trance, or medieval possession. In tribal consciousness, what counts for truth are not facts or data or any type of objective evidence, but blood, kinship relations, affinity groups, and community. McCarthyism is a good example of this (as is communism, of course), brilliantly illustrated by Arthur Miller in his play <i>The Crucible</i>. When the US Government sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths, for example (1951), the outcome of this trial was preordained; evidence was the least of the prosecution’s concerns. Cold War America was the “tribe” that had to be protected at all costs, and the trial was basically a sham as a result. In my own view, and that of a number of other historians (e.g., William Appleman Williams, Denna Fleming, Walter LeFeber), the Cold War could be seen as a trance that possessed the United States for decades, and it did incalculable damage to America in the process.
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Stephenson’s focus, however, is not Cold War America but the mythological consciousness of the ancient world, which was tribal and pagan. There were, he says, various attempts to break out of the trance of magic/sacrifice/sun worship and so on; the most successful of these was Israelite monotheism—a counter-virus, he calls it. Judaism, he goes on, was the first rational religion, but eventually it hardened into legalism and Pharisaism—ritual without content—to be challenged by Christ. (“What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes into it.”) Through the efforts of Paul, this eventually became the next meme, until it was in turn challenged by Martin Luther many centuries later. Centuries after that, Protestantism was rejected by New Age spirituality, which spits up Oprah and Chopra, leaders of the latest trance, who are blindly adored by millions. And so on. This is a cycle that writers such as John Gray (<i>Black Mass</i>) and Eric Hoffer (<i>The True Believer</i>) have described in exhausting detail.(2)<code><br></code>
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Mimetic thinking, of course, is the rule rather than the exception. It, not critical thinking, is the norm for the human race. Yet things shifted in a radical direction during 800-200 B.C., what has been called the “Axial Age.” This concept was the brainchild of the German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, who pointed out that during the centuries just noted, a number of sages arose, more or less simultaneously and independently of one another, espousing an entirely new way of thinking. This was what has been called second-order thinking: in other words, thinking about thinking (reflection, analysis). As opposed to tribal trance, in which people are immersed in their thoughts, and in whatever surrounds them, axial thinking consists of distance, perspective, and objective evaluation. Thus Socrates proclaims that the unexamined life is not worth living, and urges Athenian youth to question conventional beliefs; the Buddha formulates the practice of meditation, in which one part of the mind (the “Watcher”) observes the random thoughts that come and go when you just close your eyes, sit still, and concentrate on your breath; the Hebrew Prophets inveigh against the polytheism of the Canaanites in favor of the one and only God, Yahweh, who issues directives from on high; and Confucius promulgates societal rules and moral values—directives for living the good life. The world, Jaspers concluded, was permanently altered as a result.(3)<code><br></code>
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The result I am referring to is what I call the never-ending conflict. In recent years, the most famous illustration of this is the movie <i>The Matrix </i>(1999), although it was prefigured by Ira Levin in his novel <i>This Perfect Day</i> (1970). (Recall also Huxley’s <i>Brave New World</i>, in which almost the entire population is zonked out on “soma.”) The plot is that you have a society caught up in a trance, except for one individual (“Neo”), along with several others, who manage to see through the trance—i.e., achieve second-order thinking—and as a result, escape from that society.
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<i>The Matrix</i> was lionized; it grossed over $460 billion at the box office during its first year. Why would that be? My guess is that there are many individuals in various countries who see their fellow-citizens as sheep, mechanically and unquestioningly going along with the dominant ideology (consumerism, for example), and doing whatever the government tells them to do. Or simply what everyone else is doing. They find this alienating, even repugnant, and so a movie based on the theme of escape from “sheepdom” is inevitably going to attract them. The fact is that rational thinking, when first encountered, comes as something of a shock. It is irresistible, even overwhelming, and once you are exposed to it you cannot easily forget it, and return to a state of “innocence.” Arthur Koestler gave the classic description of this type of awakening that happened to him when he came across Marxism as a critique of capitalist society: light, he wrote, seemed to pour across my skull; everything suddenly fell into place. All was clear now; everything made sense. Of course, years later he realized that Marxism was just another form of tribalism, after which, with the same intensity, he fell into the tribalism of anti-Marxism. Toward the end of his life, he declared that the curse of humanity was “devotion”—addiction to causes, i.e., memes.(4)<code><br></code>
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The metaphor of light is no accident. In Book VII of <i>The Republic</i>, Plato describes most people as living in shadows, in a cave, confusing the shadows on the wall with reality. Only a few manage to break through, to discover that the shadows are images thrown on the wall of the cave by a light coming from behind. These few then emerge from the cave into the light, get accustomed to it, and start to explore it. In so doing, they rise up the “noetic line” of awakening, until they attain the status of “philosopher-kings.” And awakening lies at the core of axiality: you see the light—critical reasoning—and leave tribal consciousness behind.<code><br></code>
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As it turns out, not quite. The problem (one of them, anyway) is that things are not that clear-cut. It seems that there is a dialectical relationship between tribal consciousness and rationality. They need each other, they define each other, and this is why the conflict is never-ending. Neither side is willing, or really, able, to give up its hold on the human mind. There are layers of meaning here; it’s not all black and white. In order to get a more accurate picture, we need to consider the following:<code><br></code>
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1.Critiques of Jaspers, and the concept of an Axial Age 2.The evolution of mind, as delineated by sociologist Robert Bellah and psychologist Merlin Donald 3.The dialectical relationship between tribalism and axiality
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Critiques of Jaspers and the concept of an Axial Age are quite extensive, and often fairly insightful. The question we shall have to ask ourselves is whether, after the dust settles, the concept has any validity, and if so, to what extent.(5) To begin with, both the philosopher Charles Taylor and the Egyptologist Jan Assmann fault the theory for its apparent assumption that there is a universal history, a single trajectory for mankind to follow: one Truth, one Mankind. In other words, it assumes that there is a single path, running from tradition to modernity, with the latter regarded as superior. According to this theory, during the period 800-200 B.C. the human race broke through to this Truth (second-order thinking); but, says Jaspers, it didn’t really “take” in a major or conclusive way. Rather, the tendency was to chronically lapse back into pre-axiality. It's as though the West, with its particular (and narrow) definition of progress, is waiting for everyone else to “grow up” (the easterners Buddha and Confucius notwithstanding). In contrast to this assumption, Taylor argues that there are a variety of fundamentally different civilizational patterns of development, while Assmann adds that different civilizations have different turning points in their history. All of this generates a much more complex, and nonlinear, picture. Assmann concedes that there certainly is such a thing as axiality, but argues that there wasn’t an Axial Age as such.<code><br></code>
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In addition, the larger point Assmann is making is that the notion of an Axial Age is part of the theory of modernization, which is typically blind to the cultural achievements of stabilization and continuity. In that framework, he says, tradition and cultural memory are devalued; they appear merely as factors of regression or even stagnation—a very biased way of reading history.
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Another problem with the theory: it is too rigid. Various civilizations exhibit <i>degrees</i> of axiality, and in fact elements of axiality can be shown to predate 800 B.C. Thus we have, for example, the Code of Hammurabi (an anthology of legal situations) in Mesopotamia by the eighteenth century B.C. And Mesopotamia accomplished quite a lot in the fields of political organization, statecraft, literature, astronomy, mathematics, and even historiography; and this is but one example. (The case of Akhenaten, the fourteenth-century Egyptian pharaoh, is obviously another one, as he attempted to shift Egyptian religion from polytheism to monotheism.) As Assmann says, it’s not all or nothing. Jaspers was a bit blind to the axiality that existed in nonaxial civilizations, and which existed prior to the first millennium B.C.(6)<code><br></code>
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I want to return to this discussion in a moment, but first let me say a few words about point #2, the critique of Professors Bellah and Donald. To me, this gets down to the nitty-gritty of it all. As far as the evolution of the brain, and cognitive development, goes, there is, Donald says, a kind of “layering phenomenon” of successive evolutionary stages, whereby the human race went from the Mimetic to the Mythic to the Theoretic. These three stages are categories of memory representation, and—the crucial point—they don’t replace each other. Rather, they just accumulate. Mimesis consists of imitation and repetition, and is the basis of crafts, dance, music, and tool use. This capacity is hard-wired into the brain; it goes back 4 million years. The Mythic phase is also hard-wired, although it goes back only 300,000 or 400,000 years, and it consists of speech and storytelling; narrative, in a word. It includes stories of origin, legends, allegories, and so on. And finally, with Theoretic culture, which eventually included axiality, we get writing systems, symbolic representation, analysis and reflection. In terms of evolution, this phase is not hard-wired. It is relatively recent, and has a cultural basis rather than a biological one. As a result—as Jaspers said—its hold on us is a bit iffy, rather tenuous.(7)<code><br></code>
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The crucial point here is that the modern mind is a mixture of all three of these modes, or capacities; there was really no “replacement” of one mode of consciousness by another. For we still dance, and sing, and we still tell stories, generate myths and narratives—in fact, we do both all the time. And if our mythologies are not religious, then they are secular (modern ideologies). True, analytic thinking can do things that the other two modes can’t, but these latter two “domains,” says Donald, are nevertheless
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"extremely subtle and powerful ways of thinking. They cannot be matched by analytic thought for intuitive speed, complexity, and shrewdness. They will continue to be crucially important in the future, because they reside in innate capacities without which human beings could not function."
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(Elsewhere I have referred to this mode of consciousness as “ontological knowing”—from the Greek word <i>ontos</i>, being—as distinct from intellectual knowing.)<code><br></code>
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Robert Bellah drives this point home with great clarity and incisiveness when he writes that narrative<code><br></code>
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"is more than [just] literature; it is the way we understand our lives. If literature merely supplied entertainment, then it wouldn’t be as important as it is. Great literature speaks to the deepest level of our humanity; it helps us better understand who we are. Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion. It…isn’t irrational—it can be criticized by rational argument—but it can’t be derived from reason alone. <i>Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.</i>" [Italics mine]<code><br></code>
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So much for Western notions of “progress,” which are narrow, limited, and superficial. The axial way of thinking, of knowing the world, is indispensable for the functioning of modern societies, but it is only <i>a</i> way of knowing the world; and although we cannot live without it, it may not be the most profound.<code><br></code>
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To return to our earlier discussion (point #1), we need to note that there is a class bias involved in the emergence of axiality. Donald’s Theoretic mode, second-order thinking, is mostly the province or territory of an intellectual elite—the Op-Ed crowd at the <i>New York Times</i>, for example. Today and yesterday, the majority of the population, worldwide, lives in the Mythic mode—Plato’s shadows. The average person is not a philosopher, and for him or her, what is right in front of them is what’s real. Nations vary, of course, but in the United States, it’s a good bet that more than 90 percent of the population would not be able to say what a metaphor is. Jaspers was right; for the most part, axiality never really “took,” at least not for the greater part of humanity. As I’ll indicate below, this has serious repercussions for our present situation.<code><br></code>
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Turning to point #3, I would argue that although tribalism and rationalism are two distinct ways of being, they are nevertheless entwined in a dialectical relationship. As already noted, they define each other, and this dialectic has never really gone away, as the biblical scholar Arvin Kapelrud points out (Baal was the Canaanite god of fertility and storms):<code><br></code>
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"[T]he relationship between Yahweh and Baal was a matter of central importance; and if we do not take account of this we get a distorted picture of the history of Israel’s religion. Although in the end Yahweh triumphed over His opponent, we ought, nevertheless, not to underestimate Baal’s importance. The conflict between Yahweh and Baal was more than an incidental historical episode. It was a conflict between [two] principles and interpretations of life <i>which in other forms is still being waged today</i>."(8) [Italics mine]<code><br></code>
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It would seem to be an eternal psychological dynamic. Applying the concept of axiality to contemporary American politics, for example, what do we find? The current violent divide in the United States, politically speaking, strikes me as being ultimately rooted in the archaic conflict between tribalism and rationalism. Millions adore an intellect-hater and fact-denier like Donald Trump, whose followers have no use for critical analysis and who are steeped in a tribal, Trumpian mythology. The “bubbas” who wear MAGA hats despise the <i>New York Times</i>, and what it stands for—the pointy-headed intellectuals who look down on them (“a basket of deplorables,” per Hillary Clinton). There is ominous talk of civil war, with 25 percent of the population endorsing violence against the government, as was evident on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trumpites stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC, in the tribal and misguided belief that Joe Biden stole the election from Trump.
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A related example: If you know how to look at them, the presidential debates of 2016 are a perfect illustration of this conflict. Hillary Clinton was depending on fact and evidence to win the debate, and as a result came off as scripted and boring. Her opponent hadn’t bothered to prepare for the event; his weapons were mimesis (body language) and tribal mythology (invented scenarios, rhetoric, dramatic emotional expressions, and so on). At one point he even referred to Hillary as “nasty.” The result? He pretty much wiped the floor with her. As Merlin Donald tells us, this mode “cannot be matched by analytic thought for intuitive speed, complexity, and shrewdness.”
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In any case, those on the axial side of this conflict are for the most part capable of critical analysis, but a rather large percentage of them have gone off the rails, channeled it into a strange place of “woke” ideology, where the focus of attention is on political correctness—an abuse of critical thinking, in my view, and a movement that has created its own form of tribalism. But the point being made here is that the axial issue is, it seems to me, a potentially fruitful way of framing the heated political conflict that is currently engulfing the American body politic. My guess is that this mode of analysis can be applied to other countries as well, such as Brazil, or Israel. The struggles going on in the US and these nations can, I believe, be seen as having their origins in the fundamental conflict between a tribal way of life and consciousness and an axial one; and the conflict, which is existential, would seem to be never-ending. With Trump, tribalism may eventually triumph in America; but the rational opposition to him will not simply go away. Many Israelis regard the Palestinians as a variety of savages, “human animals,” as the Israeli Defense Minister put it (October 2023), whereas the Palestinians view someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, with his desire to destroy Gaza, as a monster, a war criminal. It should not surprise us that there is no resolution in sight. As for Brazil, consider the contrast between Bolsonaro and Lula, and what each of them stands for. This mode of analysis may seem far-fetched; personally, I’m guessing that it contains more than a kernel of truth. At the very least, it seems to me to be heuristically valuable.(9)<code><br></code>
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Truth be told, the issue of an Axial Age never got resolved. Everyone agrees that axiality exists in a psychological or mental sense, and that we can investigate the degree of it in various societies, on a comparative basis. But did it exist historically? Was Jaspers right about there being a specific Axial Age that can be identified with the period 800-200 B.C.? On that score, opinion remains divided. There are eminent historians on both sides of the argument. Personally, I agree with the critiques discussed above, regarding modernization bias, class bias, and the problem of ignoring the vibrancy of other capacities of the human mind. But at the end of the day, I think Jaspers got it pretty much right: this period was a turning point in the evolution of human consciousness, and the sages he identifies as agents of the change were <i>sui generis</i>. Of course, they were not acting alone; I am not proposing a heroic version of history, and it’s a good bet that they were the products of deep-seated changes going on in Greece, India, China, and the Levant. But they may, perhaps, be likened to Hegel’s “world historical individuals,” who changed their societies because they epitomized changes that were already underway. It is rather amazing that this occurred across the board, in the absence of practically any cross-cultural influence. Once again, we might draw on Hegel for the notion of a <i>weltgeist</i>, sweeping across the globe in the space of a few centuries, and seemingly coming out of nowhere. Whatever the cause, this much is certain: the human race hasn’t been the same ever since.<code><br></code>
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©Morris Berman, 2023<code><br></code>
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Notes <code><br></code>
1.“Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition,” in A <i>Question of Values </i>(Charleston SC: CreateSpace, 2010).<code><br></code>
2.See also another essay of mine, “The Hula Hoop Theory of History,” CounterPunch, 11 January 2013.<code><br></code>
3.Karl Jaspers, <i>The Origin and Goal of History</i> (London: Routledge, 1953; orig. German edition 1949).<code><br></code>
4.Morris Berman, <i>Eminent Post-Victorians </i>(Independently published, 2022), pp. 67-79. See also Raymond Aron, <i>The Opium of the Intellectuals</i> (London: Routledge, 1957; orig. French ed. 1955).<code><br></code>
5.In the discussion that follows I am borrowing liberally from Appendix III of my book <i>Neurotic Beauty</i> (Healdsburg CA: Water Street Press, 2019).
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6.For additional critiques see Daniel Hoyer and Jenny Reddish, <i>Seshat History of the Axial Age </i>(Chaplin CT: Beresta Books, 2019); Ken Baskin and Dmitri Bodarenko, <i>The Axial Ages of World History: Lessons for the 21st Century</i> (ISCE Publishing, 2014); Iain Provan, <i>Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was</i> (Waco TX: Baylor University Press, 2013); and Antony Black, “The ‘Axial Period’: What Was It and What Does It Signify?,” published online by Cambridge University Press, 15 February 2008. Regarding the Code of Hammurabi: according to two scholars of Canaanite (Ugaritic) literature, the adjudication of legal cases, particularly those involving widows and orphans, “was the ordinary task of elders and rulers in ancient Near Eastern societies.” This goes back to ca. 3,000 B.C., i.e., 1,200 years before the Mesopotamian Code. See Michael Coogan and Mark Smith, eds. and trans., <i>Stories from Ancient Canaan</i> (2d. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), pp. 27-28.<code><br></code>
7.This section and what follows are also taken from Appendix III of<i> Neurotic Beauty.</i><code><br></code>
8.Arvid S. Kapelrud, <i>The Ras Shamra Discoveries and the Old Testament</i>, trans. G.W. Anderson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), pp. 55-56. Kapelrud’s assertion that we are talking about two distinct principles and interpretations of life is one that is supported by a number of scholars of axiality, notably S.N. Eisenstadt in his edited volume, <i>The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilisations</i> (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). These scholars refer to the shift as “the transcendentalist breakthrough.” Eisenstadt defines it (according to Alan Strathern) as the “erection of two sharply distinguished orders of reality and modes of behaviour,” which he (Strathern) regards as “a powerful way of lending coherence to the apparently disparate ancient philosophies.” See Alan Strathern, “Karen Armstrong’s Axial Age: Origins and Ethics,” <i>The Heythrop Journal,</i> vol. 50 no. 2 (February 2009), pp. 293-99.<code><br></code>
9.I am not the first historian to suggest this kind of long-range influence. The biblical scholar Baruch Halpern makes a somewhat similar argument in his book <i>From Gods to God: The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies </i>(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Halpern accepts Jaspers’ thesis about an Axial Age, including (unfortunately) the Western bias and modernization theory criticized by Jan Assmann, above. But leaving that aside, Halpern argues for a similarity between the axial shift that took place in ancient Israel (which gave birth to monotheism), and the cultural and intellectual shifts that took place across Europe during 1500-1800; which is to say, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. But not just a similarity; rather, some type of connection, or influence. This is not a causal connection rippling down through the centuries, but only an argument that there is a psychological or mental pattern here that gets repeated; what Kapelrud is saying, in effect. In such a framework, I don’t feel that this is far-fetched, although Nathan MacDonald, in a lengthy review of Halpern’s book, does, and he offers a plausible critique. Clearly, the jury is out on all of this. See Nathan MacDonald, “Making the Past Present,” <i>Journal of Hebrew Scriptures</i>, vol. 11 (2011).
Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com193tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-52438511222827719482023-10-09T20:43:00.000-04:002023-10-09T20:43:05.253-04:00The Great CharadeIn an interview she gave in 1980, the eminent British writer Doris Lessing said the following: "I can't remember any time in my life where I wasn't sitting looking at the grown-up scene and thinking, this must be some great charade they've all agreed to play." On an intuitive level, I had a similar perception about my childhood environment when I was about 8 or 9, and subsequent events have only served to reinforce that perception. It's one reason why I have been attracted to Lessing's novels, some of which reiterate this theme--in particular, <i>Briefing for a Descent into Hell</i>, which I occasionally assigned to my classes when I was teaching at various universities.
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"The Great Charade" is a theme that goes by other names, in particular "The Emperor's New Clothes," a story by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (it has been translated into more than 100 languages); or "Orwellian Newspeak"; or "The World Turned Upside Down," the title of a book by the British historian Christopher Hill. A more accurate title might be "Reality Turned Upside Down," for that is what we see in the MSM and their interpretation of daily events. I frequently read the 'news' and say to myself, Has everyone gone completely nuts? Like Jack Kennedy with the Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962, Vladimir Putin saw that he had to safeguard his country's borders against America and NATO, which finally necessitated invading the Ukraine. This obvious fact is recognized by only a tiny handful of astute political analysts (Mearsheimer, Ritter, Pilger, Sachs...); the rest of the world is appalled at Putin as some latter-day Hitler, ignoring what the Russian foreign minister correctly described as a proxy war against Russia, in which the Ukraine is nothing more than fodder. Self-righteous Americans, deluded up to their eyeballs, jump up and down and wave the Ukrainian flag, while American universities actually think it makes perfect sense to cancel courses in Doestoevsky(!!).<code><br></code>
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A similar charade pervades the coverage of, and reaction to, Hamas' uprising against Israel. Most of the 'analysis' of causes is plainly stupid: it was caused by a failure of Israeli intelligence. Wha?? Much to my amazement, only the NYT seems to have gotten it right: this 'intelligence' thesis is a load of crap, and the real cause goes back to 1948, when the Jews drove 700,000 Palestinians off their land. (I reproduce excerpts from the <i>Times</i> article in the previous post.) Meanwhile, the whole world is outraged at the Hamas uprising, when they too would be retaliating if something similar had happened to <i>them</i>. Excepting Palestinian commentators, the NYT emerges as the sole voice of sanity amidst--once again--a great charade.<code><br></code>
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One great danger posed by Donald Trump--and I agree that it is a danger--is that of falsifying reality, in Orwellian style; a charade, turning black into white, up into down, and so on. The raw empirical truth is that Trump lost the 2020 election, pure and simple. But if Mr. Trump wins the election of 2024 and ascends to the White House, that complete falsehood will become The New Truth. My question is: How is that different from making Russia the culprit in the Ukraine war, or making Hamas the culprit in their attack on Israel? All of it--Trump, the Ukraine, Israel--is reality turned upside down: a charade, as Doris Lessing said, that grown-ups have all agreed to play. Some grown-ups, is all I can think to say.<code><br></code>
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com188tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-39826038455684760802023-09-13T22:21:00.000-04:002023-09-13T22:21:06.627-04:00A Revolutionary ActIt was George Orwell who said it: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."<code><br></code>
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There can be no doubt that we are living during a time of universal deceit. America, among others, is soaking in it. The Trumpite claim that Biden stole the 2020 election is an obvious example of this; his demagoguery is classically Orwellian. The phony proxy war against Russia via the Ukraine, the "reportage" of the NYT and others that is little more than propaganda--another Orwellian pile of crap. The fomenting of war for "democracy": you have to be brain damaged to believe such nonsense.<code><br></code>
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What can one blog do? We aren't on the radar screen of intellectual debate, and never will be. Even leading critics of America, of both its domestic and foreign policy, are ignored by the MSM and shunted off to YouTube, at best. But it is still worthwhile, for those few of us who see that the emperor has no clothes, to point it out. This is the hard rock at the bottom of all the bullshit, all the gaslighting.
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Truth, like virtue, is its own reward.<code><br></code>
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com184tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-27440198618852630172023-08-16T19:42:00.001-04:002023-08-16T19:42:18.478-04:00The Deepest TruthFor many years now, I have been fascinated by the life and work of Remedios Varo (1908-63), a Spanish Surrealist artist who died in Mexico City at the age of 54, after having lived there for 22 years. I just read, for the third time, the superb biography of her by Janet Kaplan, which reproduces a good many of her canvases:<code><br></code>
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Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys: Kaplan, Janet A.: 9780789206275: Amazon.com: Books<code><br></code>
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I have in mind paintings such as (in English translation) <i>Toward the Tower</i>, <i>The Escape</i>, <i>Rupture</i>, and <i>To Be Reborn</i>, but my all-time favorite is <i>Breaking the Vicious Circle</i>:<code><br></code>
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Museum Art Reproductions | Breaking the vicious circle by Remedios Varo (1865-1911, Spain) | WahooArt.com<code><br></code>
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The vicious circle is the script or narrative that consciously or (mostly) unconsciously governs our lives, as I described it in my book <i>Healing</i>:
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Healing: The Defining Root of Our Existence: Berman, Morris: 9798393548681: Amazon.com: Books<code><br></code>
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I could have easily used this painting for the front cover. For me, Varo exemplifies a life of authenticity, and a rejection of a life of conformity. This theme occurs in many of her paintings, but is most dramatically presented in <i>Breaking the Vicious Circle</i>. Varo was searching for the deepest truth, in her own life and in life in general. She calls to mind a quote from Virginia Nicholson’s book, <i>Among the Bohemians</i>, which I cite in <i>Healing</i> (she was a niece of Virginia Woolf):<code><br></code>
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Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939: Nicholson, Virginia: 9780060548469: Amazon.com: Books<code><br></code>
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"There are people in the world who will not make compromises
with life. Their faces are turned like sunflowers towards the
source of light, and even when battered and broken they
refuse to give in to old age, sorrow, loss, defeat."<code><br></code>
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I believe the deepest truth is what I have called the Healing Vector, the force within us that is pushing toward the light. It is the motive force of life, sometimes referred to as “entelechy.” The deepest truth is to live in Reality. I’ve struggled to make this my path, as best as I have been able; it is a lonely road, since most people—certainly, most Americans—are not interested in it. America is living in illusion, which is why it is dying. And most Americans are living in illusion, which is why so many of them are angry and depressed. My guess is that it won’t end well for them, and it certainly won’t end well for the US. (Just look around.)<code><br></code>
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Let me conclude by alerting you all to the current exhibition of Varo’s work going on at the Art Institute of Chicago:<code><br></code>
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Remedios Varo: Science Fictions | The Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu)
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Really wish I could go. Those of you Wafers who do go, please report back, let us have your reactions.<code><br></code>
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<i>Arriba!</i><code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com183tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-85644348888891839352023-08-10T06:04:00.012-04:002023-08-10T06:09:24.054-04:00Our Common HumanityThe following text is from a Canaanite (Ugaritic) tablet, early third millennium B.C. It was from the Canaanite people that the Jewish people eventually emerged. The Canaanites were polytheistic; the Israelites, centuries later, were monotheistic (worshipping Yahweh). The speaker here is Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility, and storms. He is addressing another deity.
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"I have a word to tell you,
a message to recount to you:
the word of the tree and the whisper of the stone,
the murmur of the heavens to the earth,
of the seas to the stars.
I understand the lightning that the heavens
do not know,
the word that people do not know,
and earth's masses cannot understand.
Come, and I will reveal it."
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Ugaritic is very close to Hebrew. Many of the Psalms are direct translations of Ugaritic poetry into the Hebrew language.
Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-68253065824397971332023-07-05T12:06:00.000-04:002023-07-05T12:06:00.326-04:00The Soul of RussiaWafers-<code><br></code>
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My book on Russia, hardcopy edition, just got listed on Amazon, and should be available for sale sometime within the next two weeks. The (cheaper) paperback edition will be listed soon after that, or so they tell me.<code><br></code>
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https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Russia-Morris-Berman/dp/1648373623/
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Enjoy, my friends. This book took a while, but was a true labor of love.
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mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com182tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-17251885688021021452023-06-09T23:54:00.000-04:002023-06-09T23:54:06.671-04:00SchmegeggeWafers-<code><br></code>
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Truth be told, I'm running out of things to say. How many events, facts, and bits of evidence of our degradation/disintegration/debasement/collapse can we point to, on a daily basis? The sheer self-destruction of the country is right there, before our very eyes; every day, we sink deeper and deeper into it. Everything we do, every action, is an abysmal error. Years ago, I predicted 2030 as the endpoint of the nation, but I'm wondering if I should move the date up. Our slogan, "Onward and Downward," may have to be revised: "Onward and Rapidly Downward." The whole country amounts to nothing more than baloney. The government is baloney; the MSM is baloney; and the American public is baloney. The Yiddish word for this is schmegegge. Look it up on Google (it's sort of like putz squared). America is a schmegegge, a hopeless, pathetic collection of hot air.<code><br></code>
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com92tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-88087748300330801002023-05-04T23:33:00.003-04:002023-05-04T23:33:37.171-04:00HealingSo it's finally here:<code><br></code>
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47YQXYQ/ref=sr_1_29?crid=27WJHQ5GXMZZP&keywords=morris+berman&qid=1683257351&s=books&sprefix=morris+berman+%2Cstripbooks%2C263&sr=1-29
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Also available in Kindle for $2 less, I guess. Hope you all will enjoy it.<code><br></code>
-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com190tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-19754423194331671472023-04-11T20:12:00.003-04:002023-04-11T20:12:32.532-04:00Beating a Dead Horse Dept.Wafers, honestly, how many times can I say it? America is composed of violent morons and the country is going down the drain, with no hope of reversing trajectory. What could be more obvious? And yet 99% of the American public don't believe this for a minute, and the MSM are oblivious to it. There will be no wake-up moment for either; we'll just simply fade into irrelevance. And yet here I am, boring all of you (I'm sure) with what is basically non-news. Let me just repeat what is going to be my epitaph, and then sign out:<code><br></code>
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I KEPT TELLING THEM, BUT DID THEY LISTEN? NO!<code><br></code>
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-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com167tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-37947158451110336872023-03-04T07:22:00.006-05:002023-03-04T07:22:51.540-05:00A Grotesque Bulvan. However...There is no question that Mr. Trump is one of the most repulsive human beings on the planet today. One cannot say enough awful things about him. But the one thing you can’t call him is “warmonger”; which is clearly what Mr. Biden is. On the domestic front, Biden is OK. He is kind of a mild version of FDR, and has instituted some important changes in the direction of giving Americans a better life. Oddly enough, these Americans fail to notice this, or fail to care. What they see is a senile fuddy-duddy, and they are not far wrong. The stats are that most Democrats would prefer a different candidate in 2024. However, as a senile fuddy-duddy, when it comes to foreign policy, the man has no imagination at all. It just consists of reviving the Cold War, which now means carrying on a proxy war with one nuclear superpower, and making threatening noises in the direction of the other one. It’s the height of stupidity, and it could have disastrous consequences.<code><br></code>
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If elected in 2024, Trump will very likely back off this suicidal trajectory. Instead, he’ll try to revive the American Dream, it looks like. This won’t work, because America is dying, and nothing can prevent its inevitable demise. It’s time has come. But at least it won’t end via a nuclear conflagration. Quite simply, we’ve got to get Biden and Co. out of the White House; although I confess, I will sorely miss Kamala. Her ideals, and her penetrating intellect, have been a beacon of hope to all freedom-loving people the world over. 😊 <code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com189tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-63771001389821929842023-02-04T11:54:00.004-05:002023-02-04T11:54:36.899-05:00The Sopranos, William Golding, and Contemporary AmericaWafers-<code><br></code>
Let me repeat what I wrote at the end of the previous post:<code><br></code>
All of America, young or old, is a case of <i>Lord of the Flies</i>. Or to take another allegory, which I've talked abt before, <i>The Sopranos</i>. In this TV series, as it plays out, the only purpose in living is to acquire money and material goods, and to beat out the competition. By the end, the 'brothers' are killing each other off, eating each other alive (despite their constant hugging of each other). Is this not a very close description of contemporary America? And in both cases, there is no way of arresting this pattern. Rather, the system has to die.<code><br></code>
-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com187tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-7751254965146305982023-01-06T16:13:00.008-05:002023-01-06T16:13:57.998-05:007 million and going strongWafers-<code><br></code>
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Since April of 2006, this blog has received almost 7 million hits. Our influence has never been greater, as we march toward the 10 million mark. Innocent Americans accidentally trip onto this blog, and given the high level of intelligence that most of them possess, they are immediately converted to the Waferian outlook. No more chest-beating about how we're No. 1. No! They understand that the US is going down the tubes, and they prepare accordingly. I think all of us here at the blog can be justly proud.<code><br></code>
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Onward! And of course, Downward!
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com185tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-84801009174149321482022-12-13T08:05:00.002-05:002022-12-13T08:05:30.292-05:00Karma CityWafers-<code><br></code>
Well, nothing much to report, but I'll stick with the blog for the time being. America is like an almost-dead fish, flopping on the deck. No idea what it's doing, or why. But Wafers know why: you set yourself against Nature, and against Reality, and what do you think is finally going to happen? Ditto, if for 400+ years, you marginalize or reject those critics who tried to give you valuable input. The dominant narrative reigns supreme, until it hits a wall; which is the story of our time.<code><br></code>
-mbMorris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com191tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-35167175263046241992022-11-12T13:23:00.001-05:002022-11-12T13:23:28.121-05:00Muddy WatersWell, at this point, it looks like the GOP will have the House, and the Dems will have the Senate. We may not know until the Georgia runoff on Dec. 6. But hopefully, if the GOP has the house, they might stop the fueling of the war in the Ukraine. These times are pretty murky; no one seems to be sure of anything. All I can do, myself, is throw up my hands and cry KAMALA SCHMAMALA!Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com192tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-57889520514703599072022-10-19T01:00:00.004-04:002022-10-19T01:00:34.718-04:00The MidtermsWell, folks, the midterm election is something like 2 weeks away, and while most midterm elections are typically a big yawn, this one seems to be set to determine a lot. All year long I was saying it was a slam dunk for the GOP; now, the abortion issue/Supreme Court decision has muddied the waters. The Dems believe it could be an important playing card for them, possibly drawing voters away from the GOP and into the Democratic camp. We won't know the answer to that until the dust settles.<code><br></code>
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Hovering over all of this is a mad paradox, perhaps more than one. The GOP has already signaled that if they take the House, they intend to review all of this $ being pumped into the Ukraine. My own view is that this is absolutely necessary, since the Ukraine war is an illusion, a pile of shit cooked up by Biden and his admin to revive the Cold War, inasmuch as when it comes to foreign policy, the guy as no imagination whatsoever. The drawback of such a victory, however, is that a large % of GOP candidates believe Trump really won in 2020, and if this MAGA crowd takes over, a complete lie becomes the official "truth". In a larger philosophical arena, it pretty much destroys the notion of truth altogether, as something rooted in empirical evidence. Postmodernism, once a weird French fetish, would now be the order of the day. Plus, this would bring us much closer to a Trump victory in 2024.<code><br></code>
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This would not be the case if these folks are defeated. Sanity would reign if the Dems win, with one important exception: Biden is a warmonger, and this absurd resurrection of the Cold War would
continue to be our daily reality, possibly even pushing the edge of going nuclear. We are, then, screwed either way, the choice being between absurdity/surrealism and brinksmanship/potential holocaust. Yuck, is all I can manage to say about that.
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Maybe comedy is all that is left to us, at this point. Survey the public field: what could be funnier than Kamala Schmamala, Tulsi Schmulsi, Kanye West/horse-ass-face/Marjorie Taylor Green toting her Jewish space lasers, Herschel Walker, etc.? It's getting to the point that Bill Maher might as well rename his show "The Parade of the Grotesque," because that is literally what is on display in the US these days. That prescient film of 2006, "Idiocracy," is now with us, except that we could probably use a remake and call it "Buffoonery Unleashed". At the end of the day, only 4 people were correct about the real story of America: H.L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, George Carlin, and of course--moi.;-) As we used to say when I was a student at Cornell, SMF; Sayonara, Mother Fuckers. (Which also translates as Whee!)<code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com196tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-67756923354190011922022-09-27T15:32:00.002-04:002022-09-27T15:32:29.829-04:00MeatballThere is a game, which I think is called meatball, in which you have to choose between 2 horrid alternatives; like Biden vs. Trump, for example. No sex for 10 years, or being beaten with a rubber hose for 30 consecutive hours? You get the idea. The meatball I'm going to propose is: Gisele Bundchen secretly directing our foreign policy, or Kamala Harris? Wafers, you tell <i>me</i>.
Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com197tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-80629895083583013002022-08-24T11:54:00.001-04:002022-08-24T11:54:48.398-04:00Permanent War for Permanent PeaceI don't know who first coined that phrase, but it describes our "grand strategy" since 1945. It also echoes Orwell's <i>1984</i>, where there was always, in the background, a war going on that made no sense; it was just war for the sake of war. The Cold War was like that, and Biden, with this new $3b shipment to the Ukraine, seeks to revive it. He has told the Ukraine that he's thinking long-term: the war with Russia will probably go on for years.<code><br></code><code><br></code>
One possible problem, however, is that the American people don't have very much upstairs. Their attention span is extremely short. What they want out of a war is quick destruction of the "enemy," such as they got when we destroyed Iraq in 2003. They lose interest if things start to drag out; the prolonged war sinks into the background. Their enthusiasm for this proxy war in the Ukraine already seems to have waned, although not for Biden, apparently. That Russia wants to protect its borders from America and NATO is not on his radar screen. This obvious fact eludes him, and in any case, he prefers to follow the old American playbook of forcing the "enemy" into a corner and then blaming them when they fight to protect themselves. Meanwhile, the $3b that could be used at home for so many badly needed things is pissed away on an illusion, one that we are desperate to maintain. One has to wonder if the American people even care, at this point. However, there is a larger playbook operating here, one that finally sent Rome to its grave: imperial overstretch. If we had a brighter populace, they would see that permanent war is self-destructive, and that we are witnessing our last days. It's not likely they will see that; in fact, it wd require an Act of God--something in short supply these days.<code><br></code><code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com194tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-55928645263890306222022-08-04T17:08:00.007-04:002022-08-04T17:08:44.227-04:00Stupid People-->Incompetent Leaders-->Foolish Decisions-->National CollapseWafers-<code><br></code>
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OK, here is how it actually is. This is finally the only narrative worth entertaining.<code><br></code>
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1.The American people are basically out of it. They are clueless and stupid. If you don’t believe me, just go up to one—any one—in the street, and try to engage them on any issue of substance. They will just stare at you, uncomprehendingly. Most of you have already had this experience. The truth is that there is nothing of consequence in their heads. (The World Series, how to make more money, sex, etc.) Ask them what the initials FDR stand for, for example, or what is the capital of New York State (they’ll say, “New York”).
2.As George Carlin told us, stupid people elect stupid leaders. How in the world do we have the likes of Greene, Boebert, Schmamala, Tulsi, Trump, Pelosi—it’s a long list—in office? These people are little more than jokes, and millions adore them. They have no self-transparency, and no real understanding of American history—why the US does what it does. The best they can do is repeat slogans, and think that that’s thinking.
3.Not rocket science: stupid leaders make stupid decisions, ones that are programmed from centuries ago, and that are ultimately self-destructive. (I discuss some of this programming in QOV. For example, the age-old need to have an enemy, and thus to constantly live in a war mentality, and to make war when there is no genuine cause for it.)
4.Bad decisions involve living reactively, from moment to moment, whereas our “enemies” are smart; they play the long game, and they will, as a result, eclipse us. Meanwhile, most nations no longer take us seriously. We look like fools because we <i>are</i> fools. These nations have to tiptoe around us, because we are like a baby waving a bazooka. But they know we have force, not strength. (We don't even know what strength is.) Meanwhile, even our force is draining away, on a daily basis. We have no spiritual purpose; we are just drifting, without any meaning at all.
5.What country decides to take on 2 great powers simultaneously? Ukraine is a proxy for our totally unnecessary war w/Russia, and Taiwan a semi-proxy for an unnecessary confrontation w/China. Who does this, except governments run by people who are effectively brain dead? And who believes this “democracy” crap except the American people, who will believe anything? Anyone w/half a brain knows that Schmiden doesn’t give a shit abt the Ukrainians, and that Schmelosi cdn’t care less abt the Taiwanese. It’s all posturing for the sake of posturing—the refuge of the impotent.
6. Arnold Toynbee demonstrated that civilizations don’t collapse by being invaded from the outside. No, he said; instead, they commit suicide by making all the wrong moves. There is simply no other way to (accurately) interpret what is happening to us. Meanwhile, intelligent civilizations, such as Russia and China, are biding their time. Why attack America when it is doing a bang-up job of attacking itself?
7. Just a ps: Exactly what *is* American civilization? It is a culture only in an anthropological sense; in our case, a gun culture; which is, really, a death culture. In terms of culture in the sense of creativity: Where is the American Dostoevsky? The American Verdi? The American Picasso? 0. What, exactly, will be lost to the world as America slides down the chute to oblivion? Democracy? Ha! Basically, a cover for capitalism, which Americans, like Milton Friedman (a high-IQ moron), equate with freedom, even as it crushes the life out of them.<code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com190tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-64478963700348726202022-07-19T16:21:00.001-04:002022-07-19T16:21:15.912-04:00What Am I Living For, Anyway?Wafers-<code><br></code>
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I think it's time for me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. What am I living for, anyway? I tell the Dems and the wokes, "Stop beating off!" Their reaction? Increased beating off. I tell the general public, "This is a phony war. Biden couldn't care less about the Ukrainians. What he is doing is resurrecting the Cold War, i.e. attacking Russia." The response? They run around waving the Ukrainian flag, removing Chekhov from university curricula, and insisting that restaurants serve Beef Zelensky instead of Beef Stroganoff. I tell them, "We're not No. 1. We're actually way down the list, in almost every category you can name. The place is disintegrating before your very eyes." What do they do? Run around waving the American flag, chanting "We're No. 1!" They actually think we won the war in Vietnam. There simply is no reason for me to go on, amigos; I need to give some serious thought to packing it in.<code><br></code>
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Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com187tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-51670504078229323832022-07-02T16:27:00.003-04:002022-07-02T16:27:59.634-04:00An Anatomy of the WorldPoor America! Not much left of it these days. A phony war, increased poverty, serious inflation, runaway drug use, massacres, suicides, a sick and dishonest Supreme Court, and a bitter, clueless population. One party hankering for violence, and the end of democracy; the other thinking that diversity appointments and 'correct' language constitute an adequate response. Of course, I predicted the end of the US 22 years ago (in the <i>Twilight</i> book), but I never imagined it would look like this--so bleak, so stupid, and so sad. I think of T.S. Eliot's "vast, impersonal forces," History rolling over us like an Abrams tank, with literally nothing that can be done to stop it. Trumpi in the White House will be the final act of this tragedy, but Schmiden in the White House hasn't been able to do much better. And on the microlevel, a deep unkindness Americans have for one another, also unimaginable 22 years ago. Although John Donne had it right in 1611 (<i>An Anatomy of the World</i>):
“Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.”Morris Bermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01541460409142158946noreply@blogger.com191tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25497693.post-88836009937065798932022-06-09T07:33:00.000-04:002022-06-09T07:33:02.417-04:00What is the female of "doofus"?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6UJO3nGitY<code><br></code>
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Honestly, folks; what can ya say? "Doofusette"? I'm speechless.
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