… a lot of breaking news on the 45 front… 45 has received notification of target of investigation in J6 coupe attempt from DOJ… the indictment is imminent… 45 will go full ballistic political… already is… the Republican party thankfully tied to his feet as he stands on a platform of lies and innuendos with a rope around his neck… the door will open and the whole republican authoritarian thing will perish… at least that’s how i hope it goes… then perhaps we can go back to arguments about policy…

So far as I can tell, the #2024 #election is about whether we want #authoritarian rule or not. I wish it were about other things. But we have to settle the authoritarian question first.

July 17, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both “weaponized” against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile.

Notes on what a banana republic is…

reason.com/volokh/20… #politics-us #45th #vladimir-putin #authoritarian

Giving high officials impunity for criminality is actually a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin routinely commits war crimes and other violations of law without fear of prosecution is a sign of the degeneration of that country’s political system, even if some trappings of constitutional government remain.

Buy, Buy says the sign in the shop window,

why, why says the junk in the yard.

Paul McCartney

I had two revelations from my reading of A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell this week.

The first is that at the heart of (almost?) all scientific, philosophical and religious effort is a desire that something, anything, be eternal. We want our lives to mean something even if only that they were a necessary, albeit, tiny part of something grand and purposeful.

The second is that when we ask the question why, we either ask it teleologically, seeking first cause, or we ask it mechanistically, seeking to understand the mechanics of what we observe. The first is a process of induction of universal truths from experience. The second is a process of deduction of rules from experience. Regardless of path chosen, it is impossible to know anything in an absolute way. Consequently, certainty that there is something eternal is beyond grasp.

My wife loves to ask why and then tell me she doesn’t understand when I offer an explanation. Why would anyone like Putin exist (because absolute power makes absolute assholes)? Why would he invade Ukraine (because absolute assholes are assholes)? Why do conservatives want to destroy democracy (because absolute power is worth it)? Why do white supremacists exist (because we are primally disposed to enslave the other)? Why can’t we all just get along (because humans have never just gotten along and there are always power hungry assholes)?

“I don’t understand” she continues to say to any explanation I offer. I love her for being this way. She still has faith in humanity and it doesn’t compute when humanity is not faith-worthy.

When we were young we asked about the sign in the shop window and the junk in the yard. We also asked about the Vietnam war. These days liberals like ourselves ask why as we witness the Enlightenment Liberalist world order we have been comfortably ensconced in decomposing. We are pretty sure we won’t like it if it does decompose fully, any more than Ukrainians are enjoying bombs and displacement.

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles believed everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water which were moved into vortices of physical manifestation by love and strife in a cyclical manner.

Love and strife have been playing themselves out in humans since the time before memory. We are lucky if our lives contain plenty of love and strife is rarely life threatening. But it’s a crap shoot. We could as easily be Ukrainian as American. We could as easily have brown skin as white skin. And we could as easily live in an authoritarian form of government as a democratic one.

The struggle between some form of Oligarchic/Authoritarian rule and Democracy has been going on in the west for most, if not all, of recorded history. A prime example is the struggle between oligarchic Troy and democratic Athens, a contest the Trojans won, marking the end of the Athenian Golden Age. It would not be until the Renaissance that anything like that golden age (The Enlightenment) appeared again in the West.

We may eventually turn Putin back in Ukraine. But will we turn back Oligarchic Authoritarianism in the US? It’s not clear and on my bad days I despair. If Authoritarianism wins, it would be in no small measure because of Vladimir Putin. Are we going to win the battle but loose the war?

The United States has been in this place multiple times in the past. The Civil War was the manifestation of one particularly harsh turn in the cycle. So far, the people have rallied to push back the slave holders, the oligarchs and the would be despots to preserve the promise, if not execute the ideal of democracy. If Greek history teaches anything though, it’s that the only thing pre-ordained are the cycles, not the winners and losers.

I have been struggling with depression for much of the past week and probably for much longer than that if I am honest with myself. It’s not a debilitating depression. I can get out of bed. I can pursue my routines of reading, writing, walking, picture making, picture editing, and more. Still it’s a bit like I am moving through a viscous solution as I try to do these things.

Relative to Ukrainians, I have little to be depressed or anxious about, except, I feel deeply that their existential struggle is mine too. The loss of freedom they are threatened with is a loss I am being threatened with.

One of my prime thoughts this week is that the last seven years has been a firehose-shit-stream of angering, worrisome and depressing news. The most salient feature of this news has been the steady decline of Liberalism and Democracy and the steady rise of illiberal Authoritarian tendencies within the United States and around the globe. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it put an exclamation point on this trend towards Authoritarianism.

A vast struggle has broken out into the open in a dramatic way. There is no guarantee of the outcome, though, if we can avoid World War III, I am hopeful that Putin’s aggression will end with his loss of power and serve as a rebuke to Authoritarianism everywhere.

Among the many other thoughts revolving in my head these days:

• Will it ever be possible to have a world free of nuclear sticks?
• Is it possible to construct a world in which bullies don’t exist or can never acquire big sticks?

In The Greeks, H. D. F. Kitto describes the golden age of the Greek Polis, the pinnacle of which occurred in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BCE and lasted for a little more than 100 years. The Polis was a reasonably well balanced democratic organization of society where everyman’s opinion mattered, everyman’s participation was expected and status depended on the “excellence” of a man, not as determined by his wealth, but as determined by his character. One cannot overlook that there was slavery, limitations on the rights of foreign citizens and that women had no rights. But among the male citizens there was a relatively small (by today’s standards) distance between the wealthiest and poorest citizen, a common education around the principles of good character as illuminated by the Homeric epics and decision making by consensus. This is the foundational example of democracy, a more inclusive form of which Liberalism pursues today.

H. D. F. Kitto writes this in The Greeks:

It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved – that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty. The Greeks were fortunate in possessing Homer, and wise in using him as they did.¹

The truth is that humans get enough right about how to arrange and conduct themselves such that golden ages happen now and again, but, so far, only for brief periods of time. We seem only ever to glimpse utopia, never fully achieve it.

Heraclitus came closest to an accurate description of humankind’s condition, proclaiming fire to be the foundational element of the universe and that flux is the norm. He thought wars (fire) inevitable and even necessary as a change agent. History is a churning beast and nothing lasts for very long. What is good eventually becomes bad which eventually becomes good again.

I don’t know what Heraclitus would have though if nuclear weapons existed in his day. Would he still champion fire? What do we do with a bully carrying a nuclear stick? My deepest fear and sadness at the moment is that it is conceivable to me that the nuclear stick will get used. If not this time, then sooner or later.

Bertrand Russell² points out in The History of Western Philosophy that since the time of the pre-socratic philosophers a main endeavor of religion and philosophy in the western world has been to establish something, anything, eternal and relevant to the condition of humankind. The nuclear stick is a definitive refutation that anything eternal for humankind exists.

Enter my sadness.