WHAT MIGHT MAKE THE UNITED STATES TRULY GREAT?

WHAT MIGHT MAKE THE UNITED STATES TRULY GREAT?

The  one-sentence answer: If it truly lived up to its professed ideals!

The elaborated answer:
1] If it admitted to the crimes of slavery and extermination of the Native people and made amends & effected the necessary redress.

I] If it admitted to the perversion of its Monroe doctrine and apologized – the very  least it could do - to all Caribbean, Central & South American countries for the invasions, overthrowing  of their governments, and to Mexico for stealing a third of its land in the 19the century, and made the requisite amends.

3)If it pleaded guilty to the crimes of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh, of the 1953 invasion of Guatemala, the attempt to replace the French as overlords of Indochina that led to the invasion of Vietnam; to the criminal destabilization of Afghanistan – and if it did so it would be in defiance of George Herbert Bush’s claim that the United States never apologizes, in his case refusing to do so for shooting down an Iranian passenger plane and killing 250 human beings. And if Uncle Sam also apologized for the madness of his anti-communism he would cease to be known as a mean, small-minded paranoid sadist & instead would set an   example, an example that would shine as bright as the sun.

ON FAKE NEWS

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-fallacy?

THE “FAKE NEWS” CONUNDRUM

It ought not to come as a surprise that a demagogue shouting “fake news“ obtains considerable automatic agreement from his followers, and does so in a world that is overwhelmed with information and where most everything yet is actually knowable and verifiable if you have the time, the time, the time, the patience the patience and the knowledge and capacity to verify.

The matter of the current Trumpian edition of Fake NewS is scarcely merely a matter of normal human, or if you like, mammalian dread as  which it can be accounted in the instance of Welles’ WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1938.

„Fake“ & „News“, two words not found co-joined until recently,  yet  in a short time the phrase  has come to sound as though it had been around for years, loud and clear…. to obscure, to defeat, at least to throw into doubt even the most obvious and rationally ascertainable truths such as the contribution of human activity to the heating of the planet & its exponential consequences.

“We” all know a fake when we see it!  Except for the one’s we miss, or the ones we get used to living with, or where we think what the hell what does it matter.

Then there are the true believers, say, the Seventh Day Adventist, but how do you prove to them that there are barking up the wrong tree? How can news even be fake? News is news, is new or old hat, but then it ought not to be called news, should it, except by sleepyheads.

 “Fake” is a word that you learn while you are still young.  “That’s a fake,” the kid is told about a wooden nickel! (I have never seen one!) The first fake experience a kid will have is of a false nipple, an appeaser for the longing for the real thing.  “Real” & “fake” will be concepts coupled as diametrically opposed in the kid’s mind.

A “falsie” in adolescence does not refer to a wooden nickel but to whatever it takes – tissue paper, padding of any kind - to make believe it is a mature breast, an enhancement to make a young girl appear more mature and attractive and to enhance her sense of womanliness in the making., which will disappoint the callow boyfriend’s hand. –

The concept “false”/ falta seeps into one’s American being at an early age, never to be disabused, but to be augmented by an increasing number of experiences of buying, being subjected, being fooled by matters that are not what they seem. The breast that the mature lover caressed is of silicone! – No wonder that my caresses fail to elicit the anticipated response, no wonder that the news so often elicits the response “same same.”

On the basis of the above observation you could conclude that the truthfulness of the news that all kinds of media convey is susceptible to serious doubt; the only news you therefore end up trusting are your bodily sensations, what you see and feel and hear; everything mediated is susceptible to doubt.  Whose word do you trust? Family, friends & then there are those who take the Bible literally.

To above cited reasons to distrust the news are then added instances when the government, not just a corporation, has lied to you, to the public. Propaganda.  Propaganda in an Orwellian world.  And has lied for generations. And in the most important matters of war and peace.

In addition, keep in mind the human propensity to deny unpleasant news, for denial, for wishful thinking, for fantasy, for misunderstanding.

Thus, shocking as it continues to be, it is not all that surprising that a demagogue might succeed in devaluing truthful news by screaming “fake” at everything that is critical of him and that disagrees with his views, and have his followers act as his chorus; although, I must say, it continues to surprise that such a major onslaught, even on the most obvious of truths, should find such a wide responsiveaudience. Dommage. And yet another factor comes into play: How much available time exists for the average working stiff to obtain, dwell on and possibly check the truthfulness of the news, local, national, international? Should there be doubt as to a story’s truthfulness how long will it take, on average, to verify – not all that much, say, of a local warehouse fire, although there may be residual doubt as to the fire’s source.  A national story will take hours to track.  Imagine being eighteen years old: how long will it take to have a fair idea of the whys and wherefores of the sixteen-year old Afghanistan war, whose origin dates to Carter/Brzezinski’s destabilization to draw in the stupid Russian bear, the Soviets; that is, to the Cold War. Dwell on the long, propaganda-filled stretches that you need to traverse in this Orwellian world to reach something approximating truth!  Think about the news sources! For example, here in Seattle we have but a single newspaper, it aggregates its out of town news, mostly from AP, Blomberg, McClatchey & the New York Times; two weekly local news sheets of the Village Voice type;  a few T.V. stations whose news output scarcely differs; some variants in cable and radio news and commentary;  a locust plague of info-bits on social media if you choose to expose yourself to it;  a number  of  political and civil interest blogs.  

   

  

A COMMENT ON TIMOTHY SNYDER + REICHSTAGSFIRE

 . SNYDER 

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/26/reichstag-fire-manipulating-terror-to-end-democracy/

Professor Snyder’s salutary reminder how governments can take dictatorial control ought not to have left out Hitler’s icing of the cake of his assumption of complete power, the "Night of the Long Knives",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

which ought, actually, not feature such a darkly romantic label but be known as the "Days of preventive, competitive, vengeful mass executions & murder" and  was acually enacted during the course of a long weekend & was what led Brecht to draw the accurate parallel between Chicago style gangster execution for his "The Evitable Rise of Artuto Ui," and has been an event close to my heart since the grandfather on my mother's side, Werner von Alvensleben 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Alvensleben

not only topped  Hitler’s hitlist but was featured by Hitler’s speech that sought to justify these events; namely, that “a certain Herr von A.” had been about to have the Potsdam garrison 

http://www.preussenweb.de/potsdam2.htm

have him Hitler depose as part of a coup. 

 No such coup unfortunately was in the works, nor was Colonel a.d. von A,, ex-go-between Chancellor Schleicher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Schleicher

& Hitler, in the positiont to do anything of the kind, but Opa A. had made a joke to that effect, as he had made fun of Hitler, the one time that he had H. for lunch, clowning around, instead of poisoning him, about H.’s evident ambition, reminding Hitler, to his chagrin, of Napoleon’s fate at the gates of Moscow - a lunch of which I came to know that his wife, my grandmother, subsequent to the lunch saying “that she just as soon not have the gentleman for lunch again.” Hitler, at the time that the “Long Knives,”  certainly had all the reasons in the world to be paranoid that justified vengence for any number of matters might be near, as paranoia characterized Hitler’s life. 

Opa A. was fortunate to have one of the organizers of the murder spree, Count von Helldorf, who himself was executed subsequent to the 20th of July attempt on Hitler’s life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-Heinrich_Graf_von_Helldorff

suggest that he spend the weekend at his hunting lodge, whereupon he was arrested and condemned to death, a sentence that was commuted to a life sentence which, however, appears to have allowed occasional stretches of freedom, for otherwise he would not have been present at my 4th birthday and Christmas & provided the occasion for the most major of my screen memories in my memoir Screen Memories

http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2016/11/screen-memory-i.html

 or re-appear two weeks after VE 1945, liberated by the American army, after four different concentration camps stints, at our place outside Bremen, apparently spry & full of jokes, although, having been tortured, he refused to take off his shirt before his wife or his daughters. But my favorite story among many features the time that he was beaten at Buchenwald. The KaPo asked him whether he, Herr von A. still classified people, whereupon Opa replies yes he did, and that there existed three classes;there was the class of those who were in jail, there was the class of those who had been in jail, and then there was the third class of those who were going to jai, and “to that third class, my dear fellow” is the one to which you belong - where the “my dear fellow” is the one time that aristocratic disdain seems justified, as it is to the spawn of Roy Cohn & McCarthy who calls himself President of the United States.

-- 

*http://moravian-nights-discussion.blogspot.com/2016/08/main-moravian-night-discussion-page.html
<http://moravian-nights-discussion.blogspot.com/2016/08/main-moravian-night-discussion-page.html>*

*http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
<http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name>*

*https://twitter.com/mikerol69 <https://twitter.com/mikerol69>*

 http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/12/provisional-obituary-on-reaching-eighty.html

<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/12/provisional-obituary-on-reaching-eighty.html>*

*http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hub-navel-to-todos-handke.html/magazin.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hub-navel-to-todos-handke.html/>*

*http:/ <http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>**/​
<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>**artscritic.blogspot.com/
<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>*

*http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2
<http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2>*

*http://www.workliterarymagazine.com/submission/michael-roloff-6302014/
<http://www.workliterarymagazine.com/submission/michael-roloff-6302014/>*

*http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
<http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/>*

*Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society*

*"MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS! +* *THE FIREPLUG OF
FILIALITY REINSURE YOUR BUNGHOLE!" **{J. Joyce}*

THE U.S. OF A MUST BE THE MOST FUCKED UP COUNTY EVER

 THE U.S. OF A MUST BE THE MOST FUCKED UP COUNTY EVER.
WE HAVE REVERED MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS SUCH AS REAGAN AND BUSH AND CHENEY,
&
BLOW-BACK FOR IMPERIAL WARS
&
A PRESIDENT WHO HAS THROWN THOUSANDS OF WORKERS OUT OF WORK, FAILED TO PAY 100 OF MILLIONS IN TAXES BECAUSE HE’S SUCH A GOOD BUSINESSMEN,
 THE FOLKS WHOSE CRIMES CAUSED A RECESSION THAT COST MILLIONS THEIR HOMES & LIVELIHOODS & SAVINGS NOW ARE MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNMENT
&
ASSHOLE # 1
GETS FOLKS TO WORRY ABOUT NON EXISTENT UP--TICK IN IMMIGRANT CRIME IN SWEDEN - AND THAT IS WHERE THE GNATS ATTENTION IS NOW!
BRAVO YOU FINE PEOPLE FOR HAVING BEEN TAKEN, YOUR ATTENTION & YOUR VERY BEING. 

--

 Michael Roloff  [as "Summa.Politico"]
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society



"Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno}
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben}
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante}
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.}

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

OBAMA VERDICT

OBAMA VERDICT

As African-American intellectuals say:
“A great house-nigger!” I say, Jamie Dimon’s best of the kind. “Yes we can” “stay the same,” - the same old same same - we keep the criminal national security & economic team & of course don’t prosecute, god forbid the  thought, only prosecute truth-leakers, we exercise discretion, we are the smoothest killer from Chicago ever & the idea of putting Old Ossama bin on trial gives us hives, Terror Tuesday tries to avoid wedding parties full of Jihadists as foul meat is with maggots, let’s think of Jihadists a maggots, yes. The only war we pursue is the one the New York Times also wants me to: black sheep in Afghanistan; the biggest mistake we admit is Libya, letting HRC talk us into liberating Libya. Welcome Isis! We made a sensible treaty with the Mullahs in Iran, we instituted half of a health plan for an ungrateful people, we are well spoken, we have a pretty wife and two pretty daughters, and a good enough tan to protect against some of the consequences of the destabilization of the environment, and there, too, we did the best we could, under the usual ideal circumstances. What astonishes me most is that a sensible agenda should have engendered.... such unanimous Pooplikan opposition. What - in many ways - such a dreadful country this is!