Posts Tagged ‘politics’
A World of Imagination
What a world we live in,
what manifest destiny we have wrought.
This world stands on the brink,
the knife’s edge poised for oblivion.
The scales balanced carefully,
our future’s fate at stake…
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What we face are a set of principles, mutually exclusive, that guide our decisions; all of them.
On one hand, we have the sturdy band of rationalists who have throughout history been committed to inquiry, to reason, and to fact.
Yet on the other hand there is a different sort of rationale, one wholly committed to the heart (as opposed to the head). We see its definition every day. Individuals with utter conviction spewing complete nonsense; and one could hardly dispute that it is pure rubbish! These people, whole-heartedly insistent, refuse to acknowledge exceptionally reasonable science, psychology, sociology and the like, on the grounds of belief.
A More Sinister Realpolitik
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has been grabbing headlines over the past few months for being a bit of a loud-mouth and spilling the beans on the GOP’s master stroke to “defeat” Obama (meaning that Republican interests do not align with health care and labor reform, among other things, so the public interest must be aggressively impeded). His flippant remarks earned him a deserved tongue-lashing from the president and others who are trying to fix the problems that politicians like DeMint helped to create and perpetuate.
If that were not already enough, did you know that Sen. DeMint is also a member of a covert Christian political organization that has influenced global politics since the 1930s? Recently outed congressional adulterer John Ensign (R-NV) and Argentine-mistress-entertainer/taxpayer-defrauder South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (the stoic King David himself) are also members of this theocratic nightmare. Sounds crazy, I know; Jeffrey Sharlet, co-author of Killing the Buddha and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine and Rolling Stone, has been following this secretive political organization since 2002, and his work “undercover” within The Family — as the group is called — was published in book form last year, titled The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Sharlet has made a number of appearances on MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s show; go to the Daily Kos to watch his interview from last week: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/29/185647/053/.
Book description of The Family contained after the jump.
The Power of Fraternite
The Power of Fraternite
by Ryan Georgioff
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In the time it will take me to write this piece, it is likely that hundreds, if not thousands of women will be sexually assaulted.
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As an afterthought to my previous piece, “Viva” (which, if you have not read it yet, you should peruse before proceeding any further), I stumbled upon another insightful point regarding the human search for power and its derivatives.
Within the footnotes of “Viva” I noted both the definition and implications of the word “ally.” To save us both time, the essential logic I presented was that if our allies were friends, we would call them friends; considering that human language represents a kind of verbal contract between its users, we necessarily must all agree that “ally” does not equal “friend,” just as “tree” does not equate with “bush,” though some of their fundamental components are related.
Similarly I came to consider the word “fraternity,” and if it would not be too much trouble I encourage you to find its definition now. Its origins are masculine, and this is seen within the modern Greek system at colleges and universities, though the female counterpart of a fraternal twin might feel a bit excluded by these linguistic parameters. Regardless, my interest in this word stems from that same interest in alliance (and concomitantly: gang, band, party, and nation).
