The Pathway to the Fall of U.S. Power

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  1. Nature of Reality

Consider two of the seven principles of biocentrism, an ethical point of view that extends inherent value to all living things:

First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves consciousness.

Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be separated. (Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza, MD, with Bob Berman, 2009)

The first principle suggests that an observer affects what is observed, brings it to life.

The second says that what we are observing, the object of our observation, is literally determined by the observer’s internal perceptions — the external and the internal are associated, interlaced, connected.

And a third principle yet suggests that without the presence of an observer, particles and objects remain in the undetermined state of probability. That is, all is probability until someone brings an object to life through observations that are meshed with internal perceptions. We create the world we see, the world we want.

“Men make their own histories,” says Edward Said, in Orientalism, followingVico. “That what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities — to say nothing of historical entities — such locales, regions, geographical sectors as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made.”

These principles have everything to do with the fall of empires — we’ve perceived.

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The Authoritarian Man

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If by now you’re still unsure whether the White House is moving forcefully towards vicious totalitarianism then you haven’t been paying attention.

Some have gotten the message, though, and interpret it as a license to punish, dehumanize, and demoralize. This is essential for The Authoritarian Man, who finds security in obedience.

Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. Jewish centers in Albuquerque; Baltimore; Birmingham, Ala.; Milwaukee; and Wilmington, Del., have reported repeated threats; jarring graffiti of swastikas have been reported on some college campuses as well as the New York City subway. Two Indian engineers were shot in Kansas. According to the New York Times’s John Eligon, Alan Blinder, and Nida Najar, “It raised new alarms about a climate of hostility toward foreigners in the United States, where President Trump has made clamping down on immigration a central plank of his ‘America first’ agenda.”

A feces swastika was found in a gender-neutral bathroom at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Southern Poverty Center reports that hate groups have increased for a second year following Trump’s election. The Center also reports that, “Comparing the language of Breitbart commenters to the language of the most aggressive far-right extremists online — e.g. language used by Twitter users who advocate for violence against minorities and are openly pro-Nazi — we can see a clear trend of increasing similarity over a three-year period, the bulk of it under Bannon.”

Questions: What is The Idea of Justice in a New World (Order)?

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What has happened to justice? How do we — today, now — perceive justice?

I sense that what has lead us to this strange, historical moment is our confusion about justice, our reluctance to struggle for a definition. We’ve instead become comfortable with injustice.

Is justice that elusive? Is it too difficult to define, too arbitrary? Is justice relegated to the eye of the beholder, justice for one an injustice for others? Is humanity normalized by injustice?

Or maybe it’s that injustice everywhere parades as justice and this is what we’ve become used to.

I want to know what justice looks like because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it. Have you? Do you know what it is?

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One Nation, Divided by Education & the 2016 Presidential Quagmire

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Apartheid Education

Apartheid Education

Education — with a capital E — has effectively divided the nation. Education has been eating away at the fiber of this country for quite some time. This is quite obvious when examining the 2016 Presidential Election. Yet, Education is not being held accountable for the mess we’re in; it’s getting a pass.

We can get a sense of this by looking, first, at popular media. Second, we can see how obstructionist our Education system really is, and the consequences.

Bill Maher calls Trump supporters idiots. “What we learned,” Maher tells CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, “is that there’s a lot of vulgar, tacky, racist people in this country, more than I thought…A basket of deplorables.”

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How We Got Into The Mess We’re In : The Moon Illusion & the Question of Thermonuclear War

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“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1839-1840)


We are more at home with illusion than we are with the reality before us. It seems quite natural for us to walk away from facts when they don’t support our illusions — and our emotional attachments to them. Our minds and our eyes always fool us. We even reject the notion that they do — a catch 22 if there ever was one.

Consider this: Why does the moon look so much bigger when it is near the horizon?

Most scientists agree that the reason the moon looks bigger is purely in our minds. Our mind interprets the things we see in interesting ways.

Like facts.

One theory about the moon illusion says that when the moon is near the horizon we perceive it to be farther away from us than when it is high in the sky. But since the moon is actually the same size, our minds make it look bigger when it is near the horizon to compensate for the increased distance.

Like danger.

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Star Wars Civilization & Stone Age Emotions

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Star Wars

That’s who we are … We could very well be a developing country.

Take a look: we are all getting our new credit cards with computer chips, something that has been long in coming.

Have you tried using your card, though?

I routinely walk to a counter, see the chip-enabled card reader, and when I go to use it, I’m met with this halting remark by the cashier (that we have cashiers, still, is another matter): “Wait. No. It doesn’t work. Please slide your card instead.”

What?

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Welcome to the Age of Knowledge: How Propaganda Has Moved Us From the Information Age, Into New Challenges & (Potentially?) a Renaissance

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The Big Short

The Big Short

It’s instructive to begin with Barry Blitt’s March 28, 2016, New Yorker cover, “The Big Short,” because it conflates three central ideas critical to our discussion: Donald Trump’s deep anxiety about the size of his fingers — and something else, our age’s latest, desperate attempt to try and determine our future by hyperbolic palm reading — disconcerted flailing as we transition into the challengingAge of Knowledge — and the latest, eye-opening film directed by Adam McKay, The Big Short, based on the book by the same name written by Michael Lewisabout the financial crisis of 2007–2008, which was triggered by the build-up of the housing market and the economic bubble.

No one has said this, so let me be the first: Donald Trump is a manifestation of an age that has run its course. There you have it.

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Why We Deserve Donald Trump/Drumpf as President

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Donald Trump/Drumpf & Benito Mussolini

The United States has been flirting, if not downright chasing after, fascism for quite some time. Donald Trump/Drumpf is the final manifestation of this inclination towards despotism. Historically, our entire system has been moving in this direction.

Here, I’ll show you…

There have already been some intelligent articles written about the fascistic leanings of Donald Trump/Drumpf, which I will briefly point to and summarize but by way of showing the part of the argument that’s missing: namely that US flirtations with fascism are directly related to a merciless socio-economic system that stratifies, marginalizes, and silences many, to the point of creating large swathes of invisible, voiceless people; out of such mayhem and loss, a fascist will rise and in a language the imperceptible can understand, the language of violent change through overthrow.

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