How To Live, What To Do

As Plato knew, following Pythagorus, the Enlightened Ones are those who see the shadows on the wall for what they are. The revolution will not be televised. Every individual who drops out and makes tea is one more for our side. The happy idiots struggling for the legal tender believe the shadow play on the flat screen. We should do what we can to shake them out of their somnambulism, but we must accept the fact that most of manunkind grazes in what the great Ibn Khaldun called "the pasture of stupidity." We wish them well, but we must keep moving on. There's something happening here and Mr. Jones just doesn't know what it is. But Mr. Smith might. Or Ms. Khalil. And we must speak the truth to one and all. Disturb the sleep of the somnambulant, enter communion with the Awake. And, in this way, redeem the time.

A Leftist in City Hall?

Swing back, sweet pendulum...

State of the Nation

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 17.

In a society such as ours, the "all volunteer" military is composed, mainly, of the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire, though there are certainly barbarians in the ranks and the occasional republican and, perhaps, even a few coupon-clippers moved by a sense of honor and the spirit of adventure.

To understand the state of our nation, skip Presidential speechifying and read Tacitus and Gibbon.

Time for a New "New Deal"

Only this time, take off the gloves with the bankers and the militarized corporatocracy.

And the People Bowed and Prayed...

to the neon gods they made...

Pretzel Logic