This is a third installment in a trilogy of videos. To view it or any of the videos in this recent series click on the title of the video. The link does not seem to show up as a different color.
This particular video (that was the title, go ahead and click on it) is about the way we actually celebrated this special event in the lives of my parents.
I hope you enjoy it, there are a lot of scenes of local color for those who want to know me better.
This post has been edited after some delay from its original condition but not all that much. It still keeps a kind of unfocused and compound structure and still preserves in most passage the point of view of the time it was written. However, this first paragraph is entirely from October of 2015, while the rest is from May of 2013. Today it is easy to see that mass shootings across the United States, crises in Syria and related to Syria, bad relations with Russia and the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will be among the trends and events for which the second Obama term is remembered. In addition it is also true that Amanda Know has finally been acquitted of almost all serious charges in truly final hearing. This does not answer all issues related to her case. Did she murder the woman and were false approaches a cause for a confusion that could never be overcome? Was there a ritual element that did or did not involver her or her boyfriend in any way? I assume and hope that she is as innocent as she now stands declared. I hope that she can go on with her life. But at the time I wrote this I was upset at the way connections were made and the way that paths were pursued. Italy is now retrying a woman executed for witchcraft 300 years ago. I do not believe there are no witches nor do I believe that none of them deserve to be prosecuted. I was very angry about the Amanda Knox prosecution because I did not believe a good case was made that she was a woman who was in fact a devotee of ritual murder. I also mentioned the heavy rockets and now we are seeing a real interest in exploring Mars related to current missions reporting from their and related to the fame of The Martian. A longer time has passed since I advocated planning to colonize the Moon and Mars. But the reasons to consider such a course are not less compelling.
So we now begin the more lightly edited section of this version of this post. I abandon the readers and history to the point of view that I had at that time. For many people it appears that all times seem largely alike even though new situations are always arising. Many people constantly say almost the same exact things about larger events than those in their own lives and some constantly revisit the same rhetoric for describing their personal situations. For me and for some others it is perhaps truer to say that each time is a bit different even though the situation in it are somewhat familiar and reminiscent or predictive of past and future situations. So this is a kind of transition paragraph between where I am now and where I was then in my thinking. From here down little has been changed but the formatting of a few lines. I can find in the lines below a view of who I was and what I was thinking a bit over two years ago.
For example in summing up the first weekend in May of 2013 for me I could write: “ My nephew won his first boxing bout at a scored tournament while others of us in his family, including me, have been absorbed in other matters. My call of congratulations missed him while he was out serving at Mass. Old friends have arrived from the Philippines to celebrate a big occasion with our family and my parents met them at the airport. My brother Joseph is celebrating a birthday a couple of days early. The weather is spectacular here in south Louisiana.” This exact mix of circumstances seems pretty unique to me.
This piece will be a bit longer than my average piece. Those who read my stuff frequently will know that I am interested in the dates on the calendar and what holidays are being observed and what seasons are in play from nature and the various political and cultural institutions of our time. For example as I have been working on this essay the Greek Orthodox Christians celebrated the Feast of Christ’s Resurrection. I have also noted that other things like the coming of The Great Gatsby have been going on. More personally, I have put up two videos in anticipation of the celebration of a family event. Lastly, I have mentioned the struggle I have experienced with allergy season. This is a time like any other when I am in synch with some things and out of synch with some other things. In recent years and over the course of my lifetime the media has been on occasion filled with the violent deaths of people on such occasions as the President Kennedy Assassination, the Martin Luther King Assassination, the Bobby Kennedy Assassination, Jonestown massacre, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Rodney King Riots, the Waco Branch Davidian conflagration, Ruby Ridge raid, Colombine High School Shootings, the 9/11 Attacks Fort Hood Shooting, Colorado Dark Knight Shooting, The Newton Sandy Hook Shooting and the Boston Marathon Bombings. In addition to these violent episodes I think of all those I have known who have died suddenly and violently without so much media or public recognition. Many of them were pretty well covered in regional or local media but not at the center of the entire national discussion.
I have felt some sense of doing something important to myself at least as in recent weeks I have prepared and posted two of my intended trilogy of videos related to the fiftieth wedding anniversary of my parents. They represent and preserve in very brief form a kind of narrative and description of a story that I believe is important and certainly is important to me. As for the general tone and view point of the two video, I stand by them and they are in my opinion both true and authentic. Both emphasize the positive and good aspects of fifty years which have been just a bit longer than my own life and have been the single most significant influence on my own life. In this essay I am going to take a moment to reflect on both what my own life and point of view are and how I am seeing the life ahead of me – however short or long it may be.
The word English word critic and related words such as critique, criticize and critical come from Greek κριτικός (kritikós), “able to discern”, which is a Greek derivation from the word κριτής (krités), which means roughly “a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis”. It is unclear whether there is any connection to a man named Crito and the Dialogue in Plato’s Dialogues or (Dialogs) named for Crito – The Crito. This is the last of the dialogs or conversations about philosophy in the life of Socrates. He is executed at the end of it and the pending execution forms the basic framework of the conversation. Crito is certainly both critical of Socrates for his refusal to resist execution by fleeing from prison with his assistance and he is criticized by Socrates for what he says. Thus it could be the character is given the name Crito by Plato (or fabricated with the name Crito –not everyone accepts that the dialogs are based on fact) or it could be that they try to live up to his name in the tone of their conversation. Also, despite some texts seeming to indicate that the word existed before Socrates it may be that this is a gloss by some ancient clerks and that the word came into Greek in honor of the death of the great gadfly and the actions of his companion. One is reminded of the conversation between Peter and Jesus regarding Jesus going up to Jerusalem to face crucifixion which follows upon Jesus declaring Peter’s role as Rock and precedes the mystical peak of the Transfiguration. When Jesus foretells his condemnation by the leaders of his own people and crucifixion by the Romans Peter is eager to persuade him to change his plans to avoid these horrible events. Jesus tells Peter (as retold in Mark 9 and Matthew 16) that he is in this instance “Satan” – opposing God’s will. So Crito criticizes the legal system to which Socrates has been a devoted citizen subject. When one comes across Jesus and Socrates one is reminded that not only they but quite a few other people have been very serious about things. It is a fact we can sometimes forget. While people often use the term pundit for people who comment on politics and events I think that I am by many measures more of a critic than anything else as regards the sort of writing I do in Facebook Notes and Blog Posts. Perhaps like Crito and Peter that criticism is often born of a sense of resentment for the way things are turning out and the costs involved. However, in the case of both Jesus and Socrates both were men who spent years being largely critical of others, of institutions, of laws and of sacred customs. Each intended to bring about change and each on did contribute to vast webs and ripples of change across space and time. Both were executed. In each case this had at least something to do with their own criticisms of the status quo.
Crito (Ancient Greek: Κρίτων) is a short but important dialogue by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It is a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy associate Crito regarding justice (δικη). The men gathered in the cell or chamber where Socrates awaits his poisoned cup also converse in a disciplined manner in the same dialogue about injustice (αδικια), and the appropriate response to injustice. The truth is that it is more than just possible to empathize in both these cases of ancient teachers being killed with the opponent and critic beside them. Even such an unusual modern reader as myself readily wants to see a form of justice that does not require killing Socrates and a divine plan that does not require Jesus’s death. In the case of the Athenian philosopher Socrates thinks that justice cannot be repaid with injustice and two wrongs don’t make a right either. What that means is that when Crito offers to use money and influence to help Socrates escape execution the philosopher will not accept this and argues that he has been nurtured and lived under the Laws of Athens and should be willing to die by them as well. His duties to his family, friends, reputation and other matter Crito brings up to criticize his plan of accepting death are not relevant. He ends by having his disciples pay the sacrificial chicken he owes to a certain god. Part of human life is to face death and to try to find a way to face one’s own death well. Of course facing life is no easy task either.
I am not a hypochondriac but in addition to my health problems I have most of the problems which are experienced by those afflicted with a myriad of merely imagined diseases. I have been exposed to many horrible diseases and do not even have the resources to screen for which ones I might or might not have contracted. I am really stuck in a new way in my life despite the fact that it is a life in which being stuck has been a big motif all along. It may be that I was simply always going to be someone who negotiated a deal for something I did not much like rather than seeing life as a realization of hopes and dreams. It certainly appears that such an outcome is an ever more foregone conclusion. I am writing about this and wondering whether to try to continue on with anything else that I am doing online after my upcoming birthday. It seems to me that June 15, 2013 is a time to perhaps admit that I have done almost and at least nearly all I can do and it has brought me to a place that has nothing much to offer me anymore.
I am at a place in my life where it is possible and perhaps inevitable that I confront and analyze where life has brought me. It is a good time to take a moral inventory and also to try to define my own motivations. I also think that America is still at a place of crisis…
I am going to try to explain where I have come by some of the basic components and qualities of my point of view in this post. I think that there is not so much a need for this as there is a possibility that such an action could be useful.
Two Major Sources of My Critical Point of View and their Consequences
Problems of the Opposition
I take a critical position and have a critical point of view partly because I often oppose the politics of those in leadership in my own country. Partly, oppose the politics of those in leadership in my own country because I have already undertaken critical commitments.
Many people are more “oppositional” in much of their behavior than I have ever been. Jails, mental hospitals and cemeteries around the world are filled in part by people who acted more rashly and directly in opposing the order of things around them than I ever have. Yet, I have long and often opposed many of the powers at work in this world. Certainly I consider myself a more pronounced political opposition than either major party in these United States faces in the other party. Opposition has a high cost and is tiring. When one has confronted many opposing forces on behalf and in defense of one’s church and then other opponents in one’s church there is a cost in that. When one has confronted many opposing forces on behalf and in defense of one’s country and then other opponents in one’s country there is a cost in that. When one has confronted many opposing forces on behalf and in defense of one’s ethnic affiliations and then other opponents in one’s ethnic affiliations there is a cost in that. When one has confronted many opposing forces on behalf and in defense of one’s former political party and then other political party in one’s church there is a cost in that. I am not alone in having paid all of those varied costs. However, not nearly everybody has paid such costs.
I think that a certain amount of conflict is simply part of human nature. I do believe that my own nature is more imbued with a propensity to conflict than most human natures. But I have been in a number of situations that have heightened that aspect of my life… It was never really likely that I would wear a uniform of any military or police organization and I never have. But if I had done so then perhaps my life would make more sense from a variety of points of view. The closes I ever came to adding that kind of public and rational disclosure to my life’s history was a prolonged episode involving the Central Intelligence Agency known by its initials the C.I.A. or the CIA. This organization is the largest American civilian intelligence agency the position and structure of which have been reformed more often than other agencies. It lacks the kind of institutional support which the military can bring to its own agencies. Like a lot of people I grew up fascinated with spy movies and television shows. Twice before I was eighteen I met someone overseas whom I interacted with and who may well have been with the CIA. When I was sixteen years old I published a long letter to the editor in The Morning Star a Roman Catholic newspaper objecting to the draft and then going further. I had lots of reasons but as time went on felt that perhaps I had closed off a career that might be my best channel for my particular talents. In an onging process of figuring things out I applied to the Central Intelligence Agency while in college, seeking a career as an operative. I spoke with my wife, went through several phone interviews and was sent a first application. It was sort of approved and I was sent a second application and for it I got a recommendation from then US Senator John Breaux. This was sort of accepted and I was scheduled for initial testing and I sort of passed. Then I signed a confidentiality agreement of some kind for whatever happened thereafter. I cannot say more than that there were head games involved and I would describe my connections with the agency as just enough to endanger my friends and associates overseas by association and not nearly enough to get paid and supported.
I have spent a lot of time in places where there was conflict but I also have spent a lot of time alone in my room, at a picnic table in a park or elsewhere – reading, writing or using a computer’s keyboard or mouse. Solitude has defined my life as much as any conflict has and as much as the whole of conflict in my life has as well. These themes of conflict and solitude define my life in distinction and contrast to whatever themes of community and family there may be as well. Like a good number of people who write a lot I am fairly interested in myself. People tend to be interested in where there daily bread comes from and in the years when I taught, wrote, did outside sales or a number of other things for a living my daily bread seemed to come mostly from my own inner resources. So in writing and in other parts of my life, self absorption has been another theme which has been in contrast and distinction to themes of community and family in my life. Yet is all of this enough to describe whatever sense of alienation I have? Do the reasons for alienation matter much?
Just as I am posting this essay my parents have begun a series of events celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary, which actually falls on the Thirteenth of May. It pleases me that we have in some sense been able as a family to fully mark the occasion. It is a milestone each of my parents saw their own parents reach. I could easily devote all my energy to reflecting on and writing about that huge portion my life which is purely personal or familial. Given the joys and the difficulties this event occasions for me internally and objectively I could write a full note about that and not bother writing about the many social, cultural and political things I write about in this note. It is more dangerous to criticize the government than it used to be according to many analysts. I am not sure that is true, it seems many people criticize it and survive now and many people have been punished by third parties and varied public means for criticizing it since the start of the republic. But despite that reality of continuous risk I know I have already paid a price and risk paying a greater price. Yet I do choose not only to discuss events and trends but to criticize and oppose. I choose to state my grievances on many matters. My own life would provide plenty to write about, however, I am still compelled to address national and global matters in these posts.
For me the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of these United States of America was a signal that the time had come for me to expend the very little energy and resourcefulness which I could devote to criticism in criticizing a man who would make already intolerable prospects of this country much worse and do so much more quickly. I still think that was an appropriate reaction to his election. But this note will not be in the same vein as most of the others I have written. This note will be largely about better aspects of the Obama Presidency.
I find myself writing this note from a position in a set of circumstances I could not have predicted. The fact that I am not feeling well is a small part of that unforeseen circumstance. The fact that I cannot afford to deal with the misery of allergy season effectively through any of many effective means (not all of them purely medical) and do engage in a tiresome and expensive struggle this time of year has social implications. Countless people have suffered far worse health conditions than I have and still do every day. Yet, I can look back on all the many bad days in my life as well as the good ones and know that I was often heavily burdened when I was undertaking things that would still have been a great challenge if I had not been burdened. It can seem at times as though my life has always been a combination of the effects of living in a society in decay, being personally ill used and struggling to maintain my health in adverse conditions. Yet I know there have been good times as well. So it is with Obama’s Presidency, it may turn out that serious wrongs come to be connected to him in time for which he shall be held responsible – yet he has not been as bad a President as could be. I want to discuss what has been better than the worst possible case…
I have been among Barack Obama’s most committed and harshest critics since the day he was elected President. In general that will continue until he is out of office or I am unable to criticize him. However, I have on occasion praised this or that decision he has made and this or the other thing he has done. In addition I have written a great many times that he did not personally create any number of problems and bad behaviors for which I hold him responsible. I am going to dedicate this essay appearing as a post or note to putting forth some balance as regards Obama. Balance is not the same as truth. This does not change our fundamentally polemic pose towards one another’s positions and even persons. This is simply a matter of balancing the record of things I have chosen to write about President Barack Hussein Obama. Even in this essay it will be necessary to include some critical remarks but I want to address areas where I will clarify things I have written before.
I am going to address five areas where I think Barack Hussein Obama has done a better job than my harshest rhetoric would suggest. I am going to mention three reasons why I have had to oppose him that do not reflect so badly upon him or even his presidency as some of the other reasons I have for my opposition.
Where I think Barack Hussein Obama has done better than I warned
Privatizing Heavy Lift Rocketry
Whatever bad things may have been happening in the space program the heavy lift rocketry program is not as badly off as I suggested it might be by now. His decision may be as good as any has been lately. SpaceX and the Antares rocket system are both promising developments.
It may be that Elon Musk and others are going to bring America surely and not so slowly into a better position in terms of the space industry than we have been in and do so with sufficient speed to make a difference. I think there is a lot wrong with the space industry and with US space programs but I think things are better than they had appeared to me to be and better than I had indicated in some of my early writings. In addition scramjet technology is advancing whether despite Obama or not. These things matter a great deal to me. I believe the space industry is essential to human hope. Obama may have done less to kill it and more to help it than I have given him credit for up until now.
Avoiding Directly Inciting Social Unrest
I have seen a change in America sense Barack Hussein Obama became President of the United States and it has empowered a flagrancy of violence and anti-social behavior as I predicted. It is also true that his rhetoric is often of the type which undermines the coherence of this society and puts a great deal at risk. I never said he would directly incite total social chaos and upheaval – inever implied that either. However, he has in fact been averse to sacrificing all the advantages of the presidency to be a mere demagogue. It is not a very big difference but he has done better than the overall tone of my remarks and predictions would suggest.
Personal Racial Sensitivity
There has been some discontinuity for the better between the Obama who was elected and the President. In some small degree he has been more fair-minded and lucid about racial issues and above all has not been continuously in the habit of evoking his blackness as a matter of shaping the discourse in public around the White House. The difference is not total but he has done better than some of my more extreme writing might have seemed to predict that he would.
Sustained Systemic Attacks on Constitutional Governance
While Obama has not been a great model of either reverence for the constitution or effectiveness in dealing with the constitutional machinery and political realities of governance he has not completely given up the effort to govern legitimately. I never said he would by this point or ever in so many words. However, I have suggested that he is a truly hostile force as regards our national well-being. In time history may be written that shows most of my worst fears are true or such history may not be be written. Then it will be up to others to see how correct such histories are anyway. For the moment, however, Obama is still acting as President and not something else. I suggested that his greatest harm had little to do with this issue and I still say so but he is at least acting as a President for now.
Confronting BP and Not Reconfiguring the Economic System
The Obama administration has done well in policing the BP disaster in the Gulf overall. One cannot doubt that many administrations would have done worse. I do not approve of every decision he has made but I do think he has enforced the laws we have and has not made a strong public push for some radical new solution like nationalizing BP. Overall, he has handled this crisis fairly well and his administration and legacy have both benefitted from his good work in this regard.
These sorts of overstatements are part of the cost of being a critic. They are not without impact on me or my long-term credibility and they are not entirely avoidable. This has been typical of the long lasting and building cost of being me in my own country and in the world. My next formative influence shaping my point of view has to do with the experience of being an American abroad.
The Problems of American Identity
In addition to my problems in fitting in with the prevailing views of things in the United States I have lived much of my life outside the United States and have many associates in other countries. Some are American and some are not. American identity is not all good or all bad. It does not make everything better or make everything worse but it certainly creates an influence on all aspects of one’s interactions in life. We know of protest against Americans throughout much of the Moslem world, that North Korea has more or less made a religion of hating and despising America and fearing it as well. We ought to know vastly better than we do of the many times the British and the European Union snub and sideline Americans in the international affairs. But there is more to all of this than that. The attitudes and realities , manifest in the Italian scene as regards the Amanda Knox trial have a great deal to show us about the state of American Identity in places like Perugia, Italy.
I watched the broadcast of the Amanda Knox interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC on the last night of April 2013. In watching it I came to the experience as one who has been around jails, trials, law offices, police stations, hospitals and crisis outreach programs a good bit. I am not easily shocked and I know that law enforcement is a complicated and messy undertaking. It seemed that smoking pot and sleeping around was more alright with some Italians than others. There may well have been a web of racial, national and ethnic tensions in all this that we will never fully understand. But the Italian legal system has declared that Rudy Guede is guilty. This black man whose DNA is allegedly all over the crime scene is an Ivory Coast native raised in Perugia. He got a shorter sentence than the 26 years assigned to Amanda because he gave evidence against her and her boyfriend and in that trustful relationship with the police he also opted for a fast track trial. Rudy Guede does not seem to be closely connected with Amanda in any previous allegations or anecdotes and to have been at most on the very edge of her life. He was convicted in October 2008 of having sexually assaulted and murdered Kercher, and is currently serving a 16-year sentence. He could be out on parole before the Knox matter is resolved. It also seems that in the trauma of her initial questioning by police Amanda implicated the black man with an African name fro whom she worked and that she was partially or very stoned on Marijuana at the time. If she had nothing at all to do with the murder she seems unprepared to be Secretary of State – but that is not the question at hand.
In October 2011, Knox and Sollecito, who had both been in prison for years were released after both convictions were overturned at the second level trial. The language used in overturning their convictions was stronger than the bare minimum needed to effect the deed of setting them free. Perhaps that and the American press makes it hard for Italy to swallow the criticism of their system The liberating court’s official statement of their grounds for overturning the convictions included language by the judges stating that there was a “material non-existence” of evidence to support the guilty verdicts. The judges further stated that the prosecution’s theory of an association between Sollecito, Knox and Guede was “not corroborated by any evidence” and “far from probable”.[ The murder and subsequent events, especially Knox’s arrest and trial, received worldwide press coverage, often in the form of salacious tabloid reporting. Some observers criticized the media for not describing the case accurately and dispassionately, as they believed it could influence the court case. In March 2013 the appellate trial judgment was set aside by the Italian supreme court. Knox and Sollecito’s appeal will be reheard.
I felt that the case presented to her native country’s people by this young woman justified some response from me even though it comes at a time when I have many other things on my mind and in which I am more convinced than ever that the only way to address the issues presented in this or any of the many crises confronting America is to undertake broad and sweeping changes. I am sure that there are other people with things to say and write and they can do so. But I am in a quiet an rational way enraged, once I become enraged I usually remember the cause for the rest of my life. That does not contain and encapsulate all of my emotions related to this incident but it does describe my principal emotion as relates to this matter. Perhaps Amanda Knox is a Satanist priestess who lures black men into her apartment to kill her roommates brutally in sex games. But this seems unlikely. It seems so unlikely that I think it would be good for Italians to find out that despite the movies not all Americans who are violent are Italian-Americans or Black. There is no miraculous pass that applies to human scum who use the courts to vilify and savage a nation and construct absurdities.
If the courts are right so let it be seen. If not then it might be unlawful to say that I hope some of the real American underworld will reintroduce itself to Italy in time so they do not fantasize about dangerous Americans and go blaming a promiscuous tourist. So because it is unlawful I am not saying it in this blog post. It might be good for them to know there really are some people who are both bad guys and Americans – 100% both. However, our government really is made up of a bunch of sissies – I can’t argue against that perception much. There is no lower form of life than the kind of prosecutor who handled this case if in fact he was guided only by prejudice. And his prejudice is a threat to all Americans.
The facts of the case do not suggest that Amanda had anything to do with the case. The facts do suggest that Americans are a persecuted and hated minority in Italy. Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, a British university exchange student from Coulsdon, South London, roomed with Amanda Knox who did not flee the area or try to hide from the police or anyone else when her roommate was brutally murdered. Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was murdered in Perugia, Italy, on 1 November 2007 at the age of 21 and there was lots of blood and a man was found guilty of raping her. She was found dead on the floor of her bedroom in the dwelling she shared with Amanda who was out sleeping with her boyfriend and Kercher’s body was left to in plain connection with the place Knox lived as she was rendered lifeless by stab wounds to the throat. Amanda and her sex and drugs lifestyle that may offend some people in Italian justice did not appear to need to provide any motive. The motives appear to have been rape and robbery. Some of Kercher’s belongings were missing, including cash, two credit cards, two mobile phones, and her house keys. Italians were on the court that threw out her conviction and among others who worked for her but there seem to be many who felt it was alright to suggest that she was violent and abusive because she was an American. Somehow I think that if American bombers had laid waste Much of Italy more recently than the forties there would be fewer Italians who would blame our violence primarily on the pot-smoking girls who have sexual adventures in Italian cities with big tourism industries. Europeans have often had a hard time distinguishing forensic guilt and social undesirability – as have many other cultures. But Americans have to take this factor of anti-Americanism into account. It is a policy concern.
It seems that the United States does have an extradition treaty with Italy and so there is the very real question of whether or not Amanda Knox will have to return to Italy to stand trial. There is also the very real question as to whether or not she was involved in the murder of Meredith Kercher. The facts of the case are not entirely in dispute nor entirely agreed upon by the parties but it does seem right to identify the questions of the case as it relates to an American sheltering under our flag who has at least in part been singled out as an American for being an American abroad.
A good country would be putting Italy in pain. We are not a good country. We are sick and weak. If Amanda Knox is a murderer that does not answer the whole question, she is not likely the kind they say she is. Italy is not the most hostile country and it is not all their fault. We need to teach our daughters to represent better values abroad but we also need to stop lying to ourselves. Fewer people fear us and more despise us every year and we need to change our attitudes at home to change that reality abroad.
So while I have no connection to Amanda Knox, an American exchange student from a different region of America and value the life of her roommate Kercher I must say I presume my countrywoman has been horribly lied about. I also believe Knox’s then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian student, who was convicted at the initial stage of a two-level trial process deserves support from Americans. They were sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively and now they can be retried. I have paid a heavy price for what I perceive as very little of what it takes to make a decent life. There is no way for me to relax and cheer up. But while I am critical I am not happy to always be critical. I wish I could celebrate happily and with abandon far more often. I wish I got along better with more people and groups. But I am myself and will keep being myself – it is not likely to be a future of happy and easygoing getting along…
This is the second in what is intended to be a trilogy of videos honoring my the fiftieth wedding anniversary of my parents Frank Wynerth Summers and II Genie Gremillion Summers. I hope you enjoy watching it.
I think that I have had and continue to have a fairly unusual relationship to wealth and money. I am interested in American and other views of wealth when expressed in the arts of fiction and film. Movies life Blow, Scarface, The Godfather, Wall Street and Trading Places have all dealt with the connections between varied crimes and money in ways much more explicit than the way in which The Great Gatsby deals with these issues. We know Jay Gatsby is a bootlegger but neither his crimes nor the problems he may have with the police really happen “on camera” even in the novel. The more securely rich people in the novel drink a great deal of prohibited booze but Gatsby must have a grander house in the less fashionable West Egg because he is associated with the underworld. His extravagance is in part to get along with the influential people at his parties and avoid their prying eyes in the part of his life we do not see either. In an America dependent on sweatshop labor abroad, millions of undocumented workers in the USA and with untaxed industries from drugs, to internet sales of all kinds to much of the sex industry we have to ask if the equivalents of East Egg respectable rich people today are living in more or less of a fool’s paradise than the characters in The Great Gatsby. I have known lots of people rich and poor as well as people on both sides of the law and as I see our deficits soar and our social cohesion in trouble I do wonder about America’s relations to the people both like and unlike Gatsby in our own world. I am very far from being a Jay Gatsby myself but can relate to him in a number of ways as I imagine many can.
I see promise in a film coming out soon: http://thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com/
Leonardo Di Caprio and Carrie Mulligan will be seen in a new film adaptation of F. Scott FitzGerald’s The Great Gatsby in a few weeks. God willing, I hope to see it. I like the Robert Redford, Mia Farrow portrayal quite well. Yet I hope to and believe that I will like this Baz Lurhman directed film even better. I like reading Fitzgerald well enough. I am also a fan of movies and watch quite a few but this one is perhaps closer to the heart of some of Fitzgerald’s insights than many of his works were. There is less fantasy and more realism than in some of his short stories… Fitzgerald’s works and his relationship with Hemingway are among the defining products of modern American culture. The Great Gatsby is also a work which brings up the period of Prohibition and also the parts of that period which connected with the last glow of the Gilded Age. Perhaps an argument can be made that the Gilded Age which created the Newport Mansions transplanted to the best sites in Long Island where the fictional Gatsby lived, the Prohibition era in which he lived and the period in which Fitzgerald wrote form three acts of a continuous Jazz Age in America. So the story has some kind of real historical resonance. It is also about wealth in America. I want to spend a little time in this blog post discussing these aspects of the work and what it means to me…
I am looking at the book and the movie from a particular point of view. It is not an entirely original thing to view The Great Gatsby as standing for “Wealth as an Exploration of the Deeper Qualities of Life”. Fitzgerald was unusually interested in money and wealth compared to most writers. Jay Gatsby and Daisy are more than merely moneyed people but they are not less nor other than moneyed people. Class concerns are not reducible to money concerns but are not separate from them either. While F. Scott and Zelda dealt with money issues elsewhere in successful works this novel stands above the others. The Great Gatsby is probably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest and is greater in scope than any other of his writings that might be as fine a novel. This book offers what many find a damning and almost all readers find an insightful view of the American moneyed sets in the 1920s. A great deal of the very complex historical truth is woven into this wonderfully evocative American classic.
Hemingway was very interested in writers with whom he himself was contemporary. He was more interested in Fitzgerald in this regard than in most other writers such as Baroja y Nessi and Gertrude Stein who also came in for serious review by Hemingway in print and conversation. Hemingway said of Fitgerald as a writer that, “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings”.
Whatever Fitzgerald is saying it is how he says it which matters most. Typical of Fitzgerald’s prose Gatsby is able to use well-crafted language to convey details of setting, character and plot without getting lost in a great deal of excessive language, the books and stories which are sometimes about elegance are also often elegant. But elegance is never the primary manifestation of wealth in Fitzgerald’s works. He really did enjoy the society of the wealthy and enjoyed spending money. But he found the compulsions of excess in his own life and his wife’s life. Fitzgerald’s books are not usually called cinematic but he had a cinematic vision and worked much of his career as a Hollywood screenwriter. He claimed in an autobiographical piece to have made a good bit off of movies as early as 1920 and he saw it as part of his publishing income on which he depended. He and Zelda were notorious for not saving money and living in as high a style as their income would allow. Famously they went suddenly from making 20,000 dollars a year to making 36,000 dollars a year and with an enormous desire to set money aside found that they still saved nothing for the future and simply indulged a more expensive lifestyle when money came in and so it is not surprising he was not financially secure.
This personal way of life joined with the national economic situation in such a way that by the summer of 1937 was broke had a lifestyle that consumed lots of money and had made him very dependent on lots of alcohol. Facing these problems while in debt and discovering he could not readily dry out or control his own partying lifestyle he was ready to try something new. So he was going where money had come from before when F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood. He worked in the huge army of people little esteemed by the Hollywood elite who were the screenwriters. Fitzgerald was not alone in this trip to the California coasts and the work of writing for movies. Others who did their time in Hollywood were William Faulkner, Donald Ogden Stewart, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Nathanael West and the British novelists Anthony Powell and Aldous Huxley. The move helped most of these writers but none found it the supply of long-term easy money they were hoping for. Di Caprio and Mulligan have probably not seen many of the movies on which Fitzgerald labored during his two and a half years as a screenwriter. These movies included titles such as ”A Yank at Oxford” and ”Madame Curie.” In the early part of the last decade the University of South Carolina acquired a great deal of what remains of what Fitzgerald produced. There collection reveals something about the productivity of this man who never achieved real capital security in 2,000 pages of material — sketches, treatments, drafts, polishes, rewrites — much of it in soft-penciled longhand. This is called the Warner Brothers Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald Screenplays, is part of the Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection at the University of South Carolina’s Thomas Cooper Library in Columbia. Jay Gatsby with his war record, time at Oxford, chains of drug stores and fabulous home is not just a thug with money and is not quite part of the class with money in America which Daisy is born to even though American class systems are more porous than those in Europe. Fitzgerald could relate to Jay Gatsby in analogous ways although his novel’s protagonist does not seem to have troubles with fiscal solvency or alcoholism.
Jay Gatsby is like Fitzgerald to in that he is not conventional in many ways but is deeply in love with a woman he finds hard to have and hold as he moves forward in the life of a man. The fictional man and the author see other men keeping their women more easily and comfortably than they are able to and yet Zelda is not so much like Daisy and neither is the love of a sometimes desperate marriage really much like a long affair which for decades amounts to little more than a man desperate for a love remembered.
Tobey Maguire of the Spiderman franchise will have a significant role played in the Redford version by an actor America has since come to know in Law and Order. The new movie will have to respect that the novel’s events are interpreted but an actor outside the love story and not playing the protagonist because the novel’s essence is the Gatsby filtered through the consciousness of the narrator of the story’s events. This young Wall Streeter Tobey Maguire will play is Nick Carroway The worldly and yet oddly naïve Gatsby is one we see in the view of a young Yale graduate, who is both more a part of Daisy’s world than Gatsby and reminds us of all that is middle class about a world Gatsby sees somehow from below and above but does not enter. But Carraway is also completely new to Gatsby’s connections in the world of bootleggers, gamblers and gritty clubs as well as separate from the world he describes as the home of his cousin Daisy and her set. It will be the Spiderman sense of alienation that we will have as an introduction as Nick, upon moving to New York rents a house beside the extravagant mansion of and the party-throwing millionaire Jay Gatsby. It may be that the relationship between Gatsby and Carroway is not so vastly far from the one that actually exists between Tobey and Leo offset – I really don’t know. The differences are not so great but there are apparent differences in income and glamour and they must know each other.
In this fictional world Saturday, Gatsby throws a party at his mansion and I think this movie will do a better job of capturing the extravagance Fitzgerald intended than any previous version has. While they are unlike the near perfect success of the early Gatsby in his world, the Mexican cartels may not be quite as able to throw the best parties in L.A. Di Caprio has probably been to a few with large drug lord ties. But on the lawns and floors of the West Egg mansion all the great, the good, the beautifully young and the very fashionable of that part of the world come to marvel at Gatsby’s extravagance. One is also reminded of American innocence in the relatively mild suspicions put forward by guests about their host when they speculate on his murky past.
This is not a gangster movie because the love story with a woman outside the underworld is at the heart and is the fabric of the whole literary experience. As we see what happened when the Tsarnaev family failed to mesh well with our society we must be aware of all the ways people are trying and not trying to fit in around the country. Fitzgerald does not lie to us about how strong American class is and yet suggests confidently that money alone will not buy security in the elite. That may not have changed much. Higher income taxes and more government programs for the poor have changed some of the conditions surrounding the central plot. In addition, America has changed in many ways that make it a place the Jazz Age would not recognize. But still we can see in this story much of ourselves. For those who do not know it I will not disclose much of the plot itself. It ends in something near tragedy and there is real badly flawed love and not just unrequited desire involved but beyond that read the book or see the movie.
One thing I would have us think about is Gatsby firing his servants. In the book they are replaced by secretive underworld servants and in the Redford movie he leaves them blankly out and gets by with caterers and guests mostly. What about the struggle for jobs such as the servants had? As Americans watch Downton Abbey as well as contemplating migration and work laws do we have a plan for making class relations work in our confusingly complex and blurry social order?
I had originally planned to write this essay at least partly about my own view of wealth. I would have discussed my reasons and excuses for personal poverty and the ways I have used money. I would have discussed wealth in the time of Obama. However, as it turns out I am willing to leave this mostly in the category of an essay wondering about a movie and what it might have to say to us all…
Frank & Genie Summers Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary
This is a time when my thoughts are turned to the celebration of half a century of marriage by my parents, Frank and Genie Summers. i have a lot of other things on my mind but none more important perhaps. I hope that this video will express some of my thoughts and feelings regarding their fifty years of married love and the day and festivities that mark the occasion.
This Note and Blog Post is going to be a sort of recycling, patchwork and rehashing of quite a few ideas and even passages that I have gone over in recent months. However, this will be done in the very definite lights, contexts and insights afforded by the recent events in Boston. Let us examine the very real way in which these events will determine the way long term trends and questions are addressed. America is in the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, he has campaigned on the issue of more immigration and more diversity and the celebration of diversity. He has presided over what I call lies and misrepresentations about the acts of extreme violence in his term of office ever since the Fort Hood shootings. However, it may be that in this case he has handled the events after the attack in a better than average way. I will not go into detail here about the fault I do find in the procedures and words he chose. There are too many other aspects of this case to consider. This event may begin to make some Americans realize that we are in a crisis state.
While it may be very unlikely that we should address any of these issues effectively it is still worth discussing them. America must contend in any way around the world every day. It will never be easy. Some have been eager to forget the world we actually live in every single day of any administration. We have to address globalization, terrorism, environmental issues, possible pandemics, war and smoldering conflicts. We cannot opt out of any of these issues. The United Nations and other bodies such as the WTO have sought to set out a series of new regimens and protocols for international affairs. This has been done ambitiously despite staggering problems with previous reforms. An incident like this one at and around the Boston Marathon reminds us that things are not going smoothly. Reforms can be and are proposed but are the likely to succeed?
However, the same powers that have sought these reforms sense that they are not succeeding as well as could be hoped. Britain’s Conservative political leaders and Prime Minister can smell and taste the geopolitical winds enough to feel the need for security and will consider spending considerable monies made available by this move for a stabilizing internationalism and an expansion of the UK’s aid budget to be used on more old fashioned kinds of military peacekeeping and even more purely conventional defense-related projects.
The UK which has quite a bit of experience building Empires is both really interested in a better world and really aware it must remain engaged in a world where China, Russia, new organizations and international Islamism or very much engaged. For each of these powers armed humanitarianism is part of the total world strategy Britain will not be left out and is allocating 30% of the UK aid budget to fragile and conflict-affected states. This development will involve some defense profile as well. The Brits have declared that their world strategies and interest are enhanced and their engagement effectiveness is improved when the Ministry of Defense, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development work together, “sharing expertise while co-ordinating policy and strategy.”
We have not chosen Mitt Romney and I am not sure we should have chosen him. However, he was a man who understood soft international power such as sport and missionary work can bring to bear from personal experience such as I have had although quite different from mine. Obama has seen our first Ambassador killed in active duty in decades and has helped to foment varied revolutions without responsible planning on his side. He has denied links between American events and international enemies in the past. In these ways he is simply worse than average in following through on American presidential customs. But still, this is no 9-11 event. It is simply a wake-up call that our policy is not going along swimmingly. We must face the complexities of our world…
In this complex world America has a government that does not draw up budgets, does not understand how to compare debt. Our public indebtedness is about one hundred trillion and not sixteen trillion dollars. It does not understand the international networks that can fuse and separate and has not really allocated sufficient resources to countering the kind of weapons postulated in the film Red Dawn which would take the whole internet off line, fry CPUs and jam communications simultaneously. We see the world adjusting to new patterns of reliance, we know carrier killer missiles with small warheads on mobile launchers can be rained down from space with amazing speed and we see that a new generation of projectiles hunt conventional rocketry more effectively than ever before but largely we do not adjust to these challenges but instead focus only on the lessons of recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We see that our own social cohesion is under strain but really keep increasing the strain and not really securing the future and not thinking of what an American solution ought to be in deep terms.
I do feel that much of our traditional capacity is slipping away but we are adding some new capacity and that also has a cost. A friend of mine posted the following post on Facebook after the bombing and before the end of the original manhunt.
Listening to FBI Press Conference on Boston Bombing: What disturbs me the most is the FBI can scoop up all texts, facebook, any social media, and phone calls in a mile radius of the bombing, and sift them for information. Wow, with drones, computers, and satellites, there is no where a righteous person could hide from a tyrannical government. I am glad that the bombers will be found, but our government has incredible power and we better hope there are some checks and balances that protect us from this power.
I replied in a comment, “There is review of police action by legitimate authorities and federalism still clings to life so no single power has all the rights. There are legitimate skills to use in hiding oneself, hacker groups to fight for free uses and exchanges, burner phones and more ways to travel and connect with others who might help you. But if you mean can an honest person living and working near home expect the level of privacy some Americans enjoyed in the fifties to live in a zone truly untouched if they stayed out of trouble and still enjoy civilization — that is gone, really gone, very gone — in my opinion…”
I applaud President Obama and his administration for marshalling the resources to address this problem. It is quite an achievement for him to have found the enthusiasm which has often seemed lacking. These unusual Caucasian (from the Caucasus ethnicities) terrorists striking where they did received a response more aggressive and prompt than all but a few and this was a much harder case because they did not stay in place but slipped away unlike many who kill themselves or dig in for a siege. I also salute the use of the many cameras in the Boston Marathon. I know the police probably are hiding rather than hyping the capacity of indexing software, facial recognition software, time synchronizing software and surveillance engineering to allow them to quickly produce valid suspects. It seems to have been an effective thing to do. The truth is that all of these technologies do impact our freedom and our privacy even as they help to preserve life and property from attack. I do believe these are complicated matters and it will not be easy to determine what the right balance is and also not easy to apply these technologies correctly in warfare and international relations. Other countries have spent decades finding ways to circumvent these technologies which are low-tech and effective and cannot be easily defeated. We should rejoice in what law enforcement accomplished in Boston. We can hope it bodes well for us in military security as well but we must know it is not a simple matter.
I believe our models for economics and military projections are flawed badly. If we do not do a lot better soon there will be consequences. The solution does involve being alarmed but does not involve seeing the whole world as made up of full-fledged enemies. That approach would be one of many that would produce the same bad result. The result would be what?
The United States of America is moving towards a series of catastrophic military disasters. The country will awaken sooner or later to a future of having been entirely overrun by its enemies. The time for reform and appropriate action is quickly coming to an end.
Things are going to get a lot rougher than most people are prepared to deal with I fear. There is little else to say about the situation’s overall status and stature. There is a lot to say about what exactly I mean by that. However, for this note the short paragraphs above will have to do…
So we should be able to see that our society is largely dysfunctional by many events of recent times. Yet it is more largely functional. The kind of change I suggest in my model constitution for example is unlikely. I do want to see what these events may tell us about our future as a society and about the present we may not understand well in some aspects. I think that in this Boston Bombing we see the many aspects of our security situation highlighted. That includes our constitutional and immigration questions and issues.
Let us start with what we know about the bombers. Neither were born United States Citizens and both were citizens at the time of the attacks, This single reality would seem to be quite an indictment of our immigration system. They are certainly not the ideal. Clearly they are either guilty of a heinous set of crimes against life, public safety and the community or else they are framed by a vast conspiracy of law enforcement. There really are very few other possibilities. Neither result would be a good outcome for our immigrants who become citizen. I presume they did the deed of which Dzokhar is accused. Legal guilt is another matter and must be established at trial but I presume they were not framed. Their family says they were framed. There are no pictures in circulation of them doing violent crimes. There are picture os them with back packs, at a Seven-Eleven and hiding in a boat. The police shot out the younger brother’s capacity for speech. Given all this they are entitled to be represented by lawyers who may claim they were framed. That defense almost never succeeds even if someone is framed. For the rest of this note let us examine their lives as though they did the crimes in the very brief way this short note will allow.
The older brother had no doubt been seeing the world in terms of conflict for some time. The younger Dzokhar was an accomplished wrestler but his older brother was a much more serious boxer. Let us speculate about some of the weaknesses in our society which helped produce this event. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died at a mere 26 years old, was only 15 when his family came to the U.S. He went on to become a skilled boxer, representing New England in the Golden Gloves competition in 2009 and 2010. There are many challenges to fitting in and building connections between cultures. Perhaps if, as is conjectured, he was the instigator of the bombing attack and drew his younger brother into the plan they are accused of carrying out his sense of isolation increased every time this fighting man’s name was not recognized and understood as a reference. I do not know he knew this but I presume he knew he was named after Tamerlaine . Tamerlaine is is the equivalent name to Tamerlan in our histories but probably did not appear in the history classes he took and is an Anglicization of what some have rendered Timur i-lenk, or Timur the Lame. Chechen’s would probably be reminded that while I grieve over how little of our own history student’s know they know far less of central Asia’s history.
Tamerlan’s namesake was a Tatar tribesman who entered history when he successfully rebelled against the dynasties and cultures of Mongol overlords in the 14th-century social order created by the almost unimaginable violence and military skill the great Mongol warlord Genghiz Khan who had conquered much of the known world. Tamerlaine established his seat of government in they exotic inland city of Samarkand, There he both took advantage of controlling existing dominating significant trade routes and he helped to forge other routes which knitted together a vast part of the world. While we study little of these people and their heritage the cultures around Tamerlaine suffered a similar cultural narrowness of their own. Vikings, Europeans Aztecs, Tongans and other groups had leaders who ruled large regions, traveled far and commanded armies but Tameralaine’s people and neighbors probably regarded only seven rulers or small groups of rulers in the world as significant. These significant powers were the Mongol overlords Tamerlaine conquered in his first rebellion, the Lord of Tatars which may have been his own chief title, the Caliph in Baghdad, and rulers in Turkey, Egypt, India, and China. Tamerlaine conquered all the others except China. Here he fell short of the greatness of Ghengis Khan. While he had little more than tribute from Egypt and only an occupation of Turkey he was still a ruler of enormous influence in world history. His lasting legacies were the Mogul dynasty in India, and some cultural influence over a wide area from India into Russia. What did it mean to the older Tsarnaev to meet so many to whom his name meant nothing at all? A country must have a cultural coherence and not merely laws.
We are struggling with many cultural questions right now and these events have thrown them into stark relief. It was with some of these cultural issues that I began my first note about this bombing. Passages from that note are reproduced here below.
“This is a time of crisis which cannot be reasonably compared to the events of September 11, 2001 in very many ways and yet inevitably it will be. In addition, the limited reportage of possible attributions for the attack has been led by those seeking to pin the responsibility on America’s far right. I do not know who is responsible and it could turn out to be anyone. There is a tendency to follow the patterns in which any given society reacts to crises when any new crisis occurs. Liberal ABC News has focused on the far right and possible connections to April and then has somehow jumbled that in with Virginia Tech’s huge killings in April. There is no connection to the American right in that killing. Lies and propaganda continue full force.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the FBI has a Saudi Arabian national in custody that they are looking at “as a possible suspect.”
Ruppersberger said he wants the FBI “to focus on what they do best and that’s getting the information and finding out who did this and what type of bomb it was.” Nobody sane could accuse me of being soft on Islamists, nor do they lack for Islamists in Saudi Arabia. In fact I distrust Islam as a whole and often write such things. Bad blood between my ancestors and Muslims goes back to the start of the religion and is enormous. Yet there is so little reason to go first to the Muslims for this attack.”
It is apparent that the brothers were Muslims. We do not know how much there motivation was Muslim or Islamist. We do hear that Russia had been investigating Tamerlan and also that he had links to Islamist groups on his own web presence. In my first note I tried to get people to consider that it might not be Al Quaeda related and to consider North Korea. Boston’s homeboy Secretary of State John Kerry had just led a campaign against North Korea and this attack could have been and really still could be a reprisal against Massachusetts by the DPRK.I wrote in that first note that ” It could be anything or anyone but North Korea leads a sane list of suspects”. That was perhaps hyperbole and a bit too much for the emerging facts but it is still possible they were involved and there were strong reasons to be on guard from the start. The Marathon attacks occurred on the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung. In my first note I went into detail about what that meant. I reprint a bit of that argument here below:
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I also argued that America may have been hit by such a birthday attack before that day in Boston. I wrote that the Virginia Tech shooting was likely DPRK directed along with so many other acts of anonymous violence:
“This Korean shooter before committing suicide left notes which if complete have many resonances to North Korean propaganda and which may be incomplete because of removal by our own falsifiers of real connecting papers. Cho’s massacre is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history. While our emphasis on the idea that only crazy people do not love us led the Virginia Tech Review Panel to conclude that because of Cho’s inability to handle stress and the “frightening prospect” of being “turned out into the world of work, finances, responsibilities, and a family,” Cho chose to engage in a fantasy in which “he would be remembered as the savior of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the poor, and the rejected” –a sane person can see that this not far from radical communist anti-Americanism of the type found in the DPRK. But the panel rejected this approach and went further down yellow brick road stating that, “His thought processes were so distorted that he began arguing to himself that his evil plan was actually doing good. His destructive fantasy was now becoming an obsession.” They refused to see the chances that he was buying into an ideology.”
There is no reason to produce again all that I wrote about North Korea and the connection to the Virginia Tech shooting. The link here is far less likely and if it could not be established in that case there is no chance of finding the link here if it does exist –or at least very little chance. We need to foster an atmosphere in which all aspects of the security situation are being considered. The world is really that tough of a place. We have a need to bear all these different and complex connections in mind.
It is still possible to believe the family members who see a set up when one looks at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The young man is only 19 and he was not yet a teenager when he moved to the United States. While the reports of his age when he immigrated range from 7 to 11 he was here for most or all of the years since he arrived. Numerous people have been shocked that he was involved in this kind of activity. He is described as a likable, relaxed young man and an athlete who played soccer up until the incident as did his eight-year-old victim M. Richard. Dzokhar was also the captain of his high school wrestling team. With a small wrestling scholarship and a financial aid package he seemed still to be having some trouble in school and may have been influenced by his brother. On the other hand all the things that will allow some people to believe his parents when they claim he was framed are the same true facts that suggest a party from abroad may have profiled and manipulated the brothers. That may be true even if they did nit share the Islamic values and Islamist motivations to which the bombing will likely be ascribed in the end. I admit I am not ever likely to be sure that the DPRK was not at all involved. But I admit others may have a greater probability of being the manipulators.
This is a case which should haunt us and will. It will be a long time before it fades from memory. Where America will be then depends in large part on the way we address the issues which this tragedy raises.
I applaud all those who participated in the apprehension of Dzokarh and the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. This has ended with the capture of the malefactor. We can rejoice in any number of bad outcomes avoided.
I also remember the families of officer Collier, the Lu and Richard families and the family of 29 year-old Chrystal whose last name I forget. In addition the twenty-five people who lost their limbs and their families as well as Officer Donahue and his family and the other one hundred and more wounded in Monday’s bombing. The cost of today’s shutdown was 350 million dollars and there are many issues in this crisis that must be addressed.
Let us hope that the society we live in will continue to progress in its ability to respond to and anticipate such acts. Let us include these improvements in our honoring of the dead. Boston stayed on the job and for that virtue there is no substitute and we are all in their debt for such perseverance…
This is a time of crisis which cannot be reasonably compared to the events of September 11, 2001 in very many ways and yet inevitably it will be. In addition, the limited reportage of possible attributions for the attack has been led by those seeking to pin the responsibility on America’s far right. I do not know who is responsible and it could turn out to be anyone. There is a tendency to follow the patterns in which any given society reacts to crises when any new crisis occurs. Liberal ABC News has focused on the far right and possible connections to April and then has somehow jumbled that in with Virginia Tech’s huge killings in April. There is no connection to the American right ib that killing. Lies and propaganda continue full force.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the FBI has a Saudi Arabian national in custody that they are looking at “as a possible suspect.”
Ruppersberger said he wants the FBI “to focus on what they do best and that’s getting the information and finding out who did this and what type of bomb it was.” Nobody sane could accuse me of being soft on Islamists, nor do they lack for Islamists in Saudi Arabia. In fact I distrust Islam as a whole and often write such things. Bad blood between my ancestors and Muslims goes back to the start of the religion and is enormous. Yet there is so little reason to go first to the Muslims for this attack.
But the far right and Al Quaeda are not the leading suspects the evidence would suggest. Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung. John Kerry our Secretary of State who is the former Senator from Massachusetts went on a campaign to ruin the rocket launches which were essential to the entire regime’s sense of worth and identity. Disrupting these launches resulted in a great loss of face and theses bombings are most likely a reprisal against Massachusetts by the DPRK. It could be anything or anyone but North Kores leadsa sane list of suspects.
Kim Il-Sung is very significant and his birthday can only be compared to Christmas for its significance in this country. There are over 500 large or life-size and prominent statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea. The most prominent public places in the nation are marked by truly enormous statues in many cases. Some of these enormous statues are installed at Kim Il-Sung University, Kim Il-Sung Bridge and the Kim Il-Sung Stadium. In addition there is the near religious worship associated with the park surrounding the Immortal Statue of Kim Il-Sung . The Korean situation is characterized by huge amounts of lies on all sides and so it is hard to be sure of what is going on no matter who one is in the game but it seems to be true that some of these statues have been reported to have been destroyed by explosions or damaged with graffiti by North Korean activists. Whatever the opposition may be doing this cult is vital to the society as a whole. It is also traditional that North Korean newlyweds go to a near-by statue of Kim Il-sung to lay flowers at his feet.
The statues are joined by thousands of Yeong Saeng (“eternal life”) monuments have been erected throughout the country, each dedicated to the departed “Eternal Leader”, at which citizens are expected to pay annual tribute on his official birthday or the commemoration of his death. Kim Il-Sung’s image is prominent in places associated with public transportation, hanging at every North Korean train station and airport and are prominently displayed at the border crossings between China and North Korea. The same leader’s portrait is featured on the front of all recent DPRK banknotes and this cult is essential to being in negotiation with the country. That connection is made by the very numerous gifts to Kim Il-sung from foreign leaders which are housed in the DPRK’s International Friendship Exhibit.
The North Koreans of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have many real and at least somewhat valid reasons to hate and oppose the foreign power they see as having divided their country for generations. On the other hand we have many reasons to believe we have had an enemy worth opposing. Recent books about escapes from horrific labor camps and huge suffering of innocent people under the regime have joined the legacy of the man whose birthday we ruined. According to many experts in the lie infested environment of Korean geopolitics such as those in Korean Churches and Eastern province China watchers as well as scholars like R.J. Rummel, an analyst of political killings the horrors have gone on for decades and were well started under the Eternal Leader’s tenure. Kim Il-Sung’s regime itself perpetrated killings in the millions through concentration camps, forced labor, and executions.
America may have been hit by the DPRK five years ago today. Nobody takes seriously the possible DPRK connection to the Virginia Tech massacre that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Cho Seung-Hui or less Korean usage known Seung-Hui Cho was far from the American right to which ABC kinked his killings this morning, and last night with McVeigh and others. a Cho Seung-Hui was a Korean born senior at Virginia Tech who shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart. He was diagnosed with Anxiety disorder but there was a real effort not to find that his anxiety could have been caused by pressures from DPRK operatives in the shadows of American life seeking to influence his conscience and life. In China I myself came into contact with a small piece of the DPRK’s enormous and sophisticated anti-American propaganda machine. Cho may have been exposed to it and we worked hard bot to see that connection. This Korean shooter before committing suicide left notes which if complete have many resonances to North Korean propaganda and which may be incomplete because of removal by our own falsifiers of real connecting papers. Cho’s massacre is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history. While our emphasis on the idea that only crazy people do not love us led the Virginia Tech Review Panel to conclude that because of Cho’s inability to handle stress and the “frightening prospect” of being “turned out into the world of work, finances, responsibilities, and a family,” Cho chose to engage in a fantasy in which “he would be remembered as the savior of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the poor, and the rejected” –a sane person can see that this not far from radical communist anti-Americanism of the type found in the DPRK. But the panel rejected this approach and went further down yellow brick road stating that, “His thought processes were so distorted that he began arguing to himself that his evil plan was actually doing good. His destructive fantasy was now becoming an obsession.” They refused to see the chances that he was buying into an ideology.
Cho’s suicide note follows below and it is easy to see in it connections to the rhetoric long used in the DPRK. Unification Church rhetoric about Jesus Christ, ethnic rhetoric about Cho’s suffering brothers and sisters and communist rhetoric about rich people. It is hard to read but here it is:
You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people. Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can?…I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f***ed I did it for them… When the time came, I did it. I had to…You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.
Not claiming responsibility is very North Korean and the sinking of ROKS Cheonan which occurred on 26 March 2010, should have made that clear to all of us. The South Korean Navy ship carrying 104 personnel was sunk off the country’s west coast in the Yellow Sea Killing 46 seamen. A panel of international experts concluded that the warship had been sunk by a North Korean torpedo fired by a midget submarine. However, the DPRK never took responsibility and managed to get China and Russia to support its refusal to do so – they are seen by both of those countries as a buffer to US regional power.
There have been countless small events such as the bombardment of Yeonpyeong was an artillery engagement between the North Korean military and South Korean forces stationed on Yeonpyeong Island on 23 November 2010. The prospects of all out war are really horrible but while it may be better to endure small evils than risk global nuclear war we may at least need to join consciously with those tied to the suffering the DPRK shelling caused in its widespread damage on that November Day in that fishing island, killing four South Koreans and injuring 19.
I have people I care about in East China and South Korea. I have no desire to see a total horrible war. But I do not believe hiding from the truth so completely serves our interest or world peace.
As those who read me often will know, I have been a teacher in numerous contexts as well as being a person who has taken many standardized tests. I have also advised people I cared about who take standardized tests. Let me assure you that people provide skinnies and acquire early copies of master forms and provide for special conditions for pretty girls who can use their favors to influence the right people, for stellar athletes who cannot make the grade after extensive tutorials and for the relations of rich donors to universities and prep schools. Teacher’s pets can sometimes be rewarded with hints that are unfair to others. That kind of impurity which is not so shocking but offends a sense of the sportsmanship that goes with standardized testing regimes is rampant enough to offend but not pervasive or normal in most testing regimes around the world. Beyond all of this in our own country margins are attached to scores to provide affirmative action for racial minorities, for women, for veterans and for the disabled before making decisions that will apply the scores. In addition to all of this intimidation, cheating lies and abuse occur in all sort of places around the world. If that is the case then does the APS scandal matter? Does it matter that Beverly Hall and others in the Atlanta Public School System presided over wholesale distortions in public school testing? Yes I think it matters. I think also that this kind of wholesale lying and cheating is occurring in many school districts around the country.
I myself have mixed feelings and a mix of things to say about standardized testing itself. I also believe high schools should have more diverse educational outcomes leading to apprenticeships, tech schools and work programs for a good portion of seniors who will still graduate and take some classes in the main school. Likewise they should offer advanced college prep and individual classes. I also think a military track should exist in each school. In other words I think the public school system is broken. I think it must change or we will pay an ever higher price. Given all this dysfunction does wholesale cheating such as erasure parties, broken seals, coaching during tests and false reporting matter? Yes, it assuredly matters. We currently see the worst element combining in the worst ways. This is a result our society demands. Ms. Hall and other are fulfilling an American fantasy about our society. I will not have time to fully explore that fantasy in this note – but I have done so elsewhere to a greater degree.
This little essay of the type I often write will be about Beverly Hall and the thirty or so other school officials indicted in the investigation of cheating in the Atlanta Public School System. This is especially important because Ms. Hall has been honored as National School System Superintendent of the Year and has been a symbol for many of the direction in which our American educational culture ought to be moving. I am going to look at this scandal in order to see a few other things in American life and culture more clearly as well. Like many of my Notes and Posts this one has a central theme and also some other themes woven into the writing about the topic. Also like many of my other notes and posts this topic comes from the current news. The most important news story may be the escalation in tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the new strain of bird flu or for some it may have to do with college basketball. However, for this note’s own purposes we will suppose that this school scandal is as important and may be more important than any other story.
This Facebook Note which is also a Blog Post comes at a very difficult time in my own life. Despite the memories of many times of far more visible trauma and crisis than this is in some ways I am writing this note at a time when it would be easy to think that all of my energy ought to be going to my own senses of loss and sadness. Perhaps this is the darkest time I have ever experienced in some ways. However, It is not about my personal life but about larger social issues. However, the school scandal story is dear and near to my heart… What is striking about this wholesale and institutional fraud which is both alleged and supported by evidence is that it shows the totality of failure in regards to the matching of the machinery of calculating the standing of our citizens with the realities of our society. This failure will play out in very broad implications beyond the serious corruptions of the system of public education in this country. The implications are that we do not currently have a correct view of our society as we face a large number of crises in our nation and in the world. We must consider the significance of this scandal in the context of those challenges.
Later on below these words I will return to the issue of race and the significance of these events being first uncovered beneath the Georgia flag. In this struggle by the State of Georgia and other authorities to deal with these issues the colors which were the confederate battle flag has waved above this instance of endless and widespread nonviolent black supremacy. The flag has often been attacked in Georgia but the falsification of all standards to promote the relative position of the Black race in our society has been fostered by all our learned and moral opinions. I have elsewhere proposed a new model constitution and I feel that the recent events have justified my sense of where the United States of America truly stand as regards its knowledge of its own status in the world.
My proposals in the constitution are moderate in nature and my convictions continue to be the same although there are some great struggles to be had in our future I would not use the horror of our situation as an excuse to fight for the kinds of racial extremism which such corruption as we have seen here can often encourage. The wholesale war on the survival of what was best in Southern culture has been ongoing as a political operation of the Federal Power of the United States for all of the last 150 years. It has simply changed in its distortions over the last few decades. However, there is still some vestige of an American sense of sportsmanship which can somewhere be offended by the total degradation of all standards which is normal in so much of our society. Let us not also doubt that Madoff was a cheater, Nixon was a cheater and people of many races, tongues and ethnicities throughout the world are today and always have been cheaters. We face the reality that if anything is to be determined by something other than cheating then real provisions must be made to assure that cheating will not occur. Where this serious effort is not made to prevent cheating then cheaters are exalted and extolled at the real expense of those who do try to do the right thing.
I have long been weary and discouraged in many ways myself and see the great weaknesses of our society stacking up and growing ever more numerous. I wonder what chance there really is for us to find our way to a better future. Cheating is not a simple matter. I do not think a purely passive or hidebound populace is to be desired. Given the assumptions, laws and rhetoric of our times the actions of Beverly Hall and others seem reasonable enough. Efforts to correct these abuses cannot really succeed without greater changes accompanying them. I have in my model constitution laid out one possible path for such change.
We have not as a society correctly calculated the consequences of rhetoric and policy extolling equality, demonizing racial distinction and white supremacy of any kind, simplifying the mechanisms of stopping fraud at many points. We do not understand the exigencies of any kind of meritocratic institutions on which we must rely. Today as we think back on the Independence Day anniversaries of 150 years since the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere was drawn out at Gettysburg and the horror of the Vicksburg siege ended in the failed Confederacy we must recognize the change which Gettysburg assured has been a complicated kind of change bringing both good and evil to Georgia and the South. We must also consider that process launched in and for our nation. The occupation of the South and the repression of its state institutions by the federal government has never ended and has not abated. The morals of it have never been fairly examined. But before focusing on race let me examine some other implications of all this horrific mess.
The creation of a destructive class of vicious and entitled black abusers has been empowered and supported against the society and culture of these states and all of the union. There are many African Americans who would participate in a more positive system drawing on a diverse set of roots of progress. But these people are overwhelmed in the stream of a fantasized racial exact equality in our land. The Black Republicanism which many in the South and the Northern Opposition sought to stop in the War Between the States has reached its fruit and full flower in many places across our society. This racial element is very significant in all of this although one must applaud the black officers of the court who are involved in the prosecution and the black teachers and administrators who lost their jobs in droves opposing the total adulteration of scholastic integrity. There story is not much being told yet and may not be told. It is a story which ought to inspire us to give to the United Negro College Fund and to see in institutions like Grambling and Southern University in my own state. There is in such racially conscious institutions a different ethic than the wholesale cultural terrorism that the US Supreme Court has imposed upon the Union of the States. We are not likely to see such an outpouring of generosity to the UNCF by “Southron” whites of the old school. It is more probable we will see hopeless resentment or racially charged righteous anger. However, many things must be done to make a society or a heritage and the Georgia flag is witness to a complex situation in so very many ways. This is truly a time for a broad and well informed effort.
This Note will put forth 50 reasons why the Crater Cap Colony Concept is a good and important idea. The Crater Cap Colony Concept involves building a cap on the crater of other worlds such as the Moon and Mars most of all. It also involves a specific and effective from of development under the caps. In addition to all of the other things that are part of the model there is a program for mining which is specific to the model as well.
The crater cap colonies also represent both a great deal of risk and an enormous engineering challenge. This note will seek to promote the benefits of the concept and plan and to show the contrast with other schemes. However, there is no doubt that this remains a staggeringly great challenge. In addition there have been many things that were designed to fail and many efforts undertaken to preserve something that would have been threatened by a successful design, thus in order for this to succeed it would not only have to be done well by a sustained and great effort but avoid being derailed by a false effort.
One through Twenty-Five: Craters are Special
1. The progress of human technology needs to be shaped and directed not only by war and the marketplace but also by a grand and meaningful project. The development of craters on the Moon and Mars are the right places for such a focus of development. Recognizing the special and unique importance of these craters and the potential of other craters for the human race is an important part of the chance for human progress.
2. Craters are special because they occur on the Moon, Mars, the other terrestrial planets and on the major asteroids. They cannot be ignored as a great commonality of features across the solar system.
3. Craters are also special because of the efficiencies implicit and distinctive to a crater cap as the means of instituting a colonial environment. With a crater cap one can spend the great bulk of the resources and energy of the development on the completion one dimension in a shape which also provides other dimensions of enclosure which are pre=made at no additional cost. These dimensions are able to adapt in a way which the cap cannot. Mines can be operated readily on and through the floor while the cap is improved, made more substantial and kept in a state of restricted access.
4. Craters also have numerous qualities which tend to make them good places to plant a colony. The craters are visible and distinct features with well-defined autonomous edges and a large area where air can be held under a cap and the large views over the crater itself will allow for a sense of freedom space and abundance which create real and perceived priority. Other reasons in this list will return to many of these specific reasons. But this number four reason has to do with the synergy and efficiency of combining all of these factors in the whole which is the crater as a colony site. This is even more notable when compared to how bad it would be to develop the other features of these planets as early colonies.
5. Craters offer intrinsic security in a harsh extraterrestrial environment. The crater will provide a great deal of buffering and blockage as regards to the hostile of effects of solar wind, micro-meteors, cosmic radiation and allows heat management in the environment in a way which protects from the terrors and dangers of extreme heat and cold.
6. Craters provide good visible features for navigation, comparison and planning. The craters have many common features which will allow people and agencies in varied places to learn about many common challenges and benefits from a variety of colonial sites at the same time.
7. Craters provide enormous psychological benefits. If properly conceived and managed the mines will provide security if and when the cap is breached and controlled wall dugouts and sub-floor mines will house most people and activities in such a way that the craters themselves will provide an open air space reserved for agriculture, aquaculture and recreation. The principal benefit of the space will be to allow people to see large expanses and then return to the confined spaces of daily activity. Surface areas around the crater will be utilized for astronomy, solar power generation and other activities but will not be a hospitable environment which offers a sense of real freedom of movement.
8. Craters allow for ideal multiple use planning.
9. Craters allow for a really terraformed placement of colonies without extravagant expense. Craters already tend to align to the center of gravity in a certain way and to produce numerous relatively constant parameters which colony planners, environmental specialists, technology designers and engineers can rely upon to effect their colony’s optimum performance.
10. Craters allow for species variety and ecosystem balancing early in colonial development. This is because of the ability to hava a floor, a central pond or lake , air space and mines in a particular array which is conducive to the success of biological systems.
11. Craters are truly unique in that they provide a possibility for effective thermal management. In the case of the Moon, Mars, large asteroids and any large body which is not geologically active the mines will have access to unlimited relatively cold material. Proper planning will allow the energy used in mining and living as well as the heat from lighting and other systems to balance a micro climate in the crater and still have access to a broad face for emergency thermal venting.
12. Craters are remarkably stable. For the purpose of brevity I will leave this as an assertion supported by observed facts.
13. The behavior of volatiles in craters has remarkable benefits in the case of a meteor strike. In places like the Moon, Mars and other places with very little or no atmosphere the air will rush out of a breached cap into the relative vacuum outside as will some of the water while colonists shelter in the mines. This will mitigate the destructive force of a strike already broken up before entering the crater.
14. The behavior of volatiles in craters has remarkable benefits in choosing a site. The preservation of volatiles such as water in all its forms and other gasses that can be activated by heating is a property of craters which makes them suited to be colonial sites.
15. Craters allow independent mine shaft systems for greater security of all kinds and yet links them all to a central open space which can be readily observed and monitored for defects and allows for ready movement of large groups and resources.
16. Craters are readily identified for planning and travel negotiations and discussions between parties not constantly cooperating.
17. Craters come in vastly different sizes to match the resources available to very different colonial efforts.
18. Craters can be modeled and studied to a significant degree from the craters on earth.
19. Craters offer the chance to create a very complex design and environmental system that starts with a very simple plane positioned in a predictable place and in a place where it can be easily improved.
20. Transporting energy from solar panels (and windmills in the case of Mars) to the lights, pumps and heaters on the lower face of the Cap is a very efficient position for such transfer.
21. Maintenance of features on the Cap’s plane itself has many efficiencies compared to almost any other configuration.
22. The atmosphere being created in the colony will itself help to support the great plane of the Cap for the colony. This is because of atmospheric pressure below and near vacuum above and the force of gravity being lower than Earth’s gravity.
23. Craters allow us to use many old and well established Earthly technologies.
24. Craters have no exposed elevation and reduce the incidence of meteor strikes which a colony elsewhere increases as it develops.
25. Craters are efficient in that a huge amount of energy has been expended in creating most of the design features by nature itself.
Twenty-Six through Forty: Colonizing Space is Vital
26. Space Colonization is vital to being who our species is as explorers, survivors etc. Outer space is that portion of the universe that is farther from the center of the Earth than the highest reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. It makes up more than 99.99999999999999% of the universe which we can physically perceive.
27. Space Colonization is a necessary process if humanity’s leaders are to be able to command the respect of thinking people when difficult choices and allocations of resources must be made. Some reasonable hope for a better future given that ff we were to divide up all of the physical space we can see or detect equally among all the inhabitants of the Earth the amount of space occupied by all humans alive today would make a minute and entirely insignificant portion of the share belonging to each person.
28. Space colonization in the craters is vital in that it links the vastness of space to the real abundance that come from hard work and capitalizing on opportunity So that humanity’s constituents can understand that most of virtually limitless space is dark empty and has hardly any atomic particles in it and it is so far away that physically using those particles in any way in the next 100 generations can’t be reasonably imagined yet hard work and careful choices can create real opportunities in a few nearer places.
29. Space colonization is vital because despite how tiny it is in the universe of visible light the dimensions of our solar system alone would allow us to use a fraction of more than 99.99999999999999% of the space being somewhere other than the surface of the Earth.
30. Even in our solar system which some of our traveling craft have left behind in the voyager project most of the raw natural resources are not on the Earth’s surface. The crater cap colonies which operate in low gravity wells would allow us to reach these vast resources and supply them to Earth much more cheaply than operating from Earth would.
31. By far most of the oxygen in the solar system is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
32. Most of the carbon is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources
33. Most of the hydrogen is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
34. Most of the helium is in outer space and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
35. Most of the metals we call precious are almost certainly there and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
36. Most of the exotic metals and silicates we need for specialized purposes are there and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
37. Most of the Methane which could be burned to power a civilization for thousands of years is out there in the solar system and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
38. It is almost certain that there is more liquid water under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa than there is on Earth and ships operating from bases in 1/6 and 1/3 Earth’s gravity could better reach those resources.
39. Our space history has already proven that nothing between the Sun and the orbit of Pluto is intrinsically beyond the reach of our own basic technology to reach, tag and return from robotically. Humans operating from colonial bases in the craters would be primed to utilize these spaces.
40. Space colonization follows a chain going from observation, to exploration, to travel and exploration and then to stationing. After these things comes colonization. Space colonization has the chance to be the biggest change in human economy since the development of agriculture. The coming of agriculture was not an unmixed blessing but it was one of the most justifiable of all social changes in human history.
Forty-one through Fifty: This is the Concept
41. These Crater Cap Colonies are the key to unlocking a future of promise for humanity. Like the rise of agriculture they are the essential innovation supporting all others.
42. Some bad things by any measure will come of these colonies as they did from agriculture but it is just as essential to make the change. Had humanity not become agricultural sooner or later things would have become much worse than they have gotten so far. The Crater Cap Colonies will allow a vast new array of needed resources and very bad results are the alternative.
43. Our science and technology up to now has shown that Space can be explored. Now it must be colonized. These colonies will allow multiple models of a new human dynamism. They will allow us to address as many varied social and environmental experiments as we may choose. Life and humanity today await at a crossroads as great as that of the first rise agriculture. These colonies will have an effect as great or greater than the first great works of irrigation for large scale agriculture created the mighty powers that ruled ancient China and Egypt.
44. Like the surpluses and changes created by agriculture these colonies will create societies that could pour wealth into the extended economy and transform it at the same level that the first agricultural changes that enabled other peoples to change from nomadic hunting or nomadic herding to a combination of nomadic herding and carrying trade goods thus our non space industries would also find new opportunities.
45. In their similarity to the ancient farms these colonies will enable space industries not involved in colonization to progress just as agricultural societies enabled fisherfolk to increase their population by adding waterborne trade to their fishing economy.
46. These colonies could promote peace while at the same time creating new security and defence sector challenges and opportunities just as early agriculture enabled warrior bands to enter int0 long-term contracts with landholding kings and to earn a living partly from keeping the peace.
47. These colonies would transform our society and future just as agriculture really made a different human world and remade much of the world as well. The best hunter-gatherers were actually richer, healthier and freer than the new farmers but in the end the choice of the species as a whole to emphasize agriculture was a choice vital to both survival and any real chance of prosperity. I think that space colonization requires a similar leap and offers similar sets of consequences.
48. Space Colonization will restore a sense of wisdom and virtue not available in much of human society today. For instance, I don’t really expect to live to see a working colony on the Moon or Mars. However, as long as I do live I will apply some of my energy to that transition humanity must make towards becoming a space colonizing species.
49. Space Colonization allows for a growing human population over time and the survival of real biodiversity on Earth.
50. Space Colonization allows for a path of reasoning which is both optimistic and sane and other long term plans do not allow for this. These colonies can be cost effective and supportive of what is going on here on Earth in a very unique way.
Born 1964 Frank Wynerth Summers III
This is the blog of Frank Wynerth Summers III, I had wanted to title "A Frank Summary"...
Franksummers3ba's Blog 