10/15/23

 Sunday, October 15, 2023

In bed at 9:15, awake at 2:30 and on the brr, up at 3, let Lilly out.  46°, high today of 55°, another cloudy windy day ahead, AQI=24, wind NNW aat 15 mph, 12-18/28.  0.25" of rain in last 24 hours, none now till Thursday.  Sunrise at 7:05 at 101°, sunset at 6:09 at 259°, 11+3.  Solar noon at 11:37, elevation 38°.  Venus rose at 3:10 a.m. and is very visible at about 90°, elevation about 40°.  The only 'star' visible.

Henny Youngman:  "Why don't Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering."  And ditto for Palestinians.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot:  "On the view of earth from 3.7 billion miles away: 'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home, That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [...] There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'

Bertrand Russell:  "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."

Dinner with the Family.  Wonderful dinner with the family last night in West Allis at the HuHot Mongolian Grill.  Andy, Any, Peter, Lizzie and her friend, Drew, Sarah, Geri and I.  Much good conversation, sharing of photos on our phones, etc.  Peter has gotten into photography and I gave him my old Nikon EM film camera since he wants to try film photography and not restrict himself to digital.  The battery for the Nikon is dead but I texted him after he picked the camera up at our house that the Bayshore Target probably carries the batteries and was open till 10 p.m.  He is on his way to Door County today to joing friends from school.  He is also working to develop a device that will capture particulate pollutants from vehicle tires and brakes, apparently a greater source of air pollution than exhaust fumes.  All our grandchildren are amazing blessings.

The Myth of U.S. Support for Democracy and Freedom.  I have known since at least my experience as an invading Marine in Vietnam in 1965 that our government's claim to support "Democracy" and "Freedom" at home and abroad is "happy horseshit," pure hypocrisy.  I say this for myself as well.  Hitler and the Nazis had broad popular support in German (and then Austria) in the 1930s. Mussolini and Hirohito and Tojo had broad popular within their countries.  Putin apparently has popular support in Russia now, despite or perhaps to some extent because of the war against the Ukrainians.  The fact that the leaders of any government enjoy the support of most of the nation's citizens  and is to that extent democratic provides no assurance that the policies of the government are worthy of respect or support.  It is entirely possible that Donald Trump will receive the majority of the popular vote in the 2024 election.  For a long time there was popular support for African slavery in this country and even broader support for Jim Crow and de facto segregation, Manifest Destiny, and perhaps for white male privilege.  For the most part, we accept majority rule as a compromise form of government only because we can't get our own way all the time which is what we would naturally prefer.

    Internally, I think of the days of J. Edgar Hoover and our domestic political police a/k/a the FBI, the "COINTELPRO" program against American leftists like Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, the assassinationn of Fred Hampton in his bed by Chicago Police aided by the FBI, voter suppression by Republicans, etc.

    Externally, I think of the CIA and the overthrow of the Mosaddeq government in Iran and installation of Shah Pahlavi in 1953, the ouster of Salvador Allende and takeover by Gen. Pinochet in Chile in 1973, the murder of thousands of supposed leftists by Suharto in Indonesia in 1965 while I was in Vietnam helping to kill Vietnamese, our installation of the Catholic anti-democratic Diem-Nhu regime in Vietnam and the cancellation of popular elections in 1955 when it was clear the people would elect 'Uncle' Ho Chi Minh if given the chance.  And of course we can't forget "the Monroe Doctrine," and all the "banana republics."

    I've been browsing a little in Erich Fromm's book Escape from Freedom and a sentence caught my attention:  "The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own.".  So much of what we think is indeed planted in us by others, from our parents and schools in childhood to our government and multiple "hidden persuaders" in adulthood.   I don't remember having learned anything particularly terrible about American history in my years of Catholic schooling.  I knew about slavery of course but received no sense of the true horrors of it, what the life of a slave was like  on a "plantation."  The very term "plantation" was a euphemism for a slave labor camp.  The enslaved workers were people captured from the 'jungles' of Africa.  The indigenous people we worked on exterminating and forcing into "reservations" were savage people intent on killing "white people" just fulfilling America's Manifest Destiny.  And somehow, presiding over all of our history was a benevolent God who blesses America and sees we Americans as having a special role in bringing our brand of goodness to the rest of the world, an "exceptional nation," "under God."

    I am thinking these thoughts about America today, but they are prompted by what I am seeing in Israel and Gaza (and in southern Lebanon and in the West Bank) and what I am hearing from government spokesmen about the absence of a 'humanitarian corridor', about what is happening in Gaza's hospitals, about what is about to happen in northern Gaza, and what to expect after what is about to happen in Gaza.  

Treadmill:  20:33;0.50