6/26/2025

Thursday, June 26, 2025

D+211/143/130 3

1968 Iwo Jima was returned to Japan by the US

2003 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

2015 US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 same-sex marriage is a legal right across all US states

2015 US President Barack Obama sang "Amazing Grace" as part of his eulogy for the 9 victims at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston

In bed at 10 after LO'D, up at 5:50.  68°, high of 73°, thunderstorm this afternoon.   

Kevzara, day 3/14; Trulicity, day 7/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 8:50 a.m.; Eye wipes at 9 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at 5 p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  

I am incapable of generating two coherent thoughts today.  Preoccupied, in a state of torpor.

Did the bombing of Iran reduce the likelihood of nuclear proliferation or increase it?  Nuclear armed countries now include the United States with 3,700 warheads +1,477 retired, Russia with 4,309 + 1,150 retired, China with 600, France with 290, the UK with 225, India with 180, Pakistan with 170, Israel with 90, and North Korea with 50.  The countries that are technologically capable of building nuclear weapons include Germany, Poland, and Turkey in the West and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the East.

From The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, ch. 2:

He had been educated with his younger brother in the law school. The younger one didn’t finish and was expelled from the fifth class. Ivan Ilyich completed the course with good marks. In lawschool he was already what he would later be during his entire life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured,and sociable man, but one who strictly did what he considered his duty , and he considered his duty to be everything that it was considered to be by his superiors. Neither as a boy nor afterward as a grown man did he seek to ingratiate himself, but there was in him from a young age the characteristic of being drawn to people of high station like a fly toward the light; he adopted their habits and their views on life and established friendly relations with them. All the passions of childhood and youth went by without leaving much of a trace in him; he gave in both to sensuality and to vanity , and—toward the end, in the senior classes—to liberalism, but always within the defined limits that his sense accurately indicated to him as correct.

At law school he had done things that previously had seemed to him quite vile and had filled him with self-disgust while he did them; but later, seeing these things were done by people in high positions and were not thought by them to be bad, he didn’t quite think of them as good but completely forgot them and wasn’t at all troubled by memories of them.

Having left law school in the tenth class and received money from his father for fitting himself out, Ivan Ilyich ordered clothes at Sharmer’s, hung on his watch chain a medallion with the inscription respice finem, took his leave of the princely patron of the school and his tutor, dined with his schoolmates at Donon’s, and, equipped with a new and fashionable trunk, linen, clothes, shaving and toilet things, and traveling rug ordered and bought from the very best shops, he went off to a provincial city to the post of assistant to the governor for special projects, which his father had procured for him.   

In the provincial city Ivan Ilyich at once established for himself the kind of easy and pleasant position he had had at law school. He worked, made his career, and at the same time amused himself in a pleasant and seemly way; from time to time he went around the district towns on a mission from his chief. He behaved to both superiors and inferiors with dignity and he carried out the responsibilities he had been given, mainly for the affairs of religious dissenters, with an exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he could not but be proud.

ch. 12

Suddenly some kind of force struck him in the chest and on the side; his breath was constricted evenmore; he collapsed into the hole and there at the bottom of the hole some light was showing. There happened to him what he used to experience in a railway carriage when you think you are going forward but are going backward and suddenly realize your true direction. “Y es, everything was wrong, ” he said to himself, “but it doesn’t matter. I can, I can do what is right. But what is right?” he asked himself, and at once fell silent.

It was the end of the third day , an hour before his death. At that very moment the gymnasium schoolboy quietly slipped into his father’s room and approached his bed. The dying man was still crying out despairingly and waving his arms about. One of his hands hit the schoolboy’s head. The schoolboy took it, pressed it to his lips, and wept. 

At that very moment Ivan Ilyich fell through and saw a light, and it was revealed to him that his life had been wrong but that it was still possible to mend things. He asked himself,  “What is right?” and fell silent, listening. Now he felt someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes and looked at his son. He felt sorry for him. His wife came to him. He looked at her. She looked at him, mouth open and tears on her nose and cheeks that she hadn’t wiped away . He felt sorry for her.

“Y es, I make them unhappy , ”he thought. “They are sorry for me, but it’ll be better for them when I die.” He wanted to say that but didn’t have the strength to utter it. “However, why say things? One must act, ” he thought. With a look to his wife he pointed to his son and said: “Take him away . . . sorry for him . . . and for you . . . ” He wanted to add “forgive” but said “give, ”and not having the strength to correct himself, waved his hand, knowing that He who needed to understand would understand.  And suddenly it became clear to him that what had been oppressing him and not coming to an end— now everything was coming to an end at once, on two sides, on ten sides, on every side. He was sorry for  them, he must make it so they had no pain. Free them and free himself from these sufferings.

. . . . . 

“So that’s it!” he suddenly said aloud. “Such joy!”  For him all this took place in a moment, and the significance of this moment didn’t change. For those there his death agony lasted two hours more. Something bubbled in his chest; his emaciated body shivered. Then the gurgling and wheezing became less and less frequent.

“It is finished!” someone said above him.  He heard these words and repeated them in his heart.  “Death is finished, ” he said to himself.“It is no more."

He breathed in, stopped halfway, stretched himself, and died.

Erich Fromm came up with the notion of "malignant narcissim" to include the psychology of Hitler and others, including narcissim, paranoia, psychopathy, and sadism