We Are All Theater People

  

All About Eve is the only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations (Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as Best Actress, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter as Best Supporting Actress). The film stars Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star. Baxter plays Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who maneuvers herself into Channing's life, ultimately threatening Channing's career and her personal relationships. The film also co-stars George Sanders. Notably for the subject of the movie, Marilyn Monroe appears in one of her earliest roles.

The last post I made brings up an important point. We have been trapped in the process of Historical Narratology, by which we collectively consume the News and decide what the narrative of history will be from it, as we are a giant collective group of screenwriters in one room, yelling out our ideas to each of how the story must proceed.

We do this because we are prisoners of the Dramaturgical, especially those of us born after 1965. The Dramaturgical subsumed the culture of the West in the Twentieth Century because of the advent of Postmodernity via movies, recorded music, radio broadcast, television broadcasts, etc.

Over time we learned to become actors in a worldwide drama. We are characters. We know what that concept means in regard to having multiple personas that we adopt in different situations. We are comfortable knowing there are levels of character reality in ourselves.. People in the past aspired to have character.  Actors were seen as abnormal people. Now we all of us are required to have the psyche of theatrical performers. 

Some of our cultural heroes are people who realized this early on, decades before the rest of us. The famous ones were Hollywood actors who realized that they had to be in character even even when off camera but in the public eye. All actors today realize this, as does the public. 

One of my favorite Hollywood movies illustrates the concept of the take over of our lives by the Dramaturgical during Twentieth Century very clearly---All About Eve, released in 1950, exactly halfway through the century.. This is one of those movies I could write a dissertation about.

The movie is about Theater people in New York, including actors, actresses, producers, directors, and critics. We get to see how horrible they are to each other. It points directly to the destruction of the concept of Honor in the second half of the century in film and in our culture, and the rise of the Antihero over the Hero . 

It is also very explicitly about the rise of the Toxic Feminine, which has also subsumed our culture, This is feminine character inflamed with the desire for raw Attention that could only have been imagined by women in the era of Postmodernity. The last shot of the movie is a gut punch in describing what the entire coming generations of young women would be like, growing ever more absorbed in the collective Attention-seeking disease on larger stages.

It is a brilliant movie and feels ahead of its time. The essential message I get from it is that Postmodernity is turning all of us into the Theater people. The culture of Theater was becoming, via Pop Culture, the culture of America.

We interact with each other with the knowledge we are interacting with personas. Our culture is a giant backstage from which there is no escape. 

Actors went from being freaks to being our greatest heroes, because they are the most highly talented in the essential skill of the Dramaturgical era.

We know nothing is truly ever what it seems. We are suspicious of all reality because we know it to be stagecraft. We believe that we can design history the way screenwriters tell a story.  The News is a Reality Show that obeys the canons of story-crafting and character. Skilled news producers are skilled at narrative.

What was true in an allegorical sense in Shakespeare's time, "all the world is a stage," is now true in a literal sense.  Postmodernity brings about this awareness and acceptance of its own Dramaturgical condition  Thus we think of this situation as normal now. I think it was one of those things that separates us from people of the past in a huge way. Hardly anyone is left alive who is now Dramaturgical in their core.

God bless the legitimate Theater people. I've know a few in my life, and I have liked most of them, even the crazy ones. I saw in some of them a struggle to come to grips with the very things I just wrote, even if they wouldn't have expressed it as I just did. 

We have been looking for the elusive catharsis, putting together in our Postmodern way the shards of methodologies through experiment, hoping to recreate and re-invent that release that drama once provided, but which now only seems to deepen our affliction.

Xi's Down the Rabbit Hole?

 If Xi turns out to have been an ally of Trump during the big Election Bust (a big if), then it would be a remarkable departure from the storyline I had been assuming was playing out.

In the Postmodern Era, where everything is narrative, and where we collectively decide the narrative of history as we go, it is important to nimble in ones assignments of roles of various persons. Do you know a certain person is a bad guy or a good guy? In movies, we usually always know, or are encouraged to think we know the answer. We want the story to play out in a way that elucidates the characters of the people involved. Good guys will triumph. Bad guys will face justice.

The Crisis of Postmodernity is that we have are so far "down the rabbit hole" of narratological weaving, through both media and social media, and by the way we talk to each other about what we see there, that we believe that we actually control history through this fashion.

The reality of history has no obligation to play out according to our dramas. We are not watching a movie that plays out according to the story arc canons of Hollywood, whether it be a movie, or a streaming series adapted from an unfinished series of novels, etc.

Trump has long recognized that the public assigns personages in the drama of Public Life, and that it was possible for him to take charge of his own persona. He adopted the stance of the subset of drama performers who stay in character whenever they are on camera---the professional wrestling circuit. He became the bad guy and learned to take control of his own negativity within public life. 

Most people who hate him suffer from a cognitive rigidity regarding who he really is. They insist they that must be the worst bad guy of bad guys. This insistence had led many of them into mental illness, and they struggle in the Cult of the Press (people who appear on camera are heroes).

Trump: "We Caught Them All"

Feb 2020 -- Pompeo warning to U.S. governors at conference, regarding Communist Chinese report on them. "They've labeled each of you friendly, hardline or ambiguous. I'll let you decide where you think you belong. Someone in China already has. Many of you in the report are referenced by name.

Jun 19 2020 -- Secret meeting in Hawaii between Secretary of State Pompeo and Xi's goons.

Jun 25 2020 --- Trump on Hannity's show on Fox, speaking about Biden."The man can't speak. And he is going to be President?"

Jul 23 2020 -- Chinese consulate in Houston shut down. Pompeo speaks about Xi and the Communist China. He references the Jun 19 meeting in Hawaii .

Nov 10 2020 --- Pompeo: "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration."

Wictor's running theory for the last several years is that the Chinese have been bribing and blackmailing people in politics, the media, academia around the world, in particular in the United States, on a massive scale for many years. It is part of the general Chinese plan to defeat the United States without a direct military confrontation.

Wictor thinks that the list of controlled western assets with the evidence to blackmail them was kept in a database. Relying on news reports and videos, he has built what he thinks is the solution: that the Chinese database was recovered by Saudi and Gulf commandos in 2017 working as part of a clandestine U.S. military operation using the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter. There was a cover story at the time about Mossad supposedly raiding an Iranian facility. Whether by that operation, or something else, Trump has had the database since then. We are learning that the DOJ and FBI have used FISA warrants to gather data on many public figures since then, as part of counter-espionage against the Chinese. Biden was under surveillance, to be sure, until he became a candidate.

We have already had the initial release of Communist Chinese Party members in the West, and the revelation that Eric Swalwell, a Democratic Congressman on the intelligence committee, was the successful target of a Chinese honeypot operation. Ric Grenell, former Acting Director of National Intelligence, has said Swalwell is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Today we learn the degree to which Chinese money has control of the U.S. media. This may be the big monster that is about to emerge. The video hints at the possibility that Xi sold the Democrats out, and was part of the sting. I hadn't thought of that possibility. If so, then Trump really is toying with them like a cat toying with a mouse.  By some means, he has tremendous leverage at the moment. 

Pop Culture at Nadir III: Turning on the Eighties

Over the weekend the movie vloggers in my Youtube subscription feed weighted in on the latest big movie release. 

True movie releases are rare these days. Any movie release is a big deal. So much has the output dwindled. Hollywood is making motion pictures at the same rate as the early Silent Era.

This new movie is the first sequel to a superhero franchise that started a couple years back by a major studio, spinning off a popular superhero character into her own movie. 

That first movie, which came out before the shutdown, was a rousing success. It made the studio lots of money in worldwide theatrical release. The characters were compelling and the acting was excellent. The making of a sequel, if not multiple sequels, was a given.

The movie was actually made in 2019, and was supposed to be released last spring. Production delays and theater closures delayed the release until last week. It went to the theaters in China, and perhaps in limited theatrical release in the U.S., but mostly the U.S. release will be an on demand offering through a streaming service. There is plenty of talk that theaters will never come back in the U.S. as we knew them.

What did my favorite movie Youtubers think of this sequel?  

Here is one opinion. 

Here is another

(The titles of these videos express the sentiment of the reviews. You'll have to click on them to see).

The story is a disaster and full of plot holes. The pacing is boring. The movie is way too long. The characters are ridiculous. They have trashed the character equity they built up in the first movie.  The CGI special effects (the one thing they should have nailed) was shoddy and laughable.

The movie tanked in Chinese theaters after a week.

We knew that Hollywood was dead even before the Shutdown. Disney had destroyed its flagship Star Wars franchise, for which it had paid so much money. The streaming services would take years to recoup the initial investment and become profitable.. There was talk that Hollywood had realized it had gone too far with Wokeness. They were pulling back from the brink.

Then came Black Lives Matter, which blew away any resistance left to a complete Revolutionary takeover of Hollywood, Hollywood is past dead. It is undead.

One of the reviews in this links I posted---I think the one byCritical Drinker--pointed out something funny about the movie, namely that it trashed the America of the 1980's as a dystopia. 

The Eighties in America were a lot of things, but they were not a dystopia. The Eighties were awesome. 

Personally I had the most wonderful of times in the Eighties,  while complaining about America in the heaviest of ways and thinking American politics was awful. 

Being young, I had painful episodes, heartbreaks and set-backs. I was lucky to be sure. but I can assert that for a normal chap like me, the Eighties were great time to young.

Among other things, it was way easier to meet people back then, and develop friendships. We are way more broken apart, on so many levels.

If you want to understand what made the Eighties so great, just consider this truth: America in the Eighties was the most advanced state achieved by Western Civilization without the Internet. 

The Direction of Maximum Goodness

 The Thinking Man's way forward through history inevitably leads to Communism, because Communism is the embrace of the idea that human beings can control the evolution of human society.

We can educate people to be Smarter, and they will become Better people along the way, building the momentum for change towards the Good.

At any given point in time, the directions towards the Good reflects the conditions of oppressive and injustice present at that time (and place). 

A century ago in Russia the direction towards the Good pointed towards seizure of property of the nobility, including their real estate, and its distribution to peasants. At another time in history, it means highlighting the death of people with a certain skin color, or sexual orientation, who have suffered historical oppression. At one moment, the drive towards Goodness make take the form of correcting the language and vocabulary that we use with each other. It may mean sexual libertinism or sexual prudery, depending on the moment.

The Smartness of the Smart People who embrace Communism is not an intelligence of intellectual pursuits. About this, they are frighteningly ignorant. They now make it their creed that all the previous pursuits of intellectuals are invalid. All of western philosophy, science, and art is now invalid. 

Science is good only when it points towards the Goodness of the present era of history. Otherwise Science is bad. Overall, the Scientific Method is anathema, since it has the mere possibility to disagree with Goodness of the present era.

The mere possibility that a scientific investigation might contradict a principle of the Goodness of the present moment means that it must be prohibited. At some future date, then the direction of maximum Goodness has shifted to another topic in the Struggle of History, then perhaps such an investigation can be taken.

Communism vs. Christianity

 

Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film that stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen. Shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, it is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the plot contains certain analogues to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation.

What's wrong with a world run by Smart People?

One could say it is as simple as pride. Our classic science fiction is full of warnings that ego leads people with strong intellects to believe themselves to be infallible in judgment, even while acting for what they think is the Good, the canonical example from film being Forbidden Planet (1956). 

Let us stipulate what Rule by Smart People is not. It is not the idea that all of us are Stupid People. This is the Christian view, that we are all Stupid. There can be no such thing as Rule by Smart People, only Rule by People who Think They are Smart but are Actually Stupid. This is why Communism is fundamentally at odds with Christianity. 

A World Run by the Smart People

One of the misconceptions about Communism is that it is about economic redistribution.  This is only one aspect of Communism, the importance of which varies from age to age of history. Right now in America, the classical Marxist redistribution of wealth is only part of what Communism is about. American Communism, which now dominates the political dialogue in the media and in both political parties,  includes economic redistribution as only a part of which it is seeking to achieve at the moment.

What is Communism always about, no matter what time of history we are talking about? If not economic redistribution in the old Hammer and Sickle model, what does Communism mean?

Communism is essentially the idea that the society, and the world as a whole, should be run by the smart people who have good ideas. Communism is the organization of this concept into political action that transforms society..

No matter era we are talking about, even before Marx, Communism always means the Rule by the Smart. What Smart People want at any given point in history varies from era to era, as the needs of society change. Right now it pretty obvious the things Smart People want.

One feature about Smart People is that being more intelligent, they are more able to distinguish Good from Evil.  Being more intelligent, they are more rational and thus they tend to move towards Good and away from Evil. Some Smart People choose to be Evil, which causes great harm to humanity, but most Smart People are Good.

The true Evil in society comes from the Stupid People. Stupid People are less able to distinguish Good from Evil, and thus on the whole, Evil arises from the masses of Stupid. Alas there are more Stupid People than Good People, but the situation has been getting people through universal education. Education is the process of transforming Stupid People to Smart People, and thus making them from Evil and towards the Good. 

Most Smart People who are not bent on Evil tend to share a consensus of political values which are based on Reality. Stupid People, who tend to be Evil, base their opinions on falsehood.

Smart People thus can recognize each other by the political beliefs. One way to know if you are smart or not is to compare your political beliefs to other Smart People. 

Likewise one can easily recognize the Stupid and Evil People by their political beliefs as well.

The surest way to identify a Communist is to talk to them for a few moments. Inevitably they will begin complaining about the Stupid People. It's their obsession. If only the Stupid People would go away, the Smart People could remake society in a way that would do away with so many of our current social ills. Perhaps it would not be paradise on Earth, but it would be a lot closer. 

The more things in the world that are run by Smart People, the better. We should not only increase the number of Smart People in society (which is measured by democratic elections), but we should increase the influence of Smart People over as many things in society as possible. We should be bold in remaking society under the guidance of the Smart. The only thing standing in the way are the Stupid People, or our collective will use political action in a Smart way.

In the First Class Lounge of History

 This video captures my general mood at the moment.

Pop Culture at Nadir II: The End of Pop Music

 Fittingly it was left to a radio network, NPR, to declare the End of Pop Music. From a tweet on Twitter I learned that NPR had declared the obvious song, by a female rapper, as the Song of the Year. (link) 

In this, NPR did not err. The song was the only song in 2020. There were no other songs. 

There have barely been songs for years, but this year Pop Music reached an unprecedented bottoming-out in the form of the most vulgar, taboo-breaking finale explosion possible (lyrics [warning strong vulgarity]). 

Pop Music had already succumbed to the moribund disease of lack of fundamental sexual energy, which is what has always driven it.  

The entire canon of Pop Music, which could legitimately have included thousand of titles by 1992, has taken in less than two dozen new songs since the turn of Millennium. The last legitimate inclusion was in 2014. In the end hardly anyone noticed when it died. I think that it will not include any others.

Pop stars will continue to exist, playing themselves in the Reality Drama of social media, etc. They will continue to emote in the most uncreative ways, that make one doubt one's judgment in having ever considered them to be creative.  

Pop Music, however, is done. There can be no recovery from this song. Pop Music cannot ever come back, because the taboo-breakers will never have it. The only way out now is complete repudiation of Pop Music, which is what will happen. 

The Magic Cow of Happiness

 

Macushla with Sydney Greenstreet

We watched TCM for a couple days before Christmas, including Christmas Eve. I hadn't seen TCM at all since last January. Watching it, or any television for that matter, had not seemed the thing to do. Also I was not interested in the fictional narratives of cinema. I got into watching Youtube channels of traditional religious services, of people doing stealth camping in Canada, or people traveling the country in RVs.

But J had wanted to watch Christmas in Connecticut, which is one of our favorites, that I turned her onto. When we watched it a couple days ago, it was pleasing to notice details of the genius of the constructed story, even after so many watchings, and to raise deeper questions about the plot line and the characters.

One of the notable things about this movie is that, besides having a great early example of the "Town Dance" scene, it among the finest examples in all of Hollywood history---perhaps the finest---of what I call the Magic Cow of Happiness.

The Magic Cow of Happiness is a Law of Hollywood Poetics. It is the idea that in any appearance of the bovine species in film, the appearance of the animal reflects the tone of the story, and relation of the characters in the scene, in regard to earthly happiness.

The way the cow functions in the story often reflects the entire story in one scene, either foreshadowing it, or providing a mirror version of it. 

In all my years of watching movies, I have never seen this law violated. It is uncanny, because it cannot be a conscious element of the poetics of storytelling. Screenwriters don't tell each other to use cows this way in the story (although at one time maybe they did). It is far too thorough in movies, even recent ones, for that. It arises from something spontaneous in the human psyche in regard to cattle that comes out inevitably in any artistic vision involving cattle.

I could give many examples of the Magic Cow of Happiness and how it works in movies. It need not be a comedy or a movie in which the characters are happy. Sometimes they are very unhappy. In that case, the treatment of the cattle will be a sad one, that accompanies their own sadness. It can even be surreal and ugly, if the movie has that tone and style. The cows may even be destroyed. One of the bleakest movies I can think of in Hollywood history ends with a shot of a bull being killed. Cows may be used as a weapon, for example in a stampede, but if so they can only ever be used as such by the good guys as a weapon of justice.

Invariably, however, the best uses of the Magic Cow of Happiness are when the characters themselves are happy, as they are in a buoyant romantic comedy like Christmas in Connecticut. Made in 1945, it is not only a romantic comedy, but a fertility comedy.  The two main characters are more than romantically suited for each other. They obviously belong together, and should marry as quickly as possible and start putting that energy into having kids.

Because the two characters must be together, the story must put up many obstacles and barriers. Christmas in Connecticut is rich with supporting characters who interact with each other in a complex sequence of scenes, pairing or tripling them up to create comic intrigue through misapprehension and other classic story devices.

The comic barriers places between the two leading characters is so over the top that at one point in the story, when all seems lost, they have to be rescued by the intrusion of a cow right into the kitchen of the house. The cow does more than interrupt. It demands attention, which rescues the two main characters at a critical point in the story and gives an excuse for the characters to have the moment of intimacy in which they realize they are meant for each other. 

There are multiple follow-up references to the cow after its appearance, including multiple instances in which a characters is talking about the cow, and the other characters thinks they are talking about a person, or vice versa. One supporting character is converted from being a supposed cow-hater to a cow-lover.

The cow in this movie is the very essence of the force of life pulling the two characters together into matrimony. It intervenes when nothing else can, to save the day. It brings the two main romantic characters into a stable on Christmas Eve, 

It is as close to the direct blessing of God that one sees in a Hollywood story. It is what we want to believe happens, what we universally yearn to find in life when we are young, and which was so obvious in 1945 but seems oblique now in the stories of our own time.

The story is so powerful as Christmas magic that it converts Sydney Greenstreet's character, the force-of-good-despite-himself antagonist, into a giggling jolly incarnation of Santa Claus in the last shot of the movie.  It must have been a great joy for that great character actor, known so well for his villainous roles, to make this movie in which he gets to ring in Christmastime in Dickensian fashion. All it required was working alongside a cow.

The cow in Christmas in Connecticut utimately is so important to the story that it gets honored in a way that few of its species get honored in a movie. Like any important supporting role, it gets to have a name, which is said aloud by both the main characters. Macushla. It's from the Irish for "my pulse,' and it is a term of affection from a song in the era before the movie was made.

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) as Elizabeth Lane. Stanwyck was 38 when she made the film, but she plays it was a lusty buoyancy of a woman in her twenties, something few other actresses of her day could have done.

The movie---which is an Irish romance---turns a wooden rocking chair into an  ultimately) matrimonial object of lust. This use of the rocking chair in the story, and the fact that there are an abundance of such chairs in the movie even at the beginning,  can be compared in various ways to the The Quiet Man (1951).

The Nativity with Cow and Donkey

The Nativity, fresco in the lower church of St Francis in Assisi by Giotto, 1310s

In the tradition of western art, the cow (or ox) and donkey are the two animals most often present in the depiction of the Nativity. 

Lambs are sometimes present as well, but they are less uniformly so in western art, and typically are found a group. Part of the reason for this is that Christ is the Lamb of God, and thus any other lambs present  reinforce the idea that the wood of the cradle is the wood of the cross, as the Church teaches. 

The cow and donkey, by contrast, are gifts of God to Man. They are often present as a single representative of their species, standing side-by-side as in the Giotto fresco above, peering close at the Christ child from a close distance, often closer than anyone else but the Virgin herself.

It is impossible to think of the history of humanity and civilization without these two animals.

They are, significantly, the first two possessions that God allows Satan to take from Job (Job 1:14-15).  I like to think they are the ones in the Nativity symbolize the same animals returned by God.

Pop Culture at Nadir

 We watched more Hallmark Channel Christmas movies a couple nights ago. It was interesting to compare Hallmark to the Lifetime Channel ones we had seen in Salt Lake City.

As we suspected, Hallmark is a higher caliber product. Among its strengths is the art design---the locales, the interior, and the props. This is to be expected given Hallmark's brand.

The stories are better as well. They are more interesting scene-by-scene. 

Among the Hallmark channel movies we watched was one that newly released in 2020. Watching that one, we noticed the comparisons to Lifetime that I mentioned.

But the biggest surprise was not this comparison between the networks, but the comparison between old and new, as we also watched a Hallmark Channel movie that was six years old. We knew it was old from the start because it featured a veteran television actor in a supporting role who had passed away a few years back. It must have been one of his last roles.

Watching this older Hallmark movie blew us away. We were taken into a completely different America. In this America, strong male characters existed. Men had passion and drive. They had purpose in life. They were not wandering around in life looking for the woman who could help them find their way in the world.

The current crop of Hallmark and Lifetime movies have universally weak male characters. The men are all at sea. They need a woman's help and direction at every turn. Old men fretting like women take direction and counseling from teenage girls. It is disgusting.

There is no romance in any of the current crop of movies. The two main characters usually have no chemistry. The story is the narration of a business arrangement. The two characters go into business together as romantic partners at the end, or so it is implied. 

The movies today are sterile. Only one kiss is allowed as a remnant of a canonical scene from earlier Hallmark movies---the tantalizing stolen kiss scene. We saw such a scene in the 2014 Hallmark movie we watched with the veteran actor in the supporting role. 

The man and woman were in his kitchen, where he is master of his domain, and is teaching her how to cook (mansplaining). As he gives her sauce to taste, holding the spoon, there is a moment of palpable romantic tension. We see that both characters feel the moment, and that for the moment, the moment is not about sauce. 

They almost kiss. He calls it off, and takes them back to the cooking lesson.  Then he teaches her how to stir the sauce with a big spoon. As she stirs, he puts his hands almost over hers. 

At this point we were falling out of seats laughing.  This was beyond risqué. This implied the characters actually had baby-making energy.

The most startling aspect of the 2014 movie was that the heroine had a rival for the man's interest, and she was attractive. I realized I had not seen a single instance of this formerly common storyline, the rival story, in any of the current crop of movies. 

The difference in the realities of the 2014 movie versus the one portrayed in this year's movies on both networks is a chasm as big as anything I have experienced in my life time, including the mid-late 1960s.

Last Stand or Party?

Trump: "January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

Tim Pool: "This could be Trump's last stand."

Wictor: "It's an invitation to a PARTY."

(clip starts at 3:34)

 

Why America?

 What purpose does the United States serve in the world order going forward?

This is a serious question, because the answer to it will give us the clue to winning the war.

The world aches for global socialism, we are told. This will bring world peace (at last) and world harmony to a degree never known in human history. Great inequities will be rebalanced. The measure of social justice in the world will increase substantially. The potentials in all peoples will be realized to a degree barely imaginable in today's world. Above all, the Earth and its environments will be saved from catastrophic climate change.

If an election for World President were to be held right this instance, either using a global popular vote, or some global Electoral College, it would be certain that in a contest between Xi and Trump, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party would defeat the current President of the United States in a landslide. One should not make too much of this, however. as every Republican President would have lost going back to at least Nixon.

In the Postmodern era Socialism seems to have the upper hand because it relies on image over substance. It is about remaking the world through the power of the collective human imagination. This power is manifest in the world through political action.

Socialism is intoxicating because it will promise to fulfill all of your yearnings, and solve all your beefs with the world. It is a system designed to discover and shape those yearnings and beefs within society at large and to harness that energy through politics.

Marxist theory tells us that each new stage of world history arises from a synthesis between opposing dialectical forces described sometimes as the thesis and the antithesis.

The most famous example, going back to Hegel, is that of Napoleon as Emperor was a synthesis of the old French monarchy and  the French Republic. By combing the old and new into a new stability, he was thus the fulfillment of the French Revolution. 

Marxist theory has been the core of western thinking for over a century and a half. By the end of World War II, it was known by all great minds of the West that the Cold War would resolve itself by a fusion of Soviet Communism and American Capitalism. 

The synthesis would result in a world civilization at some point.  Influenced by Marxists, but without being a Marxist himself, Franklin Roosevelt did much to establish the groundwork for this eventual synthesis of the Soviet and the American systems at some future date when the world would ready for that level of stability.

In the year 2020, we are deep into the synthesis of a global civilization, which began around 1991. The Iraq War was the catalyst event that allowed a new post Cold War framework of cooperation to emerge around the world.

The world order was initially led by the United States, who had been the apparent victor in the Cold War. The order thus had an American flag at its front, and carried explicit American values in its mission. 

By Marxist doctrine, however, one can see that the world order could not simply be an American-led coalition of nations with America always first among equals. 

The stable resolution requires a true synthesis. It requires the adoption of a vision that surpasses both of the two warring sides of the old order.  Nor would it suffice to have any two pair of nations or empires face off against each other over a long period of time. Such a system could never be global. 

In June 1992 world leaders reached a consensus that in the new phase of history (global civilization), the warring factions of the new stable world order would Earth vs. Man. 

The global civilization itself would be a merger of certain aspects of American capitalism and certain aspects of Soviet Communism. The laboratory for this synthesis was China, which has been adopted by consensus of world leaders as the model for the globalized world. 

As a laboratory for the new society, China thus became an antithesis to the legacy post-1991 thesis of America being at the front of the world order.  In the minds of world leaders, the synthesis between Laboratory China and Legacy America is being fulfilled as I write this.  The result will be the true birth of the new global world order.

The global order post 2020 will have aspects that are recognizably American (and British), in the way that a face a grandchild may have facial features of the grandparent. It will use English as standard language. The globalized culture will be a descendant of American Pop Culture and its accompanying secular consumerism. It will have a liberalized world trade economy based around a unified global banking system which uses the institutions established by the western nations.

In this vision, certain aspects of America, however, will not survive into the new global order because they have become outdated. They are incompatible with certain foundational principles of the global world order. Care to guess what these things are that America is supposed to give up, when it merges into the harmonious new world as a cooperative world citizen at last?

If we are going to save the American Republic and the Constitution going forward, we need to have a reason that we articulate that says that the above vision offered by the Globalist Marxists and their many millions of acolytes is dead wrong. 

Acting Secretary: "I'm Going Off-Script Again"

Christopher C. Miller addresses Mike Pence at the commemoration of the first anniversary of the founding of the United States Space Force. Dec. 18, 2020.

Founded Dec. 20, 2019

Nov. 9, 2020 (D-DAY) -- Christopher C. Miller (age 55) appointed Acting Secretary of Defense.

Miller was born October 15, 1965 in Platteville, Wisconsin, and raised in Iowa City from 1975, attending Iowa City High School. His father was police chief of Iowa City for 13 years who had previously been a law professor in North Carolina. 

In 1987 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from George Washington University. He was awarded the Gardiner G. Hubbard Memorial Award in U.S. History for having the highest grade point average in the history department.

Dec. 18, 2020 (D-DAY+39) -- Commemoration of the first anniversary of the creation of the United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. military. 

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the commemoration. He is introduced by Acting Secretary of Defense Miller.

"Mr. Vice President, I'm going off-script again. I just want to personally thank you. We've been through some stuff. We've gone through some of the most complex military operations this country has ever conducted. Your steady hand,and your leadership during those...was a great source of strength for me. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your character. Thank you for your selfless service. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for being a mentor to me, Mr. Vice President."

Miller's remarks are at 3:00 of this video:

Personal note: Miller is my type of guy.  Class of '83? Freshman at GWU when I was in D.C?  I get him. 

Trump: "We've Got it Made"

 

Dec. 20 -- Trump calls into "Uncovering the Truth",  hosted by Rudy Giuliani and Dr. Maria Ryan on WABC Talk Radio in New York. (link to audio [5:06])

Trump, to Dr. Ryan: "I call[ed] in to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas. As you know, Rudy and his team, and myself, and a lot of other people, and frankly millions all over the country---we have uncovered a voter fraud, the greatest voter fraud in history. It's the most corrupt election this country has ever had, by far...

We've already found the answers. Now we have to get the support from some politicians. Other than that, we have it made. I think we've come. a long way in a very short period of time. "

Giuliani: "Mr. President, I just issued a challenge. I said to the Democrats: 'If you're so sure that we're lying and making this up, how about letting us examine the machines...in six counties? We'll examine them in open, in public, and let's see who won.'"

Trump: "Right. The machines, number on. And very machine that we've looked at, you know what the results...have been....[A]lso the signature verifications. Let us see the signatures in Fulton County in Georgia, and a couple of other places.... You'll find that hundreds of thousands of signatures either don't exist or were fraudulently written...

"...It's a very difficult thing because of the Governor and the Secretary of State [of Georgia]. But...on Monday they're starting signature verification...but they're not starting it in the right location. They're starting them in areas which are not very troubled. We'll still find a lot even in those areas..."

The six counties are presumably:

1. Maricopa County, Arizona (population 4,485,414)

2. Clark County, Nevada (population 2,266,715)

3. Wayne County, Michigan (population 1,749,343)

4. Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (population 1,584,064)

5. Fulton County, Georgia (population 1,063,937)

6. Milwaukee County, Wisconsin  (population 945,726)

Trump: "A Hit on Our Ridiculous Voting Machines"

 Dec. 17 -- "[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo labels [the Chinese Communisty Party] as most existential thread to US national security." (Yahoo News)

 "America has now had a leader who is refusing to bend a knee to China and is standing up to them, but there's an awful lot more work to do, as you can see by the data that's now coming out."

"Pompeo announced sanctions against 14 vice-chairpersons of the National People's Congress over the controversial national security law imposed on Hong Kong" 

"...and also designated China in its list of 'Countries of Particular Concern' (CPC) for violations of religious freedom. (ANI)"

Dec. 18 --- "Solarwinds hack hit Pima County servers"  (Tucson Sentinel). 

The county acknowledged Friday afternoon that it had been a target, but refused to detail the extent of the attack on its networks.

"We have no indication any data was stolen," said Pima County Chief Information Officer Dan Hunt.

"As soon as we were notified that SolarWinds had an issue, we unplugged every device running the software, and removed the agent from every device in our network as recommended by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency," Hunt said. "We are following proper protocol and have not been able to verify that there was any data breach

Pima County, Arizona. "As of the 2010 census, the population was 980,263, making it Arizona's second-most populous county. The county seat is Tucson" (WP)

 Dec. 19 -- POTUS in a tweet just now

The [Solarwinds Orion] Cyber Hack is far greater in the...Media than in actuality. 

I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control.

...Russia...is the...chant when anything happens because [the Media is] petrified of....discussing the possibility that it may be China...

,,,it may!.  

There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA."

 

 

Haberman: "Those Briefed Said"

Maggie Haberman. Born October 30, 1973 in New York City, the daughter of.. a longtime journalist for The New York Times, and ..., a media communications executive. Wikipedia:"In October 2016, one month before Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, a document was released by WikiLeaks that outlined how Clinton's campaign could induce Haberman to place sympathetic stories in Politico"

. . 

Sat. Dec. 19---   Tweet thread by Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for The New York Times. regarding an article in today's edition that she co-authored. The subject is alleged meeting in the Oval Office the night before. 

The meeting supposedly was attended by POTUS, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump's Personal Attorney Rudy Giuliani,  Sidney Powell, and (possibly) Mike Flynn. 

"The meeting got raucous, with various administration members drifting in and out and different people arguing. Powell told others they were quitters, people people briefed on the meeting"

The current White House Counsel is Pat Cipollone (born 1966) who assumed the role on December 10, 2018.

The White House Counsel is a senior staff appointee of the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States whose role is to advise the President on all legal issues concerning the President and their administration.

Although the White House Counsel offers legal advice to the president and vice president, the counsel does so in the president's and vice president's official capacity, and does not serve as the president's personal attorney.

Cipollone was named White House Counsel by President Donald Trump in October 2018. He succeeded Don McGahn who left office on October 17, 2018. Emmet Flood served as counsel until Cipollone's background security check was completed. 

"Sidney Powell was in Oval Office last night as POTUS discussed making her special counsel for election fraud.

Among those pushing back on the idea was Pat Cipollone, [White House Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows and even [Rudy] Giuliani.

"Giuliani separately pushed DHS this week to seize control of voting machines to examine them for possible fraud."

"DHS said it has no authority to do that."

The current DHS Secretary is Chad Wolf, appointed Nov. 13, 2019 by Donald Trump.

"The fact of the meeting - and Giuliani hope of seizing the voting machines - has alarmed some of the president's advisers, who see his desire to take his refusal to accept the election results as in a dangerous new place."

"Meadows and Cipollone strenuously and repeatedly objected to these suggestions, saying there was no constitutional basis, according to the people briefed"

"...[T]wo people briefed said [General Mike[ Flynn was there ..."

"...[T]he president asked about Flynn’s suggestion of deploying the military, those briefed said.

"...That was also shot down."

cf. February 16, 2017 -- "Trump: Leaks are Real, News is Fake"  (CNBC)

Navarro: "This Looming Risk"

 Fri. Dec. 17 -- The Navarro Report.(pdf). on electiion irregularities in the "six battleground states": AZ,GA,MI,NV,PA, and WI.

  Peter Navarro (born 1949), author of several books on China and trade policy, was appointed to a newly created White House Office by Donald Trump in April 2017, the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy

From the Executive Summary:

"This was theft by a thousand cuts across six dimensions* and six battleground states rather than any one single “silver bullet” election irregularity" 

"Evidence used to conduct this assessment includes more than 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of state venues, published analyses by think tanks and legal centers, videos and photos, public comments, and extensive press coverage."

 "[S]ignificant irregularities occurred across all six battleground states and across all six dimensions of election irregularities.*"

"...each [battleground] state has a unique mix of issues that might be considered “most important.”

"the observed patterns...are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election outright, ... unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket."

"The ballots in question ...are more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump should even a relatively small portion...be ruled illegal."

[M]edia and ... social media are complicit in ...a dangerous game that ...undermines ... the stability of our political system and Republic.."

This game is also

 ",,, a signal failure ...of ... our legislative and judicial branches. Republican governors..and State Legislatures of five of the,,,battleground states...[who] have had both the power and the opportunity to investigate..[y]et, wilting under intense political pressure,...failed in their Constitutional duties..."

"Both State courts and Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have failed ...in refusing to appropriately adjudicate the...irregularities that have come before them."

This failure poses:

",,,a great risk to the American Republic... "

The risk includes:

"...putting into power an illegitimate and illegal president..."

and

"...never being able to have a fair presidential election again . "

The Georgia Senate runoff on Jan. 5 is

"......an initial test case of this looming risk."

*The six dimensions of election irregularities used in the report are:

1. Outright Voter Fraud

2. Ballot Mishandling

3. Contestable Process Fouls

4. Equal Protection Clause Violations

5. Voting Machine Irregularities. (widespread evidence in five of the six states, and some evidence in Wisconsin).

6. Significant Statistical Anomalies

68%: The Audit of Antrim County

"A forensic audit of the presidential vote tally by Dominion Voting Systems software used in Antrim County, Michigan, showed a more than 68% error rate, with auditors claiming the system intentionally creates the errors so the machine can have them "adjudicated" – allowing individuals to change the result." 

The audit was conducted by James Ramsland of the Allied Security Operations Group. It was ordered to be released by Judge Kevin Elsenheimer after its release had been blocked under pressure from the Michigan Attorney General and Secretary of State.

Location of Dominion Voting Systems in the United States during the Nov. 3, 2020 Election. To my recollection, this was tweeted by Sidney Powell shortly after the Nov. 3 election, in conjunction with Trump's initial tweet about Dominion alleging widespread vote switching to Biden.

We see Georgia is saturated (Georgia has 159 counties). Among the swing states, it is also widely used in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, including the critical urban areas. In Arizona is used critically in Maricopa County (Phoenix and suburbs) and also in Pima County (Tucson). 

It is used only in a limited sense in Florida (and not at all in the urban areas) and barely at all in Texas.

Nov 4 --  Initial results in the reliably Republican Antrim County in northern Michigan showed Joe Biden with a 7,769-4,509 lead 

Nov 6 --  Antrim County result is changed to a 9,783-7,289 Trump lead two days later. It eventually becomes a 9,748-5,960 margin for Trump.

Editor's note: To my collection this switch was widely known at the time and discussed on social media. One can assume it was completely ignored by the mainstream media.  It was reported that the Dominion machines were at fault somehow. The ordering of an audit took several weeks to come about.

Early December -- Audit of Dominion machines seized in Antrim County is ordered by Jaudge Kevin Elsenheimer of the 13th Circuit Court of Michigan. It is to be conducted by  Russell James Ramsland.

Dec. 12 -- Release of audit is blocked by. judge in Michigan at the urging of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The findings were nevertheless leaked to CDMedia.

Dec 14 -- Ramsland audit of Dominion voting machines ordered released by Judge Elsenheimer in Michigan.  

Audit:"The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail." The audit was released Monday by state court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer of the 13th Circuit Court of Michigan in a case brought by county resident William Bailey against Antrim County, Michigan. (link)

"We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results," the audit report prepared by Allied Security Operations Group read. 

Antrim County, Michigan

 which was changed to a 9,783-7,289 Trump lead two days later and eventually a 9,748-5,960 margin for Trump.

"The discrepancy was attributed to a clerk's failure to update the programming in the tabulators. Russell James Ramsland Jr., who conducted the audit and has worked with NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, disputed the claim.

Dominion denied that there were software glitches in Antrim County or anywhere else. In a statement the company said "isolated human errors not involving Dominion” were at fault

Ramsland: "We disagree and conclude that the vote flip occurred because of machine error built into the voting software designed to create error," he wrote in the report.

(Detroit Free Press) Trump suggests in a tweet that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson would face legal scrutiny for the alleged errors. “Did Michigan Secretary of State break the law? Stay tuned!” Trump wrote. 

Editor's note: This headline made me crack up. This is what passes for journalism these days. Nitwits all of them. It gives me compassion to the tortured, embittered souls who are still watching "the news." A psyche fed on a diet of lies becomes as unhealthy as a body fed by junk food carbs. Not hard to see the result in so many folks.