Your life is filled with stuff, outside and inside yourself. Minimalism is popular. You are told and believe that reducing the amount of that stuff, outside and inside, has its benefits. It does.
But there is another face to this. However much too much is in your house or inside in your busy buzzing mind, the minimal is already there, without discarding and disposing of a single unkempt pile or thought. The ultimate is to remain surrounded and filled with stuff and to realize that you are not.
Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) begins this evening. It is the final day of the Jewish Days of Awe.
“Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
Constellations are useful
when we see through them
to the stars
We are occupied with connecting dots. We study and follow the pictures emerging from these dots. Like looking in the night sky and telling stories about people and things there. They are there but distract us from the stars themselves. Our systems of religion and psychology and society have power only fueled by the dots as constellations have power only fueled by the simple points of light.
Once upon a time, children got a lot of important information about subjects like history and science from comic books. It was easier and more fun than actually reading.
Here is a comic book from 1957 called Life Stories of American Presidents. Each president up to that time (it ends with Eisenhower) gets at least a page, and some of the more significant presidents such as Lincoln get as many as eight pages.
Now you or anybody else who might need a quick education on American presidents, but who prefer pictures to words, can view this comic book online. It is found at Comic Book Plus, an amazing site that offers online viewing of vintage comic books and other related literature. Best of all, the comic books are in the public domain, so you can download this one and many others.
We don’t know whether Trump was a fan of comic books as a kid, though he is the right age. So maybe this is the way to school him on subjects such as the history of the presidency.
He might learn that Lincoln was a Republican:
He might learn that there used to be another most corrupt president:
He might learn that there used to be another worst president:
He might learn that other presidents may have accomplished more than him during their presidency:
So much to learn when you know so little. That’s why comic books might help.
Every year, on Rosh ha-Shanah, everything returns to its very beginning. Creation is renewed. All that was created in the beginning comes into being again. Thus each Rosh ha-Shanah the world is re-created.
—Sefer Netivot ha-Shalom, commentary by Solomon ben Joel Dubno (1793)
Talking today about the trouble he is in because of a whistleblower, Trump might have said:
“Snitches get stitches.”
Or he might have said:
“Rats need to be exterminated.”
This is what he actually said:
“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
Yes sir, you yourself should be glad these aren’t “the old days,” so now even traitors can escape the ultimate punishment. Of course, some traitors may try to pardon themselves.
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” Henry Ford
Republicans today don’t believe in history, any more than they believe in government or journalism. They don’t believe in historians, any more than they believe in civil servants and journalists. And they are confident that much of the electorate doesn’t believe in these either.
That’s why suggesting to Republicans that history will judge them harshly makes no difference to them, falling on deaf ears. They continue to subvert conventional regard for institutions such as government, education and journalism. Convincing people that history and historians can’t be trusted and have little to offer doesn’t seem that hard to them.
Republicans are probably not right about the whole of the citizenry. Historians are already quick-reviewing the current era in an unflattering light, and numbers of people are paying attention. But if Republicans are right about a substantial portion of the citizenry, that people are ignorant and skeptical of history, and don’t really care what historians say, that unflattering light may get much darker.
For those living under undemocratic regimes—in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere—this may be the most important and interesting story this week that has been missed.
Shaman walking across Russia to ‘exorcise Putin’ arrested on ‘terrorism’ charges
Alexander Gabyshev was attempting to walk 5,000 miles from Siberia to banish ‘demon’ president.
Six months ago, Siberian shaman Alexander Gabyshev experienced a mystical revelation.
He had been chosen to exorcise dark spirits from Russia – as he told anyone willing to listen – dark spirits that were being directed by a demon called Vladimir Putin.
To this end, the shaman set off on foot from far eastern Siberia. He aimed to meet his presidential nemesis in Moscow sometime in 2021. But in the early hours of Thursday, over 1,800 miles into his journey, Mr Gabyshev was stopped, arrested, and reportedly charged with extremism offences.
Authorities were taking no chances, with an elaborate dawn raid to detain the ageing shaman.
According to witnesses, police first cut off the highway on the border between Buryatiya and Irkutsk, the impoverished regions lying on the sides of Lake Baikal. They cut off mobile networks. Then officers surrounded the shaman’s campsite, before pinning him to the ground, leading him to a waiting van, and whisking him away.
For a long time, the idea of a 50-year-old shaman tugging a small trailer towards Moscow was the butt of jokes. Only a fragmented biography about the man was available. It seemed to speak of personal tragedy: a history graduate, Mr Gabyshev turned to mystical religion after the death of his wife in the 2000s.
There seemed little prospect of the one-man protest managing to complete the 5,000-mile journey to the capital.
Yet every day that Mr Gabyshev inched along the federal highway towards his goal, 10 miles at a time, his following grew. A handful even joined him on his crusade.
For some, his unusual protest spoke to a wider general disaffection with Moscow. Locals staged demonstrations in support. And that was when things started to get embarrassing for the Kremlin.
In an interview with the local outlet Znak published before his arrest, Mr Gabyshev said he aimed to create an “army” by the time he reached Moscow.
“God told me to go and banish the demon,” he said. “He, Putin, is not human. He’s a beast, a demon.”
Mr Gabyshev encountered plenty of resistance along the way. Earlier this month, a group of shamans more loyal to the Kremlin tried to impede his entry into Buryatiya. Nearer the regional capital, police also began to take a close interest, arresting two of Mr Gabyshev’s followers.
Ironically, the propaganda video below publicizing this mission is from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded in whole or in part by the American government. There seems to be no recognition that if Putin is viewed as a demon requiring exorcism, there may well be others who view Trump as a demon requiring exorcism. So far, no shamans. A walk from Washington to Palm Beach perhaps?
Mega Flag is one of the world’s largest kites, measuring 138 feet x 83 feet.
Some say the winds of the American economy will never stop blowing, carrying the economy infinitely higher forever. Some of the same people say that if we rely on intelligence, reason, and science, with initiatives such as wind turbines, the lights will all go out when the wind stops blowing.
What if the winds do slow or stop blowing and instead of the lights going out, the Mega Flag economy can’t stay aloft and comes crashing to the ground?
