John Lennon Memorial Day '17

Greetings, gentle readers.
After some intense feuding with some sort of diabolical stomach flu for the past week or so, I've finally brought myself to set a few more jagged thoughts to publish.  It does seem a bit like whistling whilst western civilization immolates itself in a funeral pyre of fear and ignorance, but Samuel Pepys scribbled notes as the 17th century sputtered and bumbled about, and we are all the inheritors of his commentary. 

Political Musings

Having just picked up another copy of Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, I was forced to ask myself once again to consider the ongoing struggle between appearance and reality.  Just as a person can't mention Thomas Hobbes without being beaten over the head with the line "nasty, brutish and short" to describe human life in the state of nature, so too is Machiavelli eternally tarred with the "it is better to be feared than loved" bollocks from The Prince.  Both political philosophers are associated with the catchiest and most popular phrase in their respective bodies of work, rather than their most insightful or even their most representative thoughts.  History thus thinks that both men endorse some sort of tyrannical, repressive regime, presided over by a "Prince" with the authority derived from the force of a "Leviathan."
To make long stories short, both men were writing for a particular audience, and telling them what they wanted to hear.  Hobbes wanted to return to England after the Parliamentary Rebellion, and so had to suck up to Oliver Cromwell, and thus said that the right to rule was not a Divine Right of Kings, but one derived from the barrel of a gun (point of a sword, heavy bit of a club, etc.).  Machiavelli had to tell the Medici family that he wasn't going to stir up any trouble against them so that they wouldn't see him as an obstacle and have him revoked.  K-I-L-L-E-D... revoked.
Political scientists who argue that force and coercion are the keystones of social contracts ought to use these sources to support their arguments very carefully, lest those same sources contradict them.
But as one astute wag remarked, political science is just history for people who are unable to draw their own conclusions.

What Has Trump Done Now?

American politics is such a trash heap of idiocy and incoherent myopic onanism that it defies anything resembling a simple or clear delineation.  Every poll and survey conducted in the past ten years indicates that the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans is seen as corrupt, ineffective, misrepresentative, and broken.  The American public overwhelmingly despise their current system of governance.  Period. 
And then we hit a touchstone issue, and we can see how the American public are again herded into their pens and forced back into the same polarizing paradigm that quietly becomes synonymous with the old two-party system. 

• Abortion.  Democrats are obviously all godless babykillers.  All marginally literate evangelicals therefore must vote for the Republican party at all costs.  There's one demographic sorted.  People who can barely read use ancient scribblings of those who could barely write to justify voting for dirty old pooves.
• Sexual Harassment.  Democratic members of Congress must be horsewhipped within an inch of their lives and ridden out of DC on a rail.  Republican members of Congress are given a badge and several fund-raising events where they can double down and insist that the Bible has set a precedent for acceptable misogyny and paedophilia. (paedos love Exodus 19:31-35)
• Immigration.  Anyone that does not endorse hermetically sealing all of the borders of the United States indefinitely is some kind of bleeding-heart liberal who no doubt masturbates to a bust of V. I. Lenin shrouded in a hammer-and-sickle flag.  Eating popcorn while watching Syrian refugees drown, starve, burn, and bleed to death is solid patriotism.
• Taking a knee.  Military veterans who take a knee out of respect for fallen comrades during a funeral procession is fine.  Athletes taking a knee to protest over-militarized and racially discriminatory police forces is un-American.  Another example of offense being taken where none was being given.
• Gun Control.  Mass shootings are always declared some kind of mental health problem.  Why then is there no impetus to increase funding or resources for mental health either in the armed forces, or in the national health services?  Postulate:  
• all mass shootings are as a result of mental health issues
• women and men are equally susceptible to mental health issues
• over 98% of mass shootings are perpetrated by males
• An easier conclusion to reach prior to speed-dialing the psychiatric association hotline would be to look at the issue from a gender perspective, rather than a wellness one.
• Health Care.  Everyone knows that the best thing for the American population is a single-payer health care system.  By "best," I mean keeping the most people healthy at the lowest overall cost.  The problem with single-payer is that it doesn't make corporate CEOs filthy rich.  Pharmaceutical and medical tech companies make billions every year at one end, and medical insurance companies make a fortune at the other.  Some 50% of American taxpayers are one leukaemia diagnosis away from bankruptcy, but the majority deny the possibility, saying that Medicare, Medicaid, and other social health programs are just part of the slippery slope toward godless communism.  See Abortion.

In short, the deadlock of the American public over these basic issues is actually reflected in Senate and the House of Representatives.  A greater person would be like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith - someone who believes the absurd not only because of a wellspring of positivity, but possibly because it is inherently absurd.  A true Knight of Faith believes that somewhere over the rainbow, some magical Hegelian synthesis between these diametrically opposed viewpoints will lead to a true enlightenment of all the parties.  Mutual appreciation and compromise all around.
Unfortunately, I fall a little short of that lofty spiritual perch.  I'm more of a Knight of Infinite Resignation.  Like two falcons locked in a death spiral, pirouetting toward the stony earth, I see only annihilation.  Rigidity, intractability, and inflexibility have condemned American society to death. 
I have hope that once the cycle of verwirrung has run its course, common sense will allow a rebirth that incorporates the secular humanist democratic thoughts of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, et al. with the rational post-industrial economic understandings of the 21st century.  Until then, citizens of the world just have to hold their noses and keep their head down while ignorance and fear run rampant.

Washtime Warblings

• The Motorcycle Song, by Arlo Guthrie
• Why, by Melanie Chisholm
• Escape, by Journey
• Wrote for Luck, performed by Manic Street Preachers
• African Sky Blue, by Juluka
• Let it Ride, performed by Big Sugar
• Furious Rose, by Lisa Loeb
• My Favourite Game, by The Cardigans
• Turn On Your Lovelight, performed by Them, featuring Van Morrison

Just a few quick observations:

• Returning to the iPod hours later and letting the random playlist continue, the next track to play was "Shine a Little Love" by the Electric Light Orchestra, which is a very eerie track to follow "Turn On Your Lovelight."
• Almost fifty percent of the tracks feature female lead vocalists, something egalitarian to note considering that I have never made a conscious effort to specifically populate my music collection with any sort of quota.
• In a playlist almost bereft of any sort of drug or substance references, Lisa Loeb's song sticks out by mentioning "your opiate eyes." Depending on how physiotherapy goes, I may be looking at breaking my own opioid habit in the next few months.

In Memoriam

Today marks the 37th anniversary of John Lennon's death.  The occasion saddens me immensely, and has done every year.  Just wondering what the world would be like with his acerbic wit to deflate some of today's self-indulgent pretensions is an intellectual exercise as depressing as it is futile.  I miss the guy, warts and all.  I've been moping for decades, and the list of wonderful contributors to the soul of humanity and illuminators of the human condition who have passed away lengthens each year.  Tom Petty was the most recent knife-twist to the figurative cultural gut, and I'm tired of exposing my emotions on social media.  So cheers John.  I'll have a brandy alexander and think about you.

And that's it from me, other than to say that Liverpool FC have been struggling to deal with some severely woeful defensive issues, and have decided over the past month that the answer to defensive frailty is complete offensive overload.  Smashing seven goals against Spartak Moskva this past Wednesday was just a further honing of the knife's edge as every minor misstep by the Russian squad was ruthlessly and relentlessly punished by swift execution.  Surely Everton FC are quaking in their proverbial mukluks ahead of this weekend's cross-town derby.  That sort of fear is the progenitor of the same minor missteps I mentioned earlier.
Goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS