no peanuts in church…

"You might as well face the music. You've tried everything else…" -Sun Ra.

politics

  • New England Townships

    Some ‘Yankee’ wisdom (via de Tocqueville)… Each individual is therefore considered to be as enlightened, as virtuous, as strong as any of his fellows. Ok. This means that we can do whatever we want, right…? He obeys society, not at all because he is inferior to those who direct it, or less capable than another Continue reading

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  • John Adams, small-r ‘republican’…

    A little quote I ran into from ~1776: The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society, Continue reading

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  • FFS. This Crap, Again…

    So: Jack Teixera. D’affaire Snowden was about ten years ago, oddly enough. It was a very different political climate at the time: Trump was still just “a celebrity”. The ongoing War on Terror, initially started by GWB and his GOP a decade before, was now associated with Democrats in general and with Obama in particular. Continue reading

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  • black iron prison, velvet cage.

    How does one destroy a Republic? You destroy the very notion of res publica. You convince the people that there is… no People. No civic space. No public forum. Every square inch of the planet, owned by someone. Every idea, every invention, every thought, every human creation of value, owned by someone. Every one of Continue reading

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  • slouching towards zanzibar…

    SOTU is in a half hour or so. To my mind, this is when the second Obama Administration begins (everything since the election –Hagel, Brennan, drone memos, the fiscal cliff– has just been the usual noise and aftermath, at this scale). That just seems to be part of the national rhythm. Between that, and exhaustion, Continue reading

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