2020-07-10

A serpent tread down

Perhaps, as God said, but this

Dragon? Let it be.

 The Nile Crocodile; 

  known for his smile

 He is not a handsome mess

 When he boats 

  he boats in style 

 His clients all confess;

 A V-I-P

  From sea to sea 

 Just watch the party move

 Works for free,

  Spontaneity,

 Is always in the groove;

 As he promotes,

  Those in boats

 Know his taste is fine:

 Everyone screams

  And sinks or floats--

 He loves to wine and dine.

 

I chose a crocodile for this sketch simply because I read from some heraldic writer or other that the original heraldic dragons were something like a crocodile with the wings of a bat. It was thought that the artists used something they had seen -- likely a Nile Crocodile - as the basis for that winged serpent. And when we look at the crocodile, he certainly is a reptile in the classic sense, 'repto' - I crawl on the ground. More than this, his scaly body is quite serpentine... without a doubt, there is a real sense in which crocodiles (and their cousin the Alligator) are river dragons. 

We continue with the process of acquiring a birth certificate - nothing threatening so far, but 100% of the bureaucrats have been women as well. It may simply be that the slowness of the bureaucracy here prevents it from being excessively inhuman; at the college I went to, while their parking enforcement was as capricious and draconian (to students, though not so to scofflaws) as any parking enforcement ever is, yet their appeals process was so slow that you could get an almost endless reprieve from paying by re-appealing your ticket. 

We taught the second daughter to ride the bike today, which means that all three of the older children can ride, and thus we can go biking together. In practice all of the bikes are different sizes and the littlest one gets tired more quickly, but it's a start. I found a method that is rather easy to teach someone to ride, so long as they are willing (mainly, they're not afraid.) 

I've quit drinking coffee. Once upon a time, I did this because I was learning piano performance in college, and the stress of performance combined with caffeine caused jitters that made it impossible to play with accuracy. So, I quit for a year or so. In this case, the stress of recent events has proved too much for me to sleep even many hours later, having drunk coffee. Some people find caffeine calming; usually it's not much of a problem for me-- I have no objection to coffee on principle. Yet, to each thing its time and season.

2020-07-09

A time of trial

We must all see through the mist

To the morning sun

This entry will be the first which comes across as I originally intended. I realized that it is very possible that the way of life of Americans will vanish away, and perhaps soon. This acts as a sort of odd record of these final hours. I am not sure if it will continue even after various terrible things befall myself or my family; I certainly hope that won't be necessary. 

Americans - by which I mean those who are citizens of the United States of America - are living in fear. I think this condition extends to all Americans, for various particular reasons. However, the general reason remains that our governing authorities have signaled that they will not protect us. 

We have been living in a state of mild to severe depression for quite some time - and of course, as we live, as it seems to us now, in a prison, the only thing we can do is work on ourselves because "depression is the opposite of action." The only other way to be free of this is to simply tune out entirely from the world's events. 

I spend my time procrastinating, by in large. There is not much that can be done, that would have any effect; one gets a very strong sense of one's powerlessness in these days. So all things tend to be put off until tomorrow, hoping perhaps that something will happen that will change the atmosphere, for someone to give the signal that it is worth investing in anything.

This, sadly, is not at all equivalent to a Christian sense of detachment. We do not divest because we are investing in things which are eternal; we are not having a view to the human condition's changeability. Rather, we are like people in the inner cities who are concerned that anything which is not bolted down will be broken or stolen.

People would like to insult us because we do not 'rise up', yet what would the result be? I suppose that some do not understand the mystery given to Christians, "The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth", it remains a hard teaching and it was never given to the masses. Yet, something will give. But as with all things, it must start with those who have authority showing courage. Even our enemies do not dare stick up their neck unless called for.

It is a terrible failure, almost unspeakable to us -- I know that I bear it every day. Perhaps some will say I am over-reacting; yet I must say that in our time we needed more than ever for those to whom we gave leadership over us to exercise that, and either defend us, or give us the means to defend ourselves. They have done neither. We are left to our own resources, which after 50+ years of plundering, are very little. We may as well be peasants.

Today we are trying to get a birth certificate for my second son. It seems like it will be difficult, as we're not able to provide the type of documentation to which the Vital Records department is most amenable. Yet, it might end up being trivial - having never dealt with such a situation before I do not know what to expect. I do however worry that, based on the behavior of bureaucracies in our nation, it will be used as a pretext to deprive us of our son. 

I do not pretend to know how they will deal with us - but I expect, as it is, to be treated like a complete stranger by the government of a country my family has been in for over three centuries. My wife said to me, "why should we want to be citizens of such a country?" I don't have an answer.

2020-07-06

When it calls, answer

A voice of thunder and brass

Sitting in his palm

Death is a place; it is a time

A time that always ends, a rhyme

That always falls without answer

Not because the dead may prefer

Speech without any verse

But that the curse --

That is death, may be perfected

I hope else we had not expected

As in death there's no space

It is that sort of place;

The dead may hope we pray

Though naught they can say

Not in rhyme, nor in prose

Their year has met its close

And opens no more, no spring

Awaits or any other thing

But to dwell and be forgot

In forgetfulness of aught

Else-- and we must remember all

And in remembering a fall

In a garden, and a tree

And another tree, you, I, we--

Cannot afford to forget anyone

History cannot ever be undone

By us, we bear everything

This was our Christening;

And if to be remembered we strive

By other than God, while alive

We err, for in time I've thought

Ev'ry grave must at last go unsought.

Diagnosing the Patient

The sickness of the United States is profound. There are many ways to look at the patient- the Sick Man- and many reasons to do so. We can think of innumerable ways in which she is sick. Yet, it stands to reason that as the patient has gotten sicker, like the woman with the issue of blood, none of the physicians she sought to treat her had, or perhaps have, either the correct diagnosis, the correct medicine, or both.

There are very many opinions about this. I cannot overstate this fact -- the number of different perspectives is simply staggering. Yet, if we wanted to understand what happened, why she became sick, why perhaps (if I suppose rightly) she died, how would we do it? Or where would we start? 

Often in medicine we treat symptoms, not because medicine as a science or art believes that the symptoms are the disease, but because symptoms are often complications that prevent healing, and so in some sense, though being effects, are also causes of what they are effects of. For the reader, yes, I have described a feedback loop.

Swelling for example is often a symptom of some malady, but the role of swelling in healing is questionable beyond a certain degree and swelling itself, especially in muscular injury, often perpetuates the injury rather than helping in its healing. We can definitely look at America and say she is swollen. 

It is rarely necessary to treat root causes. This is the truth, and it should be accepted as such. It is rarely necessary to treat root causes. The body of man has survived countless generations because it is fundamentally robust; and there was never a time when people could consistently treat root causes. 

We might even go so far as to speculate that attempting to identify and treat root causes is maladaptive in many cases, because these causes are often hidden, whereas symptoms are objects of the senses. If one is to misidentify the root cause, or one is to treat a disease invasively to get to a deep root cause, one may easily do more harm than good.

It is also possible that in a very sick Man, such as America is, the idea of a root cause is a myth. Causes and effects cascade into each other and while tracing backward might give us a sense of where some of the effects originated from in time, these older causes, perhaps even root causes, are themselves gone now and even if we had an effective treatment for them, it would be without merit to employ it.

Yet, we do see a sick Man, who is being treated in a way that is only making her sicker. She is perhaps already dead; it is hard to tell. Perhaps it is her sister who has died - who can tell with these types -- they all look the same. If they had been twins, were they playing games of identity with us? 

There can therefore fundamentally be only two approaches to this. The first is to start as far back as we can go reasonably, (we try not to go back to, "And in the Beginning...") and start by tracing the roots of current problems as they appeared in earlier forms in history to the current day. 

The second approach is to start in our current time, and trace backwards the symptoms to their apparent origins. Both approaches have their merits, both have their demerits.

An approach I don't recommend is attempting to identify a syndrome or disease. For example, an Objectivist might tell you that America is suffering from Collectivism or Statism, and then list off various symptoms that match. That is well and good for Objectivists, who have, we expect, solutions tailor-made for those problems.

The reason why I don't recommend this approach is simple: if societies are organisms, and organisms which acquire pathologies, they are far fewer than human individuals. To think that we have a reasonable catalogue of individual human maladies is somewhat of a stretch despite the incredible count of cases; to suspect that the small population of human societies has exhausted its possible pathologies in 'white supremacy', 'liberalism', 'fascism', 'elitism' and so on, is laughable.

Yet, it is probably true enough that what is wrong with America (or her sister, at least) is that she has caught a nasty case of communism. However, the known cures for communism don't at all look like cures -- and it's not at all true that our communism looks like the others, exactly. After all, if it did, it would have been diagnosed much quicker than it was.

If indeed, America has caught a novel communism, it might be that it infects the blood instead of the lungs - viruses are very adaptable things and based on adaptations might be able to infect almost any cell. One might get a different communism based on the origin of the infection, and so on. The worst part is that even if we had a vaccine, an anti-virus, or some other kind of cure, it isn't even certain we'd be able to administer it from the inside.

Worst of all, all of the immune system seems to have been compromised, for the most part, to the production of more of this virus, and even the uninfected parts seem unable to clean out infected areas. 

So we resort to one of our methods above; we will look at symptoms, their origins, and treatments. Communism is largely a self-reinforcing and mutating pathogen; treatment for the 1917 variety isn't going to work on the 2020 variety. Thus we're at square one.

We know where we are though, and that is how to begin.

2020-07-04

Silent country now

Will these stones not cry out still

If it remain so?

We must think our time has come

But you and I do not exist 

Persons neither, anyone

Who matters now could just have missed

Places overlooked because

They exist without a cause

Censored yes, and here's the twist--

without a name, bereft of laws;

Censors used to keep the roll

of citizens, and so you know

Motivation, and the goal

Is to erase us all, although

We are now invisible--

What we are, illegible;

'See no evil', must we show

What lies behind the curtain-pull?

Greatest rings of power grant

The power we have won for free

Us! To whom the babbled cant

Must move like waves upon the sea!

Walking free beneath the sun

Just before the battle-drum--

Yes, indeed-- and can it be

that we must think our time has come?

How America Balkanized

by Albert Warwick

I have often been asked to give an account for the "balkanization" of the United States of America. Needless to say, there was an essay written, now lost, which was very infamous and drew a great deal of unwanted attention to me. In it, I had carefully sourced both historical texts and current events to try to give a precise account of those fatal decades. It was too early! I regret now that I published it, being naive as I was in those days, because the ensuing complications deprived me of much of my prior work, being seized by the authorities of the WSU, which included both the work in question and my notes.

But for the sake of my readers, and at the behest of Mr. Salazar, I have endeavored to recreate as much of the substance of the argument as possible here. If not for your gracious donations and his organization, there might not have been Yet Another Warwick Essay ever again! 

The United States counts its founding day as July 4th, 1776. Although at the time the founders of the former nation considered themselves burdened by an oppressive king, they were in fact, as some contrasting accounts show more factually, burdened by a neglectful and capricious Parliament. That British Parliament would be responsible for, in its capricious disdain for commitment, the loss of nearly all of Britain's colonies, despite the best efforts of its kings. 

While the principle of federalism, itself a very English idea, was in theory deeply ensconced in this nation's Constitution, it is arguable that it is this very principle that was its undoing. J. Rosenberg did some interesting work, which I once had access to, about the origins of Federalism in the history of the English Speaking Peoples. In his work, "The Seed Which Spread Itself", he argued rather conclusively that English history was marked by an inability to retain centralization, simply because the respect for 'the particular' always prevented any traditionally minded, typically 'authoritarian' figure from behaving in a centralizing fashion.

His notes on the rise of certain occult movements at particular times aside (I think the historical patterns suggest these are epiphenomena rather than causes, as he seems determined to prove) it's very clear that almost every unification of English speakers or their protectorates (sometimes only marginally speakers of English) is invoked on the principle of protecting "Ancient Liberties", these liberties themselves inscribing notions of what later became 'federalism'.

At various times, this idea took different casts, sometimes it was the Common Law, other times it was the 'rights' in the Domesday Book, and we are given to believe even in English pre-history it has its exemplars. 

As a law therefore, the more Authority a figure attained within the English speaking milieu, the more they were compelled into a contradictory relationship with the very power that Authority entailed. At first this always expressed itself as a deference to present governing authorities, which were a multiciplity but none of which had for themselves the Right that they arrogated. 

Later however, as those authorities themselves, being of an illegitimate and underhanded sort (we can see this pattern also in the Parliament re-making the royal seal on its own when the King removed it) became unable to successfully retain unification. The figure that follows their indecision typically stands in resistance to them, but is unable to, because of the contradiction aforementioned, do anything but be the cause of the shattering of the prior union.

This process has several phases, and one of them often sets itself in contradistinction as a phase of intense unification. The second is like it, but elite in nature rather than popular, and sets the stage for the collection of the illegitmate 'unifying' authorities that the final figure comes to fight against. 

Because there are always several visions of unity, especially with the concept of "federalism", there come to be two distinct parties both of which have a different idea of unity. It turns out that, however, even in their victory, the unifying party always causes the failure of the Union.

The reason is simple: the authorities that they have to break to win are what are holding the Union together, and by defeating them, they necessarily release their essentially social bond with the protectorates. The battles that follow are only half-hearted, because the state has had to remove half of its heart.

In the history of the United States the process was rather similar. It is said that the average life expectancy (being about 70 years consistently throughout its history) combined with political cycles (2 and 6 years for various congressional positions, 4 years for Presidents) created a 75 year 'turn' in US government. This 'turn' cannot be overstated; each turn created a new government, it was a revolution. In the history of English 'Glorious Revolutions', they were sometimes mostly bloodless. 

As would happen, the United States was due for its next turn around 2007 Anno Domini (37 UE) but this turn failed to happen. This does not mean that the old government would last forever, since the decay of old governments was rather regular and was the central 'cause' of turns. 

This is where things get interesting, and in all likelihood, the following claims were what got me in the most trouble with the Western States Union authority. Naturally, revealing what became quickly and retroactively regarded as state secrets while still residing in said state was a foolish oversight on my part.

Nevertheless, it really started in or about mid-July in 2020