Official Truth

I voted Tuesday, the first day of early voting in Wisconsin. As I said I would, I voted for Alfred E. Neuman for president and U.S. senator. It felt good. It was not an easy decision, risking passive support for totally evil Donald Trump with my one vote. It was worth the risk. Given Kamala Harris's full support for president Joe Biden's sponsorship of genocide in Gaza, I couldn't bring myself to vote for her. No morality about one area of concern means no morality about anything. Expedient and situational ethics are no ethics at all. A president with no morals or ethics will sell-out any and every principle or policy if it is politically inconvenient.
It is hard to comprehend how the lives of an entire population can be politically inconvenient, but this is the stance of the supposedly decent candidate. She is a fellow-genocidist with her mentor and bestower Joe Biden. This is a lesson in politics for the whole world. The U.S. presidents, present and future, are not only comfortable with genocide, but are threats to world peace.

How can this be? Are "Americans" genocidists? Some, maybe, but the broad population of the United States is no more likely to be a mass of genocidists than the German public was during the time of Adolf Hitler. This is the fatal flaw of the mass system. The many are governed by the few, who ostensibly represent them, stand in for them - democratically or despotically. 

Experiences with bureaucracies are good lessons in how representative governments operate. They are authorized to perform certain functions in service to the public, and they generally do serve the public. They also serve themselves. The way organizations function is through internal processes, practices and relationships that cohere to perform their roles in society. Internal dialogue becomes organizational truth, or what John Kenneth Galbraith called "bureaucratic truth." It may or may not be actual truth, but it is working truth, operational truth that the organization presents to itself and to the public. Another name for it is institutional truth, but for me official truth works best.

Official truth can have tragic results, such as the genocide in Gaza. The front man for the genocide is Joe Biden, President of the United States. After the October 7 attacks last year he declared himself a "Zionist," hugged Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and supported the onslaught on Gaza with the slogan "Israel has the right to self-defense" and "Every effort is being made to protect civilians." Lies. But true for the organization, the Biden foreign policy establishment. They started with lies, and no matter what happened in the ensuing months they stuck with the lies. They also stuck with supplying Israel with all the bombs, artillery and bullets it could ever want, the instruments of genocide, er, Israel exercising its right to self-defense.

This madness will not end well for anyone. The war has extended into Lebanon, and Iran is next. Based on the genocide that Israel is already perpetrating, deaths could mount into the millions. It couldn’t happen without U.S. funding and weapons. Or Joe Biden and his underlings Blinken and Austin. Who knows where it will go from there? Israel is on a rampage, and it is apparent that it was planned for a long time. Because of organizational inertia and hubris our "leaders" are unable to stop the carnage. They will continue to lie, and they will continue to arm Israel. This is the fatal weakness of organizations. They live by their own truths, and damn the consequence.

There is an added factor. The weapons industry. The military industrial complex. They stay in business by selling armaments. Wars, any kind of wars, are good for business. The assault on Gaza, and now on Lebanon, are a bonanza for gun-runners. That, plus the billions in weaponry for Ukraine are making the gun merchants very rich. In an election year the jobs provided by the weapons industry can mean the difference between defeat and victory. All the more reason to keep the slaughter going.

These people are that bad. All of them: Biden, Blinken, Austin, Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the arms merchants. All genocidists, and in the case of the Israelis, gleefully so. We will all pay dearly for this crime. Paying for this while we are also paying for what we have done to the planet. Alfred E. Neuman, who never existed and couldn’t possibly have generated such madness, is already a far better president than Biden or Harris could ever be. Without ever being president. Nothing and nobody are better than these two genocidists.
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Here's a song. Here's another. Brewer and Shipley. Bob Dylan. Another song from Steve Miller. Another from Brewer and Shipley. Citizen Kafka.

Some background on how genocide in Gaza is being carried out.

Here's some news about Donald Trump. I predicted over a year ago that neither Biden nor Trump would be their party's candidate by election day. So far I'm half right. Trump is disintegrating before our very eyes. Between now and November 5 his disintegration will likely be complete. Good riddance to both of them.

R.I.P. Phil Lesh. A tribute from Warren Haynes. He didn't sing often, but was revered for this song, written for his dying father.
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Writing beyond the bounds of thinkable thought, I submitted the following to four local newspapers. None of them published it.

To The Editor (oped@badgerherald.com, editor@dailycardinal.com, wsjopinion@madison.com, tctvoice@madison.com)

Ahead of the Pack

It would seem that the University of Wisconsin’s football fortunes are back on track with the blowout victory over Purdue. In actual fact, though, the fortunes remain exactly the same. Gargantuan. College football is all about money, and win or lose, athletic departments nationwide stand to reap a vast fortune year after year. In order to make even more money, the major conferences have consolidated into still larger conferences, with the Big 10 now consisting of 18 teams. It used to be, when the big 10 was a real 10 teams, that they all could play each other every year and have a sense of cohesion and regional identity.

A huge money-making scheme needs marks, suckers who fall for the grift, believing the hype and the pretense that it is about athletics, sportsmanship and an integral part of the educational process. If you believe that, I have some land in Arizona you might be interested in. Students play along, filling stadiums with bodies, noise, bands and even jumping on the supposedly indestructible stadium. Players, pawns in the game, risk lifelong injury and obscurity, giving their most hale and hearty years to an increasingly brutal game. They move easily from one school to another, maximizing their marketability and NFL draft posture. Most drift into anonymity when their playing days are over.

I have a solution. Drop football. A state university, funded by the public, should not be a professional sports vehicle. In ancient Rome crass entertainment was known as bread and circuses. What we have today is bread and circuses on steroids. I don’t have cable, dish or Internet streaming, but on any fall Saturday I could watch football for free on about seven channels, maybe more. It is madness. No one could watch that much football, but madness knows no restraint.

This won’t last. Our unsustainable infinite-growth economic system will fail, likely soon, and the money for ever-expanding football hype will dry up. Universities will have difficulty filling stadiums, TV revenue will shrink, and the enormous salaries paid to coaches will be a thing of the past. Many schools will no longer afford to have football teams. Wisconsin can get ahead of the pack and drop football now.

John Hamilton 

Madison

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A surprising update about University of Wisconsin football. They are hosting the nation's number one team, Oregon - now a member of the Big 10 - on November 16.
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Here's an update about how AIPAC controls Washington. Here's another update on how an Israeli digital intelligence firm, "Cellebrite," is becoming the top U.S. contractor. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.

This interview on Madison's WORT is pretty comprehensive about the dangers of genocidal theology. It is one of the best interviews I have heard in a good while. A week later this interview about Hamas on the same show is great too. It doesn't seem like it now, but I believe truth will prevail. It might take until Satya Yuga, but we are likely to see an infusion of truth in the current times. Meanwhile, you can tune in to Democracy Now. It is also on YouTube.