cell913blog.com #82

 On this first anniversary of the Hamas insurgence, murder, rape, pillage and kidnapping of hostages, many of whom are still enslaved, one is prompted to ‘take sides’ for/against Hamas or Israel. Initiators, as ‘who started the fight in the school yard,’ have their share of responsibility, guilt, shame and accountability. Whomever the bully attacks, also, in open and vigorous response, has their share of responsibility, guilt, shame and accountability. And in this case, The Israelis have a steroidal degree of shame and responsibility, having killed, maimed, destroyed the lives of thousands, devastated Gaza and are now embroiled in a fight against Hezbollah, another of Iran’s sycophants. Let’s not forget, or omit, or turn away from the basic notion that Iran has a stated, unapologetic, unabashed and historic hatred for and serious ambition of eradicating Israel from the planet.

Existential crises, for Israel, for Ukraine, for Taiwan, for Sudan, and likely for others currently or about to be, epitomize another planetary crisis, the heating of the climate, and the devastation that continues to bring, while our headlines are over-stuffed with the daily grind of bombs, deaths, invasions, captures and, today, ceremonies commemorating the October 7^th disaster. And, as in all ‘headlines, the story has ‘legs’ into the future, and ‘roots’ from the past.

Sooner or later, Israel will be confronted, far more seriously and legally than by these words, with the question, “Is Israel conducting a campaign of apartheid?”

Eventually, denial, obfuscation, distraction, political gamesmanship and even the best legal minds will be brought up “straight” with this allegation. It may take decades, and courts that currently do not exist, in international fora that await inception, gestation and execution. But the truth will eventually ‘out’!

Roaring about the elimination of Hamas, by Netanyahu, however, even linked with hundreds of bunker bombs, missiles, drones and hand-to-hand combat will never erase the motive, the ideology and the cast of characters that are Hamas. The current cast, just like the current cast of leaders of Hezbollah may be eliminated; their shared cause, however, and the militants ready to sacrifice life and limb in its pursuit, will never be eliminated. And such a ‘lion’s roar’ from Netanyahu is hollow in its birth, delivery and potential execution.

The roaring, itself, however, is shouting from various ‘lion-wannabe’ throats with varying decibels, cacophonies, and lyrics; Putin from Moscow about eliminating fascists in Ukraine; a more sinister ‘whisper’ from Bejing about the potential invasion of Taiwan; and then there is the faux American lion currently attempting to blast, to shout, to harangue, to detest, to hate, to cry victim his way back into the Oval Office. Some naïve voters even tell pollsters, ‘He’s a thug; and we need a thug of our own to go against the other world thugs!’ Thuggery as a lion’s roar, however, fails to meet the basic ‘smell test’ of authenticity, integrity, resonance and credibility.

James Hillman, archetypal psychologist, writing in A Blue Fire, says:

So, the question of evil, like the question of ugliness, refers primarily to the anesthetized heart, the heart that has no reason to what it faces, thereby turning the variegated sensuous face of the world into monotony, sameness, oneness. The desert of modernity. Surprisingly, this desert is not heartless, because the desert is where the lion lives. There is a long-standing association of desert and lion in the same image, so that if we wish to find the responsive heart again we must go where it seems to be least present. (A Blue Fire, p. 304)

These raging bulls (certainly not lions in Hillman’s connotation, are calling out the authentic lion’s roar, from those who know deeply, profoundly, and intimately the ‘beautiful’ and the ‘good’.

According to Physiologus (the traditional lore of animal psychology) the lion’s cubs are stillborn. They must be awakened into life by a roar. That is why the lion has such a roar: to awaken the young lions asleep, as they sleep in our hearts. Evidently, the thought of the heart is not simply given, a native spontaneous reaction, always ready, always there. Rather the heart must be provoked, called forth, which is precisely Marsilio Ficino’s etymology of beauty: kallos, he says, comes from kaleo, ‘provoke.’ ‘The beautiful fathers the good’ (Plato, Hippas Majoy, 297b). Beauty must be raged, or outraged into life, for the lion’s cubs are stillborn, like our lazy political compliance, our meat-eating stupor before the television set, the paralysis for which the lion’s own metal, gold, was the Paracelsian pharmakon. What is passive, immobile, asleep in the heart creates a desert which can only be cured by its own parenting principle that shows its awakening care by roaring. ‘The lion roars at the enraging desert,’ wrote Wallace Stevens. ‘Heart, instinct, principle,;…again Pascal….The more our desert the more we must rage, which rage is love. The passions of the soul make the desert habitable. One inhabits, not a cave of rock, but the heart within the lion. The saints are not dead; they live in the leonine passions of the soul, in the tempting images, the sulfuric fantasies and mirages: love’s road. Our way through the desert of life or any moment in life is the awakening to it as a desert, the awakening of the beast, that vigil of desire, its greedy paw, how and sleepless as the sun, fulminating as sulfur, setting the soul on fire. Like cures like: the desert beast is our guardian in the desert of modern bureaucracy, ugly urbanism, academic trivialities, professional official soullessness, the desert of our ignoble condition…

We fear that rage. We dare not roar. With Auschwitz behind us and the bomb over the horizon, we let the little lions sleep in front of the television, the heart stuffed full of its own coagulated sulfur, now become a beast in a lair readying its attack the next infarct…Psychologically, we subdue our rage with negative euphemistic concepts: aggression, hostility, power complex, terrorism, ambition, the problem of violence. (A Blue Fire, 304-305 excerpted from two lectures, the thought of the heart and the soul of the world 24-33, 41-44)

Hillman was certainly not writing about the current presidential campaign, although his words are prescient, and can be applied, as an instructive, imaginative, creative, and exhorting metaphor to envision two desperately needed outcomes:

first, the identification of the ‘roar’ of the lying, frozen-hearted, callous, self-serving bully-tyrant as a false lion;

second: to awaken the lion’s roar in the hearts of those who see, seek, know, grasp and dream of beauty, the spark of the good.

Liz Cheney, Admiral McChrystal, Dick Cheney, hundreds of former trump-administration officials, lawyers, judges, Magic Johnson…and many others, while supportive and roaring their ‘vote’ for the Harris-Walz ticket, are insufficient.

Wakening the ‘lazy political compliance’ that lies stupefied in front of the television, by the lion’s roar will take a wake-up call commensurate with the desert of our shared time in history.

Recognizing the ‘modern bureaucracy, ugly urbanism, academic trivialities, professional official soullessness, the desert of our ignoble condition’ as the real desert, and not the carnage, crime, rape and infestation of immigrants eating dogs and cats that are hourly spewed from the mouths of both the candidate and his sycophant, might be the first step in peeling opening our eyes to the real desert. Recognizing the potential seduction to the roar of this ‘faux-beast’ could well be a second step. A third could well be the growing consciousness of apathy insouciance, disassociation and disdain for the whole process of democracy, including elections, campaigning and the tidal wave of billions of dollars of advertising.

‘Denial’ is not just a river in Egypt’ as the cliché goes! It is a sometimes willful, often unconscious turning away from the desert on which we all live. Slumber, a few snacks, a tour of binge-watching on Netflix, a few small wagers on the latest pro-sports game, and then back to work, for those who have jobs. For those still seeking gainful employment, the story is even more desperate, debilitating and depressing.

The lion’s roar that lies quiet in the hearts of the millions of ordinary Americans is not only invited, it is urgently required, if the nation is to come to its senses. Discerning the fake lion from the authentic lion in the heart of the millions of Americans who ‘know’ the difference, and then letting that lion roar, without fear, without anxiety, without looking over the shoulder in anticipation of public assassination, may help to turn this ‘ship’ around, from the spectre of another four years of the hollow-man and his cult.

cell913blog.com #81

 We have two democratic allied countries—Ukraine and Israel— that are at war. We now have two radicalized portions of our population in the millions who both are on opposite sides of the spectrum and believe we shouldn’t be supporting one or the other of our proxies in this war. That is cognitive warfare happening in real time. None of that is naturally occurring.

It is not a mystery if you are watching Russian and Chinese (cyber)accounts where the narratives are coming from. If you knew where to look on October 7, it was just like a blitzkrieg on these accounts. Russia and China had the same accounts all together at the same time. We tracked these accounts, we know what they’re saying, and it all happened exactly in coordination with the attack. And so even some of the American accounts that we knew were either fake American accounts or trolls. Organizations that themselves have been clearly co-opted by Russian and Chinese actors were all basically humming to the same tune within 12 hours of the initial October 7 invasion before Israel had even gotten a response or even shut down the first attacks. 

The cognitive warfare attack, which was a combined arms operation between Russia, China, and Iran, happened simultaneously with the October 7 attacks. Now, can I explain how they coordinated that? No, but I know it happened at the same time because I watched it happen in real-time. (These words are those of Constantine Nicolaidas, being interviewed by Sohan Mewada, an associate editor at the Renew Democracy Initiative, RDI.com, October 2, 2024, in a piece entitled Waging Cognitive War.)

Constantine Nicolaidas is principal of user research at Carnevale Interactive and has previously spoken on geopolitics, cyberthreats, and building organizational resilience at DEFCON.

The protractive, heroic and ultimately successful campaign for equal human rights in including the establishment of a democracy in South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela was and remains an epic historic accomplishment. Self-less, humble, highly intelligent and collaborative leadership, including the ability and willingness to ‘see’ the strengths of his compatriots in the struggle remains seminal in twentieth-century world history. Support from the UN and the West was instrumental in this deconstruction of apartheid.

Today, the global contest for basic stability, security, freedom, and protection from enemies now intimately connected in both technology and motive to sew the seeds of entropy, erosion, destruction, self-doubt among liberal democracies with a view to replacing them with the eventually dominance of autocracies, oligarchies, dictatorships has already formed the necessary alliances, technologies, motives and visions that are not abstract political ideas, notions or even fantasies. While hundreds of missiles rain down daily on both Israel and Ukraine, from both Iran and Russia respectively, China apparently continues to serve as puppet-master to the puppet-masters of Putin and the Iranian regime. Putin’s puppets, the most evident example is Lukashenko, president of Belarus. In Russia itself, there is a cadre of internal puppets, who help to enable Putin to remain in power. Andew Roth, in The Guardian, March 10, 2024, writes:

As Putin seeks a new presidential term into his third decade in power, his electoral system is propped up by a political elite adept at managing the shifting political winds. Those who know Mironov (former Putin opponent), describe him as a consummate political survivor who has sought to ‘catch’ political trends to his own benefit….(His son, Yaroslav says) ‘He’s a person who doesn’t think any rules exist and whatever advantage he manages to obtain for himself is correct.

Iran, on the other hand, has its terrorist cell ‘puppets,’ Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi’s in Yemen, all openly, simultaneously and vigorously preluding and underscoring the direct attack on Israel by Iran herself.

While buildings crumble, men, women and children die and/or are wounded as innocents in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Ukraine, another ‘war’ is being conducted at a cognitive, cyber, dis-and-mal-information level by Iran, China, and Russia. Reuters, on October 2, 2024, through their reporter, Ted Hesson, in a piece entitled, ‘Russia, Iran, China expected to use AI to try to influence US election, report says,’ reports:

The U.S. sees a growing threat of Russia, Iran and China attempting to influence the Nov. 5 elections, including by using artificial intelligence to disseminate fake or divisive information, according to an annual U.S. threat assessment released on Wednesday. Russian ‘influence actors’ have amplified stories about migrants entering the U.S. in a attempt to stoke discord, according to the Department of Homeland Security report, and have used generative AI to create fake websites that appeared to be authentic U.S.-based media outlets. Iran has become ‘increasingly aggressive in its foreign influence efforts,’ the report said, In one example, Iranian actors posed as activists online to encourage protests over the conflict in Gaza, DHS said….The DHS assessment anticipates Russia, Iran and China ‘will use a blend of subversive, undeclared, criminal and coercive tactics to seek new opportunities to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and domestic social cohesion….The report said it expects domestic extremists to attempt violent actions ‘with the intent of instilling fear among voters, candidates, and election workers, as well as disrupting election processes.’

It is not only from the Russians, Iranians, Chinese (and North Koreans) that America can and does expect serious interference, incursions, and ‘cognitive war’ (borrowed by Nicolaidis above) from outside. There are nefarious, subversive and highly financed ‘puppets’ of this camrtpaign of deconstruction of the administrative state within the United States borders.

Writing in his substack website, Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration, today writes:

Trump picked Vance for his vice president because Vance publicly stated he’d do what Mike Pence refused to do: overturn democracy and place America under MAGA control. In a response to a question from ABC’s George Stephanopoulos put to Vance last February-‘Had you been vice president on January 6^th, would you have certified the election results?’- Vance said: ‘If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.’ In 2020, Vance alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant ‘more Democrat voters pouring into this country.’ In 2022, he suggested that Democrats were attempting to ‘transform the electorate’ amid an immigrant ‘invasion.’ Echoing the so-called ‘great replacement theory,’  Vance told voters, ‘You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again.’ In contrast to Trump, who has no ideology except accumulating power and wealth for himself and taking revenge on those who would deny them to him, Vance does have an ideology. He’s the emerging leader of the anti-democracy movement in America…..Thiel (Vance’s financial puppet-master) and Vance-along with Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, blogger Curtis Yarvin, and others in the anti-democracy movement believe that the only way true libertarians can win in America is for a Caesar-like figure to wrest power from the American establishment and instal a monarchical regime, run like a start-up.

 

Both Netanyahu and Putin are thumbing their noses at Biden (and Harris-Walz by inference) daily, hourly and with impunity. The U.S. is providing both offensive and defensive weapons and military materiel to Ukraine and allegedly only defensive weapons to Israel. Meanwhile, the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine, both deeply implicated in, and ignited by terror, Putin’s and Iran’s proxies, rage on right in the faces of all of us watching as our personal anxiety grows, if and when we venture into the speculation, ‘Where is this all going to lead?’

Having the most powerful and best-equipped military arsenal in the world’s history, is clearly not protecting the American election or its people from savage and perhaps even existential invasion. Even the most technically advanced homeland security apparatus in the world’s history is being penetrated daily, hourly by state actors, enhanced by the actions of deeply and intractably irate over years of what they consider oppression.

In the U.S. itself, both far-left and far-right activists are highly amenable to influencers that trigger their own intense attitudes, whether in support of Israel’s ‘right to defend’ herself, or in support of the Palestinian cause of liberation. The other Middle East nations, reportedly, do not ally with Iran, and yet seem unwilling or unable to tamp down the Iranian regime’s obsession with obliterating the state of Israel. Similarly, far-left and far-right activists in America are deeply divided about support for Ukraine in its illegal invasion from the Russian tyrant.

Harris and Walz, decent, articulate, committed, sincere and moderate political ‘sacrifices’ on the altar(s) of this cauldron of openly festering, boiling over and potentially consuming conflicts, are visiting the devastation wreaked by hurricane Helene in the American South, as is Biden, while the American people watch Vance morph into mr-nice-guy and Walz trip him on his refusal to acknowledge that trump lost the 2020 election.

When facts, truth, and decency are being replaced by lies, contempt, hatred, bigotry and self-aggrandizement, under the guise of ‘protection,’ the demographic ‘great replacement theory’ along with the Cultural Theory may be washed overboard in the great tsunami of international geo-politics of the most heinous, ambitious, immune-deficient, and openly destructive geo-military-cyber-security invaders of all history.

As I once retorted to an abusive parent when she asked, ‘Why do you think I beat you?’ “I guess you could not talk!”

Violence is much more sexy and dramatic than talking, especially among those who consider their positions absolutely ‘correct’ and without any need for adjustment.

Absolutism, however, is neither an ideology nor a theology, in spite of the centuries-long attempt of the churches to make it so. Moderation, talking, negotiating and compromising, however, have no place in a world dominated by the absolutists, irrespective of what it is they are absolute about. Bombs, missiles, drones, cyber invasions, dis-and-mal-and-a-information continue to weaponize, demonize, and eviscerate democracy, decency, integrity, honour and dignity, not to mention human rights, and the lives of millions of innocents.

And this screaming tirade will do nothing more than sticking my hand in a bucket of molasses to the bucket of hate in which we are living, except cover my hand with molasses, and certainly not alleviate the hatred that has the world in its claws.