"Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted." Max Lerner
I am becoming accustomed to being frightened. Maybe all of us are suffering in the midst of NONLINEAR WARFARE. How do you resist a war that nobody but Carl Bernstein says outloud we are fighting?
"Oh Ma, I don't want to die. I don't think I can stand to smell the bodies fry." - Tina Toxic Queen of Trash
War. Is this not our condition? Nationally, we are now doing two mass shootings a week. Authorities in Texas responded to a bomb explosion at Random, a beer garden near Boerne Lake, KENS-TV reports. There were 2 pipe bombs at the Capitol. Gun deaths now exceed car deaths in 21 States. We have had 239 mass shootings in 2021 so far.
If it looks like a War, and it sounds like War...well you know.
"The Kremlin, according to Barack Obama, is stuck in the “old ways,” trapped in Cold War or even 19th century mindsets. But look closer at the Kremlin’s actions during the crisis in Ukraine and you begin to see a very 21st century mentality, manipulating transnational financial interconnections, spinning global media, and reconfiguring geo-political alliances. Could it be that the West is the one caught up in the “old ways,” while the Kremlin is the geopolitical avant-garde, informed by a dark, subversive reading of globalization?
The Kremlin’s approach might be called “non-linear war,” a term used in a short story written by one of Putin’s closest political advisors, Vladislav Surkov, which was published under his pseudonym, Nathan Dubovitsky, just a few days before the annexation of Crimea. Surkov is credited with inventing the system of “managed democracy” that has dominated Russia in the 21st century, and his new portfolio focuses on foreign policy. This time, he sets his new story in a dystopian future, after the “fifth world war.”
Surkov writes: “It was the first non-linear war. In the primitive wars of the 19th and 20th centuries it was common for just two sides to fight. Two countries, two blocks of allies. Now four coalitions collided. Not two against two, or three against one. All against all.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/
"What do I cling to that is useless to understanding our condition?" I ask myself. I have no real answer. Who can focus or think when under constant "shelling?" And gaslighting. Psychopaths can. Psychopaths like Trump and Putin. I am not enjoying government or World by psychopath.
This is the focus that may work. If my personal integrity is no more, what do I have? Nothing. Some ideas that work for me:
“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“All I have on earth is me, myself and my word and I don't break them for no one. So as long as I got those things, I'll be the bomb, you're just a false alarm.”
"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."- Malcom X.
#13
Favor and disgrace: same fear.
Honor and distress: same self.
What is meant by
"Favor and disgrace: same fear"?
Favor make the lowly
Fearful when they get it,
Fearful when they lose it.
That's why favor and disgrace are the same fear.
What is meant by
"Honor and distress: same self"?
The self registers our distress:
If we have no self,
We have no distress.
Therefore,
He who values all things as his self
Is fit to manage all things.
He who loves all things as his self
Is fit to be trusted with all things.
- Tao Te Ching translation by Herrymon Maurer
