Is this the end of American democracy? Pretty much, says David Kurtz, an informed observer at the excellent Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshal, the founder of TPM, and the most penetrating observer of current American politics, concurs.
Muhlberger's World History
Ancient, medieval, Islamic and world history -- comments, resources and discussion.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Thursday, April 25, 2024
1,000,000,000 Voters
You read that right. There are very close to ONE BILLION qualified voters taking part in the Indian election. There is likely to be a high turnout because some issues important to Indians are effectively on the ballot.
You want another impressive number? How about 24,341,055,613.7 (earlier today)?
That's the distance from Earth to Voyager 1 in kilometers.
From the Jet Propulsion Lab:
From the Daily Mail, sometime back.
Monday, April 22, 2024
Comments on
Some months ago I turned off Comments on this blog, for reasons I can't recall. I have now turned them back on. Perhaps one of you can give it a try?
Friday, April 19, 2024
It Takes A Village Where No One Is Above The Law To Bring Down A Tyrant
It Takes A Village Where No One Is Above The Law To Bring Down A Tyrant is a post at toays Morning Memo at TPM. Here's an excerpt:
So it has warmed my heart this week to hear multiple prospective jurors in the Trump hush-money case assert that no one is above the law. As a statement of fact, that is unassailable. But it’s more important as a civic virtue. It states an expectation and an aspiration for who we are and what we want to be.
Nothing is quite as succinct a distillation of the American revolutionary experience: No one is above the law. (Where we have been at our worst is putting people – enslaved peoples, minorities, women, immigrants – outside of the law.) We are seeing random citizens who are imbued with an innate understanding of what the rule of law means. That civic-minded understanding of the rule of law is the bedrock foundation for the legal structures we erect upon it. Without it, we have nothing. It’s a small sign of hope in a troubled time.
This reminds me of the brilliant speech Ursula K LeGuin put in the mouth of her character Shevek in her novel The Dispossesed. Have a look.
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Star Trek will not save us
The Honest Sorceror argues that there is no conceivable technological fix for the decline of our civilization. All civilizations depend on key resources which will eventually be used up. When they are it will be impossible to replace them and our network of technologies and institutions will unravel.
This is an economist ' argument, clearly stated.
Don't forget
On March 21, 1861, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the newly-elected vice president of the Confederacy, explained to a crowd that the Confederate government rested on the “great truth” that the Black man “is not equal to the white man; that…subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Stephens told listeners that the Confederate government “is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” |
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
The English language, Canada, yesterday
I was listening to the CBC 1 program "Commotion" where they were discussing Canada's music awards. One of the commentators used these two phrases: "Jetson-realistic" and "super-iconic."
Once in the early days of the breakout of rap I told my academic adviser -- who had been an important dean in the turbulent days 1968-72 that soon it would be impossible for my generation -- the rock and roll generation -- to understand what younger people were talking about.
He gave a small smile and said "Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch."
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Umair Haq, the Everything Crisis and the Crisis of Democracy
The eccentric economist Umair Haq is the blogger I have the most respect for. Why? Because he is always looking at the big picture, and he is always right. Sure, it is a deeply pessimistic picture he paints, but he has consistently analyzed trends before prominent commentators have even thought about them. If you want to know more about him, look at his most recent essay
Umair Haq and now everybody else have written about the crisis of democracy, and sure enough it is real enough and alarming. But there is a positive side to this. Reading high quality news sources (the CBC, the Guardian) and even mediocre ones (MSNBC) I am struck by the fact that people in many countries know that on a very basic level know that elections, honest elections, are essential for sane public life, and are willing to organize and fill the streets to get them. And even Putin and Lukashenko have to present themselves as elected leaders. The news is filled with wars and even genocide, but also coverage of elections and how honest or dishonest they are. The CBC routinely does this.
One reason that American democracy is in so much trouble is that no one is willing to say how ridiculous the American "system" is. Indeed, Americans hardly seem to reccognize there is a problem.
Thursday, February 08, 2024
Nomadic empires
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
To my readers : January 30, 2030'
Friends,
My Parkinson's is progressing, and I find myself tired and too often afflicted with brain fog.
So if you've got something you've always meant to ask me or tell me, this would be a good time.
Maybe you'll want to send anything too personal or confidential via email.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Some good news out of Nunavut
We hear that the Federal government of Canada has turned over control of resources and other areas of federal jurisdiction to the territorial government of Nunavut, the farthest northern territory of Canada, inhabited mostly by Inuit (formerly called Eskimo). This is a big deal. More later.
Monday, January 15, 2024
The Honest Sorcerer talks about resource depletion and the collapse of the civilization of the Colombian Age
The Honest Sorcerer is one of those economist guys who looks at the long trends and comparative histories. Honest Sorcerer says that all the easy resources that made possible Western domination of the globe (the Colombian Age) have been used up and there are no substitutes. H.S. also sketches out the politics and culture of civilizational pre-collapse and collapse.
This quote (grammar adjusted) will give you a taste:
P.S.: Save this article and send it in a few years time to anyone who insists that all this could not possibly have been foreseen.
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Noah Smith opines on the significance of People's Park and where America is today
Just about everybody with an internet connection has opined on the current state of American culture and how it got that way. Many of these analyses are very much the same -- after all, the problems are pretty obvious.
Noah Smith (at Noahpinion) has a different take -- and it may be worth your reading time. If you have ever wondered about the significance of Berkeley in the cultural wars of the last few decades, this may suggest some interesting perspectives.
Q -- Brilliant
Back when CBC Radio One introduced the interview show Q some years back, I was unimpressed. I found the host, Tom Power, irritating in the extreme. Power is a musician and in his numerous interviews with other musicians he always seemed to ask them whether music was a big factor in their childhood homes.
How many electrons were wasted asking such a lame question?
Well, Power and his producers are putting together a superior product these days, one that approaches brilliance. Let's take today's episode as an example of what they can do.
Here in Canada, eminent people are honored by being inducted into the Order of Canada. (This is what chivalric orders of the Middle Ages have evolved into.) Today's interviewee, just inducted into the Order was Deantha Edmunds, advertised as the "first Inuk professional opera singer." She was an intelligent, even profound guest (although the issue of music in the home came up😁which gave me a laugh). She spent much of her time in the chair explaining the Inuk tradition of classical music.
When Edmunds says classical musical, she means what you mean, Mozart, Handel, etc. She is not a throat singer, which is the tradition most familiar to non-Inuk. She is a professional opera singer, and as such may be a first, but she is also working in a centuries-old tradition on the Labrador coast. Two undred years ago missionaries from the tireless Moravian church came to Labrador, bringing among other things classical music and European instruments that made it possible to play the new stuff. The
Inuk have been at it ever since, playing and adapting what once was a purely European (should we say German?) repertoire.
I had no idea.
Go to it Tom! You are doing great!
Sunday, December 31, 2023
At Bethlehem
Friday, December 29, 2023
Timothy Burke looks forward to next year with foreboding
The thing is, in 2024 I think the mass of humanity will remain what it basically has been all along in modernity: full of decency, ready for justice, open to change. Sorry for their trespasses, hoping not to be trespassed against. Wanting to just live their lives and be left well enough alone. If the powerful could only manage to keep things running well enough for everyone, share some wealth and leave space for the vast rest of their societies, I think most people would return the favor and leave them to scheme and jostle amongst themselves. I wish it was just a moral failing of power and that would could wish reasonably enough for a better class of millionaires and ministers. But there’s something systematically rotten in the world we’ve made and it will take something with systematic energy to push things to being good enough for the world to go on being enough for everyone, as it plainly can be. We have the tools, just no hands worthy of using them and no plan to build what they’re capable of making.