[ by Charles Cameron — I don’t suppose the analogy will be exact ]
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A quick flash of Divus Augustus:
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Zenpundit himself, and many of our other readers, will be better able than I to explain what this conjunction might portend — expanded empire, extended peace?
At any rate, Trump seems to have shifted at least his cabinet from a sorta secular to a more overtly religious mode. My antennae are up.
[ by Charles Cameron — wondering whether Pascal was imitating or poorly recalling Shakespeare, plagiarizing or merely GMTA? ]
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Try these three on for size!
Hamlet
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Star Trek
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Pascal in the original French:
Quelle chimère est-ce donc que l’homme? quelle nouveauté, quel monstre, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradictions, quel prodige? Juge de toutes choses, imbécile ver de terre, dépositaire du vrai, cloaque d’incertitude et d’erreur, gloire et rebut de l’univers. Qui démêlera cet embrouillement? La nature confond les pyrrhoniens, et la raison confond les dogmatiques.
Oh I mean, everyone does it — I no doubt do it too. But according to Dorothy Lee, Linguistic Reflection of Winto Thought, among the Wintu there is an “attitude of humility and respect toward reality, toward nature and society”:
I cannot find an adequate English term to apply to a habit of thought that is so alien to our culture. We are aggressive toward reality. We say, This is bread; we do not say, as the Wintu, I call this bread or I feel or taste or see it to be bread. The Wintu never say starkly this is; if he speaks of reality that is not within his own restricting experience, he does not affirm it, he only implies it. If he speaks of his experience he does not express it as categorically true.
And here’s the second of two posts, one from myself and one from Zen, both about today’s Comey testimony — in an initial attempt at balance in response to our friend Scottobserving:
This blog has been getting a little partisan since November…can we go back to being a little more objective?
I don’t suppose Zen will mind my making a post of it here, since he posted it en plein air / en clair on FaceBook himself:
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The Comey testimony is amazing on a number of levels.
My initial read is that the President didn’t obstruct justice in a legal sense but his actions in attempting to influence the investigation of General Flynn provide more than a theoretical ground for an article of impeachment.
Historically that is not going to get you a conviction in the Senate by itself. Not even in a Democratic Senate, without other articles and clear evidence supporting them. Which is why Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton finished their terms after being impeached and Richard Nixon resigned even before articles could be voted upon.
The GOP has a POTUS who is out of control in the sense that he won’t accept normal staff assistance and advice to avoid transgressing obvious red lines in the daily conduct of his office.
The last administration inappropriately tried to influence Comey in an investigation too – but note that the President personally didn’t wheedle him. There’s good reasons he didn’t. While the type of convo between Comey and Trump was common with J. Edgar Hoover and US Presidents, ever since Watergate this has been understood to be suspect behavior at best and a red line to be avoided.
If Trump continues as he has done he will soon be in dire straits and all the complaints about hyper partisan media and Never Trump/Obama mole leakers will not matter, no matter how accurate
This blog has been getting a little partisan since November…can we go back to being a little more objective?
Here’s the first of two posts in an initial attempt at balance, one from myself and one from Zen, both about today’s Comey testimony.
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Was this the day a boil burst?
‘
Was this the day a boil burst on the neck of universe?
Universe is too large,
even solar system exaggerates,
Jove Pater may be keeping a paternal eye on us,
there may even be villages in New Guinea
where John Frum is the news topic of the day,
but as Dan Rather just said of Comey’s testimony,
This scene is going to be written about fifty, a hundred,
two hundred years from now; there’s something
Shakespearean about it, in more current terms,
House of Cards..
My mind drifted from the Comey hearings,
and came back, I wondered where it had gone, given
the intensity of the moment,
volcanic maybe, though all moments
have seemingly a sort of priority in their own times
like a balcony in Escher bulging because,
well, because he’s seeing it, making it his focus..
My mind must have wandered,
that’s the metaphor, down to the banks of Lethe,
dipped in, gotten ah somehow baptized,
deep baptized,
so that Lethe, the banks of Lethe,
the steps leading down to the banks of Lethe
all vanished, all submerged,
gone down into oblivion, known
only because once there was mind on Comey
and I woke to mind gone.
Pure Buddhism, pure any meditative practice..
Mind here, gone,
and meanwhile the volcano,
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, boil,
has burst,
spewed forth evidence Mueller
like a small planetary Jove Pater can work with
in his own moments volcanic —
just an American,
or not quite only an American Jove Pater —
manwhile, Trump ever Mercurial,
Comey stellar..
Speaking of stars, whoah!
Catastrophe,
meaning literally: a downward-turning of the stars.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
