Sticking It To The Libs

The world has changed mightily for all of us these past several generations.  As extreme as the changes have been, they have been merciless to those who identify as right-wing, MAGA, conservative, etc.  That's because, in many ways, they are the least equipped to handle the changes.  They feel ever more adrift as their paradigms of male dominance, racial superiority, and/or dominance by brawn, are increasingly replaced by a resurgent female population, multi-culturalism, and physically weaker but smarter, (and therefore more successful), people.  They are aware that "Elites," and/or Liberals, look down on them and make fun of them for not being able to keep up with the modern, changing times.  So, they constantly push back, trying to keep us in the Dark Ages.  Or, send us back to...  They simply resent the changes of this world and they REALLY resent those who are successful and happy with these changes.  Hence, their glee at "sticking it to the Libs."  And this is why even those military retirees who have lived a lifetime in the world of, "You do not follow unlawful orders," are still enthusiastically beating the drumbeat that Senator Mark Kelly deserves punishment for simply stating that unlawful orders are not to be followed.  Their fear of not being able to succeed in the changing world is more powerful than any cold hard facts that contradict their world view.  Cold hard facts are simply no match for fear....

 

Christopher Dinnes

Chief Sherpa

Dinnes Farm 

There Is No Such Thing As A Winnable War

 "There is no such thing as a winnable war.  It's a lie we don't believe anymore."

Sting

(From the song, "Russians", on his debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, 1985.) 

For the longest time, I thought to myself, "Self, that's an admirable sentiment, but not really true.  There have been wars that we unquestionably "won".  After all, taking the most obvious example in our cultural consciousness, we decisively "won" WWII, right?  Right."

For six+ decades on this planet, there have been so many things that I simply cannot unsee; the graves, the mass graves, the ash pits, the forever wounded and the forever scarred, the lost hopes and promises of so many people, so many cultures and so many countries.  Now?  Unequivocally, I know that Sting was right.  There IS no such thing as a "winnable" war.  We didn't "win" WWII.  The best we can say is that we ended WWII.  We ended what the fascist fucks started, stopped them from imposing their evil idea of "world order", and instead imposed our vision of what a just world should be.  

Or, at least, we tried to create a just world.

 

As it turns out, all we succeeded in doing was temporarily beating back the fascists into the shadows.  We utterly failed to address the fascist ideals that had been quite evident in our country in the decade leading up to WWII.  As a result, they cloaked themselves in a veil of respectability and continued perverting any effort to realize the promise of a truly just society.

 

Someday, history may very well say that while we won the decisive battles of WWII, we ended up losing the war to the fascists.

 

Christopher Dinnes

Chief Sherpa

Dinnes Farm 

The Vile Pro-Life Choice

Today's anti-abortion movement is the spiritual descendant of the victors in the ecclesiastical debate regarding wealth of the (Christian) church.  This is evidenced by the stunning hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement.  For virtually all self-avowed members of the movement are actually very much "pro-choice".  Do they not preach that abortion is a crime?  Do they not preach that abortion is murder?  Do they not prattle on that being pro-choice is being pro-death of innocent babies?  Blah, blah, blah.  These are the same people who choose to buy ice cream instead of saving a child from an agonizing death from starvation, or from an easily treatable disease.  Make no mistake, it is a CHOICE to expend resources on luxuries rather than save children from suffering and death.  Their defense is that while, "choosing to have an abortion is murder," choosing to let a child die of starvation is (somehow) completely different.  And they are good with their choices and appear pathologically incapable of seeing any hypocrisy.  Therefore, undoubtedly, they are the spiritual descendants of the winners in the wealth debate.

'It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.'¹   

 

Christopher Dinnes

Chief Sherpa

Dinnes Farm & Castle

1] Considering that Jesus was largely speaking to a bunch of fishermen, I've always felt more comfortable with this translation from the Aramaic bible, rather than the vastly more ubiquitous translations from the Greek.  It is virtually impossible to know what may have been the vernacular of the day and all arguments about this are arguments about vernacular.  Therefore, I go with what seems timelessly logical. 

The End of America's Grand Experiment

I fear that America’s grand experiment in democracy¹ is over.  Nearly forty percent of our nation’s electorate are passionately following the very kind of leadership which the framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to prevent from ever being in power.  By dividing power among three separate branches of government, the Founding Fathers rejected the idea that our country should ever be led by someone wielding the power of a monarch that ruled by divine right and that answered to no earthly authority.  The Separation of Powers embodied in the U.S. Constitution was supposed to ensure that accusations of wrong doing by anyone, (including, and especially, accusations made by the President), are backed up with evidence, presented in a court of law.  Forty percent of America’s electorate² does not care that 61 of 62 “election fraud,” lawsuits³ brought by the 45^th President and his team, have failed.  That forty percent of the electorate only cares that the 45^th President said the words and therefore the words must be true; evidence, or the lack thereof, be damned.

 

Moreover, the paramount point of the U.S. Constitution was to mandate the peaceful transfer of power, election cycle after election cycle.  When forty percent of any nation’s population is willing, nay eager, to forego the peaceful transfer of power in favor of violence, representative democracy can not survive. 

 

Christopher Dinnes

Chief Sherpa

Dinnes Farm and Castle 

1] As ubiquitous as is the phrase, “grand experiment”, in reference to America’s democracy, the phrase itself doesn’t appear until the later part of the 19^th century.  The concept is discussed in The Federalist Papers No. 9, by Alexander Hamilton, published on 21 November, 1787.  One can find the word, “experiment”, used in reference to America, in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler Washington, dated 28 June, 1804

2] Axios-Momentive Poll of 2,700 adults, conducted from 1-5 January, 2022.  An earlier poll by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, conducted from 14-20 December, 2021, has the number at 33%.  An even earlier poll by Politico/Morning Consult, conducted from 22-24 October, 2021, has the number at 35%.

3] The 45^th President and his team, in challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, brought 62 lawsuits to court.  61 failed; failed in courts presided over by judges from both political parties, including judges appointed by the self-same 45^th President.  The single remaining lawsuit was only partially successful, but it did invalidate the rule that had allowed Pennsylvania voters to “fix” their lack of voter identification up to 3 days after the election.  This invalidated about 14,000 votes in a state that President Biden won by 48,000 votes.  It is important to note that these 14,000 voters who had originally gone to the polls without proper identification could just as easily been Republican voters as Democratic voters....

 

 

Non-Humans Do Not Matter

How did ostensibly good and kind people, who loved their children, enjoyed sunsets, and attended church, own slaves or gas their neighbors?  The first step is always the dehumanization of a class or group of people.  To the Germans; the Jews, the Gypsies, the homosexuals, and the rest were the untermenschen, the subhumans.  'They are not worthy of consideration, they are less than fully human.'  Once a group or class is seen as less than human, any horrific treatment of them becomes possible.

The following is from the book, The Temple of Music* by Jonathan Lowy.  The book is set in the late 1800's, to early 1900's.  The scene is at a party where a discussion is ongoing about how little advancement has occurred among the former slaves since slavery ended.

"...As I was saying," the professor raises his voice a notch now and turns towards the colored man.  "I have studied them and I have found the following.  The Negro children may be sharp, intelligent, full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change sets in.  The intellect becomes clouded, animation gives place to a lethargy, briskness becomes indolence.  The reason, I have deduced, is that the growth of the Negro brain must be arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and the frontal bone.  There is no doubt the arrest or deterioration in mental development is largely responsible for the fact that after puberty[,] sexual matters take the first place in the Negro's life and thoughts.  You will not be surprised to find in the Negro a lowered morality, as evidenced by the higher rates one finds in our prisons.  Contrast with the white, whose brainpan expands, allowing for proper development."

The point of sharing this vile quote is that it in itself is largely a quote.  The assertions made by the professor are word for word from the famed 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1911.  Against this backdrop of that socially acceptable analysis, black Americans were trying to carve out a piece of the American Dream.  While real science eventually debunked that vile analysis, the dehumanizing attitudes remained throughout our society.  In 1939, Bille Holiday recorded Strange Fruit.  The segregation of bathrooms and other public facilities was not fully outlawed until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Laws prohibiting interracial marriage were not declared unconstitutional until 1967, in the Supreme Court's aptly named Loving Decision (Loving v Virginia).  (Although, the last law against interracial marriage, in Alabama, wasn't officially repealed until 2000.)

We seem to have two kinds of people in our society today.  There are those who see that certain classes of people are too often treated unfairly; considered to be less worthy, less intelligent, less honest, and less deserving of basic human consideration than other classes.  And there are those who don't see it all.

If you contend that there is no racial or social injustice in our country that is worthy of protesting, then you are part of the problem.

Christopher Dinnes

M/V Liberty Eagle

Berbera, Somaliland 

*The Temple of Music, by Jonathan Lowy is a now little hard to find.  I own it in eReader format; a format which came, ruled, and disappeared all in the seeming blink of an eye.  I did find that it was available as a Nook book from Barnes and Noble, on iTunes as an iBook and as a used book in places like AbeBooks.  

Disclosure: No financial considerations have been given for the preceding book links.  I just really enjoyed the book.

A Complete, Searchable PDF of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Trade Agreement Is Now Available

 The Law of Unintended Consequences:

"Whether or not what you do has the effect you want, it will have three at least you never expected, and one those is usually unpleasant"* 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement is the single largest and most complex trade agreement which our nation has ever tried to implement.  The possible negative repercussions and unintended consequences of this agreement are beyond comprehension; literally beyond comprehension.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPP) was negotiated in secret.  Outside of a few leaks, the entire process was performed behind closed doors.  The entire 6405 page document was released on 4 NOV 2015 and is available on the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (OUSTR).  But this "release" does little to assuage the very real concerns about the consequences of the TPP.  The "release" is a web page with 194 separate PDF documents that comprise the entire TPP.  (This is not counting the "Chapter Summaries" which are PDF's from the OUSTR explaining how good for America is that particular Chapter.)  A single, downloadable, searchable PDF of the TPP was nowhere to be found.  Certainly, the appearance is that there is little real intent to inform the public about the true scope of the TPP.

But.  Christopher is nothing if not tenacious and stubborn.  An afternoon and evening was spent downloading all 194 PDF's; all the Chapters, Annexes and Related Instruments.  Another evening was spent combining the PDF's into a single, searchable document and uploading it to Dropbox and it is available here.  (The size of the document is 339 MB, so be prepared if you download it.)


Christopher Dinnes
AMO Star Center
Dania Beach, FL


NOTE: The single PDF of the TPP which I am making available above, does not include the aforementioned "Chapter Summaries".  Also, the file is named with the year-month to clearly indicate its version/age.  I will endeavor to update it should/when changes occur. 

Disclaimer: While I am extremely anal about such tasks, we are talking about almost 200 files and over 6000 pages, (which I downloaded and combined manually without the aid of a script), so there may be a mix-up or missing file/page.  Confidence is very high that my offered file is accurate and complete.  However, if a problem or omission is discovered, please let me know so I can correct it.  

*The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

The Danger of Christians Seeking To Impose Sharia Law

Christians who want Sharia Law have become a significant threat to American Democracy.  Their desire to apply the Bible to secular/civil law is an affront to our shared values.

Stop.  There is no relevance in the difference between a Christian's view of God's laws and a Muslim's view.  As a non-Christian, non-Muslim, I can unequivocally say that they are exactly the same; they are laws of religions that are not mine.

We should all respect and support ANY religion's right to organize itself in a manner that it sees as true to God's law.  As a personal example, within the bounds of our Parish, my marriage to my wife is not recognized, (at least as far as Rome is concerned).  Yet, I attend Mass with my wife and value the experience.  Should Catholicism try to have secular/civil law reflect their religious law and thereby invalidate my marriage, the religion would, with extreme prejudice, lose my respect and support.

When a religion fills your Life, it can be easy to forget that that it is just YOUR Life.  While you should live your Life as an example of your religion, it is wrong to IMPOSE your religion's rules and laws onto someone else.  Our democracy is based on a principle that whatever are your personal beliefs; you have every right to have them and no right to impose them on anyone else.  Therefore, railing against the real or imagined imposition of Sharia Law, all the while seeking to impose a different set of religious laws, threatens the very foundation of our democracy.

And it is a stunning hypocrisy.

"In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind."
-Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1771)
 

Christopher Dinnes

AMO STAR Center
Dania Beach, FL