News on the March: politicians

Freshman Rep. Joe Walsh, who has earned a reputation for caustic remarks and spontaneous tirades, this week accused opponent Tammy Duckworth–a double-amputee who lost her legs while serving as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in Iraq–of using her military service to score political points.
The Illinois Republican– who has not served in the military– on Wednesday chose not to back down from comments he made accusing his Democratic opponent of talking too much about her time in the Army.
“She is a hero, and that demands our respect, but it doesn’t demand our vote,” Walsh said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. “All she does, guys, is talk about her service.”
Talk of politicians who serve their country with deep pockets. They see their electorate and they give them glad eyes that mean,’you are worth only votes’ and if they see special interest groups they know what interests them specially. It is true not only in Illinois but in India, Thailand,Philippines. Politicians are sold to service and they will serve anything except the nation’s interests. But what else we can expect from skunks but their stink? The citizens who think they will leave them smelling roses after cuddling them, ought to have their heads examined. What else can vets do after they have pulled out chestnuts from fire but mope over their burnt limbs? Marines, all blacks, require some 67 years to get their service properly recognized, as recent news tells us, politicians send cannon fodder to the line of fire and move on to other things. How many do you think will really care to hear and feel empathy for the sacrifice of these heroes? OK the double amputee spoke once too often of her service. Yet if those who can feel their loss will not grudge them. They covered the ass of those who sat at home. The least one can do is to ease their bottled up feelings.
If the politicians did really experience war from the thick of burning bodies and falling debris of their make-shift shelters they would not have gone in so slapdash style as we have seen wars lately. The neocon nuts owe to their nation an explanation for the wars precipitated by their rhetorics. Just as one who interfered with construction of a bridge and for throwing his weight as a bureaucrat without an iota of engineering skill, is a menace to society; and if their interference led to its collapse will be criminally charged. Of course politicians play a certain old-boys from school-stick-together’and are not held to account.
Rep. Walsh is simply a busybody to castigate the vet for her service.
benny

Read Full Post »

Wanda-commissioned work

Read Full Post »

White Ibis-pen and ink

Read Full Post »

A Divided House

The unconscious mind (often simply called the unconscious) is all the processes of the mind which are not available to consciousness. The term unconscious mind was coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The concept gained prominence due to the influence of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of dreams and automatic thoughts. (Wikipedia)

Some actions – like moving a finger – are initiated and processed unconsciously at first, and only after enter consciousness.

Philosopher Walter Jackson Freeman III writes “our intentional actions continually flow into the world, changing the world and the relations of our bodies to it. This dynamic system is the self in each of us, it is the agency in charge, not our awareness, which is constantly trying to keep up with what we do.*” To Freeman, the power of intention and action can be independent of awareness. ( * Freeman, Walter J. How Brains Make Up Their Minds. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. Page 139.)

We think and act rationally but do we understand what it implies? One who wants to kick the habit of smoking may linger on wondering when or how to do it. He knows it is slowly incinerating his lungs and one day he quits it altogether. Suppose the coming weekend he is in company and they are headed towards a bar. If he chooses to sit with them in the smoking section he may excuse himself that he did not want to cut their pleasure of a smoke. Or was it he was craving a secondary smoke and his mind had tricked him? Our mind is a divided house. We may say we keep an open house. Only that when we want to empty our bowels we keep the door shut. Open house in short is not always what it says. Our mind is not what we like to believe. We say we are rational. Are we really? How come then we irrationally succumb to prophets and dolts alike. We accept heaven for someone else’s word. Similarly we listen to some fool’s prattle and when he says,’such and such race is subhuman’ we accept it without a murmur. It happened in Nazi Germany. Or a half-baked science fiction writer cobbles up Scientology ‘weird evil cult’ as Rupert Murdoch said the other day) celebrities are ready to join. Our rational mind knows it is a moron’s path to bliss as one who take bath salts for kicks. The nature of mind is such that people are dying to believe and ‘weirder the better.’ There has never been a proof of religion as consistently put to test and found true. Yet why people still harp on it? Our brain is a divided house.
‘I can make Donald Duck pass for a Deity and have churches built for worship. If so why don’t I do it? The trouble is I may in the end come to believe myself in the joke.‘ I consider that as truly tragic.
PS Philosopher Schopenhauer signified this unconscious part of mind as the Will. We seek pleasures from within ourselves and even if these are less honorable we still pursue it. Then we rationally explain our actions. We are not seeking a course because reasons are already existing outside ourselves.
benny

Read Full Post »