THE Ticking Time Bomb---the Clintons

I just heard JACK CASHILL from May 26, 2004, promoting his new book, "Ron Brown's Body", and mama mia---that's some spicy POLITICAL MEAT balls!

I was wondering if all the s$^t the Clinton's pulled off was ever going to be exposed, and now I think it has to happen. The author previously wrote a book about TWA flight 800 that he tries to prove was shot down by terrorists, and the Clinton's got it covered up.

I almost didn't watch the program, today, when I saw the name, "Ron Brown", since I figured it was another whitewash job, but as soon as I listened, I knew it was a hot shot of truth telling. His real point had to do with the way the media enabled all of Clinton's shenanigans. He likened them to the pod people from the 50's movie, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". His detailed stories were riveting! I hope, and bet, it will be on again---C-Span usually runs these things a couple of times a weekend.

Here's the beautiful part---probably the biggest con Clinton pulled off is epitomized by his being called by Toni Morrison "The first black president", when the truth is exactly the opposite. This is where Plato comes into play. TRUTH = the GOOD = BEAUTY.

Ron Brown was BLACK, and as the evidence Cashill presented proves, TO ME, anyway, Clinton had him murdered to save his ass. Apparently, there was no autopsy done on Brown, even though X-Rays of the body were taken. The one of the head showed a .45 inch round hole on the top of the head. One of the people taking care of the bodies, when they were returned from Croatia, took a photograph of this, but lo and behold, later the X-Ray of the head was "LOST"!

According to Cashill, the conservative press won't likely give yet another Clinton scandal story any exposure, given what happened in the past---The American Spectator and Bob Bartley at the WSJ literally wrote the many books about it all, and nothing has come of it: SO FAR!

And yet, wrt this book, Cashill has touched a BLACK nerve, and I betcha there'll be GOOD hell to pay, for the Clintons. Why do I say this? Well, the author has already got Dick Gregory and that previous congressman, Flaunteroy (sp?), on his side, pushing it for him. Also, he has the top black talk radio host in DC on the case.

We'll see if the alternative media can really take this ball and run all the way to the TRUTH bank with it. The old-to-me (and a whole lot of informed libertarians and conservatives) story of Clinton's raising money by trading American technology to China and North Korea is surfacing with explosive alacrity! I realize the mainstream media still has a lock on CW news, but maybe it's now time to take the information revolution to its exponential take-off phase. Yes, just like a successful company follows an S-curve path, over time, so can the Internet, blogging, etc take the Drudge effect to the 10th power. It is NOW time for the curve to slope upwards at an increasing rate.

Won't it be awesome to be around when the TRUTH becomes so irrefutable that old time liberals will be even more embarrassed than they are now, to be called a liberal, or even to show their face? When this direly NEEDED revision of Clinton's history hits the fan, I wager there'll be a plethora of heart attacks and other diseases that'll wipe out a lot of the now-famous liberal media enablers. It will be quite interesting to see who drops dead, who doesn't repent, and who does their mea culpas. There are a slug of still-young 'sub' humans---Carville types---who will have to deal with this, so we have a lot of schadenfreude to look forward to! I wonder if Mary will divorce James Carville?

By the way---with the pick of the fourth most LIBERAL in the senate, Edwards, to go with the number one from bean town, 'er Mass., the biggest arrow in the Republican quiver is just to keep repeating this fact.

Get the following rebuttal out to all Republicans!

Calling all CARS! Here's what any Republican spokesperson should say when liberals complain about the sure-to-be incessant use of the TRUE word, "LIBERAL", to describe the Democratic ticket. If you can ever get a word in edgewise, when in a debate with a LIBERAL, tell them that if they don't like it, they can go ahead and call the Bush-Cheney ticket too CONSERVATIVE!
What's fair is fair!

If you want more info on Jack Cashill go to jcashill@aol.com and he'll be glad to email you a detailed report on Ron Brown, if you ask for it.

posted by James at 1:36 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Blatant

What NON-SENSE!

Reality can be like a slowly percolating pot of coffee, a randomly erupting geyser, or even a piece of ice flying around is space. In whatever case, IT-ALL is ever new. Hence, in the game of splits-ville life, a fitting = fighting distinction of the highest merit might be between CW SENSE and pooh-poohed NON-SENSE.

At this EDGY place within all of humanity playing with all the rest of IT-ALL, a way of further cutting up important elites is into the mutually exclusive categories of 1.) TRUE scientist or artist, and 2.) RUN-of-the-MILL technician or illustrator. Both kinds of people are important.

The first set contains the change-bringers, who make SENSE of what had been NON-SENSE. These humans exist in every discernible field of endeavor. My inspiration for this blog comes from the re-studying of physics, so an Albert Einstein would be a great example. What are the main characteristics of such path-makers?

There are two. The first is an OPEN MIND, a child-like ability to see things AND processes as they really are---the famous 'emperor is wearing NO clothes' insight. I believe each human is essentially born with this---hey! We WERE all a CHILD, when young! But, CW does work its UN-mysterious UN-magic ways on all of us. The second trait is an unshakeable self-confidence that we are correct in what we SEE, despite attempts by CW to convince us otherwise.

Hence, an Einstein won the Nobel Prize for physics for his 1905 'discovery' that a photon was a PARTICLE despite the long-accepted CW 'wisdom' that it was a WAVE.

What about the CW 'technicians'?

What you have here are people with CLOSED MINDS, like a Paul Krugman at worst, say, and an Alan Greenspan at best, perhaps. The winners who lead the defensive CHARGE for any CW, in whatever field, fall into two further camps, it seems to me. The prime base TRUTH to never forget is that they DO have supreme confidence in their own SELF, so the do satisfy the second condition for cutting-edge 'interpreter'.

However, a Krugman is SO full of him SELF that he has slipped the bonds of this surly CW Earth to such an extent that it is all about HIM, which means he can lie and cheat and say ANYTHING. The results are CHAOS and a fall into nothingness, which means, to me, that he is the tool of the 'devil' or of 'Shiva', the bringer of darkness---the DESTROYER. No OPEN mind in types like this! Black-hole CLOSED!

The Greenspan types, though, while expressing a CW closed mind, at least try to be consistent within the CW they defend. Actually, Sir-lee Alan, when his entire career as an economist is taken into account, can be seen to be like a camera lens that had been wide open, but then had all the leaves twisted tighter and tighter, so that less and less light could get in. You know, being an Ayn Rand follower when new, and a central banker when old.

So, you could think of important people in these ways. The Krugman type could be seen as destroyers of the CW faith, the Greenspan's as defenders of the CW faith, both types well within the closed minded 'technician' or 'illustrator' mediocre category.

However, it's the NEW-DAY bringers who truly matter. Continuing in this economics vein, maybe you could put the Austrian School guys, like Hayek and von Mises there, which also might prove that old-school people could be the newest idea men, even though long dead!

However, every day is a NEW day, so maybe what all this is meant to say is---look for those people who are ALIVE, now, who are at least carrying on the maybe UN-tried and TRUE tradition of a Hayek, such as an Art Laffer, and never fail to apply the two tests---

OPEN MIND and SELF CONFIDENCE.

Oh, and never forget INTEGRITY. Of course, living from an OPEN-MIND position is the very essence of INTEGRITY, because when such a one confronts XXX, they are unable to do other but follow its truth.

Integrity = ONE!

Thus does NON-SENSE ever bubble up into ONE SENSE!

posted by James at 7:29 AM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

On the Eve of Liberalism's Destruction?

Larry Kudlow scored, again, with a detailed analysis of the Kerry-Edwards economic program. While we weather the STYLE over SUBSTANCE media storm, he brings us back to that hoary-to-him Investor Class argument. The storm that came to my mind, as I digested Kudlow, however, applies, almost PERFECTLY to those two top-dog champions, themselves, and more vitally, to what standard they bear---LIBERALISM.

Yesterday, I spent 75 LONG minutes with about 200 other citizens in close contact in a room barely big enough to hold us all, awaiting the call for jury duty. What a across-section of Americana! And what a lesson, for us all, about our duties and responsibilities. This relates to the Investor Class in that the person in charge said the following---"We appreciate your service and recognize that you all might have a BUSINESS or JOB you are sacrificing." Not that ALL people were in that CLASS, most assuredly not---but I could feel the go-getter-ism in quite a few of them.

This all has to do with a possible gift for America, and the world, to wit the reality that two of the most EXTREME populists, cum socialists, imaginable, provide about the starkest contrast possible for Bush to run against. If it is indeed true that Kerry is going to adopt Edward's "Two America", William Jennings Bryan "Cross of Gold"-like strategy, then America could be about to put up a resounding NO to these types, and put them up on the shelf with all the other failed antiques, like the USSR. Yes, the current thrust of the Democratic Party resembles the Soviet Union's 'Communist' Party, in American DRAG! In math lingo, they are isomorphic, across TIME.

Why do I write this?

Let's just consider the dimension of ECONOMICS---show me the money! Harking back to what I had to say about Position and Momentum, am gestern, it seems to me that the best macro tool to use to get the big flowing picture is the way people can be classified in terms of INCOME and WEALTH---the whole idea of 'quintiles', and upper, middle and lower class deal.

At any given time, each person is worth so-and-so much money and has an income of such-and-such---call that their POSITION.

At the same given time, each person ALSO has hopeful, or not, Expectations about their future income and growth, or shrinkage, of wealth---call this their MOMENTUM.

Here is where what Kudlow said, today, struck my mind. The emphasis on the MIDDLE class is the key. Basically, the Kerry-Edwards core constituency is the Lower class and those in the Middle class who have LOW Expectations. These are the people they have to keep pleasing. However, as Sir Lawrence noted, the fact that more and more people are leaving the middle class by joining the upper class, that is, actually getting more and more wealthy, bodes ill for Liberalism!

Therefore, in this perhaps watershed election, it could be that this shift will tip, once and for all, into the winner's class---that is, more voters will actually have become at least upper-middle class, and/or hopeful of becoming so, reasonably soon. And this would be a once-in-a-lifetime seismic SHIFT, becoming a trend that is friend of those for smaller government and the death knell of Liberalism.

What do you think?

posted by James at 10:25 AM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Music, MAN! Godel, what a Math MAN!

In "Godel, Escher, Bach", by Richard Hofstadter, I ran across something I can't resist quoting. First, a little context. In this book, between chapters, the author creates discussions with Achilles, the Tortoise and other famous characters, that illustrate a musical and a mathematical point he's making.

The one before chapter IV involves a record player that Crab, another fellow in the story, buys. It is claimed that it will reproduce ANY sound, so Tortoise creates records 'to break record players by'. Whatever phonograph player Crab can create, Tortoise can make a record that, when played on it, resonates so harmfully with it, that it shakes to pieces.

The essence of Godel's Theorem has to do with Consistency and Completeness. Nothing that is Consistent can be Complete, and whatever is Complete can't be Consistent!

Here goes---

"First I'll talk about the record players and the records. The main point is that there are two levels of meaning for the grooves in the records. Level One is that of music. Now what is 'music'--- a sequence of vibrations in the air, or a succession of emotional responses in the brain? It is both. But before there can be emotional responses, there have to be vibrations. Now the vibrations get 'pulled' out of the grooves by a record player, a relatively straightforward device, in fact, you can do it with a pin, just pulling it down the grooves. After this stage, the ear converts the vibrations into firings of auditory neurons in the brain. Then ensue a number of stages in the brain, which gradually transform the linear sequence of vibrations into a complex pattern of interacting emotional responses---far too complex for us to go into here, much though I would like to. Let us therefore content ourselves with thinking of the sounds in the air as the 'Level One' meaning of the grooves.

What is the Level Two meaning of the grooves? It is the sequence of vibrations induced in the record player. This meaning can only arise after the Level One meaning has been pulled out of the grooves, since the vibrations in the air cause the vibrations in the phonograph. Therefore, the Level Two meaning depends upon a chain of two isomorphisms:

(1) Isomorphism between arbitrary groove patterns and air vibrations;

(2) Isomorphism between arbitrary air vibrations and phonographic vibrations.

Notice that isomorphism 1 is the one which gives rise to the Level One meaning. The Level Two meaning is more IMPLICIT than the Level One meaning, because it is mediated by the chain of two isomorphisms. It is the Level Two meaning, which 'backfires', causing the record player to break apart. What is of interest is that the production of the Level One meaning FORCES the production of the Level Two meaning simultaneously---there is no way to have Level One without Level Two. So it was the IMPLICIT meaning of the record which turned back on it, and destroyed it."

Page 83

Maybe we should keep this in mind, whenever a NEW event comes to be, such as the pick of Edwards by Kerry, today. In this case, something tells me the Level Two 'meaning' could BACKFIRE!

posted by James at 6:46 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Now the Fun begins!

Well, now we have TWO sitting senators with heft on the extreme LEFT to enjoy shooting down. The top of the ticket is the MOST liberal of all 100 members and the bottom of the ticket is a self-made millionaire TRIAL LAWYER! A couple of plush-with-holes whoopee cushions, if I do say so myself.

You could also say---which the liberal media won't---that Johnny Edwards is a lightweight equivalent to Dan Quail, the surprise pick of papa Bush. Just think---he's only served one six-year term in the senate, which he barely won with 51% of the vote. Talk about a Johnny Edwards come lately!

I noticed the betting odds on Dubya dropped to around 54% from 58% a week ago, or so. This probably has to do with today's veep announcement. I wonder how low this can go, say right around the time the Democratic convention hits its far left-wing climax later this month. Do you smell a buying-betting opportunity in the near-term offing?

It would be great if Bush DID get 54%, with Kerry and Nader splitting up the rest, so the result would be a solid margin----exorcise that Florida devil!

I just re-heard some more of "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" spoken by the author, Gary Zukov. He clearly elucidated Heisenberg's Un-certainty Principle, for one thing. I wonder how it might relate to the red-hot, and soon to be white-hot, federal elections.

The Principle says that at the sub-atomic level the product of the POSITION and the MOMENTUM of particles is essentially constant, and you can never know, precisely, both of them at once. If you can know WHERE IT is, you know NOTHING about its MOMENTUM, and if you know its MOMENTUM, you have NO idea where it is. There are all kinds of possibilities in between these extremes, to boot.

Maybe you could equate the many differing attempts at POLLING to the POSITION of the candidates. How about MOMENTUM? In political terms, I guess the CW understanding is to note the trend in those polling numbers. So, right now, CW might say Bush has had the MOMENTUM, lately, since his numbers have been going up.
I don't know---what is MOMENTUM in physics? It's the multiplicative PRODUCT of MASS and VELOCITY.

Ground-Background

Another thought just arose, triggered by "Godel, Escher and Bach". Also, remember the good old days of Fritz Perls and the encounter group movement? These have to do with the GESTALT, the drawings of Escher being probably the best visible example of the union of the splits. With this in mind, maybe we can expand on the Kerry "train" and the Bush "rocket", as the GROUND, and AND their back-grounds. Neither one is running for president in a VACUUM---in simple physics terms, there's IT-ALL that's outside each one of these guys. But, perhaps the most fruitful way to 'ground' this analysis is to limit their out-there's to the other PEOPLE who are polled, and who will vote.

Consider the contenders, then, as unitary PARTICLES with MOMENTUM, flowing through the universal field of caring humans who have the power to change their courses. Why not let their MASS be their convictions and their own voting records? Now, don't forget that VELOCITY is not mere SPEED, but SPEED with a DIRECTION. Hence, our candidates can be deconstructed, also, in terms of how fast they move, and where they are going.

What about Bush?

There have been presidents with more MASS = HEFT, but it might be that his convictions are the core component of this, in his case. His voting record---NO VETOES!---has been a huge disappointment to conservatives, except for the key tax cut bill he got passed. But, he's a right-winger, and a true-blue convicted small government man, in his heart, mostly, so at least there exist possibilities he could GROW in another term, and actually reform social security, for instance, among many other things, given the same kind of GROWTH of Republicans in Congress. WRT VELOCITY, he did move pretty fast in the right direction when it came to taxes, so there's some hope there.

And Kerry?

He comes from the ANTI-MATTER dimension, which doesn't occur in our reality! How he can continue to fake people out, given his MASSIVE history as an anti-war leader and all the nihilistic RECORDED votes in the senate for so many years, is an UN-true wonder! When it comes to analyzing his VELOCITY, a close look at his leadership in the senate tells me he's a slow poke! What did he ever get passed? And, you know his direction is pointed straight to annihilation of our freedom!

What about the MASSIVE public?

These two flying objects must traverse a space-time of here-now made up of two quite antagonistic sets of people. This FIELD is just THERE! CW might be fairly on SPACE-TIME, as it says the populace is almost 50-50. However, it just doesn't seem logical that the interaction of the two projectiles, Bush and Kerry, with those needing their MOMENTOUS leadership, will choose suicide over survival. Thus, I'd have to bet that Bush will make Kerry resemble Dukakis, in the final tally.

The Final POSITION, then, on November 2nd?

When all is said and done, unless Bush is actually killed, or dies a natural death, before the election, he should manage to be in the winning POSITION with great MOMENTUM. Bush on a ROCKET to the moon and Kerry on a witches broom, melting like the ugly green-with-envy witch in Wizard of Oz. One man will engorge as winner and the other will shrink back to the nothingness at his core!

posted by James at 12:46 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Living In An Illusion

Victor Davis Hanson wrote, today, on nationalreview.com, what no one seems to want to believe is not only possible, or even probable, but nearly inevitable. The MAD strategy did work to keep the Soviets from trying to sneak attack America, so he asks, why don't we, now, let those wicked evil-supporting regimes in the festering Middle East know that we'd wipe out much of their superstructure, if another 9/11 happens.

It's a Hobbesian choice. Either the terrorists do repeat 9/11, or worse, or they don't. Maybe there are a lot of secret messages that have already been sent to the top dogs in Iran and Syria, etc, telling them we will do some heavy reacting, so they had better NOT do anything, and indeed, they should actively make sure nothing DOES happen. Could that be true?

Remember the brave words of Saddam before the US attacked? Arabs are full of 'bazaar haggling' bravado---they remind me of the way Mexican salesmen across the border in Tijuana start out at a price too high, and expect you to dicker them down. Maybe Bush has the thugs on an invisible leash, but isn't willing to go public with this fact. When you DO think about it, since the twin towering statements of, 1.) naming the members of the axis of EVIL, and 2.) saying you're either for or against us, and because Bush DID follow up by going to Afghanistan and Iraq, there has to be some concern, a la Gadhafi, that the cowboy has 'me' in his sights.

But, I wonder. With the State Department types, including the almost un-patriotic, or at least mostly incompetent CIA, in control of so much of the machinery of the government having to do with foreign policy, maybe it's a case of a two front war.

While America SLEEPS

As we now face a LONG summer of happy-days-are-here-again of enjoying the best outdoor weather of the year, the tension just seems so intense. I wonder if, on the margin, some huge changes won't take place.

America---an IN-CAR Nation, spinning its wheels?

Yesterday, around lunchtime, I biked to the store. Near by it are a McDonald's and a Jack-in-the-Box. Returning home, going down the sidewalk in front of them, I saw three cars facing me, with each one containing one human eating away, and I flashed right back on my recent insight.

Yes, America is a country on wheels--- MEALS in automobiles.

posted by James at 7:09 AM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

The JFC Triangle

Old friend Mark Skousen was on C-Span 2, a couple of times, yesterday, promoting his new book, "Bestsellers of 1776". What a stroll down memory lane! I subscribed to his market letter about fifteen years ago, and always found him to be a straight-shooting libertarian type. His book covers Tom Paine's "Common Sense", Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations". The older and more experienced I get it never fails to confound me that there's still so much more fantastic stuff to find out about the past. Well, there's ANOTHER book I want to read, as my life TIME seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

The second time I watched and listened to his presentation the clarity was phenomenal. He offered us his TRIANGLE, three conditions that are absolutely required for the best kind of civilization to work, one based on individual liberty. There must be Justice, Freedom and Competition. Wow! What a great and simple way to put it! In order not to forget, I immediately tried forming a mnemonic in my mind, using the first letters, F, C and J. Then IT-ALL smacked me UP HIGH---my given name is James Franklin Crystal. So, how could I EVER forget it, NOW? In a born way, then, I actually EMBODY all three legs of this 'stool'. We all probably know that 'Franklin' is actually based on "FREE", so right smack dab in the middle name I am FREE. What about the name 'James'? I long ago looked it up, and found that it comes from Hebrew, 'Jacob', but I don't recall seeing what that came from, until now---"seizing by the heel of". I guess you could stretch this a little bit, in order to connect it to 'JUSTICE'. After all, in order for there to be JUSTICE, you have to haul the miscreants into a court of LAW. And what are lawbreakers, anyway, but HEELS? As for the big C words, in my own hard-core way, I'm as COMPETITIVE as all get out, which is probably while I've spent so much time enjoying observing athletic elites fighting it out. The purity of mano-mano confrontations keeps me sharp, and engaged. What about that word, "Crystal"? Am I ever surprised! According to my dictionary, its etymology is not even close to my first guess, the word 'Christ'! In a way, though, a comparison of the two words is very interesting. "Crystal" comes from "Crude"---ah, how CRUDDY! At the Indo-European base, however, it's not so bloody bad---'*kreu-, congealed (blood)'. Check out "Christ"---'chriein, to anoint < IE base *ghrei-, to spread over, smear'. Ah, what's in words, anyway? At best any wise ONE can't take them TOO seriously. Whenever I meet a new class and have to tell them my last name is 'Crystal', now that so many girls have been christened, anointed, with that name and all kinds of spelling variations, I have to be ready to finesse any reactions from wise guys and gals. So, my latest ploy is to 'blame' it on good old dad---"Yup, that was my father's last name, so therefore---"

A really mind-bending thing happened the other night. I'm at an age, now, where there exists about half a century's worth of pop songs that impinged 'my' consciousness. I can almost pick a starting year and an ending year---when I was twelve, in 1954, it all hit consciousness, big time, and when the 1980's ended, I tuned out almost totally, finding rap and all the other crap to be anti-music. In a way, though, from the beginning it was impossible to escape the oldies being played, THEN, so I was able to go back in time, essentially, and capture the big band era, etc.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for those infomercials featuring rock and roll, folk music, et al---you know, those ubiquitous Time-Life 'ten CD' deals. Heretofore I've come close to buying them only a few times, and I always resist, feeling I need to keep competing by saving as much money as possible, and realizing that time is running out, and I don't want to spend it clinging to the past, but instead use it by engaging in the best new-to-me classical music available. Well, a new offer grabbed me by the aural sense, at the deepest level.

This one was about "A Lifetime of Romance Songs" from the 50's, 60's and 70's. As the advertisement went on and on, every song literally had me in MEMORY tears, meaning it was like I was back in those times, when I was fresh and so sensitively impressionable. Those were the days when popular music hadn't yet been taken over by vulgar rock and roll, even the Beatles. I almost called up and ordered it, and I still might. With 150 of the most exquisite-to-me standards for less than a buck each, why---- Probably the largest draw, for me, is that there are many, many instrumentals which were surely the path that led to my lifetime love affair with classical music. Man, oh man. I'm becoming what I always laughed at, when younger---a nostalgic old fart!

Here's the dilemma: Santayana horns in on my consciousness with "If you forget the past you are doomed to forget it" and on that famous other, 'other hand', "If you cling to the past, you are doomed to get FAT with encrustations in your karmic Narcissistic bag". A great illustration of the latter was a replay, from 1994, of Larry King interviewing Marlon Brando. The seventy-year-old ex-actor was stretched out, semi-flat, in one of those chairs that open up. His legs and arms were the size of a normal person's WAIST, so you can imagine what the rest of his body looked like. Jawohl, the FAT horn got him, good. A couple of thoughts arose. First, it is amazing that he survived another TEN YEARS in that condition, which certainly got worse and worse as he neared death. Second, it was impossible to avoid comparing the famous 93-year-old actor who died on June fifth, Ronald Reagan. Can't find too many polar opposites than Brando and Reagan wrt a real life outside of acting!

Aha, it's my current life's KOAN! We all need a KOAN to lean on! It's at least a way to keep the mind sharp, and can even lead to experiences of REAL MIND, called 'satori' in Zen.

posted by James at 3:31 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Character "MATTERS"

Ah, crusty old C-Span scored again, with its latest monthly three-hour conversation on the first Sunday of this July. It was accentuated by being on the 228th birthday of America, AND featuring a diamond-in-the-rough experienced historian, Forrest McDonald. I, of course, enjoyed the show immensely because he is my kind of guy, politically and wrt his demeanor.

I only saw the last hour, but plan to catch the first two when it replays later today. In a way it was painful to watch and listen, as the time just seemed to drag so slowly. It was almost too hard to take, so packed with resonating comments was it-ALL. However, I stuck with it, and was blessed by the final answer he gave to a question about Washington and Jefferson.

We're still recovering from Clinton, resembling a confessed alcoholic at an AA meeting. Billy boy brought the word and idea of CHARACTER to the top of the nations awareness heap. At least for 'noble' conservatives, the realization that 'Character matters' became the scarlet letter scarred into his forehead, or is it the bit lower lip that reminds us of this vital aspect of a humans being? Concurrent with this use of 'character' is always the more primal definition having to do with the playing of a role, a defined part-in-the-play-of-life, that fits the present situation. I can't forget the apparent paradox that Reagan earned money by playing roles in movies, assuming various 'characters', and then became a real president, whereas Clinton willfully played to the public, that is, he acted out a political 'character', in order to become the 'acting' president, in full mental jacket. The double entendre is sublime---Slick Willy acted just right to become president, and then continued the act while in office, but the best way to understand his time there is that he was mostly a caretaker, an empty suit, a true 'stand-in', and 'ACTING' president. You know; it's like when someone fills a position until the proper procedures can be followed to get back in order, say when a person is appointed to some political office when someone dies, until the system can gin up a formal election.

Now, the professor claimed that Washington was more important for who he was than for what he did, and it was vice versa for Jefferson. Hearing that shocked me, so I listened closely to his reasoning, and he elucidated on what 'character' meant in those early days. Instead of the Clintonian definition having to do with morality, in Washington's case it more a matter of self-consciously willing yourself into, and playing to the hilt, a certain character, in a Shakespearean sense. So, McDonald says Washington was most vital to the country by playing ever more NOBLE roles in public, culminating in the ultimate pose, FATHER of the COUNTRY. In short, he absolutely lived out "Life is a stage and we're all actors on it" by dressing the part and DOING the acts required at each time of his life. He wore the appropriate MASKS in each daily BALL. Of course that meant he had to DO certain things along the way, so you could say his BEING WHO HE WAS demanded he DO WHAT HE DID, so it gets all complicated, here.

In Jefferson's case, he also played the same game, but when he left the presidency in 1809, according to a quote from a letter to a friend, he expressed great relief, at the time, that he could retire back to his home and drop all the masks. Apparently, Washington never did drop his masks, at least in public.

These 'character' matters brought up a few related maxims that have long pervaded my noospheric reality. The first thing to notice is that heretofore it's all had to do with the PUBLIC arena. What struck me, today, was how this all could relate to me, and how do I fit into this schematic. At the heart, I confess that choice is ever so, meaning I, and everyone, must always accept total responsibility for whatever the situation 'happens' to be. Nothing, ever, just 'happens' to be! However, I do have a new and deeper profound appreciation for those people who have managed to rise to high positions of power and affluence. The way McDonald put it was so pithy---driven by various levels of AMBITION and/or AVARICE, we all choose how to act.

So, 'CHARACTER matters' always carries a double meaning---1.) In a moral sense, having good or bad character, and 2.) In a staged sense, playing a chosen character when in public.

However, what about this---in a transcendental dimension that contains the PUBLIC and PRIVATE while simultaneously rising above them, notice the saying that "Attention is DESTINY, guaranteed". How does that compare to "You become what you meditate upon"? Well, "The meek shall inherit the earth" wants to jump into this thoughtful soup. Turning my other 'cheeky' freely played ROLE, "A man's gotta know his limits" shoots its round, heard 'round the world.

Guided ATTENTION, it seems to me, is what can't be distilled out of ALL of IT-ALL. If/when one chooses to copy Rene Descartes or Ramana Maharshi and meditate as far backwards to the source of themselves, I THINK when all else has been cast aside, being aware of, and AS Consciousness, will be the ending MYSTERY.

It's so funny trying to follow materialist, for example, in their on-going attempt to find the ultimate place 'in' the physical brain that 'MIND' resides. They have it utterly backwards. Perhaps you could say that they are the scientific 'school' of thought in the PUBLIC CW sphere, and their first belief is that physical reality is OBVIOUSLY what's real, and the quest is to find WHERE consciousness = mind is, in IT. Of course, 'mind', 'consciousness', 'spirit', et al are simply pointing words like signs on a road to enlightenment, not to be taken for what they try to stand for. The ONLY way = TAO to undo the damage of the geniuses probing physicality is to, in effect, multiply their NEGATIVE NUMBER by another NEGATIVE NUMBER and get a Radically Transcendental POSITIVE NUMBER. You know---you step in a pile of dog s**t, which is a very NEGATIVE action, so you remove it, which is a TAKE-IT-AWAY NEGATIVE counter action, and voila, back to pure pristine CLEAN being.

Therefore, it's Absolutely necessary to always remember that the job is NOT to find consciousness in the material world, but, au contraire, to acknowledge, to RE-COGNIZE, that the material world is appearing in consciousness. Indeed, it's a quite convincing ILLUSION, which is merely a play OF consciousness, itself.

Now, there's your Infinite stage to play a CHARACTRISTIC role on!

posted by James at 12:37 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com