The FBI

There is an accurate and insightful article in the American Thinker on August 14, 2022 that every American should read, especially members of congress. It is frightening to be confronted so openly of what we already suspected, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has become monstrously totalitarian. The points made by Mr. Fitzgerald:

In addition to proclaiming the death of God, Nietzsche proclaimed the death of peoples.

There is a distinction between the state and the peoples.

Peoples existed before the state.

States claim to be identical with the peoples, thus stares are the biggest liars.

States stole the identity of the peoples, thus are the biggest thieves.

Every modern state is totalitarian, some more than others.

The biggest threat to the peoples of America is the omnipotence and omnipresence of the states' administration.

The FBI is the central part of the administration of the state. The two have collapsed into one.

There is no governing authority over the FBI. Neither the president, congress, the courts, other law enforcement agencies, nor the Department of Justice posses no power to oppose their jurisdiction.

The FBI does whatever it wants, to whomever it wants, wherever it wants.

The FBI has enormous intelligence gathering capability and no one at any level can know what it knows.

The FBI in effect is the "regulating finger of God."

The FBI most be reformed.

Only Thing They Didn't Do Was Arm Teachers and Students

 UCISD's (Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District-Texas) website states that the district has "proponents to curb and/or eliminate" elements of" violence, vandalism, disruptions and fear" in its schools to "provide a safe and secure environment for all." Those proponents include four officers, including a chief, a detective and two officers within the school district; partnerships with local law enforcement agencies; security staff that patrols door entrances and parking lots at secondary campuses; case managers and social workers on UCISD campuses; licensed counselors; threat assessment teams; social media threat monitoring; a visitor management security system; canine detection services; motion detectors and alarm systems; perimeter fencing at Robb and other schools; security vestibules and outside buzz-in systems; security cameras; a locked classroom door policy; staff and student training; and a threat reporting system. https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-mass-shooting-school-district-security-measures

Biden's Wimpy Approach to Russia

 Putin is a self-proclaimed bully with a known agenda. He is intent on restoring the territory previously governed by the USSR and will do so when necessary with military force. He will push and push until he accomplishes his goal or is stopped. In any case he will have bullied his way into increasing Russia's hegemony. Actually, smelling America's leadership weakness (military as political) and lack of resolve emanating from woke stupidity, he has already done so with impunity.

Why Sanctions on Russia Will Not Work

 Geez, aren't we aware of Russia's history of peasant misery? The ruling elite, be they Tzars or "democratically" elected leaders have never hesitated to sacrifice Russian citizens to their and their friends and relatives advantage. The more the merrier. 

Because sanctions on any major country also affect the citizens of the countries levying the sanctions, the question becomes, who has the political will to hang on the longest? Citizens of communist countries, short of a national revolution, have no opportunity to voice their displeasure with their government. The governments of many member states of NATO, on the other hand, can be readily influenced by a dissatisfied citizenry. The United States under Biden, for example, has already experienced a record inflationary increase causing prices to soar. People are already unhappy. Biden warned that they will likely go higher should there not be a quick resolution to the Ukraine thing.

What do you think will happen? 

There Would Be a Time for Mourning

 The following is from the book: Helmet for My Pillow: from Parris Island to the Pacific, Robert Leckie.

"It is not always or immediately saddening to hear “who got it.” Except for one’s close buddies, it is difficult to feel deep, wracking grief for the dead, and now, hearing the lieutenant tolling off the names, I had to force my face into a mask of mourning, deliberately adorn my heart with black, as it were, for I was shocked to gaze inward and see no sorrow there. Rather than permit myself to know myself a monster (as I seemed, then) I deliberately deluded myself by feigning bereavement. So did we all."

About 20 years after Robert's experience, I, upon the combat loss of comrades, thought myself to be psychologically defective when I felt much the same following combat losses over the longest five years. Others, with whom I spoke about this feeling agreed that they, in wonder, felt the same. When the task was mine to write condolence letters I felt, guiltily, that I was just making up the proper words and phrases. I didn't really feel them. I consoled myself with the thought that there would be a time for morning. And I have now lived long enough to realize that truth. I don't remember most of their names, but I see them and their deaths or ghastly wounds vividly many-a-night in nightmares. I don't dream about successes or victories, but the events that resulted in horror.

Philosophy--The Hard Questions

 What came or was before the big bang? Why is there something rather than nothing? Does the universe exist only because we are conscious of it? 

Consciousness

A number of past and current philosophers contend that consciousness is what always was and will be, the "before" the universe. In other words, consciousness is God. If we define "nothing" as lacking space, time, and material, then it seems that consciousness could well be the "nothing" that came before. Yet so could many other brain-evoked universal non-material nouns such as love, fear, apprehension, intelligence, etc.

"I propose that consciousness can be defined as a particular state of awareness, characterised by a curious recursiveness in which individuals are not only aware, but aware that they are aware." - David P Barash, https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-conscious-animal-how-human-minds-evolved; 2013

 To be aware that we are aware can be painful. Would it not be more comfortable to feel bad without knowing that we feel bad? Actually, could we even feel bad if we were not aware of feeling bad? Can the two be separated--1) feeling bad and 2) being aware of feeling bad? If consciousness is a product of evolution, then it would have arisen and grown as a result of proving itself to be better than worse for humans. Natural selection without consciousness would give precedence to the more immediate than to longer term, thus, in the longer term be detrimental. Satisfying hunger by the excessive consumption of fatty, sugary foods results in short-term pleasure but eventual bodily distress. Consciousness could well have grown from necessity. And socially, if we were unaware of our effects on others, we would be quite boorish.

If not evolutionary, then it is inherent to the material brain and/or ethereal thought. 

The argument for a God of a type

In The Life of the Cosmos (1999), the physicist Lee Smolin has estimated that, taking into account all of the fine-tuning examples considered, the chance of life existing in the Universe is 1 in 10229, from which he concludes:

In my opinion, a probability this tiny is not something we can let go unexplained. Luck will certainly not do here; we need some rational explanation of how something this unlikely turned out to be the case.

In my opinion, there could be another possibility. Could it be that if the fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force, chemical complexity, and gravity had been different by enough to not allow life as we know it, a life different than we know, yet life, would instead have evolved?

The evidence for a biblical God or a multiverse is incomplete and what there is, is arguable.

Tononi’s theory that both differentiation and integration are required for consciousness is known as integrated information theory (IIT).

https://aeon.co/essays/to-say-what-consciousness-is-science-explores-where-it-isnt

"First, each conscious experience is specific. Your experience of the colour blue is what it is, in part, because blue is not yellow. If you had never seen any colour other than blue, you would most likely have no concept or experience of colour. Likewise, if all food tasted exactly the same, taste experiences would have no meaning, and vanish. This requirement that each conscious experience must be specific is known as differentiation.

"But, at the same time, consciousness is integrated. This means that, although objects in consciousness have different qualities, we never experience each quality separately. When you see a basketball whiz towards you, its colour, shape and motion are bound together into a coherent whole. During a game, you’re never aware of the ball’s orange colour independently of its round shape or its fast motion. By the same token, you don’t have separate experiences of your right and your left visual fields – they are interdependent as a whole visual scene.

"Tononi identified differentiation and integration as two essential features of consciousness. And so, just as the essential features of life might lead a scientist to infer the existence of DNA, the essential features of consciousness led Tononi to infer the physical properties of a conscious system."

What is Time? Time is imaginary, implied from awareness of motion and change. Without such awareness we would lack consciousness. Tensed time would not exist. We would be aware only the present.

F15s and Nucs

 Biden's intelligence is not questioned. We know he isn't. But at least he could appear to be not silly. Threatening the American people with F15s and nuclear weapons is just plain silly but not surprising. Biden as with most of our civilian government leaders have very short memories and lack an understanding of guerilla warfare. The French military was soundly beaten as was the United States military in Vietnam. And the wars in the middle east are little different. We were not and are not being beaten by supersonic airplanes or nuclear weapons; no, rather by homemade booby traps and explosives and small arms. Just imagine how difficult it would be to quell thousands of small determined uprisings throughout the country. The massing of modern firepower would result in unacceptable collateral damage. I fought in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand and am very aware of how impossible it is to distinguish friend from enemy. And how many members of our military would rather fight for American values and the Flag of the United States than for progressive communism? Mr. Biden, your threats are meaningless and just plain silly.