Open Thread - 09-20-24 - Waiting for the Sun
This is the strangest life, I've ever known. -Jim Morrison
Daedalus told his son Icarus: Don't fly too close to the sun or it will melt your wings and into the sea you will plummet. Don't fly too low or your wings will collect water and into the sea you will plunge.
Yet, Icarus in his exuberance flew too high and paid the toll of greed, ambition and hope with his life.
There is but one thing on this earth that comes close to matching the power of the sun. We as a species, as a country, as a polity are forgoing Daedalus's warning of balance between the extremes. Madmen are in the throes of greed and ambition in lieu of hope, as we potentially soar ever closer to our metaphorical watery cortege.
Attribution: Wikimedia Commons
We, as did Daedalus, watch in horror as those mad among us fly too close to the sun at our collective peril. Their unwillingness to relinquish the grip of empire is taking us to the brink of disaster. As the wealth fades, like the melting wax of Icarus's wings, the West will plummet headlong into oblivion if we don't pull back from the sun.
It's a shame that having had this warning, back as far as the Ancient Greeks, that we still have madmen that want to fly too close to the sun.
To Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, look upon your children and see the future light in their eyes.
Before it's too late.
That is the way.
Many years ago I joked on another site about the overlords having the power to zap us with electricity through the screen or keyboard of our internet connected devices. The joke being if one says or types the wrong thing then you'll pay the consequences with a gentle reminder of your place in their world, and a not so gentle reminder for those that stray too far from the conventional authoritarian parameters of a socially controlled corralling of the mind.
I was just joking, I even gave myself the side eye on that one, but with recent revelations perhaps the joke was just a bit too premature.
The Doors: Waiting for the Sun
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
Do you ever get the feeling that if either one of the pied pipers currently running for president asked their true believers to stare into the sun, that a large percentage would participate, even though doing so would mean blindness?
Yeah, me too. That would leave then figuratively and literally blind.
America:
Reduced to being a patron of bad entertainment.
AOC: entertainer.
Zelensky: entertainer.
Trump: entertainer.
Cornel West: entertainer.
The collective West: entertainers who pretend to be politicians. Macron? Starmer? Scholz?
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Agreed Cass, with one caveat...
they are all entertainers in the sense that puppets are considered entertainers.
Good morning JtC, et. al. Remember that Daedalus and Icarus
were prisoners of King Minos who suspected them of betraying state sekrets, the design of the Labyrinth, to his enemy, King Thesus. This is and has politics written all over it, and though Kings are involved, there is nothing regal about it. Cassiodorus declares todays politicians to be entertainers pretending to be politicians, but I must disagree.
Old Joke: To understand politics, parse the word's roots; poly = many, tics = parasitic insects, ergo many parasitic insects. False, but telling. Politicians:
have never been respected or well thought of, they are not to be confused with "Statespersons", who once existed, now and then. and who were respected. They are rarely entertaining, but can be "fascinating" in the same sense as a natural disaster or train wreck one happens to view.
what we have before us aren't actors, these are the real deal, these are what politicians are.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Point well taken...
perhaps a more apt descriptor: grifters.
Almost all leave office much more wealthy than when they entered. Especially presidents.
Bad actors
.
used to be pulled off the stage
nowadays they are promoted
question everything
Well…
Biden’s a bad actor and he got yanked off the stage. He got the vaudeville hook and off he went. Works for me.
The quote needs a comma...
I think it makes a difference... may be just me.
It's a syn...
and very taxing to use improper syntax (pun intended).
Although it is probably debatable, I'll gladly make the correction.
Late to the party!
The Atlantinc published an article about the pagers at 9 m. At 9:06 am, they published an article that people do not need to be concerned that their cell phones will explode. Because of editorial process, the articles would have been written pretty much at the same time. We were informed in the Twitter files that the CIA calls in talking points to the media.
Under the circumstances, when media insists there is nothing to see here, move along, I conclude the opposite is true.
Hoo boy.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Oh good...
thanks for that. I feel much better now.