Recently, my browser send most re-posts here, so I'm just expanding it a bit. Some publications and comments on Cognitive behavioral Science and Therapy remain. Questions and participation welcome.
Recently, a group reacted on social media to a posting we did on Nietzsche.Reactions included things such as "he was a fascist" and the like showed an astonishingly lack to knowledge of what Nietzsche actually said in his "God is Dead" remarks and somehow a connection between him and Hitler.
It needs to be pointed out that the use by Hitler was promoted by Nietzsche's sister after his death from what is now diagnosed as brain cancer.His sister was a viscous blot on Nietzsche's thoughts and writings and his very name.She actually became worse after she married a notorious anti-Semite.Nietzsche's actual last coherent words were in a short note to a friend, Jacob Burkhart, and reads "I am having all anti-Semites shot"
Frau Forester-Nietzsche was an offense to him from early days.I have no idea what the general disposition of reader's is as to relations with their brothers or sisters, but mine was nearly as unfortunate as was his.I made two unfortunate mistakes: 1) I assumed that everyone at least had read Walter Kaufmann's work on him and 2) they knew better than to think that Nietzsche, who wrote nothing after 1888, encouraged his sister or Hitler.
We can see today, however, how the Trump administration now intends (2019) to use an internment camp, now admittedly a concentration camp, to house Spanish speaking migrant children, the same camp that was used in 1942 to confine Japanese Americans.
GOD'S DEATH -- POSTMORTEM BY NIETZSCHE
It reminds me of a remark of Tom Lehrer as saying that "Most patriotic Americans are feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." I am actually finding it either amusing or laughable. On the other hand, when I realize that so many Americans take this nonsense seriously, it can become quite depressing.
One also remembers Bernard Shaw's dictum "Beware of the man whose God is in the skies." The problem is, of course, that these people simply state things as fact as coming from the word of God, and yet God does not have a phone number and is not available for confirmation.
Some time back, there was a great deal of consternation over the phrase "God is Dead!" Many people knew it somehow came from the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, but that was about it. They hated the idea, considered it blasphemy, and the kinder of them took pity on him and those who agreed. However, they never really understood what was meant by that phrase.
We are going to change all that right now.
First, an amusing bit a graffiti:
"God is Dead." – Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead." – God
And thus it remained until the final statement, understood only by those who knew a bit about the subject:
"I was born posthumously." -- Nietzsche
And there it has stood for some time.
It seems quite clear that many of these people never read past the first mention of God's death in the Prologue to Book One of Zarathustra. In fact, many of them do not realize that the character Zarathustra was invented by Nietzsche and undergoes a change during the course of the work. He took the name of Zoroaster, the mystic, because he had experienced no prophet with whom he more intensely disagreed, and it is worth mentioning as well that the transliteration of Zoroaster is often Zarathustra, or something quite close to it.
I take it that few readers of Nietzsche also realize that he was trained as a classical philologist and studied a wide variety of languages. He was especially interested in pre-Homeric writers.
So, with this in mind, let us look at a few passages where Zarathustra discusses God's death. Nietzsche is nearly impossible to translate to anyone's satisfaction, but Walter Kaufmann, who came to Nietzsche hating everything he stood for BEFORE he did the translations, manage to translate him into sense in English and thus understanding what he actually stood for and changing his mind radically. R. Hollingsdale and M. Cowan have also produced excellent and scholarly accepted translations. I am providing my own, just because I don't want to bother worrying about the absurdity of "fair use" and because I want to translate it the way it came across to me originally. If you can read the original German, ignore the translation. Nietzsche abounds in plays of words, puns, double-meanings, and like to joke a great deal and one who takes everything seriously and as the last word will be helplessly lost.
Here is that first mention:
Als Zarathustra aber allein war, sprach er also zu seinem Herzen:
"Sollte es denn möglich sein! Dieser alte Heilige hat in seinem Walde
noch Nichts davon gehört, dass _Gott_todt_ ist!" -
Einst war der Frevel an Gott der grösste Frevel, aber Gott starb, und
damit auch diese Frevelhaften. An der Erde zu freveln ist jetzt das
Furchtbarste und die Eingeweide des Unerforschlichen höher zu achten,
als der Sinn der Erde!
OR
When Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in his forest not yet heard that God is dead!"-
Sacrilege was the greatest crime of blasphemy against God, but God died, and so also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the role and the entrails of the unknowable to ensure higher life as the meaning of the earth!
The key to that now is that the idea of God is dead, blasphemy is to be stupid enough to attack quantitative evolution, a leap upwards from Mankind. (I know, you can have your own interpretation.)
One of my favorite, however, comes at the end of the third book, after Zarathustra has absented himself from man twice before and gain a better perspective on things.
Ist es denn nicht _lange_ vorbei auch für alle solche Zweifel? Wer
darf noch solche alte eingeschlafne lichtscheue Sachen aufwecken!
Mit den alten Göttern gieng es ja lange schon zu Ende: - und wahrlich,
ein gutes fröhliches Götter-Ende hatten sie!
Sie "dämmerten" sich nicht zu Tode, - das lügt man wohl! Vielmehr: sie
haben sich selber einmal zu Tode - _gelacht_!
Das geschah, als das gottloseste Wort von einem Gotte selber ausgieng,
- das Wort: "Es ist Ein Gott! Du sollst keinen andern Gott haben neben
mir!" -
- ein alter Grimm-Bart von Gott, ein eifersüchtiger vergass sich also:
Und alle Götter lachten damals und wackelten auf ihren Stühlen und
riefen: "Ist das nicht eben Göttlichkeit, dass es Götter, aber keinen
Gott giebt?"
Wer Ohren hat, der höre. -
Also redete Zarathustra in der Stadt, die er liebte und welche
zubenannt ist die bunte Kuh. Von hier nämlich hatte er nur noch zwei
Tage zu gehen, dass er wieder in seine Höhle käme und zu seinen
Thieren; seine Seele aber frohlockte beständig ob der Nähe seiner
Heimkehr. -
Or
II is long passed for all such doubts? Who may still wake up those old light-shunning things!
With the old gods, it went so long since come to an end: - and verily, a good joyful Deity-end they had!
Their "falling asleep" is not to death - that is probably lying! Rather, they laughed themselves to death once!
That happened with the most godless word of a God himself, - The word: "I alone am God! Me! Thou shalt have no other gods before me! "-
- An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous old fart, forgot himself thus. And all the other gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones and shouted: "Is this not just divinity that there are gods, but no God exists? "
Who hath ears to hear, listen!
And that is it. Obviously, Nietzsche did not write "fart," but it fits! You can supply whatever you like there – try Langenschiedt's (or however it is spelled). Later on, Zarathustra offers details as to how God died (as it is, I skipped over about 15 different versions between the first one and the last). In Book 4, after another hiatus in his life, Zarathustra speaks much more calmly and evenly as his audience is comprised of only the "highest" of mankind.
Probably the most salient reason is that God died of pity for man after he saw man nailed to the cross.
Perhaps it would be better to call these Neanderthal Republicans (an electoral college majority still) as "Pro-Birth," rather than pro-life as they use the term.It does seem clear that once the child is born, they have no further concern for it as it then becomes a tax issue.Yet, so many of those opposed to higher taxes have no problem with the fact that so many of the "elite" pay no taxes while everyone else does.
One problem Biden has as a candidate is that the contemporary "base" of the party do not realize that many of his earlier votes come from a time when people still smoked in airplanes and so on.He does need to say that he has learned from his past mistakes and learned more since then.Perhaps then his votes for the Hyde amendment and for the "war" against Iraq (really a regime change idea) would be easier to shake off today.For similar reasons, Voters today are not brainwashed against "Socialism" as they were back then.It is a main reason that Bernie Sanders remains so popular today.In addition, many of his positions have not had to change – the country changed to his point of view.
Global warming: note that the issue of that or climate change is not allowed and mention on our media, yet weather reports are allowed to be accurate and show the disease of climate change.The underlying cause has to be inferred and etiology is not a strong point of Americans, especially those dedicated to Trump.
We talk of education.It is an obscure fact that one high school teacher was using Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD as required reading in an honors class is typical.Parents were outraged.After a few questions the reason became clear.It had nothing to do with Henry Ford (who built tanks in Nazi Germany).One popular chant in the fictional novel kept saying "Ford has a better idea" or something like that.No, one could only hope that was the issue.It has nothing to do with assembly line treatment of people, although that is what the school system had become modeled after.None of that was of interest or even understood by the PTA.The idea was "contraceptive belts".Why, after all, their own daughters were all virgins were they not? That is what they understood.He was forced to discontinue using the book.The next semester, he used a translation of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.No problem there.That is an illustration of why oureducational system is still about 2 to 3 years behind those is Europe.
Fake news?For people so interested in the ideas of our founding founders, perhaps it would be wise to remember Thomas Jefferson who said "If I had to choose between one of the three branches of government and the Free press, I would easily choose the Free Press."
Not many people remember that, or have even been taught that, the Attorney General is a part of the Judicial Branch.
Allof the compliants against the Trump children running the country like the Rothchilds are nothing compared to the attacks John F. Kennedy got for placing his brother as Attorney GeneralNow I wonder why that is?
And now, I'm tired.I may send links or so from time to time, but this is just too difficult.
And now to Larry Tribe, law professor at Harvard and Obama's mentor in Constitutional law:
Impeach Trump. But don't necessarily try him in the Senate.
Laurence H. Tribe is the University Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and the coauthor, most recently, of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment."
It is possible to argue that impeaching President Trump and removing him from office before the 2020 election would be unwise, even if he did cheat his way into office, and even if he is abusing the powers of that office to enrich himself, cover up his crimes and leave our national security vulnerable to repeated foreign attacks. Those who make this argument rest their case either on the proposition that impeachment would be dangerously divisive in a nation as politically broken as ours, or on the notion that it would be undemocratic to get rid of a president whose flaws were obvious before he was elected.
Rightly or wrongly — I think rightly — much of the House Democratic caucus, at least one Republican member of that chamber (Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan) and more than a thirdof the nation's voters disagree. They treat the impeachment power as a vital constitutional safeguard against a potentially dangerous and fundamentally tyrannical president and view it as a power that would be all but ripped out of the Constitution if it were deemed unavailable against even this president.
That is my view, as well.
Still, there exists concern that impeachment accomplishes nothing concrete, especially if the Senate is poised to quickly kill whatever articles of impeachment the House presents. This apprehension is built on an assumption that impeachment by the House and trial in the Senate are analogous to indictment by a grand jury and trial by a petit jury: Just as a prosecutor might hesitate to ask a grand jury to indict even an obviously guilty defendant if it appeared that no jury is likely to convict, so, it is said, the House of Representatives might properly decline to impeach even an obviously guilty president — and would be wise to do so — if it appeared the Senate was dead-set against convicting him.
But to think of the House of Representatives as akin to a prosecutor or grand jury is misguided. The Constitution's design suggests a quite different allocation of functions: The Senate, unlike any petit (or trial) jury, is legally free to engage in politics in arriving at its verdict. And the House, unlike any grand jury, can conduct an impeachment inquiry that ends with a verdict and not just a referral to the Senate for trial — an inquiry in which the target is afforded an opportunity to participate and mount a full defense.
House Democrats call for impeachment proceedings against Trump
After the White House blocked numerous congressional subpoena requests, lawmakers have begun calling for impeachment proceedings against President Trump.(Blair Guild, JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
Take, for instance, the 1974 investigation of President Richard M. Nixon when the House gave the president the opportunity to refute the charges against him either personally or through counsel and with additional fact witnesses. (Nixon chose to appear only through his attorney, James D. St. Clair.) Following its impeachment proceedings, the House Judiciary Committee drafted particularized findings less in the nature of accusations to be assessed by the Senate — which of course never weighed in, given Nixon's resignation — than in the nature of determinations of fact and law and verdicts of guilt to be delivered by the House itself, expressly stating that the president was indeed guilty as charged.
It seems fair to surmise, then, that an impeachment inquiry conducted with ample opportunity for the accused to defend himself before a vote by the full House would be at least substantially protected, even if not entirely bullet-proofed, against a Senate whitewash.
The House, assuming an impeachment inquiry leads to a conclusion of Trump's guilt, could choose between presenting articles of impeachment even to a Senate pre-committed to burying them and dispensing with impeachment as such while embodying its conclusions of criminality or other grave wrongdoing in a condemnatory "Sense of the House" resolution far stronger than a mere censure. The resolution, expressly and formally proclaiming the president impeachable but declining to play the Senate's corrupt game, is one that even a president accustomed to treating everything as a victory would be hard-pressed to characterize as a vindication. (A House resolution finding the president "impeachable" but imposing no actual legal penalty would avoid the Constitution's ban on Bills of Attainder, despite its deliberately stigmatizing character as a "Scarlet 'I' " that Trump would have to take with him into his reelection campaign.)
The point would not be to take old-school House impeachment leading to possible Senate removal off the table at the outset. Instead, the idea would be to build into the very design of this particular inquiry an offramp that would make bypassing the Senate an option while also nourishing the hope that a public fully educated about what this president did would make even a Senate beholden to this president and manifestly lacking in political courage willing to bite the bullet and remove him.
By resolving now to pursue such a path, always keeping open the possibility that its inquiry would unexpectedly lead to the president's exoneration, the House would be doing the right thing as a constitutional matter. It would be acting consistent with its overriding obligation to establish that no president is above the law, all the while keeping an eye on the balance of political considerations without setting the dangerous precedent that there are no limits to what a corrupt president can get away with as long as he has a compliant Senate to back him. And pursuing this course would preserve for all time the tale of this uniquely troubled presidency.
