Pedro's Corner

Oh what beauties. Is the horse running to something or away from something?

Or is he exercising his raison de etre?

God, how I would love to hug that horse and whisper into his ear. Beautiful!

Yes - a horse is an especially pure reason of being, it has one desire. Well two maybe but one that makes it particular, and special. No other animal just runs for the hell of it.
You know von Clausewitz’ saying war is politics continued by other means?
This horse is the lightning continued by other means.

:handgestures-salute:

vocaroo.com/i/s0vZrhwHK5fq

A thought about democracy, as inspired by the great leader President Donald J Trump:

In Athens, of course, it was not all inhabitants that had a vote. Only those with enough of what we today call capital had the right to participate. Of course, Athens was a small city. In terms of a modern day yuge country, what democracy means is to vote enough such people into the process. Do you follow?

That is, you create the forum. People participating in the forum are people with certain prerequisites, like birth citizenship and whatnot, and are actual citizens, so not professional politicians, and ones with enough capital to both have enough of a stake in and have benefitted enough from the polity. To BE the polity, see? That is what Athenians designed. The people, the citizens, ARE the polity. Or, rather, the citizens who are the polity, are the polity.

To extend the democracy to a wider citizenry of just people, citizens then vote for the invested citizen which strikes them as most sane. This can obviously not be legislated for without a risk of some weird fascism, not to mention the lacking political capital even for such weirdly fascist legislating. But it can be helped to become reality. Trump is a citizen, possibly the first citizen, the first Athenian democrat. There are others out there, I hear things about a guy in Luisiana.

Sillicon valley wants a say? They can run too. They meet all the criteria. I wonder, representing their interests and ideas as themselves, how the economy of political capital would work.

And old school commies like John or whatever his name was, prometheanwhatever, can be left rambling in the streets where they used to be, where they belong. Oliver?

This precludes the Deep State as well. Imagine these dudes operating a deep state? Even the traitor Michael Bloomberg in the end found it silly.

To be clear: professional politicians are simply lawyers. Pay to play is not a feature, it is the entirety of the game.

Nixon, along with Kissinger, were strange exceptions. The thesis of the scholar politician was proven not to be able to survive the ruthlessness of well payed lawyers.

Admittedly, the Athenian democracy thesis, still so much in its infancy, is already facing the same test. Nixon, let us not forget, was brought down by a small fraction of what President Donald J Trump endures on any given day.

Rome was probably wisest in giving them a framework they could not resist. Still, Cesar proved the Roman Lawyer thesis not to be able to withstand a determined citizen with capital. Ironically, it was the wisdom of the Athenians which took down the Roman attempt at reining in the lawyers. We beat the lawyers THAT time. Well, almost. The denouement was the kind of weird we see in the final shot of Scanners.

Anyway, this ain’t Rome. The last Rome was Spain, case you were wondering.

This is better. If we win.

Pablo Escobar was a pioneer of such democracy. Nietzsche long foresaw his downfall, crime has a ceiling. But he understood. His bounty was his people, so he was in a constant, and importantly happy, negotiation with his people. What do you want/need? Here it is. He asked. He didn’t tell. A stadium? Boom, here’s a stadium. A hospital? Boom, hospital. Of course, he is not Aladdin’s genie. But people understand that. Not being a lawyer, he is seen as what he is, and so are his means and the actual facts of reality. Not “God said healthcare and we obey god,” but “ok, how do you like this hospital?” “It’s great Pablo, we love you!” “I love you too, goddamnit. You know what I’m going to do? I’m gonna drive a tank into where the lawyers are.” Hahaha, Pablo Escobar was great. But yeah, no, crime has a definite ceiling. To see it more clearly, the real rather than theoretical descendants of Escobar are Hezbollah. The theory was sound as sound gets, however. Trump is the theoretical descendant of Escobar. But also, when it is not a crime thing, the lawyers too have no ceiling, and they were pretty entrenched by the time President Donald J Trump got there.

It is important, then, to understand Escobar and the President as of a category, a certain kind of person. Not on account of their charisma, Chavez had charisma too and not a penny to his name. No, on account of their citizenship.

Capital and citizenship were seen, by the Athenians, as a single thing together with the land. Charisma only starts counting after that in a democracy. Because anything else isn’t charisma, it is manipulation. Charisma starts counting when you enter the forum. A course, Escobar and President Trump and Cesar have so far stood alone. The good thing about Trump is that he has an innate understanding of this fact of citizenship, he is not in it to be all alone. He wants the forum.

To put it another way, who more than Escobar could understand the need of the barrio?

Who better than a Trump can understand America? America is a continent, but whatever. America? A person who depended on it to get wealthy, happily? Who proves their understanding of what makes it tick by getting wealthy off of it? Money talks, there is much wisdom to this. What does a lawyer know? Nothing, that is why lawyers aren’t leaders, but representatives of interests. Negotiating on behalf of people whose main advantage is not having it known that it is they who are negotiating?

Escobar too, right? There is no division between rich citizens and their people, they are simply those of the people who understood best. The best of the People. And, as such, inmensely happy to be of the people. To work for the people. What hapiness can a loser have? A loser wants to abolish the people. The famous commie reset button.

Of course, such things as pride are of import to make such a citizen. Jay-Z, with his billions, is still not such a one because he has no pride, so he remains a commie. Why has he no pride? Or his wife, Beyonce? Both of these beautiful people and talented artists, because they are whores. Both got their billions by selling out and betraying themselves, something Escobar and Trump NEVER did. A citizen is a MAN. What pride can a whore have?

I mean, to who was it not clear the day Jay-Z made that album with Linkin Park? Shameful.

Dre could have done it, but Dre actually feels the devastation of the crime that helped him get there, and feels guilt about it. He told us as much when he sold out with Beats. Though he never was a whore, because he never gave his soul along with it.

Maybe Dre could not have done it. The role of an Escobar-President Trump type citizen is two-fold: to give things the people need. Actually, I think Escobar never gave a hospital, people tend to be more honest than that when asking for things from someone actually personally capable of giving them. But those are all contingent on their primary role: to get people working and getting wealth from work. People tend to prefer having money for a hospital than a free hospital. The free hospital is asked for by one who no longer has faith in being able to make that money.

As part of the long on-going negotiation between people and lawyers, a terrifyingly evil and sick institution has emerged: the middle class. I don’t mean by middle class the worker who makes more money than many workers and had the fence and the lawn and the motorized toy car for the kids. I mean the college people. Those with no hopes of ever becoming rich, and no risk of ever becoming poor. Or maybe even rich, but not in command of capital.

With them, the negotiation is not about capital, but about the feeling of power.

That’s a big reason the insist on the free hospital: the feeling of having the power to give it.

Why not, then, a free stadium?

Because then it would become about money, the existence of which they cannot recognize without recognizing the sickliness of their own station.

And conversely, Kanye and his wife are citizens. Entirely unideological, just ethical, understanding value. Kardashian princess visits Trump to get people unjustly incarcerated out of prison, and it works, it happens. I might be in favour of holding experience with accumulating and wielding personal power as a criterion for deserving the privilege of serving ones people. This means that mere promises and ideals don’t count for anything at all. Yet what of non-financial power?

Tangentially: Athenian pentekosiomedemnoi counted I guess around 75.000 to a number of 250.000 slaves who weren’t allowed to fight any wars nor of course paid any taxes. Slavery aside this concept appeals to me - people who don’t have the joy of power should also not carry burdens for the state. I have this rudimentary tax plan, where only businesses above a certain capitalization, say 20 million, pay taxes. No taxes for private citizens The logic of this unfolds very nicely into a lean economic dynamic.

I on purpose did not mention Kanye, because he has a hard time. Kim far less so.

That’s the point, though, with Hezbollah. Their inheritance from Pablo is purely concrete power structures. No theory involved. In theoretical terms, it is awkwardly true that they are kind of Roman spawn. All that matters about islam is that the first temple is the Cathedral of Constantinople. Post-Octavian lawyers. Octavian was became inevitable christianity, because of the magnitude of a thing that was to spawn a head. Fascists also wanted to cohere it. It’s… murkier territory.

Hey, slaves, you know. People hate, but it wasn’t that simple.

The point, though, is that democracy is not a bout any given legal framework. Taxes this or this that. It by definition works from a given. The citizen must already exist, and the people of whom he is a part, before he can rule.

To put it more bluntly, your personal opinion of taxes is moot. Now, had you a billion’s worth of assets and a birth certificate that said Made in USA, then you would have a different opinion, and THAT opinion would matter, in an Athenian democracy, such as President Trump is spearheading. Actually, they don’t even need to have an opinion. They may change it, or hire a guy. Do you see what I mean?

If you had the Made in USA minus the billion, then you could vote for a citizen etc.

Maybe you can be a guy one of them possibly hires. But that’s always contigent anyway.

It’s a rulership scheme by which the people rule themselves.

Taxes are evil, man. Btw, the only reason people form Corporations in the first place is to get taxed less, not more.

It’s just. A fucking doozie.

Like a Brazilian expat told me recently, “…me too. Leave the money in my pocket.”

Also, defining power as servitude is a large part of what got us here. Think you that Trump thinks of himself as a servant? Nay.

Making America Great is his beat. Or, for Pablo, Making The Barrio Great.

That’s… different, than serving. And the motivations, too, are different from the, if you don’t mind me saying, somewhat Roman motivations I make out in your propositions, such as the state. The state, aka the Res Publica. The lawyer trap.

What Spain proves is that it gets too big and then no actual humans are allowed to lead it and then eventually it bloats itself over the edges and fizzles out in glorious scenes of country estates and piss-stinking streets.