An Open Letter to the Democratic Congressional Caucus

Dear Democrats in Congress,


          As Americans and the rest of the world watch the circus under way in our nation’s Capitol, you have an opportunity to demonstrate reason and courage.
  

          Why do I say circus?  A circus is a spectacle designed to attract mindless curiosity.  A circus does not build or solve anything.  It does nothing to change the quality of society’s norms or traditions.  It’s a distraction from normal life.  In this case, it masks an unadulterated play for political power in ways that are contrary to the democratic principle of due process.  But it is also a deliberate attempt to deceitfully move public sentiment in the spirit of mob behavior.  If successful, America’s Constitutional Republic as we have known it will be killed.


          I lived through the Watergate Scandal.  Senator Barry Goldwater substituted for President Nixon as the commencement speaker at my graduation from the USAF Academy in 1973.  Despite Nixon’s winning reelection in a landslide, Democrats were very successful in trying him in the court of public opinion—so successful that Nixon chose to resign before dragging our nation through impeachment proceedings.  Democrats were lucky to have John Dean as their weapon.  Dean was a guileful traitor to Nixon, his colleagues, and our nation.  As more evidence becomes available, the picture we were given is not the real picture.  Two books that reveal a clearer picture (and the corruption involved in taking down a duly elected president) are Geoff Shepard’s The Real Watergate Scandal:  Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down; and Len Colodny’s  Silent Coup:  The Removal of a President.  John Dean, Bob Woodward, and The Washington Post sued unsuccessfully to keep Colodny’s book from being published.  In Colodny’s reasoned analysis, Nixon made mistakes (mostly out of trust for Dean’s legal and political counsel) and was betrayed by the likes of General Alexander Haig (a role model for LTC Alexander Vindman?); but he committed no crimes.
     

          Back to the circus . . . This is where reason is critical.  Those pushing for impeachment have placed their Party ideology above universal principles of truth, fairness, and justice.  Many Americans are becoming distressed about the emerging nature of today’s Democrat Party with its blatant penchant for leftist values associated with Marxist socialism.  As a member of today’s Democrat Party, I can only conclude that you embrace an ideology that has a terrible historical record.  Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was not only removed by the Bolshevik Party, he and his family were executed.  Contests for political power are not historical exceptions; they represent the dark side of human nature.  History will record your actions in Congress.
  

          If you believe in truth and justice, and you realize that the left has been working feverishly to deny President Trump the right to serve as a duly elected President, then show some courage for two major reasons.  First, the Democrat Party needs to be refreshed with the capacity for reason, especially on matters (e.g., liberty, fairness, truth, justice) that affect everyone, regardless of political party affiliation.  Second, focus on your role to legislate as opposed to chasing deceitful ways of securing political power.  The current Democratic caucus has been blinded by its overzealous attempt to remove a duly elected President and the values he represents; thus they cannot see how wasteful their time has been in terms of the moral and Constitutional obligation to legislate.  Americans want to vote for those who champion good ideas, and those who respect diversity of thought in a free and just society, especially in a Constitutional Republic.


          We are watching, and we will remember.


Sincerely,


Gadfly

An Unruled American Citizen   

Guns or Megaphones

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, after the Orlando mass shooting, the President used this incident to emphasize that we should not make it so easy to purchase guns.

AM:  There is a lot to unpack in this particular tragedy, but I see that you want to focus on the role guns played in it.

Old Gadfly:  Yes.  For example, addressing the dilemma associated with the teachings of Islam and homosexuality is too complex and deserving of another conversation.  Nor do we want to get into the issue of tolerance based on natural law versus secular humanism and the absurdity in understanding consequences.

IM:  So, we want to understand the thinking behind gun control.

Old Gadfly:  Yes.

AM:  Well, obviously the logic suggests that without guns people will not get killed.

Old Gadfly:  Exactly:  As if to suggest guns have motivation and intent.  Yet, for an individual who wants to do harm, a gun is an instrument for doing harm.

AM:  How many guns were used on 9/11 or the Boston Marathon incident?

IM:  Of course, none.

Old Gadfly:  So, what really “killed” the victims on 9/11, in Boston, and Orlando?

AM:  Ideology.

Old Gadfly:  Correct.  Are there any other instruments that can kill targets?

IM:  All sorts of instruments:  knives, hammers, bats, and all other sorts of instruments.

Old Gadfly:  How about megaphones?

AM:  What do you mean?

Old Gadfly:  On tonight’s news (at least with ABC), Trumps tweets were “controversial.”  Obama’s White House message and Hillary’s tweets were characterized as “in contrast” to Trump.  Simple words like this are amplified by the media megaphones in such a way as to “kill” a target.  Again, ideology kills.  Various instruments, whether guns or megaphones, serve the purpose.

AM:  One of the Presidential candidates seems to have identified this form of threat.

IM:  Yes.  Trump’s apparent resistance to “imitate” politically correct language and tone makes him an even bigger target. The fact that fellow Republicans have joined this megaphone bandwagon might be the real “vein of intolerance” Colin Powell cleverly, but incorrectly, pointed out during the first Obama election.  Powell implied a racist prejudice among Republicans, despite serious concerns about actual experience and what could not be learned about the candidate because of legal efforts to seal records. 

Old Gadfly:  F.A. Hayek observed that “mind is a product of cultural evolution that reflects more imitation than reason.”  So, the real contest in America may not be between Clinton and Trump.  It is between imitation and reason.  Until reason dominates imitation, killings, whether via guns or megaphone, will continue into the future.  

Cogito Ergo Sum ("I Think, Therefore I Am," Descartes)

What is the rationale for this blog?  The blog presents reflective and analytical articles by Old Gadfly about a world that is becoming increasingly absurd and ripe for catastrophic unintended consequences. 

We inherited libraries and artifacts of great wisdom and methods for scientific inquiry.  We enjoy the conveniences stemming from technology.  Yet, we seem to be losing a collective capacity to reason--to think clearly, to discern the finer qualities of distinction among differences. 

In his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek warned against the pathologies of political correctness, we currently witness and experience, in his chapter, “The End of Truth.”  Hayek observed that in societies sliding toward, or completely overcome by, totalitarianism, it is not sufficient for citizens to acknowledge (i.e., to tolerate without affirmation or advocacy) values prescribed by the political elite; to the contrary, members of society are expected to spontaneously and emotionally react to anything that challenges or threatens those values.  Have you ever encountered a situation when another person gets angry about something you said?  It happens a lot nowadays.

I realize that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection and analysis in these blog entries.  Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the product of a public school educational system that spends more time prescribing what to think instead of how to think.   These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or critical analysis.  Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a scientific revolution.  In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the solar system.  He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek). 

Even our academics seem to be losing a capacity for lucidity and depth of reasoning.  Am I incorrect in assuming that academia should be that one sector in our society where knowledge is advanced through reasoning (i.e., spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language) that takes place in the neocortex of our brains?  Yet, this “neocortex” function of academia is subordinate to a political orientation that derives from what Paul MacLean (in his book, The Triune Brain in Evolution) calls the “paleomammalian complex” portion of our brains where the functions of long-term memory, emotion, and motivation take place.  By the way, this is where political framing originates and resonates.  Frankly, today’s hubristic scholarship is devolving to mere flotsam, drifting on the surface of an immense ocean of potential knowledge.  To cite just one example, read the work of George Lakoff, whose publications represent mostly old wine in new bottles.  The wine in Lakoff’s case is normative—it prescribes a world the way he (and those who subscribe to the same politically correct values) thinks it should be.  Lakoff even claims, in his book Thinking Points:  A Guide for Progressive Framing, that it is the frame that matters—if facts fit, great; if not, then the facts do not matter.  Scholars such as this do not discover the truth; they create it.  You’ll read more about this type of emotionally-grounded thinking in future blog entries.

The blog approaches topics from a gadfly perspective.  Socrates was known by two metaphors:  a gadfly and a midwife.  As a gadfly, Socrates challenged many “truths” of the day that were based on assumptions about reality.  Many assumptions can be myth or fact—true or false.  In today’s political narratives, the frame is more important than actual fact.  This may explain why a prominent national politician can feel safe in encouraging the voting public “to pass it [Obamacare] so you can know what’s in it.” 

Socrates also saw his role as an educator to be similar to the role of a midwife--one who facilitates the birth of grand and noble ideas (that can pollinate the world).  Notice, Socrates did not teach others what to think.  He shaped their ability to think for themselves. 

The blog’s primary objective is to challenge many of today’s narratives, advanced by the political elite (mostly politicians, journalists, and artists from Hollywood who believe life should imitate art).  If, in the process of presenting the reflections and analysis, readers find alternative ways of seeing things through a less distorted lens than the prevailing narrative, then this will be a nice objective as well.  New understandings can liberate us from the chains of our illusions, described so eloquently in the cave allegory in Plato’s The Republic.  Unfortunately, too many of our citizens are complacently content to remain chained to illusions  because they may be reinforced by normative delusions of reality.  This observation includes those who are afraid to test assumptions.  We know who they are.  Some reveal this form of bondage when they say: “let’s agree to disagree.”

Most of the reflection and analysis contained in this blog are based on material in a manuscript (currently being written) entitled, Reflections on the Contest in America.  This blog was created to connect with minds that have the capacity to reason before November 2012.  We live in a perilous time.  If a majority of the self-determining citizens of America do not stem the current drift of our Nation, we will discover the real consequences of our failure as cautioned by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and documented by Hannah Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.   

Most of the reflections and analysis in future entries to this blog will be presented in the form of a conversation.  Meet our conversationalists:  IM (a fictitious inquiring mind) and Old Gadfly (me).  Old Gadfly encourages your inputs to the conversation.