For an Idealist, at least... High/1T (first movement), Awakening/2T (second movement), Unraveling/3T  (third movement) Crisis/4T (fourth movement). With score!





from notes on the YouTube site:


pf: Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by  Leonard Bernstein

The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem or tone poem. The work was premièred at the Vigadó Concert Hall, Budapest in 1889, but was not well received. Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for two early performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.

In its final form, the symphony has four movements:

0:02 - Langsam, schleppend (Slowly, dragging) Immer sehr gemächlich (very restrained throughout) D major

16:27 - Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (Moving strongly, but not too quickly), Recht gemächlich (restrained), a Trio—a Ländler

25:30 - Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen (Solemnly and measured, without dragging), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise (very simple, like a folk-tune), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang (once again somewhat more agitated, as at the start)—a funeral march based on the children's song "Frère Jacques" (or "Bruder Jacob")

35:55 - Stürmisch bewegt – Energisch (Stormily agitated – Energetic)

What happened to the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" paradigm (China faces Muslim irredentism in vast, mineral-rich Xinjiang) being applied so determinedly to Russia?

Chinese state tabloid warns Donald Trump: 'Pride goes before a fall'

A Communist party-controlled newspaper has launched a searing attack on Donald Trump after the president-elect threatened a realignment of his country’s policies towards China, warning the US president-elect: “Pride goes before a fall.”
The Global Times, a notoriously rambunctious state-run tabloid, was writing after Trump reignited a simmering row with Beijing by suggesting he might recognise Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province, unless Beijing agreed a new “deal” with his administration.
  
Trump’s move came less than a fortnight after the billionaire infuriated Beijing by holding a 10-minute telephone conversation with Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen.

In a tough-talking editorial published on Tuesday the newspaper, which sometimes reflects official views, claimed the “calculating businessman” might feel he had pulled off a shrewd manoeuvre by “seizing China’s fate by the throat”.
“However, the truth is this inexperienced president-elect probably has no knowledge of what he’s talking about. He has overestimated the US’ capability of dominating the world and fails to understand the limitation of US powers in the current era,” it warned, calling on the Chinese government to respond with “surprise moves”.

Trump’s comments revealed he “despises China strategically”, the newspaper added, warning: “Pride goes before a fall. Even before entering the White House, he has already put his cards over blackmailing China on the table … What reason do we have to accept a most unfair and humiliating deal from Trump?”




Speaking to the same newspaper, a Chinese scholar sought to hammer home the point. “[Trump’s] remarks have not only jeopardised world peace, but also upset the Beijing-Washington relationship ... he will pay for his mistakes,” warned Niu Xinchun from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Jessica Chen Weiss, an expert in Chinese foreign policy and politics from Cornell University, said the increasingly tough language coming out of Beijing was part of a campaign to “educate” Trump and his team before his inauguration on 20 January.

If the president-elect refused to change tack, behind-the-scenes countermeasures might be rolled out to ensure the Republican understood the dangers of challenging China.

Weiss said Beijing would now be looking for “pressure points that Trump might be responsive to”, particularly on the economic front. “You can imagine China making its harder for American businesses in China to operate; nothing official, but certain actions that might serve as a warning to the US business community that this isn’t going to end well if Trump continues,” she said.

“I don’t think we are seeing that yet – I think it is likely to wait. It may well wait until Trump takes specific actions. It’s one thing to question a policy or talk about revising it and it is another to take actions that indicate greater recognition for Taiwan as a sovereign state,” Weiss added.

Experts say Beijing has an array of weapons in its armoury with which it could respond to what it considers Trump’s “provocations”.
They include weakening China’s currency, the renminbi, in order to hurt US exporters, or seeking warming ties with North Korea and pumping economic aid into Pyongyang.

There are fears in Taiwan, an independently and democratically ruled island to which Beijing lays claim, that it could face severe economic or political retaliation from China before the US is targeted.

Possible measures against Taiwan include a diplomatic offensive which would see Beijing seek to seduce Taipei’s already meagre stock of 22 allies which include Haiti, Paraguay and São Tomé and Príncipe, one of Africa’s smallest nations.

Weiss said it remained unclear whether Trump would carry his “wild talk” on China into the White House. But the tycoon’s arrival in power had raised the prospect of a dramatic and potentially catastrophic falling-out between the world’s two largest economies.

“It could be a rupture in the US-China relationship that we haven’t seen yet,” she said. “I’m not at all optimistic”.

America is a sick society.

That's what we knew back in the sixties, and said so. It's what we've forgotten today, amid all the "God Bless America" super-patriot reactionary propaganda.

Any society that produces Dylan Roof is a sick society.

Any society that thinks a sick behavior like capitalism is not a problem but a "solution" is a sick society.

It needs help; it needs a cure. It is possible to cure it, but it has been a long-standing illness, probably inherent and genetic in nature, and it will take a long time to cure.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Dylann S. Roof, a self-radicalized young white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners last year when he opened fire during a long-planned assault on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was found guilty by a federal jury here on Thursday.

The jury convicted Mr. Roof of nine counts of hate crimes resulting in death, three counts of hate crimes involving an attempt to kill (there were three survivors), nine counts of obstructing the exercise of religion resulting in death, three counts of that charge with an attempt to kill, and nine counts of using a firearm to commit murder during a crime of violence.


Mr. Roof, 22, stood, his hands at his side and his face emotionless, as a clerk read the verdict aloud in court. Two deputy United States marshals stood behind Mr. Roof, whose lawyers also stood nearby.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us/dyl...trial.html

Autocracy: Rules for Survival, from the New York Review of Books

Masha Gessen

(Greatly redacted to avoid copyright violations and to save space. Please read the whole article at this link).

...(Concessive) talk (by Trump's opponents, the current President, and even members of the liberal media) assumes that Trump is prepared to find common ground with his many opponents, respect the institutions of government, and repudiate almost everything he has stood for during the campaign. In short, it is treating him as a “normal” politician. There has until now been little evidence that he can be one.

...Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.

I (Masha Gessen)  have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.


He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.

To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture members of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.

Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.

Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.

The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information.

The power of the investigative press—whose adherence to fact has already been severely challenged by the conspiracy-minded, lie-spinning Trump campaign—will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier. Even in the unlikely event that some mainstream media outlets decide to declare themselves in opposition to the current government, or even simply to report its abuses and failings, the president will get to frame many issues. Coverage, and thinking, will drift in a Trumpian direction, just as it did during the campaign—when, for example, the candidates argued, in essence, whether Muslim Americans bear collective responsibility for acts of terrorism or can redeem themselves by becoming the “eyes and ears” of law enforcement. Thus was xenophobia further normalized, paving the way for Trump to make good on his promises to track American Muslims and ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.

Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home
.
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.

Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.

Looks like we have the first millennial with significant influence:


http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-tru...icy-232592

Quote:President-elect Donald Trump has picked Stephen Miller, a top policy aide from his campaign, to serve in the White House as senior adviser to the president for policy, the transition announced team Tuesday.

“Stephen played a central and wide-ranging role in our primary and general election campaign,” Trump said in a statement. “He is deeply committed to the America First agenda, and understands the policies and actions necessary to put that agenda into effect...


http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-tru...icy-232592

I didn't know where to post this.  I've just started reporting posts that either insult someone (i.e. calling someone a grasshopper) or use insulting terms for groups of people (i.e. "libtard", "rethuglicans").

What if we abolish the penny, which costs the U.S. Mint 1.6 cents to produce, as Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. have already done, round up all retail purchases to the next higher nickel (and round all paychecks etc. down to the next lower nickel) and use the resulting breakage to reimburse health care facilities for giving charity care to the poor?

No mandates, no penalties, no unwieldy bureaucracy, and as they would say across the pond, it's jolly regressive - a 96-cent cup of ramen noodles becomes $1.00, while a $4,999.99 diamond ring becomes $5,000.00 - taking the right's #1 argument away: That it would "redistribute wealth."  Plus it would maintain the "charity" paradigm that the moral judgmentalists require.

All this talk of automation to get around any increase in the minimum wage will put mass euthanasia on the table as it has never been before - and along will come Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "Christians on the scene of Second Century Rome" to rise up against it.

Possibly this after tens of millions of African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, LGBTs etc. getting killed and/or driven into exile in the upcoming Second Civil War, apparently giving the conservatives an insurmountable majority in the 1T?

The irony of the oligarchs getting challenged by 21st-Century "Jesus freaks" would be exquisite.

Here’s a CNN article on a father of a Sandy Hook victim receiving death threats from a woman who believes Sandy Hook was a hoax created by gun prohibitionist activists.  While it is of note regarding just the narrow gun policy discussion, I’d like to work it at a higher level.

As most should know by know, my understanding of humans is that they reject fact that conflicts with their values.  In this case the woman crying hoax has a strong right to bear arms perspective.  With it comes an impulse to deny any evidence that owning and carrying weapons might be problematic.  Not just on this issue, but on any issue, there is a common notion that one can doubt to disregard any media outlet that presents information one doesn’t like.  I recall a broad dismissal of the NY Times recently on this forum.  There are bunches of folks who wouldn’t recommend Breitbart as precisely fair and balanced.  Thus, the notion of rejecting major events as media fabrications fits with how lots of folks think about the media these days.  It’s all lies.  One can disregard what one doesn’t want to hear.  One can embrace and practice hate speech and death threats based on what one does want to hear.

I’ll mention climate science denialism as another issue where both the scientific and main stream press is frequently dismissed in favor of what one wants to hear.

Various dystopian novels and movies warn of how in the dark future propaganda and lies will be used by the dark ruling elites to snooker the common man.  Orwell’s ‘doublespeak’ from 1984 will stand as one example.  Real world autocratic governments who seize control of the media to present state propaganda is another example of how falsehood might be pressed on the people.  Neither approach seems to be quite matching the reality of the modern Big Lie.  There are large numbers of media outlets providing a smorgasbord of assorted truths for consumption according to one’s tastes.  If one is a rabid fan of unquestioned unrestricted owning and carrying weapons, one can find outlets that will turn Sandy Hook into a liberal mainstream media hoax.  If one favors any sort of off the wall theory, one might well be able to find a set of media outlets that will tell one what one wants to hear, the more clicks the better.

This isn’t exactly a new observation.  I just thought I’d start a thread centered on this sort of thing.

Of course Trump was rated as having more ‘pants on fire’ than most anyone in history.  He understands what certain people want to hear quite well.  He seems ready to assume that he can get away with telling certain folks what they want to believe.  Zillions of illegal voters.  He never endorsed lots more countries getting the bomb.  He will use the Big Lie blatantly and openly, no matter how easy they might be to debunk.  Worse, it seems to work for him.

It’s a problem far easier to describe than fix.  What issues do you feel are being pushed as Big Lies?  What might be done to return to reality based thinking?

When Obama was elected, as a supporter, I formulated a report card on what I wanted him to do, giving that I had voted for him.  The grade was based on six things:

1. Prevent a Depression and initiate a bull market.
2. Implement a form of universal health care.
3. Take some significant action to address climate change.
4. Kill Osama Bin Laden
5. End torture, close Guantomano and roll back the surveillance state and use of drones
6. Make sure you are succeeded by  Democrat.

Obama got  a B-, four A's and two F's (#5, 6).

I did not do Bush, since I did not vote for him, but it I had done so, this is what I would have wanted:

1. Pass at least one major tax cut and restore the deficit and cut regulation.
2. Pursue a humbler foreign policy (i.e. keep up out of unwinnable conflicts)
3. Prevent any financial collapse arising from (1) from killing my portfolio (i.e. pass TARP).

Bush also got a B-, two A's and one F (#2).

I also did not do any of the other presidents before 2000, but if I had it would have been one on thing (he deficit).  SO it goes as:

Reagan F
Bush I C (hell he tried)
Clinton A
And then there is Carter whom I gave an F--I was fucking 21, give me a break .

So now I will write up the report card on which I will grade Trump (assuming I had voted for him)

1. Reduce net immigration rate by at least 40% (the 1924 law decreased immigration by 45%).
2. Deport at least 1 million undocumented aliens per year for a total of 4 million by end of 1st term
3. Reduce American force posture in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East/Central Asia (except for operations against ISIS).  No new wars.
4. Enact tariffs against US trading partners with which we have very large trade deficits (particularly China and Mexico).
5. Pass a major tax cut.
6. Do nothing about a financial collapse arising from tax cut: i.e. no TARP, no deficit spending (stimulus), allowing me to buy at the most optimal price.

Before I get all sorts of confused responses, I will point out, this "report cards" is based on the assumption that I voted for Trump, which I did not. I do not favor forcibly deporting 4 million people from this country.  But if I had voted for Trump then I would be OK with this, seeing is as an evil, but a necessary one (like a just war).