Death Valley Days

Tinnitus produces a ringing sound in the ear, satellite generators, a hum. Compactors, hydraulic drills pounding into pavement and the beeping of trucks backing up are a municipal orchestra but on another decibel class. These  are the equivalent of a nouveau riche individual trying to establish themselves in an aristocratic environment. Gold diggers is the word pejoratively used to describe those who marry for money. In an episode of the 50s TV series Death Valley Days centering on the San Francisco gold rush of 1848, a couple who have discovered gold run into trouble spending it.They acquire the big San Francisco mansion but sit at opposite ends of a long table whose chairs are vacant when invited members of the ruling class fail to arrive. Social elevation and sound then share the Doppler effect. As the parvenu grows closer and their supplications rise so too does the pushback from those who still control the systole and diastole of social and political power.

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy (illustrated with "Pluperfect" by Hallie Cohen), The East Hampton Star

Is Knowledge Power?

There is an old adage which curiously equates the acquisition of knowledge with emptiness. The seeming contrariety simply relates to filling a void. If one’s glass is full there is no more room for any additional liquid. It’s a version of the glass half empty or half full equation. An emetic cleanses the system of toxins and the sum of such procedures also pertains to the mind. By purifying and removing you create a clean slate. Have you ever been in a room with a very noisy person? Individuals like this bilge out verbiage so no one can get a word in edgewise. Disturbed children display a hyperactivity that performs a similar function. On a macro level, you will note this kind of behavior in political discourse. There’s a method to the madness. Trump and his surrogates have a way of talking that takes the air out of the room. Kellyanne Conway set the gold standard in this kind of logorrhea. Interviewers are  stymied in the face of assaults which insure that no real discussion takes place and that no information is allowed into an overflowing reservoir of propaganda. From an epistemic point of view, there are incidences when it's not so great to have one's cup running over. Yes, there are the Saudis and now Syria, yes there was some sort of agreement with the Chinese, but what is the fate of democracy in the USA, where judicial orders are dismissed or totally ignored by the executive branch?

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Mr. Big Stuff" by Jean Knight

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

Trump Palace

Frederick the Great was the model of the benevolent despot. In modern times, Marshall Tito employed autocratic methods to benevolent ends, holding off the onslaught of ethnic cleansing and irredentism, the result of a bloody religious war. The USA has in its president a not so benevolent despot who veils his malevolence under a veneer of laissez-faire capitalism. Well it’s laissez-faire when it comes to emoluments and not so laissez-faire about free trade. Trump displays a  clownish veneer gadding about town with the world’s richest man chainsaw in hand. Stephen King has shown the dark side of the clown in It. Kristi Noem is the epitome of Pennywise shaking her booty and $50,000 Rolex as she tours the cages at Cecot. BTW you realize chicken coops and abattoirs offer a kind if utopia since those inmates don't know what’s in store for them. Perhaps pigs are the exception. Historically democracy renovated (ie Parliament) and in the case of the US did away with monarchy. "It’s good to be the king," said Mel Brooks in The History of the World. In his disregard for the rule of law and particularly the judiciary, Brooks' comic one-off is something  Trump is plainly taking seriously.

listen to "It's Good To Be the King" by Mel Brooks

and read "Never Brush Again" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Rain

Rain and cry are almost the same verb in French ("pleuvoir" and "pleurer.") "Il pleut dans mon coeur comme, il pleut sur la Ville," run the lines of the Paul Verlaine poem. Remember "The Tracks of My Tears.” Smokey Robinson is undoubtedly cringing amidst the allegations against him. La Cloche Sonne is a composition by another composer, Franz Liszt. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Do rain and tears cleanse cathartically or are you all wet? Just when you think the clouds have parted and hope's in the air, your local Tiresias is there to remind you, the day is young. Apparently it's pleuring in Gerard Depardieu's coeur aujourd'hui, aussi.

listen to The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Pious?

Trump embedded his own image in the Pope’s mitre. It’s not too different from him dancing to YMCA at a rally with Kristi Noem gyrating in the background. Noem would go on to flash her boobs and Rolex in Cecot prison with tattooed inmates glaring at her from behind their cages. It’s all a big joke where a former heroin addict, anti-vaxer runs HHS and a conspiracy theorist blackballs a respected general, Timothy Haugh, who’s head of Cyber-command and the NSA. MAGA again, never again USA.

listen to "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" by The Supremes

Breeding Sheep

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel should have bred ideologies. Adherents to opposing doctrines come out like roses. Multiculturalism, for example, places itself firmly against the canon, the same syllabus of white male humanistic philosophy that has created the liberal order, as does Retrumplicanism which attempts to crush universities, under the guise of fighting anti-semitism. Higher education is a threat for many reasons, but primarily in the way it upholds constitutionalism with its emphasis on due process and inalienable rights. Revolution in most cases favors the ends over the means and hence often finds itself sharing a similar dismissal of the democratic order as the very despots it seeks to overthrow. One cannot but remark that the Ice agents and those they arrest have one thing in common--they both wear masks.

read "Never Brush Again" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

It's Raining Cats and Dogs

The subject of emotion in animals is as difficult to parse as consciousness itself. The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote “What’s It Like To Be Bat.” Bats sleep are like teenagers who sleep all day. If you go into a cave during daylight hours you will barely make them out hunkered up stealthily against the ceiling and walls. Can it be said that most of the emotion humans espy in pets is the result of projection? Of course by definition you cannot confirm or deny that. Give Ruggles a polygraph? Or by monitoring perspiration, can you tell whether dogs are really man’s best friend. Maybe it’s “thinking” that’s the issue. Ruggles may be sad but does he or she possess self-reflexive consciousness that would spill forth if only barks were filtered through a language cortex? Will it ever be known what goes through a fly’s mind as it furiously tries to avoid being swatted to death. Or take the water bug you creep up on, who doggedly eludes the stamp of your foot. Yes it looks like those insects are experiencing fear.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr