[Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est

Wed May 26 12:01:17 CDT 2010

Good, I am glad we have gotten the meaning and derivation of those terms out 
of the way.  It was informative even if the terms themselves are hardly seen 
or heard these days since most of today's population tend to be much more 
direct than persons of earlier generations.  Now we need to determine how 
those terms moved from references to asses to genitals (male or female) or 
genitals to asses.  Kissing a horse's ass or even patting it is certainly 
different from kissing or patting a horse's genitals (there are different 
parts of the anatomy or are they?) and a horse is not only a different 
species than a human; but in my humble opinion, a far better and preferred 
species.  Since "sucking up to" or "kissing the ass of" one's superiors and 
even one's equals - literally or figuratively - has become a way of life in 
the highly bureaucratized world today where no one is ever sure who is in 
charge now or will be in the future and whose ass to kiss or who to suck up 
to so as to cover one's own ass, we have all become "Bozos on this bus." 
Some like Petraeus are better at it than others or more creative at it than 
others; but I would not rule out that people like Admiral William Fallon 
have not done their share of ass kissing or genital sucking to get where 
they are.

The point of this is to note that in today's world no one gets to positions 
of authority and power, influence and control, or officialdom and wealth 
without being a good game player, who is playing at the top of their game. 
Thus, the meek shall not inherit the earth; they will only inherit the dirt. 
Those who do inherit the earth (why they would want to I will never know) 
are going to be those who are savvy, intelligent, and shrewd players who no 
one should ever trust - but whom the masses tend, in a fit of false 
consciousness, to believe, trust, and follow rather than think and do for 
themselves.  Finding a proper name to use to label and describe those 
players and discussing the derivation of said terms tends to become another 
distraction and misdirection away from the substance of the problem.  Are we 
engaging in such distractions and misdirection because we refuse to bracket 
the realities of today's world so as to call those realities into question 
and treat the existence and survival of those realities as problematic in 
order to counterfactually propose alternative groundings for our views of 
other possibilities?  Can there be a different set of presuppositions for 
grounding our world which enables the possibility of organizing and 
structuring it in a way so as to make ass kissing and sucking up an 
impossibility - or at least a negatively sanctioned reality?

--------------------------------------------------
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:19 AM
To: "E.Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>
Cc: "peace discuss" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est

> Cast or oil seems to be the alternative, and the Obamans seem all too 
> willing to throw the dice, regardless of whom they crush.
>
> "Pamapi" is a keeper, given the usual recipients of sycophancy - a strange 
> & interesting word in itself.
>
> "Pudenda" in Latin is mostly post-classical and referred primarily to male 
> genitals - but in Victorian English applies mainly to female genitals and 
> seems unavoidably misogynistic.
>
> "Psychophant" (from David Johnson) of course means a particularly deranged 
> ass-kissing chicken-shit.
>
>
> On 5/26/10 9:22 AM, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> It's a hoot. and it has an outcast like me shaken, and casting about for
>> something aleatoric to roll out.
>>
>> I am not sure if I mentioned it in this forum before or not... but
>> "sycophant" literally means to display a fig [sukon], and figuratively
>> speaking the fig represents "the female pudendum" as the American 
>> Heritage
>> dictionary puts it.
>>
>> Ass-kissing chicken-shit is the bowderized version of sycophant, sort of.
>>
>> * BTW, the common term for sycophant in Chinese is "pamapi" which means 
>> to
>> "Pat the Horse's Ass".
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" 
>> <galliher at illinois.edu>
>> To: "peace discuss" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Sent: Wednesday, 
>> May
>> 26, 2010 12:09 PM Subject: [Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est
>>
>>
>> David Petraeus Announces for President After All Submitted by 
>> davidswanson on
>> Wed, 2010-05-26 http://asskissinglittlechickenshit.com
>>
>> My name is General David Petraeus and I want to be your Commander in 
>> Chief
>> because I admire everything about you, especially that amazing and unique
>> way you have about you.
>>
>> Here's a little background on who I am, just a few highlights that I know
>> you will be able to appreciate.
>>
>> In 2007, Gareth Porter reported:
>>
>> "In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members 
>> of
>> the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior,
>> Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided
>> Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March,
>> according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
>>
>> "Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be 'an ass-kissing little
>> chickenshit' and added, 'I hate people like that', the sources say. That
>> remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks
>> that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior."
>>
>> Fallon's problem was actually that he didn't want to escalate the war in
>> Iraq, and I did. He lost, and I won. Well, the people who died lost too, 
>> but
>> you know what I mean. We put more blood on the ground in Iraq, and 
>> through a
>> combination of utter devastation, displacement, segregation, bribery,
>> corruption, withdrawal, and promises to leave, we were able to pretend 
>> that
>> wars of occupation are ended by escalating them. This is paying off BIG 
>> TIME
>>  right now in Afghanistan.
>>
>> We all know Afghanistan can't be won except by withdrawal, but we're 
>> going
>> to escalate. The counterinsurgency manual that I pretend I wrote says we 
>> need
>> to put 80% of our effort into civilian solutions. We're going with 3%
>> instead, as a compromise with real world conditions on the ground, such 
>> as
>> the fact that they're all a bunch of Muslim Arabs or some such thing!
>>
>> And, because you idiots think we have a peace prize winner in charge now,
>> I'm expanding our efforts with death squads into a number of neighboring
>> nations, including Iran, which is going to be the real big one, I mean 
>> really
>>  really, I mean my mouth starts watering at the thought of how much blood 
>> is
>> going to flow, I can just feel the taste of it bubbling down my throat, I 
>> . .
>> . I . . .ahem, I mean to say, the New York Times has given credit where 
>> it's
>> due:
>>
>> "The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus,
>> authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both 
>> friendly
>> and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of 
>> Africa
>> to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said 
>> the
>> order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible
>> military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.
>> While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military
>> activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to 
>> make
>> such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said."
>>
>> Damn straight. And it's got the hippies running scared. Here's Robert
>> Dreyfuss in the Nation:
>>
>> "If President Obama knew about this, authorized it, and still supports 
>> it,
>> then Obama has crossed a red line, and the president will stand revealed 
>> as
>> an aggressive, militaristic liberal interventionist who bears a closer
>> resemblance to the president he succeeded than to the ephemeral reformer 
>> that
>> he pretended to be in 2008, when he ran for office. If he didn’t know, if 
>> he
>> didn’t understand the order, and if he’s unwilling to cancel it now that 
>> it’s
>> been publicized, then Obama is a feckless incompetent. Take your pick. If
>> Congress has any guts at all, it will convene immediate investigative
>> hearings into a power grab by Petraeus, a politically ambitious general, 
>> and
>> the Pentagon’s arrogant Special Operations team, led by Admiral Eric T.
>> Olson, who collaborated with Petraeus. And Congress needs to ask the 
>> White
>> House: what did you know, and when did you know it?"
>>
>> My favorite bit is "If Congress has any guts." Let me let you in on a 
>> little
>> secret. I've been to testify in Congress, and those clowns mostly beat up 
>> on
>> each other and kissed my ass. I testified there in September, 2007, for
>> example, and toward the end of the hearing Rep. Brad Sherman asked me 
>> what I
>> would do if Congress ended funding for the occupation of Iraq and Bush
>> ordered me to continue with it anyway. I told that chump I would have to 
>> ask
>> my lawyer, and he let it go. Ha! And people think there's a legislative
>> branch of government running things. Come on! I tell them what to think
>> before the hearings!
>>
>> I even tell them things they will never remember when I tell them the
>> opposite and show them how the new story will protect them from the 
>> heathen
>> hordes. Like when I told them I would never run for office. James Madison
>> said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the 
>> guise
>> of fighting a foreign enemy." It's here, children, and you are going to 
>> love
>> it!
>>
>> ###
>>
>
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