[Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est

Wed May 26 21:03:28 CDT 2010

Well then, that resolves everything; we can now just die in peace having resolved that there is no point in doing anything since everything is predetermined and set in stone.  All that is left is to debate the derivation and meaning of words.  Our lot in life is to engage in mental masturbation and naval contemplation - a sort of Herman Hesse-like Glass Bead Game.

From: John W. 
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 7:32 PM
To: Laurie Solomon 
Cc: E.Wayne Johnson ; peace discuss 
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Laurie Solomon <ls1000 at live.com> wrote:

  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?

Yes, probably.

  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?

No, there can't.

  --------------------------------------------------
  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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