"Keep America beautiful: Get a haircut!"[1]
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| I was listening to the radio this morning and heard a song with the lyric: "I'm looking for someone to change my life. I'm looking for a miracle in my life...." (Moody Blues, "Question", 1970) I want to take this opprtunity to thank you, The United States of America, for seeing to it that I never had that in my life here in you, nor even really the thought to have such a hope.With enormous effort of studying you over half a century I have slowly figured out some of the things I was not let onto. Never in the history of the world has there been a country which wasted so much promise for so little: to make post World War II Europe into an enormous potlatch, your Cold War. It could have been different. It could have been a lot better (Germany could have been neutral, not your Bogeyman NATO (ref. Prof. Jeffrey Sachs). Half a century of study I have learned a few things and I still probably don't know all what has been denied me by you big waste of my life and of the whole world. Thank you, with your Invisible Hand, for denying me the life I could have had. "I'm looking for someone to change my life. I'm looking for a miracle in my life...." NIMBY. In 1970 U had waSted 24 yeArs of my life already. U really blew it, big time, USA. Thanks. | |||
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What at 01:02AM 23 Nobember 1946 in Baltimore Maryland USA I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) was ejected from a birth canal into
I have no memory what I came out into but in retrospect I learned it included being circumcised. From baby pictures it can be inferred I was apparently a happy baby so long as my mother could treat me like a baby doll.
From my first memories nothing good, with very few and inconsequential exceptions, until Yale, where my freshman roommate was a 26 ywar sold European aristocrat: the first human being I had ever encountered whom I felt had any positive value.
Starting with him, I began to find a few good persons and things in "this place". Not everything is worthless or worse in America, but not the part of it where I came from. This is an exaggeration, but only just a little bit, close to the order of magnitude of saying there are no grand prize winning MegaMillions lottery tickets (1 in 302,575,350). When I learned about infinitesimals in math, they were obvious. Certainly things could have been worse: I was never phsically tortured.
My first essay at philosophy, in 11th grade, was to try to construct a deductive proof that one should not kill oneself — like many real philosophers have tried to prove that God exists (neither endeavor has ever succeeded, of course, or, if it did, what it proved had no payoff).
If my childhood and teenage years were this bad on the good side of The Iron Curtain, what must it have been like on the other, the bad side, since I was told it was better to be dead then red?
Or would it maybe not have been so bad for me since I never wanted to have fun (Disneyland; play football...) as a child or to protest in the street as a young person? Maybe I would have had it less worse behind The Iron Curtain? I certainly do not know, but I am fairly certain that do not know despite having been told by our side what to believe. (Over here I was somewhat protected from persecution for ideological deviance because I had been ignoranced of most things people get persecuted here for these days. The school did not care that I became am atheist because they did not care about spirituality (they were busy worshipping graven iamges: shiny plated varsity lacrosse and tackle football team victory trophies), I didn't know about sex, I didn't understand to struggle against class (teacher) oppression, and my opposition to school spirit was mainly passive (I just didn't want ot be bothered by it, not actively struggle against it), so why worry about it since I got "A" grades?)
Hthe net: Boht sides lost
This defeftive country failed me. I could hav had a joyous life. Instead I got mean-spirited pedaagogues and involuntary celibacy. Around age 40 I even tryed to have a fit body: For over a full calendar years I worked out every day and on a couple occasions twice in one day so vigorously that I thououghly soaked my t-shirt with sweat. Pain, no gain. Of corse I did nto do it for pain, bu tto be physically fit, but I did hope it might find me a suitable intimate partner: If wishes wer ehorses then begars would reide (Jay Unger).
But i cut the other way too. The country could have got much value out of a highly gifted child instead of making me chronically fear Or else!. It was no use to America for me to memorize "Ashurbanipal" and expend my mind figuring out how to work the curriculum to keep geting those Or else! "A" grades from those mean-spirited pedagogues. I never wanted to be "a child". From early on I would hav ethrived on doing productive real activity hed it been win-win: Richly growing my spirit while also doing good for others. No I dod not wan tto be alresuistic: I suffered too juch without being a martyr for a social world that did not care about me. But I wasn't "selfish" like a Donald Trump. I just wanted interesting intellectual growth and an appropriate intimate partner and a standard of life wher I could afford to buy university press books. I got [fill in the blank]. Everybody lost but nobofy ever thought: How can we get something out of this gifted child by giving him what would enable him to give more to us?
America, Die Scheißestückwelt: Land of the Big Mac and "The Super"[2], too. What a waste!
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1:29 PM (1 hour ago) [+2023.06.01]
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Bradford McCormick | New York
Aren't we having fun fiddling while Rome burns – err, Ukraine. When will somebody point out the big invisible elephant in the small room: that fashion is waste. Potlatch. The emperor's new clothes are always trendsetting. If persons cannot have the right stuff, they can still buy and flaunt the right the right clothes. If fashion producers say they are giving profits to charity, why not cut out the middlepersons and just give the whole amount to charity directly? Instead of "trickle down", wide open spigot. All the superrich had better sell their fancy condos all along the Atlantic shore before Palm Beach goes undersater from the rising sea. Instead of going to Broadway plays, everybody cculd be reading ancient Greek tragedies. "All understood, too late." (Sophocles's "Antigone)"
22 Recommend - ↑ "The Super", i.e.: the hydrogen bomb, the shiny trinket that was a burr up Dr. Edward Teller's petty anti-communist ass to break the spirit of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (See my rewrite of the story of Dr. Oppenheimer: here). America: Charred meat, and charred cities. And Dr. teller's malicious mouth emitted words about Dr. Oppenheimer similar to some emitted by the comedian in a green-t-shirt costume today. Dr. Teller said he would feel more omfortable wwith he nation's atomic policy in the hands of people he could feel he understood better. Mr. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy said on the BBC that the was some British comedian or other who was "more understandable than Monty Python". Petty people who hate ideas that are too big for them instead of manning up to make themslves bigger or at least learn to respect what they cannot themselves have or be.
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