#i do want to be clear though i am not of the opinion that oppenheimer was at all a good person

[grahamcore]

truly don’t understand anyone of the opinion that oppenheimer is u.s. military propaganda the whole fucking point was that the international arms race has had, and will continue to have, dire consequences for humanity… oppenheimer and all the other scientists at los alamos were explicitly shown to be grappling with insurmountable feelings of remorse because of what they had done… i’m sorry where are we seeing war propaganda? just because a movie is ABOUT war does not mean that it PROMOTES war jfc

[tigermike]

Einstein and Oppenheimer, 1930s.

"Though I knew Einstein for two or three decades, it was only in the last decade of his life that we were close colleagues and something of friends. But I thought that it might be useful, because I am sure that it is not too soon - and for our generation perhaps almost too late - to start to dispel the clouds of myth and to see the great mountain peak that these clouds hide. As always, the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful.

Late in his life, in connection with his despair over weapons and wars, Einstein said that if he had to live it over again he would be a plumber. This was a balance of seriousness and jest that no one should now attempt to disturb. Believe me, he had no idea of what it was to be a plumber; least of all in the United States, where we have a joke that the typical behavior of this specialist is that he never brings his tools to the scene of the crisis. Einstein brought his tools to his crises; Einstein was a physicist, a natural philosopher, the greatest of our time.

Einstein is often blamed or praised or credited with these miserable bombs. It is not in my opinion true. The special theory of relativity might not have been beautiful without Einstein; but it would have been a tool for physicists, and by 1932 the experimental evidence for the inter-convertibility of matter and energy which he had predicted was overwhelming. The feasibility of doing anything with this in such a massive way was not clear until seven years later, and then almost by accident. This was not what Einstein really was after. His part was that of creating an intellectual revolution, and discovering more than any scientist of our time how profound were the errors made by men before then. He did write a letter to Roosevelt about atomic energy. I think this was in part his agony at the evil of the Nazis, in part not wanting to harm anyone in any way; but I ought to report that that letter had very little effect, and that Einstein himself is really not answerable for all that came later. I believe he so understood it himself."

- Robert Oppenheimer, 1965

[jiggins03]

CONTEMPORARY ART ESSAY PART 1

Jack Higgins

Essay 2 Part 1

This essay will go in depth into a specific piece of contemporary art, followed by looking into a key modernist movement that clearly influenced the manufacture of that piece. Looking into the movements origins, beliefs and goals to find ties to the work I've selected. In summary, looking for characteristics within the piece that tie it to the movement.

The piece of contemporary art being evaluated is Damien Hirst's 'I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds'. Made in 2006 it is a 2134 x 5334 mm/84 x 210 in canvas that is entirely covered in household gloss and the wings of real butterflies. Part of his extensive selection of Kaleidoscope paintings, that all share the use of gloss and butterfly wings. The first Kaleidoscope painting, ‘It’s a Wonderful World’, was created in 2001. Originally inspired by a Victorian tea tray found by Hirst, the works are made by placing thousands of different coloured butterfly wings in geometric patterns into household paint. The ‘Kaleidoscope’ paintings reference the spiritual symbolism of the butterfly, used by the Greeks to depict Psyche, the soul, and in Christian imagery to signify the resurrection. The works are very reminiscent of, and even sometimes directly copy stained glass windows. Their titles similarly often reference Christian iconography.  

"I’ve got an obsession with death … But I think it’s like a celebration of life rather than something morbid" Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in the United Kingdom in 1965. He received his BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths college in 1989. In the 1990's he was part of the Young British Artists group, or YBA's for short. He has gained much praise as well as infamy for his unique art projects which often include dead animals in some way. He has created works spanning from dead sharks: 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' a large vitrine containing an Australian tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde. Sheep: 'Away from the Flock' shows a sheep that appears to have been frozen in mid run suspended in formaldehyde. Cows: Mother and Child (Divided) Four glass boxes each with one half of either the cow or the calf also suspended in formaldehyde, and more recently butterflies.  

The butterfly being one of Damien Hirst's most enduring triggers in this Kaleidoscope series he's differed from his use of it in his previous works. Previously he included live butterflies in his instillation 'In and Out of Love' in 1991, or whole dead ones in his butterfly monochrome paintings. These works and many others were influenced by a quote someone ounce said to him: “Butterflies are beautiful, but it’s a shame they have disgusting hairy bodies in the middle.” So, he chose to only use the wings of the butterflies in the Kaleidoscope paintings. Removing the ugly and leaving the only desirable part of the butterfly would show the everyday person glancing apon it should appreciate all animals no matter how ugly or disgusting they might appear.

Works from the ‘Kaleidoscope’ series were first exhibited as part of ‘Romance in the Age of Uncertainty’ at London, in 2003. In 2007, Hirst presented a major series of the paintings in the solo show, ‘Superstition’, at Gagosian Gallery, London Davies Street and Beverley Hills.

'I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds' is one of the largest ‘Kaleidoscope’ paintings in existence it includes over 2,700 butterflies. Its title recalls the words of the American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who, on detonating the first atomic bomb in 1945 recalled the words of the Bhagavad Gita, part of the Mahabharata, “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.” It sold for 2,169,250 Pounds, being a monumental sum of money for what many consider to be animal cruelty. These works have, not surprisingly drawn outrage from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who called him a sadist for one of his earlier pieces, and with this one being one of the largest he had drawn their attention again. The group also described his butterfly wing covered bicycle that he had made for Lance Armstrong as "Barbaric and Horrific." But Damien Hirst was never to be detoured as in an interview with the daily mail regarding the bicycle piece he said that he uses real wings because "I wanted it to shimmer when the light catches it like only real butterflies do." Much to the discredit of Damien Hirst he has never really provided an answer as to how he obtains the butterfly wings. Specifically, whether the butterflies were killed for the sake of art or had been collected after they were already dead.

Damian Hirst has long been scrutinised by many people to be psychotic and inhumane in his works, his fascination of life and death shines through all his work. Though many can appreciate seeing butterfly wings used out of context for creative purposes there are also many others who condemn his work as inhumane. He pushes the boundaries to what he can display in a gallery, in his instillation 'In and Out of Love' he has thousands of butterflies packed into a space where the floor Is littered of thousands of dead ones. PETA made the point of if the animal used in this instillation were dogs people that would've sparked a massive outrage, but because they are insects it is looked past. They are right depending on certain people opinion on the matter of animal rights but it's clear to see why Hirst receives all the negative attention, some would say he deserves it. But despite all the negative criticism and personal hatred towards him personally, he keeps going, creating more and more pieces that go against what many consider to be art.

References:

Tate. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hirst-mother-and-child-divided-t12751. [Accessed 16 March 2018].

The Guardian. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/18/damien-hirst-butterflies-weirdly-uplifting.  

Damian Hirst. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.damienhirst.com/. [Accessed 16 March 2018].

treehugger. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.treehugger.com/culture/damien-hirst-artwork-made-of-thousands-of-butterfly-wings-sells-for-2-million-pounds.html. [Accessed 16 March 2018].

theartstory. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-hirst-damien.htm. [Accessed 16 March 2018].

[head-and-heart]

The Head and Heart Controversy - Parts 1 & 2

I’ve seen lots of mixed opinions on the whole head vs heart analogy in relation to Bellarke and I realized that, for someone whose Tumblr URL is literally “head-and-heart”, it’s kind of pathetic the lack of meta I actually have on this topic. I do reference the analogy quite often in my posts, as many of you would know, but I’ve never actually dedicated a post simply to discussing this analogy and analyzing it and pulling it apart to point out the reason that it’s important to me, why I love it, what I find intriguing about it, and how it continues to be a major theme from season to season.

Often when I see people who aren’t quite as fond of this analogy, they talk about how they think that it oversimplifies Bellamy and Clarke, and makes it seem as though Bellamy is dumb and reckless whereas Clarke is stoic and heartless - neither of which are true. For me, that’s never how I have viewed the analogy (nor what I think was intended by Jason when he first mentioned that particular dynamic) and whenever I think about it, it seems much more complex than just those two ideas.

The original quote (in fact, the first post ever posted on my blog, fittingly enough) is as follows:

"Without Clarke, Bellamy doesn’t function as well. Clarke doesn’t function as well without Bellamy. The complete each other in a really nice way. She’s the brain and he’s the heart. Without one, the other doesn’t survive. Together, you’re awesome. Together, you’re going to be okay. But individually I think they’re not as strong as they are when they’re together.”

I like this quote, I do, but for me, when I think about the head and heart analogy, it has expanded far beyond whatever Jason was ever thinking about when he said these words. This quote is ... what - two years old now? Since then the metaphor seems to have developed a life of its own and evolved into something far deeper and complex than whatever it’s initial meaning (at the time it was said) was ever meant to be.  It is built into the fabric of the show, in fact, it has almost become the core of the show - 4x13 made that clearer to me than ever before. So maybe I’m not a year and a half too late to make this post, maybe I’m right on time. 

Clarke being “the head” doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a big heart, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel - it means a whole lot more than that (which I am going to explore in parts in this post). And Bellamy being “the heart” doesn’t mean that he is only capable of following his emotions and acting impulsively, it doesn’t mean that he never thinks. In fact, I would even argue that it’s the opposite, but that will all make sense in time.

Clarke being the head and Bellamy being the heart as core characteristics of who they are has to do with a lot more than just the way that they make decisions. It affects all sorts of different aspects of their lives and extends itself into areas of gray that are far more complex than the black and white discussion a lot of people like to make it into, in my opinion.

In order to explain my personal interpretation of this analogy - which is to delve way deeper than Jason ever did in his original quote - I’m going to split the head vs. heart analogy into four main parts regarding how it translates itself into Bellamy and Clarke’s unique intuition, the way they lead, how they apply themselves to each of their personal relationships, and - the one people seem to talk about the most (both when praising and critiquing the metaphor) - what it means for each individual character’s internal struggle throughout the show.

(Please note that this meta became far too long for one post so I had to split it into two. In this one I will cover the first two sections I mentioned - intuition and leadership - and in the next post I will talk about the remaining two parts).

If any of that sounds of interest to you at all, please feel free to keep reading under the cut.

Part One: Intuition

The first thing I want to talk about in this post is the intuition category. We know that both Bellamy and Clarke are highly intelligent, in many different ways, but how are they different from each other? Clarke, as the head, is often recognized as being the clever and strategic one, but from what we’ve seen from Bellamy, we know that he is also very strategic and can quickly improvise his way out of sticky situations. (Eg. the way he destroyed the acid fog in Mount Weather, tricking Pike into walking into the Grounder trap, purposefully injuring himself in 4x11 to convince Abby to help him, etc, etc) 

We also know that Bellamy and Clarke have typical book smarts/school smarts - as shown by the Oppenheimer conversation, Bellamy’s many references to Greek mythology, the oxymoron conversation, and Bob’s comment at some con awhile ago that Bellamy and Clarke were both at the top of their classes, among other pieces of evidence scattered throughout the series.

The reason I bring this up is that it is a personal pet peeve of mine when people talking about the head and heart analogy simplify the meaning of the “head” to mean that Clarke is very logical and strategic. She IS, but I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, because we have lots of canon evidence to suggest that while Clarke is, indeed, very smart, so is Bellamy. What I’m getting at, is that if you only look at that one trait - intelligence - to decide who is the head and who is not, it wouldn’t make sense to say that Clarke is smarter than Bellamy.

This is why I used the word intuition instead of intelligence.

Both Bellamy and Clarke are very intelligent, but they have separate intuitions. Bellamy’s intuition is heart-focused, and Clarke’s intuition is head-focused.

Bellamy is the heart (in this specific intuition-based sense) because he understands other people’s hearts. He’s people-smart, if you will. Clarke is the head because she understands other people’s brains. 

Sound vague? Allow me to elaborate.

There’s a reason that Bellamy is so good at inspiring people, as Clarke likes to say, and it’s because Bellamy is very good at reading their emotions - he is incredibly emotionally savvy. For this reason, he can predict not just what someone might do, but why they might do it - what personal motivation or particular emotion is driving them to react to things in the way that they do. It is easy for him to empathize with others in a sense that extends itself far beyond basic comfort and sympathy (as most people). He can mentally and emotionally place himself in other people’s shoes (in their heart, if you will) to understand what they are going through and how to help them, what they need to hear to keep going. This also makes Bellamy incredibly skilled at manipulation, if he were to choose to use that to his advantage (as we saw at the very start of Season 1, although he doesn’t use manipulation as a tactic so much anymore - he doesn’t particularly need it). 

Anyway, I’m edging into some territory regarding leadership that I intend to explore later, so I don’t want to go too in-depth into that idea.

Instead, I ask you to consider something: it is no coincidence that, while we know Bellamy was good in school, it is very obvious that he excelled in the humanities rather than math/science (not that he didn’t do well in those courses, but it’s clear he had a passion for something else). Why? Because he understands people. Who they are at their core, and how that shapes their actions, not just how their responsibility or their external goals determine their actions (which is a more head-focused kind of intuition). 

More on that later, but now that I’ve expanded somewhat on what I mean by “heart intuition”, I should probably talk about the other end of it (”head intuition”). 

Where Bellamy can almost effortlessly figure out what role a person’s heart plays in a person’s actions, Clarke is extremely good at understanding how someone’s brain and personal reasoning/strategy might lead them to make certain decisions. She understands the logic behind people’s actions and can often predict moves that the other side might make before they do (for instance, in 4x10 when she teamed up with Jaha to take the bunker - she clearly predicted the outcome that would happen if Octavia were, indeed, to lose the conclave, and reacted accordingly). 

Decisions made from a place of pure, sometimes cold, logic? Clarke can understand that very easily. It’s what made her understand L.exa in a way that Bellamy - who is more focused on the emotional side of decision-making (something L.exa was very careful to stifle) - never could. I might add, that Pike - like Bellamy - was also a master of emotions, which is one of the traits that made Bellamy decide to follow him: he could relate to him in that sense, and understand his position, whereas Clarke thought he was out of his mind. L.exa and Pike were people in Clarke and Bellamy’s journeys that served a similar purpose. They represented opposite extremes - L.exa in Season 2 mentored Clarke in a way that favoured her head over her heart, and Pike in Season 3 mentored Bellamy in a way that favoured his heart over his head. 

But I digress.

Clarke is a master at understanding the pure logic and pragmatic reasoning that would inform a decision one of her opponents or colleagues might make. Bellamy is skilled at deciphering people’s emotions to understand or predict (and in some cases, manipulate) a person’s actions. 

This is a difficult concept for me to articulate, although I can envision it clearly. In order to best illustrate this idea I’m getting at, allow me to bring up an example of these different types of intuition at play in the show. 

In 2x09, “Remember Me”, Gustus poisons L.exa’s cup in order to put an end to the newly formed coalition because he distrusts the Sky People. 

There were two people involved in piecing this together: Clarke and Bellamy.

Clarke (with the help of hallucination!Finn who, I might add, is actually just a figment of Clarke’s own conscience, which means that anything he “pointed out” was really just Clarke) was able to use her head-focused intuition to figure out that it wasn’t, in fact, the alcohol that was poisoned, but it was the cup. 

And how did she figure that out? Because Clarke understood that many of the Grounders weren’t happy about the coalition, and that poisoning the cup to frame the Sky People would effectively dissolve the new alliance. It was a conclusion she came to simply by thinking about the situation, and coming up with possible solutions that her opponents might think of.

Bellamy, on the other hand, was able to determine that it wasn’t just any Grounder who poisoned the cup - it was Gustus. He knew this because he read Gustus (someone he had barely interacted with) like a book, and easily figured out his sense of protection over L.exa, that his core values were linked to his strong sense of duty to keep her out of harm’s way. Bellamy used his excellent understanding of human nature to figure out that the poisoning of the cups was a desperate attempt of a man who would do anything to ensure the safety of a woman he feels responsible for.

In this case, Clarke asked herself the question “what might a Grounder do in order to break up the coalition and how might they make it possible to achieve that goal?” Bellamy asked himself “why would someone break up the coalition, and what emotions are driving those actions?”

Clarke’s head-focused intuition led her to the conclusion that the cup was poisoned. Bellamy’s heart-focused intuition led him to the conclusion that it was Gustus, L.exa’s righthand man, who committed the crime. Both of these pieces of information were important. If they didn’t figure out about the poison in the cup, the alliance would have been broken and Raven would have been killed. If Bellamy didn’t figure out who did it, chances are that Gustus would never stop trying to evaporate the coalition and it’s very likely that - eventually - he would succeed.

In short, Bellamy and Clarke are both very intelligent people in similar ways, but when it comes to their most instinctive understanding of other people, they approach the situation in different ways (head vs. heart).

Part Two: Leadership

Bellamy and Clarke are both - undeniably - leaders, but the way that they lead is very different, as they excel in different areas. For this part of my meta, I would like to talk about how the head and heart analogy translates into those two different styles of leadership, and how their different types of intuition guide them in that area.

To put it simply: Bellamy is a man of the people (a war chief or military leader), whereas Clarke is a diplomat.

Season after season, we have consistently seen this dynamic at play. Bellamy leads at the front-lines, fighting alongside his people and offering words of encouragement to inspire them and keep them going even when it feels hopeless. Clarke, on the other hand, is the one who – for the most part – holds together the political landscape and works behind the scenes making pragmatic decisions to save their people.

In Season 1, we see that Clarke takes up the more political position by going to negotiate with Anya on Unity Day and trying to build an alliance with her in the latter half of the season and through her interactions with Jaha and the rest of the council members over the radio. Bellamy, on the other hand, acts as a leader by working alongside the delinquents and gaining their trust and faith in him - it is this that inspires them all to work together in the final battle of the season. 

In Season 2, Clarke once more fights for her people’s freedom first through her interactions with Dante, and then later uses her diplomatic skills to work alongside L.exa and negotiate an alliance. It was her job to keep that alliance together as Bellamy was in Mount Weather. Bellamy’s role in Season 2 was to go to the front-lines, as I stated, and lead the Grounders from within the Mountain as well as his true people (the delinquents) by fighting alongside them. 

Season 3, in many ways, was about Bellamy and Clarke’s loss of agency (through their relationships to Pike and L.exa/other Grounders in Polis). But even still, we see Clarke attempting to negotiate with L.exa, Roan, etc to save her people while Bellamy once again fights alongside them as Pike’s second man. The second half of the season was largely about regaining the agency that Clarke and Bellamy lost in 3A and learning how to work with each other again, and we see Bellamy leading their people against the chipped people in the final moments of Season 3 while Clarke goes into the City of Light and is guided by the spirit of the Commanders.

In Season 4, we again see Clarke leading through her interactions with Roan and Jaha and by making politically-based decisions for the Sky People, whereas Bellamy’s form of leading was more specifically linked to his connections with individual people and through inspiring them (eg. Riley, Octavia, Raven, Echo, etc). 

These an example of how their respective positions as leaders arise from their different types of intuition that I talked about.

Because Bellamy is so empathetic and understands the way other people’s hearts work so well, he is able to get all of these people to fight alongside him in a way that Clarke has never quite succeeded at to the same extent. He walks among them, because he can reach them. One of Bellamy’s greatest qualities is that he can feel the struggles of other character’s so deeply that it’s almost as if they become a part of him. It’s like when he saw the slaves in Farm Station and was unable to leave them behind because he felt their pain - he experienced what it was like to be chained up and treated like an animal in Mount Weather - and so he couldn’t leave them behind. He became one of the people. Their heart became his heart.

I really cannot emphasize this idea enough. Bellamy is not the heart because he is only capable of making emotionally-based decisions; he is the heart because he understands other people’s emotions so deeply that he can effectively empathize with and inspire them to follow him.

And so he doesn’t just emotionally place himself in his people’s shoes, he literally does it, fighting alongside them as though he is one of them. And Bellamy is really the only person who can do this in such a way because he relates to people in such a personal manner that they grow to trust him and depend on him enough that they would follow him into the depths of hell and back if that’s what he told them was the right thing to do.

That’s why Bellamy is the war chief/military leader. He holds the people’s hearts in his hand. 

He brings out their courage when they are afraid. 

He offers them hope when they’ve given up. 

He reminds them of what they are fighting for when they lose sight of the cause. 

That’s why Bellamy is the heart.

it’s not cause he’s dumb you imbeciles

And Clarke? Clarke’s way of leading is lot more quiet, a lot more tactical and a lot less personal. As I stated in the first part, Clarke is a master at predicting other people’s strategies and understanding the kind of logic that drives their decisions. While this makes it difficult for her to sometimes lead people and connect with them on an emotional level, as we see in 4x04 in the aftermath of her and Bellamy’s list, it makes her much better suited as a diplomat. 

If you look back at the way that Clarke has lead in the past, it has almost always been through her interactions with other leaders. She can negotiate because she very clearly understands the goals that motivate other leaders’ decisions and the strategic means they might use to accomplish those things. This is why, beyond her relationship to Bellamy and her mother (the people she loves most), most of Clarke’s relationships we have witnessed that are offered the most focus are with her political adversaries/partners, such as Anya, Dante, Cage, L.exa, Roan, and eventually Jaha. 

And what do all of those people have in common with each other? They are all - for the most part - “head” types. They speak the same language, Clarke’s language. 

And it is exactly that ability to speak that kind of language that would inform the decision to allow a bomb to drop on hundreds of a leader’s own people just to ensure that their battle strategy would not be revealed to their adversary.

Clarke’s ability to understand the way other peoples brains work helps her work with other leaders, but even when she is not working with them, it also helps her successfully predict the moves that they might make and lead her people accordingly. For an example, revisit the Gustus situation I talked about in Part One. 

Think about 4x10, where Clarke stole the bunker with Jaha because she knew that if Luna won, everyone would die, or if anyone but the Sky People won, the Grounders would not be able to run the ship. Clarke is always thinking ahead, always looking at the big picture and searching for the logical outcomes to inform her present decision-making. Sometimes this causes her to overlook the emotional costs of those decisions (like with Tondc or with the way she handled the people’s anger over the list in 4x04, answering all their concerns with cold logic, or in locking the bunker door in 4x10, sentencing 800 people to die who might have lived instead, etc). 

It doesn’t mean that Clarke doesn’t feel pain over the decisions that she makes or that she is heartless; it just means that she has the ability to recognize objectively strategic “solutions” to save her people that often require a sacrifice of some sort. 

In short, Bellamy is a heart-focused leader through his ability to empathize with his people’s emotions and inspire them to follow and believe in his cause. Clarke is a head-focused leader through her savvy when it comes to understanding the strategic thinking of her political adversaries, which enables her to work alongside them or effectively oppose them by building plans based on her understanding of the way that they think. 

Both kinds of leaders are required to be successful, which is why Bellamy and Clarke work so well together. A politician is nothing if they have no followers, which is why Bellamy is so essential. Likewise, no alliances can be formed if there isn’t someone there who can effectively negotiate/deal with political rivals/allies, and that’s where Clarke excels. 

Obviously, I’m simplifying their roles as leaders for the sake of summarizing, but those are the main points that I want to get in for this section. 

Now that I have explained my thoughts regarding the head and heart analogy in relation to intuition and leadership, I have gotten through all the topics that I wanted to for the first part of this post (of two). In my second part, I will talk about how it affects Bellamy and Clarke’s personal relationship to each other, and their internal struggle/overall character journey. The next chapter will be a lot more focused on Bellarke’s relationship, as I mentioned, so if you’re looking for some Bellarke heavy meta, it should be right up your alley. 

I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for my next post. 

[progressiveparty]

The Democratic Office Boy Machine

A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. Of course the DNC will do it again. The fact that anyone considers that they will play fair is hopelessly out of touch with their history. They will try to thwart the will of their voters through continued reliance on second vote superdelegates and the use of slanted support that will be extended to corporate-friendly candidates. They did it the last time around, and less known…they did it back in 1944 (more about this later). The only way this will stop is through a fear of becoming completely irrelevant and going the way of the Whigs. A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. My guess is the Democrats will try to steal the primary again for their corporate candidate who will lose, and the DNC will become bankrupt (fiscally after the moral) and a new party will have to rise. If the fascism continues on the right from a blown opportunity by the Democrats, these predictions become more weighted with terrifying possibilities. A new Progressive party that can command decency on the part of their candidates will be coming, whether it is going to be a revamped Democratic party or something else remains to be seen. Henry Wallace (no relation that I know of) was a bit of an anomaly. He was a left- leaning Iowa boy who hated imperialism. He absolutely loathed the British Empire and its abuses. He was able to understand the needs of and advance the rights of workers. He even went against the United Fruit mode of intervention in Latin America and was able to find common ground with the people there, all without the use of right-wing juntas. This may be a bit of a simplification, but overall, Henry Wallace was a friend to the working men and women across the globe. He served as FDR’s vice president until a fateful convention in 1944. He had the backing of the voters—they appreciated that he had done more in that vice president’s office than others before him and they felt he had a kinship with them—that he would work in their favor. He was not popular with Southern conservative politicians or the corporate factions and they wanted nothing of him and his common man appeal. FDR made overtures and indicated that he was still behind Wallace being his vice president. Eleanor was a staunch supporter as well…but whether FDR was simply too ill by that time to exert his will or just plain feckless regarding Wallace, the Pendergast political machine of out Kansas City was able to insert their “office boy” as the vice president.

Henry Wallace Truman was a haberdasher from Kansas City (failed haberdasher, actually) and he came across the corrupt Pendergast group through that connection. Suits for brutes, I guess. Truman was encouraged to go into politics by the Pendergast political influencers and that he did, owing his start to this machine. It sounds like Truman struggled with the alliance having physical symptoms of stress from a bit of cognitive dissonance, but he never did anything that truly rocked their boat or made him a less of a favored candidate in their eyes. Truman was a natural to be handed the vice president slot in 1944 as he looked to be the office boy of choice for the disparate factions that were not representing the progressive appeal of voters. These things have consequences. We are now in an “anything but Trump” era. Older Democrats would probably vote for an Amazon delivery drone if it had the mark of the DNC on it in the general election because it feels right to vote against the melon-hued Mussolini. Trump is, of course, that calamitous of a human, but this “lesser evil” thing ends up with an effect. We need to not get to that point where your choice is not simply death by a malignant cancer like Trump versus a slow descent through dysentery, offered up by a centrist Democrat. But back to Wallace. By August of 1945, it was clear that Japan had lost the war. The common refrain is that atomic bombs were dropped on two civilian cities because the US “was going to have to send our boys to invade”. But is this true? A land that had already lost needed to be invaded and/or nuclear bombed right away? What happened to a little patience and isolation? Internal Japanese factions would get sick of the isolation and most likely force a surrender, wanting to join the world again. They weren’t a threat to the US by that time. But even discussing this around the “greatest generation” members is dangerous. I know by experience. I had a friend in high school who wrote an opinion paper stating the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes. My parents didn’t even want her to come over to visit after they heard that! Strong feelings aside, there is even stronger indication that the real purpose of dropping the bombs was to scare Uncle Joe Stalin shitless with the death that could be meted out by the US. What would have been the harm to wait a bit for a full surrender? At least try for that? America solves everything with violence, or in this case violent science. The choice is framed as this: atomic bombs or every young man in America will be killed by Japanese grannies on their shore with weapons. This jingoistic framing should be a red flag to anyone that the truth is probably going to be a bit more nuanced.  Illogical horror descriptions that are built to scare should be analyzed for veracity. (Babies being thrown out of incubators etc.). Not that the world doesn’t have ample evil for certain, but don’t get played is what I’m saying. They are masters at this and always have been. Manufactured consent and all. Another consideration: anyone who can think of the atomic bombing in sterile ways should be forced to read the accounts from survivors. But ”they�� attacked Pearl Harbor…I didn’t sodomize anyone at Abu Ghraib, but that line of thought brings you to retribution in ways you might not want to consider when you begin to view all civilians as being directly responsible for the actions of their “leaders” or their military. This is why old school anarchy considerations feel like common sense truth to me. How can you be responsible for what a psychopathic “leader” did? I wasn’t asked for my feedback. Not to mention a war that was for all purposes over—well, that’s the time these bombs were dropped! My circuitous thought is this: Truman was the office boy to do it. If Wallace had been vice president, then he would have been our subsequent president when FDR died.  I don’t know what the end result would have been, but I have a hunch he wouldn’t have dropped bombs to scare someone. Patience and good judgment might have ruled the day. So the results would have been very different for the citizens of the US, multiple Japanese civilians, as well as perhaps not staining the US as the only nation to own that quote : “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” as  Oppenheimer famously repeated from the Bhagavad Gita . You can’t see yourself as the paragon of goodness when you knee-jerk use nuclear fission to solve your problems. So we are pretty far down the destroyer of worlds path. Regime change are US. A drastic realignment is necessary. Characters like Biden and Cop Harris won’t cut it, and those types are the DNC’s favored candidates. When Warren becomes favored, you know her sell-out with the Sith lords is complete. These things sound like petty squabbles over a group of similars until you think about Strummer’s pregnant mention of an unwritten future. What consequences will come from the continued use of corporate office boys/girls for the job? Can we write a future that is better, that is decent? There are a lot of individuals like me who find Bernie Sanders to be a compromise, not far enough to the left. But even his middle-of-the-road-in-Europe notions scare the crap out of the machinery. I was furious last time that he didn’t simply run as a third-party candidate. We won’t survive much more of this nonsense. The threats of being a spoiler…well I say spoil it all. It’s rancid. That milk you put back in the fridge that smells isn’t going to rehabilitate itself. Trump won anyway–even with Bernie hitting the road for Clinton last time. And don’t get me started about her. Are they even trying to win? She was needlessly caustic, much like Biden. He has a huge problem with younger voters, so he goes on the road and when he is asked about environmental concerns by a young voter, he says “Look at my record, CHILD!” to an adult woman! Is he even trying at all? Is he just campaigning so he can smell new shampoos around the country? I don’t have high hopes that Bernie will fight back this time when they screw him over again. I hope I’m wrong or at least I hope his campaign leaves the threat of it there to create a known moral hazard for the DNC if this is the path they take. The younger voters are showing that they are basically a bit more decent than the “pragmatic” Boomers and X’ers. There is evidence that they have…empathy. I am so relieved by this and feel this is an indication that a progressive party can win because they have some massive numbers they could draw from. And there are X’ers like me as well as Boomers who aren’t totally evil. We kind of want the world to survive.  We will be there for this change. The tepid centrist Democrats will not help with this imperative. Considering all this though, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to believe that to many corporate/centrist Dems, a loss to Trump is preferable to ceding to the progressive arm of the party. This is a moment like the situation with Wallace in 1944. If the party can’t get rid of things like superdelegates (the Republicans have even done that!) and they continue to use media connections to ignore the true state of support that candidates have (oh, oh, the excitement for Biden is palpable per CNN)…well, the party will vanish and sadly our descent into Republican-style fascism will probably accelerate without a needed safety valve. A true change in the Democratic party would be required, a change to reflect the views of all the adults out there who came of age after things quit being better than their parents had it. A tree does get stronger in the wind (if it survives) and perhaps things were just too easy to breed strength for some of those with comfortable health care and a guaranteed retirement. It will take some strength of character for those older Americans to care about those coming after them and call for change accordingly even if they personally feel they are safe. But ultimately their support will not be required, time will march forward with or without them.  The decent thing to do is be part of the change. The younger generations are especially suffering at the hands of unfettered capitalism. Our globe is even suffering. The middling better than Trump Obama types will not cut it. They will simply slow the descent and make it more comfortable for the well-heeled older centrists on the way down. They might be less overtly embarrassing than Trump, but that’s not enough, My elderly malignant narcissist mother who endorses aggressive nudity is less embarrassing than Trump. That’s a low bar. What we have now, well–this is not just, and this is not good. To only care about your 401 K but not care about someone else’s DKA is a sign of being a shitty person (explainer: DKA is Diabetic Ketoacidosis. It’s what you get when you can’t afford your fucking insulin and it is killing young Type 1 diabetics as we speak). But Sanders can’t just bow down to Biden or Warren if that is who the machinery wants for the office position when the time comes. A new party and movement needs to be built at that moment with no hesitation because you can’t fight fascism and climate destruction with polite adherence to rules set up to keep you down. This Piece Originally Appeared in LA Progressive Read the full article