And Here We are in the Spring of 2026

Protecting Towhee from rearview mirrors

 Baxter and I would like to take a look at the following two sentences. The "Pedagogy of Hatred" explored by Jorge Luis Borges in notes he wrote between 1936 and and 1945 wasn't just about teaching children to dislike an "Other." It was about the structural perversion of the "Process of Becoming."

 The Pedagogy of Hatred. Borges' understanding of Germany included the idea that Germany was one of the most civilized well organized nations the world had ever seen.  Pedagogy can be explained this way: the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners.

 In 1936 the fourth edition of a children's book was published, it had sold 51,000 copies in Bavaria. The book was titled, "Don't trust any Fox from a Heath or Any Jew on his Oath." The book had pictures. of young, athletic German boys and girls, and let's continue the familiar message with a poem from the text, "The German is a proud man who knows how to work and struggle, Jews detest him because he is so handsome and enterprising." Step aside Hollywood, when it come to denigrating the other you'd met your match in an eighteen year old Kindergarten teacher named Elvira Bauer who died in 1945. Hers was a prosperity doctrine of National Glory.

 A man called Doctor Johannes Ruhr of Berlin edited, or re-edited, the "History of German Literature." Amongst others he removed the name Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht. Kafka was a Jew. Brecht's wife was Jewish. 

Corrupting the Process of Becoming. Ah right, sounds snow flake libtard. But greater minds than yours and mine have identified the Process of Becoming. Borges, an Argentinian, in the months before the Second World War was about to explode beyond the consciousness of us people into the reality of killing,  identified his own feelings in 1939. He listened to the slogans on the streets of Buenos Aires and he wanted to be neutral, his love of German Literature and his joy in an English Language that had produced Bernard Shaw, his admiration for Bertrand Russell's critique of newspapers as a source of truth was complete. Not for a minute did Borges believe that a regime that'd eradicated Schopenhauer for being Schopenhauer was powerful. Far from it. In 1939, for Jorge Luis Borges, Hitler and his homespun Übermenschen were a banal curse on mankind.

In 1945, contemplating the peace, with the great powers still dividing up the world. In the west it was what to do about Iraq, with all that oil, Palestine and the Zionist, should France go back to Syria or was Lebanon good enough for them. Borges returned to his Ancient Greeks, he found them alive and well. His Plutarch: "No-body is what he was, nor will he be what he is now." His Heraclitus: "No-one steps into the same river twice."

We can leave it to Hannah Arendt to remind us of Heidegger's "Becoming" then look at Borges Total Library, a place were every word ever written could be found in one place. Would this absolute knowledge, would knowing everything be the functional equivalent of know nothing. And why? Because finding the truth among infinite false variants is impossible. 

Covenant

Vinca Minor

 The meanings in the English Speaking word covenant start with the ideas of cutting and sharing. This cutting and sharing form of covenant either followed a blood oath or followed how the meat of something like an Ox or a Goat was divided following an ordained by the Priest sacrifice. Today Covenant still has Legal and Religious meanings all of which we are going to ignore and concentrate on the sacred rather than mixed up diddle-dads of the profane. And by sacred the meaning is clear you can't get a priest or a lawyer to release you from the shame of breaking an understanding between yourself and another. The issue being, a covenant hasn't hurdled the distance between a small almond shape in the temporal lobe and the Humpty Dumpty of the Left Hemisphere that produces work for lawyers, Priests and Grammarians.

 

Prosperity Preaching

Fallen Cedar

 The error of "Tongue in cheek" is that some moron will run with it as fact. As it happens, in my view, the essence of Fake News as a concept goes deep into the past, it wandered in the wilderness for a thousand odd years, it was dug up, it reacquainted itself with the present, it had a passionate affair with irony in the 1640's, then,  sometime in the first half of the 1700's was adopted by Bishop Berkeley, Patron Saint of US Episcopalianism, founder of Immaterialism or Subjective Idealism, otherwise known as The Very Reverend Esse Est Percipi, (to be is to be perceived). They all spoke and wrote Latin back then because it was very apple for the teacher and Front Row. By the early 2000's post modernism had been through enough beer bongs and influencers to produce this shag carpet pick up line "Fake News" which is the shortened form of "News I don't want to hear  so it can't be true so give me in A."

 Our man Nietzsche, with his "Behold the Man" his crown of thorns would never preach, his ubermensch wasn't a leader, never wanted to be, he just loved Wagner as a portrait of a tragedy that faced our species. Wagner was hope, his next opera would be even better, more transforming, another chance to transcend, but like the Rolling Stones with their Glitter Rock, a total sell out, Wagner never was more than a moment to be repeated, on endlessly into a Ground Hog Day of Februaries.  

 But you are absolutely right! Schisms are the thinning of the community. When we start fighting over whose mirror is clearer, we lose the Grip on the journey. We risk becoming just another set of Prosperity Preachers shouting over the pews.

Yes indeed the schism ends were the covenant begins

Oh Happy Day

Chair

 All very well throwing compound nouns around as though they were pomegranates, but what is the difference between the Front Row and the Back Row.

 Of course I'll tell you exactly what I mean by reminding everyone that yesterday's tribute to the Situationist International was to imagine the box in which Schrodinger had closed up his cat, with a counter and a decaying atom, being opened, and then drawing a slogan that reflected an understanding of the moment. The hint from the back row was that Schrodinger's Cat would hopefully be alive and furious with Schrodinger for shutting him up in a box with a decaying atom and Geiger counter, and as a result of individual and justifiable rage the cat would would obviously bite Schrodinger on his Nose.

 In short, the Front Row would have reacted in a different way, they would have said: "Ah! Now I understand why quantum rules cannot apply directly to large everyday objects, or macro-systems, so give me an A."

 The point for the back row is: "So big deal, why was shutting  a cat up in box the only way to illustrate a point about how an atom, until it is observed, is in a state of superposition, both decayed and not decayed at the same time." And there might have been something about Schrodinger being one of the more primitive of the bow-tie wearing Great Apes .

 Just a joke? Not in the context of the newer Prosperity Gospel Preachers, so engrossed in their own spectacle it's clinically sad.