Bush demonstrated that any person could be President.

Americans are paying for their servility and ignorance because the newsmedia respects political correctness and ignores Constitutionalism.

After 9/11 any person opposing war would be attacked; but the time is coming when a person who defends war will be attacked.

The smart Americans are the ones who know enough to avoid military service. Usually those who refuse are the least servile. Almost nothing is gained by enlisting (unless it’s done only for employment.) Joining the military exacerbates our problems because it allows our govt to engage in dysfunctional activity (empire building.) Enlisting is unpatriotic and counterproductive. But the only way to avoid being stygmatized is to know our history and founding principles, and to be able to understand that America will always do exactly the opposite of what it should do.

A: Being aware of becoming America!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I come to this out of a background of studying psychology as a natural science. I’ve been studying the role of our psychophysiology in empathically-mediated altruism since the late 80s.

I’ve seen pictures of kittens dressed up in the same paraphernalia (sans orange jumpsuit) as was Jose Padilla. The objective of it all is CELLF-imprisonment, the acceptance of a mere mechanical receptacle in place of these very *cisterna mystica.*

Are we human BEINGS, or mere machines? In what cosmos are we presently enacting our insane political theater?

I pick on the APA because I’m an American student of psychology (I used to be an AP Society member, the one more for natural scientists than for therapists), but it’s the mechanization of Life in general that’s the real target of my ire.

Both the APA and the APS believe in a mechanical cosmos. Both base themselves on an impossibility: the Newtonian point particle. Doing so implodes our shares of Psyche into black holes–and misconceived ones at that!

That wasn’t legit back at the founding of modern psychology; it still isn’t legit. Our psychology is unfounded.

Our psychology conceives of the cosmos as a political machine: one in which absolutely separate parts are forced into order from the outside by a Creator/God/King/Man among men. In this cosmos, TORTURE IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY.

We’re dealing with authoritarian pinheads who can’t think for themselves. I believe the medical profession to be the controlling authority to which BushRoveCo is listening when it demands the right to torture. They listen to the doctors and psychiatrists and psychotherapists oh my! and so feel relieved of responsibility for inhuman cruelty against our neighbors. For example, what is a polygraph but an electromechanical Iron Maiden?

Torture by isolation, the specific type practiced at Gitmo and elsewhere; torture by abuse of religion, which James Yee has said has become a weapon to break human spirits; torture by ever-present surveillance, by the implicit threat of Gitmo in the background; for psychologists, it’s what we do.

Witness the treatment of climatologist Jim Hansen: his science was shaped to fit the policy, just as the intelligence was “fixed around” the policy of war with Iraq. Same thing goes on with psychology.

I propose a new fundamental unit for a living, breathing, organic psychology: the *cisterna mystica.*

The fundamental property of a mystic vessel is {self-filling/self-emptying}, aka kenosis. Our brains, our lungs, our hearts: all are kenotic vessels.

Neuronal models of stimuli are the {self-filling/self-emptying} vessels of Mind: into which experience is pouring; from which awareness is arising; and out of which we are {Mater & Pater flowing in Water}.

So even while we are here, now, being eternity; we are yet aware of becoming time- and space-embedded. This is a mystery to behold, within which we stand in awe.

Shall we trade our inalienable birthright: Divinely Being Eternally Aware of Becoming enmeshed in space and time; for reduction to mere mechanical receptacles of whatever our dear herdsmen decide to pump us with?

Shall we place our faith in the likes of Zelikow and Rice and Cheney and Rove? Or in our own experience?

I wish more people were intellectually infected like that.

The dude has been a rascal going back at least a decade. And that is aside from his association with the University of Virginia.

I don’t know how much of a role inciting fear of Gitmo has played in the government’s tactics. I have heard a number of folks speak of this as a reason to not speak up or complain. But I don’t know that it is on the radar of the average American.

Seen one cherry blossom, seen ‘em all.

But the same is not true for great beer.

Here’s what I alluded to earlier.

http://zelikowednomore.blogspot.com/2008/02/4630-dr-z-cant-add-2-2-and-get-4.html

Ratner expresses his surprise to hear Zelikow say we can’t assume evidence from the interrogations was torture.

Ratner: “Can I say it 100% ? No.”

He goes on to utterly demolish Zelikow’s story, demonstrating that anyone who can do 1st grade math can add this up. Oh, and need to be able to do something Zelikow and other authoritarian royal pains in the ass can’t do: think for yourself.

| [ 2 (Report Relies on Interrogations of KSM et al.)]
|+[2 (Hayden says, yes, we tortured those very people by waterboarding.)]
—–
| 4!

Ratner: “You get 4.”
Zelikow: “[Ratner] doesn’t know that, we don’t know that, no one knows that.”

This is logical positivism at its worst. Right now, you must overlook these very spaces in order to continue reading these very words. But, by Xeno’s paradox, even “empty” spaces could become impassable. So how does this “reading” thing even work?

By intuition! Look carefully: there are not “spaces:” there is only the one background, out of which these squiggles seem to arise ex nihilo.

O sister my Sister! O brother my Brother!

We find our common ground in the spaces “in between.”

Did you see Zelikow on Democracy Now! 07 Feb 08?
http://www.archive.org/details/dn2008-0207_vid

He tries to cast a spell of unknowing over the obvious fact that he used evidence manufactured to order by torture. When Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner adds it up, Zelikow interrupts to say, “He doesn’t know that, we don’t know that, NO 1 knows that” (emph. added).

Who does he think he is, the Buddha? Of course we can add 2 + 2 and get 4! Only authoritarian pinheads can’t think for themselves.

Is this what you mean by the 9/11 servility reflex: do as you’re told, and not only will you not be tortured, NO 1 you know will be tortured. But if you even so much as think about stepping out of line, we got a suit tailored for you at Gitmo.

As a Zen poet, grad student of research psychology, and devoted student of comparative mythology, I’ve come up with a name for this process: myth-jacking.

A myth is not a lie, it’s a metaphor; a metaphor is a vessel for going from ignorance to enlightenment; thus, to take captive an entire nation all at once, by applying Goering’s infamous formula (declare an attack and denounce the pacifists) you can myth-jack them to Hell, and then stick them with the bill.

[(Absolute Supremacy) //NO 1's Land// (Absolute Subjugation)]

Can’t you just see every Wall of Denial ever built erupting from NO 1’s Land? Do you see the prison bars and razor wire? Do you see the paraphernalia of public isolation in which Jose Padilla was paraded in order to put the FEAR of Gitmo in us? Do you now see where the “cracks in the system” come from?

We put them there with our assumption of the inviolability of the Law of the Excluded Middle. It’s the only law BushRoveCo ever obeys.

beloved /UNION/ Beloved

This is a more perfect Union. In this cosmos, empathy and compassion are easily seen as the proper bases of human social intercourse, not antipathy and perpetual war.

I’m thrilled to have read you piece today. Can you tell?