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It is quite disappointing and notably painful to acknowledge that the venerable intentions of America’s Founders have yet to be empirically realized, and that our “radical” nation exists as an avatar of liberty and democracy in inspiration and aspiration,( more than as established reality.

A Nation, founded upon enlightened and humanistic morality, governed, “by and for the People,” in which every vote counts, where “no one is above the law,” where equality of rights and of opportunity are inherent and legal, where there are no privileged classes, where the public good is exalted above other (profitable) considerations and citizens possess the sole right to determine private and personal matters, without sanction from government (or Church), simply, does not empirically exist.

Our venerable Nation, in historically coignitive dissonance, has shown itself to fail to comply with its eternally avowed representations regarding liberty and equality. The foregoing declaration is irrefutably empirical, contrary to its eternal representations of the virtues of a systemic democracy, where true equity and justice are inarguably prevalent. A brief, presumably unnecessary reference to the historic blemishes on the countenance of true democracy is contextually relevant and, summarized below, preceding our thematic remarks on the virtue and promise of our unique Nation, notwithstanding such transgressions

(a) The history of black chattel slavery may be the most egregious and discordant feature of our purported democratic polity, shamefully followed by the cruel and immoral practices of “Jim Crow” prejudice, governmental and individual.

The “Indian Removal Laws” under President Andrew Jackson, and the Japanese interment during the Second World War, plus, more recently, the Nation’s Trumpist, Gestapo-like policy practiced against the Nation’s residential Hispanic community, based upon an outrageous xenophobic neurosis.

(b) The irrefutable and outrageous demonstration of inequality of application of the law. The President, himself reveling in his hubristic exercise of unauthorized and unlimited autocratic power, despite a myriad of felony convictions and Federal Indictments. To add spice to the un-American and immoral stew, the pardoning of publicly demonstrated criminals who committed felonies in his political interest.

(c) The President and his horde of MAGA sycophantic interference with the equal vote, thus ubiquitously distorting the public will, as well as the definitional purpose of the Constitutional democratic franchise.

In light of the historical validity of the above, matters, repugnant to the existence of our American Nation as an inarguable exception to autocratic regimes such as exist in Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, and North Korea, we were ultimately successful in ascribing a notably relevant distinction; i.e., our Nation has regularly demonstrated a beneficial aspiration to achieve the political tenets of an exemplary democracy; such nations as China, Hungary and North Korea have not.

Our Nation’s avowed, but delayed, benevolent aspirations, presumably, based upon certain atavistic features of the developing human persona, appear to be taking some time; however, we remain faithfully hopeful that the intended political context of the venerable Founders will be achieved before long.

-p.

The Jewish holiday of Hannukkah is, in essence, the annual celebration of a historic military victory over the powerful Hellenic (Seleucid) invaders of ancient Jerusalem in the latter’s martial attempt to politically and culturally exterminate the extant Hebrew people. History shows that this aspiration has persisted but has notably proven unsuccessful over the ensuing centuries.

In earlier writing, we have observed that the holiday’s thematically celebrated military victory empirically permitted the survival of a people among whom the impactful advent of World Christianity was born. We have observed such an ecumenical dynamic in the historical Jewish holiday. ( see: plinyblog # M. 419) but thematically have omitted the apocryphal “miracle” responsible for the universal designation of the holiday, as “The Festival of Lights,”

As stated in the Old Testament, the successful military achievement of the modest Maccabean Army against the powerful Seleucid invaders was followed by the miracle of eight days of light from lanterns, containing only one day’s supply of oil. Celebrants traditionally eat commemoratively prepared foods, fried in oil, such as potato pancakes (“latkes”).

Students of human history will undoubtedly perceive the universal message implicit in the thematic holiday’s “Miracle of the Lights,” symbolizing the universality of Man’s eternal aspiration for the light of cultural and personal advancement.

The contrasting symbols of light and dark have ubiquitously represented the contrasting and competing forces of good and evil, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, since the ancient days of the Persian prophet, Zoroaster. The miracle of the lights, celebrated by the Hanukkah observants, is, metaphysically, an homage to the endurance of civilized reason and human awareness.

Before Copernicus, the prevailing belief was that, since Man was “the Center of the Universe,” the Sun orbited around the Earth; in reverse order to the empirically d valid “heliocentric Theory” of the obverse. Humanity’s laudable period of dedicated substitution of empirical reality for the “dark age”. superstitions” was appropriately termed “The Age of Enlightenment;” light replacing the former dark reality of ignorance. “Throwing light on the subject has been the universal aspiration for a reasonable explanation to be found for a previously unsolved problem.

Hanukkah accommodates the ultimate preference of human reason, founded upon empirical knowledge, contrasted with Dark Ages ignorance, manifested by the ubiquitous persistence of atavistic ignorance and superstition.

Happy Holidays!

-p,

Students of antiquity will predictably know that a “palimpsest” is the covering over of an erased document or parchment for the purpose of later writing, but of which traces of the erased original still remain.

We have chosen to employ the titled analogy to illustrate the sophomoric perception that, notwithstanding the earnest resolve of the mainstream citizen to adhere to his high expectations of principled conduct, the inexorable repetition of immoral conduct by President Donald Trump will effectively result in an enduring diminution of America’s traditional principles. To the contrary, we feel confident that the dedicated, moral, and humanistic citizen, notwithstanding such quotidian demonstrations of executive miscreance, will enduringly retain his personal perception of rectitude. The morally directed citizen will predictably cling to his innate values and systemic humanistic inclinations, as dictated by his benevolent life-long self-image.

The American mainstream perceptions of the actions of our contextual, self-indulgent, and delusionally egocentric sitting President are seen for what they empirically are, as opposed to their tactically worded explanations; the latter, amounting, analogically to a false and unconvincing palimpsest of the delusionally chosen action, not rationally acceptable to the informed and savvy citizen. In the singular case of Donald J. Trump, the eternal motivation is invariably based upon his delusional drive to be publicly acknowledged as a “winner.”

The fundamental dynamic behind Trump’s absurd, quotidian remarks and erratically despicable actions is his singularly delusional perception of objective reality, engendered by his lifelong, myopic, and singular aspiration to attain the neurotically based status of a declared “winner.” Any sophomoric explanations, tactical or otherwise, warrant summarily justified erasure from the parchment of empirical history and the reinstatement of the analogous process of the ancient palimpsest.

As is the case with such ancient procedures, unhappily, the erasures will be endurably and shamefully visible.

-p.

Mankind would do better

To avow that all respiring co-tenants

residing on the green, peripatetic planet,

Are, in common, Earthly dust eaters

From protozoa to platypus.

Felis domesticus to Bonobo Arborist

All dine on the Earth’s airborne menu

The aerial detritus of past performance, of

Earth’s theatrical presentation of planetary life

The silent thinkers and the dynamic doers

Of every prismatic reflection

The conglomerate of planetary respirants

Ineluctably,  fellow dust-eaters

-p.

[Leonard N. Shapiro, Kingston N,Y,2/22/25

As disconcerted and angry as we may be, relative to the myriad criminal, unconstitutional, inhumane, and immoral acts of our sitting President, our fear for the future of the American Nation is paramount. To describe our trepidation in analogical terms, we would liken its nature to a parent’s concern for his young child, daily driven over bumpy country roads by a reputed, inebriated School Bus driver.

The populist election of Donald Trump boded well, solely, for those captains of industry who sociopathically exalt profits over human and planetary salubrity. Donald J. Trump, declaring the demagogic “snake oil” meme, “Make America Great Again,” From the first day following his inauguration, Trump incompetently assisted America’s enemies by virtue of his overriding neurotic aspiration for perceived public admiration and personal grandification. Future historians will have the pragmatic benefit of countless dumpster-fulls of fetid detritus engendered by his egocentric delusion and empirically hapless incapability.

Nonetheless, as egregious as his opprobrious acts and policies have proved to be, our responsive outrage has been fundamentally overshadowed by an abject fear for the endurance of our democratic Nation, founded upon his discernable insanity. Trump’s obvious lack of reality orientation, motivated by his self-serving delusion, has proven to be palpable proof of his evident lack of mental health. We would briefly recount several instances, illustrative of the basis for our thematic declarations.

(a) During the course of his campaign for the Presidency, Trump publicly announced that he would rule (“the first day”) as a dictator. The same was an untoward and highly inappropriate declaration in a democratic election.

(b) As President, Trump outrageously claimed his intention to acquire Denmark’s Greenland, make our sovereign neighbor, Canada, a State of the Union, take back the Panama Canal, and rename the historic “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Bay of America.” The dystopic assertions are a diagnosable denial of history and the right of sovereignty.

(c) In a Nation historically featuring two major competing political parties, he has been engaged in implementing his paranoid declaration to seek “retribution” against members of the historically competing Democratic Party.

(d) Contrary to the anti-monarchial theme of the Founders, Donald Trump egotistically installed gold leaf throughout the White House in the manner of the past European Monarchist Palaces, he was a European Monarch, a style eschewed by the Founders. We are advised that the White House restrooms have also been thus enriched. He has arrogated to himself the monomaniacal authority to destroy the historic East Wing of the Nation’s (“The People’s) White House to construct a large and Ballroom, named after himself; in addition to its irrational hubris and philisophical travesty to American history, the progect will cost many millions of dollars, at a time when many Americans are living “paycheck to paycheck”.

(e) Donald J. Trump has unprecedentedly chosen to raise a private, masked army to harass and incarcerate Hispanic Americans, incarcerating and banishing them, as claimed criminals without a modicum of due process. He has also, in illegal and kinglike fashion, used the Nation’s military for his perceived domestic necessity. These latter acts, justified by “Executive Order: are irrational and contrary to the basic tenets of our Republican Democracy, as well as notably erratic.

(f) Without mandatory Congressional authority, Trump has declared War against Venezuela, bombing small boats on the high seas and murdering its sailors, on the spurious grounds that such warlike action is interdicting the importation of drugs.

(g) Donald J. Trumo has demonstrated not only his delusional hubris and dystopic sdense of reality, as shown by “(e) and “(f)”, above, and futher demonstrated by his delusional ideation and public declaration that the Nation’s economy is in excellent condition and the cost of consumer goods is lower than ever; the latter two irrational declarations, empirically far from the contrary sane observation that both are decidedly false; and notably, the result of his irrational and ignorant policies, most especially his inappropriate imposition of tariffs on our trading partners

(h) His unauthorized declaration of War against Venezuela, including the bombing of small boats and the illegal murder of Venezuelan sailors.

(i) Publicly and bizarrely announcing his felt entitlement to the Nobel Prize, despite his warlike and pathological acts set forth above, particularly, “(g)” and “(h).” Arranging to be publicly awarded (non-existent) “FIFA Peace Prize” his public declaration that the thousands of young soldiers interred at Arlington National Cemetery were “suckers” and “losers” and, emblematic of his warped persona, asked, “What was in it for them?”

(j) Hubristically and delusionally changing the name of the Kennedy Cultural and Arts Center to include “The Trump Center,” whereas empirically, the hubristic, egocentric neurotic deserves the equal cultural and artistic recognition as “Godzilla.

Article 25 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states the procedure for the removal of a disabled President. We would urge Congress to utilize this provision before Trump and his side-show menagerie of Cabinet Advisors demonstrate more grave damage to our beloved Democratic Republic.

-p.

• Novel by William Faulkner; taken from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”

We include ourselves among the great many who mourn the ever-increasing societal trend toward personal insularity. In our view, such insalubrious change is the predictably empirical root and branch of ubiquitous discontent, and conceivably, the requisite element for the recent, unprecedented election of an amoral and repugnant personality to the office of the traditionally august American Presidency

Our thematically worrisome anti-societal trend is plainly evidenced by the observable decline in communal interactive functions such as picnics, barbeques, get-togethers, and community outings; and, notably, the rare, if at all still existent, practice of meaningful social and political conversation.

In contradistinction to the history of societal participation in communally oriented tasks for mutual benefit, individuals have observably withdrawn into a reductive, personalized, private world of their own. This latter development is empirically productive of feelings of loneliness and insecurity and ultimately, of personal discontent. It sadly appears that traditionally communal pleasures such as picnics, barbeques, square dances, and multiple other areas of beneficial, interactive participations have ubiquitously surrendered to preferento insular, personally reductive aspirations, designed exclusively for material success and occasional, ephemeral entertainment.

Regular readers of this blogspace are doubtlessly aware that we emphatically attribute the toxic etiology of such negative trends to the inadequate (and unsatisfying) mode of interactive communication, attributable to the notably impersonal “smart phone,” and the consequent diminution of emotionally required, recognizable, and self-affirming interaction.

Among the myriad of distressing sequelae of such degradation of interactive relations was the universal accommodation to such personally less satisfying, facile “advance” social exchange, and its resultant hobbling of the pathway for the humanistic need to effectively share thoughts and experiences. The existential element in enduring societal relationships is the empirical sharing of feelings and experiences, now significantly minimized by the inadequately cold digital exchange transmitted to small, lighted, handheld devices, often received without temporal relevance.

The ensuing trend of societally injurious isolation is empirically evidenced by, among other things, the costly emotional loss of a vital, healthy, self-affirming interaction with others and the myriad of personal benefits, social and psychological, derived from shared communal living; the diminution of the latter empirically resulting to feelings of personal isolation and insularity.

To be fair, the pandemic played its concommitantly injurious part in the necessitating of the prophylactic isolation of members of the community aggravated by the disease- preventative masking of individual identity; however, we are of the view that the insalubrious trend to anti-social insularity is notably, the consequence of the foolhardy human inclination to favor perceived facile mechanical devices, thoughtlessly, to the societally harmful and unthinking exclusion of emotionally required, expressive modes of personal interaction.

The Pinocchio-like, thoughtless seduction of computer facility, metastasized into a pernicious virus, amounting to a universal desire for further impersonal facility by way of robotization, exemplified by devices such as, “Alexa” remote actuators, robot-assisted driving, robotic vacuum cleaning, and auto-directional devices, as well as dating services, encyclopedic telephones (as opposed to the enriching and affirming activity of personal research), to the development of drones, personalized digital health watches, computerized books (in ignorant contrast to the tactual pleasure of holding a book and arbitrarily turning the page), the mechanization of the concept of”friend” and perhaps, morfe extremde, the scholastic cheating utility of A.I.,

The exclusive quest for individualized convenience and facility is demonstrated in the desire to attend an institution of higher education for the singular purpose of the future acquisition of a job, rather than, concomitantly, for a more mature perspective and personal growth. It sadly appears that no universal principles of sophisticated insight are of recognizable utility to the analogous, insular island located among a perceived geographic archipelago of similar, unrelated islands.

Such a thematic, disparate, insular, and perceptively individualized existence of the modern individual extends perforce to family matters. Family gatherings before the television or formerly, before the family radio, even at mealtime, have become empirically rare and anachronistic. The infrequent attendance at family dinner, often punctuated by a young member of the assembled family, engaged in consulting his or her smartphone surreptitiously under the table, is not an exotic occurrence.

We are greatly troubled by the evident lack of a mature, healthy, and empathic World perspective, analogous to the “geological phenomena” of separate and remote human islands in the unattached archipelago of human society

-p.

In the Winter holiday season, our third-grade public school teacher drew a line down the length of the blackboard and titled each of the two resultant sections, “Christmas” and “Hanukkah.” She then listed in each half several of the attractive traditions of each holiday. We remember her kind efforts at social inclusion and student brotherhood to this day,a great many decades later,

Yet, concomitant with our recognition of her kindness, we nevertheless felt that the same was somewhat overdone; since Christmas is, inarguably, the most celebrated and ornate of Christian religious festivals and observances, while Hanukkah, presumably, is a historical observance of far less cultural impact. As we grew older and more reflective, we realized that the celebration of Hanukkah’s military success in its war with the Seleucid Empire was no less than an existentially vital event for Christianity as well as the Jewish People.

Ancient history shows that Christianity originated in the first Century in Judea as a Jewish sect, centered on the life, teachings, and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, with its theology spreading through the missionary work of Apostles like Paul, across the Roman Empire, and empirically developing from a modest Jewish movement to a world religion.

It is inarguable that since Christianity developed from (had its roots in) Judaism, had the Seleucid Empire in the Maccabean Wars, (whose victory is annually celebrated by the Festival of Hannukkah), been successful in their earlier attempts to destroy the Jewish population, there would, as an empirical result, have been no Christianity.

From a historical standpoint, we came to realize that the “Festival of Lights” (Hannukkah) is a holiday whose joyous celebration (seven days) is an occasion of formidably important significance, perhaps unrealized to Christians as well as Jews.

As a universally metaphysical matter, it is difficult to rationally comprehend the age-old, horrifically demonstrated institution of bigotry, bearing in mind that, as depicted in the New Testament, Jesus, empirically, was a tan-skinned Palestinian Jew.

-p.

It is empirically predictable that society will eternally have its unfortunate number of aberrant personalities; it is certainly not inevitable that they possess weapons of human destruction. Tragically recurring instances of injury and death demonstrate their hazardous presence in civilized society.

We will once more declare that the ownership of guns, despite common propagandic memes, is not authorized by the Constitution nor statute. Our confident declaration is not alone symptomatic of our confident assertion; it is authoritatively ratified by the plain reading of Early American history. As stated in prior writings, the NRA and others who self-interestedly proclaim that the Second Amendment to the Constitution grants the right to American citizens to own and use guns are proximally responsible for yesterday’s tragic events at Brown University, as well as the plethora of ubiquitous tragic events in public schools, parks, places of worship, in fact, everywhere.

In contrast to our small pocket knife, whose utility extends to cutting a string to open packages, whittling, or eating fruit, the utility of guns is singularly and perniciously limited to inflicting serious injury or death.

The distortion of the contextual terminology of the Second Amendment stems from the ubiquitous combination of personal self-interest (commercial profit) or ignorance of early American History. In no wise did the prudent “Founders” intend to authorize every American citizen to be a “gunslinger,” as the gun lobby would pretend. The intent of the grant to the “People” was not intended for the general American population.

History attests to the serious, hotly contested debate between the “Federalists” and the States’ Rights (Colonists), whether the new Nation would be administered by one Central Government or by several separate State or Colonial Governments. The definitional status of governmental authority, as then perceived, possessed the right to raise and maintain a standing Army; thus an historical compromise was reached to recognize a Central Government but agree that each State (“The People”) would have the right, nevertheless, to raise its own armed militia; and that the People (State Militias) would have the riught to bear arms. This enlightening and determinative fact is objectively referable to early American history and not to polemic.

We have been eternally frustrated at the subjective and convenient misreading of the relevant Constitutional Amendment, its popular acceptance, and agonized at the consequent tragic results. We are also puzzled and frustrated that the opponents of gun ownership do not make this empirically legal argument.

-p.

We’ve been told the ancient bard,
Could hear the “music of the spheres.”
We have since seen harmony on high,
Tho astral strains are never heard.
We do hear the music of “our” sphere,
Where virtuosos perform in nature’s realm.
One has but to will to hear.

The splash of raindrops on trembling leaves,
And whistled wind-song thru dark reeds,
The high-pitched scratch of cricket limbs,
The basso profundo of bullfrog croaks,
And redundant “coo” of mourning doves,

The baby summoning her mom,
The wolf intoning his baritone aria,
The countless chirps of little birds,
The gleeful chatter of sportive chipmunks,
The staccato sound of barking dogs,
The brassy honks of flyover geese,
The lake’s soft slosh on muddy banks.

One can, in truth, faintly hear,
If he listens, most meditatively,
The upward thrust of perennial plants,
The final melt of tardy snow,
Spring, is that really you?
Have you just returned?
Welcome, do come in, Spring, my love.
Bienvenue!

-p.

Leonard N, Shapiro, 12/13/25, Kingston, N.Y.

Many of our writings may fairly be termed opinionated or questioning; others express observations and editorial comments; this writing, by contrast, has as its thematic intention the raising of the fundamental question: asa to why the subject of immigration is so problematic?

Generally defined, “Immigration” is the action of leaving one’s country of origin or domicile to live permanently in another country. Our thematic query relates to the empirical cause of the ubiquitous opposition to the understandable desire to live a better, often freer, life. It may be contextually emphasised that the United States of America (excluding its indigenous peoples) is populated universally by immigrants and their generational progeny.

It may be strangely observed that many, if not most, of the developed industrial countries share the same negativity; many have relevantly gone politically rightward, where national identity is historically or traditionally sacrosanct. Is it possibly the myth of superior or historically familiar folkways, atavistic fear of change, selfishness, fear of competition for jobs or resources, or just plain pernicious xenophobic bigotry?

The horrific policies of the autocratic-leaning Trump Administration in raising a Halloween-masked palace army of Gestapo-like goons to harass, arrest, incarcerate, and banish Hispanic people on the bogus suspicion of being criminals without a modicum of due process is an extreme and shameful demonstration of perverse xenophobia. Donald J. Trump and his MAGA cultish lemmings are an extreme, nightmarish example of hatred and loathing of immigrants, but not singularly atypical of the thematic inhumane conundrum. It is to be emphatically noted that many immigrants are fugitives, fleeing for their lives from autocratic tyranny. We might also relevantly note that Congress has historically provided a body of precedential legislation regarding fugitive and general immigration, and that the Statue of Liberty, holding her lamp to guide the “[poor and huddled masses…”] to a better and safer life in America, is tactically positioned in New York’s East River. to face outward from the Nation, in keeping with Emma Lazarus’ poetic invitation.

We, ourselves, are grateful, first-generation beneficiaries of immigrants who fled Soviet political repression and the brutality of religious pogroms. As typical of our experience as children of refugees, we have been educated, employed, paid taxes, and served in the military as proud and grateful American citizens.

We will readily (and perhaps gratefully) admit that we cannot conceive of a conceivably rational explanation for the selfish and pernicious bigotry that underlies the extant, universal prejudice against needy human beings, seeking a better life by immigration. As a practical matter you will have to ask those MAGA miscreants who selfishly celebrate the non-empathic elimination of USAID, the foolhady and ignorant elimination of the Nation’s .health and education agencies, the hobbling of Medicare and Medicaid, the reduction of student loans, the elimination of regulations assuring clean water and healthy food, the cruel opponents of abortion, the proponents of fossil fuel and guns, and sundry other saintly MAGA personalities.

-p.