Apenas, un día...

F.: Rafael Suárez

Preocúpate del sentido y

Preocúpate del sentido y los sonidos se preocuparán de sí mismos.

 

Lewis Carroll

Alicia en el país de las maravillas

How the World Views US ‘Clown Show’

Some Americans may be amused by the “clown show” that is modern U.S. politics, particularly the Republican presidential race. But the crude insults and gross bigotry are seen around the world, reducing the appeal of democracy and turning more people against the U.S., notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

 

By Paul R. Pillar

 

The U.S. political class and political system in effect grant a lot of leeway and a lot of tolerance to excesses of American politicians, including excesses exhibited during election campaigns. There is little consistency and almost no principle in determining which comments by candidates come to be considered as campaign-crippling gaffes and which do not. Much gets said that does not cripple a campaign but which a majority of decent Americans, if they carefully thought about it, would probably agree is unreasonable, untrue, mean, inflammatory, bigoted, or extreme.

 

The tolerance comes partly from an acceptance that, oh well, politicians will be politicians, and that especially during a race for a party’s nomination extreme things will be said to appeal to the angriest and most active part of a party’s base and will not necessarily endure during a general election campaign let alone once the winner takes office. It comes partly from a quest for even-handedness, especially among the press, involving a supposed need to give equal respect to every position expressed merely because it is expressed, regardless of the unreasonableness of its content.

 

And it comes partly from how much all of us who are political junkies (which includes to varying degrees a large proportion of the U.S. population) are entertained by the spectacle. This last factor has been especially at work this year with the phenomenon that is Donald Trump, who first came to be known to most Americans primarily as an entertainer. What is extreme and unreasonable gets treated as harmless fun.

 

Essays can and should be written on how the fun isn’t really harmless even when confining our perspective to the United States — about how this sort of crude followership rather than the exercise of true leadership by contenders in political races is a race to the bottom when it comes to reason and decency, and how it encourages a further lowering of political and moral standards among the America public as a whole and not just in the portions of the electorate that are the main targets of the crude appeals. But what may be even more likely to be overlooked is the effect such discourse has on perceptions overseas.

 

American politics unfortunately has not been stopping at the water’s edge, in at least a couple of respects. One, which we saw recently with opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran, involves how much domestic politics complicates and impedes the making and implementation of U.S. foreign policy.

 

Another involves foreign governments and publics forming impressions about the United States and about Americans based on what they see and hear going on in American politics, including the crazy and disgusting aspects of it. Globalization and modern mass communications have made this second factor more important and more inescapable than ever.

 

Every indication of dysfunction in U.S. politics diminishes in foreign eyes the reliability and trustworthiness of the United States as a partner and leader in world affairs. Foreigners just got another such indication with the resignation of the speaker of the House of Representatives because members of his own party considered him insufficiently obdurate and too willing to work cooperatively with others.

 

Beyond the general picture of dysfunction are more specific hateful or prejudicial positions that some politicians get away with taking, which leads foreigners to conclude reasonably that such views must be shared by much and even most of the American public. This greatly harms the image of America as an open and tolerant land and the substantial soft power that has flowed from it.

 

The problem has been most acute in recent years, though by no means limited to, the frequent indications of Islamophobia. It is bad enough when impressions are conveyed to foreigners by the words and actions of Koran-burning pastors or religiously biased army generals. It has become even worse with leading (according to opinion polls) candidates for the presidential nomination of one of the two major U.S. political parties appearing to go along with statements that “We have a problem in this country — it’s called Muslims” or stating themselves (notwithstanding Article VI of the U.S. Constitution) that a Muslim should never be president of the United States.

 

The deleterious effects in majority Muslim countries of such postures taken by U.S. politicians are multiple. The belief that the United States as a whole is out to persecute or subjugate Muslims gets entrenched, making it that much harder for the United States to win trust and get accomplished what it wants to accomplish in those parts of the world. Foreign governments, sensitive to their own public opinion, find it politically harder to cooperate with the United States. The motivations for anti-U.S. extremist violence grow stronger, and thus the probability of such violence increases.

 

Politicians who like to appeal to the baser sentiments of a political base ought to think hard about such consequences. If they nonetheless continue such appeals, they ought to be condemned for doing so and voters ought to reject them, decisively.

 

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

 

S.:https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/26/how-the-world-views-us-clown-show/

September 21, 1976: Chilean Exile Orlando Letelier Is Assassinated in Washington, DC

Repression for the majorities and ‘economic freedom’ for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.”

By Richard Kreitner

 

(...)

 

The economic policies of the Chilean junta and its results have to be placed in the context of a wide counter-revolutionary process that aims to restore to a small minority the economic, social, and political control it gradually lost over the last thirty years….

 

In such a context, concentration of wealth is no accident, but a rule; it is not the marginal outcome of a difficult situation—as they would like the world to believe—but the base for a social project; it is not an economic liability but a temporary political success. Their real failure is not their apparent inability to redistribute wealth or to generate a more even path of development (these are not their priorities) but their inability to convince the majority of Chileans that their policies are reasonable and necessary. In short, they have failed to destroy the consciousness of the Chilean people. The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years, the closing of trade unions and neighborhood organizations, and the prohibition of all political activities and all forms of free expression. While the “Chicago boys” have provided an appearance of technical respectability to the laissez-faire dreams and political greed of the old landowning oligarchy and upper bourgeoisie of monopolists and financial speculators, the military has applied the brutal force required to achieve those goals. Repression for the majorities and “economic freedom” for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin. There is, therefore, an inner harmony between the two central priorities announced by the junta after the coup in 1973: the “destruction of the Marxist cancer” (which has come to mean not only the repression of the political parties of the Left but also the destruction of all labor organizations democratically elected and all opposition, including Christian-Democrats and church organizations), the establishment of a free private economy and the control of inflation a la [Milton] Friedman. It is nonsensical, consequently, that those who inspire, support or finance that economic policy should try to present their advocacy as restricted to “technical considerations,” while pretending to reject the system of terror it requires to succeed.

 

S.:http://www.thenation.com/article/september-21-1976-chilean-exile-orlando-letelier-is-assassinated-in-washington-d-c/

Relato y describo el sueño

F.: Rafael Suárez

Somos libres de hacer lo que queramos.

Mentir o morir

David Trueba

El vómito ciudadano ante sus dirigentes ha obligado a tomar medidas, lentas, pero saludables con respecto a los refugiados.

 

No estamos habituados a mirar la vida desde la perspectiva de la desesperación. Pero estar tocados por la suerte no nos tiene que hacer olvidar que ese lugar existe y está muy poblado. Cuando el escritor Céline, en su relato del naufragio humano titulado Viaje al fin de la noche,escribió aquello de que la verdad es una agonía que nunca termina, se colocaba en esa perspectiva y concluía que la única opción de supervivencia se resumía en mentir o morir. Mentirnos a nosotros mismos se convierte en un consuelo, y así nuestros Gobiernos, como entes superiores, nos mienten a nosotros mismos para tranquilizar conciencias por institución interpuesta. Lo raro en la crisis de los refugiados sirios de estas últimas semanas es que parte de la población europea le ha gritado a sus Gobiernos que no estaban dispuestos a aceptar la mentira un segundo más. Y entonces los Gobiernos se han visto obligados a cambiar el paso. Sucede siempre cuando la mentira es tan intragable que obliga a vomitar a los ciudadanos.

 

En la Europa de los tirones de orejas económicos ha aparecido un bloque insumiso a la caridad, fortalecido por la esencia nacionalista, que sostiene que el maltrato a los refugiados es la única opción real. Países que consideran, desde las más altas instancias, que la solidaridad se terminó con ellos mismos y ahora toca la mano dura con quienes llegan 15 minutos después de que se agotara la bondad. Son países que llamaron a la puerta de Europa y cuando entraron decidieron cerrar por dentro. Pero una de las líneas mayores de cinismo ha sido pronunciada por David Cameron cuando ante las imágenes de un niño ahogado en la costa ha reconocido que como padre se ha sentido impresionado y eso le ha hecho variar su política inflexible. Aprovechemos la alta cotización del niño muerto en la bolsa de gestos solidarios. Corramos a salvar alguna vida antes de que se agote la mecha y nos quedemos sin niños ahogados con que abrir en portada.

 

El vómito ciudadano ante sus dirigentes ha obligado a tomar medidas, lentas, pero saludables con respecto a los refugiados. Queda una indefinición en el aire, porque las políticas de reagrupamiento familiar, cuya dureza inhumana se cobró desde el Canadá la vida del niño de la foto, son también el escollo diario para desgarros familiares en nuestro país. Conviene no emocionarse demasiado con los gestos y legislar desde una mínima humanidad que levante un poco el listón desde el que comenzamos a mentirnos a nosotros mismos.

 

F.:http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/07/opinion/1441654042_633682.html

El nombre de una estación de tren...

Visto en Flick.com
En una estación de tren  de Rosario (Argentina).

The Who - Baba O'riley

Demande-t-on à une île qui elle est?

(....)

 

Ouvre mon nom.
Ouvre le livre.

Le bonheur que l'on éprouve à aimer n'est pas, forcément, lié à un amour heureux. Il est besoin d'amour.

Dans le miroir de ma salle de bain, je vis apparaître un visage qui aurait pu être le mien mais dont il me semblait découvrir, pour la première fois, les traits.

Visage d'un autre et, cependant, si familier.
Groupant mes souvenirs, je retrouvais, à travers lui, l'homme avec lequel on me
confound mais dont je suis seul à savoir que, de tout temps, il fut, pour moi, un étranger. Brusquement, le visage disparut et le miroir,
ayant perdu sa raison d'être, ne refléta plus que le pan de mur, lisse et blanc, qui lui faisai face.
Page de verre et page de pierre, dialoguant
entre elles, solitaires et complices.
Le livre n'a point d'origine.

Jeune est le monde au regard de l'éternité et
si vieux, au regard de l'instant.

Demande-t-on à une île qui elle est?
La mer la flatte et l'étourdit.
Un jour, elle l'engloutira.

Fixée à rien. Fixée à l'eau.

"Comment vois-tu la liberté? - demanda le
disciple à son maître. "Telles, puet-être, deux ailes téméraires se
débattant, au ciel, désespérément contre le vent", répondit le maître.
Et il ajouta : "Reste à savoir, cependant, si --
comme tu l'as supposé aussi -- ces ailes sont bien celles d'un frêle oiseau de passage."
"Et si elles n'etaient pas les ailes du frêle oiseau? -- reprit le disciple.
"Plus juste -- dit, alors, le maître -- serait la comparison.
"L'image de la liberté serait le vent."

Chaque vérité œuvre pour sa vérité.
Modeste contribution à la Vérité universelle.
Notre foi en elle, la soutient.

...toutes ces petites vérités qui viennent miner l'idée que nous pourrions avoir d'une véritée unique.
-- Ce sont des fourmis -- pensais-je -- creu-
sant, imperturbables, leurs trous.

D'un écrou de mouvement, ne fais pas un
écrou de serrage.

"La vérité n'existe pas afin de permettre, sans
doute, à nos vérités d'exister," disait-il.
Et il ajoutait : "Le soleil une fois couché, dans
le vide espace céleste, scintillent, pour nos yeux levés, des myriades d'étoiles.
Ô solitude de chacune d'elles."

Nous errons dans la mort, éclairés par nos
vérités insistantes.

Immuable et juste est la loi. Moins sûre d'elle-
même, la justice.

Impossible à cerner est, peut-être, la Vérité.
S'efforcer de l'exprimer, c'est, souvent, faire
fausse route.
Déloyal, malgré lui, est le premier mot.

La vérité comme voie et non point comme voix?
Je crois. Je trace.
Lumière. Lumière.

"La vérité est un mot imprononçable," disait-il.

N'entrave pas la libre envolée de l'idée. Tu
serais le premier à regretter l'inconséquence de
ton geste.

L'âme est sans retenue.

Le moineau ignore le chien mais il prend garde au chat.

L'oeil rivé à la montre, tremblante attente. Chaque déplacement de l'aiguille te fait
sursauter, car elle te remet en question.
Si capricieux est le futur. Il nous surpendra

toujours. Attendre quoi, sinon la mort? Et nous la redoutons.
Attendre, peut-être, l'oubli de la mort.

Dieu n'est pas dans la réponse. Comme le diamant dans ses reflets, Il est dans la
miroitante question. 

 

 

Edmond Jabès
Angoisse d'une seule fin