The Incompetent

"Violence … is the last refuge of the incompetent."
in Isaac Asimov's The Foundation


The first refuge: to refuse to act
Wake up, greet everyone, read the newspapers,
Break the fasting, go for a walk, greet everyone, 
Go to work, greet everyone,
Travel abroad, greet the world. 
Did my incompetence harm any one? 

2: to refuse incompetence
Read myself, read books, read people,
Read newspapers, read manuals, read myself
Again, read people, read the same book,
Read how it now read, read myself reading.
Did I get rid of my incompetence?

3: to embrace incompetence
Who cares about the world, about people,
About what they think of me, about consequences,
The future, the past, history and the rest,
This is my first and last show up in life.
Did my incompetence bother you much?

The last refuge: to resort to violence
Who cares if violence begets violence,
Forwards no cause, melts down the brain,
It saves me time, gets me through refuge 1 and 2,
Lands me on 3, and I'm free to see, you fools, 
My incompetence realized fully.


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Written in Times New Roman, written in Times New Roman... 

St Anthony's Day Revelations

I tend to choose a humorous or saucy revelation when it comes to this day of the year which sees my namesake saint being worshipped in the Christian world. But the massacre in Orlando plus the political exploitation of it, in particularly by Trump's campaign, bled my intentions out. 

The world is not more violent than it was in the past but extremism is visibly on the rise. A few weeks ago we almost saw a far-right president take office in Austria, right in the heart of the well educated western world. In France, Marine Le Pen's party is still gathering momentum. The soon to be held Brexit referendum has deep notes of the rise of nationalism and the closing of borders that entails it, and could potentially lead to a disaggregation of the European Union---a union which was thought of, first and foremost, as a way to end the possibility of more events similar to the two world wars to erupt. And it's predictable that the continuous flow of migrants on to the eastern borders of Europe will take a toll in the the popularity of more moderate visions of the world.

To add to that, demented individuals killing in the name of Islam will only help to swell the ranks of extremism, to recruit paradoxically more enemies and thus self-defeating their purpose: if life in the western world was any tough for a Muslim before it will only get worse. Curiously, if there was a time when Islam was great it was when it was the most tolerant of cultures; when Jews, Christians, Hindus, Nogodians were non-persecuted subjects in the Muslim world. Medieval Europe, by then, was a cesspool of religious fanatics in comparison. 

So it's not the time to shun political correctness in every day language, specially if we're talking of public figures as Mr Trump got to become. It's by language first that we dehumanise our fellow human beings and thus make it mentally possible to proceed to wish for their death, or to kill them ourselves. And it's also by language that perpetrators such as the one in Orlando will be shunned or deemed as heroes. Therefore it's not the time to attach other labels to that murderer other than demented individual. That should be inscribed in his tomb. Whether he adhered to ISIS or to Lunar Defenders is just a way of finding a group to blame, and the murderer a channel for his insanity.

It's in times like these that cool brains are precious commodities, when the whipping up of emotion towards blame and hatred blinds. And if you're inclined to think of apparently strong leaders, as Mr Trump views himself, as the way to fight a perceived threat to the world you hold precious, it's funny but it's exactly the insecure who will fill out that role of strong leaders. The way Mr Trump reacts to comments on his small hands or sexual apparatus, the way he responds to personal criticism, are hints on how insecure he is. An assured person would most probably smile or laugh at similar comments. The strong, and tough, and aggressive stances are a cover under which the insecure person hides. And I invite you to look for those characteristics in historical figures. It's a fun exercise.    

Even more curious is that America was much greater when the likes of Mr Trump could never go past the intention of becoming a presidential candidate. The smallness of Mr Trump's world lies in the self-delusion that he can make a society greater out of subtracting those whom he deems that should not be a part of it.

This is a time to be politically aware and to keep all our democratic cards close at hand. Our every day stance and speech within our social circles counts; our vote is likely to have too much importance on our collective near future not to be cast.  

From Ernest to Donald in a blink of an eye

Discussional Metaphorce
Let us polish our swords with our enemy's unseen blood!
Or let his buckler meet our thrust and the return blow
Silence the brilliance that spurted out of our throat...
Otherwise, let us summon the soured scapegoat!

My history as a reader of Hemingway is one tainted with physical violence.

The first time I was reading Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises when a fight broke out in the tram. This man in a suit got fed up with a blabbermouth who was noticeably mentally challenged. Twice I had to intervene in order to push them apart. Both of them exhibited a bull-like determination to keep on altercating.

Yesterday in the subway, while reading Hemingway's hunting feats in his Green Hills of Africa, an African woman almost punched a young couple after the girl called her stupid as she didn't want to change seats allowing the couple to sit side by side.

Curiously, the times I spent reading The Old Man and the Sea don't seem to have affected nearby fellow passengers. That major work on the struggle of mankind with natural elements didn't beget any physical violence, if we except the fish I helped killing with each Sashimi I was nearly forced to eat while reading that book.

But let's blame Hemingway for those two events. Or let's blame the electricity needed to run both those public transports.

Unfortunately the human trait of selective memory tells me otherwise: my brain, trying to find meaning and, in the process of finding meaning, a cause, collated those two episodes of violence and made me ignore all others that would challenge my selected scapegoats.

And that leads me to Donald Trump.

Trump has been a master at summoning scapegoats, and became himself a scapegoat. Muslims, Mexicans, Chinese, Blacks, all are now favourite selected victims for Trump or for his followers, while Trump is being blamed for inciting people to violence and racism when he's just a catalyst, not the creator.

I'm inclined to think that historical moments make the historical man and not vice-versa. That a similar character in different historical conditions wouldn't achieve the same results.

A true entrepeneur, Trump's drill and pipes have struck a deep and dark oil field. If there wasn't crude there ready to burst out into the surface, he would have died impoverished and alone in the desert sands of Narcissiland instead.

In the meantime, I'm going to read only books on Zen while travelling in electric powered public transports. Just in case I'm wrong all along.  



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Bibliography (besides Hemingway's):

- Charlie Campbell, Scapegoat - A History of Blaming Other People, Duckworth Overlook, 2011
- Robert T. Carroll, Becoming a Critical Thinker - A Guide for the New Millennium, Pearson Custom Publishing, 2000
- Dietrich Schwanitz, Cultura - Tudo o que é preciso saber, Publicações Dom Quixote, 1999

There’s No Biz Like Showbiz

“We live in a show business society and we must take it as a revelation or scientific truth – each one will decide according to the way one is in this world. All is show business, from the religious acting to the political one, from the images of a train wreck to those of a concert.” Pilar del Río wrote in an issue of Blimunda, a magazine published by José Saramago’s Foundation.

Donald Trump seems to adhere to that view and is now the Republican front-runner for the next American presidential elections. And he has some credentials for this: he is a businessman and an expert in shows, having graduated in that area of human knowledge the old way, that is, after a few seasons as an apprentice.

Most recently, Mr Trump played out an old card from the political deck: he claims that as some opponents don’t have experience of running a company as he does then they are less prepared than he is to be president of the most powerful economy in the world. (Trump also says that he wants to make America great again, but when did it stop being so?)

It sounds like he has a point, at a first glance. But is a government really like a company? Do companies run specifically to try and better the lives of their employees? Do employees pay their companies a sum of money so that the interests and needs of all of them are taken care of? Or, in a reverse glance, is making a profit a government’s goal?  Sure, there are similarities in both enterprises. However “government is like business” is a textbook example of a false analogy.

In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether they both have property P.

Examples:

1.Employees are like nails. Just as nails must be hit in the head in order to make them work, so must employees.

2. Government is like business, so just as business must be sensitive primarily to the bottom line, so also must government. (But the objectives of government and business are completely different, so probably they will have to meet different criteria.)

Sorry to have to hit this nail in the head and into your brain, Mr Trump. You didn’t invent the use of false analogies in political discourse, nor outing you on this use will end such practice. After all, even without you, “the show must go on.” And on, and on, and on. Over and out.

As Jon Stewart showed a few times during his last appearances on The Daily Show, there’s no candidate as entertaining as Donald Trump. He’s a guilty pleasure of ours, hopefully only for a summer’s worth of entertainment: the silly season run by the truly silly. The way he trashes out his opponents reveals not Trump's brilliance but rather how poor his opposition really is.

Yet, using a bit of our imagination, we can see Mr Trump being elected. Bush II was elected, for two terms, so why wouldn’t Trump have a chance? The former managed to start two wars which ultimately offered ISIS to the world and the largest number of refugees since World War II. Mr Trump is a businessman, and he’ll deliver at least the double: “A bargain, I say! Four wars for the duration of one presidency! Gather around, folks! What a show I have for you! You’ll never be bored to death again!”

Let’s brace then for some futuristic wars, 

The US-Mexican Walled War I. President Trump built a wall in between the two countries and made Mexico pay for it, which they gladly did to prevent the surge of Americans who were trying to escape their own business, sorry, government. 

The Vag Wars saw all women hunted down and incarcerated in Kitchen-Prisons for decades with the sole purpose of catering food to the troops, and where solitary confinement was replaced by coupleteries in which the inmates were forced to satisfy sexually Free Men for free. 

Canada was annexed after its soldiers were taken by surprise while laughing about what was going on with their neighbours’ government: The Yes We Canuck War.

And, finally, the fierce Hairy Civil War (Fighting at Home is Cheaper!). All males were forced to shave their heads in order to make the president have the best (the only) hairdo in the land. Heavy Metal fans went underground where they let their hair grow the longest possible to defy the authority. They all grew deaf also because their favourite music is more damaging when reverberated off cave walls. Authorities developed listening devices to catch the Metal Moles.

The future will be a true Hell of a show!