The Math of America.

May I share some mathematical models of America with you? They won't be elaborate or complex -- more like intellectual doodling, but I hope they will be fun/serious. For what it's worth, I do have a Doctorate in math, but I’d like to limit things to a couple of mathematical snapshots of America.

(1.) This is the concept of reductio ad absurdum which is intimately related to something called "proof by contradiction". Not all mathematicians like this proof, since its "indirect", but sometimes that's all you've got.

It works, briefly, like this. Let's say you're convinced that A, B, and C are true propositions, but you just can't seem to prove D in the same way you proved A, B, and C (i.e., "directly"). So sometimes you fall back on proof by contradiction which works like this (be warned, it's a weird way to prove things).

You say, well what if we assumed D was "false" and then rigorously derived what that would imply. And IF D was false (remember, you want to prove that it is true), and IF this implied that A, B, or C was false (which you "know" are true), then (voila!), you've just proved that D is true. Sounds a little like a slight of hand, doesn't it, but believe it or not, this kind of reasoning was the origin of non Euclidian geometry (another story).

OK, now to politics.

I'm leaving out some steps here (which students always appropriately resent), but the above is all of a piece with something called the "contrapositive". You will see the similarity as we proceed and also see that this analysis relates perfectly to the fascist right wing (dem & pug equally) "model" of human existence.

But first to the logic. The contrapositve of A implies B, is Not B implies Not A. Indeed these two conditional statements are logically equivalent. Here's how it works: If you're in Albuquerque, then you're in New Mexico (a conditional statement which is clearly true). Now for the contrapositive: If you're Not in New Mexico, then you're Not in Albuquerque.

These can (and frequently do) take the form of syllogisms (at least 2 premises and a conclusion) and some of these syllogisms go all the way back to Aristotle, who even though he was totally wrong about practically everything in the physical world (note Galileo Galilei -- who was punished terribly for sticking a pin into Aristotle's TOTAL misunderstanding of motion, etc.), he had it all together when it came to logic. Indeed, Euclid based his Elements on Aristotle's insightful logic.

Well, I hope you're still with me (and even enjoying things a little?), so we can now talk about dem/pug fascism (dem/pug, because after the 2006 Congress of dem Republican, we now know that right wing dems = right wing pugs).

Here's the conditional statement. IF the Bush/fascist/Republican/neocon agenda was truly in touch with the social reality of human existence, than our economy would be great, our children wouldn't be massacred in money cow oil wars for the elites, Mother Nature wouldn't be gang banged by Texas energy corporations, our retirements would be solid, out heath plans would be solid, and American science wouldn't be under funded into an intellectual embarrassment (for the first time in American history!), and Wall Street would be a raging bull.

Formally put, IF A, then B.

But, remember Not B implies Not A, and since the United States of America is now wall to wall "Not B", the logical/mathematical implication is clearly Not A, i.e., the Bush/fascist/Republican/neocon take on human existence is FALSE.

Said more poetically, give a fool (why does president pinhead come to mind?) enough rope and he will hang himself.

Jesus put it even more succinctly: "Ye shall judge them by their fruits". And the left over fruits of these last eight years are rotten with failure.

Hey, we gave A a chance (eight years of a chance!), but the thumb of deductive logic is pointing straight down.

(2.) Shall we try another one? I'm not sure how I'm going to bring this one off, but it has to do with one of the most powerful and subtle concepts in the whole of mathematics, and this concept (or truth, since it’s more than a mere concept) is that of the Limit of calculus (or more generally, analysis).

Now even Newton was fuzzy about the limit (not about much else!), and this led to a very rare event in Western History. The event is that a contemporary of Newton, an exceedingly bright philosopher/theologian named Bishop Berkeley, correctly rapped Newton's knuckles about what Newton called "infinitesimals" (sorry, but that's a very long story), so let's try to be "intuitive" about the limit, even though that's often a mathematically slippery way to avoid really taking care of business.

Here's an example. Imagine the following function: y = f(x) = 1/x, and then ask yourself what does 1/x "get infinitely close to" as x "approaches infinity”.

There are all kinds of fancy notation for this, but I'm deliberately avoiding it since I don't want to reinforce what I believe to be the most common misunderstanding of mathematics. And for a change, this is easy to put into words.

*drum roll*

The most common misunderstanding of mathematics is confusing the "reality" of mathematics (a big and much argued topic) with the "symbology" of mathematics. And I confess when I was learning this subject, I too fell prey "quasi consciously" to that belief. After all, the notation was so impressive and "different" that it seemed like what I saw on the page WAS mathematics.

However, in due course I outgrew that belief (as do nearly all mathematicians -- I assume), and realized a better way to understand the symbology was to see it much the same way you look at musical notion. After all, no one thinks that notation "is" music, because they understand musical notion is basically "directions" for you to follow, and if you follow the directions well, "something happens" which we call music.

Actually, almost EXACTLY the same thing is true for mathematical notation. The notation is telling you something to do "in your head" and if you carry out those instructions properly, you will hear (can we be poetic again!) "mathematical music". In short, the notation is not the "real thing"; rather they are instructions to follow so you have the opportunity to experience the real thing. It's very intellectually liberating to get this straight, so you stop (in the words of my former high school debate coach) putting the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble.

Well, I keep going off on tangents, don't I? I guess my only excuse is that this is fun for me and I increasing suspect I really don't WANT to get back to politics and all that b.s.

However, the limit thing is so beautiful and powerful; I'm determined to make a connection between it and the world we wake up to in the morning.

Here's an "intuitive" definition of the limit. It's giving you an exact description of a place you'll never reach, and even though that should be qualified, let's run with it anyway. For example the limit of 1/x as x goes to infinity, is zero (we never said what it was before). Think of it like a plane in a science fiction movie that "approaches" the runway, and indeed gets unimaginably (literally) "close" to the runway, but never makes contact.

You see, that is what is happening to 1/x as x keeps getting larger and larger. 1/x will NEVER "equal" 0 (in fact, 1/x = 0 is a contradiction because it has no solution), but the LIMIT of 1/x as x gets huge is zero. When x equals a billion, you can take it to the bank that 1/x is very, VERY close to zero -- even though it is not and never can be zero.

Finally, the limit concept is the soul of calculus and since calculus was the supreme mathematical tool of science for a couple of centuries, it is clearly a very "deep" concept. Sometimes I tell my students the limit is not the Cheshire Cat; it's more like the "smile" of the Cheshire Cat. For those of you who know calculus, you also know that differentiation and integration are simply two different applications of the limit.

Hence, all roads in calculus lead to the limit -- which, notice involves infinity ("infinitely close") which is the real reason it is such a profound intuition.

OK, time to relate the "limit" to human, social existence.

Arguably, politics is not only more part of the problem than the solution, it IS the problem, since it promises much, but always delivers next to nothing. Said more exactly, "politics" is the social/political game created by the elites to seduce and control the human race, and thus it all comes down to two choices:

(a.) We can "play" this game (and ALWAYS lose, since all the game rules were created by the elites). For example, for many (most?) of the people who elected Barrack Obama, it looks very much like the cards were stacked (again!) and we're getting, not the campaign rhetoric Obama, but an elite bought and paid for Obama. However, he gets his hundred days, and then we will know everything.

(b.) The other option is to "transcend" the game. But what does this mean? Well, it almost certainly means a kind a consciousness quantum jump into a different social dimension. Notice, "politics" isn’t even mentioned in this dimension, since the political game (in the words of a very wise Zen Master) is like trying to wash off blood with blood. And if and when a critical mass of Americans (or more generally, human Earthlings) get this straight, the game will no longer have any meaning. In short, it will be like realizing that if you're trapped in a table card game which is hopeless, all you have to do is kick over the card table.

You see, that's the second option. Kick over the card table of the elite game. Which means what? It means that the "will of the people" overwhelms the "will of the elites" (and their army of dem/pug puppets). And “overwhelm” here means DOING WHATEVER WE HAVE TO DO to take back our county, planet, and lives from the gaggle of national/international vampire elites (aka, the “Have’s”).

Another Zen saying: If you don’t get it from yourself, where will you go for it?” Hence, screw politics. Critical mass has been reached. It’s time to revolt (God willing, non-violently, but . . .).

The "limit" in all this, to use it very loosely, is what the elites everlastingly dangle in front of the working class (or the middle and lower classes, i.e., 98% of the human race). It's the pseudo payoff of playing the political game. But that payoff, however much we sacrifice and work to play the game (just as we did for Barrack Obama) is something we "never quite reach". It seems like we're getting closer (we elected Obama), but like touching the runway for the plane, it never, NEVER happens.

So for us, it's not the smile of the Cheshire Cat -- it's the fascist sneer of the elites and their dem/pug puppets who well know their political game can never, never be won.

That's why they invented it.

And that’s why we should immediately stop playing it. And do what? Well, that’s what God and/or evolution gave us the internet to work out.

I’m outta here after this one, but one of the most brilliant philosopher’s of the 20th Century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, pointed out that many problems which can’t be “solved”, can be “dissolved”. This exactly relates to what we’re talking about now, since even though the political problem is “insoluble”, (a lose/lose game for the middle and lower classes), it is “dissolvable”. And we dissolve it by simply ceasing to play the lose/lose game of “politics”.

Our birthright intelligence, conscience, and creativity are more than enough to transcend politics, so what are we waiting for? Playing the political game is a form of suicide. Transcending the political game is a form of liberation.

Why aren't we dancing in the streets? We just liberated ourselves from an American Dictatorship!

This election wasn't just an election. It was a SUCCESSFUL REVOLT against a totalitarian government.

The jury may still out about Barack Obama, but whoever or whatever he turns out to be, he can NEVER be America's new dictator. His powers will be extensive, no doubt. His mandate was real, but the mandate was less to get "him in” (Hillary would probably have been just as good), than to get a "Dictatorship form of government out"!

And by God, that's exactly what we did.

During these last eight years, President Shoe (I mean President Bush) probably had more power than any President in American history. And of course, like all "temporarily" successful dictators, his power came from fascist terrorism.

The Bush/Republican neocons almost certainly engineered 9/11 to terrorize the American public into abject submission. And once they got their hooks into our Constitutional Republic, they began to systematically obliterate our Bill of Rights, our environmental protections, our educational systems, and even our health protections, etc., etc. You already know the agonizing list.

In short, they had basically limitless power and they knew exactly what they wanted to do with it (remember, the neocon cabal was planning their coup d'etat for years before the year 2000 stolen election). Indeed, the black heart of these last eight years was a marriage in hell between the elites and the neocon traitors who NEVER answered to or represented the United States of America.

Their agenda was to totally undo the moral/rational legacy of FDR and to declare total war on the lower and middle classes. This continued; of course, uninterruptedly during the 2006 deem congress of traitors, forever proving to us that we have a ONE party system of dem/pug puppets of national/international multi millionaires and multi billionaires.

Or to say it historically, the near totality of our government were and are simply "tentacles" of the vampire rich “Haves” (we already know who the “Have Not’s” are, don’t we?)

For years it looked like our government and planet were doomed. It looked like the treacherous, unAmerican neocons were systemically taking over EVERYTHING and that you literally took your life into your hands if you stood up to be counted as a survivor, patriotic American.

Bush referred to our Constitution as "a piece of paper" and the blizzard of fascist lies were rarely challenged. The Greek God like elites started money cow oil war after oil war to feed their infinite greed.

All bets to the contrary, pinhead George was succeeding where his grandfather, Prescott Bush had failed. It's now fairly common knowledge that the Bush Family was fairly tight with Hitler, and that Prescott Bush actively tried to engineer "his" coup d'etat for the Nazis in America during the 30's. This is all ho hum historical fact, so debate here is a waste of time.

FDR squelched it, however, and the US had to await Georgie Porgie for a second shot at handing America over to the fascists (and yes, many of them STILL are literal Nazis).

So during these last eight years America has been teetering in the balance. Would the neocon slime manage to trash American into corporate fascism, or did there still exist a "water table" of passionate Americans who would somehow undo an elite-dictated totalitarian country?

Also, not to forget, the mounting and gruesome evidence that the fascist elites are putting into place a literal genocidal attempt to "cull" the working classes. Examples? Well, there's many, but a brief sample would be that poisonous foods are now everywhere (no governmental controls anymore), nearly totally dismantled environmental protections, no significant monitoring of the pharmaceutical giants, Bush's cold blooded murder of New Orleans by systematically allowing the levees to fail -- the list goes on and on.

Add to this the elite agenda that the lower and middle classes are better cattle or dead, hence they have under funded out of existence America's former cutting edge in science and the dumbing down of American education (many the best students used to want to "come" here -- now many of them want to "leave" here).

The point is simple. The point is that the elite spider web is now EVERYWHERE in America and it's a spider web in which working class Americans are the struggling flies.

Hence, the elite goal of goals during the last eight years (actually, much longer) was to use their dem/pug puppets to achieve a level of domination such that America would henceforth be a textbook totalitarian government.

BUT . . .

2008 changed all that. Not with Obama (who is really academic at this point), but with a "silent revolution" to kick the ass of totalitarianism, because voting for Obama was really a side show. No, what will live in history is that the United States of America voted AGAINST a Dictatorship form of government.

And you know what, it's gone! Are the elites and neocons gone as well? Well, we can't get greedy when we're playing for ultimate governmental stakes, and so (alas) the neocon traitors and the vampire elites are still out there, BUT (and this is why we should be dancing in the streets!) we have flexed our national muscles and that g.d. "straitjacket" of a fascist dictatorship (kept alive by terrorist lies -- beginning with 9/11) we have shed like the skin of a snake.

So my fellow Americans I think we need to take a deep breath (I know I do), smell the roses, maybe take a vacation (if we aren't too broke) and just "let it sink in" that we WON this round, and we won it gloriously!

God willing, Obama will not betray our Herculean (and costly!) rising to this patriotic moral/rational challenge and after the dust settles, we can start thinking about our "next" revolution.

A couple of suggestions:

(a.) We've got to get to the bottom of 9/11 once and for all, because until we do, America will have permanently lost its soul. Was it an infinitely traitorous "inside job"? Well, anyone who examines the hundreds (?) of sites overflowing with scientific studies, on the spot observations, and devastatingly obvious videos showing that each of the towers imploded from "within" and not from the impact of what was after all a relatively small plane, will they ever again be deluded by the Bushivick's spin.

We also must be realistic about this since ONLY if patriotic Americans coordinate these investigations totally independently of politics, will there be any chance that the truth finally comes out, because neither Obama nor ANY politician will come within light years of this infamy, because they know the explosion of patriotic fury will trivialize Mt. St. Helens. They also know that IF 9/11 was engineered (or at least "facilitated") by the Bush Administration, the fall out will radically change our political system/prison instantly and forever. The only comparison might be how the Civil War "redefined" America. So will the truth of 9/11.

(b.) The other matter we must deal with once and for all is that America's Middle Eastern foreign policy (for at least the last 10 years) is in only a comic book sense "America's" foreign policy. There are so many cooks stirring this soup that the United States of America has been reduced to a tail wagged by a gaggle of other countries. Gee, wouldn't it be nice for a change if Americans decided our OWN Middle Eastern foreign policy? If left to our own interests, would we magically solve the “Middle East Problem”? Highly doubtful, but we would almost certainly be more in a position to pour oil on these tragically troubled waters if we didn’t have so manly special interest group acronyms on our back.

But, that's later. Now I'm going to, at least in spirit, go out and dance in the streets, since even though colossal unfinished business still awaits us, we should really take it in (and for me, it's taken weeks for this to happen), that a month or so ago we SUCCESSFULLY REVOLTED against a totalitarian form of government the elites so desperately tried to trap us in forever.

So, Obama, do your thing. Many of us already have some reservations, but you should at least get your 100 days and we can see where we are then, so in the meantime, reservations or no reservations, Godspeed to you. You will need all the “positive energy” we can send you.

But (one last time) in the "background" of the personalities and individuals, somewhat "invisibly" looms what will be a benchmark of American history, i.e., 2008 was the year we gave the finger to an American totalitarian government. So even if Obama tried to be our new dictator (and surely very few of us worry about that), no chance, no chance, no chance, since that governmental “framework” is now in ruins.

We broke its bloody back and it will never, never recover. The fascists gave it their best shot, but now it's dead in the mud.

Yea!!!

A personal note to my friends (and otherwise).

This is a piece I've been soul searching about for the last few days. Don't worry, it's not going to be "true confessions" or anything particularly awkward, but it is going to be a very personal statement. However, even though it's going to about "personal issues", I'd like to think it will be useful to many folks in a variety of ways.

Lately I've written 2 or 3 pieces about the "tone" set by Obama's appointments to date. For me, they have been excessively right wing dems, even though it can be argued (from the polls, etc.) that the people whose passion, money, and elaborate infrastructure, created over several years, got Obama through the primaries and elected him President were progressives and moderates.

However, alas, anything remotely "left wing" is once again a dirty word, and several of Obama's appointments can't seem to let a day go by without trashing progressives.

So, lot's to be concerned about and, yes, a little outraged if you believe that Obama's collective "team" (now nearly totally completed) is far to the right of the people who elected him.

Of course to be fair, the bigger picture of this is the fundamental tragedy of America, i.e., that "both" of our political parties are far to the right of the vast majority of American citizens and voters. Indeed, millions of Americans now realize that it's absurd to talk about our "two party" system, since the 2006 dem congress proved once and for all that practically all dem members of this congress were/are closet Republicans who slavishly obeyed Bush's slightest whims about EVERYTHING.

But, having said just a few things about some contemporary political issues, may I go back to the personal "sharings"?

Like most even moderate Americans, I have been increasingly horrified by watching the murder of our Constitutional Republic,the gestalt of ecosystems necessary for human existence, the American economy, and most of all the slaughter of our children in the Bush/Cheney money cow oil wars for the elites which have already murdered tens (hundreds?) of thousands of innocent human beings (with the standard percentage of children).

And gradually, gradually I began to write pieces which tried in some small way to rise the challenge of ATTACKING these pug/fascist devils from hell (who the 2006 dem congress showed were equally bought and paid for dems).

The more I ceased to "repress" the political events of the Bush years, is the more I found myself overtaken with moral/rational outrage. I don't know what other word to use. What other word "could" be used, when witnessing such utter, cancerous evil? If religion is right about the "anti-Christ", who better fits that identity than Dick Cheney?

I guess I'm fading in and out in this writing, moving from the "personal" to the political/factual, so I hope you will be patient with me.

I think the MAIN thing I'm struggling to put into words is that as I ceased to repress the agonizing reality of corporate fascism combined with religious fanaticism, I found a voice that was in a kind of permanent "attack mode". Now I don't apologize for that; indeed, I consider it one of the high moral/rational peaks of my life that I dared to take on these monsters with the full force of patriotic rage.

I often got into trouble with my total commitment to fight the good fight (and the word is spelled F I G H T!), and found myself increasingly alone with many of the pieces. My take on that is that, say, two years ago, it was almost as if you had to take your life into your hands in order to acquire ramming speed as you crashed into the neocon/fascist juggernaut. Thus, even though many comments were overjoyed that certain monstrous things were finally being put into words, I suspect (and it's only a suspicion) that sometimes the responses were thin because of raw and totally realistic fear.

After all, these ultimate criminals had almost certainly murdered Senator Paul Wellstone, sent anthrax in the mail to only high profile democrats, kept slaughtering our children in their money cow oils wars, and MOST OF ALL, almost certainly engineered 9/11 -- with a little help from their Saudi friends, since the Saudi Royal Family and Bush Royal Family are joined at the hip (as are Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush).

"Attack mode" is the operate phrase here, and it's exactly what I want to talk to you about now.

After a couple of pieces about my reservations about Obama's appointments (which continue to worry me), some of the feedback (and I thank you for it) jiggled me into the awareness that basically EVERYTHING I had been writing was "locked" into attack mode. Hence, my comments about Obama, etc., were still in that mode as well.

Now the personal part of this is that after much soul searching, I realized that this formerly kick ass and courageous (if I may say so) style of writing was inappropriate and even probably counter productive when writing about any "reservations" about Obama's appointments, because the "anger" was excessive to the content.

But here I hope my Op-Ed friends will forgive the ongoingness of attack mode writing after it had already served its purpose. It's like I was coming back from the political trenches, in which I was literally "warring" (albeit verbally) with the Bush/elite/psychopaths and religious fanatics.

Please understand that it takes a little "chilling out" when you crawl back from the front lines and find yourself in a fundamentally different world. And the world I am struggling to crawl back to is simply no longer the world where Cheney was King of America for eight straight years.

So if my aggressiveness in a few earlier pieces about Obama and his appointees seemed counterproductively "over the top", I now publicly acknowledge that I agree with you, and that I am taking to heart what I'm now putting into words and will still fight the good fight as always, but will escalate to attack mode only for exceptional issues.

Believe it or not, I still basically like and trust President Elect Barack Obama and I also agree that I need to give him more time and space to be true to himself.

As an aside, I am now less worried about many of his appointees because, unlike Bush who was a puppet waiting for a hand to be stuck into him (e.g., Cheney and the neocon cabal of American traitors), Obama seems to be sufficiently grounded and centered that he's too "strong" to be puppetized and will hopefully, albeit gradually, emerge as a political force of nature who will be at least slightly (hopefully more!) more pragmatically left of center than, say, the DLC Clinton machine.

Well, I was all over the place with this one, and if you stayed with me I thank you. I'm certainly not going to throw out my political attack mode, but I will save it only for things like 9/11 and the growing evidence that the elites have long been escalating their class war into what is now an amazingly open genocidal attempt to "wean" the working classes.

Just a sample of this is the presence of poisonous foods EVERYWHERE, due to systematically removed governmental protections, Bush's conscious murder of New Orleans by steadily allowing the levees to fail, the systematic degeneration of our atmosphere, rivers, and lakes into toxic tragedies, once again due to the nearly total removal of America's environmental protections. And oh yes, relatedly, the dumbing down of American citizens by a wholesale dismantling of America's educational systems and the virtual under funding out of existence of what once upon a time (now over!) was the cutting edge of American science.

In short, the elites clearly think they need to "wean" the middle and lower classes of America, which is reminiscent of the forced inoculations of Africans by European agencies which is indubitably related to the sudden epidemic of aids. Too many blacks for certain malevolent European whites?

Lastly, the 2006 congress of dem/pug Bushiviks, has once and for all made it crystal clear that even Bush and the Republican Party are now and never have been the true "causes" of America's political system/prision; rather our congress (with some rare and courageous exceptions which prove the rule) is simply a seething mass of elite "tentacles”.

So, bottom line, the old words still say it best. The tragedy of America and the entire planet is still the 6,000 year old one-sided conflict between the "Haves" (who always win) and the "Have Nots" (who always lose). Yes, the wacko religious fanatic’s come in and out of this in usually temporary and minor ways, but the true Heart of Darkness is still that ancient conflict between the fundamentally defenseless and the 1 or 2 % of national/international vampire elites.

Hence, the attack mode is still 100% appropriate for things like 9/11 and the satanic elites (with their increasingly obvious genocidal agendas), but I've decided its100% inappropriate for tracking the emerging Presidency of Barack Obama, on which I will still occasionally comment, but NOT in attack mode. Indeed, hopefully if and when I do address Obama issues, it will be to reinforce the positive.

In short, I've decided that many of you were right and I should give Obama more of a chance, and if I significantly added any tension or stress to your life by those earlier pieces, I'm truly sorry for that since the whole point of these internet town hall meetings is ultimately one of community and the working out of realist strategies to save America and the Earth from the never-ending elitist strategies of infinite greed.

However, to keep the Bush's, Saudi's, Rothschild’s, Rockefeller's, Murdoch's, etc. (i.e., the collective human cancer of literal God's and Goddess’s of our one and only planet) from dragging the human species into extinction, there is NO LIMIT to attack mode.

So even though I’m still a committed “progressive” (increasingly I think these appellations do more harm than good, don’t you?), and still believe the ONLY two party system in America is between the American Dictatorship of the Rich (vs) what hopefully one day will be a full blown Progressive Party which finally expresses the true will of the American people (not the multi millionaire and multi billionaire elites), this is one liberal who will henceforth back Obama to the limit.

Partly because I still just “like” the guy, but more importantly because I fear the greatest adversary of President Elect Obama isn’t going to be the Republican Party per se, but a Congress of elite dem/pug puppets who will fight him at every turn, and for this oncoming fight for America’s soul, I plan to mount the barricades for our symbol of hope -- Barack Obama.

We should never forget what a hate filled congress did to Jimmy Carter.