On the Aught

In Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge, protagonist Larry Darrell says, “A God that can be understood is no God”.

So, if there is Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of Time, with Time here being defined as the lifespan of the current universe, it is beyond personhood, beyond being, beyond effability.  In other words, Something Eternal.  The word Aught, “A-U-G-H-T”, derives from two Old English words that in turn ultimately derive from two Proto-Indo-European words literally meaning “eternal thing”.  Since that’s about as nonspecific as possible, for purposes of the following set of conjectures, let’s call this Something Eternal “The Aught”.

The Aught has no name.  It has no need of a name.  Since it is the one and only Something, the one and only Eternal Thing, there is no other Something from which it needs distinguish itself.

The Aught produces yet claims no possession; it redeems yet requires no gratitude; it sustains yet exercises no authority.  It has no need of obedience, worship, prayer, praise, adoration, supplication, benediction, love, respect, or even acknowledgement.  It just is.

The Aught is both perpetual and ever-changing, flowing through and animating all that is throughout spacetime and beyond, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal.

The Aught is the Source of all that is, the Course shaping its formation, and the Force energizing its manifestation.  From our perspective, these are different things, but in reality they are One.

The Aught favors none; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.

The Aught does not need us nor want anything from us; individual beings are too infinitesimal and ephemeral within the Universe for it to take much note.

The Aught is neither male nor female.  It does not take sides, nor have sides.  From it emanate both light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction, everything and nothing.  Each of those antitheses is defined by its opposite.  Without their counterpoints, none of them can exist, and the fact that those opposites exist in competition with each other is what give us choice, the choice which is the definition of freedom.

A note about Susan B. Anthony and accusations of racism against her

Much of the accusations against lifelong activist Susan B. Anthony derives from following quote attributed to her: “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”

Yes, long-time feminist and abolitionist Anthony did in fact say that in 1869, and yes, she was white when she said it.  But those comments came during debates nationally over the proposed 15th Amendment to the Constitution.  This proposed addition stated that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 

At the time, full U.S. citizenship, meaning the right of suffrage, was still denied to women and still would be under this amendment regardless of the “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.  Anthony was not protesting just for affuent white women but all women.

In 1833, Susan B. Anthony was one of the earliest leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the foremost abolitionist organization in the United States before and during the War of the Rebellion which continued operations through to 1870. 

In 1866, she co-founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose goal was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex”, along with Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley Foster, and Henry Blackwell. 

The AERA split in 1869 on the question of whether to support passage of the Congressionally proposed 15th Amendment give its deficits regarding the rights of women (it did not include them at all), with Frederick Douglass supported by Stone arguing that AERA should support it and those opposed advocating to hold out for universal suffrage.  In the debates, Douglass was quite insistent that freedmen getting the vote was much more important than any women getting the vote, and that women’s rights should come secondary to the rights of black men, at least in this instance.  This was a complete reversal of his staunch defense of women’s right to vote at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

The same debate over how extensively to increase suffrage had taken place in Congress, with more wide-sweeping versions reduced to “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The impasse rent the organization asunder.  Anthony and Stanton forming the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) while Stone and Julia Ward Howe formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).  Anthony’s infamous statement was made during the debates in the AERA at this time.

After the 15th Amendment was passed, Douglass became an active participant in the NWSA led by Anthony and Stanton.

The NWSA and the AWSA rejoined in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which became the League of Women Voters after passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

One might infer from his stance vis-à-vis Anthony, Stanton, and their faction within AERA over the 15th Amendment in 1869 that Douglass was just another misogynist and male chauvinist who only wanted rights for other men like him.  However, just three years after opposing suffrage being granted to any women before being granted to all black men, he stood for Vice President as running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party, a group which before mid-1872 had been Section 12 of the North American Federation of the International Workingsmen’s Association.  Later, his chief protégé, ideological heir, and anointed successor was Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

On the day Douglass died in 1895, he sat next to Anthony on stage at a convention of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C., a convention in which a number of Afro-American women participated.  When she heard of his death that evening, Anthony rushed to the house and stayed several days helping Helen Douglass, his (second) wife with arrangements.  She stayed in their guest room reserved for her visits, which had a portrait of her hung over the fireplace, a companion of the one of Elizabeth Cady Stanton which hung in Frederick Douglass’ study.

Judging either Susan B. Anthony or Frederick Douglass by one statement or stance taken out of context as if the same were made in the third decade of the 21st century is fucking absurd and a disservice to both them and all those for whom they struggled.

 

On the Electoral College

Out of 60 U.S. presidential elections, the winner has gotten a majority in the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote eleven times: 1824 (John Quincy Adams), 1848 (Zachary Taylor), 1854 (James Buchanan), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln), 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1892 (Grover Cleveland), 1912 (Woodrow Wilson), 1968 (Richard M. Nixon), 1992 (William J. Clinton), 2000 (George W. Bush), and 2016 (Donald J. Trump).  This is a rate of occurrence of 18.33%.  

After the election of Dubya in 2000 with a majority of the EC vote without a majority of the popular vote, Democrats screamed bloody murder for abolition of the Electoral College.  After Trump repeated Dubya's feat with a popular vote deficit of over 3 million, the screaming bloody murder for EC abolition got even louder and shriller.  

Strange, but I don't remember them screaming bloody murder about the need to abolish the EC after Bill Clinton's victory in the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote in 1992.

One of the chief arguments made by Democrats is that wealthy white male property owners at the Constitutional Convention came up with the Electoral College as a way to ensure support for slavery.  This is an example of what Kellyanne Conway would call alternative facts and historians and political scientists would call bullshit.

The Electoral College was not created to support slavery.  The original Virginia Plan was to have Congress elect the President but that fell out of favor after several delegates pointed out that the process would violate the separation of powers principle.  James Madison and others wanted direct popular election, and the EC came as a compromise from those two positions.  Thus the convention created a separate body whose members were appointed by the legislatures of the various states whose sole function was to elect POTUS, with electors from each state equal to the combined number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress.

The only provision of the Constitution at all relevant here is the Three-Fifths Clause, which came out of the compromise of the same name.  In the Three-Fifths Compromise, the states with larger populations of affluent free white male property owners over the age of 21 agreed that slave states could count each of their slaves who had no voice of any kind as “three-fifths of a person” for purposes of apportionment of Representatives.

The only reason it is relevant, and even at that not directly so, is because by that clause slaves in the various slave states were counted as three-fifths of a person each for purposes of that state’s representation in the House of Representatives.  Now, for that to be relevant to the Electoral College in any way, we need to go a step further still to the fact pointed out above that a state’s electors are equal in number to its total Congressional delegation, and that is the only way in which slavery was at all relevant to the EC.

It was much like the way convicted felons and all prisoners count toward a state’s population for representation in Congress and for budget allocations but are allowed no voice of any kind.  By all rights, a state’s population count for purposes of representation, taxation, and allocation of funds should be reduced by two-fifths of the total number of prisoners, a provision which would strongly encourage sentencing and other penal reforms.

However, I don’t like that solution.  What I believe is that not only should formerly imprisoned convicted felons be allowed to vote, especially after finishing terms of parole, probation, or suspended sentence, but that all prisoners currently incarcerated should be allowed to vote, regardless of their crimes, provided they meet the qualifications for citizenship.  And also that citizens should be automatically registered at birth or naturalization.

The fact that the past two Republican presidents have been elected with a majority of the electoral college vote while losing the popular vote is a travesty and an abomination of the democratic process.  But changing the election of the President to a purely popular vote presents its own issues.

The third largest city in the United States, Chicago, has a larger population than the U.S. states and territories of New Mexico, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawai’i, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, District of Columbia, Vermont, Wyoming, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Marianas, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

The City of Los Angeles has a larger population than all those states and territories plus the states and territory of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa, Nevada, Arkansas, Puerto Rico, Mississippi, and Kansas.

The City of New York, our largest city, has more people than all the states and territories above plus the states of Washington, Arizona, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Oregon.

The metro areas of Los Angeles (13.3 million+) and of New York (18.3 million+) each alone have a greater population than each of the above states and territories plus the states of North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. 

Combined, the L.A. and N.Y.C. metro areas have a greater population than any state except California, and if we add that of the Chicago metro area (14.5 million+), then even that is surpassed.  Those three metro areas alone have a combined population of 46.1 million+.

The myth that the Electoral College was created to support slavery became popular among Democrats after the 2000 presidential election when Dubya won by the EC count while losing the popular vote.  The myth’s second coming was in 2016.  Simply doing away with the Electoral College for direct popular election of POTUS brings with it its own set of problems.

As you can see from the map, the overwhelming majority of U.S. population lies in states along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which also happen to be areas where the Democratic Party is strongest.  The party’s elite and apparatachiks believe that abolishing the Electoral College will give them a permanent seat in the Oval Office.

That delusion arises from their hubris that tells them their majority in those two regions is permanent.  It’s similar to their push to reduce the margin of Senate approval for judges and justices from two-thirds to simple majority during Obama’s terms in office during the time they actually had a majority in the Senate.  The cute idea gave us Gorush, Kavenaugh, and Barrett.  Also, once the oceans begin to swamp the actual coasts when the seas rise due to the climate apocalypse, the population will shift radically.

Is the Electoral College anti-democratic?  Indubitably.  Should it be abolished?  Absolutely, but not until some mechanism has been devised to ensure that voters in the vast majority of territory physically do not have to see their voice reduced to the point where they are no more than two-thirds of a person in one of the states on the coast.

Cleopatra was not black

Cleopatra VII Thea Philopater of Egypt was not black.  Contemporary frescoes depict her with pale skin and auburn hair.  

Aside from Ptolemy the Great, the scions of the dynasty named for him descended from one ancestor from the Macedonian Seleucid dynasty in Syria, one from the Macedonian royal family, and one Macedonian nobleman who served as one of Alexander the Great’s general. 

In all subsequent generations, the Ptolemies adopted the native Pharoahs’ habit of intrafamilial matrimony; she herself was the daughter of a father whose parents were siblings who was uncle to her mother and her mother’s uncle.  She, like all members of the dynasty, was fully Macedonian and nearly all Ptolemy.  Wikipedia has a detailed family tree in the article for “Ptolemaic dynasty”.

So, while having a dyed-in-the-wool proud Zionist play Cleopatra in a movie is in bad taste because of her questionable politics and its attendant racism against Arabs and other members of non-European cultural groups, but it is not “white-washing”.  It can’t be because Cleopatra herself was “white”.

The photo below (borrowed from Wikipedia) is a contemporary post-mortem fresco of her in Italy.

On Matoaka, the woman once nicknamed Pocahantas

Born around 1596, Pocahantas was not named Pocahantas.  At birth, she was called Amonute, and as a child nicknamed Pocahantas which means “playful”, but that was only a nickname, not her actual name.  When she reached adulthood, which among the Powhatan was much younger than 18, she took the name Matoaka.   Changing one’s name to mark milestones in life, such as reaching adulthood in her case or a certain Cherokee warrior changing his name from Pathkiller to The Ridge after a permanent peace was reached between his people and the United States in 1795, was common practice among Native Americans.

In 1613, she was visiting the Patawomeck, a tribe belonging to the paramount chiefdom over which her father rule. The Patawomeck tricked her into boarding an Englishman’s ship and that was how the English captured her, doing so to exchange her for prisoners held by Wahunsenacawh and weapons and tools stolen in raids.  Wahunsenacawh returned the prisoners but kept the rest, so Jamestown kept his daughter.

She stayed in the town of Henricus for over a year, and during that time the minister, Alexander Whitaker, converted her to Christianity.  When she was baptized, she adopted the name Rebecca.  Partially to secure lasting peace between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy, she consented to marry John Rolfe, a tobacco plantation owner who’d lost his wife and children in a shipwreck on the way to Virginia from the Summer Isles (Bermuda).  This was something countless other native women did (Nancy Ward, to cite just one example), not only between their people and the English but with other native peoples as well.  Among the people of her husband and son Thomas, she was known as Rebecca Rolfe.

When her portrait was engraved in London, she told the artist her name was Matoaka, clearly giving him the name by which she preferred to be called, and although he engraver did include her “Christian” name, he did her the courtesy of giving her preferred name first. Given that point, when referring to the actual historical figure herself, we ought to call her by the name she chose, Matoaka.  Otherwise, we’re deadnaming her.

And please stop spouting bullshit about her being raped and reducing her status to that of a helpless victim, a pitiful damsel in distress, when she clearly showed herself wielding all of the agency which she could in that time.