johnpavlovitz.com/2023/06/09/many-of-you-owe-hillary-clinton-an-apology/
Category Archives: Quantum reality
Double Extractions
February 19, 2023
I’ve lately discovered that there is truly a lot of variety in how people do tinctures— especially with difficult herbals that are better when double extracted. So this is a report on the beginnings of an experimental process to see what works best for me.
I’ve been making teas and, recently, decoctions of Chaga, and I learned that it is one of those substances that, on account of the fact that some of it’s beneficial compounds are soluble only in alcohol, I should do a double extraction. That means normally that you simmer the mast (the herb that’s left over after straining out the tinctured alcohol) a bit and then combine the two liquids, being sure your quantities end up with a minimum 25% alcohol for preservation.
But then I started reading various approaches to get a better idea of how to do this, and found four distinct approaches. The details are a bit tedious, but essentially, it comes down to which you do first, the alcohol or the water extraction. Then there are variations in how long for each and how many times you do the water extraction. All of which is sort of a testimony to the really deep levels of beneficial compounds this Chaga has!
A Hybrid Method
I am in the process of double extraction of Chaga chunks by a hybrid method that combines several of the elements from the methods I found. Since I need to have the decoction to drink daily, I am continuing to do my water extraction every few days, and placing the mast from each in a jar with alcohol, adding a little alcohol each time to keep the proportions about the same.
I’ve also started an alcohol tincture with unused Chaga chunks, which I will let soak for 4 weeks or so — various sources suggest from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. At that point, I’ll be sure the second extraction jar has been sitting at least 2 weeks since the last time I added mast. Then I’ll strain the alcohol tincture and simmer the mast for a few hours, adding water as needed to maintain the volume.
Then the challenge will be to do the math to figure out how to combine the two so that it’s 25% alcohol, allowing for the fact that my alcohol is already 60% water (80 proof). May try to combine with a decoction as well, or just add the double extraction tincture to the future decoctions as I use them.
It’s all seeming a bit complex as I try to plan it, but I’m hoping each step will become clear to me as I go through the process — and modify as needed!
Basically what I’m doing is one batch alcohol first and one batch water first, and then combining the two. Hope it works!
Fascism
This is borrowed from an old post on the website ratical.org. It’s based on a study of fascist regimes, but it’s interesting how many of this aspects are found in current political movements. There are other similar examinations of fascism in the literature, and the website Orcinus.org has lots of information about groups and movements in the US over the past 40 or 50 years or so. It’s something people need to be educated about, because it’s coming.
“Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine’s policy.
“The 14 characteristics are:
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. - Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. - Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. - Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. - Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. - Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. - Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. - Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions. - Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. - Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed . - Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts. - Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations. - Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. - Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.”
Copyright © 2003 Free Inquiry magazine
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.This article was based upon the article “The Hallmarks of Fascist Regime” by Skip Stone, at www.hippy.com/php/article-226.html.
Penetrating the veil
Dec 23, 2022
This youngest daughter is an unusual child. A conversation several nights ago continues to come up in my thoughts and push me Into consideration of things I’m not sure I understand.
Just before she went to sleep the other night — it was the night of the Solstice — June turned and looked at me, then said, very seriously, “Daddy. I been having bad dreams about people getting dead.”
I tried to comfort her, and asked her, “What people?”
“Everybody,” she said. “Even you.”
Again, I tried to stay calm and comfort her.
Then she asked, quietly and seriously, “Did you know that your grave is beside mine?”
I swallowed hard and said no, trying to be comforting and not asking more questions.
She didn’t say more and went to sleep pretty soon after this. I remembered then that she had crawled into bed with us early the morning before and said she was having bad dreams. She didn’t say what and I didn’t ask.
As I think of the conversation in light of her frequent stories about her “sisters” and her “first family,” I get this strong feeling that she penetrates the veil in both directions, seeing her past lives with her “fairy sisters,“ as well as the future. I get an image of her seeing our graves side by side. It’s chilling.
What can this mean?
How should I talk to her about these things?
The elements of fascism
Because fascism is such an insidious thing, we must be vigilant and well-informed about how it looks in the early stages, before it’s too late.
[First published in November of 2016, this is pretty pertinent today, as the fascist elements released into our society by the Trump Effect are rampant, though seeming to lose much of their momentum lately. We need to remain vigilant.]
Fascism has been sneaking into our lives, into the hearts and minds of our countrymen, slipping into the national dialog in the guise of patriotism, strength, purity, religious piety, safety – all things that seem positive and non-threatening.
Trump and his appointees are pretty clearly leading us to an authoritarian state in the name of protecting us from “outsiders” and that’s why it’s problematic. From Dave Neiwert, a researcher on fascism who’s been following its rise for many years, here are a few of the characteristics that struck me as particularly noticeable in the current political climate:
— Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and with the goal of a mass party militia
— Positive evaluation and use of, or willingness to use, violence
— Extreme stress on the masculine principle and male dominance, while espousing the organic view of society— Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command, whether or not the command is to some degree initially elective. — [from Stanley Payne, in Fascism: Comparison and Definition]
— a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. [from Robert Paxton’s definition of fascism]
From Paxton’s “mobilizing passions” of fascism:
— the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group’s enemies, both internal and external;
— dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
— the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny;
— the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
From Roger Griffin: “Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy.”
Neiwert’s entire essay is worth reading: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2015/11/donald-trump-may-not-be-fascist-but-he.html
Latent cruelty
This has all been building up for a while, I know, but the last few weeks have seemed to be particularly offensive and painful to watch in America.
Reading John Pavlovitz’ latest blog post today seems to have crystalized in my mind a few things that have been bubbling around there for a while, too. He calls it The Trump Effect, and he lays out the development of it pretty clearly. It’s been remarked on before by others and I’ve certainly been thinking it since it began to surface during the T-thing’s administration, as racism and white supremacy began to be expressed in new and more open ways, violence increased and the quality of the national conversation began to decline daily. The slide away from truth and accuracy and decency in his daily rants had its effect.
There are lots of examples, and Pavlovitz relates some of the most egregious, but to me its in the essential failure of basic human compassion in the face of this raging pandemic that it is most clear.
How people can equate the simple discomfort and slight inconvenience of wearing a mask with putting other people–and other people’s children–at risk of serious, life-threatening disease has just been beyond me to understand. But seeing it as just another expression of the crass, stupid insensitivity to others that is at the heart of the Trump Effect helps me to understand it. It somehow makes these people feel empowered, self-righteous, justified in their own petty hatreds to be pretending that refusal to wear a mask or get vaccinated is somehow an exercise of their rights as an American.
So it’s not enough just to not do it, they have to proclaim their heroic stupidity and even harass others who are wearing masks and getting vaccinated. It’s so remiscinent of something…. what is it? Oh yeah. Nazi rallies. Book burnings. Klan rallies. Lynchings.
All these are of a piece. People venting their anger and fear and seeking justification in some kind of twisted version of “rightness.” Pavlovitz lays it clearly at the feet of Trump’s monstrous venom.
Though certainly not created then or by the man, for the first time in America’s history the latent ugliness in people was revealed and validated and celebrated by a sitting president—it was officially normalized. And what we’re experiencing now; this staggering, insensitive posturing in the face of so many people’s suffering, is the late-ripening fruit of something that has been set into the bedrock of half our nation. It is the malicious entitlement that MAGA was designed to nurture from the beginning.
JohnPavlovitz.com
If you’ve followed the rise of fascism in America over the past few decades, which has been documented by many including the guy on Orcinus, you know this strain of “americanism” has been festering under the surface, held in check by the sense of decency and fair play that is–at least I believe it is–a stronger, more truly American trait, but developing under cover of various rationalizations and facades. Trump’s legitimization of that strain is what has allowed the racism to swell along with all this other petty hatred. The whole development, of course, has been facilitated and exacerbated by the ease of vicious communication made possible by the internet and social media.
So now we are facing fascist America. Big Time. Trump’s America.
{Post script: My brother was one of the 599 people who died of of COVID in Florida yesterday, so this is all very personal to me. He was a victim of the anti-vax conspiracy theory wackos, didn’t get the shot, didn’t go to the hospital when he got sick. They kept him alive for weeks, but it ravaged him so that he eventually succumbed to a cardiac arrest.]
Pro-lifers really aren’t
A great column that goes far to explain why these Christians have pushed to such extreme positions on abotion, and showing just how un-Christian it really is. And how anti-life they really are.
Election challenges
The Orange one’s fascist
project to challenge the election
A final nail in the coffin of the Orange one’s desperate attempt to convince the world that he was cheated out of his throne just came from a district court judge in Michigan.
We all know, at least those of us still capable of rational thought, that it was a massive scam and an international disgrace, but the judge does a great job of laying it out.
It probably won’t convince those who drank the Orange Jim Jones’ coolaid, but it is at least confirmation at the highest level that this is nothing short of an illegal insurrection.
According to the National Law Journal report (rerun on law.com‘s Daily Report Aug. 25), the judge censures a group of lawyers–one of whom is Georgia Attorney Lin Wood–for their actions in the election fraud challenges. The whole group has been referred to their licensing states for potential disbarment.
“U.S. District Judge Linda Parker issued the orders in response to motions for sanctions filed by lawyers for the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan over the quickly rejected election challenge.”
The Law Journal
Those sanctioned are part of conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell’s team. The judge says the group showed bad faith in trying to use the judicial process to frame a public narrative for which there was no evidentiary or legal support.
“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” Law Journal quotes Parker from the opening to her opinion. “It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”
It’s a pretty strong condemnation of the whole effort.
Parker also said that the election challenge “was never about fraud—it was about undermining the people’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.”
This is all so clearly a fascist project aimed at pushing such a big lie that people believe it simply because it’s normal to think that no one would say such outrageous things unless there was some basis in fact.
It’s a tactic borrowed from the playbook of Hitler and Mussolini and has no place in our national process. These people should be disbarred, humiliated and prosecuted. Everything they stand for should be exposed to the light of public scrutiny and revealed for exactly what it, and its inspiration, is: a deceitful attempt to grab power.
The judge continues:
“But when viewed collectively, they reveal an even more powerful truth: Once it appeared that their preferred political candidate’s grasp on the presidency was slipping away, plaintiffs’ counsel helped mold the predetermined narrative about election fraud by lodging this federal lawsuit based on evidence that they actively refused to investigate or question with the requisite level of professional skepticism—and this refusal was to ensure that the evidence conformed with the predetermined narrative (a narrative that has had dangerous and violent consequences),” Parker said.
She goes on to explicitly show that the free speech these charlatans have claimed in their defense is not the same as that offered on public forums, because they were presenting affidavits to a court, which are required to reflect the truth, not speculation, conjecture and guesswork.
She specifically notes that lawyers presenting a case in court are not the same as journalists and are held to a higher standard of truth.
The judge wrote:
“It is not acceptable to support a lawsuit with opinions, which counsel herself claims no reasonable person would accept as fact and which were ‘inexact,’ ‘exaggerate[ed],’ and ‘hyperbole. Nor is it acceptable to use the federal judiciary as a political forum to satisfy one’s political agenda. Such behavior by an attorney in a court of law has consequences. Although the First Amendment may allow plaintiffs’ counsel to say what they desire on social media, in press conferences, or on television, federal courts are reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes which are well-grounded in fact and law.”
Four other judges around the country have recently passed down similar decisions related to Powell and other lawyers involved in election lawsuit cases. I hope these judicial responses put this foolishness to rest at last.
Blithering idiots
Yes, that’s a bit of an angry, unkind and vicious name-calling for a title!
I won’t try to defend it as justified, but I’m somewhat at a loss as to how to characterize what is happening with folks in our community, and, it seems, the nation as well. Much of what I see from folks who have been sucked into the “orange experiment”–as someone has dubbed the past few years–just seems to be blithering. Talking for effect and pandering to people who’ve abdicated their rational responsibility to critical thinking, evaluation, sorting through things for themselves. And not really making a whole lot of sense. That’s what I mean by blithering.
And they could fairly be called idiots in the sense that many of them just don’t really know much at all about what they’re blithering about. They haven’t bothered to look into the history, the scientific facts, even the reality of current reports floated on social media and propaganda masquerading as news sites, such as Fox News. They just take what someone they have decided to admire says as truth and repeat it without thought.
Locally we have just seen the impact of such blighted thinking on our school board.
The superintendent — responding to the CDC call and the obvious spike in COVID cases in our state and our county — had announced that masks would be required and caution would be exercised as school opens next week. Then the semi-republican echo chamber began to react to the idea of mask requirements, ranting and roaring about “standing up for our rights” and government mandates and other such phrases that have been put out to manipulate them. This week, the board held a special meeting and said the superintendent couldn’t mandate masks and school would be normal.
I want to call each of the four who voted to do this and ask, “Have you looked at the recent data?” Our county has seen rates go up by a factor of six times in the last few weeks, and the state has quadrupled its rate. We had four people in the hospital last week, this week we had 12 and in the past few days there have been 16 hospitalized. This is a tiny community and that’s a significant change. The curve is now going nearly straight up on that graph.
It is literally incomprehensible to me that people think that being asked to wear a mask in public is some kind of effort to exercise government control over their lives. They have long accepted that we expect kids to meet certain standards when they come to school, that we stop at red lights, that we follow laws and reasonable standards of behavior on the roads that make things work for everyone. That’s what this is. Not some violation of rights. The constitution doesn’t mention the right not to wear a mask
And then we have the true fascist, Florida governor DeSantis, who has ordered that any school district who does mandate masks will lose funding. So, being asked to wear a mask is infringing on someone’s rights, but the governor dictatorially mandating what a supposedly independent school board does is defending freedom? It truly boggles the mind the degree of twisted thinking, propagandized mentality required to think that way.
People who blast out about “standing up for our rights” by refusing to mask up or get vaccinated are somehow imagining themselves as some kind of hero. It’s really sad when there are so many places, so many issues that we truly need to stand up for our rights about, and these folks just don’t notice those things. Things like the blatant racism in our community, the inequity at the heart of the economic system, the injustice that is visited on poor or even middle class people every day by our legal system, homelessness and PSTD in our veteran population, hungry children and other issues that threaten to undermine the functioning of our democratic way of life — why are these people not worried about “standing up for our rights” on these issues?
I don’t blame social media for this turn of events, but it does seem to be making it worse. It gives people a platform to easily and freely spout un-researched, ill-considered notions that are absorbed without reflection by a numbed audience, all full of self-congratulatory blithering and self-righteous ignorance.
Candidates for local political office are “announcing” on social media platforms, reducing the political process to some kind of debased level of unhealthy posturing and attacks beyond even the low levels we’ve been seeing in TV political ads.
It’s all pretty discouraging to see. Especially as the pandemic threatens to once again disrupt daily life to an intolerable degree.
Selfishness…
John Pavlovitz, a progressive Christian blogger whose critique of the recent Fascist (he doesn’t use that term, I don’t think) surge in the American political landscape aligns well with my own, has spoken out strongly in the past year about the pandemic and the poor response from his fellow Christians.
His blog is Stuff That Needs to be Said at johnpavlovitz.com, and the post today pretty much summarizes the problem with vaccine hesitancy/resistance as one of plain selfishness. Which thoroughly indicts Christians who buy into the whole fascist republican stance on all this for the hypocrites they are, professing as they do to follow a spiritual leader whose most powerful message was “Love one another as I have loved you.”
As a former mega-church youth minister who was fired for refusing to support racist policies, he is well-acquainted with the fundamentalist approach and has very thoroughly debunked all that. This post today clarifies much about how and why these pseudo-Christians think the vaccine is not something they need to do. He says, starkly:
Selfishness is America’s second deadly virus and it may be one we cannot overcome.
And he makes it clear that it’s pretty un-Christian at heart:
I wish there was a vaccine that could make these people give a damn about other human beings; that we could inoculate them against whatever toxic cocktail of ignorance, fear, arrogance, political tribalism, and bad religion that has rendered them resistant to the suffering of others.
I suppose this shouldn’t have been a surprise. I imagine their denials of the virus and their refusal to mask and their defiance of safeguards should have tipped me off, but still I did not expect this entrenched and strident refusal to help other people, especially the many who claim to follow a “love your neighbor” Jesus.
And the prognosis for the country is also quite stark:
Until love and mercy and kindness take hold in the hearts of these people, until they are burdened with the common good, that lack of empathy will be a sickness that will destroy us.
I hope that he’s not right. I hope that goodness and mercy will prevail. I hope at least that these people will eventually recognize that the cost/benefit ratio for taking the vaccine militates in favor of reasonable action instead of this self-absorbed, ignorant attitude that puts ones own comfort ahead of the life and health of a whole nation.
Shunyata's Apprentice 