View 260 June 2

THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 260 June 2 - 8, 2003

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Highlights this week:

Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, and modern Europe.
Iraqi WMD
A 1:93,000,000,000 scale model of the solar system!

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Monday June 2, 2003

The world pretty well had to get along without me last week. We got Cable Modem here, and it is working, but we also had family duties, I seem to have a low grade infection in one foot that has sapped my energies, and what with all that I didn't even read the Sunday papers.

I see by today's papers that the US has given up trying to hold any kind of national election in Iraq, and is naming people to a national council that we will give a little supervised authority, but we aren't in a hurry to hand over the oil to a plebiscite. Sounds as if someone is finally getting smart over there. If we have to be responsible for Iraq, then we have to govern it, and we can't play ideological games about "democracy" in a country that never had any.

The Cable Modem story is interesting -- nothing is ever simple here -- but it is working and the story will be in the column shortly. There are some good morals to the story too. I keep doing silly things so you don't have to.

One thing, I find I am doing more looking at suggested web sites now that it is very fast to get to see them.

And today I really have to put a lot of attention into BURNING TOWER.

As usual there was mail over the weekend, some quite interesting.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2003

It's column time, so the action will all be in mail. Adelphia Cable Modem continues to work well. When I'm not doing the column I have Burning Tower to work on, and a new system to build.

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I have always been an admirer of the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, and consider his REVOLT OF THE MASSES one of the formative books of my college period. It is widely ignored now, of course.

Chris Brand, whose works you have seen mentioned here in the past, has done a review of Ortega in a very odd place.

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‘WHAT WENT WRONG WITH CONSERVATISM?’ I have just published a review of The Revolt of the Masses, the masterpiece of the great Spanish political thinker, Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955). The review commends the philosopher for his liberalism, elitism and realism, and his stalwart opposition to communism and fascism; but it doubts whether the European Union (which he always hoped for) will do much to fulfil his aspirations; and it also doubts whether either Ortega’s conservatism or anyone else’s will enjoy 21st-century success without a clear commitment to sexual liberation and to making realistic families the key social unit. The article was published in The Sprout [a satirical Brussels-based magazine, aiming to give E.U. bureaucrats and politicians a hard time], No. 10 (Commentary), http://www.thesprout.net/graft/graft22.htm . The Sprout kindly called me a “respected psychologist” and acknowledged the help of the Woodhill Foundation in keeping me afloat.

Chris

Chris Brand, Psychorealist, author of THE g FACTOR (Wiley DePublisher, 1996).

The review is worth your reading. Anything truly reflective about Ortega is worth your reading. But do note that I am not Chris Brand.

Ortega's elitism may be judged by this self-evidently true sentence: "The average man finds himself with 'ideas' in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation." Ortega then goes on to say that the average citizen accepts the marvels and benefits of civilization as a kitten accepts milk, with about the same level of understanding.

That made a great impression on me at one time. I have yet to see any real refutation of the view. Which leaves one to ask, as they do in the car ads, "So what do we do now?"

You may see Ortega's mass man who is done with discussion, and wants to impose his "ideas" without further ado, in Harvard and other universities when someone they don't care for is to speak; as they shouted down Solzenhitzin.

There will be discussion in mail.

I have a horrible confession. Some time ago -- a year at least -- I was sent a package containing a copy of INFERNO from the president of Electrochemicals, the people who make Stabilant 22, for me to autograph. I signed it and set aside to get Larry to sign it, and promptly forgot it. Now I can't find it, and I can't find the name and address of the President who sent it, and I am feeling like an idiot.

If I can manage to get a name an address again I'll send a copy of Inferno autographed, and of course I suppose that one day the package will surface, this being Chaos Manor. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Stabilant 22 is wonderful stuff and I continue to use it on all my machines and telephones and stereo equipment, and it's still highly recommended.

And now I have that. Thanks to all

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Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Column time and novel time. Hard at work.

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Thursday, June 5, 2003

A new Microsoft worm, critical, see mail or the security page. Note that I put security warnings on the security page so if you haven't looked there lately you might want to.

More discussions on other subjects when I get back from my walk.

Iraqi WMD: letter and reply in mail. I have gathered much of the discussion generated after the war and put it over on the What To Do page I started back in 2002 when the Terror War began. It should be obvious from the organization at the top what material was before and what after the war.

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Friday, June 6, 2003

D-DAY

WARNING: I am getting returned mail I did not send. Clearly someone is sending mail faking my return address. DO NOT OPEN ANY MAIL ATTACHMENTS that purport to come from me. They didn't. The only time I send mail attachments is to people who know they are coming, when they are coming, and what they will contain.

While looking for something else I came across this:

Wilson, having run on a platform of "He kept us out of the War", later had different ideas, and his request to Congress for a declaration of war said

„The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. (...) The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. (...) Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. (...) We know (...) that in the presence of [autocratic states](...) there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world.(...)We are glad (...) to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, and for the liberation of its peoples (...), for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy.“[

Of course on December 10, 1941 the US declared unrestricted submarine warfare against Germany and Japan, without regard to any rights of neutrals, making one of Wilson's reasons for war somewhat obsolete: almost as if the US, twenty years after the Iraqi War, declared that we would use chemical and biological weapons as we chose in future, and began to do so.

Wilson's noble ideal of world democracy was seen by many as analogous to the Athenian preference for establishing democracies everywhere.

I open a sort of new debate on the Iraqi situation over in mail. We are there. What do we do now?

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