“Often it is not clear whose [Vocation] it is to [discern the Cassandra,] detect [their] warning[s], evaluate [them], and [then] decide to act. The President of the United States or [the youngest high school student in the Unified Federalist Student Economy (UFSE)] might be the person who could order action, but there may not be a general understanding of who should take the issue to them. Who owns [this kind of Productive Property in Alexander Hamilton’s America]? [Nobody] wants to [claim ownership of what’s] about to become a disaster. This reluctance creates a ‘bystander effect,’ wherein observers of the problem [have no Command Responsibility] to act. Increasingly, complex issues are multidisciplinary, making it unclear where the [Command Responsibility] lies. New complex problems or ‘issues on the seams’ are more likely to produce ambiguity about who is in charge of dealing with them.”
-Richard Alan Clarke and R. P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes, ca. 2017
“Make Love, Not War.”
Clarke’s Cassandra Coefficient is perfect with the Political Organization Problem and the Third World Ideologies Diagram. If the Coefficient can detect people warning of future catastrophes, it should also be able to detect people trying to stop future catastrophes from happening.
(1) The warning, the threat, or risk in question.
(2) The decision makers or audience who must react.
(3) The predictor or possible Cassandra.
(4) The critics who disparage or reject the warning.
There are 4 Components and 24 Characteristics in the Cassandra Coefficient. They read as follows:
Below are my Deconstructions of two quotations from Richard David Wolff (Socialism), Michael Lind (Nationalism), and Newt Gingrich (Ultramontanism).
- For Lind and Wolff, I have Spengler and Jünger.
- For Gingrich, I have Ryan, van den Bruck, and Stalin.
Feel free to evaluate (or reevaluate my Deconstruction handiwork):
“We have a lot of employment, but [our] Quality of Arbeit [had] collapsed [in the Great Recession]. The [Americans contributing Arbeit and generating Geld] now used to be people who had a Vocation with [a Paygrade, Citizenship, Property Rights and Authentic Dasein]. [This Low-Quality Arbeit], overwhelmingly, created have none of those things: [High-Quality Geld]—that’s why our [Socialism] have gone nowhere; [no] benefits—those are shrinking, pensions and so on; and the security is virtually gone. One of our biggest problems in America [we are all Debt-Slaves and Kapital-Slaves] who don’t know one week to the next what hours they’re working, what [Kapital and Schuld] they’ll get. [The Federalist America Union] can’t have a life like this.”
-Richard David Wolff, More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich, ca. 2018
“The degradation of the Arbeiter’s way of life, the ever shorter interval during which Arbeit remains in the same hands, the questionable value of Property, particularly landed property, and the variability of Means of Production—all bear witness to this. Consequently, there is no longer Geld in the old, static sense; the Value of Gold itself is [now] doubtful. There is no longer a Vocation in which one can attain complete mastery; now we are all apprentices. Something immeasurable and incalculable is inherent in transport and production—the quicker we are able to move, the less often we reach our goal, and the increase in harvest yields and manufacturing stands in a curious opposition to the increasing impoverishment of the masses. Happy is he who knows how to choose other, bolder paths [promoted by the Work-Standard].”
-Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt, ca. 1932
“A Clinton or a Bush was President, Vice President, or Secretary of state in every year between 1981 and 2013, an era in which working-class incomes stagnated, offshoring devastated US and European manufacturing, the world suffered the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the US plunged into multiple disastrous wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Trump became President by running against a Bush in the Republican primaries and a Clinton in the general election. The desire of many American voters to disrupt the quarter-century cycle of nearly identical versions of [Jeffersonian Liberal Capitalism] under alternating Bushes and Clintons is quite sufficient to explain the presidential election of 2016.”
–Michael Lind, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from [Neoliberalism], ca. 2017
“[What we saw in the 2016 US Presidential Election] is the true ‘Parliamentarism’ [inside of the US Congress of Parliaments]. [Here], the final decisions of the party leaders are a secret even to the parliamentary majority. The publicly visible activities of the politicians are fable convenue, and the exemplary tact of both parties sees to it that the illusion of ‘government by the people’ is rigorously upheld in reverse proportion to the actual meaningfulness of the term. [I]n America, [it is customary for the two halves of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, the Democrats and Republicans,] to deliver one set of promises to the people, and another to [whoever] fills the Party coffers; the first set is published, the second is kept.”
-Oswald Spengler, Prussianism and Socialism, ca. 1919
“Elections outside the workplace stand in an ambivalent relation to capitalism’s exclusion of real democracy inside. On the one hand, elections distract people from their conscious and unconscious upsets with working conditions. Elections focus instead on political candidates, parties, and alternative policies around issues other than capitalism versus alternative economic systems and other than their respective working conditions. That is why supporters of capitalism appreciate elections. Well-controlled elections do not question, let alone threaten, capitalism.”
–Richard D. Wolff, Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown, ca. 2016
“The indifference that has greeted the elections and the debates on suffrage, despite the efforts of parties and press, shows how alien the [P]arliamentary [Democracy] is to the Prussian and [American peoples]. When a Prussian or [American] has made use of his voting franchise it has quite often been merely his way of expressing a vague annoyance. In no other country have these election days à l’anglaise yielded such a false picture of actual political sentiment. The masses have never gotten used to this exotic technique of [bipartisanship] and never will. When [any Liberal Capitalist] fails to follow the proceedings of [the] Parliament, he does so with the knowledge that that [Parliament] will look after his best interests. When [Prussians and Americans do] likewise, [we do] so with a feeling of complete apathy. For [us] the only reality is [‘the Government’ both Big and Small]. With us, [Jeffersonian] Parliamentarism will always be a conglomeration of externals.”
-Oswald Spengler, Prussianism and Socialism, ca. 1919
“The real debate over Political Economy in the United States is not between the Small-Government Right and the Big-Government Left. That’s a recent pattern. The historic debate has been between [the champions of] Hamiltonian [Federalist Socialism] [and] [the champions of Jeffersonian Liberal Capitalism]. Both of these Schools are willing to [control the Means of Production]. Hamiltonians favor [the Intents of Command and Obedience, stressing codetermination, cooperation and] collaboration between [the Federal government and the American people to build a Command Economy along Federal and State lines]. [The] Jeffersonians favor [the Consumerism of Welfare Capitalism and the Producerism of Workfare Socialism by means of Kapital and Schuld].”
–Michael Lind, In an Interview by Will Denton, ca. April 2013
“We live in a world that resembles on the one hand a workshop, and on the other a museum. The difference between the demands these two settings place on us is that while nobody is forced to see in a workshop anything more than a mere workshop, in a museum setting there is an atmosphere of edification taking on grotesque forms. We have arrived at a kind of historical fetishism standing in direct proportion to our lack of productive capacity. And it is a comforting thought that, because of some secret correspondence, the development of more monumental means of destruction keeps up with the accumulation and conservation of so-called cultural goods [on the World Wide Web].”
-Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt, ca. 1932
“The problem of [the Democratic-Republican Party after Trump is that its] policies [intend] to return the [Jeffersonian Market Economy] to what it was before the virus hit is this: [the Empire of Liberty’s overemphasis on Overtourism], [in] 2019, [became its own worst form of Over-terrorism in 2020]. [The Jeffersonians’] scars from the [Death of Bretton Woods,] [Y2K Bug and Dot-Com Bubble], [9/11], and [Great Recession] had not [fully] healed. Years of Low Interest Rates had enabled corporations and governments to ‘solve’ all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new [Kapital] pumped into [Liberal International Economic Order or Empire of Liberty] by Central Banks [and Shadow Banks] had indeed caused the feared Inflation, but chiefly in [Financial Markets] markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of income and wealth reached historic highs. In short, [Jeffersonian Liberal] Capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash.”
-Richard David Wolff, “COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism,” ca. April 6, 2020
“Our task is to give modern man a new perspective that will necessarily produce a new image. Life has no ‘goal.’ Mankind has no ‘goal.’ The existence of this universe, in which we humans play off a tiny episode on our little planet, is much too majestic a thing to be explained by such puny slogans as ‘happiness for the largest number.’ The greatness of the universal drama lies in its aimlessness. [W]hat we are called upon to do is to render the greatest possible meaning to the life that has been granted us, to the reality that surrounds us and into which Destiny has placed us. We must live in such a way that we can be proud of ourselves. We must act in such a way that some part of us will live on in the process of reality that is heading toward eventual completion. [W]e are persons of a particular century, a particular nation, a particular circle, a particular type. These are the necessary conditions under which we can give meaning and depth to existence, by being doers, even if we do with words. The more we fill out the area within these given boundaries, the greater will be our effect. Plato was an Athenian, Caesar a Roman, Goethe a German. That they were so first and foremost is the reason for their universal and timeless importance.”
-Oswald Spengler, Prussianism and Socialism, ca. 1919
Gingrich—Primary Mission
—Advocate of civilization
—Definer of civilization
—Teacher of the rules of Civilization
—Arouser of those who form Civilization
—Organizer of the pro-civilization activists
—Leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.
Priorities to 6/30/93
1. Articulate the vision of civilizing humanity and recivilizing all Americans (task 1)
2. Design general planning—management system and set up quarterly review at a general level (task 2, 9, 10, 11)
3. Build a House republican Team committed to professionalizing the House GOP and to becoming a majority and in particular building a team among the leadership and with our active House member patrons (task 6)
4. Building a volunteer-staff Team in the 6th Distr. (task 7)
5. Define, plan and begin to organize the movement for civilization and the effort to transform our welfare state into an opportunity society to help people achieve productivity, responsibility, and safety so they can achieve prosperity and freedom so they can pursue happiness (task 3, 5, 8)
6. Diet, exercise, recreational renewal with Marianne (task 9)
7. Begin to plan and develop the intellectual—educational effort to sustain in the vision of civilizing humanity and recivilizing America (task 4)
Gingrich’s [Four-Year Work-Plan] with America (1994)
FIRST, Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress [Read: America is a Council Democracy governed with Vladimir Lenin’s Democratic Centralism].
SECOND, Select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse [Read: Give the American people their ‘Audit the Fed!’ App so that every man, woman, and child in the Union can actually learn how to Audit the Federal government with their PCs, Tablets, and Smartphones].
THIRD, Cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third [Read: Committees are unnecessary under Council Democracy. We need Chambers and Community-organized Guilds and the creation of a Federalized Student Government for the UFSE].
FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs [Nota Bene (NB): I agree with Gingrich. Our Council Democracy is more effective with Term Limits for the Federal and Student Governments].
FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee [N.B.: I agree with Gingrich. This is something that I would expect from UK Parliament because I thought America was supposed to have declared its Independence from the British Empire. What, are we still living under British rule again?].
SIXTH, Require committee meetings to be open to the public [N.B. I agree with Gingrich].
SEVENTH, Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase. [N.B. I agree with Gingrich, courtesy of Lenin and Stalin].
EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting [N.B. I agree with Gingrich, courtesy of Spengler and Jünger].
“Traditional America values [High-Quality Arbeit], [the Hamiltonian Federalist Spirit of Competition], [Ordered Liberty of Duty and Honor], and [Federal-State Civil Services]. But the secular-socialist machine rewards its members, punishes ‘overachievers,’ kills job by over-taxing small businesses, and even exploits your death to tax the savings you hope to pass on to your children and grandchildren. [W]e must be an intellectually hungry, morally strong, and urgently demanding nation with an [Socialist Student Economy (SSE)] capable of responding to a voracious American desire to learn.”
-Newt Gingrich, To Save America: Stopping
[Jefferson’s Workfare Socialist] Machine, ca 2010
“But if we are [going] to reevaluate [American Catholic Education] in terms of the renewal [through this UFSE], [what] we must keep in mind [are] not only those specifications for the Church of the future but also the initial effort that will be required effectively to bring the renewal into American Catholic life – an unprecedented [Total] Educational Effort in every sense of the term.”
-Mary Perkins Ryan, Are Parochial Schools the Answer?: Catholic Education In Light of the Council, ca. 1964
“Just now you spoke about [Total Educational Effort]. But what [kind of Total Educational Effort] did you have in mind? [E]ducation is a weapon the effect of which is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to be struck down. [I] do not underestimate the role of the intelligentsia; on the contrary, I emphasize it. The question is, however, which intelligentsia are we discussing? Because there are different kinds of intelligentsia.”
-Josef Stalin, in an Interview with H. G. Wells, ‘Marxism versus Liberalism’, ca. July 23, 1934
“We do not yet know who will solve the problems that remain for Socialism. We [German Conservatives] cannot believe that German Communism which still clings faithfully to [Karl] Marx will contribute to the solution, though German Communism has about it something that is savagely and obstinately German. In any case we know—and we must believe—that the [Conservative] Socialism which we have in mind must and will solve its problems on a higher plane than Marx’s: on a plane where the problems are not those of a class but of the nation. [I]t is a purely intellectual advantage: but it is a great one. We have only to think of the complete absence of ideas which [the Liberal Capitalists] display: their victory brought them complacency, satiety—in spite of the economic and political peril which threatens their countries.”
-Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich, ca. 1923
I still have yet to find enough information about the Parentis. Therefore, allow me to end this Triangulation Practice Session by providing a quote that best fits my mood at the moment:
“Another amusing incident arose from the fact that the Reichsbank maintained a not inconsiderable gold deposit in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. [Mr.] Strong was proud to be able to show us the vaults which were situated in the deepest cellar of the building and remarked: ‘Now, Herr Schacht, you shall see where the Reichsbank gold is kept.’ While the staff looked for the hiding place of the Reichsbank gold we went through the vaults. We waited several minutes: at length we were told: ‘Mr. Strong, we can’t find the Reichsbank gold.’ Strong was flabbergasted but I comforted him. ‘Never mind: I believe you when you say the gold is there. Even if it weren’t you are good for its replacement.’”
-Hjalmar Schacht, Confessions of the Old Wizard, ca. 1956
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