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[Cagliostro_the_Impossible]

I find myself now having to deal with this sullen creeping thing, and I don't know what it is anymore. Is it as Heidegger once said, are Washington & Moscow metaphysically the same? Must it be our common destiny to so persistently relive those once reviled convulsions which ravaged Russia a little over century ago? Civil war feels unknown to us at the moment because we presume ourselves innocent, though it's been waged by various means off & on for over half a century, and the gods should pity the already fading forms that inhabit a Culture & Civilization in its terminal stage.
"Thus in cultural and economic matters, as well as in terms of values, slavery had an effect which no other sectional factor exercised in isolating North and South from each other. As they became isolated, instead of reacting to each other as they were in actuality, each reacted to a distorted mental image of the other- the North to an image of a Southern world of lascivious and sadistic slave-drivers; the South to the image of a Northern world of cunning Yankee traders and of rabid abolitionists plotting slave insurrections. This process of substituting stereotypes for realities could be very damaging indeed to the spirit of union, for it caused both Northerners and Southerners to lose sight of how much alike they were and how many values they shared. It also had the effect of changing men's attitudes toward disagreements which are always certain to rise in politics: ordinary, resolvable disputes were converted into questions of principle, involving rigid, nonnegotiable dogma. Abstractions, such as the question of the legal status of slavery in areas which there were no slaves and to which no one intended to take any, became points of honor and focus of contention which rocked the government to its foundation." (pg. 43, The Impending Crisis, 1848 - 1861, David M. Potter)
The "Thucydides Trap" is wrong. He observed something deeper & darker about human nature as the lights go out. The war between Sparta & Athens did indeed have geopolitical implications. But, the most frightening dimension observed by his analytical mind, was of a society at war with itself, tearing itself apart.
In Nietzsche:
"If however communality collapses completely and everything dissolves into anarchy, then there there at once breaks through that condition of unreflecting, ruthless inequality that constitutes the state of nature: as, according to the report of Thucydides, happened on Corcyra. There exists neither a natural right nor a natural wrong." (https://issuu.com/bouvard6/docs/nietzsche__friedrich_-_human__all_t/344)
So, to whom do we turn to in this fell state of ours, to what Leviathan do we proffer our allegiance? Golden Fang?!? Pynchon was close enough (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fang-stocks-fb-amzn.asp)...
We've been here before folks, not just in the 19th Century... Whether Shay's or Whiskey rebellions to the Alien/Sedition acts... Washington, being a Washington and not a Caesar... at least had the compunction to ride out and face the rebels head on... and as Hamilton/Jefferson, the Cain & Abel of the American political soul, fought eternal for his legacy...
"Along with some lesser counts," the Rev'd is replying, "twas one of the least tolerable Offenses in that era, the worst of Dick Turpin seeming but the Carelessness of Youth beside it, -the Crime they styl'd "Anonymity." That is, I left messages posted publicly, but did not sign them. I knew some night-running lads in the district who let me use their Printing-Press, -somehow, what I got got into printing up, were Accounts of certain Crimes I had observ'd, committed by the Stronger against the Weaker,- enclosures, evictions, Assize verdicts, Activities of the Military, -giving names of as many of the Perpetrators as I was sure of, yet keeping back what I foolishly imagin'd my own..."
The apologia of a shit-poster, who could now be liable to federal prosecution..., strange times make for even stranger bedfellows, Pynchon & Thomas:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZC1.html

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