Friday, August 26, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (XII)
Who is a heavyweight? I mean a heavyweight in a charismatic way.

I know that every star of whatever brightness is believed to be a heavyweight. However, this is a suspect presumption. The twinkle of a star may be but a twinkle.

The charisma of a heavyweight calls back to my mind the office of the Sacred King, the mythological, but not always, figure of ‘ancient’ times. This was a man, and sometimes a woman, who did real things in such a way that he-she earned themselves a place in a nation-founding myth.

Before the founding myth there was no Sacred King or Queen to guide society beyond the mother, children, and wandering Son circle. The members of this group were so much into each other that they seldom fought with each other.

Nevertheless, this incredibly tight knot, which was bound by incest [might this have been the original Gordian knot?] was often visited by exceptions: unforgettable murders. The murder by Cain of Abel belongs to this genre. The war between kings Paris of Troy and Menelaus of Sparta for the living body of Queen Helen was likely due to the fact that Helen’s bed was too close to that of her brothers. Such intimate relationships have long been erased from the founding story, whether the Bible or myth. Nevertheless, the story is a near perfect example of pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia in story telling. One may see this type of pareidolia as deliberate in order to facilitate the sometimes repressed mind. The ‘Mind’ of Western society fits the bill.
Due to the unwelcome outbreaks of murder among the ‘original’ family, a larger society—if it was to maintain itself beyond the immediate intimate circle for any length of time—needed to discover a reason for being. Why indeed not return to the warm circle of babies nuzzling the breasts of their mothers, the family where sex among its own is unavoidable?

There are two ways in which an incest ridden family can avoid future outbreaks of fratri-cide.  One is 1) to leave the murderous event, the horror, and prevent a recurrence of itself as long as it remains part of a society’s living memory, but thereafter risk a repetition; or 2) repress incest.

The repression of incest fell to the office of The Sacred King.

The Sacred King did not repress (as we may think today) by using the police or a military, but by offering his life to death. By giving (voluntarily) his life to death, the king creates for ‘death’ its large D. The Death of the Sacred King creates such charisma that it equals and passes the charisma of two brothers trying to slay each other.

In other words, Why us, why is it that we must die, but not them; or why we and they, but not they over there are dying?

The cause of an enlarged social space is stimulated into being by two powerful factors:  1) the fact that sooner or later a murder not only does but must occur; and 2) that without a mediating resource, the default will prevail; in other words, catastrophes of a tragic nature will be frequent. Brothers will kill brothers as if no sisters had been born. Incestuous dreams lead to incest, and death of one of the brothers will be by the hand of the other, who found his brother’s legs entwined with the same legs that bore them both.
The story of incest may seem far from the political economy of Latvia. Actually, it is not. Latvia is as every-where-else in the 21st century. The economic disparity between the two brothers, the Oligarchs and the Populists, puts them at a catastrophic distance from each other. While one brother is a Populist with little education banging a whore who is also a Populist and most of the time stays unemployed, the other has so much money that he is called an oligarch, and the government runs scared of his big D….  

This is how the big D is weighed: Death on the one hand, Dick on the other. Both names are heavyweight, but the last one is for a laugh, no?

In Latvia the two brothers represent the nature of Latvian politics. One is a ‘non-existent’ Populists dreaded by the Oligarchs, because they are but a handful. The first mentioned are many, the last few. The Oligarchs are believed to be omnipotent, because America, London, Paris, and Berlin are on their side, while the others are said to be mere Populists, a Mob of sorts.

The Populists are the jelly on which the Tower of Babel, today owned by oligarchs, is built. We know the Tower of Babel to have crashed http://www.deldig.com/media_thumbs/180.jpg at least once before. Will it do so again? Does not the World and Latvian media speak as one out of a given system beyond which there is no other?

One sees this polarized relationship between the oligarch who pretends to the Prime Minister’s job of Latvia, and Clever John and Crazy Jane, the last being witch Ragana’s eldest daughter http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/2010/03/eso-antons-benjamins-aka-jandzs-not_26.html , the former her pimp. Like it or not, Clever John and Crazy Jane happen to be Latvian citizens, too.

What does one Lembergs do for an encore after President Berzins, who—before being stirred into a passion for his country by high office—receives the highest pension in Latvia? If Ls 5000 monthly were to be divided by 10, the result is Ls 500—which is to say that ten families could afford to return from England to Latvia or will not leave Latvia. Clever John and Crazy Jane (Gudrais Jānis un Dullā Žane) get screwed only the way an incestuous son of Latvia can screw them. Then the oligarchs have the gall to say that the Latvian language is the most holy, and go kiss their “D”s if you don't believe it.
The Middle Class, the “successes” from among the Populists are close enough to their Populist roots to appreciate the difference, and  continues to kiss the oligarchs’ Blarney Stone  http://www.irelandseye.com/blarney/blarney.shtm till it shines and right can no longer be distinguished from wrong.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (XI)

Let me begin this entry with Apollo, the Latvian internet site so frequently put down, because it best represents populist resentment of Latvia’s corrupt institutions. The site speaks for itself by shouting loudly, clearly, and sometimes in a foul language the opinions that infect the populists. By populists this writer means that segment of the population without which democracy is not possible.

Speaking of democracy in Latvia, were it to exist here, there would be no public displays of the Turrets’ syndrome that infect the responses at said site, but [to paraphrase Adrian Kuzminski http://www.mdrtalk.org/ (go to ‘Populism, The Third Way’)] there would be a political economy of the people with claims to private property as a correlate to its claims to public power. In short, if Latvia were to be a democracy, it would use the leverage of its small size to seize for itself the intellectual ground that is that of the former Republic of Vermont (see above link) than ape the neo-liberal system that is visibly sick unto death.

Be that as it may, how does a country arrive at democracy when most of its authorities dream of becoming oligarchs, are oligarchs, or are in some way compromised by oligarchs. By using the word ‘oligarchs’, I mean not so much to put onus on the individual, but the system, re liberal capitalism self-regulating itself in such a way that there is in effect no regulation. A good example of this invasive power is the current President of Latvia, one Andris Berzins, an oligarch (granted, even by Latvian standards a minor one), who as a former bank director for an affiliate of a Swedish bank is blatantly compromising the economic interests of most Latvians.


In a recent media blurb http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246875 , the President claims to know why the citizens of Latvia are unhappy with the Saeima, the legislative body of the Latvian government. The internet text is in Latvian, which may be as well, because were it in English, the reader would see through the clichés sooner than later and understand that the President’s ideas are simplistic and self contradictory. In this instance, a lie in Latvian obfuscates the lie more successfully than its presentation, say, in English, which due to its unfamiliarity to the public at large has less ‘white noise’ to interfere with the true interpretation of what he is saying.

In the media blurb, the President insists that he is a conservative to such a degree that he would not initiate measures without the full agreement of the Saeima (a body recently dismissed by voters as illegitimate). More over, President Berzins hopes that by presenting himself as such a conservative, he is not encouraging populism. (“…es kā prezidents atbalstīšu tikai tās iniciatīvas, kurām ir atbalsts koalīcijā. Ceru, ka tas nebūs pamats priekšvēlēšanu populismam”.) Apparently, the President is as confused about the meaning of populism as are most of Latvia’s political elites, which is to say, the President is just as interested in circumventing democracy as the dismissed Saeima. Not so incidentally, he is joined in his call for a special session of the old and discredited Saeima by the coalition of the Greens and Farmers (ZZS) http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/247227 , who are largely funded by an oligarch.

The other link that this blogger would like to mention appeared in Apollo. It is a summary of an interview in the newspaper Diena (13.8) with Valdis Birkavs.

Birkavs is a former Prime and Foreign Minister of Latvia. The text is in Latvian, and concerns itself with what Birkavs believes are the four stages of Latvia’s evolution as a state, re: 1) romanticism; 2) cynicism; 3) greed; 4) near hopeless confusion
http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246776 In this instance, the Latvian text has no white noise.

Regarding the last and present stage of the government, Birkavs argues that after joining the EU and NATO, there began a period of indecision, aimlessness (for the last ten years), and standing in place. [“Līdz ar iestāšanos Eiropas Savienībā un NATO…. sākās periods… mētāšanās, bezmērķība [pēdējos desmit gados]… mīņāšanās uz vietas.”]

It is worth noting that Birkavs connects the deconstruction of Latvia’s sovereignty (see previous blogs) with Latvia enmeshing itself with EU and NATO. Joining the EU has cost Latvia its bright standard (spožo karogu) and surrendered it to Europe’s feckless http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feckless politicians. This phenomenon has also been noticed by Philip Zelikow in a Commentary piece in the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e806c60a-c769-11e0-9cac-00144feabdc0.html .

Rounding off the neglect, both, of foreign and domestic policies in Latvia, George Friedman of Stratfor has much to say that hits the nail on the head, even though he writes of the state of the governments of the world and does not mention Latvia. Friedman is concerned over who are they who are presuming to be running the world? Are they not all lightweights? “The issue is: who are these people who are running things, what gives them the right to do so, and if that right does not somehow flow from competence, what does it flow from?”
Read more: Agenda: With George Friedman on a Crisis of Political Economy | STRATFOR
Which questions brings us to the question of who is a heavyweight?
I will attempt to make some suggestions in the next blog of “Chickens Running in All Directions”.


Friday, August 12, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (X)
The recent outbreak of hooliganism in London http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14449675 and in other parts of England, confirms the death of the traditional community with a vengeance http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14487982 . Not that this is anything new or has not been known to happen before. Many historians of economy, notably Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation, 1944), noted “the social catastrophe which followed the Industrial Revolution” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) .

The social catastrophe of the Industrial Revolution was gradually arrested and a kind of temporary society reestablished in place of the traditional community. If before the arrival of the piston engine “…the self-sufficing household of the peasant laboring for his subsistence remained the broad basis of the economic systems…” (ibid), these systems were soon transformed into ones that turned the substance of its labors, labor including, into money.

Moreover, if before the arrival of money as the chief determinate of value, the community had been held together by the limits imposed by slow mobility (the horse, the sail, and objectified land), social rituals established over long periods of time, and the founding violence of the arch-Christian world (later to become neo-Christendom), the arrival of money commoditized even violence. Some of the first great wealth of our times was made by financing wars.

War is not a new phenomenon. We only have to recall the Vikings, who roved or sailed to distant lands and pillaged peaceable villages located far upriver of those lands. Indeed, such wars preceded the times of roads, because once the only ‘roads’ that were were rivers or paths along seashores. However, these early wars differed significantly from the wars of our time. While no one to this writer’s knowledge has called these early wars ‘fascist wars’, this is what they were, if we understand that  fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology can stand for socialism on behalf of small homogenous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneity_and_heterogeneity  communities.

No doubt, early communities were also more or less democratic in the sense that individualism as such was non-existent or was barely perceived as such. Moreover, early communities probably sustained a dual system of self-governance: that of the sacred King being buttressed by so-called community of Elders.

The Sacred King was the scapegoat who legitimized the community by confirming through his death (real, ritualistic, one or both) the community’s will to be (as if to say: ‘The community is so important to me that I am willing to die for it’). The elders of the community (early bureaucrats) were then able to exploit the charisma of the death in an administrative way. Usually, such an ‘administration’ was by way of instituting common gods, ritualistic observations, distribution of supplies in times of emergency, and a network of messengers who distributed such summons as the Sacred King and the Elders issued in the name of the community. The community, often misnamed ‘tribe’, was generally visualized as a totem.

[The name of the Sacred King was probably John (Janis, Ivan, Huan, Jean, Dion, etc. The name probably derives from the name ‘gans’; re, herdsman. This is why the herdsman, also the Sacred King, is often identified with a lamb.]

Small community fascism expanded, after the great movement of communities from the East (perhaps originating in some climactic cataclysm) came up against the shores of the Atlantic in the West. With oceangoing ships not yet invented, many of the migrants settled as households (self-contained subsistence level economic units). Relatively peaceable communities at their inception, the governments of the communities—the Sacred King and Elders—soon came under the pressure of violence.

For one, the Vikings (and their like) had more prey (settlements) at hand, which they could attack; secondly, the relative vulnerability of a settled community vis-à-vis a gang of marauders increased the role of the messengers. With the arrival of violence, the role of these messengers was transformed. Traveling armed with a stick, we know them to this day as Gendarmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Upljy3gks&NR=1  and Janissaries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ackK2GP8mCk + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opac9IGV8fM&feature=related .

The proto-Latvian communities had their Jahnihshi (Jānīši) or Johns, too. A Johns Festival song on Midsummer’s Eve or Johns Eve sings of this community’s guardian: “Ai, Jonny, son of the Sun!” Of course, today the word ‘Sun’ is replaced by the word ‘God’’. This is one of the ways that a small community is joined to the empire. Or could it be that one empire, the East, was exchanged for the empire of the West?

Yes, of course. I have frequently mentioned the 1209 attack by Bishop Albert’s knights (of Riga) against the proto-Latvian king Visvaldis and the city of Jersika (Jerusalem), which was located in what is now eastern Latvia. Situated on the left bank of Daugava (Jaunava?), Jersika was but a portage away from the Volga, whence the Black Sea and the Orient was wide open.
Without going through the labyrinth of proto-Latvian history (I do that in my earlier blogs), let us allow ourselves the fantasy of joining the 12th and 13th centuries in proto-Latvia to our days.

Today the Johns Festival on Midsummer’s Eve is famous for drunkenness by disoriented Latvians or summer concerts beginning with a Spanish song. John himself has been scandalized and was removed to heaven to sit on his hands there centuries ago.

Following a brief period of independence, 1918-1939, Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union and administered on its behalf from 1940 until 1991. Since 1991, after undergoing brain massage by shock and awe capitalism, Latvia is an invalid sovereign country presided over and administered by a President, who cannot escape having a conflict of interest and being under suspicion of being a proxy of Western banks. The same goes for the Finance Minister. Almost everyone pretends that this is not so, but perhaps as many as 20% of Latvians have left the country to work abroad. This ought to serve as proof of incompetence, failure, and ‘sovereign’ power sans charisma.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (IX)

Judging by the ubiquity of the endearing word in the Latvian language (a number of languages share in this facility), a ubiquity that is now reduced to a potential rather than actual use, the proto-Latvians may be judged to have once been a peaceable people.

At some point in their history this peaceable people became subject to great violence. This violence appears to have been a prolonged affair, causing Latvians to become the victims of violence. That is to say, the victimization of proto-Latvians turned their descendants into a violent people as well.

If one follows Professor Rene Girard’s thesis  (this writer to a great extent does so), then the founding violence of the proto-Latvian community—that is to say, their recognition of themselves as a community through the killing of a scapegoat—occurred a long time ago. This initial violence through victimizing, likely, an innocent fellow human, was thereafter transformed into a profoundly felt guilt. Though, no doubt, I make what is known as a ‘forward looking statement’, it may be that the proto-Latvians projected their sense of guilt into their language. I.e., to avoid conflict among themselves, the proto-Latvians enabled their language to endear every noun and even soften verbs.

When speaking, the forebears of Latvians made the use of the endearing word a ritualistic practice by frequent insertions of words of endearment into their conversation. This practice reached a point, when such an insertion of endearments became automatic. This is a time when proto-Latvians and no doubt many of their neighbors created a unique not-violent http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/2009/11/eso-antons-benjamins-not-violent-terror_25.html culture.

One may cite as proof of the endearing culture the fact that the Latvian language does not have such phrases of swear terms as “mother fucker” (widely used by the English speaking peoples) or “yobt via mat” (the same in Russian). Interestingly, the latter expressions belong to people co-opted by empires, which make frequent use of war and prepare their people for it by surrounding them with bare existence conditions. According to the generals of empires, the enemies of empires never value their life, which is, so to speak, ipso facto, why the enemy’s people fuck their mothers. The empires never have peace through conciliation or re-conciliation, but through violence. To the proto-Latvian mind this kind of behavior is a sin against human rights. Such swearing means that (in loose translation) ‘God fucks his mother!’ To imagine such a thing is not worth sacrificing the proto-Latvian language for.

Today the Latvian language is not yet a total sacrifice for the dump, but with the media and officialdom having largely eliminated the endearing word, the Latvian language is being presented as a kind of bastard that can be sold as a slave to whoever is the oligarch of the moment. And when a writer’s novel pays no more than a few hundred lats, it leaves the language to the publicity pimps, who are this very the moment pimping it for whatever it is worth. It is known as the positivist mode.

When I (LOL) laughed out loud that Latvia had become an Administrative District in the European Union, I found it more than funny that the first bureaucrats administering the district are foreign bankers even as they play footsie with proxies like the President and Finance Minister of Latvia.  

In short, dear Latvians, the administrators predicted by ol’ George Orwell in his novel ‘1984’ are our overlords. We share them with their equivalents in Greece, Ireland, England, France, Germany. In fact, they are all over the world.

This then comes to the question whether Administrators have the right to send people, any people, to war? Can those, who guarantee themselves death in a down bed, send others to die in their place in wars they have declared? Can the President of Latvia be among the receivers of the highest pensions in Latvia? By what right does a foreign proxy send Latvians to war and leave men who hardly have visited Latvia decide Latvia’s domestic and foreign policy? Is the foreign policy of Latvia anything but a charade?

Talking about a charade—is not the tiff with Russia over whether Latvia was “occupied ” by the Soviet Union (1939) based on the (unspoken) fact that President Ulmanis offered the Soviets no resistance, but knowing that resistance was futile, did not offer his own life in lieu of it and as an affirmation that it was not futile? Did Latvia avoid becoming an administered district of the Soviet Union by offering no resistance to it?

If the Latvian legionnaires who joined the Germans against the Soviet Union in 1941, whether they volunteered or whether were conscripted, did so for patriotic reasons and in defense of Latvia and the Latvian community, did they also not step into Ulmanis do-nothing trap: Ulmanis did not re-found the State of Latvia by giving his life for it. He left the community fend for itself. The community, left without leadership fell into a legalistic trap: try as they may, they cannot extricate themselves from accusations of being trusted by the Waffen SS and all it implies.
A great many Latvians died, were sent to Gulags, fled to near and far abroad, but are not requited by the government of Latvia with a government that knows what it is doing.
#
The following article by George Friedman at Statfor is an excellent summary of the political-economic situation in the world—not excluding Latvia.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (VIII)

A 'sovereign' Latvian government


In the previous blog, I wrote that “The reconciliatory event … must be an event of death …, because only death has sufficient charisma to impress and persuade the skeptical.”

In our day the reconciliation is of course to be accomplished by means of a democratically elected government. This is well and good. However, what does one do when the democracy turns out to be a self-enclosed system that does not recognize anything outside itself? Such a system victimizes ‘democracy’, and in due course becomes a unipolar government with the people tending more and more to gather on the unacknowledged other end, the other pole. In Latvia these 'other' people are called “populists”.

I also wrote that Latvia, its sovereignty in control of foreign banks, was in the process of desacralizing its sovereignty, and on its way to becoming an administrative area of the European Union by the name of Latvia. I pointed out that it was noteworthy that

“Two of the proxies [of European banks] doing the administering are already in place and easily identifiable. One is the President of Latvia, Andris Berzins http://www.planetrulers.com/latvia-president/ , while the other is Latvia’s Finance Minister Andris Vilks http://www.mk.gov.lv/en/mk/sastavs/vilks/ .”
A gathering of Latvian populists

Of course, a federated Europe has many opponents, not least among the Latvians. This may explain the fiction among some Latvians that Latvia is still a sovereign country. However, if the supporters of sovereignty are to take themselves seriously, the fact that the President of Latvia and its Finance Minister are, so to speak, Trojan horses of EU banks and the EU, the natives must be spending sleepless nights as they try to figure out how to get the horses removed from Troy’s marketplace. Can the Latvians remove said office occupants from said offices?

Some critics claim that Latvia has been stolen from its people. In this writer’s opinion, Latvia has not only been stolen, but has been robbed naked (izlaupīta līdz kailumam) as well,

·        what with the banks (plus the IMF and the ECB) encouraging Latvians as yet uneducated in liberal capitalist ways to borrow money that they were unlikely to be able to pay back, thereby rendering them helpless to resist de-sovereignization;
·        not to mention former Soviet apparatchiks blossoming into oligarchs with the help of, among other things, ‘the Harvard Boys’ http://michael-hudson.com/2011/08/russia%e2%80%99s-economic-interests-part-1/ , a wonder previously presumed only for the fern blossom on Midsummer’s eve;
·        by cashing in chips of the above, in place not only of the Trojan horses, but by way of said institutions and banks causing unemployment in Latvia, and forcing people (up to 20%) to emigrate to other countries to earn a living;
·        by causing deforestation of Latvia by way of inducing a debt crisis (a half, ~50%, of Latvia’s exports are in wood products, most of it raw timber), at the same time as stopping development of Latvia by permitting only well endowed foreign industries representing the status quo to invest in Latvia (ha, ha);
·        by all the above producing a demographic crisis over which the current Latvian leadership has but hypocritical concern. It is unlikely that the President of Latvia and Finance Minister will turn in their high retirement pay and salary, as the case may be, for Latvia regaining sovereignty.
Banks keeping Latvians employed

Thus, when speaking of death, we are actually speaking only of the death of Latvia as a sovereign nation. Whether an individual’s death as a scapegoat can re-found a nation through a sacrificial death in our time, as Karlis Ulmanis had an opportunity to do and become (but failed to) is doubtful.

Professor Rene Girard, whom I have quoted in a number of preceding blogs with regard to the scapegoat, is insightful not only in his analysis of the scapegoat syndrome. He also tells us that much of the literature of the Middle Ages is a ‘victimage mechanism’. Latvians are not yet conscious of this mechanism. For example, few Latvians realize that the 13th century Chronicle of Henry (Indriķa hronika) http://www.indopedia.org/index.php?title=Chronicle_of_Henry_of_Livonia seeks to victimize ‘pagan’ (actually, pa-yan) proto-Latvians and that the victimization causes a substantial slaughter of native inhabitants and the destruction of their culture—of which their religion is a part.
A road somewhere in Latvia

As a consequence, Latvians today are greatly influenced by the victim syndrome. The best example of victimization is imprinted in the Latvian language itself. A language rich in endearing words (dear may become dearie, etc.), today this facility has become a grammatical formality (called a diminutive), a phenomenon vaguely remembered, seldom used. The endearing word is only rarely seen in the media. With all the proof that is necessary to call this linguistic phenomenon of the Latvian language a ‘term of endearment’, even the embodiment of the proto-Latvian people’s religion, the victims’ descendants chose to call a diminutive instead. No wonder we note with amazement the passivity (hailed by the apparatchiks of the Latvian government) of the Latvian populace when it comes to making political demands.

The victim of course cannot victimize, because to be a victim means to be inhibited, and any desire to act is tied in a Gordian knot http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_9_01.html . The state of finding one’s self a victim is a form of death that is sometimes known as living death.

This is why the question for Latvians is not how to be healed of the victim syndrome, but what steps to take when that syndrome has let slip out of hand national sovereignty and sees it replaced with a novel substitute: Latvia as an Administrative District of the European Union. The living dead then find themselves in an altogether ‘other’ state, perhaps as cooks in a kitchen trying to write a recipe for a system that transcends the unipolar world.
A burning issue at the core of  Latvian applewood
Is Latvia perhaps on the verge of untying the Gordian knot of political inactivity into which they have been tied by their unipolar government? Sometimes when something is untied, it unravels or a cover comes off with a whoosh.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Chickens Running in All Directions (VII)

As the desacralization and deconstruction of Latvia’s sovereignty continues apace, Latvia may already no longer be a nation, but an area under the administration of proxies working for foreign banks.

Two of the proxies doing the administering are already in place and easily identifiable. One is the President of Latvia, Andris Berzins http://www.planetrulers.com/latvia-president/ , while the other is Latvia’s Finance Minister Andris Vilks http://www.mk.gov.lv/en/mk/sastavs/vilks/ .

Both of said men are former employees of Swedish banks. Both men support the “system” of neo-liberal economics, even though that system is arguably a manifest failure. Both men are among the core of men and women who have the privilege to put Latvia on its feet, but who instead stand for abysmal failure of example. Indeed, today a public example from the leadership may be the only thing that may inspire the despised ‘populists’ (re people) to endure as Latvians.

The difficulty facing Latvia as a sovereign nation is touched upon by Imants Lancmanis, director of the Rundale Castle complex in the Zemgale region. http://ltvzinas.lv/?n=video&id=4903 [Interview is in Latvian. The part relevant to this text begins at the min mark.] However, this writer is not persuaded that the ‘new generation’, which the director mentions, will bring about anything more than continued deconstruction of the community and cement a naked money based secular administration more securely in place. Some will say, well and good, because, after all, all of Europe is in the process of being denationalized. Perhaps so.

However, the answer of those who are not persuaded that fiat money is able to create a community that lasts and can endure an economic crisis through the strength of its communal bonds is to point out that a pseudo community necessarily worships exponential growth.  Dependency on such growth necessarily leads to a catastrophe and collapse.

While the world of our culture is only at the beginning of its final catastrophe, the event is of a nature more felt than critically perceived. The situation brings about an intensification of mimetic rivalry, because in better days an increase in such rivalry was said to give rise to progressively more elaborate and humanized forms of culture. In other words, while a complete rollover in exponential growth has not yet occurred, but tremors and quakes of it are clearly felt, many people continue to opt for frenzied exponential growth in personal ‘liberty’ in the mistaken belief that it may prevent the crisis or that it does not even exist.

Alas! Exponential growth of “humanized forms of culture” (human rights as absolute rights), when such growth is based on debased former cultures and fiat money, cannot escape the moment at which it must reverse direction. It is at the peak (the hour of it no one knows) of this phenomenon that our fiat culture must either launch the societies under its umbrage into wars of surrogate victimhood that re-found or allow for changes in said culture or in order to avoid war, it must find a re-founding mechanism that allows for the substitution of mass victimhood with a reconciliatory event.

The reconciliatory event however must be an event of death (a symbolic death can be stretched only so far), because only death has sufficient charisma to impress and persuade the skeptical.
The least damaging death to all concerned is a single death. As Rene Girard points out in his work (“Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World”), such a death in past societies was discovered by seeking and finding a victim who was then stoned and killed. Indeed, the scapegoat or victim enabled through his-her death to increase the time necessary to think things over. Thus, a re-conciliatory death (a delay or cessation of the death threat) encouraged from times way back, both, a growth of the human brain in a child and development of human culture itself.

In the previous blog [Chickens Running in All Directions (VI)], I suggested that in spite of the fact that a surrogate victim may be found by the lottery method [Adolfs Buķis http://www.politika.lv/508/did/16931/ , a publicly unacknowledged self-sacrifice, may serve as an example if we allow that chance may become a synonym of the unexpected], Latvia now has the opportunity to substitute the unacknowledged man with two well known men, President Berzins of Latvia and the mayor from Ventspils, Aivars Lembergs. Both men are millionaires. Occasionally people call both men oligarchs. However, in terms of money, the President of Latvia is worth a few million, whereas the Mayor of Ventspils is said to be worth a few hundred million.

If the story that Lembergs had the first and last word as to who was to be Latvia’s next President (after the incumbent Valdis Zatlers was passed over) is true, it becomes intriguing to learn whether the voting public will side with Lembergs http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/245657  in his choice of who is to be Latvia’s surrogate victim and reconciliator (the President of course), or is the President of Latvia going to be able to foist the cadaver onto Lembergs.

Some people may mistake blood money for blood and blood in office for prestige, when in fact the option may be that 1) that a certain sum of money from the Ventspils mayor will to go to the restoration of the North Vidzeme Biosphere Region (starting with a 200 million lats contribution), and 2) the President of Latvia will resign from (sacrifice) the Office of President lest he be impeached by the new Saeima.
Incidentally, the election of the new Saeima is less than two months away on September 17, 2011.