Some Thoughts On The 25th Amendment

 

There's much talk about the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of our Great Republic (I'm not sure it still is one, but let's pretend it is for purposes of this post) and its application to the madhouse in which we find ourselves.  I'm uncertain, though, if those who invoke it know what it says.

The 25th Amendment is of relatively recent origin, having been adopted in the 1960s.  It appears it was intended to make it clear just how a president may be removed during the time in which the president serves, and what happens at the end of the term of office.  Perhaps this became a matter of concern to Congress due to our history of assassination.   If presidents are going to be assassinated, it would be prudent to have a replacement method at hand.  It may also be the case, however, that there was a concern that a president should be removable, so to speak, in circumstances where there has been no successful assassination, or impeachment, but a president is otherwise unable to discharge the duties of the office.

That was the case with Woodrow Wilson.  He suffered a stroke after he was outmanuvered and even bamboozled by the British and French representatives at Versailles.  This would have been hard for a man like Wilson to swallow. He seems to have seen himself as a modern-day Moses, if not a messiah.

Regardless, his stroke incapacitated him, and Mrs. Wilson and some agreeable politicians or friends presided over the United States for a time.

What the Amendment says in pertinent part is that if the Vice President and a majority of the members of the cabinet believe the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of the presidency, they may submit a statement to that effect to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Then the Vice President becomes "Acting President" and assumes all the power and duties of the President. The President is no longer President. However, the President may in turn submit a declaration to the same officers stating he is capable, in which case he'll be President once more, unless the Vice President, or rather Acting President, and a majority of the cabinet within four days submit yet another declaration that the President remains incapable.

In that case, the Congress decides the issue.  But a two thirds majority of each House  must find the President is incapable.  If there is no such super majority, the President is once more President.

The language of the Amendment provides no guidance regarding how it may be determined that a President "unable to dischage" the powers and duties of the office or what that means.  So it appears it isn't necessary for a President to be incompetent or mentally ill to be removed under the Amendment.  Nothing in the language of the Amendement indicates there i. such a requirement, and it would have been easy enough to impose such a condition.  Nor would the fact that a President is unpopular or unwise be cause for removal.  One could be an inept President and still carry out a President's duties.

Would the fact that a President has deplorable taste be relevant, or that he/she uses vulgar language? Since a President takes an oath to preserve, protect and protect the Constitution, I would think that a violation of that oath would suffice, as that oath sets forth one of the duties of a President.

In any case, the language used in the Amendment suggests that if it comes to a decision of the Congress it may be difficult to establish an inability to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency, due to the Amendment's lack of definition..  But there are other factors which would make the invocation of the 25th Amendment unlikely in this case, in this time.

The primary factor is the fact that the Vice President, the cabinet members and most of the members of Congress lack the moral courage to proceed under the Amendment. Or, they may feel that their jobs depend on his goidwill. They're slaves, thralls of the president.  It would take a great deal of moral courage to invoke the Amendment, and that courage is lacking in those who now may make use of it.

We Are But Dust And Shadows

 

These somewhat deflating but poignant words are those of Horace, Odes 4. 7. 16.  People may know them if only because they were recited by the character Proximo in the film Gladiator, in a different order.

In this Ode, Horace describes the passing of each season, and the continual cycle of death and rebirth in nature.  The fact that in nature, what dies is, in effect, reborn-- life eternally returning after dying in autumn and winter-- seems to have been felt to demonstrate that we humans, though mortal and doomed to die, would live on after death for the initiates of certain of the ancient pagan mysteries, like those of Eleusis.

But in this poem Horace tells his friend that we don't return to life once we die.  He doesn't offer hope of a rebirth.  He says we join those already dead, even famous figures and heroes we know have lived and died, and have never returned to life.  Neither shall we.

It seems a poem which advises acceptance of our fate, without fear. 

 The poet's friend is being told that it's folly to believe or hope that the end isn't the end, and that the reasonable and appropriate course is brave resignation in the face of the inevitable.  It expresses, I think, a very Epicurean or Stoic point of view.  This is unsurprising as it seems that most educated and sophisticated Romans favored one or the other of these philosophical  schools.

It isn't a particularly cheerful bit of friendly advice.  But wise nonetheless.  Leaves and plants die in autumn and winter, and reappear in spring and summer; but what reappears isn't what died, but something different.  The same crop doesn't come back each year (the display of wheat is said to have been a climactic part of the Eleusinian mysteries). Nature provides no analogy for our rebirth.

Lucretius thought that Epicurus did humanity a great service in maintaining persuasively that we don't survive death.  This established that there need be no fear of punishment in Hades once our lives ended.  Some of us, though, find the thought that we'll cease to exist frightening as well.

It's apparent that we've always longed to survive death.  I know nothing of modern physics or quantum mechanics, but it's claimed that they suggest that consciousness is a part of the universe and so ours may continue in one way or another.  That view seems similar to ancient Stoicism's beliefs regarding the nature of the cosmos.  The ancient Stoics also believed that fame, pride, riches. self-love and excessive concern regarding our success in life were were foolish and we are, in effect, but dust and shadows, and living according to the divine in nature is the only real good.

Perhaps modern physics provides support for the ancient Stoic view of our lives and the universe.

More On The Missionary Media

The patronizing, persistent, pontificating (every day should bring at least one alliteration) of the Missionary Media continues apace.  I wonder if it matters.  Do the incessant, heavy-handed efforts to show us the way, the truth and the light make any difference?  Do they enlighten us, make us more tolerant, more sympathetic, less tribal, less bigoted, less bad generally?

I think not.  One doesn't persuade by making a pitch of any kind in such a jarring, blatant manner.  I doubt those religious who knock on doors unnannounced to proclaim that Jesus is Lord make many converts thereby. 

Why, then, does the Missionary Media proceed in this fashion?  In the case of the religious-minded who make surprise visits to unsuspecting householders, I suspect that making converts is a secondary concern.  There's a duty to prostelyze, regardless of its success.  So, persuasion isn't the ultimate goal, and they need not spend a great deal of time honing their technique.

Can it be that the media missionaries feel the same?  Do they believe that they should, or perhaps even must, introduce characters and subplots that reflect diverse sexual, familial, cultural, racial and other considerations regardless of their relevance to the story, for our own good?

Judging from the reactions these intrusions apparently elicit, they do.  Thus the missionaries condemn negative reviews and declining ratings as inappropriate not merely from the standpoint of taste or esthetics, but immoral as well.  This is self-righteousness of considerable magnitude.

I might as well give examples.  The most recent would be the latest effort to do something, I'm not sure what, in the Star Trek universe.  I must admit I've never watched a full episode, as the premise never appealed to me.  I have no interest in the lives and sexual encounters of youthful cadets somehow becoming officers of Star Fleet by being members of a debate team and putting on plays while merrily rogering each other under the guidance of strangely smug and tendentious teachers.

But it seems clear that the peculiar focus on issues and matters which are of significance mostly to those who produce and write the show rather than established Fandom, and are crudely designed to educate all in the wisdom of a particular message, resulted in ridicule and disinterest and rapid cancelation.

What the media missionaries are achieving is the opposite of what they seem to intend.  Particularly when they tinker with stories and characters that have become beloved over time, deliberately making them different from what they're known to have been, merely to make what they think is a moral or educational point unrelated to the story being told, they foster irritation and anger. 

Those they're trying to "educate" or "enlighten" recognize these efforts as pandering and patronizing, and resent them.  It's unsurprising that they react negatively to the points the missionaries want to make as well.

A Convenient God

 

Humanity and God.  God of love, God of peace, God of war.  We take our pick.

Is there some causal relation, or perhaps a correlation, between substance abuse and religious belief of the showy "Praise God!" and "pray with me!" and salvation- show variety?  I think so.  Those who think themselves saved indulge in a kind of exhibitionism; they enjoy being noticed and watched; even admired, as someone God saved.  They also seem determined to see to it that others are similarly saved or at least pretend to be saved, and are certainly TOLD they should do as the saved do.

Humanity's God, though so often described as loving and merciful, is also often a God of war.  The God described in what's called the Old Testament, for example, exuberantly urges his chosen people to kill the men, women, children and even domesticated animals of those various peoples occupying the Promised Land before them.  He himself obliterates the sinful very dramatically, and in one famous instance even kills nearly the entirety of the human race.

In fairness, it should be noted that other ancient nations or at least their leaders delighted in describing the destruction they caused in war against their enemies and their domestic animals (killing the livestock of enemies seems to have been important then, judging from the frequency with which it's noted).  I've mentioned the lavish detailing of their wars by the Assyrian kings in this blog before.

It's not as easy to find support for or approval of war in what's called the New Testament as it is in the Old Testament, but no matter.  Christians have waged war since Christianity began.  In fact, they've waged war against each other far more than they've waged it against non-Christians.

We've been engaged in war throughout our history.  It's something we do.  We can't claim that we're less warlike than we were in the past.  There always seems to be some war going on somewhere, as there is now.

So, naturally enough, and quite conveniently, our God is almost always a God of war.  Sometimes, God is considered the reason why wars take place.  Wars have many causes, but religion is so often one of them if not the primary cause of them, and God so frequently evoked by wars' participants (though the God of the warring parties may differ) that it may fairly be said humanity's God is a God of war, when we want God to be a God of war.

And that's what we have wanted, and some want now.  

The claim is regularly made that belief in God is needed for us to be moral; indeed for morality to exist.  If that's the case, though, it appears that causing death and destruction through war is moral, i.e. that we should wage war. It's difficult to think of any war in which religion wasn't involved or in which God wasn't invoked by those at war as justifying it or as favoring the victory of one side or another.

Thoughts On The Rough Beast

 

It seems each day brings with it some new freakish incident, threat or claim in these sad times.  I doubt even Suetonius, who wrote of the peculiarities of the Julio-Claudian emperors, could imagine some of the grotesqueries being perpetrated and paraded in front of us by our ubiquitous media.  Whether it's merely ridiculous, like requiring public servants to wear outsized shoes, or actively fostering fear and chaos, those in power seem to be determined either to commit outrages or slavishly support them.

W. B. Yeats believed that the First World War overturned our civilization and deprived us of the traditions and morals on which it was founded, presaging an apocalypse of some kind or another.  So, he wondered what Rough Beast would be born of it.  The 20th century was full of beasts, and so Yeats was right to expect them.  But no Second Coming was forthcoming, as was the case with the many Second Comings which have been predicted by the self-righteous over the centuries.

Could Yeats have imagined a Rough Beast that was destructive of civilized values but merely vulgar, rude, scatterbrained, blustering, ignorant, self-centered as a spoiled child, albeit cunning in a shabby way?  I doubt it.  Yeats was a great poet and evoked beauty and described evil, but in a superlative sense.  I'm not sure he would have believed an apocalypse might be caused by crude, malicious but otherwise unremarkable people put in charge of forces capable of wrecking havoc on the world.

We had to wait for someone like Orwell to tell us that the beasts to be feared most are those who are not great in any sense, are unworthy, even contemptible, but are raised by the corruption of our society to the highest places and are tolerated and even encouraged by those who are part of the corruption.

It's difficult to think, like Yeats, that the current Rough Beasts have beliefs contrary to those which form the bases of Western civilization.  In fact they value what has always been of the greatest importance in the West; money and its relentless acquisition.  Money, of course, is power, which has also been desired.  And they also rely on hypocrisy and purported adherence to so-called Judeo-Christian morals, at least in public, another characteristic of our civilization. 

The Rough Beast no longer slouches towards Bethlehem, but marches against it, and lays siege to it.