Can Democracy survive the Internet?

I suppose I should be complimented. I seem to be getting a lot of hits on my blog from Russia. Somehow, however, when I check the stats from Google, the individual hits do not add-up. No doubt there are non-sinister reasons for this. Maybe.

However, there is an old saying: even paranoids have enemies. I have one in particular who quite skilled at Internet stalking. He is quite angry at me for my success in preserving a news stand site for an Indian imagrant that he wanted. I get these terrible comments for my page that I delete and do not allow to be posted. One of them claimed that a departed relative was burning in Hell.

Today there is story in Slate which really bothers me and I connect it to a Wiki-leaks story yesterday revealing hacked and embarrassing E-Mail from the Democratic National Committee. Then there is a story about how Putin intervened in European elections to aid ultra-right candidates Prime examples are Marie Le Penn in France and Berlusconi in Italy. Of course Berlusconi was ousted eventually and Le Penn has yet to win control but her influence is growing.

Putin is the new Stalin seeking to expand his influence. I do not think there is any limit to his ambition. One of his goals to break-up the unity of Europe (and the United States).  That seems to be okay with Trump.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html

The Wiki-Leaks release was clearly designed to drive disaffected Bernie Sanders voters away from Clinton.

Frankly, I'm scared. Saturday afternoon, I saw Tim Kaine get and deliver a knock-out performance in Miami when introduced by Clinton. While, I am bit to his left, he is supporting the Democratic platform to be adopted at the DNC and that is more than enough for now.

But, there is no question that Trump in his statements about the NATO and the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) is music to Putin's ears.

I have at times metaphorically tabbed Trump the Anti-Christ because of his blatant narcissism and his disdain for nuclear non-proliferation. It now seems clear that he is at best a tool for a real Anti-Christ, his pal Vladmir Putin.

Then there is story on why  all the Brexit vote wrong. When I first became involved in Bronx reform politics in 1969, I was told that "We have to win by 10% because anything less they steal."

We have become so dependent on the Internet. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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This is not a promo for my book Quantum Christ but you can find out about it at:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html

The Apocalypse is now!

While there may be some who read this who welcome the results of the BREXIT vote in the tenuously "United" Kingdom and/or support the erratic Presidential campaign of Donald Trump, the concurrence of BREXIT vote and Trump campaign is continuing evidence of the apocalyptic nature of our times where climate change threatens the extinction of humanity. Although he eschews the word "Apocalypse" Pope Francis has recognized the selfish instincts which threaten the survival of our posterity. The drought and fires in the western US and the epic floods in West Virginia are just two examples of what awaits humanities future.

The BREXIT vote in particular has drawn me this Sunday to one poem that has affected me deeply and guided my thoughts for decades: William Butler Yeats The Second Coming"  published in 1919.

"Things fall part" Yeats wrote. "the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . The blood-dimmed tide is loosed … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

In my book The Coming of the Quantum Christ I wrote of an Apocalypse of Selfishness. Trump is the embodiment of selfishness. When a horrible massacre occurred in Orlando, Florida, Trump's first message did not reflect sympathy and concern for the victims and their families but how everybody was congratulating him for being right about the threat of Islam. He was actually in Scotland the day after the BREXIT vote "trumpeting" the beautiful amenities of his two Scottish golf courses until he was directed to the BREXIT, the results which has embraced. Indeed, Trump remarked that because BREXIT is devaluing the British Pound Sterling, his resorts will do well, The devaluation of the pound makes US dollars more valuable and will attract  more US visitors to Scotland.  He expressed no sympathy for British pensioners whose pensions will be devalued along with the pound.

Is it any wonder that I earlier asked tongue not entirely in cheek whether he was the Anti-Christ? Pope Francis has made it abundantly clear that in his view that selfishness is the driving force of climate change. On May 21, 2014, he lamented “If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us.”

Only by united, unselfish actions can we ameliorate the extreme result of climate change: the extinction of humanity. Trump and the BREXIT vote are material manifestations of selfishness in action. I read the last stanza of Yeats poem to be not an inquiry about Christ but the Anti-Christ:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html