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Good to learn that the schizophrenia is being challenged. For a while i noticed the schizophrenia baked into the US consciousness, thus rather amazing to me to learn of Justice Thomas identifying as such. Walt Whitman, considered the father of free verse and one of America's most influential poets, was a populist imperialist, as he championed the common people and was one of the few to even mention Natives, yet he touted the so-called New World. Another schizophrenic example is Thomas Jefferson's "empire of liberty."

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You've started a veritable laundry list! Isn't it interesting that the 'conservative' nemesis of liberals — Thomas — speaks out, while the darlings exemplify it...

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Lee Hester’s work is both philosophical and rigorously factual. Both he and Peter d’Errico touch on the question of the possible reach and influence of such work. So did John Maynard Keynes. As Keynes’ view is somewhat different, I thought that I would share it: “At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

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Mar 4Liked by Peter d'Errico

I did not know when I typed my comment that John M Keynes was a eugenicist - I was just responding to what I see in the world now that relates to the influence in the world of ideas in the evil sense. I was looking into something else and learned he was indeed was a supporter of eugenics along with a great many other influential people. I was just in a conversation with someone else about the importance of giving context if you're going to use someone who was essentially evil or misguided into evil action in their ideas, however white washed in benevolent coatings...so that if it is useful to learn something from them, we might not absorb, unconsciously, what would be harmful to learn from them by associating them with wisdom, whilst what they stood for was not a true love for humankind, except the kinds like them. I'd love to understand what your thinking was in posting him...if you did or didn't know...and if you did, why you chose to, and if you're open to giving context if you choose to quote someone with that kind of background in the future?

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I didn’t know either Alicia. Should have but didn’t.

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Thank you! I needed a reminder to have faith in humanity today, and your response gave it to me. <3

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Mar 2Liked by Peter d'Errico

If you combine ideas of egoic insanity with sexual exploitation and wrap it up with a bow and nothing else, you have Epstein, The Edge/The Engine and various derivatives that operate in terms of "ideas" and creating a "future" built on the toilet paper that voldormort became.

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Mar 2Liked by Peter d'Errico

Poetic: "Deloria wrote:

“Using a number of illogical and irreconcilable theories of ward-dependent nation, plenary powers of Congress, and treaty abrogation the court skips along spinning off inconsistencies like a new sun exploding comets as it tips its way out of the dawn of creation.”

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Mar 2·edited Mar 2Liked by Peter d'Errico

“Their relations to the United States resemble that of a ward to his guardian. They look to our Government for protection, rely upon its kindness and its power, appeal to it for relief to their wants, and address the President as their Great Father.”

As Hester puts it:

“The ‘guardianship’ of the United States over Native Americans constituted an extension of power over them. …

“By claiming ‘guardianship,’ [the US] assumed preeminence and control.

Marshall said the basis of the Cherokee Nation decision was the claim of US “ownership” of Original Peoples’ lands:

“The Indians… occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will.”

The above sounds exactly like a highly abusive relationship: If you put a bit of sympathy combined with absolute domination, but then tried to couch it as a kindness, as a guardianship of sort...but when in which the *forced* dependent has no independent will.

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Another for the laundry list, "private equity". Saw that one in show blurb: "The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson on how Private Equity billionaires bought up America and turned workers into serfs:The U.S. economy is being held hostage by a small cohort of financiers who run private equity firms --- Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts."

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Peter, there is something called a "list poem", so perhaps one in the making. And yeah, interesting... the "darlings" seem smitten with the enjoyable "liberty"s that the empire provides.

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I find it VERY TOUGH to "go carefully" when on-line!! I wonder: is this writer familiar with a guy who is in Chicago who wrote a published (in England, though) book all about these doctrines and so forth, and I am wondering if you two agree. Here is the name then, Steven J. Schwartzberg

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Steve is one of the commenters here!

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OK. I'm on-track now.

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"Political Principles and Indian Sovereignty": I kept waiting to read mention of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And as the conversation of renaming continues I share this link as a reminder of where we are today: https://blogs.cornell.edu/cornelluniversityindigenousdispossession/2021/01/04/ruth-bader-ginsburgs-notoriety-in-indian-country-and-cornells-campus-landscape/

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stunning piece in the Cornell blog. " The Oneida Nation of New York then purchased these parcels back in the late 1990s. In this seemingly benign case, the ONNY did not ask for jurisdiction over anyone, nor did they try to tax anyone. They merely purchased back their stolen lands and claimed rights to them: the right to not pay taxes to a foreign government. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion for the Sherill case denying this claim, arguing that the Oneida could not “rekindle the embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold.” "

I am Autistic and cannot read much in one sitting but I can already see where this is going. Big blunder by Bader-Ginsberg whatever her other accomplishments are. (I am sure there really ARE heroes, in the American culture. everyone is flawed.)

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Thanks… I saw the Cornell piece …. As to Ginsburg: now I wish i had squeezed her into this post. I discuss her frequently in other posts... for example:

https://peterderrico.substack.com/p/sam-seder-talks-with-peter-derrico

https://peterderrico.substack.com/p/governor-hochuls-veto-of-montaukett

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Mar 13Liked by Peter d'Errico

Thanks for sharing the links.

In Solidarity

Neighbor

J.D. Ruybal

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