That Haunting Inferiority Complex
Greatest Generation
when America fought the enemy
rather than sided with the enemy
when dignity was in the White House
rather than disloyalty.
Peasants
The word means people of the countryside. Vance’s supercilious reference to Chinese peasants just shows the extent of his dull-mindedness. Certainly, the pernicious communist tyrants that rule China as a prison state and whose will-to-power seeks to destroy Taiwan and enslave the Taiwanese deserve condemnation, as does the authoritarian MAGA oligarchy presently ruling America. Peasants are Earth people. There is no better introduction to peasant nobility than William Wordsworth’s poem The Solitary Reaper:
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Here is an image of a peasant girl not so different from Wordsworth’s lass:
MAGA’s Dull-Minded Men
The difference between the perception and thinking of Vance and William Wordsworth is absolute, like the difference night and day. At least the dull light of the moon possesses beauty. Let’s bring in the other two dull-minded men to get all three men’s response to the solitary reaper. Dull-minded Trump would say her work is hard labor (which he has never experienced) to be avoided at all costs, meaning hiring a Mexican (no blacks allowed, as you know) to do the work if there are any left in the country.
Trump’s a dandy, not a worker. He plays golf between executive orders that fire people who do work. He doesn’t like dirt, with the exception of rare earth minerals that can be expropriated from other nations. Since his birth he has been provided with money, so he always used money to work for him by paying to have someone else to do the work. Lifting a pen to sign his signature to an executive order firing someone or implementing an act of aggression against people and countries he hates (Putin and Russia being the only exceptions) is the hardest work he does. Trump really doesn’t work. He simply exists as a national affliction.
Gadget man Musk would just invent a robot to do the work. Musk has the sensibility of a Tesla robot. Bumblebee, WALL-E, R2-D2, or EDI have greater humanity than does Musk. He would like to send a rocket to Mars just to do it. He doesn’t give a shit about the planet.
Then there is poor haunted J.D., Master Trump's golem. In a sense, he is a mystery man because there isn’t any substance to him other than resentment and anger. He joined an investment firm, which does suggest a very materialistic philosophy of life. He claims to be a Christian, but his attitudes and behavior indicate that the teachings of Jesus had little effect if he actually read the Gospels. His greatest praise is for the Catholic theologian Augustine of Hippo who also learned nothing from the teachings of Jesus. He’s the guy who believed unbaptized babies should be sent to a nightmarish kiddy care in Hell! If he lived today he would work for ICE. Most likely, J.D. would see the solitary reaper as an insignificant menial laborer who is of no interest whatsoever. I mean she’s a fucking peasant!
The peasant in the painting is Alive and at one with nature.
What one sees in the painting is the primordial unity between the woman and nature—not simply in the fact that she is a peasant doing agricultural work. First of all, the rhythm of her work is determined by her physical relationship with the nature, not by the requirements of a machine so loved by Musk. She holds a hay fork, which is a tool, not a machine. The difference is important. The hay fork doesn’t separate her from the wheat in the way a tractor or combine would. Musk, of course, would prefer a robotic tractor, leaving farm work to machines. Like the other two co-conspirators he is not a man of the Earth. He, like them, is an artificial person (roboman).
More symbolically, the woman’s head scarf is the same shape and color of the clouds. Her blue apron is the color of the sky, and it and her dress are stirred by the wind as is the wheat in the field. So the artist (Winslow Homer) is saying that she’s as much a part of nature as are the clouds and wheat. Of course, to the hyper masculinity of the three dull-minded men, nature means nothing other than something to exploit. That Trump has ordered half of all trees within National Forests to be clear cut says as much. (Princess Mononoke we need you and Moro. There is evil in the White House that threatens all that is good.) Understanding the meaning of nature and the Earth-world requires a modicum of knowledge of philosophy, art, and literature and perhaps some actual experience in nature. (A golf course is not nature because it’s not natural.) But the values of the three men are thoroughly modern—business, politics, technology, and finance—thus thoroughly commercial and artificial. They share Judas’s love of silver, a rare earth metal. Nothing else matters. And being narcissists, they are incapable of having any empathy with the girl or nature. Their favorite image is their reflection in a mirror.
The Mind of the East
The three narcissists with their bloated egos would find this Chinese painting incomprehensible thus meaningless. That may also be true for the communist politburo that controls the Chinese Marxist-Leninist prison state. Again nature is inherently mysterious, a cloud-like emanation, which is consistent with modern physics. Bottom center is a small bridge with human figures. The significance of humans is reduced that of other creatures except the world reveals its mystery to us but not to them.
This painting shows that humans share the world equally with other creatures. It is our home together. An idea found among Native Americans, whom our dull-minded trio would consider worth less than even peasants because of their dependence upon the U.S. government that slaughtered them and stole their land. Perhaps Trump’s next executive order will be to abolish the reservation system.
Here again the insignificance of humans is illustrated, yet their awareness that encompasses the world is not insignificant. Thus, they witness the glorious Earth-world with appreciative awareness that is lacking in dull-minded men like Trump, Vance, and Musk. Let’s throw in the mass murderer Putin as well.
Two sources of wisdom: Chinese Zen Buddhism and Taoism
Influenced by both philosophies, the poet Bashō saw the mystery of existence in rivers, grass, mountains, toads, flowers, and birds. For Bashō the beings of existence are sacred, and they exist like foam stirred up by the waves of the ocean. But for him beneath the surface of the be-ing process is the great, mysterious void—the nothingness that gave birth to the Universe. (Consistent with modern astrophysics.) Though humans are physically insignificant, destined to return to the dust from which they came, it is to them that nature reveals itself. The obtuse minds of the three dullards Donald, Elon, and J.D. are too bloated with ego to see that. And unlike Bashō, Winslow Homer, and other artists, they lack insight, understanding, appreciation, and most of all empathy. Truly they see but are blind men. They are incapable of having a reverent appreciation for nature and all her creatures. They don’t even appreciate human beings.
This is also true of the Russia oligarchs that treat Russia as their piggy bank and allow dull-minded Putin to play war but not with toy soldiers made of wood, stone, clay and metal but with Russian men—father, sons, brothers, and boyfriends—made of flesh and blood, tens of thousands of whom have been sacrificed for his amusement. You would think that the Russian people would protest as the Americans have. What is holding them back? The absence of freedom within themselves. They have been slaves too long. The spirit of freedom died in Russia after the Marxist revolution, just as it did in the other two prison states China and North Korea. And MAGA’s three dullards and their dull-minded stooges want to turn America into a prison state, but as recent demonstrations have illustrated, freedom is alive and well among the American people.
Where is wisdom to be found in China? Not among the Marxist-Leninist overseers such as Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. His title indicates that much. There are no wise men in the politburo.
No Confucius, who emphasized personal and governmental morality, harmonious social relationships, righteousness, kindness, sincerity, and a ruler's responsibilities to lead by virtue.
No Xun Kuang who believed because of China’s constant warfare of his time that human nature is evil. Those of us who live in modern Western societies that have given women a voice know that it’s not human nature that is evil. The evil lurks in the aggression inherent in masculine nature.
There is no Buddha, the oldest foreign religion in China, who says that there is already enough suffering into the world so one should act to lessen suffering, not increase it.
But for now there is no Lao Tzu, perhaps the wisest Chinese philosopher who is totally incomprehensible to the dull-minded men such as those who presently rule the U.S. and the prison states of Russia, China, and North Korea.
I see this not succeeding
the world is a spiritual thing
it can’t be forced
to force it is to harm it
. . .
therefore the sage avoids extremes
avoids extravagance
avoids excess. (Red Pine translator)
We’ve seen the harm done to the world by dull-minded men who have sought to govern the world and its people with force. They have harmed it and its inhabitants.
The rice-planting girl
Adjusts her hair.
Bashō’s poem and the painting reveal the wisdom of a simple peasant girl. She is at one with nature, she works with nature to provide for her family, the simplicity of her being possesses beauty (witnessed by the painter and Bashō), and she takes a moment to look at the magnificent world with appreciative awareness. She is the summation of life capture in a moment. She struggles gracefully; a way of living that is alien to the dull-minded, greedy president of the United States and his toadies. The us-versus-them ideology Karl Marx destroyed the art of living gracefully in Russia and China. Unbridled capitalism has had the same effect in the U.S.
We Westerners have our own images of working with rather than against nature.
Anonymous
The beauties contained in this painting are numerous, but go unseen and unappreciated by dull masculine minds that value money and power above all else.
The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet
to the Chinese peasants
disrespected by America’s
dull-minded vice president
J.D. Vance.
