Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ , http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ , or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  

Photo: The "Suicide Shack"

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
28 Responsible Democracy Anyone?

Without going into detail concerning the reasons why rational democracy is failing in the United States, Europe, and indeed everywhere, we must nevertheless take a close look at the consequences of the Age of Enlightenment and rational Democracy in Latvia.

The advent of rational democracy in Latvia was greatly furthered by the Herrnhuter religious movement. Led by a farsighted German nobleman, Count Zinzendorf (he understood that natural democracy among the princes and barons had come to an end and wished a peaceful transition to a democracy shared with all people), the movement encouraged uneducated Latvians (as well as Africans and Americans) to learn how to read. By 1897 an estimated 92% of inhabitants of Livland (later Latvia) were literate.

Unfortunately, there was an inherent conflict in Graf Zinzendorf’s movement. Inspired as it was by the Age of Enlightenment, the nobleman championed individual freedom and a personal relationship with God. Zinzendorf’s goal threatened not only the authority of the Catholic and Lutheran churches, but the tsar of Russia. In 1742 the knighthood of Livonia with the help of the Empress Tsarina Elizabeth (in 1743) shut down the movement, and forced it to go underground. It recovered in 1764, when Empress Tsarina Catherine II restored (said to have occurred inadvertently) their religious rights. The Lutherans continued to impede the development of the movement, until Tsar Alexander I proclaimed them complete liberty in 1817. Still, the Lutherans persisted in their repression (they insisted that the state eliminate the Herrnhuter choirs, the movement’s core organizing unit (disallowing recruitment of new members), and eliminating elections by a lottery system. By 1860 the movement was for all practical purposes eliminated, and its near 70,000 members in Livland muted.

As Estonians and Latvians ought to know, if there had not been the educational effort of the Herrnhuter movement, which increased the literacy of the people, their nations would not have come into existence.

The above conclusion is one of the reasons to remember that the Herrnhuters first came into being in 1727, when Count Zinzendorf came to the aid of the Bohemian Brethren, a religious group originating in Taborite movement (originating in the Hussite movement) by granting them land (called Herrnhut). Tolerance for their faith came with it. Interestingly, the originator of the Hussite movement, Jan Hus, martyred by the Catholic church in 1415. The martyrdom of Hus occured a mere two hundred years after the elimination of the Cathar movement in Languedoc and the humiliation of the proto-Latvian leader, king Visvaldis of Jersika, both killing events taking place in 1209. The repression in Languadoc was so severe that according to some estimates nearly 500,000 people were killed. Military operations against the Cathars ceased in 1255. They ceased against Jersika in 1214, when a rebellion against the imposed peace by Visvaldis was repressed. All the same, opposition to the Catholic church, which was supported by secular princes, did not cease. Various religious movements other than Catholicism continued to exist. In short, a study of the Protestant movement sans doctrinal dogma leads discovers us among the heretics of the 13th, 12th, and earlier centuries. As this writer has written in other blogs, the Latvian Children of Johns, an almost meaningless designation today, were once upon a time the very essence of proto-Latvians.

Notwithstanding the repression of the Herrnhuter movement by the Lutheran church, the repression did not occur without resistance to it. The very first flag of the First Awakening of Latvians is the famous “Līgo” flag. It shows John as “vaidelotis” (priest) before a sacred altar. In the original drawing by Baumaņu Kārlis, we can still see in the background the Children of Johns. The original drawing (see “Jāņu Foto Albums”, Norden AB, 2007; also the archive at LNB) appears in a book published 1874. It features a collection of songs, some nationalistic in sentiment. This edition was destroyed almost in its entirety by then ruling regime of the Russian tsar. However, an even more devastating blow to the existence of the Children of Johns was the publication in 1888 of the pseudo epic called “Lāčplēsis” (literally, Destroyer of Bears) by the Latvian poet Pumpurs. Pumpurs by design (conscious or unconscious) replaces John with a pseudo hero. There is nary a protest from the gallery. Everyone is taken with the age of industrialism and has little idea what to do with the natives, the Herrnhuters. It seems that the Lutheran church has won.

Today (2010) a hundred and fifty years have passed since 1860, the year the historian marks as the end of the Herrnhuter movement in the Baltics. Almost no one on the internet sees history on the other side of the Soviet occupation as something real. 1860 incidentally happens to be the year of birth of my grandfather. I mention him, because my grandfather’s father (1804-1868) was a Herrnhuter. He was also “starasts” (an overseer of the works, a manager) of the local baron. He held Herrnhuter meetings at his inn on Sundays. Yet grandfather’s paternal half-sister, Evelina-Līze, is buried in a Lutheran churchyard, and buried not just anywhere, but beside the (now wrecked) “kaplicha” or graveyard church. Round and about goes history. Was the Lutheran pastor sympathetic to the Herrnhuters? Those who were sympathetic had to cease being so. All this happens in the vicinity of Valmiera, once the center of the Herrnhuter movement in Livland. Valmiera and vicinity also became the very center of the movement of national awakening. The very first national Song Festival occurred in the small town of Dīkļi, about 10 km from Valmiera.

What does all this have to do with my calling for a NOT-VOTE (come October 2) for the government of Latvia? I must ask the reader to refer to my letter (see: Jaņdžs) here. I write among other things that “The sacrificial victims of the ritual in Latvia—the Latvian soldiers of WW1 who were then compromised by the illegalism of Latvian legionaires of WW2—have become a no longer relevant sacrifice. The proofs of this are the acts of Latvian government during the last twenty years.” I realize that some grammarians will dispute my use of the word “illegalism” (it does not appear in the dictionary), but I use it to make a reference to the fact that the Latvian legionnaires, now accused of being part of Hitler’s SS, were not so, but were trapped into being so-called through the absence of legal advice before joining the battle against the Stalinists.

The illigalism of the legionnaires and the ignorance by the present of the past suggests that Latvians are in fact caught up and hurled into the maelstrom of the hapless. The crisis we are in is not just any crisis, It is a systems crisis. The repair of this broken engine is not possible. We need a new motor. To go a step beyond pop culture, this writer suggests that you go and vote the NOT-VOTE.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ , http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com / , or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
27 Should We Vote For A Catastrophe?

Democracy is a very nice idea, and it is even better than nice if it is put in practice. In fact, the history of democracy goes back to the very origins of human beings, even though most history books present it as an invention of the Greeks.

However, Greece is a hilly place, which means that once the forests growing on its hills were cut down erosion set it. One may imagine that the erosion was furthered by King Laius’ goats and sheep. Here is the rub: the democracy that was practiced by the people living in the woods in Greece and elsewhere (because while there were forests there also existed a natural subsistence economy that allowed a wholly natural democracy) became subject to rational manipulation anywhere people lived without or few forests.

Deforestation in ancient Greece may be traced back to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. This is to say, the natural democracy that prevails among forest dwellers (we can take as an example the early inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego  or prehistoric Latvians who may have invented the grammar for the endearing word) disappeared and was replaced by a rational system of an in-group of “voters”. For all the appeal that “rational democracy” may have, it did not survive for long because it is subject to rational manipulation. Though a number of experiments in democracy were made by the agriculturalists who succeeded the forest dwellers—the most notable of which experiments was the election of a sacrificial king, who through his sacrifice was to remind naked humanity of the spiritual and charismatic components that being human makes possible—the temptation to tax the agriculturalists (if you have 2 sack of grain, I will take one of them, add it to my 2 and have 3) was too great for the sacred king to survive the aggressions of kings who succumbed to the temptations of becoming secularists. The transition from sacred king (King Arthur and his Round Table is a good example) most probably happened around the 9th century of our era.

The secular king had many “friends” who envied him. Among these friends-enviers-enemies (some would call them “freedom fighters”) were the king’s vassals, the princes. The latter had the power of arms, and while the secular king could rule by practicing the tactics of divide-and-rule among his vassals, the latter were, so to speak, natural democrats when in their own company. The best example of a princely democracy overthrowing the king turned secularist is the Magna Carta  (1215) of England. Incidentally, we may note that the name of the king who signed the Carta is John, a name that in this writer’s opinion links him with the sacred kings of the past.

The natural democracy of the princes did not all evolve at the same time. For example, “democracy” was far less defined by a code of law in France, where the secular king (and the vassal princes) hung on to absolute power until the Revolution in 1789. This is one of the reasons why King Louis XVI  lost his head (1793). While the people, often called “the populist mob”, still remembered something of the once sacred nature of kings by rushing to smear themselves with Louis blood, Louis XVI death is all the more remarkable because his corruption allowed the commoners to forget his forebears once sacred political role.

Both the American and French revolutions brought into being “modern democracy”, i.e., the democracy of the merchant class soon expanded to include what we know as the middle class. It is the vastly expanded natural “democracy” of the middle class that has brought civilization to the point of economic and political catastrophe.

Without going into detail about the failing political order in the United States, Europe, and indeed most parts of our planet, we can see the consequences of the so-called Age of Enlightenment and Reason in Latvia. In Latvia the demise of political charisma is especially painful, because not only did Latvia come into being as a last ditch effort by its inhabitants to overthrow oppression, but then suffered enormous loss of life for the sin of its success.

Today, stripped down to the naked body as a tree is stripped of its leaves and branches, the charisma of political self-sacrifice has been turned into a dirty word. Indeed, the word does not dare to reconstitute itself other than an anachronistic entity that everyone recognizes as such and no one really wants. The dying of the body is delayed only by the vampire ticks (ērces) trying to prolong the body’s life by singing of hope and heaven. The psychological damage caused by the rhetoric is palpable. On the one hand it creates hubris among the political elites; on the other hand it creates mass emigration of the population to parts where jobs replace empty words.

The re-adoption by post-Soviet Latvia (1991) of Latvia’s Parliamentary Constitution of 1922 is not only a late attempt to rehash the glories of the expansion of democracy to Latvian middle classes (in effect creating them out of former Soviet bureaucrats), but proof of the disorientation caused by a failed Western civilization attempting to lie its way out of its demise. While one may excuse the nascent communist middle classes for mistaking the fall of the Soviet Union for the “victory” claimed by Western capitalism, the failure of Latvia’s political leadership to bring about a true middle class should (by 2010) have brought enlightenment to the fact that the hopes of the Age of Enlightenment have not only failed, but are founded on a failure to understand the limits of rationalism.

Logic would suggest that the Latvian voters take the risks implicit in NOT-VOTING in order to activate the default button of the 2nd Republic and reset it for a new start with as 3rd Republic.

Alas! At the time of this writing, the collapse of the financial and economic system of the West is still a hair’s breath on this side of bankruptcy and enables the ruling elites of Latvia to claim that the tremors are a negativist’s illusions and no major earthquake is in the offing. While this writer suggests that the voters NOT-VOTE in order to put the authority of “natural” oligarchic democracy into question and force it to call a Constitutional Assembly to discuss and rewrite an outdated document, there are enough professors-politologues brainwashed by Western ideology to lead the urbanized public into the bric-a-brac of deforested countryside and promise it wild strawberries in October.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.
THE-NOT-VOTER
26 Latvia’s Leaders As Geopolitical Dunces

In my previous blog (25), I pointed out the gutlessness of the Latvian political leadership. Anyone who votes for any of the would be leaders in the upcoming elections is not only acting on the irrational hope that somehow matters will improve (re: hope dies last), but that irrationality is in and of itself what hope is about. The disgusting circus in the air to a dumbed down crowd gathered on the shores of Daugava in Riga just about sums up the level of maturity of both organizers and the entertained.

While the right wing coalition of the former Prime Minister Shkehle and hyperventilating vice major of Riga Shlesers are waging an election campaign that has turned economics into a form of the mindless, “Vienotība” (Unity), another coalition of right wing political parties, has turned the fear of Soviet invasion in 1944 [“The Swedes are coming (to save us)”] into a hysterical fear of Russia in 2010. The allegedly non-Latvian “Russian” leadership (concentrated about Riga) offers—as its contribution to the pre-election babble--deathlessness to destitute pensioners by promising no further cuts in pensioners pensions and further daredevil air shows above Daugava. Not ot to be outdone, the leadership of Catholic, Lutheran, and Russian Orthodox has reached such ecumenical highs that Tony Blair, the former British PM, could well become the next Pope.

Meanwhile, the geopolitical unification of East and West, that is to say, Europe-West (the EU) and Europe-East (Russia) proceeds apace. Of course, the economic links precede political links and may take a hundred years to reach completion. Nevertheless, as the project Nord Stream  proves, the linking is taking place. Oh, yes, Latvia is not having any of it. Thus, not only did modern technology pass Latvian by using an underwater pipeline, but Lithuania, Poland, and others are denying Latvian agricultural products export to Russia by taking the paranoia of Russia for the psychological disorder that it in fact is.

The Latvian paranoia of all things Russian has created a “death spiral” not only in its economy (a Bloomberg reporter on a trip to Riga interviews a Swedish economist on Latvia’s economy), but in demographic and geopolitical status. The geopolitical nihilism can be grasped by anyone who wishes to look at the map and notice that Latvia is located just about in the middle between Western and Eastern Europe. In short, Latvia’s much talked about geopolitical advantage is being denied in the name of a democracy that has become a synonym for irresponsible politicians and politics.

The mushy thinking among Latvia’s political elite is one of the reasons why I have been suggesting that the only vote in the upcoming elections is to NOT-VOTE. Among the earliest NOT-VOTER supporters is Thomas Jefferson, who argued for nullification, i.e., the right of the citizenry to nullify everything from laws to governments. The basis for Jefferson’s argument is that it is the people who are the sovereign, with government acting on their behalf only as long as the people not NOT-VOTE and de-authorize it.

Incidentally, were the Latvian “Russians” to win the elections (not without Latvian support, of course), the result can in no way be worse than the political chaos that prevails at present. In fact, next to a successful NOT-VOTE, which leads to a revamping of a dysfunctional Constitution, a Latvian-"Russian" political coalition is the next logical step if the people of Latvia wish for themselves more than become a near-nameless domain for bureaucrats.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ , http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ , or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  



I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
25 Latvia’s Leaders Reveal Lack of Guts

Right on the heels of the 24th post of THE NOT-VOTER, which provided a link to President Valdis Zatlers statement to the media that he does not know who to vote for, there appeared in the magazine “ir” an interview with a former president of Latvia, Vaira Viķe-Freiberga, in which she stated that “I was the mother of the nation for eight years, I served for eight years. If the people trust me also today, I thank them for that, but my aim was that they should take responsibility for themselves.”

One may indeed agree with VVF that some of the electorate perceived her as some sort of “mother of the nation”. On the other hand, if she perceives herself to have been such, she identifies the hubris of the national leadership, which for twenty years has served the nation without showing any guts. Incidentally, I identify “guts” or gutsy leadership as leading by example. While VVF may have been the better looking talking head among the post-Soviet presidents of Latvia, she hardly led by example. Perhaps one cannot blame her for that, because her knowledge of the Latvian people was superficial and her tours to the countryside were ceremonial tours de force.

Now in the wake of these (G. Ulmanis, V. Viķe-Freiberga. V. Zatlers) muted (self-censoring) presidential wonders, comes Laila Pakalniņa and offers more lighter than air intellectual grub at "ir", a magazine that serves as the mouthpiece of “Vienotība”, a grouping of right wing reactionary political parties.

Writes Pakalnina: "Man gan šķiet, ka Latvija pirms vēlēšanām sen nav bijusi tik vienkāršas izvēles priekšā. Tieši tā un ne sarežģītāk – starp nenoslīkt un noslīkt, starp jā un nē, starp Rietumiem un Austrumiem, starp neatkarību un atkarību.... Tik vienkārši. Ja vien kādam laime nav dzīvošana PSRS un cerība uz savas valsts atkalpārdošanu Krievijai. Tik vienkārši, ka nav jāmeklē iespaidīgākā reklāma, skaistākā programma un mīļākā partija. Vien principiāli jāatceras, ka Latvijas neatkarības atgūšana, tāpat kā zaudēšana, bija ļoti konkrēts process – tikšana vaļā no Krievijas. Tāpēc Latvijas neatkarība vienmēr ir un būs ļoti konkrēta – visupirms neatkarība no Krievijas."

(My rough translation: “It seems to me that Latvia has not faced such a simple choice before elections for a long time. Thus and no more complicated than that—between not drowning and drowning, between yes and no, between the West and the East, between independence and dependence…. It [the choice] is so simple. Unless one has a secret wish (? laime) to live in the USSR and hopes that the nation will again be sold to Russia. It is so simple, that one does not need to look for an advertisement, the most beautiful program and dearest party. One only needs to remember that the regaining of Latvia’s independence, as much as its loss, was a concrete process—to rid itself of Russia. This is why the independence of Latvia is and will remain concrete—above all independence of Russia.”)

We are of course independent of Russia are we not? So, why are we drowning nevertheless?

My suggestion is that all of the above have a reactionary vision of the future of Latvia and are full of dread to try see Latvia as a nation that in the future includes all of its present inhabitants. As long as such reactionism is given to carry a chip on its shoulder, Latvia will for ever be a flounder rather than a fish that breaks water.

The mush that passes for thinking among Latvia’s political elite is one of the reasons why I have been suggesting that the only vote in the upcoming elections is to NOT-VOTE. Incidentally, among the earliest NOT-VOTER supporters is Thomas Jefferson, who argued for nullification, i.e., the right of the citizenry to nullify everything from laws to governments. The basis for Jefferson’s argument is that it is the people who are the sovereign, with government acting on their behalf only as long as the people not NOT-VOTE and de-authorize it.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ , http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ , or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  



I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

 THE-NOT-VOTER
24 A President For Something

The President of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers, tells the press that he does not know who to vote for.

This voter does not know who to vote for either and does not expect that by some miracle he will before the elections are over.

This is one of the reasons why I have been suggesting that the only vote in the upcoming elections is to NOT-VOTE. The greater significance of a NOT-VOTE can be discovered by reading my preceding blogs. Incidentally, among the earliest NOT-VOTER supporters is Thomas Jefferson, who argued for nullification, i.e., the right of the citizenry to nullify everything from laws to governments. The basis for Jefferson’s argument is that it is the people who are the sovereign, with government acting on their behalf only as long as the people not NOT-VOTE and de-authorize it.

Asterisks & Links of Interest

Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The Trap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic