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
32 The Sacrificial Crisis (2)

Latvia stands before a fork in the road. If it goes to the right, it faces extinction as a community; if it turns left, it may save itself and the world.

At this moment, it appears more likely that Latvia will turn right and die. Why should this be so?

The answer is that the fork signifies coming upon a sacrificial crisis. If the sacrifice is not made, a slow or sudden death is the likely outcome.

In 1991, at the time that the Soviet Union collapsed, Latvia regained its independence through what is referred to as a “singing revolution”. Of course, no one ever gains or regains--except in fairy-tales--
one’s independence by singing—either singly, or as a chorus, or by blowing trumpets. Much more than that is required. A people have to manifest a will to become independent and a willingness to die to bring about their will.

If one becomes a free nation, it is only because the people of the nation make a life-sacrifice. Latvians bore such a sacrifice during and immediately following WW1. However, Latvians bore no such sacrifice upon the invasion or fall of the Soviet Union.

It is the failure of Latvians to bear such a sacrifice (possibly due to circumstances) upon the fall of the Soviet Union that haunts Latvia today, and why Latvians are haunted by a suspicion that though Latvia is a nation, it is a failed nation. This sense of failure is notwithstanding the huge loss of life that Latvians suffered at the time of WW1, WW2, and the great deportations that Latvians suffered at the hands of the Soviets in 1941 and 1949.

The insufferable corruption of government and lack of populist reaction to it is proof of the uncertainty of the people over whether they are in fact capable of maintaining their community.

This is why one may say that Latvians are suffering from a sacrificial crisis today. It also opens space for discussing who will or will not bear the sacrifice.

For a detailed argument of the significance of sacrifice, this writer suggests the works of Professor Rene Girard . Because a detailed familiarity with Gerard’s arguments may be obligatory to politologues, the ordinary citizen (unfortunately limited at this time to he-she who knows English) will find the following Fora.tv (Hudson Institute) interview with the professor (click here) helpful.

To be sure, neither this writer nor anyone else can foretell just how the sacrificial crisis in Latvia may resolve itself. Nevertheless, assuming that the forthcoming election (October 2) will put in office the same clique of elites, the reasons why Latvia is dying as a nation may be even more sharply silhouetted than they are today.
Let us hope that an increased awareness of the crisis their country and community is facing will send Latvians on a journey of discovery of what it takes to create and maintain a community.

If the Latvians meet the challenge, they may discover that from among the last and least, they have moved up and become redeemers, and not only of themselves. To be or not to be that is the question.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic

29½ THE NOT-V0TER


This post in response to a post on LOL by Bruno the Left. It is no doubt difficult to make a response to a theme discussed in blog 28, when 29 is on line. Nevertheless, it is worth a try.

The Wars of Religion (1562-1598) severely tested the concept of government that “une foi, un loi, un roi,” (“one faith, one law, one king”) could any longer hold the kingdom together. One of the rebels against the former hegemony was Martin Luther, who made the Pope his special enemy. Nevertheless, while Luther initially supported a German Peasant Rebellion, he wished them to remain under the tutelage of temporal authorities. When Lutheranism came to the Livonia, it had a priori submitted to the German authorities there. Most of the Lutheran ministers did not speak the native language, not even by the time when Livonia was reached (1729~1736) by Graf Zinzendorf and his Herrnhuter movement. Thus the Herrnhuters were the liberators of the Livonian peasants de facto, that is, they taught them how to read, become politically self-aware. Not surprisingly the peasants became demanding of their rights, which was not an attitude much appreciated by the tsar, the German barons, or the Lutheran preachers.

After the Lutherans had repressed the Herrnhuters (1860), they consolidated their hold on power, even as they had to acknowledge many of the changes brought about by the Herrnhuters. The latter had actually started into motion the national awakening, which soon became a secular and militant movement. It was under the pressure of the secular movement that Lutheran barons admitted Latvian Lutheran ministers to preach to their own. Still, even the Latvian ministers found certain things in the proto-Latvian past with which they prefered not deal with. One such figure was the figure of “John”, a figure of the ancient European forest, who had survived the Crusades in Livonia.

When in 1873 “John” reemerged from the forest by appearing on the cover of the first Latvian book (other than religious) as krivs or vaidelotis, names of the proto-Latvian priest, not only did the Russian tsar have most of the copies of the book burnt, but encouraged the removal of “John” from the stage as a Latvian hero.

Thus, when in 1888, Andrejs Pumpurs, a Latvian poet serving in the tsars army, wrote “Lachplesis” (Jawbreaker of Bears), his book was eagerly received by the tsar and Lutheran preachers alike. Though Lachplesis was a pseudo epic hero promising to rise again from his defeat by the black knight, his introduction definitively allowed the removal of John. A number of cultural muggings followed. Writes Emils Melngailis, Latvian componist and ethnologue: “When in 1900, I published my first collection [of folk poems], which contained exclusively songs of Johns, I followed the practice of the ‘new language’ and replaced the name [of Johns songs] with ‘Ligo songs’. Unfortunately, my new invention has stuck, and Johns Eve and Johns songs are now replaced with ‘Ligo’”. The removal of John was cemented into place by the Latvian leftist poet Rainis in 1905 through his play “Uguns un Nakts” (Fire and Night) by making Lachplesis the sole representative figure of the Latvian hero. John was—for all practical purposes—dead.

Needless to say, the Lutheran church encouraged these perversions of the proto-Latvian character by the “new language”. Indeed, the Lutheran church even managed to become the state sponsored religion—just as it was in Sweden. The vogue today is to separate religion from politics, which is why the Lutherans in Sweden as well as in Latvia are a little laid back. Still, the multitudinous presumptions of the Lutheran archbishop in Riga and the influence of the Swedish Lutheran church in making the anti-drug movement in effect an anti-narcotic movement by excluding “soft” medicinal plants such as marihuana, attempt to reintroduce dogma in the social life-style of their respective peoples.

THE NOT-VOTER believes that the current phase of “religion” in Latvia is part of the problem of this nation. Rather than help the people fight against corruption in government and reintroduce religion as a tool that is helpful in forming a critical mind, it encourages passivity through unhelpful pietism and social dissention by focusing on such issues as a ban on gay rights and lumps marihuana with hard narcotics, even as the latter find increased acceptance elsewhere in the world.

It is possible to think that if the Herrnhuters were still around, they would be encouraging Latvians to NOT-VOTE for government that has become a stain on the spiritual fabric of the nation and which in collaboration with orthodox religious sects disables the radical changes necessary to bring forth a better tomorrow.

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
29 Latvia Left For Dead

Last Friday evening I took yet another excursion into the Latvian Kingdom of Boredom on the Air Waves.

Not that reaching Boredom was my intent. “100. pants preses klubs” (The Press Club of the 100th Commandment), led by Mareks Gailitis, the news director of LTV1, announced in a pre-show on-air blurb that his guest will be Ainārs Šlesers, the vice-major of Riga, the same who has often been portrayed as the “bulldozer” of Latvian politics.

Granted, the only “bulldozing” Mr. Shlesers ever does is drive his tractor back and forth over a pile of rubbish of nothin’ special, then jump out of the caboose, and goes home reciting rubishy poetry for the ears of the Latvian electorate. Such a precedent does not encourage one to listen to “the buldozer” again.

Even so, this listener and viewer, though not a die-hard optimist, always hopes that there will appear a journalist, an interviewer worth his-her salt, who will sit up from his-her chair (usually of red cloth or plastic in Latvia) and ask a question with a bite. If the bite is deflected by a question arriving from God on an unrelated matter, but inspires the politician interviewed to speak in a babble of tongues immediately, the reporter will be hellish enough to ask the same question again.

The layout of the stage for the “100. pants” interviews is an inverted V, with the host sitting at the point of the V, while on his right hand sit three reporters, but on his left three interviewees. Of the latter, Ainars Shlesers (Šlesers) was the center of attention on Friday night. He was flanked by two partners from the political coalition known as “Par Labu Latviju” (Favoring A Good Latvia). These were Andris Shkhehle (Šķēle), three times former PM, and Maris Riekstinsh, former foreign minister.

The interview began with a hem and a ke-ke-rex from the host Gailitis. It signaled that the nothin’ special drive over the compost pile may commence. It took off immediately. First went Mr. Shlesers. The tractor, located at the bottom of the heap, went straight to the top, executed a dazzling turn toward nowhere, then passed the sticks and levers to Mr. Shkhehle, who did a somersault without the tractor losing its chains. The came Mr. Riekstins turn. The question from the reporters was on a foreign relations matter. As Riekstins made the answer (he fumbled at the levers a bit), it did not sound quite right to Mr. Shlesers, who interrupted him and quite extemporaneously commenced to expound on Latvia’s foreign policy. No reporter pointed out that then and there Shlesers had taken over the role of the Latvian Foreign Minister (now one Mr. Ronis). This vapid nothin’ special conversation went on ad nauseaum. While the news director (Mareks Gailitis) appeared to be in his element, the other three reporters were, for the most part, quiet as mice.

Yes, it occurred to me to wonder just why the viewing public was having all this cotton candy blown its way through their screens.

Here is the answer.

LTV Ziņu dienesta vadītājs ietekmē raidījumu saturu par labu Šleseram un Šķēlem
5.augusts 2010
Latvijā vairs nav brīvu mediju. Iespējams, šāds apgalvojums ir pārspīlējums, bet šajā rakstā mēs piedāvājam pierādījumus, ka pirmsvēlēšanu laikā politiski angažēts ir ne vien privāto mediju saturs, bet arī sabiedrisko mediju, šajā gadījumā – LTV Ziņu dienesta (ZD) raidījumu saturs.

Mūsu rīcībā ir nonākusi kādas vakar no darba atlaistas LTV ZD žurnālistes vēstule, kurā viņa norāda uz ZD vadītāja Mareka Gailīša politisko angažētību. Iespējams, šī vēstule ir tapusi aizvainojumā par atlaišanu, bet ir vērts ņemt vērā vēstulē izklāstītos faktus. Tie, savukārt, liecina, ka Mareks Gailītis jau ilgākā periodā tīši ietekmē LTV ZD žurnālistu darbu, lai pēc iespējas labākā gaismā parādītu politisko apvienību Par labu Latviju. Mūsuprāt, minētie ietekmēšanas gadījumi klaji pārkāpj sabiedrības tiesības uz vārda brīvību un degradē sabiedriskā medija jēgu, padarot to par viegli manipulējamu ieroci oportūnistisku politiķu un viņu līdzskrējēju rokās.

Izvilkums no vēstules:

“izrādās, ka (Mareks) Gailītis ir dedzīgs Par labu Latviju (PLL) atbalstītājs un ietekmē žurnālistus. Lūk, daži gadījumi:

1. kad tika dibināta šī organizācija, tad sestdienas rītā mans kolēģis, kuram bija jāveido par to sižets, saņēma vairākus telefona zvanus no Gailīša, kuru nolūks bija izkontrolēt, vai sižets tiešām tiks taisīts un īpaši piekodināts, ka mēs (LTV ZD) neesam ne par, ne arī pret šo organizāciju. Tas ir īpatnēji, jo, pirmkārt, citu organizāciju dibināšanu viņš nemaz nepiemin, otrkārt, tas bija sestdienā, kad Gailītis vispār neatceras, ka vada Ziņu dienestu, un, treškārt, tik aktīva interese par to, kas bus sižetā, ir neredzēta.

2. Pagājušajā svētdienā vispār bija nedzirdēta nekaunība – viņš lika žurnālistam veidot garu interviju ar (Juri) Savicki, kurš ir (gāzes kompānijas) Itera pārstāvis Latvijā un viens no lielākajiem Par labu Latviju ziedotājiem. Un burtiski – lika, lai gan žurnālists norādīja, ka, pirmkārt, šis bus reklāmsižets par Iteru un, otrkārt, arī par intervējamā politisko piederību. Tomēr Gailītis nelikās to dzirdam un uzdeva izveidot materiālu. Lai gan tikpat labi tagad citas partijas arī var pieprasīt raidlaiku un šādu interviju. Kāpēc gan ne”?

The above a quote from http://revolucija.eu/. Scroll down to the 5th of August entry to read the full text.

Oh, yes. DO NOT FORGET TO GO AND NOT-VOTE! A not vote means a vote for a change of the system; for provoking a crisis that will call forth a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the Constitution (Satversme); that will most likely institute a four-year long authoritarian government (under the supervision of the EU); etc.

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/  

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 + 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 and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.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
21 Where To?

A survey by Factum, published at the Latvian portal “Delfi” (July 2nd), tells that if elections were to occur in the month of June, the political parties would get their deputies or seats in about the following order:

29 seat to the “Center of Tooning” (Saskaņas centrs).
24 seats to “Unity” (Vienotība);
18 seats to the “Greens” and “Farmers” coalition;
15 seats to “LNNK” and “Visu Latvijai” coalition;
9 seats to “TP” and “LPP” coalition; and
5 seats to “Human Rights in United Latvia” (Par cilvēku tiesībām…).

A crude and perhaps oversimplified interpretation of the East or West political divide and tilt of the above mentioned is 29 East; 24, 18, 15, 9 West; 5 East (=100).

If we speculate and create yet other coalitions among the coalesced, then

29 Tooning +5 Human Rights = 34
24 Unity, +18 Greens & Farmers, +15 LNNK & VL, +9 TP & LPP = 66

In other words, 34 seats tilt toward the East and 66 seats tilt toward the West. If we presume that this split of seats remains in force after the elections, Latvia is in effect divided in two geopolitical regions, re Riga-Daugavpils vs the rest of Latvia. Riga is of course Latvia’s engine of wealth under the current political and economical setup.

While the number of seats favoring one or the other side of the geopolitical divide changes over time, the two states within one system continues in effect. The system is in existence from about the time of the reestablishment of Latvia (1991) as a sovereign nation.

The political and economic instability that has arisen from the two-state setup is increased by the fact that the Latvian government’s tilt-West has its de jure seat in Riga, even as Riga is controlled (de facto) by the tilt-East. This tells itself best when we see that the government of Latvia [its governors (deputies, ministers, etc.)] is composed of mostly Latvians, all tilting West (yet have their seats in Riga), while the mayor of Riga and his executive body are all tilting East.

Because the economic interests of the elites of the East and West are concentrated in Riga, whatever the political differences between the two, these are smoothed over by their business interests. Generally speaking the business attitude of these business interests is neocapitalistic, a mix of American, German, and Russian characteristics at their worst. This smoothing of the differences with regard to commercial interests (however rough) occurs at the expense of Latvians who live impoverished in the countryside. This has resulted in an exodus of about 200,000 Latvians (mostly laborers and their children) to the far abroad of England, Ireland. Reports from the Latvian countryside speak of vast stretches of near empty, sparsely settled land, especially in the regions of Latgale and Vidzeme. The ruins of farmsteads of a more populous Latvia lie in ruins, in abandoned apple orchards, inns, and mute trees about a house that once was.

One may argue that Latvia has not only one, but two apartheid systems. One is the already mentioned political East-West divide; the other is the economic divide between the well to do of both East and West vs the poor of the East and West.

Though the above is an oversimplification of the political and economic pie, it correctly points to why political misalignments serve to impoverish (also: dumb down) Latvians. The condition encourages the political arm of the business elite to encourage divisionism among the people of Latvia, which keeps the various ethnicities of Latvia permanently on edge with regard to each other. Thus, for example, no ethnic group is able to work toward a new cultural syncretism in Latvia, but practices political reactionism. This short-changes creativity and harms economic development.

There are some geopolitical solutions to the political-economic knot, which--though amenable to solution--do not lend themselves to a solution under Latvia’s “natural” democratic divisions. They are solvable only by means of an authoritarian system the purpose of which is to revised the "ņatural" democratic system into an “open” democratic system.

My pet dog "Not-Vote" (the real one is called Pekse), tells me to go NOT-VOTE (abstain from voting) during the October elections. If the NOT-VOTE is successful, it will force the Latvian Saeima to resign or become a de facto dictorship under an authoritarian President of its choice. That could lead to a circus. However, the Saeima may also resign, hold new elections (which are unlikely to change much), or call for a four to six year moratorium on “natural” democracy. After an interiam authoritarian democratic leadership that works to create an "open" democratic society with fully "open" elections, Latvia should emerge (with some oversight by the European Union) a new culture or one at least with such a potential.

One of the aims of Latvia’s authoritarian government ought to be the redirection of Latvia’s economic development, away from a vaguely defined system of “exports” by whatever businesses that finds a home in Latvia, and move toward a more precisely defined area of economic interest, less short-term, more future embracing. The future embracing ought to focus on

a) genetics-medicine, especially practical genetics such as cloning; this could be more easily done in Latvia, because the sense of unsettlement in Latvian society may enable individuals to accept radical changes in attitude more freely. This may enable a readjustment in the laws of Latvia in such a way that these favor issues such as cloning, for example. The controversy surrounding cloning is largely artificial, albeit seeming real;

b) cloned individuals will necessarily create new household structures; this in turn will create at the university a separate department on Future Households, one next to sociology and anthropology;

c) the right to die;

d) regeneration of Latvia’s population not necessarily through an increased birth rate, but by creating an image in which Latvia sees itself as a room in a household which is happy to see our neighbors come for a visit as our conditions permit, but we may be distinctly unhappy if other than accustomed room-mates were to come to stay; and

e) taking advantage of a declining population and redefining the character of the nation; for example, why not a decision to leave behind the glass and concrete cancer that is chewing away on its tail, the agricultural economy, and come to live in a virtual city in what may become a forest dwellers’ economy.

No, the forest dweller of our time is unlikely to go back to live in a hollow tree stump or under uprooted trees, or in caves. Rather, he-she will live in an environment that

1. knows all about genetics and related medicine,
2. rethinks life-death issues,
3. restructures its family system into a system of households,
4. assures community identity under conditions of falling population numbers,
5. reforests the land by letting itgo fallow, and
6. accumulating capital by being the first on the planet to institute laws that allow movement in radically different directions.

Thus, Latvia may exit from the political and economic fiasco into a new society.

* * *

Of course, the differentiation by the media of the Latvian community by its ethnicities and languages makes the above imagined NOT-VOTE not possible.

A peculiar Latvian meme or thought-block blocks the Latvian people to a predisposition to conservativism without tolerance for opposition. The latter results from the many historical traumas to which proto-Latvians and Latvians have been exposed to over the centuries. The thought-block is so stuborn that it resists overcoming itself even if a failure to resist leads to suicide.

This is why the entry of Guntis Ulmanis, the first Latvian president (1993-1999) of a reconstituted (and remade) Latvia, is a highly charged and, thus, radicalizing and reorienting situation. It could change not only the face (surface) of Latvia, but the way Latvians see themselves.

The situation at this moment is only a story. Nevertheless, the parallels between Mr. Guntis Ulmanis [whose grandfather was the brother of the “soft” authoritarian President Kārlis Ulmanis (1934-1940] and Shakespeare’s King Lear are striking and thought provoking. True, Ulmanis is not as hoary in his age as King Lear was.

By reentering the elections on behalf a two highly suspect (of corruption) businessmen [and rationalizing his entry by stating that the leaders of the two respective parties (TP & LPP) have become “better” men], Guntis Ulmanis puts the blunted edge of politics to the whetting stone and stakes both his forebear's and his own reputation on this potentially existential act. At stake is the honor of not only Guntis Ulmanis personally, but Latvia, too. The existential question whirls about the thoughts that come over what happens when the two parties that Guntis Ulmanis has agreed to front, thank Ulmanis for bringing them an election victory, then tell him as King Lear’s two daughters told their father: “Thanks, dad, for the kingdom; now be off to Old Pensioners Home”?

Does Mr. Ulmanis have a radical answer to the hypothetical—nevertheless real—likelihood that messieurs Shkehle and Shlesers give him the hi-ho? And even if they were to be so generous and not do so, what does Ulmanis offer to do on behalf of Latvia for his part? Will he be a neutered or an authoritarian democrat? Will he do what needs to be done to turn Latvia around and into tomorrow, or does he let the boat continue drifting Westward and on into the sunset?

Asterisks & Other Readings
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

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com  or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com  or http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ . You are invited to view them all to make heads and tails of it all.

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + 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 and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.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
20 A Farce or a Welcome Tragedy

In my previous blog I suggested that Mr. Guntis Ulmanis, who exchanged the honorific of “Mr. President” for plain “Mr.” ought now prove his worthiness as ex-Mr. President with existential behavior. There are several ways Mr. Ulmanis may act existentially. The result will depend on whether he chooses farce or tragedy.

There is definitely something of the character of King Lear in the self-neutered former president of Latvia. We may remember that King Lear, feeling the age of retirement upon him, divides his kingdom between his two daughters, Goneril and Regan (TP and LPP?), but leaves Cordelia (Unity? = Vienotība?) out of his will.

Not surprisingly (at least not to those who have overcome naïvite), Mr. Lear learns to regret his decision. However, instead of taking action—to undo, or go hang, whatever—Lear falls into profound passivity, and with no less profound humiliation and a nightmarish storm berating the day, he tears off his clothes. Mr. Lear:

“Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou
owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep
no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on
's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare,
forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings!
come unbutton here.”
[With his “wits beginning to unsettle” (words by Kent), Lear tears off his clothes.]

While Mr. Ulmanis has no unfaithful daughters to trouble him, he has been—no less than Mr. Lear—flattered out of his wits by monsieurs Shkele and Shlesers, the leaders of the above (parenthesised) political parties. May one be so foolish and think that the two political leaders—if with Ulmanis’ help they turn their political weakness into a miraculous victory—will want to continue with him except make him another lamed President? Unfortunately, (if the ex-president has not overcome his naivite) the existential act may come as love comes to a virgin as he finds himself before the public no less unbuttoned than Mr. Lear. Baby, it is cold outside, whether the Fool who is witness is kind or not.

“Unaccomodated” (by fate) and betrayed (and challenged?) in full public view, what will Mr. Ulmanis do?

As much as King Lear was pressed by age and approaching death to divide his kingdom, so Mr. Ulmanis may have been moved by the hope that Latvia—which after all owes much of its coming into being to his grandfather’s brother, who was the last president of the first (part) Latvian Republic.

The late President of Latvia, Karlis Ulmanis—may through Guntis Ulmanis have another opportunity to rid Latvia of a corrupt government and give it another go at becoming a bona fide sovereign state of a people with bona fide claims to it. Mr. Ulmanis’ hope—that monsiers Shkele and Shlesers have “bettered” themselves—cannot be anything but a rhetorical device that masks the people’s effort to snatch the state from disaster. To permit one’s self to think so, one puts trust in the belief that Mr. Ulmanis decision is self-consciously made and knows its dramatic potential. There (is) (must be) a life-risking element to Mr. Ulmanis’ effort, however. Else, not only does he fail his forebear in a personal sense, but Latvia may look forward to itself as one of bygone days.

This blogger has written elsewhere that the government of President  Kārlis Ulmanis (1936-1940) is a legitimate projection of the will of the people of Latvia--with one caveat: President Ulmanis failed the death or self-sacrifice test at the time Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Perhaps Ulmanis hoped that through peaceful surrender (to the Soviet Union) Latvia will better survive the rule of the Soviet Union. War with it could not possibly lead to victory. It is (was) a legitimate hope. However, Ulmanis failed to confirm his hope for an independent Latvia as the better choice. He failed to seal the sovereign people’s hope with an offering of his life. Though Kārlis Ulmanis died in Siberia and lies in an unmarked grave (to make his life and works so much more forgettable), if such a fate is his living seal, it spoilt itself. The decline of Latvia has something to do with the failure of Kārlis Ulmanis to act existentially by making a literal gift of his life for the people’s dream.

By taking advantage of his position as the first President of Latvia since his grand-uncle Kārlis Ulmanis, and by discovering a way to continue the story of Latvia, Guntis Ulmanis has set the stage for becoming the Latvian people’s hero and saviour. He is offering the sovereign Latvian people the chance to re-think themselves once more. He may chose to make the offer real by blocking naked conspicuous consumption among all Latvians. After all, egality was (once upon a time) shared in by every country household that knew how to make its own brand of beer.

One hopes that the Latvian people may be persuaded to be existential and know to exclude conspicuous consumption from their vision of the future. However, if it is not to be, the failure will make monsoirs Shkele and Shlesers greedy princes all over again. While the spirit of victory is sure to rise to their heads, it will also guarantee that a share in their "murgs" (a nightmare) will not just quickly pass past the nation’s eyes but be found in the mirrors of all.

Guntis Ulmanis yet fails as yet to put the seal, the risk of life, on his effort. As long as this failure persists, the story continues as a circus. Everyone knows that there are no more heroines such as Spihdola, who once went to the aid of Jahnis Lachplesis. Today the sovereign nation of Latvia is disintegrating with such seeming inevitability that it makes one think it will soon reach total self-forgetfulness. Some think that we have already reached and are in the post-self-forgetfulness era.

Whether the above alternative is preferable to this blogger’s advocacy of NOT-VOTING, the blogger does not know. One may guess that Mr. Guntis Ulmanis may show his cards before elections. Hopefully these will not be cards of puffed up rhetoric and pictures of dancing horses. If it is rhetoric, the NOT-VOTER ought to consider it a real opportunity for him and herself and the NOT-VOTE.

Moreover, there is the question of whether there are other “Jahnis Lachplecis” (John Bears) among the public, and their name may become Jāņi, i.e. Johns, pl.. We know there must be ways to accumulate capital for Latvia, but surely not by hit or miss methods favoured by foreign investors. Latvians, if they know who they are, have to see what lies ahead for them not just for tomorrow, but the day after. They cannot be looking at the future with an investor’s eye. As platitudinous as that may sound, looking from here and this time into the future, the days ahead look bleak. The sad demographic future of Latvia makes one blanch.

Even so, the negative may in some way be taken advantage of and death may be avoided by creating and adopting a different life-style. The threshold into such a future may well come as a tragedy, the potential of which has been set up by Guntis Ulmanis.

The provocation for tragedy may come in many ways. Perhaps Latvians may wish to reduce the size of Riga, for example. A reduced number of people “better” people a nation when conditions prevail that make the “virtual city of the computer” prevail over the city of brick and concrete. The countryside of Latvia has to be repopulated if it is to survive the vulnerabilities of a city. The answer of how to do this also is not only one. But it will certainly not occur just because the farmers’ lot may be bettered. It will only happen with reforestation (makes one think!) and long-term projection and planning.

THE-NOT-VOTER has many concerns. Here is yet another: Latvians must import from the world-at-large a need for Latvia and must be able to pass the- import-of-capital test at the same time. Latvia must be and become real not only to Latvians dreaming if it is to be more than a dream.

Guntis Ulmanis may not know how to get from here to there. Perhaps no one knows. How is one to tell who will prevail and survive? You decide. Nevertheless, the next three months before elections may do worse than spread around a greater understanding over the role of THE-NOT-VOTER at election time. It is not just "this", "that", but it is also "none", the box named “Other”, usually below the “Yes” and “No” box.

Asterisks & Other Readings
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

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com  or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com  or http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/.