Phew! We made it! I didn’t want to go out of this world being wrong about everything*, and so waited to see if we survived 12/21/12 before writing this.
The mythologies of the northern hemisphere are based on sun worship. That much is obvious. I’m really curious, however, that the object of worship in Christianity, the “son” is the same sound as “sun.” In other languages we have sol, sonne, jus, soare, soliel … are those words also homophones for male offspring? Is ours just coincidence? The only cultural reference I’ve seen (my American educational background) was on an old Star Trek episode (the original series) where the boys came across a culture that worshiped the sun, and at the end found that the word was actually “son,” meaning the J-man had been there too. The guy travels!
Anyway, here’s the importance of Christmas and all other solstice celebrations: The sun is the giver of life. It brings warmth. As it goes away, things wither away. When it returns, things grow. In the vineyard it turns water into wine. It is the source of all life. It is kind, benevolent, caring and giving, harsh and indifferent, burning and destroying crops as well as nurturing their growth. In desert climates, the gods can be cruel. In climates of plenty, the gods are kind. The Egyptian Ra was benevolent, the Hebrew Yahweh a nasty muhfuh. It just depended on how the sun shone on any particular cultural dog’s ass.**
The sun slowly goes away, each day lower on the horizon. On the day of solstice, which we call December 21st, it reaches its farthest point. Then it appears to stay in one place for a few more days. On December 25th it begins its homeward journey.
On the third day it rises again. And so we celebrate. Hope springs anew. Life will go on.
I did want to make sure on this one, however. It was a close call! We all know that ancient cultures know more about the future than we do, so it was natural to assume that the Mayans had it figured out. Now they can take their place alongside Nostradamus. They are discredited.
Next up: Hebrews. The Israelis will have to stop stealing land, since their bible is made-up stories. After that, hopefully, Ayn Rand sets on the horizon, never to return.
Merry Christmas one and all!
__________
*Shush!
** It is also the reason that Jesus and Mary have halos around their heads … it is our ancient forebears’ way of saying “hint hint.”
Piece of Mindful 
Ayn Rand has more truisms than anything you offer. I expect she will still be around when everyone is tired of your excuses for failure.
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She gave us the 2008 crash. I, on the other hand, and well and prospering. Merry Christmas, Fredo!
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Merry Christmas to you.
Is the crash really so bad? Maybe better to reset the system on an occasional basis, than carry the bubble unto total obliteration.
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The crash was unavoidable, but the bubble could have been prevented. The result, phantom wealth, worthless derivatives, TBTF banks and billions in household wealth evaporated or transferred uphill – all bad.
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Indeed. My next question: was this a market failure, or more saliently a result of the Central Planners stomping the gas petal ever harder in their quest for more wealth to build their Empires and Cathedrals? The central Powers That Be are forevermore penciling in more and more economic growth to fund their ambitions, and if this includes countenancing a few dicey synthetic derivatives from TBTF banks, well, we’ve got constituents to service, and campaigns to fund.
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It was market failure, pure and simple. The quasi-government entities did not jump on until the game was well underway, and fraud was rampant on the banking side of the crisis. As mentioned elsewhere, only one person sits in jail for behaviors during this time, Bernie Madoff. He is in jail because he targeted powerful people like the Wilpons. All the rest, who bilked ordinary people, are still free and snorting their cocaine on their yachts or at their ocean resorts. Our system is irreparably corrupt.
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Our finance sector is so heavily regulated and beholden to the political class, I’m not sure where the socialism ends and the private sector begins.
Note that your socialist buddies in Europe had a “hotter” finance sector and a bigger bubble than us. One grumble is that US taxpayers bailed out European banks to some extent.
The materialistic greed you decry is readily available in socialist regimes, e.g. “we will bury you”. Part of your schtick here is that you are promising more stuff for the common man if he just joins a union and robs the rich guy down the road. What makes you any different than the politician telling people to buy a house that will always retain its value?
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Rob?
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If you can shed these notions that taxes are a form of robbery and that tax policy is not a legitimate form of public policy and planning, then we can discuss this further. But I will present one concept that most people do not grasp:
When the top tax rate was 70%, it was only applied against “passive” income, or interest, dividends, rents and royalties, and then only over the equivalent of $3 million in income. And it was not “confiscatory” because people always had an option to invest the money or pay the tax. If they had already invested, the high tax rate was an incentive to stay invested.
The low taxes brought in during the Carter/Reagan years had the effect of creating an incentive to disinvest. That led to the bubble/boom/bust economy and our current protracted depression.
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I sometimes speak with hyperbole to make a point. I agree that good tax policy is good public policy.
But how much is enough? We could probably cut every federal department by 90% and see no loss in services. Starting with the defense department. Why am I hearing endless commercials about registering with Selective Service? Can’t we, like, you know, cancel the program?
Your notion of taxing away passive income doesn’t impress me that much. Maybe some merit there, but I’m not one to believe the government has a better use for the money. Were just as likely to get your Bolshevik buddy Yagoda with his ill-conceived and poorly executed public work projects, and show trials, as anything better than what we get by the yacht owning coke snorters.
That boom and busts are caused by too much passive money floating around is far from the mark.
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Regarding taxes, the evidence speaks for itself.
“Show trials” was an expression used in our media to suggest to the American public that the trials were not real and hat here was no Western treachery going on during the Trotsky years.
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What evidence? What socialist, big taxing entity has ever gone the way you like? Except for the Scandinavian countries to which everyone on your side likes to point but no one seems able to duplicate, because no one seems able to notice the difference between Scandinavia and other places.
And your latest great perception is that the Moscow show trials were actually an exercise in the rule of Law? And the Bolshevik excesses were orchestrated by Western meddling? Farther down the rabbit hole we go.
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You instinctively revert to validation due to your skin color and black/white thinking.
Post-Bolshevik Russia was a swarm of intrigue, with Germany, France, Japan and to a lesser degree the US all trying to overthrow the new regime by assisting moles inside the government and agitators outside. there was also full frontal attack from east and west, a precursor to World War II wherein the western powers supported the rise of Hitler to attack Russia. Trotsky was a centrifugal force. The trials were held, men were shot for treason, others jailed. It is no different than would happen anywhere else, but our history has been sanitized so the trials had to be rewritten as farce.
If you cannot look at these events without the preimse that you are dealing with bright line good and evil, you’ll never understand any history anywhere.
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Your easily excited antagonisms about race are all I need to point to to make my point.
Your take on history is not without merit, but it is pretty spurious in the main. You leave out so much in your anxiety to make a point in favor of your egalitarian emotional need.
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Friend of mine.
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Merry Christmas to you of all faiths. For without faith……
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There is always cause for optimism of the spirit even as we suffer pessimism of the intellect.
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