Political Mirroring Volume VII: Reclaiming Our Time

 

Volume VII: Reclaiming Our Time 

Maxim: “Avoid political discussions when everyone’s society cannot receive a guaranteed benefit.”

The Highlights of Abstract Mirroring Volume VII:

• Reminder: Belief acceptance + Context=Harmony.
• ROT acts: “Reclaiming our time” or ROT actions are inspired by long-serving Representative Maxine Waters (D-California), a sassy partisan who cuts off responses from people she doesn’t like. Instead of being partisan, irrational, and closing off discussion because we’re simply incapable of hearing it, mirrors use ROT to cut out the corrosive blot in our politics, leave the discussion, and save time to do more rational things.
• MNPCs: or mirrored non-playable characters, the subjects of mirroring. Like filler characters in a video game, they are our time-thieves who spout irrational nonsense or tell long conspiracies. It’s up to mirrors to decide if another person is a hero on the same quest for more rational arguments and solutions or is there to rob you.
• Mirroring History: past event + misunderstood context + present, questionable belief = Mirror that “historian.” History is the current, imperfect understanding of the facts in the context of the past. Its meaning changes with new evidence yet it matters only when people make it important. However, if events are given no reflection or are forgotten, or if people are focused on past trivialities, inaccuracies, or falsehoods, it’s wasted fruit. Mirrors seek to limit history’s misuse while acknowledging that many people also can’t handle real historical analysis.
• Additive History: Disputable Claim/Argument + Historical Abstraction(s) = claimed history bonus in a debate. This tactic falsely uses history to bolster an argument or to gain a real-life advantage.
• Retributive History: Historical Abstraction(s) + Present Cost to atone for the historical abstraction= Retribution Fee (money, land, apologies, shame, etc.), also known as Retributive Justice as the current sacrifice is to right a circumstance already gone, but irrationally connected to the past in the form of abstractions. This argument falsely uses history to punish an opponent, but it also may be used as an additive, that is for the punisher to benefit from the exchange (redistributionary history).
• Acontextual Imperative: or the past out of context used as a command. The claimed historical forces create an irrational order to act in a present circumstance. Commands such as: “Tear down those evil statues of slave owners!” “Shut your mouth, colonial oppressor, you don’t get to talk!” “Go back to your own country where you came from” all prevent rational argument and are thus worthy of mirroring.
• Irredentist Retributive History: Irredentism is the belief in restoring a country or nation to those who “should” own it. For us, it’s the nearly unobtainable solution or retribution for an historical claim, often the most costly, extreme, and irrational solution. Examples: American nativists wanting all immigrants out, the Stolen Land disclaimer before speeches where the North and South American continents belong to current Native American descendants, restoring the American Southwest to Mexico, Russians reclaiming Ukraine from the Ukrainians, or Palestinian Arabs and Jews fighting over the Holy Land.
• Historical Imposter Syndrome (HIS): An irrational feeling of unease or separation from a desired social group (anomie) due to beliefs about a past context from which the person wasn’t directly part. Basically, a self-hating person feels they must atone in the present for grand historical events that they weren’t personally involved in.
• Sin of the Father (STF): A specific type of retributive history that uses past actions by persons or groups who share some common element, like race or ethnicity, to punish people even though they weren’t directly involved. Basically, a person is held responsible for the sins of their ancestors. Punishment using this justification is contrary to most interpretations of fairness and justice especially in the Western Criminal Justice system. Our concept is derived from Ezekiel 18: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.”
• Groundhog Day Scrutiny: or the fallacy of history repeating itself. Based on “Groundhog Day” and the strict scrutiny standard for equal protection under the 14th Amendment, there are three levels of scrutiny we use for the application of historical comparisons in debates. Only those arguments that are rigorous, apply appropriate context, use real and relevant evidence, and are used by debaters who can respond to counter arguments are allowable under the strict standard. Historical contexts only have similarities with other points in time and “history” can never repeat itself exactly as before. Ex.: To suggest that the undesired conditions of the 2024 election will lead to the rise of another Adolf Hitler is a logical fallacy that takes people, places, and ideas out of their context and rams them into current debates in order to squash potentially valid arguments.
• HiTs: Historical Totems are physical objects (like a written constitution or a protest sign) or ideas put into speech (like shouting Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter or posting a meme on social media) that are used to irrationally represent history, aren’t meant to be argued against, and are used to provide a shield from counterarguments. Totems are used to present something instead of an argument because the person is incapable or unwilling to make one for themselves.
• Totemic Purgogasm: The emotional, almost orgasmic release that comes from destroying objects with a negative symbolic significance (iconoclasm). The effects can be found with the Taliban in 2001 and the statue and monument debate in the US. In reality, the purge of objects does not affect the abstractions behind them, instead it's a mental and emotional reaction for the object aggressors and the defenders. The Buddha himself is not affected when the Taliban blows up huge statues made to honor him nor is Robert E. Lee bayoneted in his grave when his statues are melted down in a ritual ceremony.
• The De Facto Present: The facts in the current context as you understand and process them. This is the center of the Mirroring Diagram. When rationally weighing the past in order to plan future options, centering ones’ self can help to dispel irredentist claims and solutions as impossible, costly, or irrational.
• Historical Safe Spaces: Categorizing levels of oppression and “marginalization” in an oversimplified way in order to affect the present often to exclude “oppressors” based on some oversimplified, acontextual, or false version of history.
• Mirror Future: an irrational projection/goal= Acontextual Imperative (an order out of context) + Micro or Macrofault (complaint with no solution). The future is defined as the present, imperfect projection of what is expected. Its meaning matters only when people believe it’s possible. It’s a Mirror Future if it’s irrationally conceived and useless when people waste their practical resources for an outcome that’s not to be.
• Cassandrism: The intolerant reception of irrational persons to our rational views. Once they reach the point of hearing, but not listening to rational views, they become subjects of mirroring. These warnings are ignored like those of Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, who accurately prophesied the fall of Troy, but whose foresight courtesy of the god Apollo went unheeded by the Trojans. Mirrors are cursed with the gift of rational prophesying, doomed to work on the margins of social improvement if necessary so the world topples a little slower.

Table of Contents:

Volume VII: Reclaiming Our Time

I. Introduction: The Tale of the Hall of Two Mirrors

Part I:  Once Upon a Time

II. “On the stroke of twelve:” The Time Benders

III. “The spell will be broken:” Mirroring History and Its Many Petty Tokens 

IV. “And everything will be as it was before:” Groundhog Scrutiny and the Past Repeating Command                

Part II: A Princess Awaits Their Modern Savior 

 V. ”Lips Red As The Rose:” The Here, Now, and Every Way How: The Ahistorical Present

VI. “Hair Black As Ebony:” Totem Bashing 101: Lessons from the Taliban and Charlottesville

VII. “Skin White As Snow:” Snowish Whitish and The Seven Rescue Revisionists     

Part III: For The Happily Ever Never

VIII. "Up where they walk, up where they run:” History as Future 

IX. “Up where they stay all day in the sun:” Sunnyside Safe Spaces 

X. “Wanderin' free - wish I could be, Part of that World" Exodus        

XII. Glossary 

Political Mirroring: 
Volume VII: Reclaiming Our Time

I.   Introduction: The Tale of the Hall of Two Mirrors 

Gozer: Sub-creatures! Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, the Traveller has come! Choose and perish!

Ray Stantz: What do you mean, choose? We don't understand! Gozer: Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!......

Gozer: The choice is made! Venkman: Whoa! Hold on! Gozer: The Traveller has come! Venkman: Nobody chose anything! [turns to Egon] Did you think of anything?

Egon Spengler: No……

Stantz: I couldn't help it. It just popped in there….”

“Ghostbusters,” 1984.

Once upon a time, there was a quadrennial selection of great importance, an event so pivotal to its nation that barely a third of the diverse, yet often ignorant folk bothered to turn out to make a simple binary choice. A sense of dread hung over their exhausted land, an ominous feeling greater than the last disputed contest, which almost everyone hated.  With a most abhorrent rematch four desolate years later, those same two elderly, incoherent, white princes prepared to stand in opposition to each other to claim the somewhat honorable seat of Prince President, regardless of tanning levels or hair color. 

From luxury resorts or basements, and both with a most blowhard gas-lit style, they sought another duel in that most-foreboding year of our lord 2024, much to the chagrin of their battered subjects, who wanted literally anyone else but them or that lurking Sorceress-Tsarina of the Southern Border, Kamala Harris, with her hearty cackles and nonsensical strings of self-definitions.  For thus spake Kamala in a great decree to those in the nearby Senate retirement cloister: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.”  

Stop, mirror onlookers!  Beware of a great voodoo hex hanging on your very words for sometimes your lips know not what they stutter!  Take great care that you pronounce her name as “comma, like the punctuation mark, 'la.' Comma-la.” Be warned that after thrice repeating the mistaken mispronunciation, unless you’re the Word Butcher Biden himself, that cursed into a racist, sexist sleep you shall fall forthwith, never to awaken until you deprogram your own dreams from the latent prejudices you’ve violently flung at the many wimpy word-violence victims of this nation.  No melanin-deprived, masochist stalker comes to kiss you awake!  

Heed Sir Gavin Newsom’s great defense of Kamala, for he is her temporary champion, that is unless her master Biden saves the nation and retires, whence Sir Gavin is sure to seek the Holy Grail of the Prince-Presidency for himself and for selfish fame, yet ironically doing the nation a second leal service by expelling the incompetent and even more unpopular Sorceress-Tsarina of the Southern Border from her residence at Number One Observatory Circle!  Be surprised, for his great riposte was not a defense of their Star Chamber’s political persecutions, flailing policies, broken budgets, or solved partisan riddles that freed magical treasure for the subjects they served.  Nay!  It was a stout defense of a name from being mis-uttered, a spell so critical in its pronunciation that to demean it in such an easy way means to blaspheme against all of the oppressed persons of the past.  

According to her most fervent partisan defenders that couldn’t gain her a single primary vote in 2020, she shattered the mirror ceiling her own party set up for her. She shant not be treated lèse-majesté in such a manner.  This most High Princess Comma-La earned those titles herself for many reasons, including the street cred she earned when she smoked pot while listening to Snoop Dog’s music before it was even released not long before throwing many a young black peasant into dank dungeons for the same trifle offense.

Alas, Sir Newsom still sallied forth from his liberal lockdown bastion in California, possessing the human feces map of gentrified San Francisco so he could perform the Herculean Labors, rudely shoving aside the bursting numbers of “housing-challenged” to some place more image-convenient, thus heroically and temporarily cleaning up the streets in preparation for the great visiting communist dictator from China.  How glorious was that diplomatic tête-à-tête and how great was it to see San Fran spic-and-span for a few days before it tumbled back into its usual overpriced morass!  After all, this same hero was THE governor who conquered the opulence of the French Laundry without a mask or a socially safe distance during the height of his own ruinous, pandemic lockdown.

Fresh from those confusing victories, Sir Newsom finally met his first true opponent.  He confronted the dread-gator Ron DeSantis, overlord of the Swamps of Florida, over poor Comma-La’s mispronounced name all whilst the country seethed around them because of economic discontent and other actually serious issues.  With question evasions, great hair, misinformation, and a handsome celebrity look, he allegedly smote DeSantis in the Georgia sands whilst the horrified acolyte Demon-Lord Sean Hannity and his Fox News cultists watched, very much aghast. 

For sticks and stones may break bones, but mispronounced ethnic names will always hurt thee!  You can’t ask the ashamed, pornographic book-banning Florida dragon any longer, for his defeat was probably complete according to the Blue party spinsters, though his ghost continues to haunt the other Republican primary ogres as they wage their own stupid, fruitless quests for something.  I can’t remember what.  But, let us not rest too long in this digression for the depths of your intolerance, racist reader, should nought stall us any longer if you can’t accept strong women of color ruling over you without question to what they’re actually doing and saying.  There’s much to this undesirable tale that needs to be told to avoid the fascist doom that hath been prophesied!  

Blissfully ignorant of the popular ferment and content in their blind loyalty, the white princes’ frothy partisans gathered in crowds to face off in epic fashion, already thrusting rapier placards and balled fists in the air a full year before the contest twas to begin.  For you see, these two houses of fanatics could not contain their rage, so they let loose their word weapons of war, maniacally swinging away at each other and hitting the poor, innocent Princess Lady Liberty, whose misfortune caught her betwixt violent undulations coming from the left and right.  

In not-so-fair America where we lay our scene, with the gates being battered by the storming mobs, the great political Ballroom of Two Mirrors was still set up in the old way, the quest for a leader still somewhat open, the invites to ballot still handed out to the citizens to be marked in-person unless happenstance or some new viral plague meant they had to be “accidentally” mass mailed to ineligible, deceased, potential supporters.  Alas, twas up to these good folks gathering in this kind of secure ballroom to find the fairest candidate of them all who would take the People’s hand and become the next Prince President.  

As not even a primary nor a general election vote hath yet been cast, nor yet had the Russian boogeyman of every American’s terror, the Dark Lord Vladimir Putin, directly intervened on behalf of his anti-Ukrainian golem in a small town Illinois paper ballot contest for dogcatcher, there was still time to change course if the two leading, most-hated contestants did not freeze the choices out and force these wretched Americans off a geriatric cliff they’ve doth been protesting not too much about! 

Alas, most of the peasants would barely utter a peep, feeling no sense of urgency to resist their political yoke. Forced into a bleak acceptance of their two party enserfment because of their lack of education in politics, most voters sheepishly waited until the very last second of the campaign season to get their shock in the voting booth, holding their noses and voting to continue the bipartisan disaster anyways despite the sudden realization of their own stupidity throughout the past, widely-covered campaign. After the results came in and the small margins mattered in certain precincts, the write-in voter-types and the third-party enthusiasts became the court jesters, and were promptly punished by being pegged with rotten vegetables for tilting the selection to one supposed evil over the other.

In the political Ballroom of Two Mirrors, that great Parlor representing the vast ecosystem of politics in America, that endangered environment was fixed in favor of the two partisan gangs who threatened to drag everyone down with them.  They had a lock on everything from the lights, the microphones, the cell phone reception, to even the kind of ideas that could be parlayed back and forth between them.  In this great Parlor, the shiny images in the mirrors were meant to reflect back on the viewers, as only positive reflections of their own people and political views were acceptable, for partisan beauty doth lie in the eye of the beholder.  No misshapen, ugly, nor confrontational depiction need be seen in the partisan mirrors, self-reflecting from the left to the left or from the right to the right.  The great Parlor  was tailormade to self-reinforcement as the right foods for the race of the people present were delicately prepared, and the statues and paintings of historical heroes and villains were put in their proper places of adulation or scorn, with either songs of praise or with a mixture of paint and pig blood.  

When the highly educated Blue guests arrive in November, their fancy ball gowns will most assuredly feature a culturally appropriate fashion, spared no expense nor account of gender.  Their elite policies for the progressive greater good will still be positioned to be rammed down the throats of the peasants in the name of democracy while aesthetically, the glamorous tummy lines of those with uteruses will show no evidence of unwanted, born, fetal burdens, also spared no expense nor account of gender.  When the working class Reds arrive, their lily white Jesus will see no stones cast because of their hasty intolerance, spared no sympathy for an undesirable illegal that took a job they couldn’t get, nor will any un-American others be invited to share a pew in their all-welcoming churches.  And when the undesired, yet inevitable prince candidates arrive to champion the Blues or Reds, the reader can guarantee that they’ll barely fit the beliefs of the terrified audience shrinking away, for only the partisan storyteller knows just which prince, princesses, or those in between are just right for the party sycophants sucking on their non-lactating teats.  

For both parties, the other side were evil villains, either brooding over society’s indictments and banishments in the Doom Fortress of Mar-a-Lago or sleeping in the misty, haunted beaches of Delaware, where Prince Presidents go to barely work and die.  These villains are known to each other, that is quite evident, as the other side is an existential threat to societal order, provoking their minions by mean tweets or some “come on mans” to insurrection, political persecution, social revolution, and a most un-American disorder.  

Looming over the mirror ballroom was the great wall clock, once ascribed a manly personality and the genteel voice of a friendly uncle, possibly of the ignorant, MAGA-supporting type so hated by that Wizard Chief of Staff Ron Klain.  Now, this warning clock, given new gears and de-belled to change its identity by the clueless story-masters at Disney to gain two more viewers for the loss of thousands, warned of the dire consequences of the upcoming election of the Prince President and the victor’s or the dictator’s upcoming, messy marriage to Princess Lady Liberty.  It ticked away the minutes of time that could be used to stop the encroaching nightmare.

For you see, readers, time is of the essence if the fate of the kingdom and the manner by which the Destructor’s Form is to be decided again next year by margin of a few thousand votes in just a few states.  Will it be the big-mac eating, orange-haired stay puft marshmallow man who denies anything that doesn’t lead to his selection of Gozer’s form, a walking Planet Ego that gobbles up the media or RINOs wherever he finds them on the capital’s street on his resurrection day of January 6th? 

Or, will the end be a barely functional, wheel-chair bound Dark Brandon, whose is the only selection possible from supposedly the smartest party in the room, God save us, and whose one function has been to follow his enemies to the ends of the earth so his minions can stomp their bones into dust. By their own propaganda, this crotchety and unbendable terminator shoots laser beams out of his eyes in order to smite the enemies of the all-powerful Federal Government, big vaccine pharma, and the military industrial complex supporting endless wars everywhere but in Afghanistan, his country’s worst defeat since Vietnam. 

Will Fairy Godmother Jane Doe, a MAGA protestor who merely breathed the air of Washington D.C. on January 6th, 2021, survive the protection of democracy from Dark Brandon’s great inquisition as it seeks to stop harmful democracy and as she’s sentenced to 15 years to life for peacefully and patriotically walking?  Will store owner Jiminy Cricket, a voice of conscience and resistance against the looting and insurrection, get justice after he was one of 35 killed in riots to violently overthrow the mostly peaceful police system in Summer 2020?  We doubt their endings will have any sort of happiness attached to them that our modern fairytales would require.

Be not fearful, at least not yet, for tragedy is not a certainty, for there is always some chance that heroes will find their own glorious ending and at the same help the kingdom out by de-petrifying the stoned people who sit frozen in their beliefs, never realizing their own biased glances had cost them their freedoms as they willingly stared at their own partisan Medusas.  Perchance, we representatives of Mirroring are just the people the nation should promote to be our heroes, the Perseus that's on scene to unfreeze the illogical and ignorant, and by metaphorically slaying the unfortunate Gorgons.

Wading into the struggles, we mirrors might suffer for the greater good, but our sacrifice, God willing, will allow some level of a happy ending.  At times we must be like Atreyu in the “Never-ending Story” and let our precious horse, Artax, sink to its death in despair in the Swamps of the Sadness so that we might continue our quest and save the realm from the Nothing.  We could follow our subjects, our horses that carried us through life but drag us into a sad death, or we can cut our losses and save everyone. That sacrifice is the essence of Mirroring philosophy.

For you see, reader, this is not a tale per say and we'll not be allowing our horses to die on this quest. This is but a guide to hand the work over to the right lords and ladies.  We seek to set things right before the clock strikes twelve, before our wasted time causes us to miss our shot at becoming princes and princesses of our own lives.  In Volume VII, where our true tale begins, we must reckon with context and history.  We must discover if those seven little people (formerly dwarves) are really enslaved by a white lady who is put to sleep only to be involuntarily awakened by some stalker, sex predator’s kiss like actress Rachel Ziegler claims.  

The landscape of that quasi-fiction is not as far as it appears in the rearview mirror.  Mirroring is an historical philosophy in that without understanding the past or context we can’t better process conversations for illogic and reduce wasted time.   Therefore, understanding history is half the puzzle and half the Mirroring equation of belief acceptance plus context equals harmony.  Much of volumes I-III and V were focused on belief acceptance, or an explanation of why people believe what they do and how mirrors can avoid the traps our subjects lay because of these beliefs and the speech used to convey them.  Volume IV was an introduction to what Harmony means as the output of the Mirroring equation and why the status quo (peace) is not the same.  It began the search for a happy ending, but not for us rational people, only for those committed Rapunzels who can’t be swayed to let their hair down to their would-be saviors because of their race, ethnicity, or political affiliation.  

Last in review, Volume VI created a new superstructure that subsequent volumes will use.  Power overlays all elements of the equation.  It provides a dynamic for what we believe and can comfortably say.  In the past and present, it colors our context as decisions are made or not based on peoples’ understanding of the power dynamic.  And for the future, our Harmony is at stake as the facts of the peace we live under may be upended and the hopes and dreams we have are related to the goals we set for possessing power or by seeking it from others.  

It is as macropower that people or groups can claim vast territories or resources while having indirect or no control over them.  Yet, it is micropower, or the small, interpersonal level, where most people come into contact with the power dynamic.  It’s the petty “Karen” or “Ken” who seek to rid their neighborhoods of people they aren’t familiar with or can’t control, maybe based on their skin color, clothing appearance, or some other superficial characteristic. From our family dinner tables, our interactions with our bosses, to the confrontation with a street protester, micropower shapes every facet of American life.  

Yet, if power is really what’s at stake, why does rehashing the past or knowing what a context is matter so much to mirroring?  Well, history itself is just the past context element of Mirroring and as importantly, it’s also by definition not neutral, that is to say it always contains an element of bias as humans lack the total perception of all past events in order to provide true objectivity for deciding things in the present.  Historians themselves are ideally better, less biased arbiters of sorting facts about the past, though many modern fairy tale-tellers, I mean “historians,” like John Meacham openly flaunt partisan biases when they speech write for current politicians (aka President Biden).  

What then is the view of Mirroring concerning time, context, and history?  Well, time is a finite resource for humans, including the time of those reading this fantastical work now.  Unless we’re provably aware of ways to stop or loop time a la Doctor Strange’s use of the Time Infinity Stone, it’s going to run out for every individual for any cause as it has for all humans for all time.  Being that we do not (yet) have god-like powers, mirrors must do their work in time, but more specifically in context.  

If you asked the great philosopher/logician Ludwig Wittgenstein, he’d tell you that philosophy is not a science or some fairy-tale, and as the Mirror Master of this pragmatic system, I wholeheartedly agree.  Wittgenstein saw philosophers as being afflicted with a kind of mental headache as they contemplate the nature of humanity and the mind.  This head bashing (and I’d argue time-wasting) requires clarity.  We need to go around the mental traps and utilize ways to clarify the logic of our thoughts starting with the clarity of the language that we use.  

For us mirrors, Wittgenstein is instructive as we work in situations and environments, or contexts, where our precious time resource is depleted.  We could struggle with the issues as presented to us by our subjects or we can find a way around them by leaving.  Only we know if the value of our time is worth the conversation or whether our life is being drained away.  Therefore, subjective consideration of context is a requirement to be an agent of this philosophy.  You have to be alive, thinking, and processing the political debate in context in order to decide whether your time is being wasted and whether you can do something more rational and beneficial outside of it.  

So, Be our Guest!  There are a lot of wonderful things on our plates from this work.  A mere trifling topic awaits us as we only have to contend with all of time and history.  And if we get down to it, we should definitely get to the bottom of whether black-skinned, red-headed mermaids existed and roamed the North Sea in the mind of 19th century fairytale Danish storywriter Hans Christian Anderson.  I don't mean to be the only one willing to probe this topic for confirmation of the money-grubbing pandering, I mean brave, revisionist choices made by Disney in their recent movies.  

And if we have any time left, we should have a serious look into how a supposed democracy can be protected by having less democracy via rigging the 2024 candidates on the ballot using never before tried and made up, I mean unique and necessary, extra-constitutional interpretations of the 14th Amendment, written after the Civil War, aka a real insurrection, with 600,000+ people dying versus 1 killed protester and 6 others who died after on the other, allegedly worse day.  It seems like the people assaulting the assault on the democracy abstraction have got that issue covered, so we'll leave it to the Democrats to ram down only one choice in the next election for Prince President.  That seems like a fantastical way to unite the kingdom and an opportunity for us to focus on other things!  

Finally, and we must check out whether a disguised witch with a poison apple can infiltrate an ideological safe-space and threaten its happy ending with unacceptable beliefs.  Why should former Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall have to listen to average white analysts talk about football when his segregated all-black team would easily beat them in a segregated Pro Bowl matchup?  He seems like his safe space parlor is just itching to be set up to keep that harmful, white-man football analysis from coming out of their mouths.  So, Be Our Guest, light a candelabra if you have one, get yourselves comfy, pray that footballer Mendenhall can handle the bad news if given by white people, hang up your devotional picture of Maxine Waters to channel her combative spirit, and prepare yourself to reclaim your time!  

Part I: 

II. “On the stroke of twelve:” 

The Time Benders

“A time of love, a time of hate

A time of war, a time of peace

A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing

To everything turn, turn, turn

There is a season turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under Heaven”

"Turn, Turn, Turn" The Byrds 1965

Mirroring Context= wasted time= Measured Microtime (solar-based with a clock) + undesirable circumstances of an event

What does it mean to save time when there are so many people out there willing to consume yours?  The world is full of such selfishness, with the joy being sucked out of the life of others for the sake of trolls.  We mirrors live in a world of non-playing characters (NPCs), much like a video game.  These persons who can scarcely think for themselves let alone suffer any serious opposition are often controlled by ideological puppet masters.  To Socrates, these unthinking, irrational people that made up the democratic masses of his city have lives that are not worth living. He was even willing to die rather than be subjected to the NPCs of Athens, who followed the democratic mob and wouldn’t suffer reason to exist.  

Thus, these NPCs are the subjects of Mirroring.  We can debate them, sacrifice to them our mental efforts, listen to their whining and faux history lessons that are full of thoughtless political cheerleading.  Yet, they suck up our precious gametime, draining our lives of precious minutes because of their trifle chatter, complaints, and ignorant wonderment about the things around them, from statues and paintings they interpret differently, the “racist” roads that have to be torn up and redesigned, unbuilt border walls that if completed would represent racism and inhospitality to migrants and drug cartels, or too many white faces among too many public spaces where there are still way too many white people whose ancestors built them long ago.  Too many! We could take the time and listen, hoping that the screaming and yelling would eventually convince us of something that by instinct, we know to be illogical and a waste. 

We have no second lives, no goodbyes as second chances to do over what we messed up the first time as Shinedown singer Brent Smith would have us believe.  No, we shouldn’t have to waste our precious lives with those who only seek to make the world in their image regardless of whether we fit that vision or not.  Did we ask to know about your conspiracy theories related to Hunter Biden or Russian interference in the 2020 election that never manifested because the outcome was the one desired by the majority of voting Americans?  No, we didn't.

We have the main quest to attend to, not to focus our champion’s attention on some side person who is just filler in a boring narrative.  It’s time to make some revolutionary changes in how we view our relationships as mirrors to the rest of society.  It’s time to designate ourselves as the heroes in pursuit of glory and for the furtherment of moral and rational outcomes, and not as some barkeep turned NY congresswoman who wants to chat about which unwanted orcs came into her tavern, ogling at her sexually as all Republican ogre males supposedly do when they battle with her politically after being "triggered" by her boyfriend's feet in Twitter pics. No thanks, AOC, we're reclaiming our time from your wild theories and certainly from the ones that are apparently fantasizing over you!   

For us realists and unlike the unproductive exchanges between AOC and her Republican fetishists, time is essential because it’s both finite and definite in its terminality, meaning our ideals can’t negotiate with it, nor can we wish away the facts just to make our designated future possible.  Regardless of what happens after everyone’s individual experience ends in cardiac arrest and death, we must deal with what we live through, know about, and have on this planet.  Though difficult to define, most definitions of time are something like the measured processing of existence of the past, present, and future based on the sun and the earth’s rotation around it.  When this measurable existence is combined with the circumstances of some event, it is called context, and when that context in time has passed and is given meaning and importance by humans, it’s called history.  Notice the elements: measured time, context, and the past. 

Philosophers, Physicists, and even psychologists study perceptions of time based on many factors, like the lifestyle or occupation of the person.  For example, a person working in agriculture throughout much of world history tended to view their labor and broad stretches of time as cyclical in that there are seasons and their life revolves around the labor associated with plowing, seeding, and harvesting at regular intervals.  My, how would those Neolithic farmers from 12,000 years ago react to the bratty college students of today wishing to abolish (all?) agriculture in the name of saving the planet from climate change, or basically ending human existence as we know it and possibly killing us all off in the starvation that comes after? With much scorn at their stupidity, I'd imagine, but I digress.

Subsistence and survival relied on these seasonal changes.  The manner of time maximalization depended on the civilization in question, which in the West was derived from Ancient Mesopotamia and their solar calendar based on the 24 hour day, 60 minute hour clock.  Their sundials measured the sun's position in the sky and ascribed minutes to the day period.  It also allowed a more careful measurement than simply looking to the sky and observing the weather. It allowed the Sumerians and Babylonians to tame the universe as best as a 2nd to 1st millennium b.c.e. people could.  Thus, the Mesopotamians provided the cradle for civilization in West Asia to develop and subsequent civilizations in West Asia, Africa, and Europe were connected in some part to their time revolution.

The cyclical patterns of work shifted for many reasons that we don't have the time, need, or space to go through. However, one shift is important. Workers during the industrial revolution of the late 1800s experienced a major shift in the perception of time.  They tended to view their lives as one-directional, that is starting and completing a task in a factory and moving on to another one repetitiously until their backbreaking day was finished.   This was often independent of nature and the seasons, as the factory kept going regardless of the position of the sun or the tilt of the earth, which creates the seasons.  Like the farmers, laborers were the opposite of Plato and Aristotle's ideal thinkers and rulers, as working with ones' hands, though necessary to keep society functioning, also took away time to think, to study the mathematical ideals of the universe and act as enlightened philosopher kings who ruled society (Plato), or to use ones' senses to observe nature, study science, and find the Golden Mean, a balance point for social harmony (Aristotle).

Applying their ideal Greek world (not our mirroring one), how could an engine parts worker in the Rust Belt contemplate the problems facing the export markets to the EU or China, then decide the best outcome of that choice, when they had neither the education nor the time to consider the complex issues that some people spend their entire lives studying? In the idealist mode, they couldn't unless they were Marxists and their industrial oppression was so great that the need for material survival and the resistance to the timeclock became so great that the proletariat (workers) overthrew the capitalists who controlled the means of production and started a communist revolution.

In contrast to the quick representations of idealist philosophies, mirrors would argue their profession or even the time they put into a problem is not what matters, nor the economic class of the worker, nor is the man-created status at birth something that a person is locked into forever. Instead of work and time being part of a natural state, what matters is the rational output of the use of time, how optimal it is used (with the least resources especially time and the best outcome), and how practical the choices made were in using it. If a farmer, steel worker, or a janitor can come up with an optimal, practical, and rational output, then their argument on that subject should be considered, though not automatically accepted. Likewise, just because they work in those positions and labor under terrible, exploitative bosses doesn't grant them special powers to rule society in a rational way.

As work became ruled by the mechanical clock instead of only the sun and moon, labor evolved into the service/office worker form, where punching into a clock meant a 9-5 day of typing, clicking, meeting, calling, and completing paperwork for a regular wage, in a currency, which could then be transacted for other goods.  Labor became dependent on microtime more than ever before, locking us into what some would call servitude to the ticking hands of the clock.  Yet, no longer did most people have to raise a cow to provide milk that was then traded for grains or other needed goods from their neighbors. 

Before even Socrates', Plato's, and Aristotle's days, the division of labor allowed the time of some people to produce many products of the mind from religion, science, history, or philosophy. These specialists were dependent on mental output, the amount of intellectual work derived from our brains, the output, rather than strictly the time spent doing the thinking and creating.  By the modern era and as new explanations for the universe were developed, some thinkers declared independence from the clock in order to develop their mental abilities. Some even went off into the woods to escape the rat-race and corrupting effects of society (like Jean-Jacques Rousseau) or as later American transcendentalists, they lambasted the railroads and industry from their comfortable New England homes in the countryside. Even the work especially of the evils of slavery and the travel times by rail were attacked as they regularized humanity to a degree that affected its very soul. Mid-18th century transcendentalists Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson each railed against the separation from nature due to the systemization of time while emphasizing the need to develop the individual mind. 

We mirrors might be an offshoot of thousands of years of philosophical development, but we are reclaiming our time (R.O.T) now from those would-be thinkers who have no business siphoning our time from us.  It's not the industrial capitalists or slave overseers who are oppressing us now, keeping us from achieving intellectual enlightenment during this relatively free, materially wealthy period of human history. Instead, we're returning to a control of the clock, but a control that's in our hands as mirrors, because NPCs seek to control our mental efforts. Once we have reclaimed our time by returning to our clocks, we've declared independence from their controlled time and furthered our mental efforts for as long as we have rational outputs. And that is both a subjective choice and an issue of time perception, but also a struggle we face in the everyday conversation.

So, microtime is the individual perception of time, whether it moves fast or slow, whether it’s ignored, or the person is perpetually late, or every minute is a treasure that can’t be wasted by the time-devourers around us.  Mirrors are unique in that they are fixated on time, particularly on saving theirs from wastage.  Rather than Buddha sitting himself under the Bodhi Tree to meditate until he has discovered the reason for suffering, for however long it took, mirrors invert his quest for Enlightenment and assume that suffering exists in politics because irrational people consume our life forces by stealing microtime.  Their hatred, sadness, and passion are potential blind spots that distort reality, making emotions the likely response.  We can’t mirror emotions, we can only demonstrate to the inconsolable, the partisan Kool-Aid drinker that we share belief acceptance so long as it’s in our interest to do so.  We want out!  

For you see, readers, time is neither our worst enemy nor a friend.  We are not servants to their microtime when some boor drones on about the “stolen 2020 Election” or how the riot on January 6th was the worst crisis since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  We can and should leave if it is feasible to do so.  Mirroring itself is about practical benefits including choosing language that provides something useful in trying to understand actual things in our lives.  Since mirrors are people and time is inescapable, we must “punch in” to a unique job of our own where the determination of uselessness, of waste, is totally subjective, or where the marginal benefit of spending time on something deemed rational might be totally irrational to another person.  The only way we can test both subjective views at the same time is to provide rational tests for the person to aid in their self-awareness, tests that grant them no promotion, nor a permanent sense of entitlement that their beliefs and their output are forever the best it could be.  

I’ve actually hinted at the importance of time as far back as Volume III, though more specifically, that context has never left our discussions.  Back in 2019, the Time Stone was introduced to broadly symbolize the tactics of those irrationally manipulating time, context, and history in order to gain advantage.  Originating in Mirroring Volume III and based on Thanos’ Infinity Stone in the Marvel Universe, these real-life tactics grant their user the ability to illogically bend events to their will.  It’s often associated with time or history-related logical fallacies like “post hoc,” or because some event happened before another, the first must cause the later.  Basically, a person picks a past event and makes it the cause of another without proving the connection. Afterall, correlation does not a causation make especially when spread over vast amounts of time. There must be proof of cause and effect, or there is simply a collection of similar looking facts that any mirror should be able to pick apart for fallacies.

Ironically, we’re alleviating the time burden of others regardless of their rationality by sacrificing our own time to handle irrational people’s political musings.  We must also bring back the Mirroring Diagram, a squared version of the Tao symbol from Taoism. It's a simple tool and not some universal solution that was introduced to guide the perception of a Parlor and a Parlay. The diagram represents two axes, a vertical line segment that stops at Total True and Total False on each end. Each of these points represents a binary belief system where at the terminus point every constituent part is true and anything contrary is false. In between are points of truth or falseness, with the observing mirror being the one to decide about that argument.

For our purposes in Volume VII, we must focus on the horizontal axis, which is a true line that extends to infinity in both the past (left) and future (right) directions. This is what we call the Context Continuum, which is the mirror way of processing both time, circumstance, and relevancy, the cores of the history discipline.  The center point or origin is the present context where the person processes information continually using their senses and previous knowledge that they recall at the moment of choice in the midst of a political argument.  The accuracy of information does not necessarily diminish farther from the origin; however, the burden of skepticism should be greater the further the abstractions are from the present understanding of the past because we lack the context of the very distant past or enough knowledge about what the far ahead future will entail.  

The Context Continuum is based on the likely certainty of knowledge, not the certainty that the information must always be right or wrong forever and ever. Using logic and testing, the knowledge must stand the tough scrutiny especially when faced with new evidence.  The center relates to the present and to the need for a rational, moderate level of skepticism towards information.  To respond to stimuli, or from our senses, we should use logic and facts under the general maxims of mirroring. To use the past as information is valuable as it's where we gain our individual and collective knowledge from society. To spend too long on the past, to obsess over trivia, or to simply get the facts and context wrong is a dangerous obsession and one that corrupts choices about the future.

To ignore past information and only focus on the future, the progressive impulse as we call it, is to untether goals from reality and to jeopardize the implementation in falling into similar traps that others have already experienced. George T. Doran's S.M.A.R.T. goals (1981) are a good start in that they require those set to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. We'll see in Part III how his basic criteria for goals could work with a moronic voter in 2020 Georgia, a "voter suppressive" state with record numbers of smart, minority voters, and how future voters might ensure a simple lever is pulled for their candidate in 2024 if it didn't work out for them, their common-sense last time they tried, perhaps because light refreshments were served to them while they were waiting in line.

As we'll see in the next section, history's entire purpose is to sift through the past and give it meaning, not to force unwilling students to memorize dates or force them to be interested in bloody battles and wars even if they're pretty interesting, let's be honest (just kidding). History is about learning from the past, but not about preventing the exact same events from occurring again. Time spent on such ridiculous comparisons is the waste we've already spent so much effort in attacking. So, save some time and proceed to the next section with minds open and a fair share of respect for the enormity of information available about what has already passed.

III. “The spell will be broken:”
Mirroring History and Its Many Tokens 

“In fact, I am in the midst of compiling the world’s first complete account of one day in the life of a town, as experienced by everyone in it.  Every action, every conversation, every sound made by each of the one hundred fifty-nine human and three hundred thirty-two animal residents of Cairnholm, minute by minute, sunup to sundown” Millard, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” pg. 193

Additive Mirroring History: Disputable Claim/Argument + Historical Abstraction(s) = claimed history bonus in a debate

Retributive Mirroring History: Historical Abstraction(s) + Present Cost to atone for the historical abstraction= Retribution Fee

History is a tool, it’s used as an instructive story, even a moral lesson, for us to pass down knowledge of what human life was like at another point of time.  For our purposes, history can be summarized as a past context plus current meaning.  We can spit out factoids about the past like listing Babe Ruth’s baseball stats in 1921, or the number of silk cords produced in Song China in the late 900s c.e., but without the broader importance of those facts about the past, we don’t have history, just trivia.  Babe Ruth’s stats matter because of his performance in comparison to others of his time or if the two contexts are carefully laid out, to illustrate how baseball players today compare to him.  Silk cord production can matter to the history of Song China in order to show the trade capabilities the dynasty had with its neighbors, possibly to show the productivity of the workforce, the climate and seasonal weather patterns, or if war or rebellions affected silk production. 

Historians place facts as best they can into a past context and give them meaning to the people of their time, ideally removing their and their society’s current biases from the interpretation of that past as much as possible.  Oftentimes, they wait years or decades before they consider a time period in order to avoid the passions and prejudices of the moment. Capable historians see passion and partisanship as limiting their quest for a more objective understanding of the past.  Those that wade into politics have to be extra careful that their authority about the past isn't abused and their credibility to write about the past isn't compromised. Afterall, they study the past, they aren't prophets to be trusted with the fate of the nation, especially if they can barely contain their daily rage over some current event.

The key requirement to study history and to be a mirror is to base arguments on evidence of the past and to use logic. Reason and not feelings is essential to be in this profession, so one shouldn't sign up for #Resistance or be a consultant for politicians if one wants to be an historian or a mirror. To do so is an attempt at masking over their biases and betting they won’t be detected by a better, smarter class of historians (like us) who root out the partisan interests they represent.  Unless of course, history ceases to exist as a more objective profession and instead becomes a rubber stamp for one side of the political spectrum.   

Nevertheless, historians should apply layers of filters that are supposed to decrease subjective biases, not increase them in order to elect elderly politicians in the present.  That’s why 9/12/2001 may not have been the best time to write a history of the US responses to terrorism in the late 1990s, nor should a historian lay all US history on the stakes of the next Presidential election when they’re actively supporting one history maker over another because one is supposedly an authoritarian fascist.  

It’s also why historians with their "visceral reactions" against former President Trump shouldn’t be granted authority to pass judgment on the Trump or Biden administrations as they did here in Slate magazine. Historians like Claire Potter and Renee Romano claim that "history talks back" to politicians like Trump who try to control the dominant narrative, which is the assumption that Trump is on the wrong side of history and it's up to them to oppose the false narrative proposed by him about his own time in office. He may well be on the wrong side, but it's too soon to make authoritative historical accounts about his administration and to try is to opine while under the guise of the history profession. The few seconds of detective work that I just did and using the actual words of the historians has uncovered their bias, even if it's mild.

Then the Slate author, Paul Renfro, acknowledges the faults of historians like these two commenting on current events as "analyzing ongoing developments—and doing it in the rigid format of a published book, no less—some of their assessments are already outdated or, at the very least, incomplete." Yet, if it's guesswork because they're making assessments that will be outdated or incomplete, then they're not acting as historians and those rigid formats are not works of history, but opinion artifacts! They're simply speculating about what the future will be as if they're in the guessing game. However, more on the progressive or future impulse side will be explained in Section III.

So, the evidential record is not even remotely complete yet about the Trump administration 2017-2021, the feelings haven't even passed especially since the issues from back then are still being adjudicated by the public in elections regardless of whether half the country is disenfranchised by Trump not being on the ballot in 2024 and through election meddling and persecution in the courts. If the issues were resolved in such a way to make a history possible already, this commentary on current events and the philosophy in Volume VII wouldn’t even need to exist.  The most turbulent political times does not a current historian make! 

You might be wondering why I'd comment on current events and political matters, while attacking historians when they enter politics.  Am I a hypocrite? No, of course not. The key difference is using history as an authority to alter current political affairs in a biased way.  My entire philosophical approach about history is its unbiased accuracy and understanding of the context of events as best as we can without assuming our current approach was always correct.  The historians that I criticized use logical fallacies, emotion, and demagoguery in order to alter current political outcomes in nonhistorical ways.  And they capitalize on their historical authority to dominate a public that may be less educated or be more inclined to trust them as sources through confirmation bias on TV networks or newspapers simply because they are inclined as fellow partisans to do so.  That is the real damage this group does to our understanding of the past and our current search for better political solutions.  

Here's another, more glaring example.  “Historian” John Meacham crosses the line from his profession to being a political advocate and partisan speechwriter, bastardizing the discipline to score cheap political points.  Take one of the more famous logical fallacies that was gifted to President Biden for one of his speeches.  “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he advised or inspired Biden to speak.  Historians' jobs are not to use logical fallacies, but especially not to walk into the easy ones that first year undgrads learn to avoid or they fail History 101.

Meacham uses the three fallacies of “either or" oversimplification, false equivalency, and one of the most basic of them all, the glittering generality.  First, Meacham speaking through Biden limits all possibilities of argument to just two options that they give us, the selection of which we'd have to challenge before getting to the substance of the proposed historical comparison. One current option is a racist, violent bigot from the segregation South mindset and the other isn't.  One is either the equivalent of the president of a slave society that rebelled against the government, while the other one is the equivalent to the abolition president, leader of freedom and equality.

Second, it’s a false equivalency because both "historian" and politician are forcing us to assume that the bad options (Bull Connor and Confederate President Jefferson Davis) and violent police opposition to civil rights in the 1960s and the leader of the slave-owning Confederacy is an accurate description of people today, presumably Trump and Republicans, who oppose the good people (John Lewis and Abraham Lincoln) and presumably Biden, Meacham, and Democrats.  Third, it's a glittering generality because slavery and racist segregation are so obviously bad and worthy of stigma today that almost everyone would choose the side of good (the glitter side) and oppose anyone who seems similar to the evils of the Jim Crow South. It's nearly impossible to argue for something so bad or to oppose the good person who uses the glittering generality.

A number of Republican officials are quoted in opposition to the comments, but it's Eddie Glaude, chair of African American studies at Princeton University, who's trotted out by the Post to face down the "pearl clutching" attackers of Biden and give weight to the fallacious comparison. Article author Ashley Parker made sure to provide cover for the fallacies while adding the support of historian Peniel Jospeh, who sugarcoats the veracity and illogic of the original quote by stating that Meacham and Biden were just trying to show how far we've come and have to fall. The implication is that if their view is not accepted, we can expect a slippery slope (fallacy) where new Jefferson Davises and Bull Connors can be expected to re-enslave and re-segregate American society. Thus, it's historians like Meacham and Joseph who bear responsibility for the historical malpractice and their willingness to be used for political gains even though they should know better.  As evidenced by the Post's dismal, biased article, some historians claiming to write the first draft of history are doing nothing more than creating opinion journalism, using obvious logical fallacies while distorting the public perception of the past, and doing more harm than good by speaking out. 

And as a politician whose self-interest is to win the macropower of the American nation, President Biden of course is going to be too sloppy to provide the exact context of three distinct eras: the civil war (1861-65), the civil rights era (1950-60s), and the present issues surrounding race and civil rights in order to make a proper historical comparison. Increasingly during his presidency, however, the media fact checkers tended to give him a light treatment and a pass on such outrageous statements. The Washington Post could only bring itself to state in the title that it's the Republicans who are outraged about such a terribly false and illogical statement, but not them at the newspaper so much.

Biden is a politician who has a long career to be responsible for and he has proven himself worthy of the kind of scrutiny inflicted on Trump. As the leader now and until the 2024 election, he has proven his ability to mess up stories or even lie about his own family with egregious factual errors throughout his decades in politics. His own 1988 run for President was torpedoed by his exaggerations and plagiarism of speeches. We can expect politicians to do these things and hopefully for the press to catch them and inform the public, unless you're the Washington Post and you've mostly given up fact checking the Biden administration in its first 100 days because the Trump administration had many false claims during its 4 years.

Way to go, fact checkers, for announcing you'll intentionally be practicing fallacies like that of omission. Here's "fact checker" Glen Kessler's absurd logic: liars told many lies in the past 4 years. The liars aren't in charge anymore and the ones that are in charge now haven't told as many lies in 100 days as the liars did in 4 years. Therefore, factcheckers are going to scale back or stop looking for lies in the remaining 1,360 days of the new people being in charge because they can't possibly be liars like the people before them. Was detecting lies everywhere really their job because it doesn't seem that way. Ridiculous.

So, if trained historians can abuse the past in order to serve the present despite it being their job, if the press filter is at times derelict in finding basic falsehoods that might taint the record because they're even more biased and untethered from reason and logic, what are the implications for mirroring especially when some first-year college freshman learned a few facts out of context from some influencer on TikTok who has neither the training of a partisan historian nor even the mediocre investigative abilities of the press writer?

Well, there are two broad categories of analyzing historical abuse, Additive and Retributive histories, the former referring to the inaccurate or false use of history to bolster an argument or to make a positive claim with physical consequences, like for land, resources, or power.  Retributive history refers to the inaccurate or false use of history to punish people living now.  Both types use Imperative Acontext, where an imperative is an order to do something now based on a false interpretation of context and a misuse of history.  Basically, a person misinterprets history, yet uses that interpretation to order people to do things now, long after the events and people from then have passed.  

Let's discuss Additive Mirroring History first. As its name suggests, it's false history adding weight to an argument. Mirrors should be able to pick out this type of argument by first seeing red flags in an argument where a debater seeks to gain advantage. When the disputable claim is paired with historical abstractions, the claimed history bonus is used by our subjects to silence opponents. For example, in a debate about the current Israel-Hamas war, after Hamas launched a terrorist strike on settlements and a peaceful rock concert October 7th, 2023, with thousands dead and hundreds of hostages being taken, and that provoked a brutal Israeli response, a person might legitimately bring up the decades of conflict, terrorism, and peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs, pointing out that the later can participate in civil society and even serve in the Israeli Parlaiment, the Knesset, and that the Palestinian state was offered multiple times, but was rejected because it forced the acknowledgement of the Israeli state.

The other side could equally come back with the second-class status afforded to Palestinian Arabs in Gaza through the so-called Occupation, providing examples of house demolitions, checkpoints, cutting off water and electricity, and meeting children throwing rocks with gunfire. All of those abuses could, to some, explain the rise of Hamas and its excesses, which won an election in 2006 campaigning on resisting Israeli abuse. Those are perfectly fine ways to argue the sides so long as there is no intentional denial of basic facts or omissions in the use of that history.

Where the argument strays into Additive History worthy of mirroring would be if the pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas launched into a diatribe about colonial occupation and the skin color of the Israelis. Why is this questionable as a historical comparison, why is it abusing history? Well, Israel is a defacto state in existence now, like it or not, and in a region where Jews have resided at differing numbers and as subjects of various empires for thousands of years, while their equally indigenous neighbors, the Palestinian Arabs, have not yet had a state called Palestine (See the Anti-Defamation League, which may be biased, but has the basics correct about the flaws of using settler colonialism and occupation as attack messages).

After conquest and conversion by the forces of Islam in the 7th century c.e., Palestinian Arabs have also been part of countless empires, in fact the name Palestine itself is derived from the Philistines, a non-native Sea People who were probably closely related to the Ancient Greeks, and an ancient enemy of the Kingdom of Israel. The name itself came from outsiders who conquered the region, labeling the geography and not the ethnic group into the precursor of Palestine. To separate the Arabs of the region from the other peoples of the Mediterranean by using the colonial description of their enemies is to deny history. Instead of separating the Jews and Palestinians from each other, it's more logical to say that both peoples are Semitic and share the Mediterranean basin as their origin, like countless other peoples from North Africa, Southern Europe, and West Asia. So, even though a diaspora led to many Jews leaving the Holy Land at various times, both Jews and Palestinians share Mediterranean origins with Berbers, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Moors, and more.

Many Jews returned to what they perceived as their homeland after WWII and the Holocaust to join their indigenous brothers and create the nation of Israel in 1948, at the expense of their Arab neighbors, who wouldn't be claimed by Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon before or after their defeat in the Israel war for independence, but instead labeled a refugee Arab people called "Palestinian" referring to the region and not their ethnicity or pre-existing nation-state. Therefore, to suggest that Israelis are a non-belonging colonial people is to ignore history in order to gain advantage in a discussion about current political problems. That word trick doesn't make solutions for the Palestinians any easier, it doesn't repair the Abraham Accords which might've created the peaceful conditions to allow for Palestine, nor does it do much to stop the current destruction.

All of that added information is required to debunk the oversimplified claims about colonial peoples oppressing the natives, which is why our subjects find additive history such an easy temptation. They can easily Cherry Pick from the Historical Grove, which is a type of narrative that excludes information from the past that doesn't fit the narrative with which they're trying to win an argument. It's also why being a mirror and possessing rational skills can seem so daunting because we have to pick off the fallacious arguments like pests on a dog. However, accepting the alternative in this particular scenario is far war worse than taking some extra time to either correct the historical record or leaving the conversation because the debaters can't be helped. Poor understanding of the history behind the Israeli-Hamas conflict can extend the war, making each side hardened in their conditions for negotiations, which would likely lead to more death and destruction.

Retributive Mirroring History is different from the Additive type in that it seeks an action as punishment for the historical sin. We can summarize this misuse of history as Historical Abstraction that are negative and worthy of punishment plus a cost assigned to atone for the sins. This Retribution Fee is the minimal demands of the history abuser to address some historical injustice. Taking the Israel-Hamas example, a retributive form of argument would take all of the poor history while tacking on demands for the future in order restore harmony.

In the case of Israel and Hamas, the retribution fee is land, national power, religious dominance (and intolerance), and ethnic purity. After October 7th, 2023, the Israelis increasingly look at Hamas controlled areas as breeding grounds for similar terrorist attacks. When combined with the Netanyahu administration's anti-terrorist fumbling pre-October 7th, rather than own up to the security mistakes and the failure to heed the warning about an unconventional attack because of what was likely technological and military arrogance, they doubled or tripled down on violence to retaliate and save face. Their stated goal is first to destroy Hamas, then return the hostages, then to think about what the desolation will look like after.

The retributive abstraction for the Israeli government is to deny any role in cutting off the Hamas stricken areas from development because of their open hostility. Clearly, Israel was a party to the administration of the affected Palestinians even if Hamas was elected by a majority of their own people. Yet, because of the horrors of the 7th, Israel will deny all responsibility and pursue vengeance until either it achieves the potentially unreachable objective of wiping out Hamas at the costs thousands of more innocents, often used as human shields, or if it drags on and the same Biden administration people who ran out of Afghanistan and dithered in providing weapons to Ukraine early in that war, the US and other allies may force Israel to accept a humiliating settlement, which could threaten Israel's alliances and even its own existence, which would harm US security interests and add to the perception of weakness that likely to multiple hotspots popping up since 2021.

Thus, the Israeli government is locked into a history trap where its very existence it threatened by violent enemies surrounding it because of 70+ years of conflict, and internally by an angry Israeli public that can't understand why the attack got through, why the hostages are not all freed yet, and why the long-serving prime minister isn't more effective at protecting their besieged society. Therefore, the fee to remove Hamas is probably steeper than the Israelis realize, or that the world would allow, despite the UN relief agencies doling out billions to the Palestinians with little results and while allowing them to stay in Hamas or Palestinian Authority controlled squalor and violence.

If it were Hamas seeking more retribution, as they started this most recent war with an attack, they would push their borders from the "river to the sea" as per their governing charter, which is both a rallying cry to Palestinians to have a strictly Palestinian and Muslim nation, and an antisemitic phrase to Jews because it means the elimination of the state of Israel and presumably the ethnic cleansing that would be required to purify the infidels from the new Palestine of Hamas's vision. It's both tragic and ironic that both sides accuse the other of ethnic cleansing, that is totally removing unwanted populations from a place. The Jews are accused of blockading Gaza and forcing refugees out, which when married with the history of expansive Jewish settlements, could be interpreted as a replacement for the exiled Arabs living there before.

Unlike the Israeli government, which includes Palestinian MPs and is tolerant of the three major monotheistic faiths, Hamas' governing body is more serious about a Muslim, Palestinian nation only for them. It is not a stretch to assume that most Jews wouldn't be welcome since the 2017 charter calls for the defeat and removal of "racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration), on recognition of a usurping entity and on imposing a fait accompli by force." Therefore, the Palestinian demands are based on the false conception of history and the rejection of the de facto existence of their powerful neighbor.

The retribution fee is the conquest of lands they believe were theirs, the establishment of a strict Muslim state and society (the umma), where religious toleration like in Israel would not be welcome, but instead the peoples of the book (Christians and Jews) would be placed back in second class status and be forced to pay a religious tax if they fail to convert to Islam. Is this fee as harsh as Israel's hardline demands for Gaza? Time will tell which side wins and which side is serious about enacting their harsh visions for the region. However, if either mission is enacted to the degrees desired, thousands more will die, people will be displaced, the region will decline and suffer, and generations will be needed before recovery can begin.

Retribution is often connected to the concept of irredentism, or that certain people have the only legitimate claim to lands or a country.  Irredentist Retribution twists history in the most extreme way to ensure that one claimant group gets to decide what punishment awaits those interlopers that are occupying their land or tainting their country now.  As subjects of mirroring, those who use this form of argument often advocate for the most extreme forms of punishment like divesting and taking money away from supporters of the illegitimate occupiers, dispossessing others of land, intimidating or harassing perceived opponents, or even advocating for policies that might lead to ethnic cleansing or genocide.        

The Palestinians and Jews are perfect examples of this concept as the land is the most fought over real-estate in the world. Both sides use the concept of past land ownership to determine their claims now. They can appeal to international courts or bodies that support their claims or they can run to their neighbors and allies in hopes that they will provide the strength to reclaim a lost land or validate a claim. However, the problem with irredentist history, whether it's in the Holy Land, or with La Raza wanting the American Southwest returned to Mexico, is that the land rarely changes hands without prolonged, slow-burning, and wasteful conflict and suffering.

Irredentism is a no holds-bard, winner take all solution that corrupts history with the victors proposing a solution that is not practical in the real world. How then do we adjudicate when a historical comparison or claim is worth our time? How do we know that our historical references aren't a dangerous fallacy that prolongs conflict, exacerbates irridentist claims, and prevents a rational solution? Keep seated as we'll explore those issues in coming sections.

4. “And everything will be as it was before:” Groundhog Scrutiny and the Past Repeating Command      

“Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

Ralph: That about sums it up for me.”

"Groundhog Day," 1993.

In the movie “Groundhog Day” (1993), Phil Connors repeats the same day over and over again until he fixes his attitude, confesses his love truly, and learns to appreciate life and the people that are part of it.  Though a fictional movie, its themes are powerful: a karmic restoration can occur if one's flaws are stamped out after living and dying until purified.  A nasty, cynical person can be redeemed. Most importantly, events can be repeated until they are done as God or the universe wants them.  

This is a salient point made across the world.  The Chinese believed that their dynasties lost the right to rule because heaven disapproved of their ancestral disrespect, corruption, and mistreatment.  By combing through the ancient texts (of the dynastic victors), they believed they could discover the flaws of the ancients that had failed.  Note that there was rarely a new interpretation of the old for each new dynasty won heaven’s mandate for reasons that need only be discovered.  Radical changes in understanding about the past were shunned especially when they questioned the current rulers, which often lead to violent intellectual purges.  As it went, the Chinese dynastic cycle continued in logical procession as each successive dynasty followed the basic pattern, repeated similar mistakes, and lost their right to rule to the new claimant who proved heaven's blessing by winning on the battlefield. They also destroyed the remaining predecessors and their relations, root and branch, once their usefulness in establishing the new rulership was complete.   

This cyclicism is an outdated view of history, but not something that should be entirely dismissed when looking at how many modern people are taught to view the past.  For our subjects, it’s entirely possible that a new, evil cycle can emerge, that a new Joseph Stalin can bring communist repression to Eastern Europe.  Historical cyclicism can even posit that slavery can return to the US because a voter ID is restored in a former Confederate state only 200 years later in much different circumstances.  So, the potency of this repetitious fallacy is great as in the minds of our subjects, something negative from the past can occur again in the exact same circumstances. 

However, we mirrors follow the Groundhog Scrutiny standards when analyzing subjects who make historical points.  It is based on the US Supreme Court’s interpretation of equal protection as found in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.  Since the mirroring agent is the trial judge and the supreme appellate level of deciding, they place the burden of proof on the person making the historical claim.  Rather than deciding issues of equality under the law in regards to race, gender, or sexual orientation, mirrors must often quickly decide whether history is being abused, whether a command is being issued about a false projection of the past on an impossible future goal.  

History is not a process of repeating events, nor are contexts occurring exactly the same every time.  There is no way to prove the same people, objects, beliefs, all occurring at the same time, in the same context can repeat themselves at a future place in the timeline.  Instead of pursuing the false path of theories that may or may not be true in order to use time and history to our benefit, we need only concern ourselves with what we can practically do now. That is the danger of history, the idea that because a series of events or a context can repeat itself, we must act now, use the acontextual imperative context, and force people to follow potentially unjust commands. So, let's use what tools we have and do something about the abuse of history.

Groundhog Scrutiny: Mirror History’s View of Historical Comparisons

1. Lowest Review Level: Basic Fallacy Review (Automatic Rejection)

• Suspect classifications based on provable historical fallacies like ad hominems (about the people), post hoc (unproven events causing other events), glittering generalities (arguments so agreeable no one can disagree with them), etc. Who the person is, their skin color, or race may not be factors in the validity of an argument. Use the blind test: If the same words were uttered by a person deemed worthy of uttering them, would they have the same meaning and truth value regardless of the characteristic that is used to reject the original person's argument?

• Suspect Comparisons of one fallacious element that people (now) possess that those in a past may have had (based on geography, race, ethnicity, etc.). Ex. Black skin means you are a descendant of slaves, a marginalized person, and an oppressed person. Or, white skin color that lacks melanin means you are a European colonizer (and not a Chinese descendant or another lighter skin group) and an imperialist (there have been plenty of empires led by non-European civilizations like the Turks, the Mongols, the Mughals in India, the Almorahivids in North Africa and Spain, the Songhai Empire in West Africa, or the Aztec Empire in Central America).

• Obvious Falsehoods/Conspiracies: Basic, widely accepted historical information can be used to easily reject the claims made by the subjects. Ex. of easily debunked conspiracies: The Holocaust never happened, the moon-landing never took place, 9/11 was an inside job, Jeffrey Epstein killed himself (just kidding), etc.

• Failure of due diligence: a failure to do basic fact checks and be responsible for ones' arguments. In the previous section, Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post basically gave up this for a time. Hopefully his journalistic standards have recovered since the lies and misinformation are certainly there during the Biden years.

• Bias of omission: a refusal to acknowledge obvious, contrary evidence. A good example of this is the repeated false claims about the Charlottsville Robert E. Lee statue removal and the infamous "very fine people" quote. I'm not going to take the time to debunk what the media thought Trump was talking about because I'm not a Trump supporter, but the lie and the omission of the rest of the quote in context by the media and Biden is journalistic and political malpractice.

• Fallacy of current political bias: assuming beliefs remain the same regardless of contrary evidence. For example: Democrats supported slavery and later Jim Crow in the 19th-20th centuries, therefore, Democrats today must still support those ideas.

• History Red Flag words and phrases: These phrases direct the fault to the other person and force them to defend grand history that they had no control over. Ex. "This is a systemic problem. How can you continue to defend these injustices," “let’s start a conversation (about your faults)," "How can you defend that position as a descendent of people who owned slaves?"

• Lack of cause and effect, or even correlation: Arguments are made to rest solely on the word of the arguer and there is little or no link established between events, or the arguer says no proof is needed.

• Begging the question fallacies: This type of defective argument assumes the conclusion is already true. Key indicators include phrases like "Isn't it obvious that," "Everyone knows that."

2. Intermediate Review Level: Substantial Contextual Review (Debatable or Undefined)

• Debatable Comparisons of one or a few elements that present people possess that those in a past (geography, race, ethnicity, etc.). Ex.: Some Poles participated in the Holocaust of Jews on the side of the Nazis even as their own people were being killed in large numbers. Therefore today, Poles who want to turn back Muslim migrants from North Africa or Syria are channeling the same sort of persecution of outsiders that they did before." It's factual in both cases that some Poles did those things, but the link is debatable between the two contexts and certainly neither instance is fully representative of the Poles in 1939 or 2023 as intolerant. Finally, some Poles working with the Nazis during WWII and turning in Jews and other dissidents is not necessarily the same as an elected government refusing to admit more migrants into Poland now. Migrants and Holocaust victims are not the same.

• Historical Characteristic Comparisons (Disputable): The same person, groups, or ideas existed at two points in time and are compared semi-accurately. Though not as careless as comparing Trump to Bull Connor or Jefferson Davis, this intermediate level is missing key details in comparison. Ex. "The Ukrainians have a tradition of being close to Russia because of similarities in language, culture, and religion. Many Ukrainians supported leaders who were pro-Russian in the past. Because the groups are so similar and lived next to each other in areas like the Donbass or Crimea, naturally Russian demands for a closer relationship under one Russian government were reasonable based on that historic relationship." On its face, it's true that Ukraine has much in common with Russia, but the problem with this line of argument (and what Putin uses daily to justify his Ukraine invasion) is it assumes that minds do not change, that a people are static throughout history. It's also an irredentist fallacy because Russia asserts its control over people and their lands even though the people they would control view themselves as distinct and are willing to die in that resistance. The fallacy goes that if they were friendly to Russia and similar in culture at some point, they must remain that way regardless of the pro-Russian puppets, corruption, and stagnation under the previous arrangement. The Ukrainians have clearly expended many lives to defend their difference from Russia.

• Correlation and unproven causation: The facts seem to occur at the same time, but the argument is not effective in establishing a connection between them, or in other words, there's no evidence linking the cause to the effects. Ex. "School boards across the country faced backlash over mandatory mask and vaccination policies in 2021-22. Because a few school board officials felt harassed and threatened, and there were lobbying groups and politicians that were advocating for just such protests at open hearings, those events mean there may have been a criminal conspiracy (cause) to overthrow school boards and criminally harass the board members out of office. Despite the 1st amendment rights of speech and association, and the requirement for open hearing for public institutions, parent groups and politicians supporting them should be investigated by the FBI as a conspiracy and there should be a close coordination with groups like the National Federation of Teachers to ensure that government policies are not protested too harshly, that social media posts be monitored to check for information labeled as misinformation by the government, or that the parents don't threaten or use violence against school boards that support the federal government's health policy even if only a few instances of those threats existed across the whole country (correlation, but not causation). Therefore, parent uprisings over school board policies must be caused by a nefarious conspiracy and are not largely spontaneous and local reactions to their school's overbearing health policies. As a result, the cause of these harmful events must be investigated."

3. Strict Scrutiny and Acceptable: Necessary and Compelling Evidence:

• This is the most selective and narrow criteria used. In an average debate, there will be few of these debaters because of the rigorous requirements from the previous tests and the knowledge of skill used to make it to here. Mirrors should self-select and ideally argue only using strict scrutiny or not argue at all. If history is abused and the arguments are improper, mirrors may become MNPCs (subjects) of mirroring themselves. For an example, see the previous section and my discussion of Israel and Hamas.
• Lacks nearly all emotional and irrational biases for the historical comparison (can’t work for the Biden administration in any capacity and make historical comparisons about his administration or his competitors).
• Two Pronged Test: 1. The reasonably accurate historical comparison offers the greatest possible effort in providing nuanced historical context AND 2. there is a compelling, NON-PARTISAN relevancy to the historical comparison's inclusion in the debate.
• Narrowly tailored facts fit a reasonable view of the past context.
• Rigorous scholarship, balanced sources, nonpartisan language, acknowledgement of critical views of the comparison.

Part II: A Princess Awaits Their Modern Saviors 

V. ”Lips Red As The Rose:”

The Here, Now, and Every Way How: The Present

"Colonel Sandurz: Try here. Stop.

Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?

Colonel Sandurz: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.

Dark Helmet: What happened to then? Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.

Dark Helmet: When? Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.

Dark Helmet: Go back to then. Colonel Sandurz: When?

Dark Helmet: Now. Colonel Sandurz: Now?

Dark Helmet: Now. Colonel Sandurz: I can't.

Dark Helmet: Why? Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.

Dark Helmet: When? Colonel Sandurz: Just now.

Dark Helmet: When will then be now? Colonel Sandurz: Soon. Dark Helmet: How soon?"

"Spaceballs," 1987.

Context= Measured solar time + Sensory Information + Perceived Environment (Persons, places, things, etc) + Narrative Beliefs

People in crisis are often told to center themselves, to be present, and to push away the emotions and feelings that torment our waking hours.  Yoga instructors have something right; they know how to suppress the sensory overload and achieve a focus that can be valuable for our purposes.  Why?  Because the awful conversations, lengthy durations, uncomfortable places to sit, and the unreasonable nature of the people we have to talk to make the average political conversation unharmonious and unworthy of our time. The work site of mirrors is not a musty library where we skull-capped friars comb through ancient documents nor are we priestesses at the Oracle of Mirrors, arranging the bones of Karl Marx or burning the internal organs of history’s villains in order to prophesize a riddle about the evils of the future.  We work in the de facto present, which is how we process now using past knowledge and our sense to experience life. We understand the past to aid us in context, and to learn how goal setting works so that a wrong future isn’t put into the works.

Narratives are a way of consolidating information and processing experiences in the present.  We don’t have a total understanding of everything around us, yet we often fill in the gaps of our understanding to ensure a sense of stability with our worldviews.  When that belief system is stressed, a believer’s reaction tells a lot about how valuable they’ll be to society.  If they jump to emotion or violence, they’ve become subjects who can’t escape the storyline and need to be managed like a NPC character.  That means being asked the right questions, pampered in the way that elicits only a positive reaction, and then abandoned to seek the main quest.  

What then is history’s impact on identity and social group?  For some, they can’t be in a social group with relatives of so-called oppressors.  For others, their very skin color is a mark of shame, a cause for separation from society.  They are imposters who don’t deserve the wealth and privilege that chance has brought them.  Whether our subjects are shaming others or themselves, they must be in a context to process the historical information and translate those beliefs, or as we call them narratives, into action.  Basically, they must be present. 

Colonel Sandurz puts the problems of the present in a perfect way: it's always changing and it's always now. Events become the past as we experience them and we give weight to those moments often in random ways that we can't explain. So, if we're going to explain the present in a volume about time and history, we need to explore what makes them up. Context is defined by Merriam Webster dictionary as the "environment or setting in which something (whether words or events) exists or occurs." It is in this time, place, and surroundings that a mirror has found themselves. We can broadly summarize a context as measured time using a clock based on the sun, the use of a person's senses (sight, hearing, smell, etc) to perceive their environment, however flawed, and any beliefs the person has about themselves, others, or their surroundings.

Narratives are as critical to context as the environment or time elements. It's as which are defined as the preconceived beliefs that shape a story about a person's life and specifically in mirroring to a type of narrative that is unbendable to contrary evidence. Derived from the song "B.Y.O.B." by System of a Down, “Lies from the Tablecloth” (LiFT) historical narratives often corrupt history and context, weeding out contrary information in order to preserve a storyline about the past.  A LiFT narrative isn’t necessarily totally True or False, however, it’s used to irrationally weed out contrary information (so-called “lies”) about history in order to fit a current ideological narrative.  Two ideologically opposite narrators can rarely sit at the same dinner table and share a harmonious meal let alone create viable solutions for society.

The ultimate example of conflicting narratives is over the 2020 Presidential Election and the riot on January 6th, 2021. Two completely opposite narratives emerged from the people present on that way, that when combined with the violent storming of the capital building and the expansive punishment meted out on people afterwards, make for truly irreconcilable visions of the country's past, present, and future. The first LiFT narrative comes from then President Trump and his election denial. In disbelief that he lost the election, his supporters watched as their enemy's votes (to them) magically increased until the media declared Biden the president, leading to most states, even those with active lawsuits in them over counting problems or questionable changes to the voting system before the election, to certify the results.

Let's clear some of the irrational dead weight away from both LiFT narratives first before we discuss them individually. Exercising their 1st Amendment rights to speech and to gather, MAGA Republicans had a perfectly legal rally on January 6th, 2021 down the road from where Congress was preparing to count the electors, a formality that confirms the votes being cast by them for president, but like Mike Pence not being able to overturn the election for Trump because his role was symbolic, the count itself was meaningless in terms of who was confirmed as President. Anyways, the protesters acquired permits from the city, and law enforcement was aware and warned days ahead that a huge crowd would be attending that day.

During and especially after the speech, protesters were let in by capital police or they forced their way into the People's House through windows and doors, in the process, pushing, shoving, beating or spraying officers and causing damage to the building. One unarmed protester, Ashley Babbit, was shot dead by a jumpy officer and 6 other people died after the event due to health conditions that were exacerbated by the event, or suicide, or because of drugs. It was a terrible day for America and a very tragic riot, but no rational, nonpartisan person could equate the rebellion or insurrection of the Southern Confederacy of the American Civil War with aggressive, most unarmed MAGA protesters storming the capital to stop a ceremonial vote, a group that included a guy in a Viking costume, selfie takers, and tourist-looking people who had capital police guards open doors for them. Regardless, nearly everyone who entered was arrested, charged with serious crimes, and had the book thrown at them when it came to sentencing. Some still languish in prison awaiting the glacially slow justice process to find them guilty in a city that's over 90% hostile to their political persuasion or their peers that would sit in judgement of them.

However, this riot can hardly be called an armed insurrection as the mob, though aggressive and violent, did not have an armed force with guns, airplanes, and missiles that would be needed if they had the intent of overthrowing the government with the most powerful military in the world and one that voluntarily let in many of the rioters. An electoral vote disruption of a constitutional formality is only more serious because it was in the nation's capital, but not anymore a threat to the US government than the 2011 storming of the Wisconsin state house causing millions of dollars of damage and disrupting a vote on a bill, nor were the Democrats that fled the state to avoid the continuity of state government and supported those protesters engaging in the aid and comfort of rebellion.

January 6th was roughly equivalent in terms of weaponry and impact, if it's to be called an armed insurrection, to those mobs armed with club and knives that stormed police stations, which are government buildings, and that burned churches, injuring officers, and killed 35 people across the country during the George Floyd Riots in summer 2020. Their avowed goals then were to overthrow the unjust police system that had led to Floyd and other deaths. Yet, the attempts to punish the January 6th offenders rested on the disruption of government processes only in the case of that because the symbolism was of the capital being desecrated, which inflamed most of the country as it was on the brink of further chaos. Despite the confusing and sad spectacle, the electoral vote count was paused for a few hours until it resumed later that night without incident. If it was a planned armed insurrection, it was the worst one in history.

Now to the issue of incitement, which is fundamental to the Democratic narrative about that day. Trump's speech, while divisive and deplorable to many, was within the speech rights of any American as he may have increased responsibility as president and he like anyone else can't use inciteful speech since he's not above the law, but he also doesn't have less 1st Amendment rights than others simply because he holds office. He's not below the law either. It's hard to argue that exhorting followers to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the capital or that "fight like hell" are words of incitement under the Supreme Court's test in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). None of the words spoken or tweeted that day by Trump fit the previous standard of yelling fire in a crowded building, nor is the speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action AND the speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.” Only the January 6th committee and other partisans can reach that conclusion in ignorance of the actual crime of incitement or insurrection (which no one has been charged with yet). To have incitement you must have an act in context AND the content to cause it.

The context and the content of the speech prevent a positive interpretation of incitement. Some of the lawless action took place while Trump was still speaking so they couldn't have heard it to be inspired by it, while those that heard the full speech walked down a road instead of rushing the capitol's doors with guns and knives. That mostly came later if they weren't already let in by security. Not only does the action have to be immediately after the speech as a result of it, but the content of the speech must be such that it pushes people to do those lawless things. The content of the speech at its worst was "Fight like hell," a common political saying that's used all over and has never been interpreted in any other political context to be inciteful. That a lawless action occurred after using those words or "walking down the road" is not proof the speech directed it under the incitement standards.

Take the LiFT narrative of a protester on that day, using the database the Washington Post compiled about the defendants. Context is defined as time plus sensory information plus perceived environment plus beliefs. For a fictional example based on several actual cases, retired Fairy Godmother and her husband (or Evil Queen and her trained flying monkey to her enemies) were devotees of Trump, they believed like him that the election was stolen, that the government was using its power to silence them, and that an illegitimate president was being certified on January 6th. True or not, those are all acceptable speech based on Supreme Court precedent.

They were informed of the rally a few days before, they booked a cheap hotel, and made it there that morning (time), listened to the speech and agreed with everything spoken by Trump (beliefs). They followed the crowd that thought like them after the speech to walk to the capitol (environment #1), and though they had little malicious intent while truly believing their protest could sway Congress to not certify Biden's election, they found their way in the capitol building where they were not challenged by officers and so they proceeded to take pictures in open areas, posting them on social media before leaving the building (environment #2).

A few days after, the FBI arrest came for trespassing, parading or picketing in the US capitol, and obstructing a government proceeding, which as misdemeanors meant a 100% chance of jail time plus other retribution. In disbelief that their seemingly innocuous walk around Congress was part of a violent attempt to overthrow the government or that they were being lumped in those that issued death threats to VP Mike Pence, they had to make a choice based on their experience that day whether their persecution, fines, and jail time were worth keeping their LiFT narrative in support of Trump, confirming their views about MAGA being targeted, and fighting the powerful government that sought to persecute them. (See the ex-MAGA granny for a real example)

After waiting in prison for a few weeks, the couple were forced to admit their mistakes, denounce their beliefs about the 2020 election as a condition of their release from prison, which arguably is a violation of the freedom speech, apologize to the court, enter community service, pay fines, and remain on probation until it could be resolved if they were part of violent protesters who threw a fire extinguisher at officers even though were not shown the camera footage either before the trial or after they were convicted, a denial of basic discovery of evidence rules that their defense lawyers didn't seem to bothered enough to dispute when facing the zealous prosecutors. This fictional example is similar to many real examples. In it, the context of that day led people to believe they were correct, but in actuality and eventually, they were prosecuted for criminal behavior with the most vigorous and intrusive use of the justice system since the Cold War.

When faced with the dilemma to stick with their beliefs as per their LiFT narrative because they believed that they and Trump were right and others were wrong, many buckled under the weight of the government and either served time under the advice of counsel, or in some cases reversed narratives and turned on their MAGA beliefs whether because of genuine ideological change, feelings of betrayal by MAGA, or in order to spare themselves and their families greater punishment.

Ironically, few seemed to have come out of prison with an even stronger confirmation of their views of the overbearing nature of the government while under thumb of their political enemies, though there are still cases being adjudicated almost 3 years later. We can surmise that the impetus for changing beliefs is a traumatic or eye-opening experience, like being jailed for taking selfies in the capitol, though it's uncertain whether any experienced a political Stockholm Syndrome, whereby they actually adopted the political beliefs of the judges and prosecutors about the election and January 6th and didn't just say those things under duress.

Regardless, Trump and MAGA have a narrative where they believe they were victimized by a powerful government that rigged the election against them and is trying to silence them over January 6th, which they view as an event caused by a few bad apples and not their responsibility in any way. However, that narrative, the speech, and even obvious Supreme Court precedent about incitement are totally unacceptable to the partisan January 6th committee full of Trump's most acrid opponents. Diametrically opposed to that MAGA LiFT vision is that of Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney. For them, not only was Trump agitating for rebellion, but if he isn't convicted, jailed, prevented from running again in 2024, and his most fervent supporters de-platformed, silenced, and if needed, jailed as well, then democracy itself will be threatened and the country will hang in the balance until they decide for their MAGA opponents the non-dangerous choices they'll have in the next election.

Discarding any of the good will from his opponents from his unifying Inaugural Speech in 2021, just a few weeks after the 6th, President Biden grasped the anti-MAGA narrative tighter and encouraged the persecutions much harder than many thought was possible from such an old wheeler and dealer, one who campaigned on restoring the "soul of the nation," and for bringing calm and unity. Seeing no push for actual unity or forgiveness from a stubborn and vengeful Biden despite his promises, the 74 million voters making up the so-called "extreme MAGA nation" are effectively backed into a LiFT corner where they can either keep their head down and be silent about their worldview, or fight back and potentially be prosecuted, deplatformed, jailed, and martyred. Either way, their beliefs and those of their opponents aren't simply going to be wished away especially after the election's aftermath since 2021.

And the LiFT pursued by Democrats and Cheneyist Republicans follows the power paradox from Volume VI. The harder a majority power pushes to achieve control and to the enact their vision, the harder the minority resistance has to fight to survive. Since there is no adult attempting to bridge the gap, since Biden basically forfeited that ability immediately after his inaugural, to force an acknowledgement of the political differences and end the persecutions, similar to what was required to reconstruct the country after the Civil War even there effects of January 6th are no where near as severe as the war, both sides will push harder against each other and divide the nation further until someone smart enough appears to bring about some semblance of peace and compromise, or we plunge further into nastier partisan warfare.

And that is the conundrum politicians and their supporters have placed us in. This Hall of Two Mirrors has led each side to dazzle themselves with their own reflections while trying to smash the mirrors of their opponents in some of the most divisionary political times in US history. They can tell each other no narratives contrary to their own view of the past few desolate years of American politics. And here we sit with a society fractured, waiting for the next big hit to come. 2024 seems to be an approaching hurricane that few look forward to seeing. But mope not, mirrors, for we will provide a pathway out of this mess one present step at a time!

VI. “Hair Black As Ebony:” Totem Bashing 101: Lessons from the Taliban and Charlottsville

“Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

"Ode on a Grecian Urn," 1820

by John Keats, describing art on an urn how its meaning as an object of beauty transcends time. 

The famous poet John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is fascinating because of what it gives to people who look at it as a work of art. He sees many connections to Greek history as his viewer thinks about the aesthetics, or the emotions that come from experiencing art. Why is an 19th century poem useful for us? Well, we take a different view than great poet. Objects can can stand the test of time IF people who interact them understand the meaning behind them. If one knew nothing about Greek mythology or the Greeks themselves, they might have only a rudimentary understanding of what they were looking at based on their common humanity with a people they don't know.

However, like Keats's view of art and aesthetics, we approach our material goods as objects with the potential for power rather than inanimate material made of atoms. Yet, someone a thousand years from now may not agree with Keats's that the Greek urn is beautiful because objects matters only because we make them matter. We need food, water, and other resources to continue our survival. We desire designer clothing, fast cars, family heirlooms, or collections of objects not out of simple material necessity, but because of our sentimental and emotional attachments to them. The stuff we possess isn't really possessed, we just hoard for ourselves and claim it aloud to the air and prevent others from taking them, like Rocket from "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" stealing objects that weren't his just because he wanted them. It's not like we absorb our favorite dress suit into our body as we do our food. So, ownership requires the belief that we have a claim over the objects. That much has been clear to us mirrors since Volume I.

A totem is something different than an urn, a fancy dress, or a coveted pair of mother's earrings. Neither is actually owned physically by a person as it's not absorbed by anyone, unless it's swallowed in order to keep it secret where it will remain until painfully passed through the excretory system. However, objects can be given debate powers, which is what draws our attention to them as totems instead of the grandpa's favorite walking stick. That walking stick might be a totem if it's like Gandalf's in "The Two Towers" and it has the magical power to expel evil wizards from possessing kings. Or, it might not have any actual powers at all, but the walking stick could be a sacred item to the family and thus confer authority on the holder. Regardless, the object requires the belief in its power in order for it to be a totem.

Historical totems (HiTs) are objects that have almost a supernatural historical significance and are used in place of actual history to gain advantage in debates. The US Constitution is a document that can be as religiously significant as the bones of martyrs, a stone monument dedicated to tracking the sun, or sacred texts encased in some temple. It's both critical to history and also a potential HiT once it's used to protect arguments from rational scrutiny. HiTs are objects and ideas that go beyond their purpose and act as historical shields. They're impenetrable things that are shielded by the dust of the past. They're meant to be so old that to go against them would be to question the wisdom of the ancients.

Yet, objects can be a positive or negative HiT, depending on the meaning that people put on those objects and ideas. Were the totem to have a negative historical connotation, it would be marked for change despite the fact that's not a human being, nor does it have any non-material properties beyond the political significance ascribed to it. That is where iconoclasm would come in. It's the destruction of offensive symbols and objects often of a religious nature.  Whether it was the movement to destroy the icons of saints and Jesus in the Byzantine empire in the 8-9th centuries, or the Taliban detonating ancient Buddhist statues in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2001, belief causes humans to obliterate the physical representations of what either they no longer value or that they despise as blasphemous.  

When approaching negative symbols, Totemic Purgogasm is our term for the happiness and other emotions derived from destroying historical totems.  The present feeling of destruction is what matters to them, even as they stand over the piles of stones and dust after their demolition. For example, the Taliban show the power of belief and the desire to destroy objects to reinforce what they believe. Using the context information, the time element is March, 2001, prior to 9/11 and the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The senses of the Taliban involve the sight of an offensive representation of a false god, which they can't suffer to see any longer. Their environment, a dry mountain pass that was part of the Silk Road for thousands of years and the statues were part of a powerful Buddhist kingdom. This setting was also under their control despite the warring factions across the country.

With military dominance over the region, their priority wasn't a campaign to gain full control or to provide better for their people, but to demolish offensive religious statues. Their radical Islamic beliefs dictated not only that their own religious figures like the Prophet Mohamed can't be represented in artistic form, but that other non-Islamic religious objects are blasphemous and must be destroyed as well. And so they completed their destruction, ending statues that had existed since the 6th century c.e.

Now, we mirrors are also placing emotional attachments to historical objects like many Buddhists because we appreciate to some small degree the 1,500 years of history and the aesthetic value of giant sculptures carved into a mountain. Yet, we view the objects as positive historical totems. We're only boosted by their sight and not offended as part of our religious beliefs. Why mirrors would seek to preserve historical artifacts is related to our need for a greater understanding of the past and the preservation of that physical record for others to experience. Yet, we must be mindful of our subjects and the worship or hatred of the totems, and the emotional release they experience when ownership is achieved or destruction has happened.

The expectation among the totemic purgotists is that some sense of harmony will be restored to a community, or that because of the finality of their artifact destruction, those seeking to keep the totem will be forced to accept their loss and change their beliefs to those of the object conquerors.  As Volume VI discussed at length, political power need not be the conquest of a nation to possess its land, people, and natural resources.  Micropower dynamics can exist over statues as well.  

In reality, the destruction is psychological because the material objects have no real meaning other than what humans ascribe to them. The Buddha statues didn't cry out in pain when they were demolished, Buddha wasn't weakened as a religious figure to his followers, but the Taliban did feel a sense of accomplishment over blowing up history while the world's historians and archeologist cried out at what was lost. The ideological value of the totem is such that must be ended and the harmony that comes from the symbolic action of destruction is increased.  

That is also why other types of purgotists relentlessly sought out Confederate, Christopher Columbus, and any offensive monuments even of seemingly innocuous figures, labeling anyone seeing historical value in them as supporting slavery, Jim Crow, and even the KKK. They ritualistically tore down the statues especially of Robert E. Lee, arguably the best general in the Civil War regardless of the horrible cause that was he defending.  In order to temporarily silence any objectors that were scared away because of the racism stigma, the statue topplers promised to place the objects in museums so that the objects symbolizing the Civil War were preserved for future generations.  

Instead, the statue was melted down and NPR got to witness the almost religious immolation in a secret ceremony. Basically, the purgotists got hold of the object and performed a religious ritual to expel the Confederacy, slavery, and disharmony from the metal making up the statue so that it could be re-formed into a more inclusive object with a more harmonious meaning. It's seemed absurd that so much time, effort, and resources could be devoted to a statue that once was a symbol of restoring the Union and welcoming back southerners, both reconstructed and unreconstructed. Yet, this example illustrates the power that totems have on people, that an entire community is supposedly disrupted by the presence of statue and it's very negative meaning.

According to an executive art director, one Andrea Douglas, the objects became supernatural to her and others who believe like her.  In an interview with NPR over the Charlottesville Lee statue, she said "we are turning swords into something else," says Douglas. "That saber is the object of violence and it was the object of power, the object of conquest. I think that is an important symbol to really sort of dig into."  Unlike everyday objects like rock formations, trees, hills, or a pile of sticks, totems are objects plus symbolic meanings.  For Douglas and others, they take on a supernatural element, the mere representation of a sword for her conjures much greater, maybe even invented meanings than the literal interpretation of the object.  She experiences an intense emotional release, her purgotist experience, with the destruction of the statue.

If no one had known what the object meant, it wouldn’t be a totem.  It would simply be a man on a horse with weapons, the most basic interpretation that he is some kind of soldier.  The same issues have plagued other statues for other reasons. There was a purge of Columbus monuments because of his role in exploitation of the New World, or even important and generally good leaders like Theodore Roosevelt or Ulysses S. Grant. As discussed in Volume VI, even the sword and the weapons must be understood to command power, to cause harm to others.  Otherwise, even weapons can’t bring power if no one knows how to use them.  

This goes to the heart of Volume VII, that beliefs about history lead to commands, an acontextual imperative, and for action in the present.  If no one were to symbolize the Confederate general with something evil and false, no commands would be issued and the statue would rot in the center of Charlottesville until nature brought it down.  Yet, because of the power of negative totems like the statue, they can suffer the statue no longer, or according to the then-mayor Nikuyah Walker a more perfect union cannot exist.  The negative totem then is a stain, a demonic symbol to some, and thus worthy of destruction.  If the community in Charlottesville of like ideology sees a totem as a threat to their safety, in protection of the communal safe space and in the interests of welcoming all like-minded people to them, the object has got to go before they can live in harmony. We'll see shortly how the confluence of historical totems, revisionist narratives, and the desire for ideological safe spaces comes about. Now, let's get to Disney and their disastrous changes to their legacy.

VII. “Skin White As Snow:” Snowish Whitish and The Seven Rescue Revisionists

"I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird. So we didn’t do that this time."

Rachel Zegler, on being a not-Snow White, Snowish Whitish.

"Take a step back and look at what you're doing there. It makes no sense to me," he said, about an hour into the 80-minute episode. "You're progressive in one way and you're still making that f***ing backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the f*** are you doing, man?"

Peter Dinklage, angry about the pride only in a Hispanic lead, yet influential in un-employing other actors like himself for roles in a major film he wasn't in.

          

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the best candidate to destroy a beloved story of them all? Why, it's a Snowish Whitish, the not-Snow White, and her Seven Rescued persons. “Snow White” was a classic 1937 Disney cartoon based on a German fairytale from 1812.  Most parents and children up to the present would hardly find anything offensive, nor is the thin plot worthy of yet another version. But, don't tell that to Disney and the actors and actresses they caved into in order to create this new thing.

Narrative dissonance is the altering of the facts and understanding of a story in order to make a political point.  This occurs when stories, movies, music, or other pop culture elements are altered before the people in question have time to process the changes.  Those proposing the changes expect compliance with the cultural changes or they may subject those questioning to stigma.  You see, if a story can’t be updated so its symbols are nonsensical to the original creators of the story, then what are people doing? 

Why can’t an 1883 fairytale from Italy be updated under the same "Pinocchio" name despite losing most of being in Italy in that time?  Why wouldn’t a 19th century Florentine conceive of their savior fairies as bald African American women or the Italian puppet-maker Geppetto as the "Forrest Gump" actor, Tom Hanks?  And don’t even bother bringing up Hans Christian Anderson’s Scandinavian mermaids if you don’t subscribe to racist theories about the people that a white Scandinavian man would envision in Northern Europe in 1837.  Afterall, Disney made them all Frenchified in 1989, so why can’t you adapt the classics to a much smaller audience today, capitalizing on something beloved for some more profits and so a lot of unoriginal writers can keep their jobs?  So, it comes down the most recent example of Rachel Zegler and why her criticism of classic films is worthy of notice.  She and Peter Dinklage are the lead rescue revisionists, sharply monitoring pop-culture to ensure it fits their Hollywood actress and actor narratives.

Disastrous movie promotions certainly do not lead to a bad movie. Nor, does the political controversy always match up to what's actually in the film. For one, I'd certainly never suggest banning or cancelling movies, just providing age restrictions for the most violent, sexual, or disturbing content, or avoiding them by individual choice if they're not interesting. Afterall, mirrors aren't the People's Republic of China that cancels "Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness" over two mothers holding hands. Mirrors certainly abhor the idea of a social credit score as well, where ones' public behavior is scored allowing greater travel and benefits if one is good, or restrictions, fines, or even imprisonment if one is deemed bad by the government and its censors. It's these real examples of censorship, not preventing kindergarteners from checking out library books with pornographic content in them in Florida schools for which should be alarmed.

However, most accounts of this new film seem to point to a radical revision of the original story, which means it's not really the same story anymore and Disney lacks the creativity to come up with something unique that would incorporate all of its new, woke I mean inclusive ideas. Certainly, Disney is a private corporation, despite certain tax and governance advantages from the states of Florida and California. It should feel free to make and market whatever movies they want even if that means losses. If you want to make a point about inclusivity or wokeness, I guess almost $1 billion in losses is putting your money where your mouth is, even if Disney may be deciding that its open stances on political issues are too costly and they may have to cut back or better hide the social propaganda.

In the midst of the unforced controversies, the progressive commentary about an updated "Snow White" couldn't have helped as it was in the stages of early promotion. When the movie comes out and if it's as revised as all evidence indicates, I think that it should also come with an updated unknown persons disclaimer that's in the credits of every film. To separate it from what Peter Dinklage calls a "f***ing backward story," and because Disney took his criticism to heart and made changes to the unfinished film, "Snowish Whitish" should include the following lengthy disclaimer to avoid losing the few inclusionary viewers it gained when it made the changes:

“The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious and revisions have been intentionally made to correct previous versions of that fiction. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended nor should be inferred, nor should one assume the backwards characters from previous productions are the same in this film.  Also, no animals or persons of any size were harmed in the production of this film. No offense should be inferred to any group on account of race, ethnicity, size, religion, gender, sexuality, economic, or social background unless any of those categories cause one to reject the overall message of this production, which in that case would mean there was no intentional harm with this new interpretation. No little persons were forced the play the classic, but bigoted fairytale role of a "dwarf." No little persons were forced to provide slave labor in a mine to provide sustenance to an unwanted guest, even if she's a fair, Hispanic female, which is kind of progressive and covers two oppressed categories of intersectionality (Hispanic and female). No fair, white princesses were used in the making of this film, nor was anyone forced to live in a cave with 7 men, even though the cave was their workplace and they lived in a home. Please be advised that there may be depictions of a romantic nature where a man self-identified as a prince may steal some glances at a nonbinary female in an act of stalking and harassment, and the cis-male prince may possess the desire to sexually assault her in her sleep by using the justification that only true love's kiss can wake her, and he's only pursued a creepy one-sided affection, so even if he's the only candidate for the true love's kiss, it would be a sexual assault to wake her without her consent. No nonconsensual kisses were used in this movie, even if they allowed nonbinary princesses with the means to escape death in their eternal sleep. No actual poison or Rohypnol was used by the Evil Queen, nor was she in league with the cis-male prince for him to date rape Snowish Whitish by ensuring that he was the one to sexually assault her by kissing her, and no inference about the evilness of the Queen should be inferred or ascribed to her solely because of her female gender as cis-male princes who kiss sleeping nonbinary women can also be evil queens even if they don't realize their gendered language doesn't match their unrealized identity. In this production, nonbinary princesses choose their destiny from biting a poisoned apple, whether they want to consent to be kissed and woken up, or whether they can simply prove that self-nonbinary love is enough to wake ones' self up without needing another person, but especially not a cis-male prince, because they've realized their own nonbinary self-identity and have come to accept who they are on their own, which provides the mental true love kiss to wake up.” 

This is just the start of the appropriate disclaimer that should be used to make sure that the new "Snowish Whitish" doesn't offend any of the new groups targeted for diversity, inclusion, pandering, and money-grubbing. That way parents and children looking for the classic won't be fooled by the changes. Those not content with a non-minority actress because white can't be a minority solely based on their skin color, even though they're supposed to pa famous white fairy tale character (Snow White), nor do they want to see little people acting on screen in roles formerly labeled "dwarves" as critics like Dinklage want the bigotry eradicated and the roles opened up to everyone, even if his fellow little people actors lose on gigs. After Game of Thrones and other movies, at least Dinklage is secure in what he views as an intolerant Hollywood. Though this traditional disclaimer with my slight modification seems pretty airtight, I think the current Disney writing staff and their defender Rachel Zegler are on to something.... when it comes to unforced errors that lead to a loss of revenue and support for their brand.

Part III: For The Happily Ever Never

VIII. "Up where they walk, up where they run:” History as Future

"Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.

Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth."

"Jurassic Park," 1993.

Mirror Future= an irrational projection/goal= abstract goal/projection + Acontextual Imperative (an order out of context) + Micro or Macrofault (a small or big complaint with no solution) 

Ellie Satler’s brilliant logic game with Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic Park” highlights the problems of language in goal setting after he forecasts that the chaos of dinosaurs will ruin mankind.  The clarity of God making man, man making dinosaurs, and dinosaurs only destroying man while leaving women behind is truly genius, and instructive for us.  For Dr. Satler, she’s sarcastically laying the blame of a flawed creation on God and man, a feminist inversion of women being subordinate to man.  Dinosaurs are simply the result of man’s faulty creation, assuming women had no part in it.  This fictional, sarcastic situation is useful because many people think in such blanket terms, reducing the past and future in a reductionist way.   

The glaring issue about our subjects and their future is that there doesn’t seem to be any possible success in achieving a goal.  The future is apparent mostly to them and their beliefs ensure that their desires are always met.  Where should our order come from as a society and by what authority and timeframe?  Acontextual Imperative is the past used out of context in order to command others to do things.  The claimed historical forces create an irrational order to act in a present circumstance based on some future goal.   When paired with a complaint about the world today, you have a Mirror Future, where the rosy picture of what's ahead is obvious and rosy to the forecaster.

This future is a composition of a number of elements. First, it requires an irrational or unworkable projection/goal like ending all fossil fuels in 5 years, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants in 1 year, or creating a Palestinian state after immediately ending the state of Israel. Mirror Futures generally miss most of the S.M.A.R.T. goal elements as they lack either something Specific they want to achieve, provide no ability to Measure the achievement of the goal, have steps that are not Actionable and can't practically be done, aren't Relevant to fixing the problem set forth in the goal, and they're not giving a reasonable Time-frame to complete them that would allow the goal to be completed. Though ending all fossil fuels seems specific, it's not actionable to stop its use across the entire planet and certainly not in the 5 years time-frame.

So, the Mirror Future equation requires an abstract, non-S.M.A.R.T. goal or projection for the future plus an Acontextual Imperative (an order out of context) plus a Micro or Macrofault, which is a small or big complaint with no solution. Not only does the unlikely goal exist, but a Mirror Future also requires an unworkable complaint about something big or small (called faults), problems that can't be solved in the conversation as the person is having it. There's also an order to do something now or in the future based on outdated or false information. When the toxic threesome of impossible goal, nearly unsolvable problem, and an order to do something based on false information or understanding, the least of the problems might be the wastage of time or some money thrown towards some pointless effort.

Often the end goal of the toxic threesome is Restorative Material Harmony (RMH). This is the desired result of the Mirror Future and most people out there. Harmony is the belief that others will act and think exactly as you do, there unity like a musical group playing in sync with other and not just a status quo, or a peace, where both sides still have disagreement, but the arguing and fighting have largely stopped. We can describe RMH as restorative justice plus acontextual, retributive, and redistributionary history.  It’s the belief that material goods can be redistributed in the present to a class of persons in order to restore harmony (or to correct injustices) from contexts that no longer exist.  Good examples of this are with the destruction of the statues as discussed previously, the proposed reparation payments to all those with some physical quality (like skin color or perceived ethnicity), or land seizures and redistribution. 

California's reparations board is even considering offering up to $1.2 million in slavery reparations to an eligible black resident despite the state banning slavery in 1850. However, since it didn't "guarantee equality" for all after joining the union, which would presumably mean that limiting the standard only to black residents, the Chinese, the Japanese, Catholics, Mexicans, the Irish, Jews, and Southern and Eastern European immigrants who were not treated equally should be able to get restitution if simply failing to "guarantee equality" is the standard for a state's compensation.

Supporters of this reparation program like Representative Barbara Lee (D-California) say that "Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities and inequalities." Others state that mere apologies are not enough and anyone expecting that would be enough without a massive payments are simply prolonging the reckoning over racial disparities and the legacy of slavery. Yet, this program is also found in state that's already hurting because of a lack of resources and a slow recovery from their number position as a lockdown state during COVID. However, Californians have no one to blame but the voters who gave the Democrats a super majority and the ability to impose these radical programs.

So, let's break this down in terms of RMH. Slavery in 1850 is snatched out of context. It provides an element of disharmony now for many Democrats in California. Rather than creating better systems to address the inadequacies of the economy, criminal justice, or racial inequality, lump payments are the retributive fee required in order to correct the past injustice regardless of whether the eligible person is a descendant of a slave or not, and whether current California taxpayers who would have to pay for this had any role in slavery or the inequalities after it was abolished nationwide in 1865.

Therefore, we need to assess such wasteful propositions. Let us turn to the future aspect of the context continuum, or in mirroring what is known as the progressive impulse. From the center point of the Mirroring Diagram is where we can assess the projections or goals for the future. The easiest goals are the ones that occur closest to the present, like planning to vote on the morning of election day of 2024. We know with reasonable certainty that as long as we use the average 12-hour time frame to sign in at the polling place, present an ID if it's not racist to you in your state to do so, pull a lever or click a button on the ballot machine and vote. Most projections of the goal to vote seem to forecast an accurate and successful operation. Sure, you could've already voted by mail, forgotten, and try again by provisional ballot and it will still probably be a successful conclusion to the goal of doing your duty as a US citizen.

You could be an Arizona voter in 2020 and be caught up in glitches. You could wait until the last minute to mosey on down to the wrong precinct, be waiting in line as the deadline happens, and instead of complaining that you be provided a late ballot, which almost always happens, you could go home and complain you were denied your right to vote.

Or, you could be a Stacy Abrams, so-called "disenfranchised" voter in Georgia during her multiple failed campaigns for the "stolen" governorship of that state and be denied free food and drink from pro-Democratic vendors while waiting in the voting lines. You could then return home and claim that despite unprecedented numbers of minority voter participation, you were disenfranchised because the burdens fall hardest on people of color that wouldn't vote without the accoutrements and didn't feel like bringing the ID they'd need to drive, book a hotel, or buy tickets for a concert held by celebrities fundraising for the Shadow Governor of Georgia. Regardless of allegations of a vote being denied due to unproven allegations of racial voter discrimination, and because there's often a month of early voting, in some places mass mailed voter registrations, easy vote/no excuse vote by mail, and a whole 12-hour day to pull a lever for your person, a non-stupid, rational person can reasonably assume that any citizen can assume their goal of voting in America will be successful.

Those are just practical faulty goals where people can't plan days or months ahead to do something as easy, yet important as pulling a lever or marking a paper. When marcofaults become involved, like those problems leading to the end of the world, then serious scrutiny is required.  There have been countless millennial movements that predicted the end of civilization.  There was Millerism in the mid-1830-40s, whereby William Miller predicted that Jesus Christ would come again, making Christianity a routine target for mockery as a few zealots combed the scriptures and decoded a prophecy from the most translated, distorted, and altered text in history.  

Or, there were the Y2K freakouts over the shutdown of computers at the turn of the century 2000 or the Maya 2012 doomsday that never came to pass.  In each of these cases, a bible, a computer programming, and Maya ruins acted as historical totems and an acontextual imperative.  People took these inanimate objects and interpreted them for a total Truth, changing their lives sometimes drastically in order to prepare themselves for futures that never came to pass. 

 There are also futurist movements that don’t have objects specifically, but instead use ideas in order to further their myopic vision of the future.  For example, Gretta Thunberg, predicted in 2018 in a deleted tweet that according to one scientist, global warming would eventually wipe out humanity if fossil fuels were not stopped during the five-year period of 2018-2023.   Writing from 2023, most data suggest that this scientist and the even more alarmist tweet from 2018 were incorrect in their predictions and that somewhere the science got lost in favor of the prophecy business.  

Ms. Thunberg herself is the ultimate example of a child logic buster (ala Volume II), meaning a child is granted powers to overcome an argument simply because they’re supposedly an innocent truth teller who can’t be opposed.  Like a puppy who growls at a politician's photos when their ideologue owners insist on filming the interactions, these infantalists cancel arguments because who would argue with a child, even if it’s about science and she’s simply throwing out accusations, crying, and being used by the adults around her for their own ideological purposes?  Why not worship the child climate messiah with the rest of them?  In 2018 and a few years older than her original exploitation, her mirror future required the impossible for 2018: banning fossil fuels, an acontextual imperative that required global disruption for an unproven vision of the future.   

 Like mirroring history, the future is relevant to us because it's the proposed goals, things that can affect us all.  They could be the wasted effort, the time devoted to chasing down falsities, or at worst, bring harm because of shoddy implementation or reckless abandon.  So, the most important feature of this future is that it’s an irrational projection or goal.  It’s somebody drinking with their friends who complains they can’t stop the “occupation of Palestine” and that a ceasefire needs to start now regardless of the fact that they know nothing of the events.   It’s the ones who demand a police-less society where only social workers and community peace-keepers patrol the gun-riddled streets.  It’s the person who demands an end to the invasion of Ukraine by defunding all support for the government there that faces Russian aggression. A small amount of foreign policy experience won’t ensure American security and integrity among allies that we need to trade with us instead of our rivals.  Yet, do our subjects know this? No.

Finally, we come back to micro and macrofaults because they are key to mirroring. They represent the boundary between useful political discussion and those that are simply complaining sessions.  Mirroring future is about goals that can’t be achieved, that break down into useless prattle.  A microfault is a problem related to something in a person’s individual life, like a failed local garbage service, while a macrofault is a broad issue like climate change or world hunger.  In terms of Ms. Thunberg, or at least her parents, a microfault would be the decision to drive an SUV that runs solely on gasoline.  This leads to excessive carbon emission, which harms the environment.  She has no ability to change the situation of the individual, so they take public transportation, walk, or bike to work to avoid the carbon emissions.  Instead, she complains about the people that make this choice. 

When it becomes an industry problem since car manufacturers still make cars running on gasoline, it becomes a marcofault, an issue of global concern where the ability to fix the issue the way the complainer is complex and time and resource consuming. Ms. Thunberg blames the whole sector without an ability to have all the car makers whip up a non-carbon emitting car that will sell in 5 years or less.  Thus, the projection is global doom because of climate change, while the order is for individuals to abandon gas cars and for industrial leaders to be shamed to abandon their business because a teenager interprets the future a certain way. 

IX. “Up where they stay all day in the sun:” Sunnyside Safe Spaces 

”Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

I really want to know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

Tell me who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

Because I really want to know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)”

“Who are you?” The Who, 1978

Elements of Historical Safespace Parlors (HISS)= 3 concentric circles that reinforce the participants' beliefs about history=Large Outer circle representing Agreeable Speech Environment about history (a Parlor designed to ease enforcement and prevent noncompliance) + Medium Secondary Inner Circle of Shared Characteristics (act of compliance through ideology, physical, or identity characteristics that connect to a historical belief) + Smallest, Innermost Circle of Speech Boundaries Enforcement (duty to obey the History Parlay, or the approved content about history and to oppose violators)

Imagine a cozy lounge where one can sit only with the supportive, generous people who only invoke positive feelings.  Imagine cordoning off parts of the place where you’re meant to be trained as an independent, rational thinker so that you can only be around those comforting people, separate from the intellectual evolution of the wider world.  Warm and welcoming only, nasty and intolerant not! Future-oriented, not stuck in the past!

In Volume VI, a mirroring safe space parlor was an environment where acceptance and debate are limited by at least three boundaries. These circles allow different types of individuals in based on criteria that should have no impact on the content of an argument, but without them, the person would be exposed to disharmonious truths that would threaten the narrative of the person within the safe space that's attempting to draw protection from it. With a Historical Safe Space (HISS), a perception of history is used to protect the Identity Safety of a person.  Basically, some environmental factor, belief, or object acts as a emotional threat to a person.  Until it is removed, the person can't feel safe.  

In the History Safe Space Parlor, the outer barrier is an obvious filter to keep out blatantly hostile speech and action that any member of the circle would understand to be ideologically unacceptable.  With history added, a person might object to someone joining a conversation because they display an Israeli or Palestinian flag.  HiTs (historical totems) are obvious indicators of belief and filters for rejection because a view of history is called upon experiencing them. They allow the person to immediately call up positive or negative history about the object. They can be parts of dress, jewelry, patches on a bag, bumper stickers,

The historical assumption for the Israeli flag is that the person supports the nation-state from its inception in 1948, a reduction of its difficult geopolitical problems and regardless of any faults.  For the Palestinian flag sticker bearers, one might assume that they support at minimum the creation of the first Palestinian state regardless of the tactics pursued by them to achieve it.  The speech is obvious to the person in the circle, so the rejection of the other person with the historical totem is easy. 

The secondary circle refers to more than the easiest speech filters.  There may be no obvious red flags, but shared characteristics like skin color prevent entry.  A person may have no MAGA or BLM stickers, nor have done anything to raise the ideological alarm and they may even be cordial.  However, a perceived characteristic like race or gender may lead them being kept out of the group.  Again, the truth of the race or gender doesn’t matter, only the view of those in control of the social group.  This second layer filters history in broad strokes after equally broad assumptions are made about the person as they enter the circle's context. If a person attempts to enter this group without acknowledging the 2nd circle's perceived view of history, they risk a harsh lesson.

For example, a person may not be bearing any outward symbols of support for either Israel or Palestine, however, they begin a discussion with a gatekeeper in this level and question why the hostages still have not been released by Hamas, which prompts a quick response about the number of Palestinians killed in this recent conflict and in previous years and why they, the interloper, are so concerned with hostages and not the already dead? Or, if they begin a discussion by questioning why Israel hasn't stopped the war and accepted a ceasefire yet, the opposite gatekeeper might question why Israel is supposed to accept terrorist forces on its border that could unexpectedly attack it again when they believed they were in a ceasefire the day before the October 7th attack. Both groups will have a narrative opposite to each other and to dislodge those requires the right communicator who can avoid the logical traps, fallacies, and emotional words to convince the 2nd circle folks to believe differently.

The third circle is the most selective, yet also the one that is most idealistic about a sunny future because near uniform speech and action is required among its members. Loyalty and the belief that harmony exists among them is what keeps their paradise glowing bright.   The members of this emotionally comfortable group believe and act similarly in almost every regard. It is also the core of Identity Safety, or the concept that the environement, people, and their ideas are harmful to the identity of the person.  The only disagreements to be found in this innermost circle are over the minutiae of enforcement, minor struggles over who has micropower, the small degrees of belief separating them and how to enact them, and if history is involved, the amount of it that can be cherry picked to reinforce the group's beliefs. There is little possibility for serious pushback or argument in this core because to do so would call into question the emotional support that the Safe Space Parlor provides for its exclusive members.  

Let's apply what've discussed with HiTs (totems) and safe spaces to the concept of Spatial Historical Justice in works by thinkers like Cara Mitchell at “The Site Magazine.” It's very similar to what we try to avoid with a Safe Space Parlor though it's applied to an entire public setting. It's combining the totemic purgotistic urge to destroy objects for ideological reasons with the futuristic urge to create a safe space that supposed to create more harmony.

This is the heart of our contextual discussion as the statues, artwork, building structure, community design, lighting, whatever that's part of the environment is ascribed grand historical meaning, oftentimes in a negative way to suggest that one community benefits while the other doesn't. Spatial Historical Justice is a concept used by Mitchell, other thinkers, and even at Harvard University to alter the environment to create a desired picture that isn't necessarily historical in nature. However, by purging unwanted totems that have historical significance, institutions set up parlors of their own with the intention of avoiding a discussion about history in favor of revision and what they think is emotional support.

Other than fixing spaces for historical justice, there's also the case of ex-Steeler running back Rashard Mendenhall who wanted set up both a Parlay, who and what can be said about football, and a Parlor, a segregated football match where the conditions of the match would naturally favor one group over the other. Before he was forced to walk back his comments, he said: “I’m sick of average white guys commenting on football. Y’all not even good at football. Can we please replace the Pro Bowl with an All-Black vs. All-White Bowl so these cats can stop trying to teach me who’s good at football. I’m better than ur (sic) goat.” Even though it's about football, sports are often treated the same way as politics and the two parties even when political messaging like kneeling for BLM or demanding compliance with the national anthem aren't pushed in the faces of spectators. As instructive for us, his ill-advised comments display the impact of narrative on speech and the environment for that speech.

Mendenhall wants a Parlay established where clearly his target group, average white guy analysts who aren't good at football, don't have a say and can't speak. Clearly, he is triggered by advice from people he thinks are less talented than him and that group is of a racial composition where they speak beyond their abilities. His retribution for the insolence of the average white analysts is to form two teams based on race and then crush the average white team. He also declares himself better than their greatest of all time, G.O.A.T., (not an animal goat) who puts in unwanted comments.

Then in an act of racial segregation he establishes a Parlor where teams compete, and one master race (black) can show its superiority over the other (average whites). In this example, Mendenhall carves out a safe space that limits who can converse with him based on the following criteria: male, non-white, football players, and skill level. Why does a successful football player need a level 1 safe space, where even being a football player yet white leads to rejection from level 2? Well, the murky analyst crowd were critical of him, he thought his critics were white, he believed that other (black?) players were also fed up and complained about the complainers, so he simply had enough.

His target group, white average analysts, clearly represented a threat to his safety as a wealthy athlete and even if his comments were a sarcastic, non-serious proposal, he illustrates perfectly how emotions can rule logic and how people will seek to construct places of non-debate, perhaps a racially superior, all-black pro bowl team or at least a space where white analysts aren't allowed to criticize the performance of people that Mendenhall wants to see protected (black athletes).

Though absurd on its face, let's say that some white analyst sympathizes with Mendenhall's argument and publicly states that he supports the athlete and that more white people need to listen to what black athletes are saying. Rather than challenging the irrational language that's based on skin color granting athletic ability, that white person might be suffering from Historical Imposter Syndrome (HIS).  This is the irrational feeling of unease or separation from a desired social group (anomie) due to beliefs about a past context from which the person wasn’t directly part.  Basically, he'd be a self-hating, white person whose emotions and empathy were provoked because of an irrational order to segregate sports.

However, that support would be a minor thing compared to the forced speech and conduct found during COVID and the Summer of 2020. In June of that year, some persons voluntarily kneeled and begged forgiveness from Black Lives Matter (BLM) for the sins of slavery, segregation, and police brutality after the death of George Floyd. According to the rapper Bobby "Trey 9" Herring, "we need to show a symbol that we truly do apologize for what’s been done to our black brothers and sisters. With Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, it tore us apart, and I thought we're going to take a knee to unite us." After the organized apology, the black BLM members present accepted the apology on behalf of the community and presumably for all of their ancestors. The outside group passed the basic entry test for the level 2 safe space by complying with the demands to apologize and genuflect like Colin Kaepernick, and although they're not black, they're accepted into level 2 as allies of the inner core of level 3, black BLM organizers, which they can never join because they don't fulfill all three levels of safe space requirements.

There's nothing inherently wrong with bringing about understandings in a divided community. It can be cathartic as it was for Herring and the other white members who participated in the joint prayers afterwards. However, the BLM members used a specific type of retributive history known as a Sins of the Father (STF), to tell the white people around them that they need to "shut the F up" and listen to them for once. STFs are irrational tactics that use past actions by persons or groups who share some common element, like race or ethnicity, to punish people even though they weren’t directly involved.   Basically, a person is held responsible for the sins of their ancestors.

Punishment using this justification is contrary to most interpretations of fairness and justice especially in the Western Criminal Justice system.  Our concept is itself derived from Ezekiel 18: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” The Bible and the monotheistic tradition may have little weight for some people, but at its best, Western justice practices the concept that only those found guilty of the crime are punished and not their families or relatives.

The problem is not the perception of harmony, but the interpretation of symbols, speech, and symbolic action. A person could equally view the exercise as unjust, compelling white persons through intimidation to atone for sins that they are not responsible for, maybe not even their fathers, or any ancestors in their family tree. This is the true threat from STFs. One unchangeable characteristic of a father does place any sin from that father on their offspring, nor should a parent be forced to answer for the sins of their children if weren't responsible. Whether it's racial injustice or dealing with other complex issues like the legacy of European empires, the people responsible for the crime should be judged based on their actions and not those that share a characteristic with them.

X. “Wanderin' free - wish I could be:” Part of that World

Exodus is here! It's our great escape hatch, a total departure, a final goodbye to our MNPs subjects. When the rough and tumble debates became a little too hot to handle and the oppression from the debate monster pharaohs drives us out of our time servitude, you should leave and reclaim your time.  With greater understanding of historical context, this tool means departing a conversation in order to find the promised land of fruitful, rational discourse. 

Cassandrism is the irrational reception of our rational views.  Once they reach the point of hearing, but not listening to rational views, they become subjects of mirroring.  These warnings are ignored like those of Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, who accurately prophesied the fall of Troy, but whose foresight courtesy of the god Apollo went unheeded by the Trojans.  Apollo tried to have her give herself away to him in an act of sexual distortion, but she wouldn't give up her virginity. That rejection lead to her gift being cursed with disbelief by the doomed people of Troy. No matter how she tried to get them to listen to her prophecy she was ignored. Yet, when Troy was destroyed, she taken and raped by Ajax, an event which caused Apollo to sink most of the Greek fleet. Unfortunately for her, she was murdered along with Agamemnon while in captivity. Not a pleasant story at all!

Mirrors are cursed with the gift of rational prophesying, doomed to work on the margins of social improvement if necessary so the world topples a little slower.  This is much like Socrates being persecuted for his reason in Athen, but different neither Cassandrists nor mirrors believe in a suicide for reason.   

Why is something so depressing used as a standard for our departure? Well, Apollo isn't affecting our decisions (that we know of), and each debate has the potential for our message to be received like Cassandra, but this is the real world and every context must be judged separately from each other. The Doom may happen, but mirrors will always self-select and try to stop it with a more rational though and a lot more belief acceptance to cool down the emotions. Thank you reading this fantastical tome!

Mirroring Volume VIII will return next year.........

Glossary

Abstraction: the nonphysical

ad hominems: "of the person", meaning an illogical attack about the person. 

ad populum: an argument that is popular or given by a popular person.     

Assent: To agree to something. 

Context: the persons, places, and times of a debate.

Fallacy: a false idea. 

HiTs (Historical Totems): using historical objects or ideas in order to bolster an argument or a target for destruction.

Historical cyclicism: The idea that history repeats itself exactly, which Mirroring rejects.

Infantalist Logic Busters: giving children the power to dominate an argument because they're supposedly innocent in order to tell a right argument from a wrong one.

Kimmelians: People who derive authority from celebrity and popularity.

LiFT (historical): narratives about history than can't easily be changed.

Macrofaults: large abstract and complex problems that approached simplistically.

Microfaults: Tiny social wrongs that are not solvable in a conversation.  

Mirrorism: Like a mirror, it's the reflection of emotional arguments back on the arguer. 

Mirror Agents: the people mirroring irrational political discussions.   

Pragmatism: 19th century American Philosophy that sought truth through what works.

Prop totems: objects used to convey arguments so that no argument can be given in response. 

Rationality: the use of reason and logic to discover truth.

Reason:  Justifying belief using facts.

Self-Selection: A rational choice to become a mirror because of an irrational debate

Totems: objects acting as symbols.  

Totemic Purgogasm: the almost orgasmic release resulting from destroying symbolic objects.

Utility: the choice between mirroring or arguing to gain a societal benefit 

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