Readers of this blog, redux

Okay, whatever friends of this blog may remain, I have a new blog the link to which may be found below.

aardvarknews

Please, com'on over and let us continue the discussion.

Readers and Participants of this Blog

I’m afraid this space must grow dark, at least for a while, and while I may find it possible to pick it back up in a few months, I cannot guarantee that. Know that I have had as much fun as a barrel of monkeys (or of Dubya[s] – take your pick) writing this blog, and that the pleasure has certainly been all mine.

Those who have read and commented and otherwise participated hereabouts, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel you are some of the most enlightened on this earth, and wish you all the best for whatever may lay ahead.

Keep up the good fight and do not tarry until the foul deeds of Dubya and his minions have been erased from this earth!

Students at Columbine

Ten Years of Terror

Writing in his seminal work, “Escape from Freedom,” exploring the socio-economic conditions that allowed Adolph Hitler to come to power, Erich Fromm makes the point that the middle classes, much denigrated in the period following the Great War, were living in a sort of unexpressed, even subconscious, fear. The fear was that of becoming immaterial in their society, and of losing their authority even over their own children:

“It was not only the economic position of the lower middle class that declined more rapidly after the war, but its social prestige as well…the last stronghold of middle-class security had been shattered too: the family. The postwar development, in Germany perhaps more than in other countries, had shaken the authority of the father and the old middle-class morality. The younger generation acted as they pleased and cared no longer whether their actions were approved by their parents or not…The decline of the old social symbols of authority like monarchy and state affected the role of individual authorities, the parents. If these authorities, which the younger generation had been taught by the parents to respect, proved to be weak, then the parents lost prestige and authority too. Another factor was that, under the changed conditions, especially the inflation, the older generation was bewildered and puzzled and much less adapted to the new conditions than the smarter, younger generation…the younger generation felt superior to their elders and could not take them, and their teachings, quite seriously any more.”

Never mind for the moment the generalized fear of living within a capitalistic society, where nothing – one’s social place and ability to survive – is guaranteed, and where everyone else is a potential competitor and enemy, but also imagine that the restlessness engendered by young people who go around shooting each other; who often laugh off their parents prescriptions for life; who understand technologies coming forward at speeds approaching that of light; and of feeling helpless to affect them in any productive manner. Such fear might well cause you to want to turn back the clock, reassert some sort of authoritarian role in the life of your children, and into the mainstream of society. Add to that the new sexual liberation that allows for homosexual relationships, and for sex-education in schools, and that even manages to shrug off sexual misconduct by a President, and you have a society severely threatening, subcutaneously terrorizing vast percentages of the population.

Then comes 911 and the real palatable threat of terrorism, in its full glory, coming to a venue somewhere near you, and you can understand how a people, how vast numbers of people, might feel much more comfortable with something solid to hang onto, something which promises shelter from the twin storms of socio-economic turmoil, and violent terrorism striking from the skies, like thunderbolts from Zeus. O, please dear God, save us from this unprecedented attack upon our way of life, and upon values long held dear by many in this Nation. Fear, helplessness, unpredictability, and the vicissitudinous nature of a terrifying serendipity combined to undermine our faith in ourselves and in our society.

While there may exist many more sources of terror in the modern capitalistic state, one more in particular might bare mentioning here: the fear of overwhelming demographic change. By all accounts, the unchallenged demographic reign of the white European male in America is headed for extinction. Over the next several decades the United States will become a republic of minorities, with none maintaining their previous majorities. The rule instituted by enlightenment philosophies, along with the vigors of capitalism as visualized by Adam Smith, might very well find themselves challenged by alternative methods of organizing society. The roles of wealth, privilege, class, and genetic make-up stand to suffer in the coming age of turmoil, and the once stolid oligarchy may very well stand depleted and impotent in the re-mixing of society. Another, perhaps conscious, perhaps unconscious, source of terror thus is added to the blend, and that, too, threatens status-quo America in ways we can not even pretend to understand.

A perfect storm of terror, then, has been working its will upon this Nation, and rising up from among us the most unscrupulous of the demagogues history has recorded. George Dubya Bush has been riding these breaking waves of terror like some blond-headed Norse God riding his surfboard through the pipeline. Let us hope then, collectively, that as the waves begin to collapse around his protecting tube of sheep-dip, that somehow a progressive leader emerges from the foam, like mighty Venus on her half-shell materializing from the depths.

Daryn Kagan

I Spent not an Inconsiderable Amount of Time This Morning

I spent not an inconsiderable amount of time this morning trying to figure something good, and fun and happy to write about today, and so far I’m coming up empty. Sure, I’m still alive (not a trivial matter perhaps) this AM, and the sun rose in the East, and I read a number of informed accounts about this, that or the other thing, but something that really stood out as exceptionally well done or positive escaped my perusal. Maybe I’ve simply lost the knack of seeing such things, and have become partially, selectively blind in my dotage here, or maybe I just don’t have the correct bookmarks for such things, but nothing really appeals as being particularly positive, other than isn’t it all just wonderful sort of stuff (which, admittedly, is wonderful in the way that refrigerators are wonderful, but still).

No one has been hanged for crimes against humanity this morning, although there are a plenum of candidates, and no one has been fired from this administration – without being almost immediately hired right back – for sheer incompetence and folly (again, the number of candidates are legion). A few sacrificial lambs have resigned, but not recently, and certainly not today. Also I’ve just learned that at least one of the CNN announcers is the “mistress” of Rush Limbaugh, which tells you just how objective the damn MSM has become.

So, I’m trolling this morning looking for something to lift spirits and raise a glass or two to. Anyone have any suggestions?

Dubya I & II

A Bush Trilogy of Horror

Horror 1) Afghanistan: following 911, Dubya and his associates decided to invade Afghanistan to go after Osama bin Laden. They drop various bombs, scour the countryside killing sometimes indiscriminately, miss getting Osama bin Laden (I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not that is on purpose), set up and prop up a U.S. puppet government, make promises, build a trans-Afghan highway, and then call in NATO. Today, Afghanistan is sliding back into the feudalism it has been for the last who knows how many centuries, is once again growing and distributing opium, and is as lawless and dangerous in the countryside as it has always been. As we did following the ouster of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, we have left them high and dry with only empty promises to keep.

Horror 2) Iraq: we oust Saddam Hussein and then proceed to screw up the country worse than it existed before we invaded. Although the division of Iraq into three segments: Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd may have existed in some degree prior to our entrance, it has now been exacerbated far further than it was before we arrived. Bombs go off on a regular basis; numerous towns and cities have been obliterated; people die on a daily basis; and it has become a training ground and nest of insurgent terrorists. Mission not nearly accomplished.

Horror 3) United States of America: prior to 911 we were a hopeful, somewhat respected Nation with a surplus in our treasury, with a stable economy, with a somewhat progressive tax structure, with reasonable gas prices, and with a functioning democratic system. Now, none of the above is any longer true. Instead we have been, like Iraq, split into various self-identifying factions, stand deeply in debt to various Nations, have a stupid, silly war on our hands that no one seems to know what to do about, no longer believe in ourselves or in our destiny, have religious whackos running around dictating policy, have become a neo-fascist crony-corporate state mired in our own misery, have kindled age old religious and racial hatreds, and would seem to have very few pleasant prospects for the future.

Personally, I hope someone tars and feathers the son of a bitch, and casts him into the eternal fires of Tutivillus.

Nickel Creek

Nickel Creek

Here are the lyrics to one of Nickel Creek’s songs, Sweet Afton:


Sweet Afton

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream

Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen
Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den
Thou green crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair

Oh, how lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills
There daily I wander as noon rises high, oooh
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow
There oft, as mild evening sweeps over the lea
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream
So flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dreams

Kids

I Am Sometimes Asked Why I Don’t go Back to Teaching

I am sometimes asked why I don’t go back to teaching. Assuming the question is being legitimately asked – and not just as a way to shut me up when I am being overbearing – there are several layers of reasons why at the moment I find that to be impossible. Some of the reasons are health related, those with enlarged prostates (or pregnant women) should be able to identify; and my heart, though not necessarily terminal, can get so out of rhythm that my concentration is occasionally absorbed by the old ticker’s irregular thump, thump, thumping (it’s called atrial fibrillation, which gets better or worse on a schedule commensurate with Dubya’s press conferencing – i.e. there is no rhyme or reason). Still, there are opportunities, though not full-time schedules, that I could maybe fit in with. I am frequently asked by my old principle to come back and teach this or that class, but I admit I have instead learned to mostly avoid him – which is a shame, because he was among the two best bosses I ever had. But the real reason I hesitate to return to teaching young people is as follows:

Although I have taught regular kids, most of my experience has been in teaching shit heads (I can call them that, because I love them and they know it). I also seem to identify with and correspond well with that other odd breed of kid known as exceptional children. The latter are relatively easy to deal with…you let them do what they want. Your job is primarily to ease and facilitate their learning, and help them decide for themselves their learning goals, and then play the policeman. No big sweat there. Oh, and you don’t have to necessarily be brilliant – just smart enough to know that they are smarter than you are. Most such kids are, as a Wally Parker could tell you, at a minimum three standard deviations from the norm. They live in a very precious, strange land of otherworldly enchantment, and are joyous to be around.

The first kind of kid, the real shit-heads, require far more structure and supervision, but are just as enchanting in their own way as are the geniuses, and, besides: “folly in a child is easy to love.” If you’ve ever had psychological or emotional difficulties these kids are very easy to deal with, provided you’ve learned empathy for others experiencing similar histories. There are a few truths about such kids that are almost universal (though there are always exceptions): they come from dysfunctional families (and that’s putting it euphemistically); they have a problem with drugs; their learning shut down in grade school when they began to use the drugs; they don’t believe they will live much beyond 25-30; and they all think that society and the world sucks.

About the only thing you don’t want to teach these kids, within a high-school setting, is that the world is actually as screwed up as they think it is. Please allow me to clarify. It’s okay to tell the kids the truth, they all know it intimately anyway (most of their homes are like a Jerry Springer show). But you shouldn’t over-emphasize the negative. It can’t be all one way, and one dark, foreboding perspective. There has to be some good.

Kids deserve, in my estimation at least, to be given hope about the future. They just have to believe, and to be given it to believe, that if they learn how to become human beings, learn how to function within a social setting, learn how to work and play, and learn how to stay the hell out of jail, then, through hard work and due diligence they can make a respectable and dignified life for themselves. They shall be rewarded somehow in some measurable dimension for the effort they put forth, outside of dealing drugs and stripping in a club. They have to believe there are options, and that such options are available to them, although it may be a Herculean task to get there. To offer kids less than that is in my estimation a criminal behavior.

Now, because they haven’t yet had their total spontaneity beaten out of them, kids sense when truth is being told, and when bullshit surrounds them…it’s a visceral reaction. You cannot lie to them for very long before they ferret out the truth. If you’re having a bad day, the news spreads like wildfire. Every kid in the school will know it before very long. Kind of like employees always know when the boss is in a foul mood. They also know if you are having other sorts of difficulties, and depending upon how well they like you, they will either ease you troubles, or compound them. In many ways these kinds of kids are like your pets; they know how to manipulate you. In fact, for many of them, their survival depends upon their having such skills, at home, on a daily basis.

I could not today enter a classroom and for very long give a positive assessment of our culture and our society. I could not explain the logic, though remote and abstract, of a system so that it appeared to be actually helping out the majority of the citizenry. I could not apologize, with a straight face, for our government or our economy. I could not tell them how wonderful their country is, and how it is the standard of the world. I could not tell them that if they work hard and diligently they can make a dignified life for themselves. I could not tell them what wonderful leaders in industry, and in other areas, their Nation has to offer them. I could not tell them what wonderful jobs and opportunities await them – most of them already work at McDonalds or the car wash, or somewhere as equally unrewarding. I could not explain why virtue and morality are their own reward, and why such knowledge will help them. Not these kids, from the shit end of town, I couldn’t tell that to. They watch Tee-Vee; they know what’s going on and did go on in the flooded streets of New Orleans.

For the vast, vast majority of these kids, America has no prospects, no grand designs, no upwardly mobile societal ideals for the future. At this point in our history, what these kids need is practical knowledge in survival skills – how to farm, how to raise a few goats and sheep, how to milk a cow or two, how to butcher chickens and clear land and raise a-frames and log cabins. They need to know how to love and how to value their neighbors and each other, and how to survive on next to nothing. In short, these kids need coping skills that I don’t even begin to have, and cannot give them to learn. I also know the old saying that you are never too old to learn, but at this point, after quadruple incarnations, I am about psychically worn out, and will do well to survive among the remnants of a dying culture which I do understand and can deal with. It would be a cruel thing if I ever stepped back into a classroom. The kids, all the kids on this planet, deserve much better than that.

Capitol Building

Find & Write Congress

I am certain that most (if not all) of you do things like this on a regular basis. Just for show, however, I have posted this letter to my Senator in hopes that you out there (if not hundreds of times already) will follow suit, and likewise contact your Congressmen. Go here


Dear Senator,

Good day to you, Sir. As a constituent I have several items I am particularly concerned about.

One of the most urgent is Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. I am concerned not only about her lack of experience as a judge, but more particularly with George Bush’s contention that even 20 years from now, she will not have changed her mind about anything. People who do not have the capacity to grow as human beings, Senator, concern me quite a bit. Certainly, you’ve grown and evolved over the past 20 years, and congratulations to you for having done so! It might also be pointed out that if, as a judge, nothing will change her mind, why is she then even bothering with the charade of a trial? I am sorry, Sir, but I just don’t get this. Just remember, Senator, Michael Brown, and what a man-made disaster he turned out to be!

Another immediate concern to me are the people down in the Gulf States, where things are in – to put it charitably – one hell of a mess. Following a few grandstanding appearances by Bush, things have returned to their old level of demonstrated governmental incompetence…by design from what I am able to gather. This is not the type of government I would wish for my Nation, nor for our State either.

Penultimately, but equally as important, and perhaps more so even than the two concerns above, is the penchant this administration seems to have for capitalizing, both literally and figuratively, on the misery of others. Iraq, of course, is there for all the world – save perhaps domestic Republicans – to see, in its misery and its horror. But the Gulf states region now is also full of hapless human beings, waiting for some humanitarian effort by their government to rebuild and repopulate their towns and cities, following two of the most powerful hurricanes to have ever hit our Nation. In both instances, however, in Iraq and in the Gulf States region, the only ones who seem to be benefiting from our government’s largesse are not those who are in need, but rather outfits like Halliburton, and Bechtel, and KBR, and all those other crony client corporations (or is it the other way around) of this present administration. These, Senator, are not the machinations of America at its best. I also suspect that following whatever rebuilding that takes place, the city of New Orleans will have been surreptitiously redistricted (and gentrified) in the Republican’s favor.

Finally, here, we seem to have the eroding of restrictions placed upon posse comitatus. I would most likely be uncomfortable with such action ever under FDR, but under this current administration, with its penchant for jack booted military action (and the hiring of civilian BlackWater security outfits), I am become extremely agitated. These are not the right signals for our government to be sending, Sir, and I really must protest.

I am certain that when the Democrats caucus they have some informed, rational, powerful strategic view in sight, but those of us out here in the tules are finding it more and more difficult, Sir, to find ways to apologize for our Party’s seeming lack of direction and cohesion. Trust me, Sir, many of us are begging and praying for the Democrats to stand up and do something significant.

Hey, we love you man, we just want to see some opposition!

Truly,

Battlements

Is any Law & Order (no matter how horrendous) Better Than No Law & Order

As we speak, there are those out there in the real world who are even now forming alternative communities and attempting to live their lives outside of the mainstream of America. Which is all well and fine for the moment. But consider:

Were everyone to do that (and we’re admittedly a long way from that), there would be a problem. Those isolated and removed communities can only work because there are others not living in such a fashion. For instance, take the matter of security. Were there no civilization nearby, there would arise roving bands, like wolf packs, of plunderers stalking the tules looking for vulnerable alternative communities to invade, rape and otherwise violate. Which would require a security force within the community to protect itself, and even then which would in some instances most likely prove insufficient to the task. Such was the situation following the fall of Rome; not only was a millennia of progress (in both some good and bad dimensions) lost to the world (how to mix and build with concrete, for instance), but it also heralded the need for the protections only an organized state could provide. We all know what happened next; the feudal era began. A few centuries later, someone named George III became King of jolly old England. Where have we seen this pattern before?

Isolated communities could probably not exist either without a few other trappings of civilization: like water and sewers and trash collectors, and governments, and all sorts of things it verily boggles the mind to comprehend. From whence cometh such things? Why, from civilization, of course. So while it is hopeful to imagine that there are isolated alternative communities to run away to, the real nuts and bolts of running such a place becomes more difficult the more such places become attractive, and successful…i.e., they are not in their innocence self-sustaining. While they might happily shelter a few from reality, they cannot be made to suffice for the majority of any modern nation. Vast forces are afoot that will seek to corrupt them the moment they begin. Should you at the moment enjoy the luxury of living in such a community…sssshhhhhhhhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone. Keep it under your felt hat. Or else, law and order (somebody’s law & order) will come to prevail and that always turns out to be nasty. If by some miracle your isolated community suffices for your lifetime, it most certainly won’t for your progeny.

Consider also the situation in Iraq. Saddam was a nasty, crazy, sadistic madman, but while he ruled you could, if you wanted to, manage to survive simply by following a few basic rules of living in a fascist dictatorship, and lying and feigning a lot. You could probably even get yourself educated, raise kids, run a business, whatever. Are those in Iraq better or worse off today (living in chaos) than what they were under Saddam (living in a manageable fear)?

These are serious questions we perhaps need to be asking ourselves as we begin to contemplate quo vadis (where are we going?), as a Nation, and as an assemblage of 300 millions seeking meaning, and an at least minimally ordered existence. Ultimately, of course, we must also consider what price we are willing to pay to maintain law & order. I’d be pleased, and happy, to hear and read your thoughts.

Kingston Trio

Mariah

When I was a young man I used to love what was called "Folk Music," and one of the biggest names around at the time was "The Kingston Trio." Among the more beautiful of their pieces was a song called "Mariah."

Away out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire.
The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe and they call the wind Mariah.

Mariah blows the stars around and sets the clouds a-flyin'.
Mariah makes the mountains sound like folks was out there dyin'.

Mariah. (Mariah).
Mariah. (Mariah).
They call the wind Mariah.

Before I knew Mariah's name and heard her wail and whinin',
I had a gal and she had me and the sun was always shinin'.

But then one day I left my gal.
I left her far behind me
and now I'm lost, so gol' darn lost
not even God can find me.

Mariah. (Mariah).
Mariah. (Mariah).
They call the wind Mariah.

Out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire only.
When you're lost and all alone, there ain't no name for lonely.
And I'm a lost and lonely man without a star to guide me.
Mariah blow my love to me. I need my gal beside me.

Mariah. (Mariah.)
They call the wind Mariah.
Mariah!
Mariah. (Mariah.)
They call the wind Mariah.

The State of Bush

Every Hate Group in America

As a young man in high-school I never really belonged to any one particular club. O, I was president of this, and representative of that, and because it was overseas and I had been there the longest, the other kids would come to me to ask questions of their new surroundings and environment, but I never really was joined at the hip, so to speak, with any particular group or clan. I was, and always have been I guess, a sort of social enigma who visited and partied and laughed and cried with them all, but never really put more than one egg in any one basket. I belonged everywhere and nowhere simultaneously and always felt as if everyone should participate widely and joyously.

Perhaps that is what disturbs me the most about the present state of our Union. In sixty very long years, for I have almost compulsively chosen the more difficult path, I have never experienced such manifold divides amongst the American people. I fear it is leadership that is lacking, and not just as a trivial observation - every hate group in America has done nothing but flourish under this current regime. Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book, and yet it has split us apart like so much caution tossed into the wind. We are all but shards in some kaleidoscopic nightmare of George Dubya Bush’s bizarrely twisted concocting. Right against left, red against blue, Conservative against Liberal, North against South, all manner of factions are we spanning the gamut of the good, the bad, the ugly. Yes, O yes, even the damned Churches.

Brotherly love, acceptance, caring, sharing, nurturing, tolerance and prayer have all become as sectarian as the voices swirling down from Babel. Today we have congregations with web sites labeled godhatesfags.com, and the tribulationists would like nothing better than to see all outsiders go directly to hell. Kill, assassinate that commie-pinko Chavez counsels one reverend of National repute. Meanwhile another Church urges its members not to vote for any who have crossed theological lines. God him-or-her-self has been appropriated in the megalomanical struggle to force one will or another down the throats of our countrymen. Jesus, sweet Jesus is nowhere to be hailed.

Class genocide is underway in America, with the poor and the downtrodden being left to swim against the tides that are rending our land. Meanwhile the sour stench of unmitigated corruption oscillates across the countryside like sheaves of wheat in the dry Kansas wind. There is no longer any topsoil to hold the earth in its bed – it floats away on the air currents generated by corporate misdirection. Our highly touted experiment in democracy has gone South for the duration, and only unprecedented give-away-schemes for the oligarchs remain.

Just yesterday, the Conservative author of a well-known book of virtues declared that aborting all black children would reduce the crime rate in our Nation. Previously the man had served as both education secretary and as a czar to root out drug abuse and its associated crime. I suppose no one bothered to tell him that if we simply laid down a strategic nuke or two we could probably reduce crime to less than zero, albeit at the cost of the entire planet. What a goddamned dumb stupid thing to say, and what a failure of human morality does it signal to whomever may remain.

Nope, every hate group in America is on the warpath to utter destruction and chaos. The surface of civilization has been too deeply scratched, and the roiling infection just beneath the skin has shown its gangrenous machinations. Rotted to the core, this once great land of ours, with rivers, lakes, streams, oceans polluted, and with holes in the ozone, and acid rain, and an entire litany of neglect by those who know only the profits realized by raping. Left-wing blogs, and right-wing blogs, and Ann Coulter versus good decorum, all alike shrill voices raised in blame, and in vituperative attacking.

Somewhere in this cold, dark night there lurks a leader worthy of the title. O, please good sir or lady, won’t you now step forward from the mist, and heal this troubled Nation?

The Hammer!

An Open Letter to Republicans

(RINOs in particular)

Please, please, please, Republicans, we on the left need your help badly. Please help us to rid ourselves and our wounded Nation of this travesty of an administration that would seem to know no bounds. Recount most horrid tales told on the web: John Ashcroft has been ordered to testify regarding violating the rights of Muslims in the wake of the 911 attacks; former FEMA director and now Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff is seen as having ties with characters you wouldn’t want your daughter to be seeing; House majority leader Tom (the Hammer) DeLay has been indicted on criminal charges re: campaign finance abuses; the Pentagon, receiver of more than $80 billion per year in tax-payer funds, may have set up an illegal shadow intelligence outfit, and once ran (and perhaps still is) an office of disinformation within the hallowed halls of our government; journalists within Iraq are beginning loudly to complain that the U.S. military is harassing, detaining and even shooting some of them in order to keep the wraps on an ever deteriorating situation; “good job” Brownie has not only ruined FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina, but his legacy still persists in the agency’s lackluster response to Katrina’s twin sister, Rita; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is more than likely guilty of some fairly rambunctious insider trading; the situation within Iraq is by all reports eroding on a daily basis, and in fact civil war there may have already begun; Cheney has been shoveling money to his cronies over at Halliburton and KBR like crazy without the necessary courtesy of allowing for public bid contracts; and Dubya’s poll numbers are tanking (rumor has it he is drinking again), and this Nation can no longer tolerate his looting of the National treasure for purely selfish and immature reasons. None of this, as you well know, is going to look good on the old Republican resume when it becomes time to start running for office again (within a few month’s time, actually).

So how about giving us a hand, here, Republicans. Help us to impeach the impeachable, fire those responsible for massive fraud and abuse, and simply let go those whose only agenda seems to be their selfish own.

Administration Press Conference

One of the Most Irritating Things

One of the most irritating things about the Bush administration, is its eagerness, hunger really, to take advantage of another’s misfortune. There is no compassion here, Conservative or otherwise, nor is there any sense of fair play or Christian rectitude. It is all dog eat dog (although real dogs seldom do), and Darwinian (although the theory is discounted by them) survival of the fittest - “all red in tooth and claw,” as they say.

For example, following 911, and until this day, the Republicans have milked the terrorist attack upon the Twin Towers in any and every, way, shape and form conceivable. They have ridden that horse, without water or nourishment, for their entire tenure in office. They have displayed no shame, nor have they done, apparently, the slightest thing to make America any safer since. Billions of tax dollars later, they have still not figured out how to deal with catastrophe, either at home, or aboard. Meanwhile they have invaded our freedoms, and our system of justice, by passing legislation such as the Patriot Act.

There is still neither an entrance excuse, nor an exit strategy for our little foray into Iraq, and while three entire Iraqi towns have been all but obliterated from the map, and while hundreds-of-thousands of mostly innocent Iraqis have died, along with going on 2000 American service-men, this administration has still not accomplished any one of its (moving) goals for having invaded. Iraq remains a nightmare of broken promises, ghoulish dreams, and messianic catastrophes. A real hell-hole, and a burgeoning training ground and recruiting poster for future Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, those running (and I use that word advisedly) this country have taken every opportunity of screwing the little guy, along with the middle-class. Wages continue to decline in actual value; there is no dignified wage even on the horizon; poverty has increased at alarming rates; good jobs have been replaced by low-paying substitutes in the service industries; health care has gone down hill; Medicare has been eroded; the current drug benefit is shameful; overtime pay has been violated; worker’s workplace protections have been lowered or alleviated; the integrity of social security is everyday in question; pensions and benefits have gone the way of the North end of a South bound skunk; and this administration still clamors to give tax cuts to the wealthy, welfare to the corporations, and an end to what is disgracefully referred to as the death tax.

Now comes the twin hurricanes, Rita and Katrina, and the Bush administration has moved in for the kill. Rather than doing their jobs of watching out for America’s citizenry, this pitiful White House of arrogance and greed, not to mention incompetence, has instead been full time engaged in handing out orchids to their corporate lovers, and onions to those displaced or otherwise discombobulated by the horrors of high-wind calamity. Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR, and every other co-conspirator associated with the crooked cartel at the helm of America are being rewarded hand over fist, with little or no accountability, and certainly no transparent bidding process to establish their claim. Instead the money is being shoveled in the direction of those connected quicker than you can utter, “Way to go, Brownie,” or, “Let them eat cake.”

Using the unprecedented misery we all observed for five long days (and longer, horrifying nights) in New Orleans, and elsewhere, as a springboard into establishing corruption in its cruelest and most hideous configuration, this administration has quite deliberately set out to overturn environmental protections; to do away with worker wage protections; to eliminate entire classes of human beings from the dregs of the flooded city; to import Mexican and Latino workers from down South (and more power to them, but let’s give those displaced first shot, eh?); to accuse the Democratic leadership of being dysfunctional; to begin a process of gentrification that will no doubt result in a Conservative redistribution of parishes; and to overturn long standing laws regarding the restrictions placed upon posse comitatus.

It is hard to conceive of a more ruthless, dissembling, less humanitarian government in this nascent 21st century. It ranks among the more heartless demonstrations of oligarchical hubris ever to be witnessed in history. It is, in fact, the very epitome of a despicable rule.

Protesting Dubya in Britain

When the History of this Surreal Era is Written

When the history of this surreal era is written, 100-200 years from now, it will no doubt compare favorably with the interregnum between World Wars I and II, and with the chaos associated with the Weimar Republic. It will reflect a total breakdown, within the Empire, of any objective measure of value or competence whatsoever. The records will show that the Constitution of the United States itself was contorted and mangled to support the most hideous of interpretations; and that America’s rulers, themselves no better than late 17th century French aristocrats (Versailles fops), in their unprecedented ignorance and imbecility, presaged the finally fall of the world’s remaining superpower. The ruling parties of the time, the Republicans and the Democrats, both equally enslaved by the manipulators of capital, paid scant attention to the people, and concerned themselves almost exclusively with propping up their class, and leaving the devil to take the hindmost. Meanwhile, the corporate state that by that time America had become, began to drain and transfer its riches elsewhere, and to establish new frontiers from which it might this time rule the entire planet. A mass exodus of wealth, remaining talent, youth and corporate headquarters was underway. No more could America boast of itself as being the “shining city on a hill,” or the “last best hope of humankind. “ From that time forward, there would be no hope for the masses of individuals left standing in the lurch.

For a taste of what such times may have been like, go here.



Today, in front of a House Committee investigating the disaster in New Orleans, and along the entire Gulf Region following the twin hurricanes of Rita and Katrina - a committee meeting largely boycotted by the Democrats (in hopes of winning approval for an truly independent investigation) - the former head (now resigned, but not from the government) of FEMA, failed horse trader and falsifier of resumes, Michael Brown, had this to offer in response to a question. “My biggest mistake was in not, by Saturday (prior to Katrina), recognizing that the Louisiana government was incompetent.” A few hours later, New Orleans police chief, Eddie Compass, announced he would be leaving his post, and that he hoped the media would allow him his dignity, and that he be left alone.

It really is hard to know from where America might draw its future leaders. At the moment, there seems to be no one ready, willing and able to lead America anywhere productive, and the media, who should have all along been documenting, pointing out, questioning, and raising the population’s hackles over the lack of meaningful and moral direction has simultaneously become corrupted by the wealth earned from yesteryear’s labors. In future, there can be no objective reporting because no one even today remembers how it was once done, and for certain there is no one any longer competent to teach the young pups only now beginning to matriculate. In short, when it rains, it fucking pours!

George! You put that right back into your head, this instant! Do you hear?

Is Money Thicker Than Blood

Sadly, under most normal (whatever that may mean) circumstances it frequently is. However, the nearer the end-game the more important blood becomes, and the less valuable money. Oswald Spengler writes in “The Decline of the West,” that, “A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and only one power that can confront money is left. Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. ‘Life’ is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is ‘the’ fact of facts within the world as history.”

Which brings me to a couple of my friends. One is a vet who I visit with while at the VA Hospital who most of the time is either a-political, or sort of Republican in a not very concerned way. That was until now. He has suddenly learned that his Military Retirement, for which he worked for 20 years, and which was presented and guaranteed to all who lasted that long as having regular COLA (cost of living) adjustments included, will now not be keeping up with either inflation or the cost of living. He is, to put it mildly, genuinely pissed, and quite vociferous in his opposition to such a move. BINGO.

The other dear friend is a lady who I met in an apartment complex a few years back (she makes the best pot-luck deviled eggs in existence), and over the intervening years and months since I left have maintained an active e-mail correspondence with. She’s of an age where she can remember FDR very well, and is a lifelong and determined Democrat. It is nothing new for her to detest this present administration – indeed that is why she and I initially connected; we both preached to each other’s choir. This past week she has told me how Dubya and the Republicans have eaten into her rather limited social security benefits (on which she depends to survive): “They raised the money (Medicare part A, I think) that is deducted from the SS check before we get it.” She writes, bringing tears to my eyes. “I do pay a co-pay, as well. They've been doing this since the Idiot was elected; but this time the deduction will be egregious, and more than cancel the automatic cost-of-living raise.”

Both of the above examples, from a certain perspective, confuse the blood vs. money debate still further, because it is now a loss of money in particular (not “big-time-Texas-like” money, of course, but dear to an individual) that is causing both of them to want some of Dubya’s blood. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, wants blood (at least metaphorically so) in exchange for her brave son’s blood. All of which adds up to a growing and ever angrier dissatisfaction, if not outrage, at the crooks who are running this country.

Add to that the list below of recommended program cuts by the Republicans, taken from the MoveOn.org newsletter, and there is certain to be – God I hope there will be – a huge outcry now that people’s pocketbooks are being summarily violated.

Proposed Program Cuts

$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program

And the list goes on and on.

This, of course, is but more of the “let them eat cake,” scenario that Barbara Bush has recently come out of the closet about.

What a freaking outrage! OutRage! OUTRAGE! You will notice that in order to pay for the devastation in NOLA, and some in East Texas and South-Western LA, that the bulk of these cuts come straight from the programs helping poor and disadvantaged people – including Dubya’s magnanimous pledge to help fight AIDS in Africa, and globally. The great percentage of the monies being spent in the Gulf Coast region will anyway go to the friends and cronies and crooks allied with the Dubya(nostra), and not to the displaced evacuees from the twin hurricanes.

You really do have to wonder how long until money ignites the spark that calls for Dubya’s blood. This has long since surpassed being anything but oppressive and dictatorial rule by a neo-fascist junta!

Worse, I can’t really imagine the Democrats doing the first damn thing about it save for perhaps carping around the edges, equivocating as usual. The blood of the oligarchs is united in that; they smell danger in the air, and hence are huddling together.

Automaton (Three-Cheers)

Two Americas – Two Realities

Former Senator, Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee, John Edwards has a stump speech he delivers (I’m certain you’ve all heard it, where he splits America in two between the haves, and the have-nots; between the rich and the poor; between those are technologically literate, and those who are not, etc. It’s a damn good speech, and to my mind, of course, terribly effective. I think he is right on the money with it.

There is another divide, however, that is equally as devastating within America, and that is the divide between the world picture (or myth) as the current administration portrays it; and the real world, the feet on the ground, tootsies on the ground let us say, empirically verifiable, actual world that the Republicans just don’t wish us to see (and in some cases may not even be aware of themselves). Certainly anyone who has not been in Iraq (and I must admit I haven’t been), probably has no personal clue what is going on there. Dubya was on the ground there once for about 47 milliseconds carrying around a fake bird – like all those macho men who like to hang dead animals on their walls – pretending he was feeding the troops. That was like eons ago, though, and he hasn’t been back since (pity, really, think of all the good pot-shots someone could take…maybe they’d even get lucky). Nor has he ever really been in Iraq outside of some mess-tent they set up for him, far, far, far from the maddening crowd.

I get a glimpse in my mind’s eye of Iraq because I can imagine well; and because I actually went to Vietnam; and because I bother to look at the pictures on the web; and read other’s reports and blogs, etc., of what it is like to actually be there; and because of the articles some of the returning GIs write, or offer to others to write; and because I am curious; and because I sincerely hope I am not as megalomanical as is our Dufus Maximus. And what I can thereby imagine is, trust me, one huge unholy hell.

Bombs go off continually over there; cities are almost regularly being bombed into oblivion; there are bodies, and worse yet body parts, lying helter-skelter all over the place; wrecked and fire-gutted vehicles lie scattered about, like some skeletal dinosaur burial area, having been devastated by a fire-breathing ghost dragon; there are holes in the street, like kicked over trash cans, littering the cityscape; blood and hot sweat runs freely along the stone and cement; and that is just all on the way to work each morning! Can you imagine having to live, or raise a family, in such a place? Or worse yet, what it must feel like to die there? God what a freaking nightmare!

It’s the same thing, really, in New Orleans, with dead bodies floating down the streets; and with corpses pushed or kicked to the sides of whatever structure people are cringing, dying and going out of their minds within; and with young girls being raped in the pitch darkness; and with shots ringing out from no one knows where flying through the acrid thick air, fouled with the stench of ten-thousand frightened people. O, my God, what a vision of hell right here in the United States; what a vision of devastation and hubris and fucking criminal neglect!

Those are but some of the realities of the tootsies on the ground, the empirically verifiable truths that all the world, save Republicans and sycophants, manage to see, and are forced to deal with while attempting – in many cases unsuccessfully – to survive, and to somehow maintain what little sanity they may have remaining to them. Iraq or New Orleans, take your pick, these are the realities of George Dubya Bush’s monumental incompetence, as a leader, and more tellingly as a human being. Absolutely, vomitingly, disgusting!

Dubya’s reality, on the other hand, as experienced (if at all) from the cramped windows of Air Force One, or from some war room stuffed away in the protected bowels of the Colorado Rockies, is of a completely different, sanitized and hallucinated reality, worlds apart from what is truly going on. In this faux space, “Brownie” is actually doing a good job; and Iraqi nationals are actually being trained in their own protections; and invisible WMD (not until someone squirts lemon juice on them will they appear…you just wait and see, ya know) are hidden across the sand dunes, along with chemical, biological and nuclear filled rockets aimed at our, or at Israel’s largest cities - clear and present dangers, every last one, to the good old boys’ U.S. of A.

Meanwhile the tired, the hungry, the poor here at home, along with the protesters “mad as hell” at the torture, the murder, the bombings being conducted in Iraq (and in their name) are “invisible” to Dubya and clan, along with those who are wondering when this brand of conservatism – fascism really – becomes compassionate at last. Dubya doesn’t see them, and neither do the compliant MSM, because that’s not the myth the cheerleaders wish us to witness. It’s unpatriotic, you know, in Dubya’s reality to point out the facts of the situation, or view draped caskets coming home from the front, or the corpses stuffed into refrigerator trucks heading out of New Orleans. These are not part of the myth that Dubya would have us to see, or to think about, or to concentrate upon.

So, yes, we have two Americas, and two realities, both wedged apart by the “unifying” mythology Dubya promised to bring. There is the America of the Kenneth Lays, and the Enrons and the Tycos, and the Halliburtons and KBRs of this world, and there is the reality all the rest of us poor suckers are left to deal with that Dubya and clan can grow wealthier still. How long, wonders Robert Reich, until the two Americans, “snap and then break?”

Snake in the Grass

I Got Had Today

I got had today. I was commenting on the TruthOut blogsite, and there was this idiot who had previously put his two cents worth in - all vituperative slander - who had then left a nice long article for the bloggers to read. It was very well written, well argued, reasonable and rational enough, and because I had previously invited such clowns to seriously participate, I bought into it.

It was my ignorance (arrogance?) that caused me to trust that this jerk was finally gonna voice his opinion in a reasonable way. To me, all evil is ignorance, although not all ignorance is evil (like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares), and deep in my heart I feel that if the ignorance is somehow removed, so will be the evil. I don’t, even under the best of conditions, believe that it is easy to wipe away or argue away ignorance, but I do believe that it sometimes happens, and so I put my trust in the world to task by attempting to converse with this clown. I got had.

Having left my response to this jerk, I left the blog to go take care of other things, and when I returned I discovered, much to my chagrin, that other bloggers had read this guy’s article also, and noticed that it was an un-attributed reprint of one of John Tierney’s editorials in the NY Times. I was pissed, and embarrassed that I had so easily fallen prey to this a-hole. I don’t read Tierney’s editorials (or didn’t up until Monday when I stopped reading all of the NY Times editorials because they now charge for them, which I cannot afford), and one of the reasons I don’t read Tierney’s articles is because when you click on the editorial page it comes up with a picture of Tierney. Terrible though it may sound, I can’t stand to look at the man’s face. Nevermind the aristocratic stance the man always seems to have, I don’t like to look at him because he looks like one of those spoiled rotten little kids, with baby fat faces, that appear to have never had to struggle in this life (which, of course, is probably BS, but all the same).

Now on the blog itself, there are many individuals who have been seriously hurt (in a multitude of ways) by this country of ours, and our arrogance towards blacks, the poor, the downtrodden, other racial or cultural minorities etc., and there is frequently a lot of raw emotion there (understandable under the present circumstances), along with a number of experience hardened psychologies. Many of the blog’s participants are extremely leery of those who come on the blog, attempting to yank people’s chains, and gird them into stupid arguments. It was one of those sorts of pranks I had fallen for.

It took some little while, but finally I decided that either you can go through this life trusting in other people and in your beliefs, or else you can become hardened by experience to the point where you essentially cut yourself off from such trust, and live a more protected, albeit less valuable, experience. So, while I am still fuming about being had, and, yes, my ego I suppose has been damaged, I cannot see my way clear to completely give up on it all. There are days, frankly, when I don’t much give a damn about much of anything, but usually it is a short lived period and I try to get back into life again.

What is going on in America is not at all a healthy thing. It gets continually worse and worse. If we all become so alienated from our better instincts that we can no longer trust (or accept) another’s viewpoint, I greatly fear that our society is doomed.

Rita (Baby!)

Rita (you dominatrix, you)

At the moment, everyone’s eyes are on hurricane Rita, blowing across the Gulf of Mexico and threatening life and property along the coasts of Louisiana (as if they haven’t already had a tough enough time) and Texas. They’ve evacuated tens-of-thousands (maybe hundreds-of-thousands), many from the towns of Galveston and Houston, creating what had to have been the world’s largest traffic jam, and so at the moment there are a lot of ghost towns along the hurricane’s projected path. Coming as it is on the heels of Katrina, people are pretty freaky to get the heck out of the way. We all watched in horror at what went on in New Orleans. I wish them all the very best of luck down there along the coast, by the way – I suspect they are going to need it.

There are at the moment other sources of trepidation in the air, however, which I can’t quite put my finger on, but it is as if many of us are waiting for something fairly profound (or significant) to happen. Perhaps it is tied up with George Dubya and his ridiculous-deadly-serious-incompetence, or maybe it extends beyond, involving somehow all the new trade agreements, and reordering of the globe which is manifestly under way. I dunno, but the feeling keeps getting heavier and heavier. People appear to be reaching their breaking point, and that’s not always a good thing when you live in a highly sophisticated society such as ours. It doesn’t take much to upset the apple cart. Although it’s rarely that I find myself quoting (paraphrasing actually) Henry Kissinger, he does say something to the effect that civilization (meaning civilized behavior) is very thin, and you don’t have to scratch it very deeply to get beneath it – and the gods only know what may lie down there. It’s like blindly reaching into a New York sewer.

I do know that for all the wonders technology and commercial enterprise have brought us - like soap, for instance, which kills all those pesky little bacteria that used to limit the human life span in dozens of ways – that the corporate world at the moment seems to be out of control, and is barreling along hell bent for profit heading somewhere maybe no one has carefully enough considered. Or so it seems, at least, to little guys like me. From what I can gather, checking the internet and occasionally watching news on the TV (which for months I didn’t do, because of Dubya and all the Republicans that mostly make me ill), things with all these new trade agreements aren’t going well for anyone, save for corporate contributors. Which in turn raises all sorts of red flags about the coming era of neo-fascist, crony-corporate hegemony.

Guess, we’ll just have to wait and see whether its just indigestion bothering me, or if something really is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes used to say.

In the meanwhile, batten the hatches, stay dry, and be safe out of the wind somewhere.

Bush in Black and White

I Can Not Recall

I can not recall, in sixty years on this planet - at least 40 of which have been at least marginally conscious - a time when serious people, in serious positions and jobs, have been so disrespectful of our National leadership. This is not in the least way said to fault them, but rather to point out the sad, sad state that America is in.

Molly Ivans refers to Dubya as “Shrub;” Maureen Dowd calls him, “The boy in the bubble;” MoveOn.org labels him, in a prime time commercial advisory, in big, bold black-and-red lettering as a “Misleader;” and various others simply refer to him as either Bush or Dubya or some other mildly derogatory name. No one calls him, “Mr.…you know what…I won’t speak it.” Outside of the National columnists and editorial writers, Dubya is likely to be known as anything from “Asshole,” to “Mother F----r.” How can such enmity exist towards just one man, who is arguably the most powerful man in the world?

The short answer is simple: Dubya is entirely unqualified to be in the position he holds. The long answer might take books to articulate, and already many have been, or are in the process of being, written. Most feel as if he is a joke – a very sick, sad and unfunny joke, but a joke nonetheless. And this joke has killed hundreds-of-thousands of human beings – I won’t say fellow human beings because at the moment that is a highly debatable proposition! Dubya may be from Uranus. Or maybe from Ann Coulter’s anus, or someone else’s anus somewhere. Maybe he is an anus, - in its, and his, entirety. That would explain all the farting around he does down in Texas, anyway.

Also apparent with this misleader, and with no other I can recall, are the calls for some sort of extra-constitutional action - secession, perhaps, or maybe even civil war. Those against him are adamant, frustrated, pissed off, thoroughly disgusted by his arrogance and hubris and downright, obvious incompetence. Nationally known poet, and Professor of Creative Writing at NYU, Sharon Olds, in a letter turning down an invitation to speak at a book festival hosted by Laura Bush, explains to the First Lady: “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.” These are all fairly strong sentiments to be issuing forth from what has been billed as the most wonderful place on the planet to live, or to hail from. Guess that whole commercial spot needs to be recapitulated, huh? It ain’t gonna work so well anymore.

Myself, I’d like to drown him in elephant dung. If he fell off his mountain bike and broke his neck, the stock of that company would probably go up, rather than down. I talked to one gentlemen who says he now hates pretzels; when I asked him why, he said, “because one had a chance to choke him, and didn’t.” Among those not enamored of Dubya, there is hardly a torture or hell-like repentance that is too gruesome for the man-child. Universally, as has been measured in several polls, Dubya is simultaneously disrespected, feared, laughed at, mocked and hated as no Nation’s leader has ever been in my time – he even polls beneath Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Forgotten. Only a sicko Mother, or others of her ilk, or else the politically illiterate, could possible like this man.

Word is that even Dick Cheney hates him now. No one likes Cheney much, either, in case you were going to ask. I wonder how his pace-maker is doing? Wouldn’t it be cool if his widow had to file suit against some sleaze-bag corporation because his ticky-tocker failed? Jeez, what a National tragedy that would be. You suppose all the guys from Halliburton and KBR and Bechtel would attend Cheney’s funeral? Or would they have “other priorities?” I’d bet on the latter. Cheney would understand. At times he’s had other priorities too. Don’t tell the Swift Boat Vets that, though, they’d no doubt be crushed.

Nope, I simply can’t recall when we’ve ever experienced a man as deadly and as Banty-Rooster like as is George Dubya Idiot, or was as detested by so many of the world’s people, including many of those in America.

Hey, you ever notice…he’s got beady eyes, too.

Poverty in America

In America, Poverty, Drugs, Latent Racism, etc. are Deliberate Socio-Economic Policy

Much of the early-on economic success of the nascent United States of America was built upon the institution of slavery. Rice, indigo, tobacco, and eventually King Cotton plantations sprang up everywhere throughout the South, and eventually reached across the Plain States into Texas and Missouri. In the North, where plantation farming was impractical, slaves were nevertheless used within construction, and heavy laboring.

Once the Civil War had been fought, and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, the former slaves ostensibly became free-persons, but not without newer, in many ways more difficult, problems to face. An economy built around slave-labor cannot suddenly afford to be paying the costs associated with hiring well-paid workers. So the newly emancipated African-Americans simply swapped legal slavery for wage-slavery, and things went on in much the same conditions as before. The former slaves were free, yes – but also free to starve. There was no absence, either, of white businessmen willing to take advantage.

From that day to this, the wages of America have been kept down in order to economically enslave the African American, and enslave as well almost every new group of Asian and European émigrés that have made it to these shores: the Chinese, the Italians, the Irish, et al. While others may eventually work their way out of poverty and wage-slavery, however, the African American has had to carry his or her color with them everywhere they go – and the prejudice has followed.

I can still recall, having been a military dependent following World War II and being raised in Europe, that when I returned to the United States after graduating high-school in 1963, and went to stay for awhile in Kentucky with my step-brother, that there were still water fountains separately labeled “white,” and “colored.” The restrooms were similarly distinguished. In restaurants as well, “colored” folk were forced to go to a set-aside window to both order and pick-up, take-out style, their meals. In the community buses, the “coloreds” were made to sit in the back. I’d never experienced segregation like that before, and it shocked me beyond belief. When at times I tended to make light of such distinctions, by drinking from the wrong fountain, for instance, or going to the back of the bus to sit down, I was quickly brought into line by the local residents. They were dead serious about this shit. I had placed myself in great peril. One-hundred years following the abolition of slavery, and yet the South was still as segregated as ever. I was amazed – I hadn’t been brought up with such values.

Unbridled capitalism, on the other hand, thrives under such conditions. Following the Civil War, the Industrialization of America, along with the Transcontinental Railway, obtained, and our economy began shooting towards the stars. But the perceived necessity of continuing to have cheap (and un-or-under- represented) labor available, in vast quantities, kept the poor, poor, and the rich as those exclusively benefiting. Things have not substantially changed since that time. Poverty in America, as a social policy of the capitalists, persists in almost undiminished form unto today. The poor are there to point to, and to use as a negative example to (or to terrorize) all those who may feel as if they are being underpaid, or mis-treated by their employers. “Just feel lucky to have a job at all.” How many times have you had that thrown in your face?

Meanwhile, un-and-under-employed peoples can after awhile become fairly hostile, as they did during the “race-riots” of the early 1960s, and then later on in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict. Such discontent, when it bubbles up into violence, threatens the ruling classes and forces them to show their hands in ways they might not otherwise wish to publicly display. One of the best solutions, is to allow discontent to funnel itself into alcohol and drug abuse, which then ameliorates the situation from one of mass insurrection, into millions of individual addicts who’s only agenda is scoring their next fix. That is a far easier problem to deal with, and masks the underlying conditions – wage-slavery and abject poverty – which gives rise to the high rates of drug addiction. Hence, drug addiction is facilitated, surreptitiously, by the ruling classes and the capitalists such that what we witnessed in New Orleans remains hidden from view, out of the limelight, and away from most Americans’ consciousness.

In an article by Nicholas D. Kristof, entitled, “The Larger Shame,” he speaks to the prevalence of poverty in America, and some of it most insidious ramifications: “The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush. If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing. Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India. The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.”

Although we have had previous wars on poverty in America, with little or no lasting effect, today perhaps we have an opportunity to air our grievances over the matter once again, and demand of our system that it finally rectify this great injustice left over from our earliest awakenings. It simply won’t happen, however, without significant revisions to our way of doing business.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes – Lenox Avenue Mural

Bush Sucks (a big one)

I Don’t Know What Your Definition of a Police State is, but as far as I’m Concerned We Live in One

Even though I haven’t entertained much doubt about it every since Dubya stood atop the rubble in New York with a bullhorn and announced a crusade, there is now no room left to wiggle. This is a police state, with jack booted goons enough for everyone.

For five years now it has been impossible to approach the leader of our nation. You can’t ask the man a question, you can’t get anywhere near his residences, you dare not attend his rallies (ditto in New Orleans) without being prescreened and measured against some sort of MMPI to ensure you are stupid enough to support this monster unconditionally (remember the two little old schoolteachers who tried to attend one of his dog and pony shows, wearing Free-Speech T-shirts?). In short, the man is inaccessible, evidentially to his own staff most of the time as well. Even Laura Bush complains about his “inaccessibility” after 9 PM.

The same, or psychologically similar, mercenaries that now roam the streets of what is left of New Orleans looking for African Americans to shoot or harass – gotta protect the rich-bitches property you know – are seemingly those who prohibit access to Jackass Maximus himself whilst he’s on the road, or grand standing in N.O., or slipping away for a whatever at the United Nations.

New Orleans itself has, judging by all reports, become an armed camp of governmental hegemony. There are the BlackWater security people, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne, special operations troops complete with black helicopters flying overhead, the local police force, and who the hell knows how many others all roving around maintaining the oligarchy’s prerogatives. Dubya announced the other night that we can look forward to a greater military presence - to protect and serve us all, of course.

As a Nation (although signs are emerging that begin to challenge that description), we are now incarcerating people clear across the globe, torturing and murdering them, holding them without due process or any representation, and, like some tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, having our way with them - in essence, burning them at the stake of public opinion whilst trashing their lives and Qurans and whatever previous reputation they may have had.

We have a unicameral government, an unholy trinity, in three euphemistic branches, falling all over themselves to accommodate the madmen at the helm. We have a doctrine of effective open warfare and belligerency at the times and places of the Chief Psychopath’s choosing. We inflict terror and pain upon those not willing to kowtow, replace regimes at our convenience, and rove the world as some rampant, out of control superpower run amok on its own insanity.

Yep, this is Adolph Hitler reincarnated, all right, with delusions of some corporate mega-state forcing 1000 years of ersatz freedom and democracy, and, O yeah, American nuclear exclusivity, down the throats of any not wacko or Christian enough to satisfy the whims of empire. We have unleashed a blitzkrieg of bullshit and bunker busting bombs from Baghdad to Afghanistan, and we shock and awe all those who might be insubordinate enough to suspect our messianic might. Its not living space (lebensraum) we crave so much as it is control of the world’s petroleum, and towards that end we will annihilate every enemy no matter how deeply they are entrenched. MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs), you say, and MOAB it is, and now we are willing to use nuclear weapons as well (hello, Iran, are you listening?).

Even a deaf and blind man, and maybe even particularly a deaf and blind man, might intuit that America is become an armed fascist state. State guards to the slaughter for the Emperor’s megalomanical ego, and Neo-cons along with Calvinists are marching through our streets, and across the many Nations’ highways seeking retribution for having challenged the fiats issued from our shores. You’re either with Caesar or against him, and the rest…well the rest can simply “bring it on.”

Clomp, clomp, clomp.