UNCERTAINTY GOING AROUND

bend in the road



The news says the oil leak is capped and stopped. For now. The enormity of it is such that it makes me question what is real and what is unreal. Millions of barrels of oil spewed into the ocean currents, destroying marshes all along the Gulf coast from Louisiana to the everglades, all the marshes and swamps in between. The whole stretch could become a dead zone. I wonder why I think about it since there is nothing I can do but get worked up. It's so vast it dwarfs the digit that I am. It's as far beyond anything I could do about it that it may as well be an earthquake in China, or Haiti, or anywhere. Before news went everywhere instantly, news like the Titanic was put into song, stories of murders were put into songs, "He took her by the golden curls and dragged her round and round," and by the time it got around it was history instead of news. News is always history the next day.



This 4 dvd set I found at Walmart for $5 of USGov promotional films about the war in Vietnam. Never do you see an American soldier shot or plane shot down. Quite a lot of aircraft carriers and jets landing and taking off. Helicopters shooting rockets and machine gun bullets into thick jungle. They show medics treating the people of villages with basic medicine. One of the films on the Montangnards was exceptionally good. Interesting small documentary of the mountain people of Vietnam who were still tribal. The most recent one I've seen had John Wayne narrating. He was the voice for that Southern California Xtreme right wing of the wealthy who think Ayn Rand a visionary. Charleton Heston took John Wayne's role for that voice, and now it looks like Sarah Palin is being dressed for the post-Charleton Heston rallying voice for a certain way of thinking.



John Wayne said Communist and Communism so frequently it was comical. He brought up General Mark Clark to talk and Communist was about every tenth word he said. Another General sang the same song. I remembered the time, late 60s, the news we were getting was no more news than the news we get today. Communist this and Communist that. Tom Pruitt told me back in about 1978 that there were 57 Communists in High Point. I about fell out. Heinz 57. All through the 50s to the 80s Communist was the most loaded word there was. It carried more fear value than the F word and the N word together. I think with shame of how much we the public were manipulated by propaganda using fear of Communism to keep wars going. Good for the economy. USSR returned to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, the -stans from Afghani- to Khazak-. The Silk Road carried the plague from China to Europe and everywhere along the way by fleas on the yaks. The Silk Road of bandits, a caravan needing an army escort, and that was never a certainty. The poorest part of the world in semi-desert, living today as they lived in the time of Genghis Khan whose Mongol hordes destroyed what civilization there was along that region.



I grew up in the world of the Communist threat, huddle down under desk-chairs in First grade, ready for an atomic blast. The building was made of big carved stone. The little desk wouldn't protect me very well if the entire wall of huge stones broke apart and flew a me in a thousandth of a second. It was concluded by all the kids I knew that if the bomb came we're dead. No two ways about it. In the 50s and 60s the Communist threat kept the population afraid not to turn over the tax dollars to equip the Death Star. We didn't know whether or not to believe the government, but were still of the traditional belief that we could count on the government to legislate in our interest. By now such a belief is naive. Now we're kept afraid of Terrorists instead of Communists. The fear of Communism has lifted so much we're not getting any propaganda about China as Communist. They're doing better than we are in the economic arena. I'm not saying this like I want to go live there. No way. Just looking at the landscape around where I stand.



I don't particularly like living in a propaganda-created reality, but I've done it all my life. It's of the mind, a reality created by the mind, a video game inside the head. Creating for us a common enemy to fear, our government corrals us together and keeps us manageable holding our focus on manufactured fear. In a way, it was refreshing to hear John Wayne getting pumped up over the word Communism after several years of it not being an issue and hardly ever used. Refreshing to know how seldom I hear the word any more. Now the Terrorist enemy is hiding in caves in a country with nukes. The reality propaganda has created by repeating lies until they became the truth is one more level of illusion in our lives we tend to think of having substance, when it has none at all. Another mansion in the mind. Another house of cards to fall to the floor when the wind of change whips around the corner. Time to start over. It looks like Democracy done half way breeds enemies within. Communism done half way did too. I suppose every government has to protect itself from its own people vigorously. It's ongoing in Latin America. Might be getting that way here. The youth of the world now are subject to every kind of drug experience there is. They don't care about isms. They just want to get high.