UNREPENTANT LIBERAL BIAS

              camino real by cy twombly

Yesterday I heard an hour long interview with Joe Kline, who wrote the "novel" about the Clinton Whitehouse by Anonymous. He writes for Newsweek. He's evidently on tour about the USA interviewing people of various sorts in various parts of the country. He's looking for what it is the American people are thinking politically. The comment he received that caught my attention most was a woman asking why we can't have some civility in DC among our "representatives." The common agreement is the Congress is not representative of the American people. As a people, we are more centrist than the republican right would have us. I've watched this progression since 1980 when Reagan promised to destroy our government. By 30 years later we have no more democracy, and with democracy gone, a police state can and will do whatever it desires for its own sake. The word then will probably be something like We're a nation of laws, a mask for the absence of democracy. Freedom can easily continue as a propaganda word because it can mean anything, and is most often used by scoundrels.



I saw a picture of Virginia Foxx on facebook yesterday. Someone wrote with it, something to the effect of, Does she represent you? I'm in her district and she sure doesn't represent me. She's a republican parrot like the rest of the republicans in congress and senate in DC and throughout the states. By now sedition is republican policy and purpose. If I didn't have to live here, I'd be happy to see them go ahead and tear everything down with their cancer that destroys from within. Their determination is so lemming-like, so much a primary purpose, and the democrats so timid and unable to believe the extent of the venality in the republican party, half the American people. The other half of the American people are bewildered, because they can't believe the republican party is what it looks like, smells like, tastes like. As usual in a campaign, the side with the most money spent wins. This year the democrats are raising big money. That's no problem. The supremes made a law that corporations from anywhere in the world can give money to the republican electoral effort. Scalia and Thomas are in there not for the benefit of the American people, not at all. They were placed by the corporate takeover of our government. They have already done what they were put there to do multiple times. Maybe this is why Clarence Thomas sleeps through court sessions.



I heard somebody today talking about the Wall Street demonstrations. He was saying they're not confronting Wall St. They are confronting symbols of Wall Street. He said Wall Street, itself, is what needs confronting. Good point. Who knows what all is going on there? The demonstrators seem to reflect the thoughts of the American people. There is no one cohesive purpose to the demonstrations. Everybody has their own reasons, and there are so many that no one reason is overarchingly dominant. Therefore, it's not a political force at all. Numbers mean nothing. Money is the only power in America, in the world. The 1%  control 70% of the money. The 99% have 30% of it. Where is the power? With the 1%. The 99% get too active, the 1% control the military. This is Latin America, the ruling class and the peasants. We'll be sneaking over the border into Canada as it gets more like Mexico here. I understand that since the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice coup in 2000, more and more American ex-pats are moving their lives to someplace else. It's hard to love it when it when it doesn't love you.


Yet, while Olympus is locked in intentional chaos, down here on the ground we the people are getting along with each other, going about our business or out-of-business. I saw a news report on Yahoo news today that my SocSec benefit will increase by about $23 per month in January. Can't complain about that. It's half a tank of gas. Though, of course, the republicans have a bead on Social Security and next time they take absolute power, they won't be giving it up, and Social Security will be no more. I'd like to think republican excesses over especially the last 12 years would turn everyone away from republicans, but it attracts the ignorant like a magnet attracts metal. When they get school funding cut out, then they'll have the ignorant population they want. Half a century of television dumbing down the population isn't enough. They want us without education so their propaganda can work more dependably. Easier to control. Sound like conspiracy theory? We'll see.



People I know to talk with are of a variety of political points of view and we get along well. I'm not one to require all the people I have to do with to think the same way. I like varieties of people, people with very different experiences from mine. A different race makes somebody all the more interesting to me. Mostly, however, people of other races are as prejudiced against my race as my race is against them. Because I'm not of that mind doesn't matter. Same as for a black person who thinks exactly like somebody white, nobody cares. He's black. Black people call him an Oreo and white people don't even notice. It's a difficult world to live in. It's like every racial and political division is characterized by animosity these days. It's coming more and more to the surface how unhappy half the American population is with being shut out because of their pigmentation. It feels like the races are getting afraid of each other, apprehensive. The Reagan revolution has not been kind to persons of color, the same as it has not been kind to the working class and to a lesser degree the middle class.



I started paying attention in the time of the "oil embargo" of the early 70s. When it was over, all the small independent gas stations and oil companies were out of business. Exxons went up in their places. Every time we've had a "recession" since then, small businesses fold, and when it's over only the big corporate stores are left. I see the same happening now, though this time shaving out every business that is not international corporation controlled. When they get rid of these small businesses, they have more control and make more billions per year. The corporate world controls the art world, because only corportions can afford high dollar art now. Museums can't afford it any more. When all our businesses are too big to fail, they'll all fall at the same time. A puff of the whimsical wind blows down the skyscraper of cards. Alas, total collapse of the economy is what everybody I talk with sees coming. Maybe when that happens we can start over, consciously, intentionally. Yeah, like I can turn water into wine, bottle it, distribute it and be a billionaire too. Hey, Mr Buffett, let me buy you a drink. What would you like?



One of the biggest curiosities of all is I heard somebody again today talking about it's a good time to detach ourselves from desire for more money and stuff, start giving our spiritual values some attention.
What? I've heard somebody make reference to turning inward in this time of being down-sized to peasant status 3 times in the last week, and I don't listen to the news talk shows but a little. I know that's what comes next after building a nation on mindless greed until it reaches its apex in mindlessness and the void within the heart begins to yearn with hunger to be filled. Spiritual awakenings everywhere, starting in California. Out there, they built a society devoid of the traditions back east holding them back. They got there first. All the spiritual venues could fluorish. Perhaps in that time, the thousand years of peace, we'll be over concerns about immigrants of color. These centuries of collective self-centered emphasis on money have come to their end, like any of the 7 deadly sins. All are short lived. A nation built on self-centered greed is short lived. All we need to get through the eye of this needle is a collective attitude adjustment. Like my one experience crawling through a cave at Speedwell, Virginia. Some of the holes I had to crawl through were so tight I had to put one arm forward and one arm back to make shoulders diagonal to the vein I'm crawling through. I said to myself, I am water, and flowed through easily.



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