REBEL REBEL

john marin

Watched a documentary about GMOs, Strange Culture, that left me mortified and at once realizing I've survived somehow. A lifetime of eating manufactured food and I've lived. It wasn't the food so much that took hold of my throat as the absolute violation of human rights by federal law enforcement that took place without recourse. Yesterday the Supremes, we know which five, declared law enforcement no longer needs a warrant to enter my house uninvited and take charge. They didn't anyway, though now it's official. The Confederate flag issue has pushed my buttons more than I thought it would when it started. I'm tired of smug Yankee attitudes toward the South. They've found another easy target, people up front about who they are and what they believe. There is quite a lot about the South that runs in the negative, disdain for education a big one, though American as big pickups. Everything that can be said about the South can be said about all other regions of the country, the whole country. Southerners are Americans first. The flag thing is a redneck identity tag. The people that fly the Confederate flag are Americans first. As Americans, Southern is their culture, their way of life, porch honkies. And the South is poor. American media hates the poor. 

john marin

Now that it's ok to assault white people the same as black people, the poor whites are targets. Now that it's ok for law enforcement to kill poor white people as freely as poor black people, the South is a wide-open barn door target. Ask a Yankee in denial if he's a racist and he'll say, No, I aint no racist. Ask a Southern redneck and he'll say, Hail yeah I'm a racist. What of it? I know, it's not kind, it's not nice, it's hurtful. It is and I regret that about it. I live among Southern rednecks. I love Southern rednecks. They're not all the same. They're individual human beings born without access to much resources, grew up in a world that had no place for them and looks down on them, a world that swindles and lies to them, a world they can't believe in. They're a perfect tinder box for political propaganda appealing to their anger. These are working people who work their asses off all week at labor jobs nobody reading this would take, especially for as little as they work for. They get taken advantage of by management, by government, by the Bank, work like hell and have nothing to show for it but hopefully most of the bills paid every month. Your income pays for less and less until you're working like a mule, your wife leaves and takes the kids. 

john marin

You leave the dog with the kids and put what you have left in a used Harley, attach a Confederate flag to the back of your riding jacket and you're a rebel. Rebel is what the flag is about. You keep your job, but you're a different man. A man develops a give-a-shit attitude, your ex-wife raises the kids to be nothing at all like you. You let your hair grow, let appearance go, conform to the criminal code of watching each other's backs, carry a gun at all times because twenty people want to kill you and four of them mean it, all over stupid shit you did drunk on white liquor and/or on crack. The flag says for him, By God, I'm my own man, take it or leave it. The white Southern working class man is limited to construction work, of which not much is going on now, and factory work, most of which went to Asian sweatshops, and truck driving. Factory work is demeaning. The white working class man has fallen to the same place as the black working class man, nothing available but work that is a personal affront to your manhood and your humanity. These are the people Rush Limbaugh and Fake News target to stir up their anger to take political advantage of them. More redneck boys are popping caps in their own heads and ODing than ever before. They see only hopelessness ahead. It's the same among the black boys.

john marin

The entire working class left to getting by the best they can, both white and black, intense frustration in the air, everybody with guns galore, anything can happen. Anything does happen. Corporate radio and television twists anger into hate, dividing us to conquer us, using the working class for pawns as in war. The conditions that create the disquiet in the working people are not looking to improve any time soon. The conditions for the working people have only devolved in my lifetime. Again, it's beyond my sphere of influence. I deal with it like everybody else deals, do what I can to get by and hang with it. I have no solution. It's too big for a solution. All I know to do is fly below the radar and let other people fight it out. Move inward, pay closer attention to my closest friends, give more attention to Caterpillar the cat, read more, paint more, dwell less in news and more in the people immediately engaged in my life. Pay more attention to God and the way of the spirit. We're in a time that is way out of balance, and my own balance is what I seek. We're always in a time out of balance, no matter where or when. It's the nature of the landscape we live our lives in. When I live in my own balance, it doesn't matter if the world out-there is in or out of balance. It's just a mind game. I live closer to home paying closer attention to the people I interact with in everyday life, the donkeys, the birds, the squirrels, the chipmunks, music and the wildwood flowers. 

john marin

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