DRAWN TO BALANCE

robert mangold

Today I participated  in the great American delusion. Voted. And laughed at myself. I only did it because the republican strategy to inhibit voting by non-republicans tells me there must be something to it or it would not be so important to republican strategists for me not to vote. Politically, I am an anti-republican, not a democrat. The only politician in DC I have any use for is Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, Socialist. He is the only one who speaks for the American people. The democrats suck up to the rich just like the republicans and support the rich for their favors. I can't afford to call a politician and say I want certain legislation passed and you'll have your reward. I cannot afford freedom of speech. I felt like the local elections were somewhat important. Democracy works somewhat on the local level. I vote to vote against republicans. Only. Just to register one unit saying no to the politics of ignorance. My mind returns over and over to CIA director Casey saying in 1981, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." The CIA's disinformation program is complete. This makes it easier every day for me to live in the world, not of the world. In town today I stopped in the coffee shop for a pound of coffee, saw someone I was happy to see and we engaged briefly in conversation. It wasn't long before I learned I'm expected to talk as if I'm high on Zoloft, everything is pretty, everything is lovely, PC to the max. I encouraged the end of the conversation first chance. I found my spirit is gone from the place. There's no place for me in there anymore. The right people have found it. It's too PC for me. 

robert mangold

I'd rather watch the race with my friends who cuss and drink liquor and smoke cigarettes and laugh at Rodney Carrington humor. After half an hour in the coffee shop, I'm anxious to get with friends for the race Sunday to wipe off exposure to political correctness in its most objectionable form. PC is so incredibly fake I've become intolerant of it. It has been so many months since I've exposed myself to the politically correct ones, the ones who say all the right words, and if you miss one, you're out. They're acting like they're on tv, editing themselves of words not acceptable on television. I take my mental remote and click the power button to off. I'm on the verge of becoming assertive ignoring PC in my language. It's like everybody is a preacher's wife. I used to find them funny, but now I find them severely tiresome. I suppose I'll have to let my taste for Ethiopian coffee fade away. I always have to settle for Kenyan, anyway. Kenyan is just as good, but I prefer Ethiopian. Can I get it? No. I don't like the vibe in there now. It's a vibe of correctness. You have to dress right, talk right, like in a Sunday school class. If political correctness is evidence of being a liberal, I'm not a liberal. They make me ashamed to call myself a liberal. I don't want to be in that company anymore. My friends and I don't judge each other. It's not easy to be in an atmosphere where I'm judged for how I speak. I attempt to speak clearly, but that's not good enough. I don't walk the PC tightrope; therefore, I'm out. I may check one of the other two coffee shops in town to see if I can get some Ethiopian coffee for home. 

robert mangold

The grocery store has some Starbucks coffee in bags, though Sumatran is the closest I can find to what I want. French Roast I've found fairly close. Maybe I'll go back to drinking tea like I did before discovering Ethiopian. Coffee shops are a middle class culture thing, and I am not of middle class culture. If I'm going to give myself over to walking somebody else's line, I'll go to church. It was a strange experience today. I went by Gill's Jeans n Things for a couple pair of sweat pants. Gill and I talked for at least an hour. I enjoy conversation with Gill. He is an intelligent guy with a great range of experience from India to Hong Kong to San Francisco to Sparta. He came here about five years before I did. Married a local girl who was in San Francisco and she brought him home. Gill has been a great addition to the community. We had lively conversation, no judging going on between us. It was especially notable to cross the street after talking so freely with Gill for an hour and feel judged the moment I walk in the door. The atmosphere is so correct. Attempted to talk with someone I'd wanted to talk with for some time, and came away disappointed. PC to the max. Beyond word correctness unto tone of voice correctness, to subject correctness, the list grows longer. I catch myself wanting to say something outrageous like, I'm the lowest down emeffer you'll ever meet. Not my scene when I'm thinking such thoughts. I want to stand up and rap all the forbidden words multiple times apiece. From there, I went to the voting place and made my anti-republican stand. I felt like a subversive at the voting monitor. After filling car with gas, I spent some time not being judged, then spent some time being judged, and went to vote in a state of balance. 

robert mangold

I'm at a time in the life when patience for television mind is dim. I find myself withdrawing from people who live by a checklist of rules and turning my attention to people who are simply themselves with no pretense of being something they're not, just people living our lives. I was overwhelmed somewhat by positive mindlessness. So positive. I was sitting there thinking, balance is what I want, not sweetness and not gloom. I want to be free to flow with positive thinking when I feel it honestly, and go with gloom when I feel it honestly. I'm not afraid of gloom and depression. I've found my times of depression in the past have been very active in learning about self, fulfilling know thyself. I've found that grief lasts six months. It's painful and I don't like it, but I also don't mind it. When a friend dies or a cat dies or a dog dies, I experience grief. I don't shy from it. I embrace it and go with it. I feel it honestly, so I allow it. I never deny it. I still miss Tar Baby every day, five years after. I hope there is something to meeting departed loved ones on the other side. I want to see all my dogs and cats again, and all my friends on the other side. I have so many dear ones over yonder, it makes me anxious to get over there with them. I was spoken to the other day, in a non-judgmental way by a friend, about how casually I talk about dying, leaving the body. I supposed he never knew anyone so casual about it. I couldn't explain why. It's just an attitude that comes from scriptures that know the secrets of life and death. I see the moment of passing out of the body something so wonderful there is no looking back. First, freedom from the weight of carrying this heavy body. I imagine it like carrying two heavy suitcases for hours and finally putting them down, letting go of the handles. What a relief it must be to rise from the body like smoke from a cigarette. I see more and more the saying from Paul, Death, where is thy sting? Sorrow is for the ones left behind. I tell my friends to feel no sorrow for me. I'll be going Home. Nothing to be afraid of. I've come to like it in this world, so I feel no hurry. It is what it is.   

robert mangold himself

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VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN THE NEWS

The news has become so objectionable with Ebola as something to fear, another in the never-ending list of fears we cannot live without, I can't listen anymore. It's either proving Obama is the cause of Ebola or proving he is not. Cops kill unarmed people across USA daily, yet we're expected to trust the police state and fear a disease that killed one. Fear Isel or Isis, whichever. Fear immigration of poor people of color. It's kind of Old Testament, fear the Lord thy God. I was raised in that paradigm, fear the Father, fear God, fear the Law, fear Church, fear parents, and be hysterically afraid of Satan, cause he's gonna getcha if ya don't be afraid enough. Love was never an issue. Of course we love, cause we're s'posed to. That's understood. But fear comes first in the s'posed-to list and love is last, down there with no consideration at all. The fundamentalism I grew up in, the same as is purported to be Christian now, was all about fear and nothing about love. Love might be misunderstood by the "common" people to be carnal, and that aint it. So we don't go there, while the preacher is screwing this one and that one, saying, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. The nonsense quoted from fundamentalist politicians is so ridiculous, I can't believe he or she is so free of embarrassment. My estimation of politicians has hit rock bottom and is furiously drilling a hole to take it deeper. Confidence in a politician, a fundamentalist, a cop, is not possible in me anymore. These three have shown themselves incapable of rational thought, which I already knew, but denied, looking to allow for exceptions. Never found any. 

Remember a short time ago the preacher in Kansas screwing a teenage boy to cure him of his homosexuality? Remember the tv evangelist, Jerry Lee Lewis's first cousin, Jimmy Swaggart, he of crocodile tears on tv, who went to whores to peruse and sniff? Talk dirty to me, baby. To touch makes it a sin. Making the people two-fold more children for hell than they, themselves, is not a sin. Nor is hypocrisy. It's tradition. And to complicate the news further, it's election time. The Supremes recently ruled, predictably, lying in a political campaign legal. News? Really? Insurance against lawsuits for republicans. Now white man militias in cammo, carrying assault rifles, are talking of intimidating democrat voters at the polling places, black and tan people, women, profiles, anybody that looks like a Ay-Rab, or appears to be of an IQ above ten. Of course, white men would be free to pass, How y'doin, Bro? In my very most jaundiced thinking pre-1980, I'd have never guessed this would be the nature of the fix we're in during the course of time when everything that never worked became policy. Only thing the news is telling me: This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin through. I had no idea back in 1961 when I turned my attention away from television, how just that separation would separate me so definitively and so distantly from the world I live in. We who read books are the tiniest minority of all, unworthy of notice politically, unfit for consideration socially. I tell myself the absurdity "out there," in DC and Raleigh, is not my world. I don't believe in the entire system anymore. I have no confidence in Capitalism, no confidence in religion, no confidence in police state, no confidence in voting. The Supremes nipped what little confidence I had in voting. That the republican party goes to such ridiculous extremes to inhibit anti-republicans from voting, it makes me think there might be something to it.   

Before 1980, I voted against the worst of the candidates. Only found one to be for in my long history of voting, and he was crucified. Carter. Since 1980, I vote to be one digit that says, I want democracy. Voting has been my act of protest in police state. I know my vote  has no value outside myself. One party or the other, like Ralph Nader said of his direct role in turning the election over to Bush-Cheney, the losers, "the republicans will get us there first." Both parties are marionettes of the billionaires club. The democrat politicians like to pretend they're not in it for the money, we're here for you, while the republican campaign approach is fuck-all-y'all, and it works for them. The entire American political/economic system needs to break down entirely to restructure. As in construction, you want to put up a new building in the place of an old building, the old one must be taken down. Democracy wasn't real democracy before the word was used tongue-in-cheek, anyway. Considering the absence of value in my voting to the point that I fool myself in the act of voting, whatever the justification, I must vote. It is too important to the republican party that I not vote. Like I told the country club woman who said, I bet you voted for o-BA-ma, He's a sharp stick in the republican eye. When I take a moment to vote, it will be motivated only by an opportunity to be a sharp stick in the republican eye, albeit a minuscule grain of beach sand. I doubt the militias will actually appear at the polling sites, taking it for a propaganda sound-bite using the news to inhibit black people from making the effort. I don't even care anymore. I care about like I care who wins a football game. The game was amusing to see, but the outcome is the same, whoever wins, another game tomorrow night. Even though I see it for this is how an Empire crumbles, like reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, witnessing history in action, it continues to be distressing. Better to stop listening to the news than to start a Zoloft addiction.  

I wonder how republican politicians think up the stupid things they're saying, and it doesn't take long to find the answer. The Heritage Foundation. The politicians are scripted to appeal to the ignorant. Considering half the population is below average, they have 50% at the start. Strategy. I cannot participate in this belief system, can't listen to it anymore, don't even want to see pictures of the cast members. I've come to a place where I feel envy toward my friends who pay no attention to the news, don't vote, have never heard of Ted Cruz or Ann Coulter, unaware that democracy is over. At the same time, I'm grateful that I've followed our political system unto my own disillusionment. Disillusionment equals enlightenment. In my enlightenment, I look out the window and see my world, the world I live in. I look around this room and see the world I live in. The donkey meadow, the trees of autumn, a nice day with door open, recent paintings drying, Caterpillar outside lying in a patch of sunlight, the ground drying a little bit after five days and nights of rain. The fog that accompanied the rain made my world into a wonderland. Today, the sunlight makes my world into a wonderland, too. I can't see wasting my attention on the intentionally false when a fly just now flew into a spider web in the window's corner, the spider tying it up using Wonder Woman ropes, and the fly broke free. I am that fly. I broke free of the paralyzing power of the false. It has been amusing along the way, but amusing in a dark way. I am pulling my attention inward to my friends I care about who care about me. I will read in the life of van Gogh, paint when I feel it, write in my journal as blog, watch films from around the globe, read the columns of Chris Cox in his new book, The Way We Say Goodbye. The vacancy left by extraction of the false will fill up immediately like the hole left by my hand when I pull it from a bucket of water. I will vote because I believe it is important to vote as an American citizen, whether I believe in the political system or not, just to be a sharp stick in the republican eye.  

photos by tj worthington

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TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE

        no


On the verge of deciding not to vote this time, I'm thinking of joining the left wing, the half of the population that does not vote, the ranks of the indifferent. Everyone deciding not to vote has their own reason for indifference, same as among the voters, each with a reason that inspires the choice made. Mine, before, has been that a democracy requires voting. Voting is the sacred act of democracy. Several years ago, when I saw our American democracy had been subject to a corporate coup, I thought of voting as an act of protest saying: one digit wants democracy. It means nothing as protest the same as it means nothing toward deciding who wins the election, whatever the election. To vote in this time is the same as saying nothing. In a state that is 75% repub and 25% demo, it means nothing, whatever county I vote in. The republicans are rigging voting machines, which won them the 2004 election saving the Supremes the embarrassment of nullifying two elections in a row. They showed us with lucid clarity that we do not have democracy in America, no need to beat it into our heads with a hammer. If we don't get it, all the better.

Vote rigging means nothing, same as voting means nothing. The corporate system of government we have now doesn't care which side wins, both sides are bought and totally controlled. I've been observing with Obama that he has approved the continuation of the "Patriot Act," the constitution of the police state, and in his first two years when he had majority in congress, he conceded to the republicans over and over, Joe Lieberman style, though pretended not to. Gitmo? The Reagan Junta's strategy of divide-and-conquer has grown until the Corporate State put in a black man for president to further divide us. By now, thanks to half a century of propaganda that grows more sophisticated each decade, just about everything we believe politically is false and we've been divided unto maybe likely civil war. While the 99% are divided and focusing on the division, the 1% goes about their business of robbing the working people unnoticed. Investigative reporting is of the past, same as reason. Racial divisions are being used for smokescreen to keep our attention off the Corporate State, keep us pre-occupied. If we don't fall for the smokescreen, prison will take care of it.

American government has become OF, BY and FOR the Corporate entities now called people. We, the actual people made of meat instead of money are being shut down like the Tibetans in western China, regarded the lower class out of sight, the peasant class, in what was once their own world. The Obama administration bailed out the Banks that wrecked the economy and returned to them the resources they lost in overzealous attempts to rob working people. Among the millions of people who lost their own sustenance, thanks to the Bank's ruse, what do they get? It was government supported robbery on a massive scale. One major step toward fading the middle class into the peasantry. The kick that sent the ball between the goal posts. If I were to vote, I'd have to vote for Obama, just because my entire being would not allow pointing my attention to Romney. Yet I know one will give us the illusion he's for "the people," while the other is up front that he's dead set against "the people," the non-corporate people. Any way we vote, we vote against our own interest as human beings. To vote now is to participate in the great deception as a player.

I'm undecided in this way, to vote or not to vote, though I understand that not voting amounts to voting republican. Whenever my mind returns to thinking a vote matters, I remind myself that's how I want it to be, not how it is. I want to vote in local elections, because a vote sometimes matters there. I could vote locally and leave the rest blank for the voting machine to fill in republican. Maybe there will be a libertarian to vote for, but I haven't seen one on a ballot in NC in a very long time. Or maybe I don't notice. How I vote does not matter more than whether I vote. It's as meaningless as saying I don't want my country to be a police state, but that's like saying Dick and Jane ran down the hill. Nothing. Maybe this corporate police state is the karmic payback for the white and black people coming onto the continent uninvited, killing the entire continent of people living here, putting survivors in concentration camps called reservations for over a century. Whites came onto the continent shutting down the cultures and ways of life of a whole continent of people in the most violent way, killing. Americans have become the most murderous people on the planet, far and away the greatest prison population on the planet, and continually creating wars in poor countries. The wave of killing Indians from east coast to west coast kept on going and turned inward where land ended, the white and black populations killing themselves when killing Indians was over.

Our national karmic debt would have to be big. Wiping out an entire continent of people by killing them is no small thing. Now we kill each other. We've had one disastrous civil war and it feels like another is brewing. Evidently, it didn't matter karmically that White man had God on his side. We American white people and black people have been a deadly force against ourselves all along the way. Surely the American appetite for killing one another has its karmic root in the manner of collective takeover of the continent. Whatever the payback, it would have to cover the entire continent and be a mortal danger to ourselves. In this time we see our government turning on us as the enemy. We The People have become the Indians. Targets. Our guns can't save us, like their arrows failed to save them. The only reason I would choose to drop by the Whitehead schoolhouse on Tuesday the 6th would be a social gesture with the people I live among who still believe we have a democracy. I remember in Lillian Hellman's JULIA, early anti-fascists are never understood. So what's the point of attempting to be understood? I can't change anything but my own mind. No need to attempt to do otherwise.


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ELECTION FRAUD IN AMERICA

 

Thursday evening I listened to the last 10 minutes of the so-called debate between the VP candidates. They were so boring to listen to that I was about to turn it off when the moderator asked what each one of them would say he had to offer that nobody else could do. Ryan blurted out "Honesty!" I about fell out of the chair laughing. The man who has only lied so far in his campaign lied again. It still makes me laugh to think about him saying honesty. A sentence from Gore Vidal rang in my head. "When Americans cannot recognize stupid, we're out of business." Again, we're out of business. Television has rendered the American people collectively stupid. You say that's a strong word, consider Forrest Gump's mother, "Stupid is as stupid does." It's Ryan's words and actions that tell me he's stupid. That tells me he and Romney have better than a good chance of winning.

An article in the new Harpers (Nov 2012), How To Rig An Election by Victoria Collier is very well researched and told. I'm about half way through it, enchanted to see that someone has finally researched and wrote about voting fraud. Fraud is how the republicans took it in 00, and it's looking like it will take fraud to get Romney-Ryan in. And that's not just possible, it's likely. It's so likely it is unsettling. The republicans brought us to our collective knees with 9/11, 2 wars, a Depression and a get-the-nigger Congress. Racism wins again in America. White Man is desperate now that the voting population is below the half-way mark in numbers. After Emancipation, in the Southern states the black population equaled and outnumbered the white population. White Man prefers racism to Democracy, so the South threw Democracy off except as a nice-sounding word, fear that in a democratic situation the black people outnumber the whites, so White Man felt obliged to keep-the-niggers-down, seeing to it they have minimal to no education, then requiring literacy to vote.

We have it going on nationally now where "coloreds" outnumber whites. White Man is scared again and willing to throw off even the nice-sounding part of Democracy to keep power. White Man will have power or nobody will. Republicans are now the racist party, the party of electoral chicanery that has no bottom to how low Karl Rove can take them with his strategy mind. Rove is Romney's strategist; therefore, I see Romney taking it by some means other this time from "hanging chads." It will be a Rove original, illegal, but that won't matter, because they have the backing of the Supremes if election fraud doesn't quite get it done. Today I'm thinking of not voting at all. It would be a gesture, or non-gesture, of absence of confidence in the American political system. Johnson taught me to stay out of politics, Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice taught me for a certainty that we do not have Democracy in America anymore, even made me doubt we ever had a democracy.

Since the coup of the Kennedy assassination our government has only lied to We the People, taken courses the American people never wanted and us without recourse. Television has made a great smoke-screen of happiness where we need wars to keep the news interesting and products sold. Like Gore Vidal said, we're out of business. We the People have been taken over by multi-national corporate money after a few hundred years of corporate lobbying when We the People have no lobbyists on our behalf. Evidence of police state: the Occupy movement. Even National Public Radio, the "liberal" news outlet is the same as the corporate news, just told in less frenzy and commercials. Corporate news will not allow Occupy demonstrations to be reported in the news. NPR doesn't report it either. BBC America, however, does report the demonstrations. It's like being in Ukraine during Soviet occupation listening to Voice of America, the "freedom" station. Now BBC is the freedom station for Americans. The Occupy people are being labelled subversive, when in fact the republicans are the true subversives. They also know winners write the history books.


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WHAT'S GOING ON

          screen shot by john chamberlain 2012


I laugh at myself today and yesterday for jumping on the chance to imagine Limbaugh gone under. It was a good lesson for me in jumping to interpret by what I want to be the case, instead of by the way things are. The way things are, Limbaugh is the official voice of the republican party. He is a $59 million a year asset. The repub party is not going to shit-can him over libeling Everywoman. His loyalty to party policy makes him a model employee. His advertisers? He could get 10 in one day for every advertiser he lost. He didn't lose any listeners. He gained listeners. The party is not going to put him out. His status has risen instead of diminished. He is now more popular than before. Nazis nurtured hate too. Not too. Nazis are not a separate entity, just a different time, different place, different language. Same spirit. The only thing the nazis really did was destroy their own country. That's what the neo-nazis want to do to American democracy. They're doing a very effective, systematic railroading (ie the patriot act) to fulfill Reagan's promise to destroy our country. Then, a very popular notion. After 30+ years of Reaganism, it's all the more popular, among republicans.



I've been looking a little bit into American history and history as I've seen it in the 20th century, seeing that the entirety of humanity is divided down the middle, 50/50, into the half that wants democracy and the half that wants fascism. Fascism rules, because fascists kill people. Somebody puts a gun to your head and says, "You move I pull trigger." What do you do? Easy. Stand still. Over the last 30+ years the half of the American population that wants democracy is held hostage by the half the dark cabal represents. The other half, not democrats, but non-republicans, want rights for all, a fair living for all, the good of the American people. Wanting our national decisions made by good sense has become an ideal, like democracy, the carrot on a stick, the fake rabbit at a dog race. It's not "real," but the idea of it motivates us forward. It's the duality of this world, left wing, right wing. It takes both wings for a bird to fly. The yin-yang of up and down in a rollercoaster provides the forward momentum. The same principle applies to pistons. And both sides have their comedians. I prefer Bill Maher's humor to Limbaugh's. I can only find Limbaugh funny in irony, like a dirty joke from second grade.


Don't worry about me getting fired up over any of this. It's interpretation by observation. I started to say "detached" observation, but it's not detached. It is emotionally and mentally involved. The documentary movie in my head of "what's going on" cannot be sworn by as it is gathered from feelings, misinterpretations, misrepresentations, spin, limited point of view, limited mind, limited understanding all the way along the chain of communication; therefore, all I can do is confess to my limitations, which, ultimately, nullify everything I say. I'm in full agreement with that. I understood before I wrote the first sentence three years ago that writing these daily entries is illusion too. I'm writing about illusion from the inside, like somebody writing about prison from the inside. This isn't how it is for everybody, by any means. This is just how one individual created by a host of experiences that are particular to this consciousness interprets what he sees and hears. I'm not a missionary. Recalling a time I told my doctor something about a side effect from a medication that I did not find objectionable, was just telling him about it, figuring he'd want to know. He started talking about a prescription and I said, "I'm reporting, not complaining." That's what I feel I'm doing here, reporting not complaining. Complaints get mixed in there, to be sure, but to be taken so lightly as to not at all. An old country sayin says it well, "Aint no point me complainin. Nobody's gonna listen, nohow."


Our democrat party is not really a left wing. It seems to me that though our bird is crippled by a very weak, perhaps atrophied, left wing, we somehow continue to fly, move forward, even though it is down a lane I would not have picked, So we must have a left wing somewhere in the population. Maybe it is the half of the population that does not vote. Maybe not voting is our active left wing, since the democrats are the passive absence of a left wing. Saturday is a big democrat meeting in Sparta. I thought for a second about going, but it didn't take long to remember democrats are not the opposition party, but the intimidated party, the party of minority mind. In Uganda, it's the same thing, but reverse. There, white man is minority minded and black man is majority minded. There, white man doesn't talk so big, same as black man doesn't talk so big here. I feel an interest in joining the ranks of the majority, the non-voters, except I cannot pass up the chance to nullify a republican's vote, just for the jest of it. I visualize a republican I know and say within, tee-hee, I deleted your vote. That's the same as deleting nothing, just symbolism, something to give myself a laugh, like I got away with mischief. I know it has no meaning except inside myself, so I vote to be satisfied I participated in the great American belief system. Like pennies in a 5gallon bucket, they add up.


Funny about our democracy, this belief we have that our beliefs and opinions matter outside ourselves. Because we vote, we believe we have rights. In high school, working on both country club golf courses and public golf courses in the summers, watering and mowing greens, and other maintenance work, the attitude of the players at the country club was that each golfer was individually my boss. Naturally, they pay $10k a year to be members, they ought to have some say in how the golf course is kept, especially 2/3 drunk. One jerk jerked the watering hose out of my hand and showed me how to do what I was doing before he and his partners arrived at the green to putt the round ball into the round hole. At country clubs the players are generally arrogant toward the maintenance workers. The players at public courses are courteous and replace divots like when a chunk of dirt and grass flies through the air after the ball. At country clubs, that's what workers do. I learned quite a lot those summers.

*      

I, ANTI-REPUBLICAN

     the view out the window I'm facing

We had an inch of snow yesterday, and today it's gone. We had a week or so of warm weather (60 the high) and now it's cold again, below freezing at night. It is beginning to look like winter is coming in waves this year. The last couple of winters have steadily grown colder and then steadily warmer. It used to be we'd have a cold spell, then a warm spell, not quite as warm as the one before, then another cold spell a little colder than the one before. After the peak of cold, the reverse happens, getting warmer by waves. I've wondered if this change in the winters might have come from the "chem trails" our government put in the sky with aerosol from plane wings for untold (top secret) reasons. I saw one in the sky here. It was about a half a dozen parallel lines left to right and half a dozen parallel lines crossing the others from top to bottom, like in the picture below. It is not a natural formation of cloud. Google chem trails and see. You may have seen some. Government that only lies to us says they are "contrails" and it is imagination that they are anything else. What I saw were not contrails. What I've seen in photographs other people have taken are not contrails. It's another deal of government calling it a conspiracy theory like they say of people who don't believe 2 WTC towers were brought down by towel-heads in a cave in Afghanistan with cell phones. Gimme a break. Donne-moi une pause.

     chem trails like the ones I saw over whitehead

So the first thing we know about chem trails is it is a government project they're lying about, meaning it is not to our good by any way of looking at it. As they say in crime detection, follow the money, seems to me to apply here; follow who reaped the most benefit from it. There are lengthy records of respiratory ailments and deaths after chem trails have been applied to a certain areas all over the country. The ones I saw were over Whitehead. Our presidents are such excellent and practiced liars, we dare not believe anything any of them says. I see the video of Johnson lying to the nation about the Tonkin Gulf Incident that never happened, Johnson telling it like it's serious business. Ronald Reagan couldn't have done it better.

Before the March on Washington in 1968 about the Vietnam war, Johnson called a press conference where he told the reporters what to report about the demonstration yet to take place. They were corporate employees first, so they did what they were told. All "reported" the same story, a totally upfront lie they knew to be a lie when they did what they were told to do, report not what they saw, but the lie Johnson gave them to tell. The Village Voice reporter told about the press conference, and was the only reporter to tell what really happened at the demonstration. Norman Mailer's book, THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, told about the press conference that Mailer attended too, as well as what really happened at the event. This was my last active political experience. I dropped politics then as something to commit to. Since 1968 I only vote as a form of protest, to be one of half the population that bothers to play the ballot game. It doesn't matter how I vote, only that I vote. From that day onward, I take voting itself for a protest that says, I WANT DEMOCRACY.

In America we are never given any better than the perceived lesser of the 2 evils to vote for. I've not seen anyone in my lifetime worth voting for. All of them are worth voting against. What do I do? I vote against Republicans as they are the most serious threat to Democracy. It's nothing at all as a gesture, except it is a digit that says, je refuse. My vote has about as much meaning outside myself as a marble thrown out a car window on an interstate. The part I don't get about our national politics now is that it's out in the open, the politicians take it as much for normal as television networks that we the people know they are about money and money only. They blatantly make it clear to us in unmistakable terms, daily, they do not give a rat turd what we think about it. We are the peasants in their eyes and we'd do well to start getting used to it. It's so taken for granted it's not even an issue for discussion. It's the kind of thing that while it's happening, it makes one ask if it hasn't always been like this and we've been hood-winked all the way along. Don't have to search too hard for the answer to that one.

It's kind of obvious I'm unsettled with what I'm hearing in the last week on the news, what I'm reading, conversations with people I know, hearing people talk on NPR radio interviews. I have to say it that Obama fooled me into entertaining a bit of hope on his behalf. As with all the black people in the country, the light of my hope has gone out. I will vote for him again, because he's running against a republican, the reason I voted for him the first time. It's looking like Nuke Gingrich will be the repub front runner. He's starting out this go-round so smooth and slick it's leading me to believe Karl Rove is his strategist. If so, remember Rove put a cocaine snorting cheerleader in the White House and knows he does not have to win an election to take it--just appeal it to the Supremes and the repubs get it. And I'd dare lay odds that all 5 of the partisan judges still gloat over their victory. That was the day the Supremes said to us: When are you going to get it that we're not playing democracy any more? Al Gore got it. Obama has shown himself to be another corporate stooge in the White House. You'd almost think he was white. I can't help but think if Gingrich wins the presidency, December 21, 2012 might indeed be the END. I believe if he were to take the election I'd quit listening to the news altogether, because I'd completely, totally lost confidence in American politics. I still have a glimmer of hope, but suspect I won't very much longer.

In this week's Alleghany News I found a letter to the editor by the county republican party's Supreme Parrot, Joe Jones. Don Conrad wrote a letter to the editor last week that had a sentence in it that slighted a republican. Supreme Parrot fires off a letter to the editor of this month's republican party line twisting everything into unreality, telling Conrad he is wrong. No two ways about it. Shot down by Supreme Parrot. In the years I wrote a weekly column in the paper, every time I wrote a slight of a republican, Joe sent a letter to the editor the next week parroting that month's republican party line and telling the reader I'm wrong. He made my day three times. Another republican parrot in the county did the same thing. After I slighted a republican, predictably these two would fire off letters to the editor to nullify what I'd said with parrot propaganda. I suppose they got their kicks telling themselves they told that wise guy. I've been told off a few times to my face and I can't help it, I have a hard time not breaking out laughing. I have to contain myself. What I'm laughing at is it looks so much like they think I care.

If we the people want our government to go on being our government, we'll need to take it back. It's gone like a caged bird that slipped out of the cage and flew out the open window. Like now that we have a Democrat administration we don't hear anything about repealing the Patriot Act that was so fraudulently thrust upon as, ready in boxes for distribution at the time of the WTC towers. Looking at who benefited, the republican party benefitted, the perfect moment to drop this police state document into our structure of laws without opposition, literally overnight. Even a speed reader didn't have a chance to have it read by the time they passed it. I don't see or hear of any Democrats wanting to repeal it. They obviously are satisfied with it. And I am dissatisfied with them. It's not like I can give them a lot of credit anyway, but now I laugh at them in derision for their so blatantly unconcealed contempt for the American people. Right now, they think they're ahead and we're behind. The tsunami of the 99% is just now starting. A tsunami starts underwater at an earthquake point, travels underwater as a tremendous shock wave. When it reaches the shore it follows the sand to the beach, jumps out of the ocean overwhelming the land. I'm suspecting this Occupy Wall Street activity could be the initial wave setting out from the faultline quake under water (our collective psyche). It will take awhile to travel under water, then it will break out on the surface and you better not be anywhere near the beach.

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