georg grosz
We had two inches of wet snow and then it was gone. Still a little bit on the north sides of mountains. Yesterday I was talking with a friend I've known over 30 years. We were talking about how odd it is to be so warm through January and February. A republican overhearing had to interject some Limbaugh ignorance to keep us in line, "Scientists say the earth is getting cooler." I bore down on myself and did not let myself laugh. Scientists say. The Bible sez. Interestinly, the only scientists who would say such a thing would have to be Good Republicans employed by a corporation that tells the obedient what to say. A recent survey I've seen said 10% of scientists are republican. Repubicans aren't going into the sciences. How can they? Facts undermine dogma. When members are held to fantasy, knowledge becomes the enemy. Republican dogma, like Baptist dogma, has no room for critical examination. They don't stand up to it. Therefore, rule number one is never doubt the Party. Sounds kinda Bolschevik, but hardly anybody knows what that means anymore. Is it history repeating itself because of willful ignorance?
My immediate thought following "scientists say," was, what scientists? That's getting a little articulate for a republican, so I chose to save my energy. I turn on the news and they're talking about Santorum, Romney, Gingrich like these people are worth my attention. I click the remote's OFF button. A gaggle of egomaniacs clucking I Am The Greatest over and over. I'm right. He's wrong. It turns my stomach to see the same billionaires that funded Kenneth Starr to demonize the presidency at a time when we actually had an intelligent man in the office. They get no respect from me. And they couldn't care less. They're now doing PAC money to force out Obama by their own wills. Shove democracy, is what they're saying. We don't do that shit round here. These are the people the Supremes work for, not us by any stretch of the imagination. Here I go, getting excited over something that is illusion within illusion within illusion, again, tangling my mind up in webs made of nothing but my own imagination.
Nonetheless, I don't like being interrupted, ever, and I especially don't like a republican butting into my conversation to correct us with dogma according to the party's official philosoph, Limbaugh the Hutt. This was somebody like you might see in a Tab Hunter movie, or an Annette Funicello beach movie. A bad one to listen to other people's convesations and butt in to make corrections. I have learned to pay attention to my first impressions, and at the same time don't take them for fact. When I first saw this one, I saw air head. Time has told me that was an accurate assessment. Polly wanna cracker? Yet, another individual I took for an air head turned out to be quite brilliant. I was totally wrong in that case with my first impression. So I don't take my first impressions seriously, but do pay attention. Like a dog, after it recognizes somebody by sight, it then has to confirm by another sense, scent. Looks like one, smells like one, sounds like one, feels like one, must be one. At this time in my life I've taken to standing up to people who get in my face with stupid. I'm ready now to come right back and call their bluff. They're nothing but bluff. We've had over 30 years of allowing aggressive bluff from demagogues. Karl Rove, Gingrich, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, W, who belong behind bars, go free.
The most obvious serial liar in the presidency in my lifetime, with Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Bush1 snapping at his heels for first position, W has become a very highly paid evangelist. Theater of the Absurd in everyday life again. And again. And again. Talking with Tom Guy in the coffee shop yesterday, I mentioned a moment from Apocalypse Now, a movie we've both seen multiple times. He started talking about the Robert Duval role of the helicopter squadron, Kilgore, the wildman. He said that character disturbs him, because when he was in Nam, he saw them everywhere. The absurdity in the film is a mirror image of the absurdity in the field. I had the great good fortune not to be involved in Vietnam. I did my time before the war. I was not happy cannon fodder, rather was depressed the whole time, at the very lowest point of my life. I didn't need a war to go with it, esp an artificial war. Just the flash of a memory of that time, and how depressed I was, pre Prozac nation, I can see nursing the memory will take me down with it if I take hold and go with it. How depressed I was. It feels good, on the other hand, to see it as a measure of how far I've come away from that mind. The bottom is the place where the ball bounces.
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