PATRIOT DIVIDED

george segal

 

I saw a picture of a cop dressed in orange, charged with sex acts with a two year old. News items tend not to get me emotionally concerned, but sometimes they do, like the Sandra Bland story. It makes me want to be the one to deliver karma in person. Unrealistic thinking.  This guy with the two year old, just seeing his face and the headline caused my whole being inside the ribcage to want to explode in rage. I thought of my baby friend, Vada, who is four now, but I loved her when she was two as well as now. It's a protective and a giving love, not a taking love. I couldn't even say something to Vada to hurt her. I see news photos of a Palestinian daddy carrying his dead baby two years old, him splattered with her blood, and I think, How can you live with this, man? To myself I say this is half way round the globe, another world, another culture, another language, another way of life, none of which I understand, leave it alone, it's not mine. Mine is here where I am, my world. My impotence to help in any way makes me sad and callouses my heart. I see myself carrying baby Vada covered in her blood, dead, age four, and I want to deliver karmic payback with my bare hands.

 

george segal

 

I remember my friend Chad, when he was fifteen, his mama's husband beat her mercilessly, Chad stood him up on his toes and told him if he ever hit his mama again, he would beat him to death with his bare hands. Chad could do it, oppressor knew it, his mama was never hit again. I respect Chad for doing what he had to do, that's a hard decision for a kid. I told him of my respect, congratulated him on having what it took to do it. I don't see Chad a lot, but when I see him, I see somebody I respect in a big way. If a smart-missile from an American military drone in this time of police state were to kill Vada, and me near enough to see it, I would lose it for the rest of my life. I would join the forces that oppose American military involvement in my homeland to become an active enemy with purpose. My life would change that instant. I would be a warrior rebel from that day onward. I imagine a large part of the purpose behind the missiles is to create new enemies and to harden old enemies to keep never-ending war going, corporate profits up, shareholders paying their bills, the politicians in the right country clubs, the stock in mood-enhancers rising steadily.

 

george segal

 

It tears me up, with Vada in my life, to see a child hurt or killed in news photographs. It's what emotional news photographs are meant to do. Nonetheless, I know several people loved that baby with all their hearts the way I love Vada. And they're the people left to bury the baby. I don't like that the government of my country is killing babies all around the globe, even at home, creating such intense misery for corporate profit. It tells me the human condition in this time is the ethics and morality of money, God is dead. Not that God can die, but the American way of life that truly worships money acts as if God were, if not dead, absent. Conscience is something to laugh at now. War is evil. It's obvious. Seems to me a country with an economy rooted in war would, itself, be evil. There is no indifference like the American so-called Christian indifference to the poor and the down and out. None of this is new. It's been like this throughout my lifetime, different faces and names in the news along the way. 
 

george segal

 

American wars are geography lessons in locating the poorest countries on earth with the least defenses, to rob their resources and destroy them further. Shameless is what it is. But it keeps the economy going, the television flickering, the smart-phone charged, the laptop open, our inebriates available, gas in the car. Now it's looking like a necessary evil. Who is going to give up a cell phone, television and computer to stop American jets from bombing more Middle-Eastern defenseless cities? In the poorest parts of the world, my country is known as death from the sky and death squads on the ground. I've not been able to find a way to look at this aspect of America with anything but shame. I can feel pride in American art since the 1950s, pride in American rock n roll, pride in American poetry since Ezra Pound, pride in American writing, in a country where none of it is honored. Maybe it's best that way. Keeps the sentiment in greeting cards and television, where it belongs. I can be nationalistically proud as one of the American people, who are an incredible people. However, our government has turned on we the people, and I can't find nationalist pride in that. This explains why Bernie Sanders appeals to me as a candidate. He appears to have the potential to be a Little David kicking Goliath's ass again. We'll see.  

 

george segal himself

 

 

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WOMEN OPENING THE WAY

mary cassatt

I had the good fortune to see the women's soccer, futball, game of America and Japan. They had a tremendous tv audience because the Daytona race was put on hold for rain and wet track. I was at Justin's house to see the race. He switched to the women's game. It was a dynamic game from the start. The women on the American team held our attention for their skill and strength. He changed channels back to the race from time to time to see how track drying was progressing. Evidently, almost everyone who wanted to see the race watched the whole football game. The race did not start til the football game was over. It was like a divine plan. Nascar racing has become the most watched sport on tv, so it was a sizeable television audience watching the game. It would be mostly white men watching, people who care nothing for soccer, especially women's soccer. They had a huge audience. That they held the audience is what matters. Going by people I've talked with who usually watch the race, everybody was enthusiastic about the game, came away with an interest in the game. The women showed such skill and control they impressed everyone who saw them. And they won too. 

mary cassatt

Soccer has recently in years entered the American school system without much attention. I feel like this game opened soccer to an American audience in such a way that it will generate more interest in the game. Maybe teenage boys kicking a ball around will be the next thing to annoy adults after skateboards. I felt like the game with the Japanese was the beginning of an American interest in the game. It has been trying to take hold here for a few decades, but never went much past kids playing it. The kids are grown up now, more kids are playing it, the fan base for the game is growing. Had it not rained at Daytona, the futball game would have been one of the great sports moments without so great a number of viewers. People I've talked with, both men and women, were impressed, feeling a degree of excitement over the unexpected all the way around. A good day for woman pride. I felt like it was a breakthrough into the future of respect for women. I felt a rush of quiet pride run through the women I know. Americans have been focused on the particularly American sports of baseball, football and basketball. Through soccer, futball, we have a sport that all the rest of the world plays. 

mary cassatt

Hillary Clinton is front and center again, advocating for women's rights as she pursues her own political ambition. And we have Bernie Sanders challenging the ruling class and Wall Street, an advocate for the people who work for a living and have no access to lobbyists or representatives. Our representatives in NC obey corporate interests. Sanders is so relentlessly making a case for the working people, I can't help but think of him a paid assassin's target, his private plane going down with no indication in the black box what happened. If he does not survive the campaign run, he will make a great martyr, cause for the ones who want him dead to let him live and go to work on destroying his name and credibility. The likelihood of martyrdom kept Bob Marley alive in Jamaica. Peter Tosh did not have the insurance of a threat of martyrdom and failed to make it. To JFKs assassins he was more of a threat alive than a martyr. I'd suspect Bernie would become a pop culture martyr on tshirts that say I AM BERNIE. I'd like to see him make it. The republican opposition would be dead set against him for being a socialist, and especially for challenging their puppeteers. At the same time they'd be enchanted that he's white, albeit a Jew, at last white. 

mary cassatt

I'm with Bernie. He's a sharp stick in the republican eye. I'm with Obama, too, for the same reason. Recalling a time in the coffee shop talking with a woman I've known to speak to for several years. She said, "I'm a con-SER-vative!" I said, "I'm a SO-cialist!" She said, "I bet you voted for o-BA-ma." I said, "Sure did. He's a sharp stick in the republican eye." Hillary will be a sharp stick in the republican eye, as well. Hillary's influence on liberating and inspiring young women will keep republicans writhing in paroxysms for decades to come. If Hillary and Bernie could run together, they'd be sharp sticks in both republican eyes. The people invested in intolerance could flare into a blinding rage. It could set off a right-wing armed rebellion too. The republican right has become the only terrorist threat in America, could possibly trigger a reaction, martial law. It could get complicated real fast. I tell myself, whatever the problem, it has to play itself out. It will play itself out. I tell myself, observe from afar and stay out of the way of stray bullets. For our society to get on to the next step, we'll have to address our racism, educate ourselves out of it. As long as blame is all that's going on, nothing will be solved. 

mary cassatt by mary cassatt

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MONEY GONE WEIRD

elizabeth murray

Fourthajuly everywhere, fireworks, explosions, talking heads remind us of wars and rumors of wars, freedom thanks to continuous war. Cheap talk about freedom runs year round like American elections, so much flag consciousness, narcissist nationalism, it makes me uncomfortable. The rest of the world leaves us to it the way a group of people allows the most self-centered among them, the one needing to be the center of attention at all times, allows him to rule. His time will pass. He'll self-destruct. Everybody bears with it and says, "Well, that's just how he is." He rules because his ego demands it, he has more money than anyone else. In America, money is the only measure of an individual's power. I have no money; therefore, I have no power. I have white privilege, though it's only good for a better chance than somebody black not to be killed by a cop. And I don't want the power that goes with money. I don't want to be looked up to for money. I want money to have no role in my life but legal tender for exchange, a form of energy---this energy for that energy. Beyond an exchange of energy, money gets weird. 

elizabeth murray

Social status in America has to do with money and money only. I imagine it's the same other places, so it appears in films from around the earth. Success is measured by money. Respect has to do with money, too. Among the mountain people, the working class, everyone rates basic human respect for mere existence. The middle class people moving into the mountains only respect people up the money-status ladder from themselves. This makes them obnoxious to the mountain people for their snooty arrogance toward people down the ladder. Of course, mountain people who climb the ladder never look down the ladder, either. It's the nature of the money-status hierarchy to want more, not less. Corny as the Beverly Hillbillies tv show was, it plays on the comedy of what hillbillies do when they tap into big money. They do, indeed, become comical, like Texans draped in gold, driving a Cadillac pickup. I never enter the lottery from fear of winning. I know a shit-load of money would make a mess of me. I'd have to give it away immediately, get it out of my mind and out of my hands.  

elizabeth murray

The system of money, status and power is American from all the way back to inspiration to cross the ocean. Making money overran a continent, drained it of its resources, squandered its profits and is left like a working-poor man who won the lottery and a year later is that much in debt. Something interesting is in the works. It's not yet on the surface visible. I'm thinking of an example of the process in the art world, like while abstract expressionism was having its moment, taught all over the country in university art departments as pure art, young artists were doing what was to become Pop and some others to become minimalism in the background, unknown, unanticipated. The artworks were being made over a period of years, shown in small galleries nobody outside New York ever heard of. Eventually, a few of the artists are heard of beyond New York, and a very, very few everybody knows, like Andy Warhol. In this time when the rich have taken all to themselves in off-shore, tax-free, numbered accounts, something unknown to outsiders is stirring. 

elizabeth murray

I can't help but think Bernie Sanders is coming from what's next. Greece, Spain and Puerto Rico are putting a strain on the old way. Something new is yet to come forward, though I doubt it is far away. Finally, the Pope, a Christian who appears to speak and make papal (infallible) decisions with attention to the true spirit of the Christ. The people who identify Christian, yet are quietly embarrassed by the Fundamentalist misuse of the identity, they must be feeling good to see the Pope Francis example take Christian back to where it has dimension beyond cartoon. Sanders, a politician talking straight, finds overwhelming support every appearance. Whether an honest man can make it all the way through the corridors of corruption to a win will be seen in its time. He gives me the appearance that he represents a rising wave of a population of people becoming aware they want their democracy and their economy back. I don't mean  to pretend to be a prophet. Sanders and the pope seem like two public figures speaking honestly in a time of deception, just when we needed them most. I wonder if they could be a sign more individuals of good faith are finding a forum.   

elizabeth murray herself

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