GRUMPY OLD BASTARD AND THE PITCHFORK ARMY OF ONE

georgia o'keefe

This time we're in has my head spinning. On the one hand, it's endlessly interesting; on the other, it puts me to sleep. I think I'm past getting mad about any of it or any of the players until I see a picture of Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two obvious frauds with conscious fraudulent intent, their treason of the heart very well paid for. Gotta give it to them, they get away with it right out in the open, even Thomas, a black man in America. American black men are afraid for their lives when they see a cop, though he's not. The cops know he's the shoeshine boy for the corporate Mastas. He's a living oxymoron, the republican Negro, the black Sarah Palin with an intelligent adviser who doesn't allow him to talk. He's doing what the East Indian governor of Louisiana, Jindal, says minorities should do, act like white people. Jindal gave it his best; it only made a fool of him, same as it did for Thomas. Thomas sold his soul for white privilege. I mean soul as the core of one's life as well as the soul in soul brother and soul music. Of course, I can see he was put in place at serious cost to the American people, with such intent, to be instrumental in the court toward systematically dismantling democracy. Another way of saying they're pulling the rug out from under us. It's like one of those sleight-of-hand stage tricks pulling the tablecloth out from under the place settings and all else on the table, everything staying in place. I see this going on in my country, and it only one of a vast web of take-over that is already accomplished. This is what I see the W meant under the Mission Accomplished banner. It makes me ashamed that the American people gave away democracy without even noticing. Off in a corner a minuscule minority preferred otherwise, but they don't matter. They don't watch tv; they're not plugged in to the to propaganda of mis- and disinformation. They read books. What do they know? Some of them believe in evolution too. 

georgia o'keefe

I tell myself it didn't used to be like every politician was a functional moron, a bought robot. Along the way, I have grown into maturity, and see them now from a point of view older than they are. If I were to start naming names, the list would never end, of people in our government with a void inside their heads. In my earlier years, they appeared to be more or less intelligent adults who could figure out how to get on a subway in NY the first time. Dan Quayle came on the scene with Bush One, intellectual equals, and seemed like the first really dumb ones. Then I look back to Reagan, the voice of Death Valley Days, as vague between the ears as W himself. Nixon before him. Law and Order Nixon. Survivor of Joe McCarthy's henchmen who unleashed super-psychotic madness, the Rush Limbaugh and Ted Cruz of their time. I'm glad I was a kid then. People I knew later who were adults in that time of a conscientious mind were enraged by the terror Joe McCarthy was. I don't often applaud anyone's prison sentence, but this ex-governor of Virginia sentenced to seventeen years for his conscious fraud gave me a good feeling. I want not to care, but when I see such fraud everywhere, out in the open and proud of it, then one actually meets with justice, it feels good in the heart. Albeit, knowing at the same time his lawyer will appeal, get another judge and come out of it with no time to serve, or maybe a couple years at tennis camp. They won't tell that one to the news. He was merely meat thrown to the dogs, the dogs hungry for justice. Here's one, now get back to yer holes. Then I feel stupid for being taken in by yet another propaganda sleight-of-hand. I look at the ceiling, close my eyes and say to self, Don't give it so much attention. Don't let it clench your heart. When you feel heart's attachment clinging, it's time to let it go, so let it go. Let the feeling of my heart clinging to something I can do nothing about go, like a puff of cigarette smoke in the wind. I can't let fraudulent people have such power over me to influence me to grip my own heart with the claws of false concern. I can't see a picture of Karl Rove without feeling the clench in my heart.

georgia o'keefe

It means I am giving them, the people who put a crimp in my heart, power over me. They keep me a spectator at the mental game directed by propaganda, someone snared to play their illusory drama to. I play audience to a drama that is smokescreen, deception its purpose. I fall for the game and become a mental player. I've been entertaining what to me is a serious question, though at the same time not, for the last few years. I think of joining the half of the American people that vote no confidence by not voting. I do not believe in "the system." By system I mean what Hilary Clinton said to a young black man before a tv camera, "Get with the system and you'll be all right." She meant it. She is a system woman. She climbed the system's ladder from ambitious college student to woman taken seriously around the world. Such counsel to a young black man in a photo-op, dismissing the world of racism the kid lived in since a baby with a veil of denial, dismissed Hilary from my interest. This phony photo-op and her vote of support for the fraudulent Iraq invasion dismissed her from my field of attention. As it turns out, it is the System, itself, I don't believe and don't want to participate in. The whole system of looking like tv news anchormen and women, the system they are modeled on, the system they appeal to, the system that tells me I have to make more money so I can feed the money pipeline to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Swiss banks our economy is being diverted through. I've seen someplace in the last few days the multi-billionaires are talking about the rest of us coming after them with pitchforks. I'm all for that. Worthington coat of arms has three pitchforks. Rebel yell. I can operate a pitchfork. I remember KISS Army from the late 1970s, a marketing slogan: Keep It Short and Simple. Now we have Pitchfork Army. I looked it up on google to see if it had been used yet politically. No. Seems like something Occupy would do. I'm not so sure the activists really want to identify with the proles. 

georgia o'keefe

It feels almost immoral not to vote. It feels fooled to the same degree to vote. The Supremes made it clear to us in the year 2000, out in the open, in-yer-face, democracy is over, and gave our government to the mega-billionaires for so cheap it ought to be embarrassing. It's in the adoration of the rich that our "representatives" represent us. It is this tragic flaw in the American character that changed our course from one of Progress to the international corporations pipelining our economy to tax-free numbered bank accounts outside the country, taking our tax base with them. And they continue to rule us by owning our "representatives." I don't believe in voting by way of duty. I vote because I want to. No one I vote for ever wins as I'm in a 75% right wing county and state, but I vote as a way of saying with my one digit, I want democracy. Though I tell myself voting does not matter, I see republicans pulling every kind of chicanery to suppress the vote, to discourage democrat demographics from voting. They've presented it such that voting has become a sharp stick in the republican eye. Therefore, I must vote, just to give the stick a little bit of a twist. The democrats are just as complicit with the international corporation tax dodgers as the republicans. They are just a little better at pretending an interest in the populace. By now, they have all  entered my zone of no confidence. Just about everybody who liked the idea of a black president is disappointed by his absence of interest in the American black people. He is the subject, the target of American racism, and continues to touch the subject with denial. By denial I mean only talks in white man platitudes on the subject, and the Hilary dismissal: get a job. Mitch McConnell will not be defeated because I voted. Nothing will be different if I don't vote from what it will be if I do vote. Only difference, I save a half gallon of gas by not voting. So I spend a dollar seventy-five to go vote. What do I get in return? More propaganda. What do I get if I don't vote? More propaganda.        

georgia o'keefe herself 

*

HATE IS A BAR OF SOAP

a r penck

Every day I see some in-yer-face current event that's heinous with text calling for change. Some want more police state, some want less. I laugh when it says to "tell" Boner, Cheney, other republicans, something or other that makes sense, something that reason applies to. Somebody like me doesn't tell a republican what to do. It's like speaking to a parrot, telling it what to do. The parrot bobs its head up and down. Get too close, it will bite. I remember what a gift it is when somebody who despises me stays away, won't go where I go, leaves when I turn up. I think, thank you, and smile big. I find it a truth that somebody I don't like for whatever is behind it, that person doesn't like me either. I've got to where I can just about tell what somebody is thinking about me by what I'm thinking about them. Dislike tends to be mutual, same as like. We're taught all through school it is necessary to be liked by everybody. No reason why, just necessary to be popular. I fell for that until it just fell away from me for being assessed not worthy of attention. Recently a friend was moaning because she'd found out someone we both knew did not like her. I said, Do you like him? Answer: no. There it is, I said, what does it matter if he likes you or not? Better that he doesn't like you so he'll stay away and you won't have to bother to stay away from him. I just heard myself say that, said it without forethought. It spoke itself. I heard it and made a mental notation for myself to pay attention. I added, you don't want everybody liking you.

a r penck

I found some good spiritual counsel about hating and being hated. That's some powerful energy to have coursing through your blood. Hate is close to love when it comes to power of the energy.  Somewhere, and I don't remember where, in reading Meher Baba's discourses and sayings, he said that the karmic danger in hating someone is that I pull to myself whatever it is I hate in the other. Hate is a bar of soap. When somebody hates me for something about my character that he or she doesn't like, the hate pulls the reprehensible characteristic that I may not like having myself, pulls it to the individual doing the hating, taking it off of me onto themselves. It taught me to keep an eye on my own active hating. As far as I know I have no hates. I know of some who hate me, and I'm ok with that. I think of them as my friends scrubbing me good with soap, taking my trash to themselves. I say thank you. This one character I cannot name, though the name is so common there must be multiple hundreds of thousands of them, hates me so bad that when I come into view he starts shaking and finds a way to exit himself immediately. It cracks me up. I always speak to him, Hey, how you doin? And I'm laughing inside. I don't even care why he hates me. I just thank him for taking whatever it is from me to himself. It makes me laugh. I'm grateful in a big way that he avoids me first. It's just easier that way.

a r penck

Since learning about hate as a bar of soap, I welcome it anymore, almost flippantly. I tell myself to watch that part. It's like curiosity about the other side, over yonder, glory land, makes me almost flippant with danger. Sometimes I have to keep myself reminded. Not that I have a suicide problem. It's more a relaxed attitude about dying that makes it something I'm not afraid of, but look forward to. It's relaxing into accidents that concerns me. Like letting something happen because I'm not afraid. I have to remind self that I'm in the body because I'm meant to be in the body, so don't be frivolous with it. Don't take it too seriously, but don't take it too lightly either. I think of it as a form of being responsible. An awful lot of hate is in the air in this time, but there has always been hate in the air. Hate in the air is where wars come form. I've seen in people new to the county, mostly republicans who moved to the mountains to get away from the N word in the cities, intolerant toward any political opinion other than their own. I can't say how pervasive this is. Going only by my limited experience. One old boy quit going to the coffee shop because not enough cement-heads went there. One day talking with a woman who was retired Army, brilliant woman I enjoyed talking with, there came a time I realized she would be intolerant of me if she knew she was not talking to another teabagger. So I dropped the bomb that I'm a liberal. She turned her back to me and had no more to do with me. I thought: thanks, and had to contain my inner laughter so it wouldn't show.

a r penck

I see in a lot of younger people (to me, everybody is younger) an intolerance unspoken, unacknowledged. It is a common belief that if you don't agree with somebody on whatever level, you can't know each other. I find it not all the time, but frequently among people under my age. It's a shock for me, because I've known so many mountain people older than me for so many years and adopted their culture as my own. It was never a consideration among mountain people to dislike somebody because he has a differing opinion. The mountain way is the same as the old American way, that a man's politics is his own and a man's religion is his own. Democrats and republicans could sit around a wood stove in a country store spitting "backer" into tin cans, somebody telling about finding a bee hive in a white pine, "aint never seen narry bee hive in no white pine." The old people knew who was a democrat and who was a republican, same as they knew what church everybody went to. It was ok for a Regular Baptist to know a Primitive Baptist or even a Methodist. In the present day, I don't mean the attitude is unanimous to stay away from people with a different checklist of likes and preferences. However, I see enough of it to catch my attention after years and years of living among people who accepted others for who they were, not according to a checklist of tastes.

a r penck

 

I'm in no place to make any assessments of generations younger than mine. Up front, I confess I do not understand younger generations. American pop culture changes so fast, there is indeed a culture gap between generations, has been since ww2. The general culture that is American culture has been very much the same since ww2. It's time for another big change, a change like from before ww1 to after ww1. The before and after of both great wars was drastic. Another big war is brooding in the air. By the time it is over, the world as we know it will be a very different place. Twitter will be so far in the past it will be ancient, like books now. USA will continue to decline under systematic republican treason and the 21st Century will belong to Asia. America had its moment of greatness at the end of ww2, then squandered it right away. 9/11 had the whole world sympathetic with the Paper Tiger, the Great Satan, and that was squandered immediately. Racism holds American social progress back like the dumbest kids in class hold the class back. Racism is tattooed onto the American consciousness. It will change. The racists are mostly above a certain age. Whey they are all dead in a few generations, racism will have died with them. Maybe. That's kind of simplistic for such a complex matter, to think an end of racism is in sight. A surprising number of adults in USA believe the earth is flat. Let's just learn to live with racism and keep it under control. There are so many other human impulses we control to live peaceably in a world of others, racism can be controlled too. Many control it in themselves. It's possible.

 

a r penck

 

 

*

SPONTANEOUS CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA

It's late Monday night, news telling about republicans and fiscal cliff, a term I'm as tired of as "spot on." The third time I heard spot on was too many. Given that it is official now that this congress is the worst ever, that's saying a lot. I've not seen worse in my lifetime. It's so bad that every day when I hear the news I want to tell McConnell and Boner to get their Nazi parrot minds out of my government. Then I think of thousands of people wanting to tell them the same thing, how little it would matter if word got to them that I want them gone. What do they care? I'm one of the American people, one of the people they are working against. They don't care what I think. I'm not adding any money to their personal fortunes, so I don't figure as anything more than a crab on the ocean floor. It's American powerlessness I'm feeling. Only the ruling class figures in republican world. Democrat world too. Our politicians show us every day and every year that we the American people are of no consequence. Continuing the Sheriff of Nottingham tradition Reagan kicked off, the republicans continue to work overtly and openly against the people they "represent." The only thing they represent is money. Money only. Not even the baptists they fool into working against their own interest matter, except as easily manipulable people who fall for propaganda. The republican party appears now to be a magnet for the ignorant, for people who believe what they're told without a trace of skepticism, and do what they're told. Just say "God told me to do it," and the faithful believe it.

I grew up in a Kansas fundamentalist church, Calvary Bible Church, and know Kansas fundamentalism from the inside. They made me an atheist; it took 15 years to undo the nonsense put into my mind of There's only ONE WAY. That, of course, is the preacher's way. It doesn't take any education, any intelligence to call oneself to preach and lay it on God. Who can disprove it? Among the old-time mountain Primitive Baptists and Regular Baptists, somebody who said he'd been called to preach is required to prove it in his preaching over a long period of time to people who know how a real calling manifests. Absolutism is the fundamentalist way. It's never a possibility of anything but right (baptists) and wrong (everybody else). Now that the fundamentalists have become political, they are coming out into the open where their nonsense shows itself for what it is. In a church where the preacher is the answer-man, the people in the church go by what the preacher sez. Some egomaniac who doesn't want a job says God called him to preach and certain people believe it and go with him as God's interpreter. He likes being looked up to. Inside the church it's understood that everything the preacher says is Truth itself. I recall often sermons against Communism in the early Fifties. I'm all for churches being taxed when they want to be political. It appears to me that now that the fundamentalists have come out in the open as Reaganista republicans, they have the potential to implode the republican party. I'm glad to see that this worst Congress ever, due entirely to the republicans, is looking like the final stretch of the Reagan Revolution that was impotent from the beginning. It's only purpose to take from the working people and give to the rich. Of course, it will go on, like republicans are still blaming everything but their own self-delusion for the loss in the election.

Considering that Bush was not elected into office either time, and considering that the republican party has made itself into the White Man Party, the party doesn't look to have much of a near future except as obstructionists. White man is now outnumbered. White man still rules the corporate hierarchy, which really is our government, and will go on ruling. White man will not let go of power just because of democracy. The South showed a century and a half ago that white man does not care about democracy as much as he cares about racism. This last election the republicans showed their racist hand out in the open. Republican philosoph Limbaugh's response to the Fail: "We're outnumbered." Racism lost the number count for them. Racism as a propaganda device has been successful, until now. The Reaganistas put all their eggs in the Reagan basket. It had no bottom. Now the great FAIL of racism as political winner. The fundamentalists embarrass the USA to the rest of the world just like the Islamic fundamentalists embarrass their own countries. Right wing absolutists who believe power is real, religionists. All for God. Poor God. God is like the ocean in the way the humans of the earth funnel their shit into it. God told me to do it. One thing I've found disturbing is the preponderance of slogans and signs saying God hates whatever the person holding the sign hates, evidence of a belief system that God hates. I see several putting God-hates messages on facebook. Evidence of a hateful belief system. Hateful people.

So much hate has been generated by the Reaganista strategy divide-to-conquer, I've been seeing the hate level rise until by now it's reached a place where it needs to be burned off. War burns off collective hate. Wondering if we have a civil war in our near future created by the hate generated by the right wing in a bid for absolute power, I've begun to see these homeland terrorist attacks of a white man killing indiscriminately, then most often killing himself, as a possible civil war expression. FBI has such tight surveillance of any opposition group of the left, no opposition can be organized. The Bank is now lobbying to have the Occupy movement declared terrorist to arrest them. The FEMA camps are ready. Terrorism is the nature of war in this time. If these white men on killing sprees were Mexicans who had crossed the border, USA would have nuked Mexico to smoke long before now. Happening on the inside spontaneously without organization, copy-cat events as seen on tv, it's taken for a gun problem. It's not a gun problem. It's a civil war problem. It looks more and more like a civil war the enormity of American hate created. The hate is generated through tv and radio, meaning the killings will continue. Guns are the tools of war. This is evidently the war of everybody against everybody.


*  

2012: THE DAY AFTER

wayne thiebaud

What a good day it has been getting the car upgraded in the morning with new tires, new plugs, new oil. The Catfish has been a pleasure to drive. Immediately after each one of those improvements the car feels better. All three at once made the drive afterward into some kind of heavenly transport, smooth all the way around. I think of the song by Queen, I'm In Love With My Car. I do love my car. 93 Buick Century with the 3300 v-6, an engine classic as the Nova slant-6 that has outlived the car bodies and continues as water pumps in undeveloped parts of the world. This 3300 I'm driving uses little to no oil, maybe half a quart in 3000 miles. My mechanic, Chuck Billings in Glade Valley, keeps it running smoothly. I told him the engine is running just short of perfectly; the occasional miss and the last time I pushed the gas pedal to the floor to pass somebody, it hesitated. I didn't like that. When he took out the plugs, he found the one that was bad. We replaced them all. I like having new plugs and good wires.

The Catfish is now running perfectly again. It felt so good on the road going home, I patted it on the dash and said, "Thank you, my friend." I love driving a car that runs as good as a brand new car, and making no payments. It's so old that replacement parts don't cost a whole lot. With all the clearcoat on the hood, top and trunklid flaked off, a couple of rust places, a couple of little dents, it is a car nobody would steal. I could leave the keys in it and never have a problem, even in Miami. I don't, but could. It's all go and no show. It would make a good car for a smuggler; it's so plain it's invisible. I love its design. It's one of the more beautiful car designs before they all started looking like they were made for wind tunnels---the F15 and the Stealth look. On the drive to Justin's house, on Little Pine Church Road, I see an Oldsmobile of the same period, a classic car body. The owner, like me, can't afford to doll it up with new paint and new trim, but he keeps it well and I have a strong suspicion he appreciates its style same as I appreciate my Buick's body style. It was a beautiful car design when it was new and it is now. I'd really like to lower the Catfish about 4 inches all the way around, but that would not be practical on mountain roads in snow and mud. For that it needs raised about 4 inches. It tells its age, but it doesn't date. It's what might be called a classic design. In my mind's eye I see it flawless and painted a lacquer gunmetal blue, no trim or words on it, just the design itself with chrome grille and red taillight all the way across the back.

Remembering back when I drove the 78 Toyota pickup I named Zen Zero. I called it a Zero because when I bought it the entire interior was stripped down to the metal structure, and a big hole in the seat where I sat required a cushion in it. It reminded me of the Japanese Zeros, the fighter planes of WW2. And I was playing with the O in Zen ink painting too. The driver's door was bad and I replaced it with a red door. The truck was blue. I found a couple of Nissan bucket seats for it that were easy to install, four bolts each. I had a friend at the time, Anna, who drove a Mercedes. One day when I saw her she said, "You still driving that trap?" I said, "I'll race you on the Parkway from Cherry Lane to Laurel Springs at 2 in the morning if you want to see what a trap can do." She could run away from me on an Interstate, but the Parkway's curves don't allow top end. It's like the difference between Talladega and Martinsville in a nascar race. The Toyota pickup had a good center of gravity and ran like a go-cart. Very light weight. On the Parkway the race would be all about maneuvering, and I knew the road a whole lot better than she did. I knew my truck better than she knew her car, too. I didn't say it, however, as a challenge, just using the light humor of exaggeration to say the Zero ran better than it looked. It was then about 12 years old. I loved that truck. Four on the floor and another classic motor, four-cylinder, that outlived the frame and the body.

The news came on the radio just now. Back to hearing about Boner in Congress. I'd hoped against hope the Dems would take the majority in Congress and shut Boner up, expunge his name from the news. McConnell too. But, no good gets done without opposition, so I welcome their opposition. The part I like best about the election results is that it was a sharp stick in the republican eye. Will they go on obstructing? Sure. They've become the New Dixiecrat Party. McConnell is the new Strom Thurmond and Boner the George Wallace. Keepin' the niggers down. Only difference is: the world is watching in the age of hi-tech. The republicans don't care if they're witnessed. After four years of nothing but divisive and disruptive politics, they didn't lose anything by it. Romney lost because he was a non-candidate like McCain. Republicans put Obama in both times by not offering any real opposition, just a couple of hand-puppet parrots. Now Sarah Palin is aghast that "a majority" of Americans would put the nigger in a second time. Donald Trump is calling for revolution. And Bugs Bunny is calling for Daffy Duck to get married in Massachusetts.

*

WHITE MAN'S LAST STAND: THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL

          jaap mooy, 1982


Last night I listened to the Democrat convention on a Charlotte radio station, WFAE FM. I wanted to hear Elizabeth Warren and Clinton. The earlier speakers were good. It was heartening listening to Warren, an intelligent, articulate woman; alas, too intelligent to beat her teabag opponent who drives a truck. Seeing her up against ignorance in her election, I have little hope for her. Unless times are changing, which I've not seen enough sign of to be convincing, we're still in the world where idiots rule. Seems kind of odd to be saying that in relation to Obama and Clinton, but they do not rule. Both of their presidencies were rendered powerless by below-the-belt republican chicanery. Yet they are known by the people who are not cement-heads as good and able men. I admired Clinton throughout his presidency and have admired Obama. The repubs who want absolute power for themselves have taken to sedition in both cases to destroy their influence. I've watched it since the Reaganista takeover of our government that over the last 30+ years has by now made us into a Third World country. It's been distressing in my adult life to see the Reagan era as it plays out every day.

Obama is the first "hope" I've seen that the Reagan revolution is shutting down by its own stasis as it has become the Party of Hate, the Party of No, the Party of Obstruction. They offer nothing but Depression. It's all they have to offer. It's all they know how to do. I like the thought of Obama being the beginnings of breaking away from the Reagan revolution because it has finally demonstrated what was known at its beginning, their methods don't work. They are about destroying, lying, taking from the working people, giving to the rich, and killing the poor at home and abroad. It's their solution to the problem of what to do about all the poor people in the world. I have hoped the party would self-destruct under its house of cards made of lies, deception, murder and hate. Then I think of the hymn Farther Along asking why such people prosper. "We'll understand it all by and by." I'm actually somewhat ashamed because this is the behavior of the White Man Party. I'm a white man and these are the people of my race and gender. Do I ever have an identity problem.

Not all white men are cement-heads. I know a lot of white men not listening to Limbaugh, not freaked out over a black president, and not hating Hilary Clinton. I was impressed last night to hear white men talking who were rational and not intimidated by ignorance as the democrats have been ever since the Reagan Junta. I'm especially glad to see the democrats coming away from a quarter century of being intimidated by ignorance. Ignorance is rather intimidating and has been the trump card in Karl Rove's strategies that have worked very well putting W in as governor of Texas and then as president. Rove needs to be charged with sedition just for doing that to us, let alone all that followed. I forget, however, the republican party is not about being a benefit to the American people. That's never a consideration. Since Reagan, the purpose of the republican party has been to bust unions, take from the working people and give to the rich, destroy democracy and the democrat party, and, like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, rule absolutely, meaning militarily. It's police state they're taking us to, systematically, step by step.

I catch myself getting excited hearing Clinton give a speech that is not characterized by lying, and Elizabeth Warren. Hearing intelligent people talk has always entertained me. I remember the Supremes hand-picked for allegiance determined that multi-national corporations can put unlimited money into American political campaigns. The rule of thumb is that money determines the election. The candidate spending the most money wins. It works out that way. Arab oil money and Texas oil money who want to see the American people made into one peasant class of cheap labor. The most money commands the military. They've got us. The corporate world has us. All they need is to get rid of Obama, shut down the democrats. Romney is no candidate and cannot make any better president than W. I doubt he'd be as sinister. When I think it looks like Obama has it, I remind myself that republicans do not need to win elections, and money spent is the key. If a vast amount of money is strategically injected into the White Man coffers in the next weeks, it will determine how the election goes. I don't think it has happened yet, but have an idea after the conventions the money flow will increase greatly.

Nothing is going to be done about the "unfairness" of that decision by the Supremes, because that decision sealed the tomb door shut on democracy. I don't anticipate it rising the third day. Evidently democracy was an Enlightenment ideal that is not practical, doesn't work. The Soviet attempt at communism didn't work either. The kinds of people we have tearing down what little bit of democracy we had left are of the very mind the Constitution was written to protect us from. Bypass the alarm system and walk right in. Throw a little meat to the dog. I can't help but think, however, that it is so refreshing to hear politicians, Clinton and Warren, talking so eloquently and not lying. Haven't heard that in a long time. Of course, the repubs would say they was lying. Lying is the only form of communication the republican dark cabal knows. They would naturally say everybody else is lying. I'm not going to allow pessimism take control. I'd like to think this is the end of the Reagan revolution. I used to think excess had limits, but have learned  during the Reagan era that excess has no limits.

*

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.

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THE FRONTRUNNERS 2012

                           I love how this pic of gingrich looks so

                       much like a preacher that preys on widows

Little did we know that Dan Quayle, who couldn't spell, was the future of the republican party. By now we have a whole cage full of them screeching and swinging from bar to bar. Wouldn't these guys look great in a prison cell together for the next 20 years. Sartre's play, No Exit, dwells on the theme that hell is other people. I don't have to be locked in a cell with any of them to know that. These particular politicians are the most sickening kinds of people on the planet. Don't you know, Romney surely wore a suit and wingtips every day in college. Mr Middle-class Normal. Of course, he never sat back with a j and listened to Pink Floyd. Nothing outta line. No hidden sin. He's certainly not normal, but rates high on the checklist for normal. He's another Al Gore. Models himself after a Ken doll like Britney Spears models herself on Barbie. Think he might have two secret pink corvettes stashed away in a hidden garage?



I know this is silly shit to say, but it's about the silly shit republican "frontrunners." This is more riotous than BushOne and Quayle, W et al, and then McCain and Palin. It's like a stooge show of politicians whose minds are still in the 1950s. They're still worried about niggers getting free money. They've cornered themselves with the white half of the population, clinging to their racism. That half shrinks as every year goes by now. They're alienating women, half of the white half of their constituency. They're known as the racist party by every non-white individual in USA. I feel like Nixon was the last moderately intelligent man we've had for president from the republicans. He didn't use his intelligence very well. He used it to get what he wanted all the way to the top, but, alas, couldn't sustain it. Seems to me like his intelligence was focused on conniving. We all know somebody like that. If you can't stab another man in the back for it, it aint worth havin. Hit the other man before he hits you. Since Eisenhower, the republicans have been dragging bottom to find their electable candidates. This pack of screeching monkeys, running down each other and Obama, pointing at themselves as right wing enough for the party's owners, not one of them is anything but a wannabe. Like Johnny Depp said at the end of his movie Blow, summing up his life, "my ambition far exceeded my talent." If any of these guys ever comes to, and has a human experience, besides adultery, this is what they'll say.



I can then turn it around and look at me from their perspective. First, I don't have enough money for them to pay any attention to. I don't drive a Cadillac or a Mercedes or a Lincoln Navigator. I'm no contributor to the economy. I live on Social Security, grateful for it every day of my life. Republicans are step-by-step chipping away at the foundation of Social Security. Unless we stop the republicans, Social Security (for working people) will go away. They're putting on such a poor and alienating show this year I can't stand to turn on the news anymore. Who wants to hear anything about Newt Gingrich? Not me. They're not interested in me any way you look at it. I don't belong to a country club, don't belong to a church, don't belong...don't belong. Simply, don't belong. One day at a lunch table a guy I slightly knew who was in the Lions club said, "Would you like to join...." I interrupted him and said, "No." He said, "You don't know what I was going to ask you to join." I said, "I don't join." He didn't know what to make of that. Neither would a politican. Politicians don't like people like me. Runs both ways, as it always does.



When it comes to my vote, I cast my digit with anyone running against a republican. I think of it a vote against fascisim, a vote for democracy. Not that I think the democrats have democracy under control. The democrat party has followed the republican lead all the way through my lifetime. Republicans take a step to the right. Democrats take a step to the right. It's a repeating pattern. Has been since 1980. I'm of two minds about Obama. One, he concedes to the republican death star with far too much regularity for my satisfaction. I have to stretch to give him the benefit of the doubt, yet at the same time, what looked like it went against us at the time, turned out to be in our favor. I think I've seen him pull off some very clever strategy in the constant rain of republican attacks. It took him over 3 years to do it, but he prevailed so far. He had to learn to strategize from the start against an oppononent with no bottom to how low he can go. I'd guess he'll be a formidable opponent this time, mainly because the opposition will be so weak, like last time.



I can't help but be happy we have a truly educated president, who is a learner too. The one thing I appreciate about Obama the most is he has little to no denial in him. After the video game president, a truly educated man running for president seems like an oxymoron. I thought all the intelligent people have been staying out of politics. Turns out, they've been staying out of the republican party. All they get is brain-dead normal. Carter, Clinton and Obama are all very well educated and intelligent men. The republicans beat them down and tricked them, used ignorance to trump intelligence, which it can be counted on to do. I figured McCain would have learned something after his time in the Hanoi Hilton, but he didn't learn anything. Or so it appears. I don't know him. I only hear him make retarded party line statements on the news. He's like Virginia Foxx (our NW NC "representative" parrot) in drag. Oh, that's a bad thought. What a picture it makes. Like J Edgar Hoover in drag. Phew. Enough. Come back up out of that dark hole. Get my feet back on the ground. Get that image out of my mind.



I doubted Obama for quite a long time, but had to remind myself the relentless opposition was set on being opposition and nothing else. Looks like he handled the republican problem, handled it well. It does look like and feel like the economy is at least steady these days. That's a pretty big undertaking. Snatching binLaden was an outstanding coup. Allowed to, he gets along well with the people of color internationally that American politicians are unable to make sense with. I don't have a great deal of confidence in the democrats. I think of what Ralph Nader said to justify screwing up the vote for the democrats, the republicans will get us there fastest. We need to get through it. The sooner the better. I take it he meant take us to police state first. Democrats are heading us in that direction too, pretending not to. Republicans are all-out unfettered zealots for police state. I believe the cycle is, when we come to police state there will be a revolution to bring us back to democracy.



I don't quite see going into a revolution knowing how it's going to turn out. My problem with that social theory is: what if there's no revolution and the television audience likes police state? In that case, I'd rather it take longer to get here. At least give me a chance to get out of here first. We could have a COPS channel and watch black people get arrested all day and all night. Sit back with nachos and beer in the recliner, watch white cops shove a black teenage boy to the pavement, push the side of his face into the street, handcuff him, act righteous, got him a nigger. That's what they want to do with Obama, arrest him with his shirt off on COPS and shove him into the back seat of a police car, humiliate him on tv. I've not seen a lot of COPS, though from time to time at somebody's house, channel-surfing, it comes up, we watch an arrest and keep on surfin. Every time I've seen a black man arrested before a tv camera by white cops, I see a Christ figure. Crucify the nigger. It's the most outrageous thing I've seen on tv that is pretty much overloaded with the outrageous, as it is. For some odd reason, I feel complicit in the activity of arresting black boys to entertain fat white men. I feel dirty. I feel shame for my race like the Dixie Chicks felt for being from the same state Bush was from.

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OLIVER STONE'S W

cy twombly



In town today I went into Dollar General to get some lighters and a smell-good candle to neutralize the scent of dead mouse in a wall killed by d-con. This too will pass. I found a display of $5 DVDs. Only one looked like something I'd like to see, though with much reservation. It was W by Oliver Stone, released 2 years ago. I respect Stone's film making so much I thought I'd take a chance with it. As usual, Stone did it right. When it was finished, I concluded we've had the average American 4th grade little rich boy for President. We actually had a child for "the decider" for 8 years. When Reagan was doing his 8 years, I thought it couldn't be worse, then it was. I felt like the film followed W and let him be himself in his private life as well as in office. The choice of music was light-hearted happy music while we're watching our country being brought to its knees by Cheney, Rummy, Rice, and W through Karl Rove's ventriloquism. Dubya, as Molly Ivans called him, was Charlie McCarthy to Rove's Edgar Bergen.



Most poignant of all in the music was at the end when the credits rolled; Bob Dylan's Masters Of War played all the way through. The first music in the film that was not light hearted, that I noticed. I took the soundtrack to add some levity to the weighty story and I felt it was about the same as children's rhymes that tell where W was coming from inside himself. It gave him a tra-la-la touch: What Me Worry? Josh Brolin, the actor playing W, became him. Oliver Stone did a great deal of research into W's life. He came out true to the W remembered from those frightful years. Stammering at press conferences was the same in the film as then, leaving out the worst of it, like the time someone asked him a question about India. He started a sentence with a word or two, over and over, unable to answer because he didn't understand the question. He finally was so frustrated he turned around and walked away, leaving the press conference. You can see that on YouTube.



When he was governor of Texas, he said he believed God wanted him to be president. I thought: God the destroyer, of the 3 aspects of God; creator, preserver, destroyer. I can see it his way when I consider this is the time for the breakdown of everything in civilizastion, somebody was needed in the  most influential position on earth to kick the downward spiral into motion. Reagan, guided by God the destroyer, set up the decline and fall of the American Empire, and W's legal team took the election 20 years later, not by popular election, but by judicial fiat in a supreme court packed by the Reagan Revolution with right wing ideologues, and it paid off. Since Reagan, the courts all over the country have been shifted to the right by putting right wingers in as many judge positions as possible. The word Liberal, meaning somebody who believes in democracy and equal rights for all, has been changed to mean subversive. Alas, subversive to fascism only, which is why they want defenders of democracy out of the picture. Fascism is a word the corporate media won't use, though fascism means right wing militarism.



Yesterday on the news I heard you can't blame just one side in congress, you have to blame both sides, when it's only the republicans breaking down the democracy in congress. It sets my blood to boiling when I hear some media mouthpiece saying both sides are to blame. It's only both sides in that democrats are not about taking from the poor to give to the rich. That's just not a democrat principle, while among the republicans it is the driving purpose. The way republicans are winning elections tells me the American people want the end of what we have of democracy, at least 51 percent do. When it's gone, it's not given back. Attempts to get it back would be reaching to catch a falling knife.



At lunch with friend Jim Winfield yesterday, he was saying "we" about the fascist takeover of our government, and I said I can't join in the We, because I do not want American democracy overtaken by fascism. That I am powerless to change the direction back toward democracy makes it all the more They, not We. I am not a post-Reagan republican; therefore, not a member of We. I am We among American We The People, but not among the corporate powers sweeping democracy aside to get it out of the way for more money to take from We The People to help them work all the better against We The People. Talk, now, about democracy is called socialist, something far far away, forgotten in our past if we ever had democracy. In the time when democracy is going away, it seems like it has never been. Maybe it was an oligarchy / plutocracy all the way along. Reflection says it was, leading me to believe the democracy experiment in America has failed. Failed to the point that the republicans are goose-stepping toward putting the democratic party out of existence, because it has the same name as democracy. Shut down democracy as a goal and rule without opposition. Homeland Security.



We the people are so manipulated by propaganda that propaganda has become truth. In a cabinet meeting in Oliver Stone's film, the Gang of Four were talking about Middle Eastern dictators. Of Saddam Hussein, on of them said, "He's no Hitler." I thought, But one of you in that room is. Even better than Hitler, more sophisticated control machinations with at least equally effective propaganda manipulation. We the people have become we the suckers. If they were ever brought to court to be tried for UnAmerican Activities, they'd use for their justification: the dumb-asses should have known better. There was an awful lot of non-corporate press telling the truth of what they were doing. It was out there. Of course, they'll never be tried. It would cost the government too much after they've drained our resources. Ayn Rand is a novelist, not a philosopher. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, not a philosopher. These are the great minds, the guiding darkness for them that lurk in the dark.



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THAT'S THE WAY I SEE IT

Heard Obama's press conference talk this morning. As I recall, we've had three quite intelligent democrat presidents, Carter, Clinton, Obama, who were rendered ineffective by organized ignorance. Ignorance trumps intelligence every time. This is the foundation of the strategies of the Reagan Revolution kept in motion by Gingrich and Rove, the master propagandists. Trump intelligence with ignorance and win. Winning is what it's about for them. They have nothing to offer but rant and racism. No niggers allowed. They throw in an Uncle Tom from time to time for a token to back up we're-not-racists. They make me ashamed of my race, the arrogance of their whiteness. I can't help but see the republican party now as anything but white man's last stand. White man is desperate, and white man will do anything. White man looks at all other races as inferior, hardly even with a soul. White man controls the greatest arsenal and military might the world has ever known. Colored people get to acting like they think they're somebody, here come the attack helicopters and drones.



I've heard a good bit of talk over the last few weeks about American census results for the present moment, two different accounts. One was that the white race is now half the population and the races of color are now half the population. That's all black people and Latin people, Asians, everybody not spic & span. We've had laws enforcing anti-racism over most of my lifetime, but the laws apply to little more than federal and state jobs. The South gets the finger pointed at it for racism, but when the finger is pointed, three fingers point back to the one pointing. Racism is throughout the USA, much of it in denial. There is a large number of non-racist whites, a large percentage, but they get labeled liberals who send money to the ACLU, laughed at, derided out of the picture. Nerds in a world that supports bullies. Clinton's fall came as a result of not believing the repubs could be so treasonously venal. Had nothing to do with Monica. How could it, when at the same time the prosecutor, Newt Gingrich, was divorcing his wife, who was dying of cancer in an Atlanta hospital, to marry a DC nordic hottie. That was hush-hush, don't talk about it.



The other story I heard about the census, it is now that the Hispanic population is the same as white. That one I don't believe. It didn't come from the most reliable of sources. As I heard it on NPR, it was that all the races together now are an equal number to whites. The repubs have been trying to shut NPR down since Reagan times and by now have come awfully close to eliminating it, may yet. As one who has listened to NPR for 30 years, I'm here to tell you, they are not liberal. Of course, a balanced outlook is equal to liberal in this time of Gingrich/Rove propaganda via Limbaugh in America. The racists have targeted every little bit of help given to a poor black person by government (white people's tax dollars). By now they have eliminated over the last 30 years every bit of help for poor black people, and now are working to eliminate any help for poor white people. They want to take every benefit from the poor here and use the money in military might to kill the poor in defenseless countries. This is why I have no problem calling them treasonous. The only difficulty about using that word is breaking through denial.



I know it's against the rules to tell it as I see it, but this is my space to do just that. Yes, I'm contrary to ignoring what I see in the world I live in. I don't care if you think differently. Of course you think differently. You are not me. I am not you. How can I care with any legitimacy? I don't like what I see since Reagan times, the strategy of divide and conquer. With the influence of Porky Pig Limbaugh who rallies the bottom 30% (white men) around ignorance, I see them marching us consciously toward civil war. First, it is necessary to separate the ruling class from the peasants, set the peasants at odds with each other to keep them preoccupied so they miss what is going on behind closed doors, set the whites against all the other races and clean house, make America white as its denial self-image, be rid of liberals too. Goal: police state without opposition, a ring of wagons around the white rich, fighting off the savage peasants of color, putting them in prison with mandatory sentencing, as unAmerican a policy as the "patriot act." Just using the word patriot on it tells me the name is a smokescreen for the contents aimed at shutting down our American freedoms with no opposition.



This is why I call myself an anti-republican. At the same time, I see it as Ralph Nader explained his absence of remorse for throwing the election to the repubs in 2000. He said (in different words) we're on track to self-destruction as a government. The republicans will get us there faster than the democrats. We inevitably will get there, because the momentum is so powerful there's no reversing the direction. It has to break all the way down before it can start up again. As Nader sees it, we'd just as well get there as fast as we can, so we can begin reconstruction as soon as we can, get it behind us, at least have a chance to learn from the fall of the American Empire. In the Nader way of seeing, I cheer the repubs on. But from the standpoint of a working class white rural non-racist in the now, I would really like to see our government operate the way we were told in school, which obviously is unrealistic, because cliches of America the beautiful and free are broken down every day by venality that could put a rhino on its knees.



I lost hope for our government to function to the benefit of the American people in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson, a republican democrat like Joe Lieberman, told the American press at a press conference to tell the lie according to government policy of what happened at the march on Washington over VietNam. I was there. I saw it. I read next day in NYTimes, Washington Post, AP, Newsweek and Time the same story, none of which happened. Village Voice I subscribed to at the time told it like Johnson told it at the press conference and told what happened at the event accurately. Since then, Rupert Murdoch shut down the Village Voice as an organ of free press by buying it. I haven't heard the word progress used since Reagan. Up until Reagan, the word was progress. Everything and everybody was for progress. The light of hope went out in America in the time of the Reagan Junta. The statue of liberty is a joke now---send us your poor. LOL. Keep your poor to yourself. Our prisons are full.



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