STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

 

 

 



It's been this way throughout my lifetime listening to Republican-speak. It's been so absurd that their ability to do what they're told keeps me laughing with an attitude of derision, which I don't like to feel; although it is entertaining. Every election year we go through long months of hearing republican-speak, and year-round every year on the news. Misinformation with intent to deceive. When it's an individual person it's called lying. What a politician says is never what the individual says. They have staffs of writers and lawyers directing them. Herein lies the issue. The politicians have to be so careful in every word spoken it takes convolutions of sentences to spin meaning into anti-meaning and nonsense into truth. It's come to the place for me that I already know somebody is a republican before they tell me or I find out some other way. When somebody comes at me completely false in tone of voice and words spoken, or comes on with the false enthusiasm of a self-help guru, or brags about being a Christian, I know automatically. Key word: false. Though the word is never used except against the truth.  


It's not just politicians, either. It's government, how it works. It's religion. Our role is to be good soldiers, do what we're told, don't ask questions. Brings to mind someone I once knew who did CIA work. Some of what he said he did made me think about conscience, don't you have a conscience? You did THAT because you were TOLD to? Do you do everything you're told? Of course he had a mind of his own and a conscience. This was work. At work you do what you're told. Conscience and idealism are ok for them that want it, but not at work, and certainly not in government work. I've spent my entire working life avoiding any work connected with government and corporations. It's not possible in the absolute, because everything is connected in one way or another. When I had my "small business" of selling cds of mountain music, it was the corporate distributor, the corporate labels, corporate credit card operation, government tax laws and regulations.


I've always worked for individuals instead of corporations or government. I've not made much money, but don't want money bad enough to bind myself to government or corporate domination. A job that requires me to put aside conscience, I don't want. For one thing, there's no telling what kind of shit it will get me into, like killing the poor for being potential communists or terrorists or whatever. At the College of Charleston I was happy the school did not have big science laboratories and big sports programs. No government or corporate funding for research toward killing the poor in Vietnam (at the time). The school was too small to be of interest to the Bank or the Pentagon. Out of control. Like Patti Smith says, Outside of society!!! That's where I wanna be!!! I'd rather listen to Lenny Kaye's guitar than to militarists or religionists. Speaking of which, in the course of my lifetime in modern and post-modern America, the only thing I see of any real value in our society is rock n roll. Rock is rebellious because rock speaks truth. Kids talking to each other. Kids have a short fuse when they hear bullshit from another kid. They have to take it from adults, but not from other kids.


I found a wonderful intent of purpose quotation from Reagan's top CIA dog, William Casey, in 1981: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believes is false." Pretty concise statement of purpose. That was in the beginning of the Reagan Junta. Thirty years later the republicans have done a splendid job of bringing about the end of Democracy in America by way of the Reagan Revolution deceptions, like trickle down in republican-speak = vacuum up in practice. Take from the working people and give to the Bank. Now that "the people" are threatening the Bank with the Occupy protests the corporate press refuses to acknowledge (even NPR), I've an idea that when "our troops" come home, their idleness will be occupied rounding up protesters and guarding them in concentration camps. Republican legislation is taking us there in a hurry. Again, Gore Vidal comes to mind, "When the American people are unable to recognize stupid, we're out of business." And I think of WB Yeats, the center does not hold.


Centripetal force has been o'ertaken by centrifugal force. We have collectively no feeling anymore for community or neighbor. "Major Tom, this is ground control," has become the song of our time. Drifted so far from the shore there's no more communication, no more control from "the center," ground control. "Here am I floating in a tin can far above the world." Then there's the double-entendre, "Planet Earth is blue (depressed) and there's nothing I can do." It's easy for politicians to debunk science, because they appeal to people who will believe ANYTHING THEY ARE TOLD, the lower half of the population where natural intelligence is concerned. Ignorance has gone this far in its advance through the collective body of the American people like a spreading cancer. This cancer or dark cabal, whichever, is seriously threatening the rest of us, like the Nazi (right wing) takeover of Germany--the same cancer or dark cabal from within. Evidently the German people don't recognize stupid. The Japanese, another super-intelligent people, don't recognize stupid either. Both were bombed back to the Stone Age for their arrogance. Duh. Can anybody see where this is leading? When the republicans take absolute power, which they are on the very verge of doing, look out America.


In this lifetime I have watched step-by-step the rise of the dark cabal of the republican party, lock-stepping its way to idolatry with a void of a human being, Ronald Reagan ("the Alzheimer's President"), one of the Southern California / Arizona right wing maniacs, Charlton Heston one of them, Barry Goldwater another. These were the people Ayn Rand wrote her fantasies for. Since the 1950s these people have been fervent with the same zeal of Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston and Richard Nixon, McCarthyites that didn't die with Joe McCarthy, intent on keeping-the-niggers-down while exhibiting a passion for the exclusive power of wealth at the expense of everyone else. Decisions that concern us are made at country clubs without any consideration of us on the outside, except how to keep us uninformed. Misinformation is the key. Alas, it works predictably. Forrest Gump's mother was nobody's fool.  


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SPARTA IN FURS

agamemnon

I picked up a paper at Betty's Dollar Mart to see what adult white male has been arrested for sex play with a pre-school little girl this week. I personally consider this one of the great crimes against humanity. Humanity is one human being the same as it is all human beings. Adults playing with pre-pubescent children "in the family way" bypasses conscience. I started to say is without conscience. But I know these men and know them to have conscience. It's denying conscience its purpose. It amounts to turning one's gaze away when passing a picture of Jesus on the wall, ashamed in the light. It does that to the grownup involved, and what it does to the child for the entire length of that person's life is particular to each one, but what's the same is a head preoccupied with shame and guilt. Swiss psychologist, Alice Miller, wrote a book on child abuse, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. I received from her writing some of the most profound knowledge of my life. At the time I was reading it, a pre-school daughter of friends, and herself a dear friend to me, was played with by an adult. I recognized it in her the moment I saw her, the day she couldn't run to the truck when I parked in the driveway and jump on me like she always did. She stood on the deck beside the door with her fingers in her mouth, trembling. Alice Miller gave the solution to restoring the child's mental health, I shared it with her parents, they followed Miller's recommendations and little girl came through the ordeal whole. I believe it was God's grace that had me reading this book in the time of her need.


I know both of these guys charged in the last few weeks. I prefer to believe there is nothing to either charge, the trial finding them falsely charged. If there is anything to it, they are personally responsible for wrecking the lives of one person apiece, or more that could be unknown. I don't like the idea of seeing two men I know carted off to prison for a long time. I don't like the idea of two men I know playing with little kids, either. It makes me want to give one in particular a meaningful cussing in his face for being stupid; even worse, acting on it. I don't like to call somebody stupid, but Forrest Gump's mother rings in my head, Stupid is as stupid does. I say all this presuming where there is smoke there is fire. I don't want to believe either charge and I do want to wait for the trial to determine guilt. I would not be allowed on either jury, because I'd be as much interested in the well-being of the two men as I would the two (or more) kids. All will suffer, and I want nobody to suffer. This is what the law's about: what's done is done.


My belly-laugh for the day was seeing at the bottom of the front page this "presentation on possible street changes" on Hwy 21 running through Sparta. Everyone forgets, or never thought of it to start with, that there is not one sign on Hwy 21 in Sparta that says Main St. It was the Michigan-to-Florida Hwy 26 before interstates. It's a highway with three redlight intersections as it passes through Sparta. Everyone with a business on Hwy 21 knows the cars passing through are not stopping. They're not shopping. They're on the road from one place to another, looking neither left nor right, going to work, going home from work, driving from Independence to Winston-Salem and back. We haven't had "tourism" since the beginning of the Bush administration. I was laughing at widening the sidewalks and narrowing the road, taking out the left turn lanes and replacing them with trees that nobody wants. The Methodist church cut down the most beautiful trees in Sparta for an electronic gizmo and a better view of the parking lot. SRC cut down all the trees on the courthouse lawn. The two maples beside Farmer's Hardware are about it for what's left of Sparta trees. Thanks, Marsha. Planting new trees in the street? I don't think so. I've an idea the principal planner left out the context of Hwy 21 being a canyon through which passes the air flow of Twin Oaks Gap. It's not always a gentle breeze through there. It's rough on non-native trees; they would never consider planting native trees.


Trees down the middle of Hwy 21 in Sparta, shutting down possibilities to make a left turn off Hwy 21 for the trees, narrowing the road and widening the sidewalks. Has anyone noticed that what could pass for pedestrian traffic compared to the automotive traffic is like about 1 to 1000? Or 1 to 10,000? Has anyone noticed we have sidewalks that are not being used nearly all the time? Has anyone noticed the traffic on Hwy 21 is continuous? Has anyone noticed that if they would remove those ugly plastic tubs full of dead plant matter and cigarette filters eleven months of the year, the sidewalks would instantly be three feet wider. Voila! And Sparta would be instantly beautified, for free. No grants, no taxes. Easy. This, however, is not the point. The point is SRC wants to shut down "Main Street" to vehicular traffic and put up a pretty plywood reproduction of Blowing Rock that will attract wealth only, like Western town facades put up for 50s tv shows and movies, Boot Hill. Characteristic of SRC is the ongoing attempt to make Sparta into something it is not. They don't know it yet, though it seems like they'd be getting it by now, but Sparta will bend to their will about like any mountain man in a pickup will bend for them. They will have to break Sparta. Meaning, they will have to kill it. Sparta is a mountain town, not a suburb of Charlotte.


This is what I love about Sparta, that Sparta is itself. It is what or who it is, depending on how you look at it. I look at it "who," a living entity. And the only truth I have found that applies to Sparta any and every way you look at it, Sparta is different. Not better, not worse. Different. Sparta is itself, like every (with exceptions) man and woman of these mountains is his and her own self. It's only since the white tsunami of suburban middle-class summer-home exurbanites (including myself) that need has arisen to make Sparta into something it is not. I see Sparta allowing a cosmetic makeover about like I see putting Margaret Evans Crouse in a Lady Gaga outfit for church. It aint gonna happen. For one thing, if "Main Street" gets shut down to traffic flow, what about the line of SUVs with moms taking their kids to school in the morning, a line that stretches from the light at Betty's Dollar Mart to the light at Hardee's and beyond? No left turns. A stop sign at every intersection to stop traffic flow. Appears to me it's something about like dumping a dumptruck load of gravel into a stream to increase water flow. Of course, grants would pay for it. Until the grant money ran out and the facade is half done. Sparta is not a fake facade-friendly town. Maybe I don't get it, and maybe I don't know Sparta, but this is how I see it anyway.


They will have to kill the spirit of the town, which ultimately, and not very far away, will be done. And they won't care. I've seen over and over for many years their determination to put makeup on Sparta. What if Sparta's spirit might be masculine and doesn't like wearing makeup? Sparta's name, itself, is ultra-masculine. The Spartan warrior is about as fiercely masculine as the Viking in legends of our collective history. Why go against what Sparta is and frill it up like a trailer park pajama party? Ever thought of calming down, getting acquainted with Sparta as Sparta is? Get to know Sparta, become friends with Sparta, not like you would with a dog, but with respect. Maybe Sparta prefers blue to pink. Maybe Sparta prefers a haircut to a perm. Kermit the barber is right there on the corner. Every bit of this new plan for Sparta is shutting down its flow. The focal point of Sparta, the cross-hairs, has moved from where Hwy 21 crosses Hwy 18 down to where Hwy 21 crosses the entrance to the shopping center parking lot at Grandview, Fifth/Third and Hardees. The part of town by the old courthouse shut down long ago for want of parking. This is the age of easy access parking. Sparta is a dynamic unto itself, even with its own personality. A long book could be filled with all the grants that have been written for money to put false eyelashes and lipstick on what might be the equivalent of a statue of a general like Agamemnon, warrior of warriors, dysfunctional patriarch. And the rain keeps washing the mess off.


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