THE DRUNK MAN AND THE PARROT

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It is a hard time to take anything seriously. The mystery of the obvious stumps a lot of our  politically minded public figures. I like to think, surely they don't "represent" us, but they do. It's like the goal is now the bottom. The latest comedy I've seen several times was a quip from Sarah Palin noting that the new pope is "kinda liberal." Wildman comic Bill Maher's response: Wait til she finds out about Jesus. His jest speaks for the entire time we've had to endure the "Christian Right" harp on taxes. Hearing them makes me laugh. Didn't Jesus say something like, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's? My take on this saying has to do with paying taxes without making a fuss. For me, personally, it has something to do with staying out of politics. The people who claim Christendom for themselves in the realm of politics exhibit little but venality toward others. Compassion among them is a four-letter word. These are people, who, if attending the crucifixion, would say, "Gimme that spear! I wanna stick him too!" I see them in my mind's eye doing this when they pat their own backs calling themselves Christian. It fails to be a bother to me, because they're only fooling themselves. Back in the 1950s I saw this coming when fundamentalist preachers started turning toward the political arena. The belief system does not stand up well to public scrutiny. Inevitably, the belief system, the fog of dogma around "the word," will be picked apart and declared lunatic. This has already happened, and the reaction has been that they're being denied the right to worship.

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Yesterday I spent some of the day with my friend Kathryn. We went by a local diner for pie and coffee, really just a chance to sit face to face and talk for awhile. An old boy we both recognized, but neither of us knew, was sitting at a table nearby. He had the angry white man look of somebody who listens to Limbaugh "religiously." He spoke in our direction asking what we thought of Obamacare. Kathryn said she didn't pay attention to the news. I said I have medicare, it's of no concern to me, and we went on with our conversation. We were not going to jump into that bucket of shit. Just by speaking, he told us where he was coming from. He wanted to gripe out loud. I don't like to be short with somebody, but in a case like this, I can't be short enough. We were not going to let him get started. He's the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving who keeps everybody miserable with his rant. And, by God, he's a Christian. Aint no two ways about it. Kathryn and I talked about him without talking about him, talked about the American white man's mind after a quarter century of Limbaugh mind whipping up artificial anger in white working class men. We spoke of two women we know, both going through divorce, desperate to get away from abusive white men. In both cases, the man was of the Limbaugh rant mind. We felt sorry for the old boy in the restaurant wanting so badly to rant and nobody to listen. At the same time, I felt little to no patience for him, the same as for a Jehovah's Witness at the door interrupting the day pushing their agenda.

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We had just come from visiting a friend of ours who had a white man staying with her at the moment. He was drunk and getting drunker. Neither of us knew him. We both read him for a wild card, no guessing what he might do in the next minute. I took it upon myself to keep him calm by encouraging his talk about himself. It could have gone off into blubbering tears over mama or throwing a fit of rage, anything in between. I didn't feel like it was a dangerous situation. It was a dumb white man drunk. Keep him the center of attention and everybody is happy. Kathryn told me later she didn't know what to do about him, how to talk, anything. I felt at home. Just another white guy in a world of white guys who have issues galore and can only address them drunk. He was tremendously hung up inside, twisted in knots probably in early childhood, needing the liquor to soften the hard edges of guilt and self-loathing. I felt I understood the guy. I can identify with somebody who wants to get shit-faced drunk. It feels great on the inside. It just looks stupid on the outside. I don't ever have a problem with somebody being drunk unless it's a mean drunk. We all have our own issues and issues don't get solved overnight, no matter how fast you go at them. It takes years on the psychiatric couch to really start getting insight into dealing with our issues. Guys growing up in a world where it's an embarrassment to expose that you have issues, or to talk about them, or even own up to them, hold so much emotional turmoil inside they often become time bombs. One unpredictable moment sets them off. Getting good and drunk every now and again acts as a release valve in a pressure cooker. The ones that need to get drunk the most are the ones with the most pressing issues.

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By the time Kathryn and I were having our pie and coffee, we were wondering what kind of day this is. We talked over what we were seeing and how we were feeling about what we were seeing, not with judgment of the particular individuals, but seeing people locked into their minds such that they miss everything going on around them. I'm wanting to pull my own mind away from the old belief that what I think matters beyond myself. We complain an awful lot because we believe what we think matters beyond ourselves. I want to withdraw my mind from "out there" to "in here." I felt like seeing those two men, one after the other, were telling me that wasting my mind on illusions of what is going on "out there" is distracting me from what is important "in here." I take "in here" to mean the heart, living by the heart, thinking by the heart, feeling. "Out there," I take to mean the constructs of the mind, agendas, even beliefs. I see venality comes out of too much emphasis on mind. The self-centered nature of the "Christian Right" is all mind. None of it comes from heart. The Christians operating from heart are not making the news. In both cases of the men we saw, the drunk man and the parrot, I could honestly say to myself: There but for the grace of God go I. Without the grace of God, I would be both those men in one. I don't mean to imply I thought they were bad people. I saw them unfortunate people, as I would see myself without the grace of God. I can't imagine living without the grace of God.

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DISINFORMATION REALITY ON THE AIR

 

It's been ongoing humor to see how the conservative / liberal agendas play out in absolute resistance to each other. The repubs in their 30+ year attempt to destroy, put out of business, the democrat party have failed. They put all their eggs in the Reagan basket, the bottomless pit. I have come to suspect it so much, though still hesitate to say I believe it, but I see it that the republican half of the voting population, or a quarter of the population, given that only half the population votes, are the portion of the American citizenry that has fallen under the spell of what William Casey, CIA director early 80s, said of the American people, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." There it is. It is an active Disinformation Program going on at least since then. The repubs are now in self-destruct mode. They've had for their agenda destroying the democrat party using false information so long that it has become their momentum. Winning elections with lies, racism and transparent chicanery has evidently run its course. This last election trumped Karl Rove, the cutting edge of the Disinformation Program's propaganda politically. It trumped hairdoo Donald Trump too. And Ted Nugent. What a laugh he has made of himself. As a rocker he has what it takes, but as a mind, never mind.

The part I object to most is what hits me at home. Of course, ongoing inflation and no increase in income for the working people over the last 30+ years is a big one. Mostly, it's that I live in a world of people, wherever I am in America, who have become part of the Disinformation Program by falling for it. Fox tv channel is a very active part of the Disinformation Program. Limbaugh is the out-front spokesperson. I chose to use person instead of man. Where I live, the word man has a bit of respect about it. Person is diverse. Somebody on death row for murder and rape is a person, while not necessarily a man one can respect very well. Like I can't call Limbaugh a pig because I respect a pig more than I do him. He's one that belongs on death row. He stirs hate with rant. Skepticism and questioning are, alas, not American virtues, which Limbaugh as republican philosoph takes advantage of to the hilt, meaning all the way in. Yes, some of us non celebrities do think about things, but if you want to find one, you have to go seeking. What do you go by? A certain alertness that television has not yet turned to slumber. There is a difference from the bright-eyed smiling fake front and true alertness that doesn't necessarily smile all the time or parrot political (television) correctness with enthusiasm. Fake alertness you see everywhere. All the publications Rupert Murdoch "bought" were turned into organs of the Disinformation Program. So are the CEOs and owners of the other networks purveyors of the Disinformation Program. You want corporate government? Here it is, like it or don't.

Though I only see television a few hours a week, mostly football this time of year and racing the rest of the year, I can see the psychological manipulation with a bit more clarity than someone asleep in tv. It's not an anesthetic for me. I can't doze for very long in a state of mental torpor watching commercials of guys in the stands at the football game holding the label of their beer bottles and cans toward the field to work a mojo on the game. It's slightly humorous in a locker room fraternity way the first time. I'm glad to see the big corporations are at least doing more commercials with humor. It's dorky corporate humor, though an attempt nonetheless. I only listen at home to non commercial radio. NPR is not commercial free, but their commercials are shorter and directly to the point about it. Don't think I believe NPR is independent of the Disinformation Program. Initially, I believe they set out to be. Then the Disinformation Program began in earnest, the Reagan Revolution, and repubs have been trying to get NPR off the air, or at least as misrepresentative as Fox, ever since. Reagan sliced NPR's budget down to the bone, like he did everything of benefit to the American people, the 99%. The people at NPR were attempting something like BBC here, which they found unacceptable in the Texas of the world.

I sit here looking out two windows between sentences at an overcast, wet, slightly sprinkling day. It's the kind of wet you can walk to the mailbox and back with slight wetness on hair. The colors are vivid at their very best with light fog in the distant trees. I love how colors come out when rain wets them. It gives them a vivid lightness of being. Rhododendron leaves rich green with white accenting them, the branches dark lines like in a Japanese painting. Every shade of reddish light brown leaves carpets the ground, curled and making a chance collage with pine needles, sticks and twigs that also fell from the trees. I spread two sizes of sunflower seeds over the ground. I've been watching the birds of all sizes pecking peaceably, a red squirrel searching, picking up a seed, biting through the shell and eating the seed inside. The red squirrel then runs and looks for another. A time comes when the squirrel is full and starts tucking the seeds away in pockets it makes with its front feet, tiny hands. It runs to get more and tucks them into a another little pocket called a midden. I will be surprised if sunflowers don't take up from at least some of the places they're tucked away. Birds scratching find a lot of them. It feels good in my spirit to see the snowbirds hopping about, scratching, flying, and the nuthatches, the bluejays, the titmice (titmouses?), a small black and white woodpecker with a red dot on the back of its head. Chickadees and titmice chirp to me from nearby branches when I go out the door in the morning with the day's ration. The birds of my mountain are so much more enjoyable to me than anything on tv that it doesn't feel right using them in the same sentence where tv is mentioned. The difference is that I love my bird friends and I don't love tv. Major difference.


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