THE WAGES OF GREED

air bellows in the fog

 

Last trip to doctor's office, I went to the window to check in before taking a seat in the waiting room. A white-haired white flatlander couple in chairs immediately to my right, I took them for about my age, the woman spoke to a local man older than me sitting directly across the room from her, "Were you in the service?" He affirmed he had been. She said, "Thank you for your service." I thought: Barf! A Fake news enthusiast. My immediate dread was she might ask me the same question. Thought I'd answer I was a draft dodger like Dick Cheney, W Bush and Rummy, but, again, thought better of it: if you don't want it started, don't start it. I acted like I heard nothing, preoccupied with the pretty girl at the window, Winter, whose brother and parents I knew, all of them recently dead, a girl I applaud with all my heart for getting on so well with her life. I about break into tears when I see her, though for Fake news woman I wanted to appear flirtatious so she'd judge me a rake, insurance she'd leave me alone. No television in the waiting room set on the Fake channel, I did not want her focusing her boredom on me. 

 

 

In today's news another mass shooting, this one in San Bernardino at a Social Services office where the purpose is to help the poor. I saw that Bill Moyers posted a statistic this was the second such shooting today in America. This year, 2015, has already produced more mass shootings than days into the year, 355. The 355th day is two weeks yet to be. Every time it happens, every day, big surprise in the news. The shooters fit an obvious pattern, white, right-wing racist republican-minded Christian enthusiasts of Fake news, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, and the host of hate-television, -radio, -internet, -print of a purpose to divide and conquer. It works for them. They have conquered the entire media to the point the 355th shooting this year is a surprise to all corporate tv networks. Oh look, somebody did it again. How did that happen? Buy a new Cadillac, now. Pizza with lots and lotsa cheeZ. Over the last 35 years of watching the increase in hateful attitudes inspired by Fake news, hate-radio and hate-religion, I've come to the place best for me is at home with silence.

 

 

I used to be disposed toward my peers and people older, but so many white men and women my age and older have poisoned their minds by their own potential for hate brought to the surface, the flames fanned by the corporate billionaires to divide and conquer We The People, the haters included, and render us powerless while they make all the legislation against us, take all our money and resources. Who would ever think greed could bleed out an entire population and land mass? Maybe this is why it is listed as one of the deadly sins. Greed has shown itself to be deadly to American Democracy, the American government and the American people. Even a devotee to Fake news sees it, but they've been told from the news desk greed is good, and they're good Americans, they believe what they're told. I have actually heard with my own ears someone say, "I know that for a fact. I heard it on television." 

 

 

In town at the library Monday, picking up art objects from show, standing in front of the display in the glass case of somebody's collection of Star Wars toys, Doug at the desk, we spoke of our appreciation of the Star Wars movies and looking forward to the new one. Our brief conversation segued somehow into him saying he's not seen hate in the air like it is now in his lifetime. I said I've never seen such in my lifetime, either, double his. We came to it must have been something like this in the time leading up to the War Between the States. I mentioned to him I have recently come to see we may be in a civil war. Terrorism is the nature of war now. We have every day occurrences of terrorism from white right-wing racist Christians having convulsions inspired by propaganda from Fake news and Rush Limbaugh, now Carly Fiorina and the whole clown bus, who publicly side with the shooters. They, in their minds, are at war with the rest of us. And we still don't get it.  

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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OTHER AND SELF

marino marini

We're in a time of being manipulated into division over caring and not caring. All my life the people who go by conservatives, who used to be called reactionaries and hawks, have looked down on the progressives, the doves, the peaceniks. It's like the heat is turned up and the parts in the stew are swirling in the pot, the bottom rising to the top and the top going to the bottom. In our democracy where we are declared created equal as the foundation of our law, the present illustrates the movement cut loose by the Reagan Revolution of belief that one man's ignorance is the equal of another man's knowledge. It's frightful that the political party representing half the population, the below average half, believes education is misleading religiously and politically. The half of the population that sometimes entertains rational thought is largely overwhelmed by aggression of the ignorant obsessed with abortion, pussy, racism, in other words, smokescreen. Everywhere I go I hear somebody making a declaration that starts with "This country." It's all mental generalizations categorizing the unknown.

 

marino marini

 

 

It has become amusing to hear the varieties of the lists that follow this country. It's like a collective wave is going through USA that seems like self-examination, but turns out to be figuring out what's wrong and pointing the finger of blame. Blame the other while three fingers point back at self. We're picking it apart relentlessly, even mindlessly albeit by way of mentation. The trend coming into the new century is surrealist slayings in random locations all over the country. By surrealist I mean in the time of Surrealism in Paris between world wars one and two. One of the surrealists declared the ultimate surrealist act would be to carry a pistol into a crowd and shoot someone randomly. The other surrealists did not take to his idea and soon after put him out of the group. They were creators, artists, not killers. Love was the surrealist theme. Killing did not file well with love. The so-called ultimate surrealist act is now common news in television world where fantasy is reality. Somebody with advanced degrees in psychology, a guy not long out of high school, a guy working at a shipyard. Before the surprise mass shootings were the post office shootings by frustrated employees let go and denied their pensions.

 

marino marini

 

 

It's easy to say it's an expression of disregard unto contempt for others. Killing anyone who is present with no personal reason is an obvious expression of contempt, the most obvious. Looking at the lists of comments after almost any kind of article online, often the rudest, most contemptuous language is used by somebody who doesn't even know who it is on the receiving end, the other. Disregard for others is from ego and the Western attitude toward self in relation to others: me first, others last. The people committing these  outrageous acts for television news show absence of regard for other as a self. No empathy. Throughout my lifetime, experiences in this world trained me away from empathy until the time the Light revealed itself to me. Once I've seen it, I cannot live as though I had not. It's only then that empathy became important. In the time of developing my ego, the time before my understanding, empathy wasn't even a word I knew. I don't mean to sound like a preacher who tells about himself as the worst sinner who drank, played cards and danced, until Jesus turned him away from his evil ways. Not that at all for me. I wasn't living an evil life. I was just trying to make my own light and it never worked.

 

marino marini

 

 

On this side of the divide of empathy / non-empathy, I can see that somebody who has watched people killing on tv every day of his life since a baby can act without empathy. The other is the same as a mushroom. So much contempt for the other indicates three fingers pointing back at self. Self-loathing appears to be an epidemic of this time of the center not holding. The people who commit these slayings most often kill themselves. The guy in Aurora, Colorado, who did not kill himself is a mystery to me, something like Bradley Manning who released a Pandora's box of US government secrets knowing he'd be in maximum security prison for life, no parole. You don't do something like that not knowing what is next. I believe he wanted prison. That's not a psychic insight. It's how it appears to me going by what I've seen about him. The Colorado shooter evidently wanted to live the rest of his life in torment. I don't understand these people, because I don't understand anymore the absence of empathy. I don't believe it's widespread as these psycho actions make it seem. I don't believe these isolated incidents of zero empathy tell anything about the rest of us.

 

marino marini

 

 

I see the news, hear the talk, read articles and books, hear interviews, and I see the people in the world I live in. We're not anything like the generalizations and categorizations we're pigeon-holed by. We're under immense stress as a culture, stress factor kept up by television that tells us relentlessly we're not good enough. It's the weakest link in the chain that snaps. Everybody I know has strength of character that could never allow themselves to sink to that self-centered a way of life. That kind of self-centered behavior is particular to the individual. Each of us has our own karmic history that is particular to self, same as personality, fingerprints and horoscope. In the rainbow of human experience we range from the lowest down dirty chickenshit emeffer from hell to the most gracious flow of helpful kindness in an uplifting spirit. We run the scale of everything between these poles in what we call duality. Most of us waver in the middle somewhere. A swing to the right is balanced by a swing to the left, back and forth, the pendulum of time. I live in a world of wonderful people who would lend a hand before they'd take from behind your back. Empathy is slow to leave mountain culture, despite several generations of television stripping away empathic values from traditional beliefs. Yes, the end is near when the false values are cleared from our traditional beliefs to make way for the new. The beginning is next. That's the part I'm looking to. The day after the last day is the first new day. The last day has to happen to let the new day come in.   

 

marino marini

 

 

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