REBELLION IN AMERICA

natural man

Kathmandu fell apart, Everest avalanched, cops at war with young black people in Baltimore, Crips and Bloods united in Baltimore to protect black people from the cops. Al Sharpton is going to Baltimore, following the cameras again. At least he has a new hairdo. Follow the news and see shameless people of every variety. Put a camera in front of somebody's face and they'll say anything you want. Seems like it would be a more certain way to get information from detainees than torture. Just aim a camera at them and they'll tell it all. Maybe this only applies to Americans. I'm glad to see rebellion against police brutality by the people the cops are most brutal toward. No matter how much it's justified, American police kill more people than anywhere in the world such that it's beyond shameless. Executioners. Maybe they like this word better than murderers. It looks more every year, and escalating fast, like the American police are at war with the American people. It's been growing since Nixon times "law and order." Next, "war on drugs." I saw something about a cop demanding respect and laughed. Took me way back to childhood, daddy demanding respect. I'd think, show me something I can respect. Didn't dare say it. Saying I'm glad to see the rebellion, I don't mean I'm glad to see the cops rally to an opportunity to beat up and torment young black guys in the zoo. I'm glad to see years of unspoken racial tension come to the surface, racism come forward and be proud. Only on the surface can social or personal issues be settled. It looks like American racism is having its day. The white robes are back, though this time they're blue. 

dogwood

The nature of the police state is racist, so racism is the nature of the police state. White people who still believe we have a democracy are freaking out over the people-of-color population now being 50/50 with whites. From here on, people of color outnumber whites. Democracy was shut down in the South after emancipation; the black people outnumbered the whites. Now, False News buffoon, Ann Coulter, mummy of an old belief system, is calling for literacy tests again for voting. Like voting matters. I have a hard time taking any of it seriously. Manipulation by corporate propaganda through television, by corporate control through legislation and the courts, including the supreme court, is how we live in America now. The land where money has been worshipped from the beginning is now ruled by money for money's interest only. Citizens are now enemies of the state, especially the poor. Fema has empty concentration camps all over the country. They are waiting for social conflict the manipulators know will be created in the near future. The police state is characterized by a dismissive arrogance toward the people, as illustrated by the governors in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Florida and Kansas, to name a few, the entire US Congress, Senate, and the White House. Mammon does not like democracy. Mammon likes police state. Fascists always destroy their own countries. The fall of America is wrapped inside its fascist takeover. Like the old apocaloptimist said, It's gonna get worse before it gets better. The rest of the world will roar with sighs of relief.

bag lady rest area

I cannot offer a solution to what I see, except the momentum must play itself out. It will play itself out and I will stay out of it the best I can. Can't stay out of the economic collapse and can't stay out of manipulated social attitudes. I can be aware, however, of the manipulation enough to recognize it and bypass its influence. My closest friends pay no attention to news, government or history. I applaud them and never encourage them to give current events any mind. The only thing I have to say to them that I feel valid is get out of debt as fast as rationally possible. I tell Justin when hard times are here, you will be all right--you're able to make it without a steady job, by taking whatever job comes up, like house painting, carpentry, auto repair, hunting and much else. You will be helping people who cannot help themselves, the people who have only money, devoid of inner resources. They'll be paying you. Your role, because you have inner resources, will be helping others. Just don't let discouragement take you over. Hard times have a way of ending. Even the Civil War came to an end, whether yankees believe it or not. Younger, I wanted to get involved in social movements, be a part of the change toward democracy, but learned in 1968 the press was complicit with the corporate coup of five years before. The manipulators own the television networks and the press. They rule. Best for me to stay home and not get beat up and tormented by cops or killed without recourse for nothing. Better to stay at home, read a biography of Van Gogh and listen to recordings of Tibetan monks singing.

bridge and shadow

I'll give carrots to donkeys, hold my cat friend, Caterpillar, give sunflower seeds to birds, be a communal food kitchen for my near neighbors. If they eat anything in the christmas tree fields two-thirds of the way around the house and donkey meadow, they die. I suppose that if I give them plenty of what they like, they won't need to explore into the christmas tree fields for something to eat. Keep them close to the woods across the road where they live, away from the bugs coated with herbicides etc that have already killed everything that lives in the water. The world I live in is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual poison. I have no choice but live in it, but I don't have to be of it. Like in childhood under arational control, I'd think, You can control my body, but you can't do shit with my mind. My mind is my own. Of course, quite a lot of warping of the mind occurred that I've spent the rest of my life recovering from and reparenting. My search for innermost self, who I really am, is my spiritual path. I found an affordable (then) little hermitage on a back road to walk my path. I'm here for my own spiritual reasons, none of them social. I like to contribute to my community, though only in meaningful ways with purpose, not the frivolous. Justin told me recently when he was in high school he told his buddies to stay away from that old man on the mountain--he'll shoot your ass--he don't care. He said he did it because he knew them and wanted them to leave me alone. I treat others right, don't draw attention to self. A few days ago I was buying a pack of white paper for the printer at a new corporate store in town, the only place it's available. At the counter I was asked if I had my card. If so, I don't know. Was told to punch my phone number into a key pad. I asked, Why? To see if you have a card. I said, "I don't care. I just want to buy this." She looked at me like she couldn't believe somebody would refuse a three cent discount, if any. I said, "I am not of this world." It actually flowed out of my mouth without thought. There it was. She let it go and rang up the sale.

rock face

photos by tj worthington

*

THE MYSTERY OF THE OBVIOUS

the hay barn

Perhaps the best thing for me to do is stop now. It may be best to just let it go for today. I'm in a rotten mood. Snowed in all day, didn't want to do anything. No music, no movie, no radio, little reading, minimal facebook, wanted to sleep all day and was interrupted just after I'd drifted into unconsciousness. No going back. Took grain to the donkeys in late afternoon, returning to the house immediately. I've laid about and laid about, watching my mood get moodier as the day went by. I turn on the radio and somebody is talking about cancer, turn the radio off. I don't think I have frustrated anger about anything in particular. It could be that I ate almost nothing yesterday and very little today. I tell self to eat something, have some Earl Grey tea, do something toward a new art project. I found some fir strips I did not know were here. This project will take some doing. It is nine six-inch plywood circles, half inch thick. Some plastic wood touches on each one will be necessary. Sanding them all too. Three rows of three circles held together by strips of fir three-quarters inch wide on the backside. The framework will run behind where the circles touch, rendering them out of sight. I'll have to fix each circle with screws in its place and make a system of numbers and letters to identify the locations on the framework where each circle goes. Take them off and paint each one of them, put them someplace to dry for a few months, then attach them to the framework with screws and glue. Doing anything toward it today was something I lacked the spirit for. I did find the sticks of fir, first step. 

mountain laurel

I'd so much rather put it together in my mind than get out the drill, the jigsaw, ruler, extension cord, paper and pencil. I have to be in a certain frame of mind for the construction. I need to see it clearly in my mind, and don't see this to the detail, yet, that I want to. This one is so labor intensive it stands before me like an obstacle course. It takes a certain mind to jump in. This is a particularly lazy day. Started a scrabble game this afternoon with somebody I'd played several games with. Forfeited the game this evening when I realized I really don't want to play scrabble anymore. I jumped in for a few weeks, but it took up too much time. My mind likes to make words out of letters, but it likes to do something else too. Comes a time I get tired of having all vowels. I used to search for the longest word and highest score I could get per turn. Today I put down the first thing I saw using no more than two or three letters, scoring 9 or 8 or 11, and not caring. Opponent scores 36, 28, 49, and I don't care. I see his score shoot way up past mine and don't care. Then say to self, if you don't care about any of it, why the hell are you wasting your time at it? I clicked on the forfeit button and left, promising self I won't be going back any time soon. At first, the game is about putting words together. Then it turns into strategies and numbers and scores. I can see the strategies are as endless as bridge strategies, I don't care to get that involved. I'd best stop playing it now that I see I don't like it anymore. I refuse to search for the highest score I can make per word. Knowing myself, I know when I'm done with something, it's over. No point in trying to force it, it will never come back. 

rhododendron

I have better things to do than focus my mind on making a higher score than somebody else. Why do I want to beat somebody at something? When I ask the question, Why?, it's over. I already know why. I've never taken an interest in competition. It may go back to my grandmother's wisdom she taught me with in childhood. I wanted to do something she thought foolish. She said, "What do you want to do that for? It's like a merry go round. You get on, you go round and round, you get off in the same place you got on. Where you been?" I didn't like the cold water that kind of thinking threw on what I thought was fun. But it never left me. Only heard it once and never forgot it. I don't even remember Bible verses that long I'd memorized for expectation in church. I remember Jesus wept. Woody Allen hit the nail on the head when he said if Jesus were to come back and see what all was done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up. It makes me laugh at these people who get their fifteen minutes of fame for some point of view devoid of compassion and call themselves Christian. I can only think they make Christian a bad name. Tell one that and be ready for the ensuing explosion of righteousness. I saw a funny clip yesterday on facebook of Pat Robertson, the wizened sage of the 700 (send me your money) club, warning that yoga is a Hindu trick to get us to praying, by way of mantra, to Hindu deities. We truly live in an insane society. When supreme ignorance passes for knowledge, the best place for me is at home. I'm doing facebook less, except for Daily Creative Practice page, bored by republican claims Obama is a Muslim. So what if he is. He has a Kenyan heritage. So what. The Bush family has a Nazi heritage and nobody complains about it. 

dogwood

I see how the Fake news channel has twisted the minds of half the American population, the below average half, white men, the obedient people most susceptible to propaganda, easy targets, and I want revenge. I want the world to be a better place, but it's not, nor is it going to be. It looks like globalization brought all the cultures in the world close enough together to see they hate each other. Ideally, bring everyone together in unity, kumbaya, but what happens when they see each other face to face: conflict. Beware of them Hindu deities. The Reagan Trojan Horse brought us division inside of division, divide and conquer. We're conquered. A cop kills an unarmed black man, woman or child and the video goes viral, he gets a paid two week vacation. Our government legislates against us, the judicial system decides against us. The corporate takeover of our government throughout the land regards "we the people" the enemy. Our resources are being drained from us into Swiss etc banks, shrinking the middle class into the working class, all of us the peasant class, a Mad Max world. I see this happening and what can I do? Read a book, advance an art project, have a nap, write, watch a movie? I've come to a place where I laugh at hope in myself. I can see now that civilization as we know it really is going completely away. It is at once incredibly interesting and dispiriting. Democracy gone away is not the end of it. In my lifetime I saw the pattern of anti-intellectualism in American life go all the way to anti-paying attention and then to anti-democracy. Them people up in Washington, they got things under control. Like my friend Lorne Campbell never dreamed he would live to see the Berlin wall go down, I never believed I'd see popular police state in America, though saw it coming since LBJ. I didn't take into account the full power of television. In my lifetime, I've seen television become American culture. I've seen the obvious become mystery. I warned you. I'm not in a good mood. However, I'll wake in the morning with a new light. Fare forward, voyager. Just had to ride this one out.       

home on waterfall road

*

THE TROJAN HORSE AND GLADE VALLEY ROAD

brice marden 

The sky is turning light. The sun is not yet up, but on its way. Mind realizes I've not slept all night and am wider awake than if I had slept. In the bed writing a short story in my mind until telling self I need some sleep. I turned the radio on all night BBC. Most often, the chatter sends me into sleep within two minutes. Not this time. Listened to Putin's popularity rating, republicans continuing attempted murder of Obama care, assassination one of their specialties, smoke-screen news covering up the real news. My interest in the news is waning fast. I've come to see that even the network news that is not the Fake channel gives misleading news. In this time when the Fake channel has made news into absurd fiction, the other channels follow suit wanting to compete for the  most exciting presentation. All of them gloss over and cover up police state. NPR cannot be counted on anymore for news. I listen to NPR, now that the Koch Bros own it, like I watch cartoons. I take what I hear for smokescreen of what I don't hear. Much talk about how terrible it is for the families of the two NY cops shot down. There is never a mention of how terrible it is for families of unarmed young black men killed every day someplace in USA by cops. Their families come up and they're discredited, made to look like jungle bunnies that rob dumpsters. Gradually, I'm learning to pay the news little mind. I like to watch the processes, how things work out, to read the patterns of the political trends. I'm learning to withdraw emotional attachment to one side or the other. I can't involve self with any kind of attachment. 

brice marden

Watched a two and a half hour documentary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt I found to be good history. I was paying attention to how he worked a crowd, his charisma, his intelligence, noting that everything he put in place, the John Birch right wing party, funded by Koch Bros and others of like mind, has fastidiously  been dismantled since the Trojan Horse Reagan of 1980. We the people are now what I've come to think of as citizen criminals. It means, for me, that we are now regarded criminals because we are citizens. Cops have become police state bullies, as always happens with police state. Their role is to serve and protect the rich and the corporations "too big to fail." We the people don't even have a lobbyist. In 2005 this police state Supreme Court declared the police are only about "law enforcement," not to serve and protect. Then why do they still have the fake slogan on their car doors? I don't want to think about this anymore, though when I see it spelled out in front of my face, it's difficult to ignore. I don't want to ignore context and how things work. I'd say this comes under the world we live in the way it is. This is the political world I live in. I have to accept it as the nature of that kind of reality, the way things are, be aware of this fake reality as such and let it go by, not be of it. This has been a problem all my life, how to live in a fake world where denial is the culture of white people.

brice marden

I went to bed after writing the above, too weary to go on. Slept all day. Up now at sunset. Stayed up too late last night, drove home between 12:30 and 1:00, then couldn't sleep. Driving at night has begun to mess with my eyes. Glade Valley road, crooked as as a running snake, mostly has little to no cars. Last night, Christmas, I found at least twenty cars on the way home. Headlights blare in my eyes. Looks like everybody has their brights on. Going into a sharp curve with three cars coming through it the other direction, one after the other with bright lights on, can be disorienting. I watch the white line on my side of the road, focus my attention there unconcerned as possible about the oncoming cars. I tend to want to steer too far to the right to avoid them. I tell self, they have to stay in their lane, like I stay in mine. One of them crosses the center line and plows into me, nothing I can do--I'm in my lane. Air bag. Glade Valley road is not a good one to drive fast on. Surprise curves just over the top of a rise that you can't see until you're in them. The first several times on the road I was hitting the brakes often to stay on the road. I've found a good pace at 30-35 mph where the car can flow with the road at this speed, brake seldom, and glide through the curves with no problem. I feel more relaxed driving at this rate than going up to fifty in a short stretch, then hit the brakes to go through a curve at 20. I've driven GV road in every weather condition by now, including snow and ice. I've learned how to drive the road, making it an easy drive, rolling with the road itself. I resisted the road for quite awhile, until I learned to flow with it instead of attempting to drive it like other roads. Used to think it a hateful road, and now I like driving it, find it relaxing.

brice marden

The kids were happy with their presents. Vada had been center of attention all day, first half with daddy's family, second half with mama's family. I went by after they'd done all the family get-togethers. Vada had been buried in presents. She loved her little earrings. First thing she said after she saw them, "What else do you have for me?" Cheyenne took the back seat all day, was quiet and had gone inward. She loved her dragonfly necklace, put it on immediately. Later, when we had a moment together, I said to her, "The necklace is all yours, only yours, not anybody else's." She said, "What if I come back and it's not in the box?" I said, "You taking it home?" She said, "No, leaving it here." I assured her it will be safe at daddy's house. I felt so deeply for her having to be in the background Christmas day, all attention on Vada. The situation is such I'd like to snap my fingers and make it right for her, but can't do it. I was grateful to Carole for suggesting jewelry. At the end of the day, Cheyenne received her prize. There isn't much I can do for Cheyanne to help her issues. It made my day to give Cheyenne something that meant so much to her. I went into it wanting her to have something she could value, a nice piece of jewelry, of which she has none, By the end, I was almost sorry I'd deepened her sadness, gave her something to worry about somebody taking. I saw that she is working things out for herself. She's learned she has to take care of herself. I'd like her to grow up to be an independent woman. I feel like her experiences in this part of her life are pointing her in that direction. I'd like, in what time I have left, to encourage in Cheyanne her own inclination to look out for herself

brice marden himself

*

  

THE LAND OF FORBIDDEN WORDS

Have been questioning what to write about. Don't want to bring readers down by being honest and don't want to misrepresent my meaning by pretending to be up when I'm not. My being, from blood vessels to aura, rejects s'posed-to for s'posed-to sake. Comes under grandmother saying, "What will people think?" I want to ask her what people? Everybody will think what they think and it will be about themselves, not me, whatever it is they think. I'm torn between two worlds, one going out and one coming in. The one going out is familiar, the one coming in is not. The police brutality I've been seeing lately disturbs me. It's only new because cellphones with video cameras are new recording the brutality that has always been going on. Ask anyone black. Since the "patriot act," we-the-people is a concept of the past. We the people have no recourse with "law enforcement" invasions or executions. White people subject to police brutality are enraged, while the black people know to take it as the way things are. I did not realize that black people were in the cops' cross-hairs to the degree they are. Every day an unarmed black man, woman or child is killed. He had a gun. I was afraid for my life. Meaning: it was a nigger. That's all the evidence needed to clear the cop of "wrong-doing." It's looking like our judicial system is dead set on eliminating the black people by way of prison or killing. 

Sometimes when I read Cornell West or hear him in an interview, he surprises me, but never shocks me. I did not understand, before the Ferguson, Missouri, murders, how consciously black people are targeted by "law enforcement." That cops kill is now policy. The closest to punishment they're given is a paid vacation--lay low a few weeks until the press forgets about it. White corporate media looks the other way, white people pay it no mind. In the world of white people, black people don't figure at all, except it's unacceptable in white middle class circles to say nigger. Not that black people matter to them. It's a code indicating status. It's about self and has nothing to do with black people. Cornell West surprises me when he reveals what black people are thinking. It's not shocking, because it's what an oppressed people would be thinking. White people keeping black people down is denied in white circles and a way of life in black circles. Black people, rightfully for self-preservation, know to keep their thinking to their own circles. Thus stretching the racial divide even wider. This just one of the many divisions widening in our time. I saw a video clip today from a courtroom where a black woman was in the witness stand talking to and about the cop that shot her granddaughter in the head while sleeping, after breaking into her house, and wrongfully accusing her of resisting the thug invasion. My heart wrung dry for the woman wailing openly in public with a courtroom full of white people looking at her, the stone faces of statues. Totally indifferent. But nobody will say nigger. That's disrespectful. 

If you want to know what the cops are thinking, listen to Rush Limbaugh. Angry. Angry cause the enwords are living on welfare white folks are paying into. Yer taxes is going to pay enwords not to work, make em lazier'n ever. I was thinking in the UK they have a law about hate speech in media, so Rupert Murdoch crossed the sea where corporate control wants hate media. Keeps the masses divided, keeps them hating each other while they all get fleeced. The cops there kill very few. I won't venture that the Brits are less racist than Americans, but they are much less violent about it. Also, they're not a gun culture. I don't want to play the game of one place is better or worse than another. Though we live in the most violent culture on earth, I am able to live my life in peace, except for the violence that comes through the news. I saw a preview, a trailer, of a movie a few days ago with a title I made it a point not to notice, guns pointing, guns shooting, guns threatening, gunshots echoing. Fast forward. I do like the occasional men-with-guns movie, but only as a genre, now and then. The little tv I see a week, Sunday afternoon races, football, basketball, baseball, golf, commercials, does something to my head, especially the commercials, the interruptions by commercials. I see them, but turn them off in my head, a fiction I like to believe for self-justification. After seeing a Burger King commercial, driving through town, seeing the Burger King building, the commercial gives it something of a golden glow. It bothers me to see the fakery of corporate media creating a fake world that gives propaganda reality. "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." Spoken by William Casey, 1981, CIA director. Their program is accomplished. We are there. 

I've been snapping in my mind today at people who want everything to be sweet and lovely, blue skies every day, the bluebird of happiness flying by, perish a negative thought. Positive thinking is only half of it. I'm laughing at self thinking of the Carter Family, Keep On The Sunny Side, and Jimmy Martin's Sunny Side of the Mountain, how I love these songs for their meaning, understanding the sunny side of the mountain is where things grow best. I tell myself to forget about cops killing black people, and white people now too. The only thing it tells me is the police hate us. We read that loud and clear. And they don't like the hate that's coming back at them. Makes them hate us all the more. Justice isn't even a word anymore. I tell myself to quit thinking about such as this. And I do. Yet it lurks in the back of my mind when I'm acting like it's not there. I tell myself it's not my concern, I'm neither black nor a cop. However, what it tells me is when they decide to put me in the cross-hairs, I have no recourse either. To ignore this is to ignore police state. What else can I do? They have the guns and the law literally on their side. In this time, I am a criminal just by being a citizen. I think it's called fascism, another word it's not polite to use in public. The other F-word. This is the north side of the mountain, the part that's in the shade when the sunny side of the mountain is in full sun and I'm thinking it's wonderful. It is. And it's also the other. It's both. It's the yin and yang, balance. Though I like the peace where I am, I still live in this landscape of commerce and state that I live in. It's the broader landscape. I cannot deny it. Have no reason to deny it. The sunny side has no meaning without the dark side. The dark side has no meaning without the sunny side. Sorrow for my black brothers and sisters overwhelms me in a time when this understanding of the racist nature of the justice system is new to me. I knew it was racist before, but not like what I see now. Even the pope can't do anything about it. All I know to do is not be part of the problem. I can't change the justice system. It's the world I live in. I don't have to be of it. I continue to go my own way. 

*

  

GRUMPY OLD BASTARD AT LARGE

wayne white

I believed I could get through this Ferguson (St Louis), Missouri, incident without feeling compelled to flip my two pennies onto the gaming table. At first, it was just another white cop kills a black teenage boy, a regular occurrence like young white guy blows away a classroom of kids someplace. It's never certain where it will happen next, but it is certain it will happen. One of the first images to come to mind about the Ferguson incident is the police overzealous SWAT numbers and equipment. Talking heads are saying it looks like police state. We've never seen this before. Boston marathon bombing? Anybody remember that? I was most struck by the immediate appearance of an army of cops that swept Boston like ants on sugar. Where did they all come from? A big SWAT operation with the assistance of tv, them saying people were happy to oblige them to go through their homes a SWAT team with machine guns and grenades. What do you say to a SWAT team at the door saying let us in by opening the door or we break the door down and kill your dog? Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde comes to mind. They went to medieval walled cities and told them to give the Mongols whatever wealth they had in gold and other valuable treasures. Give it over peaceably and we let you live. Refuse and we kill all of you, take what we want and burn down your city. I see talking head after talking head saying of Ferguson, we've never seen such a display of police state. Statistics coming to the surface now are alarming of SWAT break-in entry for next to nothing, killing people, even white people now, and saying, "He had a gun." Shooting to kill has become such a pattern, it tells on training. I've seen this coming on since the Nixon law and order fear propaganda, the beginning of white corporate backlash soon after the Civil Rights period. 

wayne white

I see "pundits" asking how we can turn this progression into police state around. I can't help but laugh when I hear that. I know they see it. I also know they are subject to corporate restraints by way of producer. MSNBC is as much a business as Faux tv. They just appeal to different markets, the presentation guided by fear. Even Democracy Now and Truthout, that seem to get it, use fear of police state to rally attention around their side of the divide. Our Ferguson protests and police show of force make fabulous tv for white shareholders: keepin the enwords down. Bright lights, smoke, rolling teargas cannisters, reporters muscled and arrested, a SWAT army keeping America safe for the whites. At the risk of blowing your white middle class mind, I've been seeing for some years that the white working class men of USA, coast to coast, border to border, believe "the nigger war" is imminent, the same as the "Christians" believe "the rapture" is near. The black people know this. White working class people know it too. It's what they are arming themselves toward, not to shoot each other. Black people all over the country are in alarm. The decisions made by white public officials have gone toward escalating the police action in Ferguson day by day so consistently the pattern exposes purpose. Even George Wallace did not provoke black people to this degree. Another young black unarmed guy will be shot by a cop with intent to kill, knowing he will get away with it and be a hero among the white brethren in racism. The cops of that community will come out a SWAT army to put down demonstrations, the protests will grow, the SWAT presence will grow. The talking heads will say incredulously, We've never seen anything like this. Black people say, yes we have, yes we have, yes we have, and the interviewer changes the subject. More blame the victim talk from white male authoritarians. 

wayne white

The black people are saying we want to be treated like people instead of zoo animals running loose. The absence of white authorities addressing the issue tells me what they see is a bunch of monkeys down from the trees hooting and screeching in their faces. If one bites you, you might get rabies. Something else I'm seeing, or so I interpret from what I see, the cops are scared shitless. No accidents in their underpants. The hacker collective called Anonymous has struck the Ferguson police hard, and the arch-enemy of white supremacism, the ACLU, is in town. Al Jazeera reporters and cameras. Ay-Rabs. The members of the SWAT force have been listening to Limbaugh for most of their lives and Faux news. My sense is that they feel cornered, not by a bunch of monkeys, but a threat to their own belief system, which is sacred to them all the way to church. Their zeal tells me this is what they believe they are standing guard for. They may be seen in shame on tv, but being on tv is their pride. They do not see human beings. They see the enemy. Their face shields, their bullet proof vests, their machine guns aimed at you, identify themselves the enemy, not people either. This isn't about people, human beings or whatever we're called. It's about belief systems. The police side doesn't seem able to see they are creating a tremendous resistance throughout the tv audience. It's like they're acting as a circle of wagons around the Bank. They're the cavalry in Indian Country. They're acting on orders from Headquarters. They're doing their job. Another wedge in the systematic divide-and-conquer phase of control. Can this be turned around? Not until Headquarters OKs it. It is too obvious a step in a systematic progression. Every day I see this a public relations police action to rally the well-armed white racists behind the police state for holding back a stampede of criminals and white liberals--same differ'nce. I feel like this ongoing standoff is a PR stunt rallying white racists, announcing to us by way of evening "news" we have police state similar to the Supreme Court announcing the end of Democracy overriding the popular vote. 

wayne white 

The step by step divide-and-conquer progression looks awfully much like intent to provoke more such protests in other cities where it is inevitable a cop will kill another unarmed black kid with his hands up saying don't shoot. It's like your girlfriend saying don't shoot and doing it anyway. She provoked it by saying don't. Put down after put down of black protest assures the white people the police have the black people under control. Good press. Good support. The press about the black kid is the same as the press about Trayvon Martin and others; discredit the victim, make him look on tv like white society is better off without him. Job well done, fellers. The indifference to the feelings and concerns of the black people who have lived in police state all their lives is as epidemic now as cops shooting with intent to kill. Six years of a black man in the White House has been enough time for the propagandists to generate so much racial hatred it's become explosive. I was thinking yesterday that if a hole the size of a quarter were to open in the president's security, he's dead as soon as the hole appears. And I remember one of Indira Gandhi's most trusted bodyguards sacrificed his own life to assassinate her in front of the other bodyguards, who immediately shot him down. A black president has been used for the focus of hate by the propagandists of white racism long enough to brew some serious mass hate. Being white rednecks, the cops in St Louis are as aware of the coming "nigger war" as every white working class man I know. A sensible person does not want to see this happen. The people passing orders down the chain of command to the white cops to provoke the black people of Ferguson are visibly not sensible people. They're functioning from a belief system. What color is the problem? Black. What color is the solution? Red. Black people have seen this coming, yet they appear to me to be in collective shock seeing white racism take such a militant stance so quickly, so blatantly, and so without meaningful censure from higher up.

wayne white

*

     

HOMELANDIA: MISSION ACCOMPISHED

 

adolph gottlieb

Driving home from a quick trip to town today for catfood and carrots, news on the radio, I reminded self with mild vehemence to let go of all, or as much as possible, concern about our American government. I used to think it was important to pay attention. I can't anymore. I still do. Today's news of the Supremes deciding against the rights of we-the-people pushed my buttons again. I tell myself, all the more reason to stop paying attention. I can do nothing whatsoever about it. The Supremes have become so predictable they reward attention with boredom. I have seen the progression to this place through most of my adult life, specifically since 1980. No longer will I say "We" in relation to government. I will say "They." We is me and other individuals. They is the takeover of our government by international corporations. They is not we. We the people are out. The Supremes taught us that voting is a sham. Since then they've been telling us, like everything else in America, now called "the homeland," they're only in it for the money. And the money is not coming from me or anybody I know. Protest, resistance, does nothing but get women beat up by cops and put in prison for assault. This new name, The Homeland, is evidently the name to replace USA or America in police state. Our new constitution is the Homeland Security Act. Remember where it came from? 9/11. I wonder why nobody has questioned where it came from, like nobody asks what happened to the third building that collapsed an hour after the two towers. The Homeland Security Act was delivered to our self-serving politicians in the night to be voted on in the morning, a document too long for even a staff to read in a few hours. It was written, edited, printed, bound, boxed and ready to go when the towers fell, by surprise. The document had been composed in secret over a period of several years, and waited in boxes for the opportune moment nobody saw coming.

adolph gottlieb

Every time I bring this question up in conversation I'm accused of "conspiracy theory." I hear it in my head as I write these words. I'm just looking at a few confirmed facts. No theory about it. I'm also not watching corporate television, so what do I know? I'm outside the propaganda loop, missing most of it. Propaganda is why I stay away from television and commercial radio. My lifetime started before television. I've seen television come in as a new marvelous invention. Even in the Fifties it was used for right-wing propaganda. The propaganda element became a state of mind we're living now. Propaganda has been found to work so well our politicians no longer represent us except in behavior. My intent to stop paying attention is frustrated by realizing I pay attention to stay abreast of the waning of our constitutional rights and basic human rights, step by step, by way of the Supremes and ignorant politicians in it for the money. This is the only real progression happening in our government. I grew up being told the Land of the Free is above propaganda. That was propaganda, too. America was the land of the free. The Homeland is not subject to the traditional belief system. I tell myself to pay no attention, but my attention for several years has been about self-preservation through progression into police state. There is no turning back. And the Kenyan-American did not do it. The mission is accomplished, police state is now. The surprise for me is seeing the Supreme Court systematically dismantle our imperfect democracy. However, it is also not a surprise. White man is in crisis. White man has proven over and over he has no use for democracy where women and other races are concerned. Now that Whites and Others in the population are 50/50, white man is freaking out, dismantling democracy to maintain power.

adolph gottlieb

I've been wringing and twisting over the question of whether or not to go on voting. Voting is active participation in a belief system I have abandoned. I tell myself to stay out of it. I see how desperately the propagandists are working against us and I wonder if voting might, after all, have some relevance. The efforts to nullify our votes tells me the propagandists believe voting matters. They don't want me to vote, so vote I must. My vote in a 75% right wing county and state only matters as one digit in the trash basket. Yet, I feel compelled to say by way of statistics with one miniscule digit, I want democracy. I vote just to say I want democracy. Our democracy has been imperfect all the way along, and there's no way it can be perfect in an imperfect world. I came up in the belief that we are continually working on the democracy to make it more representative. Along came the voice of Death Valley Days and put a stop to the progression and ultimately, democracy. I've thought this not to the good, but have rethought it too. If the democracy was so weak a bunch of wingnuts could tear it apart in front of everybody, it wasn't worth saving. It was not democracy even when we believed it was. Our government has always been a plutocracy, oligarchy, and now police state. I have begun to see it a good thing to be done with the old democracy. Fascism has a naturally short lifespan. Maybe it is best to sweep away our old plutocratic, oligarchic pretense of democracy. This is the time all traditions are going away, whether we like it or not. Democracy has been a tradition in our belief system. Evidently, American democracy had to be shut down from within by its own cancer. Maybe when police state has run its course and fades away of its own excesses, "he had a gun," a new form of democracy may be constructed. I won't see it in this lifetime.

adolph gottlieb

We'll never have democracy until we are done with racism. Scandinavian governments actually serve their people, somewhat. They stand as models to the world of societies able to live in peace. They only have one race. Europe looks down their noses at us for our racial issues. Even today, two-thirds of a century postwar, the remaining Jews are the niggers of Europe. They're not free of racism. Africa is not free of racism. The shrinking planet, economic international cooperation, has brought the whole world face-to-face with racism and religionism. It brings out the worst in us. We're dividing again. Racism has always been with us, just taken for granted as right, tradition. It's in our faces now that racism is not right and the world is in alarm. Big matter to deal with. There is no turning back. The American civil rights era only mattered legally, and not very well. Our racism has been glossed over by putting black people in commercials, electing a few people to public office, and political correctness. Black people are killed with impunity by law enforcement and as many as space allows are kept in the largest prison system on earth. Racism is a problem. The next century has a good chance of being as violent as the last century over racial and religious issues. The Baptist fundamentalists of America are at war with the Islamic fundamentalists of the Middle East, making vast fortunes for international corporations that keep wars going for their own bottom line. I've wondered as long as I can remember what is so important about living by the bottom line. I can't help but want to look a little higher than the bottom line. But that's just me. All the more reason to divorce myself from paying attention to a belief system I don't believe.

adolph gottlieb himself

 

 

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THE VIEW IN A DARK TIME

Just off the telephone with my friend Kathryn. We always have lively conversation. She's taking care of her mother with dementia. I saw Kathryn was on facebook, telling me mama was asleep and Kathryn was free. Time to call. We tend to talk about funny occurrences or news that's hilarious. Of course, hilarious news is tragic news we laugh at because we have no say in anything beyond our own immediate decisions. We pay attention to the news like watching the Howdy Doody Show with Mr Bluster, Dilly-Dally, Princes Summer Fall Winter Spring, Clarabel the clown. For Mr Bluster we have Mitch McConnell, for Dilly-Dally Ted Cruz, for Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring Michelle Bachmann, and W Bush continues as Clarabel the clown. In the past I'd get excited about having such as we have for "representatives" and leaders who neither represent nor lead. A lifetime of seeing moronic people in government satisfies my questioning of how legislation in DC and state capitals got the way it has become. I used to wonder where a nation that only concerned itself with money could go, up or down or stay the same. Right and wrong are of no significance now. Truth and honesty are laughed at as naïve. Respect isn't even a word anymore. Now people ask why trust is important. I saw an article last week of W Bush painting. He is taking lessons with somebody who is teaching him well. He has begun including in pictures of himself the dead Iraqi child who is with him day and night wherever he goes. He has a specter living with him, attached to his soul. He talks about it like it's the latest clever thing. I don't like to think about him, don't like his image in my head. I've been an anti-fascist since childhood, so I'm automatically not disposed toward him. It actually warmed my heart to see he had drawn the ghost of a dead Iraqi child to himself. After all the agony and death he has directly caused to so many million people at home and abroad, I like seeing karmic justice has not failed him.

 

 

The justice of the law has failed us in Dubya's case. But karmic justice is with him. Sometimes it feels good to see karmic justice take place, like in the case of Roy Cohn, who destroyed so many lives with Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. All three of them self-destructed. Cohn came down with AIDS and died in infamy. McCarthy drank himself to death. Nixon self-destructed and went out in mortal shame. Johnson went out broken. Bush 1 set the stage to see Bush 2 destroy the family name. I used to wonder about karma concerning the people who make decisions to turn the military-industrial-complex to the task of giving the American economy a boost. A war that is not a war, torture that is not torture, to annihilate a small defenseless nation of poor people for the benefit of American corporations, stockholders and billionaires. And jobs. Shit jobs that undermine your humanity and don't pay near enough for it, but jobs. I've lived long enough to have witnessed by keeping up with current events as history much that even my most jaundiced mind could not have anticipated. Attitude today seems like police state is a surprise. Even Rachel Maddow acts like it's a surprise. It has been coming on at least since the Fifties. Vietnam was never a surprise. Iraq was no surprise. They are true to pattern. The big one for me has  been the popular repeal of Democracy followed by popular police state, accomplished by propaganda. My friend John who is 101 said the most significant change he saw in his lifetime was the emergence of the salad. It doesn't seem like much, but give it a five second thought and it becomes an enormous change. It wasn't very long ago Americans didn't drink wine except Mad Dog 20/20, Wild Irish Rose and Thunderbird. Suddenly Americans are drinking so much wine the vineyards of the world are stressed, can't make it fast enough. Both grocery stores in Sparta have big wine sections. The coffee shop sells wine. It wasn't very many years ago coffee was Maxwell House, Folger or JFG. You can even find Sumatran coffee at the grocery store in Sparta now. People used to go to bars to drink beer. Now we go to bars to drink coffee.

 

 

 I like to back away from the social scene and see it from afar for what we call the big picture. I like both the big picture and the little picture, both the forest and the trees. Since paying attention to the last half a century as it was happening, seeing it as history, the big picture, I have a fair understanding of patterns in American government behavior, such that new events fall into place. Joe Biden made me laugh when he went to Ukraine to tell Putin, Don't do as I do, do as I say. That is so an American attitude and so blatantly naïve to think it would have meaning outside USA, I couldn't help but laugh. He's a politician, he says what his handlers tell him to say, following script. The news has become slap-stick comedy. It is fitting Comedy Central has the most insightful news programs on tv or radio. It's refreshing to see Limbaugh on the wane, and even more refreshing to see a pope who talks about love, compassion, empathy, caring. Did that ever come as a voice in the wilderness. Yes, we are in a dark time. Democracy in America did not survive it. There is the principle that it is darkest before dawn that gives me confidence this cycle is about to turn to the light. But I'm not going to hold my breath. I won't see it in this lifetime. Seeing the cycle of what we're going through collectively as Americans and as world, it tells me the democracy we had, which was not really democracy, had to go. It was an oligarchy before the latest university study made headlines saying it is. Perhaps in this time of traditions falling away, American oligarchic democracy needed to change. To make way for the new. After a cycle of assault on what we had of democracy by the Reagan Junta, maybe the next cycle will erect  a new building on the site of the old one that was torn down. This democracy didn't work, so tear it down and start a new one. When I look at it from afar, I see the patterns and the cycles. It ceases to be aggravating. In close, seeing only the short term, it turns frightening in a hurry. 

 

 

This guy, Cliven Bundy, he's just an American white man. He's not extreme racist or any of what he's being accused of in prosecutorial terms only. He's a white man. He's no surprise. He's just ego-centric enough to say publicly what white men tend to say privately. He's been listening to Rush Limbaugh for so many years, he's just spewing what he was taught in the name of God and country. Hilarious, him carrying a big American flag riding a horse and saying he does not recognize the United States Government. White man. It's perfectly logical to him. He's not being outrageous. White man is in crisis at the moment when Others and Blacks are tipping the scale, inching toward 51%. I look at this Limbaugh hate phenomenon from the inside, up close, and it makes my blood pressure go up, makes me want to write outrageous sentences like I think they would matter. Then I look at someone I know who thinks outrage matters, and laugh at myself. I pull back to my home, to the world of people I live among, my neighbors, people I know, people I care about, Caterpillar napping in the other room, the donkeys in their meadow, my relationship with God, the people and pets I have loved who are gone. I return to Now, in the chair I'm sitting on like a drummer pounding the keyboard. This is where I belong. This is where I am. People in the news like Bundy I have come to see as cartoons of themselves. Cartoons are funny. I laugh when I think about them or talk about them. People I know who are sensible never show on the news. It seems like the sensible people have faded away. But I maintain the sensible people are alive and well. By sensible, I mean something like they don't let their opinions rule their lives. Opinions do rule our lives to some degree, but a sensible person does not take a rifle to a synagogue parking lot and start shooting people because he doesn't like Jews. I believe I could guess with a fair degree of accuracy that he's never known a Jew. He evidently thinks drag queens are special, having been arrested for having sex with one in the back seat of his car. This is what I mean by not sensible. Nobody in my world is that kind of crazy. We're crazy because we have a sense of humor and like to laugh and cut up. I prefer the world of fun crazy.

 

 

 

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BELOW THE RADAR

In conversations with people I know, I hear more and more from people who most often don't talk about current events querying how to live now that democracy is gone, recession is turning into depression for the middle class, and everything we hear from government is so obviously false we don't even think about it anymore. The working class has been in depression since 1980. In this time you don't even mention the working class. The ruling class regards working class as the enemy and media keeps a lid on it. You never hear "working class" on the news. It's always middle class. However, when working class gets politically active they want police state and attach teabags to their hats. Challenged for education, the working class is so easy to manipulate they bore republican strategists who laugh at them. Obama has disappointed liberals so much by now they've lost hope for him. Used to be he had liberals for his apologists. Now, there's not much apologizing for his absence of interest in the black people, as Obama evidently identifies with his white half only he is able to see. A black man raised by white people thinks white and talks down to black people. Every time I've heard clips from his speeches to black audiences, he basically tells them to get up off their asses and get a job. Looking at it from his logic, paying any attention to black issues would only go against him. He already has the black vote and he'd lose much of his white base if he gave attention to black issues. As it turns out, he's just another republican in black face.

I and many others believed Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rice belonged on trial for war crimes, crimes against the American people. Obama is now saying Bush wasn't such a bad president. He apologizes for the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice administration, enforces the fascist constitution, the "patriot act," and is not undoing the police state BCRR set up. He makes police state obvious. It's been under cover creeping up on us. Now that it's here, it's out in the open, and the president is part of it. Everything we grew up being taught in school about our great democracy is false. It's a belief system from the past. The rest of the world is watching the fall of the American Empire, glad to see it go, but quaking because the economies are intertwined. Naturally, the American Empire became the world's police force when the Soviet Union fell. USA is showing itself to be a tyrant declaring pre-emptive wars on powerless poor countries that can't defend themselves---to stop them from destroying America if we don't kill at least a million of their people first, in the name of peace and liberty. US government cannot be serious saying they want to attack Syria because the government there killed a few hundred people. The US government doesn't give a shit about the dead people. They are the smokescreen. The US government is not a moral entity. It's run by corporate mind: money and power.

For some years I've been wondering how to live in this downward spiral created by the Reagan Revolution, seeing that it is not going to reverse any time soon. Not with Obama. Not with democrats. The democrats role in the Reagan Revolution is enabler. It's one party we have, the republican party. I fuss with myself looking for how to live. I have to put democracy out of my mind as an American institution, have to face it squarely that the international corporations took our government by coup, November 22, 1963, and keep us believing democracy is our state in transition to police state. Their propaganda has been so good, they have the American people wanting police state. Now that I know we are in police state and the American people are by citizenship the enemy, how do I live? In my school years I often wondered what it was like in a totalitarian country where people have limited rights. I found Gao Xingjian's ONE MAN'S BIBLE a very clear picture of living under the dark cloud of police state. You watch what you say to anybody. There, they become sheep for self-preservation; here, we become sheep out of indifference to all but the propaganda speaker in the living room, where even the laughter is not spontaneous.

All I know to do is hunker down like living in a house with a tyrant, bear with it and keep what we call a low profile. I think profile here has to do with police records. Meaning: don't attract attention. I'm approaching the end of my life in this body quite naturally, and wouldn't care a great deal if taken out for police state reasons. I recall in a film many years ago a guy about to be shot by Nazis said, "I'd rather die than live in the world you created." No shit. The formula for successful living in this world applies in police state as well as in democracy: no desires. I still have a carry-over in my belief system that the citizen matters. My mind knows better, but I've been trained from childhood to believe it was a naturally imperfect democracy, then watch it through the course of my life become a corporate police state. I still laugh when I think about the Patriot Act of 1,000+ pages, outlined, written, edited, printed, bound, boxed, delivered just in time for 9/11/01. Good timing. Isn't that called serendipity? The title tells you it's the work of scoundrels, in case anybody wondered. In my youth, it looked like great things were ahead for my country. Then the Reaganista coup of 1980 began the dismantling of our court system and democracy itself, laying the ground for police state, consciously with intent. This is not an unforeseen byproduct of the good of the people. The Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice coup of 2000 put an end to democracy and set police state in motion. Obama is playing his role like an A+ student trying harder on account of his racial disadvantage. His handlers will have him laughed at yet over the Nobel Peace Prize.

I see he's playing tough guy with Putin. I wouldn't advise him do that. Obama has a good mind. Putin has a better mind. Putin could kick Obama's ass from here to kingdom come, both physically and mentally. Obama is also POTUS. He does not represent himself, and he is conscious of it. When it comes down to living out the rest of my life in police state, it is time to rethink. I'm not one to lie down in front of a tank. I'm more like the Chinese that accept the inevitable and stay out of the way. That's an aspect of living rurally, out of the way, that I really like in this time. Jets and other military planes have been flying over the mountains in profusion the last weeks, more every day, practicing flying below the radar. This happens every time a new war is cranking up. It is telling me the next war is in the works. So I'm looking at an economy going under and the question of whether or not a new quagmire war on the next defenseless poor country in the Middle East that Saudi Arabia wants shut down. With an economy based in war, what does a country do when its economy heads downward. War. What is it good for? Keeping the economy going. Even if this was a democracy, I couldn't change any of it. For one thing I don't have the money for lobbyists and gratuities. The political world is not for me. The best thing I can do is stay at home and not concern myself with democracy or any of that old Enlightenment nonsense. The founding fathers were left wing radicals. Delete.

 

 

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WHEEL OF FORTUNE TURNING

all paintings by feng dakang, china

Every day I hear concerns on the news that NSA is surveilling our email accounts and facebook accounts, and everything else. I wonder whence this pose of naiveté. I took it for granted from the beginnings of emails and facebook that they were available for government surveillance and were at least set to key words like bomb. I've taken it for granted that this daily blog is surveilled for key words from the beginning. I went into it aware of cyber surveillance. I tend not to use key words that ring alarm buzzers. I read and hear indignant accusations of government for spying on us. We the people are the enemy, anyway that's how the rich, our elected "representatives," the corporate world and the Supreme Court view us. By regarding us the enemy, they are making themselves our enemy and they're now working against us to drain us of the last drop of our blood/energy/money. That we have been subjects of surveillance has been the case all my life. In the Fifties when we talked on the telephone, it was characteristic of everyone to suspect a crackle on the phone line a sign of surveillance, then it was called wire-tapping, and sometimes we would say things to insult whoever might be listening. Of course, no one was listening to teenage chatter over the phone. Then, they were interested in communists, now it's terrorists.

feng dakang

I can't help but think it a fake naiveté to pretend it's a surprise we're being surveilled. It won't be long before interstate traffic is patrolled by drones that just happen to gather other information too. Police state is here and it doesn't appear to me that surprise is authentic. It is a popular police state. I believe Marx said that if change doesn't come by legislation, it will come by revolution. Legislation is on HOLD and revolution is in the air. Not like in the Sixties when every band was required to have a song about revolution and it meant nothing, but the Occupy movement and all that goes with it is becoming a problem. The suppression of the movement by corporate media, including NPR controlled by republicans, is making it into an internet underground that is growing all over the world. Big change is at hand. Big change is happening. As always, our government is the last to get it. Government has become a behemoth with a life and mind of its own like Hal the spaceship computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Over the last 30+ years government has been our enemy. If you've ever paid your liability insurance for the car a day late, you know what I mean. The State of North Carolina has already informed me with certainty that it doesn't give a shit about me, only wants my money. All I can say is, that's all right---it runs both ways. Since I was informed by the State of NC of my status, I see NC as lines on a map and that's it. No emotional identification.

feng dakang

I have a feeling it would be a good thing to withdraw my interest in what government is doing. I've learned it has nothing to do with we-the-people except as the enemy. All I can do is accept and go on. The world of the people I live among is far more interesting than the news. Our political parties have minimalized to the not very bright vs the truly ignorant. It has reached such a low it isn't worth paying attention to. They say if you don't pay attention you're not participating in democracy. Well, we don't have democracy, the interest of we-the-people is nothing of consideration except for polls that inform the manipulators, the propagandists. I always hang up when I find it's a poll on the phone. I don't care to participate. I don't care to hear about Sarah Palin, for or against, and a long list of the others. They only make me puke when I hear them talk or read something retarded they said. That these people win elections tells me republican gerrymandering over the last 30+ years has successfully shut down democracy. Or that half the American population identifies with stupid. That's the part I find scary. So easy to manipulate they're boring for the propagandists.

feng dakang

The people around me are so much more interesting than our present run of politicians. Yet, I don't recall a time when they were better. There used to be the occasional bright light, like Fulbright and Moynihan, not many. Every president I've admired as a man was annihilated by relentless republican dirty tricks, starting with Kennedy. It's time to listen to more music. I like hearing news from Africa on BBC in the night when I'm up late. I like being aware of what's happening in Syria now and Turkey. I'm curious about China, how it is evolving. China is evolving now while USA is devolving. We are in rapid devolution. China is moving forward. We're moving backward. The wheel of fortune is turning. We're about ruling the world. China is about doing business with the world. We can't do business with other countries without controlling interest. China doesn't do that, so the developing countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East turn there for business. China does not have historical interest in expansion or the Western urge to rule the world. USA made a mess of its time at the top, squandered its wealth and influence. The 20th Century is called the American century. The 21st Century is already China's century. They will have Taiwan back before long and then China will be whole. It has been important to China since the day it became China to be its own version of united states. China means Our Land. When China is whole, I can't imagine a Chinese attempt to rule the world. But that doesn't really mean anything, my imagination. It is what it is and will be what it will be.

feng dakang

 

 



I have noted several times as a kind of refrain that the people I live among are so much more interesting than the people who compose our government. I live among people who work for a living, work at the low wage rate of the Reagan Revolution that froze wages from then to now, thereby running profits way up to pay CEOs multiple millions. We the American people have been easy targets. I won't let myself get involved in any of the political belief systems enough to feel the tug of wanting to do something to make a difference. I discourage that kind of thinking whenever it arises. The only "difference" I can see that I, as an individual digit, a pixel, can make is person to person in the world of my friends and neighbors, to help somebody having a hard time, to be a friend who can be trusted. I don't dare presume to aspire to any more than that. I don't have the last word or the answer to anything. Seeing my baby friend Vada once a week has become something of far greater value than anything to do with political systems. Time spent sitting on the floor with Vada watching her draw or helping her put shoes on is time spent at the apex of possibilities. Right now, at this time in my life, I can't think of anything I regard more valuable than time spent on the floor with Vada, watching her play. In the not too distant past I could not have foreseen saying such a thing now and meaning it from the heart. It tells me my heart is alive and well. In that way I can say my life has been a success.   

feng dakang

 

 

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