VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN THE NEWS

The news has become so objectionable with Ebola as something to fear, another in the never-ending list of fears we cannot live without, I can't listen anymore. It's either proving Obama is the cause of Ebola or proving he is not. Cops kill unarmed people across USA daily, yet we're expected to trust the police state and fear a disease that killed one. Fear Isel or Isis, whichever. Fear immigration of poor people of color. It's kind of Old Testament, fear the Lord thy God. I was raised in that paradigm, fear the Father, fear God, fear the Law, fear Church, fear parents, and be hysterically afraid of Satan, cause he's gonna getcha if ya don't be afraid enough. Love was never an issue. Of course we love, cause we're s'posed to. That's understood. But fear comes first in the s'posed-to list and love is last, down there with no consideration at all. The fundamentalism I grew up in, the same as is purported to be Christian now, was all about fear and nothing about love. Love might be misunderstood by the "common" people to be carnal, and that aint it. So we don't go there, while the preacher is screwing this one and that one, saying, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. The nonsense quoted from fundamentalist politicians is so ridiculous, I can't believe he or she is so free of embarrassment. My estimation of politicians has hit rock bottom and is furiously drilling a hole to take it deeper. Confidence in a politician, a fundamentalist, a cop, is not possible in me anymore. These three have shown themselves incapable of rational thought, which I already knew, but denied, looking to allow for exceptions. Never found any. 

Remember a short time ago the preacher in Kansas screwing a teenage boy to cure him of his homosexuality? Remember the tv evangelist, Jerry Lee Lewis's first cousin, Jimmy Swaggart, he of crocodile tears on tv, who went to whores to peruse and sniff? Talk dirty to me, baby. To touch makes it a sin. Making the people two-fold more children for hell than they, themselves, is not a sin. Nor is hypocrisy. It's tradition. And to complicate the news further, it's election time. The Supremes recently ruled, predictably, lying in a political campaign legal. News? Really? Insurance against lawsuits for republicans. Now white man militias in cammo, carrying assault rifles, are talking of intimidating democrat voters at the polling places, black and tan people, women, profiles, anybody that looks like a Ay-Rab, or appears to be of an IQ above ten. Of course, white men would be free to pass, How y'doin, Bro? In my very most jaundiced thinking pre-1980, I'd have never guessed this would be the nature of the fix we're in during the course of time when everything that never worked became policy. Only thing the news is telling me: This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin through. I had no idea back in 1961 when I turned my attention away from television, how just that separation would separate me so definitively and so distantly from the world I live in. We who read books are the tiniest minority of all, unworthy of notice politically, unfit for consideration socially. I tell myself the absurdity "out there," in DC and Raleigh, is not my world. I don't believe in the entire system anymore. I have no confidence in Capitalism, no confidence in religion, no confidence in police state, no confidence in voting. The Supremes nipped what little confidence I had in voting. That the republican party goes to such ridiculous extremes to inhibit anti-republicans from voting, it makes me think there might be something to it.   

Before 1980, I voted against the worst of the candidates. Only found one to be for in my long history of voting, and he was crucified. Carter. Since 1980, I vote to be one digit that says, I want democracy. Voting has been my act of protest in police state. I know my vote  has no value outside myself. One party or the other, like Ralph Nader said of his direct role in turning the election over to Bush-Cheney, the losers, "the republicans will get us there first." Both parties are marionettes of the billionaires club. The democrat politicians like to pretend they're not in it for the money, we're here for you, while the republican campaign approach is fuck-all-y'all, and it works for them. The entire American political/economic system needs to break down entirely to restructure. As in construction, you want to put up a new building in the place of an old building, the old one must be taken down. Democracy wasn't real democracy before the word was used tongue-in-cheek, anyway. Considering the absence of value in my voting to the point that I fool myself in the act of voting, whatever the justification, I must vote. It is too important to the republican party that I not vote. Like I told the country club woman who said, I bet you voted for o-BA-ma, He's a sharp stick in the republican eye. When I take a moment to vote, it will be motivated only by an opportunity to be a sharp stick in the republican eye, albeit a minuscule grain of beach sand. I doubt the militias will actually appear at the polling sites, taking it for a propaganda sound-bite using the news to inhibit black people from making the effort. I don't even care anymore. I care about like I care who wins a football game. The game was amusing to see, but the outcome is the same, whoever wins, another game tomorrow night. Even though I see it for this is how an Empire crumbles, like reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, witnessing history in action, it continues to be distressing. Better to stop listening to the news than to start a Zoloft addiction.  

I wonder how republican politicians think up the stupid things they're saying, and it doesn't take long to find the answer. The Heritage Foundation. The politicians are scripted to appeal to the ignorant. Considering half the population is below average, they have 50% at the start. Strategy. I cannot participate in this belief system, can't listen to it anymore, don't even want to see pictures of the cast members. I've come to a place where I feel envy toward my friends who pay no attention to the news, don't vote, have never heard of Ted Cruz or Ann Coulter, unaware that democracy is over. At the same time, I'm grateful that I've followed our political system unto my own disillusionment. Disillusionment equals enlightenment. In my enlightenment, I look out the window and see my world, the world I live in. I look around this room and see the world I live in. The donkey meadow, the trees of autumn, a nice day with door open, recent paintings drying, Caterpillar outside lying in a patch of sunlight, the ground drying a little bit after five days and nights of rain. The fog that accompanied the rain made my world into a wonderland. Today, the sunlight makes my world into a wonderland, too. I can't see wasting my attention on the intentionally false when a fly just now flew into a spider web in the window's corner, the spider tying it up using Wonder Woman ropes, and the fly broke free. I am that fly. I broke free of the paralyzing power of the false. It has been amusing along the way, but amusing in a dark way. I am pulling my attention inward to my friends I care about who care about me. I will read in the life of van Gogh, paint when I feel it, write in my journal as blog, watch films from around the globe, read the columns of Chris Cox in his new book, The Way We Say Goodbye. The vacancy left by extraction of the false will fill up immediately like the hole left by my hand when I pull it from a bucket of water. I will vote because I believe it is important to vote as an American citizen, whether I believe in the political system or not, just to be a sharp stick in the republican eye.  

photos by tj worthington

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LOCKSTEP ROBOTS IN REVOLT

I'm awfully tired of news talking heads questioning what the republicans are up to in their efforts to destroy our government. Listen to the republicans. They, themselves, have been saying since the time of Boss Reagan that their purpose is to destroy the democrat party and put it out of government. Absolute destruction of the democrat party is their stated purpose, over and over. Yet I never hear any commentator or pundit or talking head, even a democrat take note. Questions of what they are doing with the sequester and now shutting down the government go around in circles. The ongoing question is why did they do this or that? Why do they lie all the time? Their stated purpose is to destroy the democrat party. Throw in a black president who is a democrat and we get the racist party in a kamikaze dive, like they think one more lie will do it. I see questions on facebook, What are they doing? They have already given the answer, years ago and have repeated it multiple times. They make their meaning perfectly clear. Harry Reid acts like he's clueless. The comedy I see is their strategies, all of it strategy, working against them. They are wrecking the lives of working Americans in their zeal to destroy democracy, the two-party system, to set up the corporate police state. Their robotic hypocrisy and actions have worked to strengthen the democrat party and is undoing the republican party in this time. Or so it appears.

It would be just as well to be done with republican smokescreens. They follow the definition of republic as far as they can take it. In a republic the people in elected office to not represent the voters. In a democracy they do. Republicans never call what we have a democracy. It is a republic. This justifies that they do not represent constituents. I hear Rachel Maddow moaning that the republicans are undermining and destroying their own party. Where is something to regret? The only problem I have is that they will not self-destruct. In the first years of Boss Reagan they talked about the end of the democrat party because the Gypper got 51% of the vote. They called it a "mandate." Allying itself exclusively with white men, the party even has to dumb itself down. Last election they showed they had dumbed themselves down so far they didn't even see their substantial loss to (don't say it) the enword coming. I've found it interesting all my life that democrat politicians running in a state republicans want have a way of dying in a private plane crash with no indication in the black box of what went wrong. A professional hit. Much as I'd like to see the republican party go under, I also know something just like it or worse would replace them. The republican party serves a venal attitude running through the American people. Evidently, venality is the nature of half the American people. That's an awful lot. Enough to call it epidemic. When I see an expression of venality in somebody I know automatically it's a republican.

 

 

I don't even have to ask somebody their politics anymore. People of a venal nature, people who have a gripe with the world and everybody in it, people who stress the importance of punishment, people who are intolerant of everything not themselves, people who simply don't like other people, tend  to be predictable republicans. Even if they're registered democrat they vote republican. I laugh when a talking head says the problem is both parties. It is not. The problem is only the republican party, the party of stupid, of ignorance, of hypocrisy, of corporate fascism. If you're a republican and have read this far, please stop now. I only write against republicans. I don't want republicans reading what I write. It is not in my nature to embrace the false. Nor will I give the false the benefit of the doubt. I've tried it in the past and it never worked. The republican adherence to the false has pushed the democrats into the realm of the true, not by the will of democrats by any means, but for self-defense against the continuing broadside of lies. The democrats have been cornered into using fact-checker and keeping track of republican lies, exposing them, like defusing landmines. On facebook I saw a fun cartoon on the republican strategy, tell a lie enough times it becomes truth. It said, Tell a lie enough times, you're a republican. We thought Nixon was the greatest liar ever on earth, then the Reagan Junta happened. Then Bush the Second out-lied Reagan.

 

 

 

 

Every day I ask in my head, Why can't these people dead set on destroying democracy in America, the democrat party, the working class and the middle class, the American people, the world economy, be charged with treason, with sedition and sentenced to prison? Nine tenths of the people in prison are less harm to American people than the republican politicians all over the country. I see people I know to be republican and feel sorry for them. Willful robots. I see kids on American Idol with their emotional well being on the line, desperate to become a product, so desperate their emotional self is defeated when they lose. Have we become so tuned by commercials that we want to be commodities, obedient do-what-you're-told automatons? An entire political party of politicians and constituents have been talking in lock step the same lies that are so transparent it is obvious they don't believe them. It continues obvious that they are lying to fool the rest of us. It is a matter of intent, of collectively agreed upon intent. The people of the republican party have committed to ignorance, to stupid, to assassination, and most especially to the root of their value system: hate. It is not an exaggeration to call the republican party the American Taliban. They are the same. Their hatred is turned on their neighbors in the name of Jesus instead of Allah. The white man party is not going away. It will turn the military on the rest of us before it goes under. You may be sure of that.

 

 

 

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COLIN POWELL EASY TARGET

Colin Powell would do best to stay at home and watch television. I can't imagine how he justifies his participation among republicans that point their racism at him, an easy target. It's like in the Sixties when the Black Panthers were staging evening news events, going into the churches of white liberals and demanding "reparations." I wondered what would happen if they went into a Baptist church toting shotguns and demanding money. I suppose they wondered too, the reason they only picked on liberals. They cracked me up in that time pointing their racism at easy targets, people that appeal to reason and logic before they point fingers. Now the republicans are bashing Colin Powell again for being dumb enough to associate with them. I thought the Cheney-Rummy-Bush triumvirate burned Powell bad enough a blister to keep him out of their circles. He talks like he thinks the republican party has reason tucked away in some out of sight niche, if he continues to talk sense, maybe it will connect with somebody in the party who has some sense. It has never happened for him. Cheney-Rummy-Bush set him up to be the stooge for their lies about WMD and got Powell discredited and out of their way. Powell is now back saying racism and intolerance characterize the republican party. Duh. Now they're all over him running him down, calling him a fool in their third grade tone of voice: So there!

I saw it in a video clip somebody put up on facebook, Americans Against The Republican Party. I went there to see what they had to say, but turned it off 30 sec into it. It's that So there! attitude they spit in your face when they talk about (oh no!) liberals. So there liberals! Being a somewhat rational man, the republican party is no place for Colin Powell. I don't know why he keeps on going back for more unless his publicist is telling him negative attention is better than no attention, or unless he really is not rational. Dems don't want him same as they don't want Joe Lieberman. The republicans shit in Powell's face, he goes back for more, they rub it in and he doesn't get it. He must have more invested in reason and logic as human motivation than I do. I learned many years ago never to expect reason or logic, unless maybe in a test question. I am coming to see that Powell wants reason and logic to be a factor in the world he lives in so much that he goes about acting like they function for him. Maybe he's practicing the principle of being the change he wants to see in the world. Maybe he thinks if he believes enough that republicans can be rational, his belief will make it happen. If so, it failed to work out.

I'm not going to complain about the implosion of the republican party. I'm happy to see the party of lies, assassinations, deception, racism, sexism, hate, contempt for the American people, the party of uneducated white men, the party attempting to turn forward momentum to backward momentum, happy to see the party fade away as do individuals who build their reputations on falsehoods. It works for awhile. Then it doesn't work at all. They're going into the doesn't-work-at-all phase. The funny part is by now their lies and chicanery are not fooling anybody but themselves. Occasionally I'll look at something on youtube from Fox. Every time, I think nobody can believe this but people who want to believe it. They get together convinced they're right and always have been, reinforce each other with agreement and emphatic tones of voice. Like at a Southern Baptist convention where they're expected to believe alike, and pat themselves on the back for it. Sameness confirms rightness. It must be why they're called the Right. They're right about the way they see everything. Being right is very important. It's the foundation of their smarty-pants tones of voice. Laura Ingraham on Fox talks like Ann Coulter, the blond mini-skirted Barbie in highest of all possible heels. I laugh every time I see something of these blond commentators with the camera looking directly between their legs requiring them to keep their legs tightly crossed with hand on miniskirt holding it down. They squirm keeping their legs together, except Ann Coulter. What a riot she is.

Gore Vidal's words ring in my mind, When Americans can't recognize stupid, we're out of business. Not all Americans, by any means. Maybe "out of business" will be localized to republican party, the ones that embrace stupid. Mark Twain has a saying something like, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." That's what the republican party and Fox pretend-news knows. And they count on the American attention span being shorter than a cat's. This isn't to say everybody. Just enough to make 51% a challenge. A century and a half of the science of psychology, our people with mental issues are on the streets and in prisons without being charged or tried. The knowledge gained from the science of psychology is used in advertising, propaganda, population manipulation. We're told that gun violence in movies, easy killing, does not influence people who watch it. Maybe not once, but watch it every day of your life and it has some kind of influence. Advertisers pay an awful lot for a half minute to influence your mind. I think they know something the purveyors of killing as entertainment also know. I see the Yeats line, the center does not hold. Centrifugal force without gravity. Interesting time in that way. This is how a belief system flies apart. It can be looked at as sad. It can be looked at as necessary to break down the old calcified belief systems that have become tradition and need changing. They have to go before we can move forward to the next phase of our collective development as Americans and as human beings.


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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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