ELECTION DAY 2012: TRUE OR FALSE

Election day today, I stopped by the Whitehead voting place at the Whitehead Community Center that once was the Whitehead School. I've given this vote much thought, not about who to vote for, but whether or not to vote. I see voting since the so-called Patriot Act, the constitution for police state, a sham used to keep we-the-powerless-meat-people believing we still have democracy, to keep the American Fantasy full of hot air. I came to see voting as a social act in the world of people I live among who continue to believe we have democracy, and I see myself wanting democracy back, so I vote to be one digit that says I want democracy. The thought that set me into action more than any other was thinking if I don't vote I've not cancelled a republican vote, meaning I give the republicans one vote I might have cancelled. You see, I'm not a democrat or libertarian or communist or anything organized. I'm a single-digit anti-republican. Democrats are not anti-republican enough to suit me. I vote democrat because they are the only opposition. A vote for a libertarian is a vote for a republican by not adding one more to the count against the republicans.

The election results are coming in now. In an hour or less the West Coast voting establishments will be closed. I don't want to hear this state and that state and the building of the drama. I'll wait til after midnight and see what they're saying. Then wait til morning to get the news that the republicans are calling on the anti-democracy supreme court to nullify the election results and make the losers the winners again. It's what they packed the court with "wingnuts" for. There will have to be some kind of republican chicanery before the counting is over. I saw Mitch McConnell on 60 Minutes Sunday, not because I was interested to hear what he had to say that was totally predictable, but because I wanted to see him talk. I wanted to see his face when he lied and only lied. I saw a tight-lipped smart-mouth pudgy little brat. I looked at him as someone I was meeting the first time, thinking if he were face-to-face talking to me at the coffee shop, I wouldn't believe a word he said and I'd be feeling to see if my billfold was still in my pocket. Another republican parrot. Willful ignorance out in the open, paraded and bragged upon. The image about Fox News above that I found on facebook tells it best of all the "memes" I've seen that are anti-republican, many of them awfully funny.

Yesterday on YouTube I saw that blond airhead "commentator" from Fox talking with Bill Maher. I don't ever see her, because she talks republican parrotry that is too predictable to be entertaining or interesting in any way. She was retarded. She reminded me of the woman I heard on a call to the 911 phone on YouTube wanting the highway department to move the "deer crossing" signs to places with less traffic. Ann Coulter is her name. I had to go to YouTube and look up the video I saw to get her name. Pathetic where intelligence is concerned. She might have passed a lot of tests and done well in school as a robot student, but it certainly shows she never learned a thing about thinking for oneself. She's the blond parrot. She looked like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader gone to seed, and struck me the female counterpart of Rush Limbaugh, propagandists to the gullible. That the press takes Romney seriously and half the population does too, brings to mind every time I think about it, Gore Vidal saying, "When Americans don't recognized stupid, we're out of business." Yes, we are indeed out of business. My concern is that it looks more like Americans do recognize stupid. Stupid is what they want in their representatives, at least half of them. Very odd. Half a century of television.

I'm seeing in this year's electioneering process the republican side with no apparent agenda, anything that comes up, no concern about being called continually on lies, blatant obvious lies. Commentators and the television/radio reporters act like Romney is actually speaking with substance, though they never talk about the substance. In the first "debate" Romney trumped Obama with ignorance, the Karl Rove trump card, absence of substance. It rattled Obama like it was intended by the master propagandist to do. The only reason I can find for why the republicans stood by this obvious serial liar Romney is because he was a white man. Liar identified his character a white man, verifying his allegiance to his skin color. The only republican agenda was get-the-nigger. It went completely unsaid throughout the campaign, and understood by all in the white racist party. In their panic at the point where people of color outnumber white people from here on, I'm seeing White Man prefers racism to democracy. The South turned democracy aside after Emancipation because the black folks outnumbered the white folks. A serious threat. White folks aint having no nigras lording it over them. It aint gonna happen in America. Democracy is not that important. As we have seen.

I refuse to let myself get wound up with worry and hope for something I have no control over. I have seen that willful ignorance is what it takes to vote republican. This year's was the most interesting republican strategy I've ever seen. Obstruction by lies and using lies to catch the other off guard by ambush was the only strategy used. Lies and stupid statements were adhered to all the way along the campaign. Because they are lies and stupid. Lies and stupid made a great strategy against a man whose mind republicans can't out-smart, but Karl Rove knew how to trip him up and keep him off balance as much as possible by surprise attacks of stupid and lies. Romney was the perfect puppet to lie and talk stupid. It showed me that the people siding with these open liars, republicans, do recognize stupid when they see it. Stupid is evidently what they want. Gore Vidal thought Americans didn't want stupid, but it really looks like at least half of them actively want it. Even if Romney doesn't win, it's a really bad show that whatever percentage of votes go to Romney is too high a percentage for comfort. Considering however many people voted republican, we have that many people evidently wanting stupid with a passion. It's alarming even to have more than a handful.


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TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE

        no


On the verge of deciding not to vote this time, I'm thinking of joining the left wing, the half of the population that does not vote, the ranks of the indifferent. Everyone deciding not to vote has their own reason for indifference, same as among the voters, each with a reason that inspires the choice made. Mine, before, has been that a democracy requires voting. Voting is the sacred act of democracy. Several years ago, when I saw our American democracy had been subject to a corporate coup, I thought of voting as an act of protest saying: one digit wants democracy. It means nothing as protest the same as it means nothing toward deciding who wins the election, whatever the election. To vote in this time is the same as saying nothing. In a state that is 75% repub and 25% demo, it means nothing, whatever county I vote in. The republicans are rigging voting machines, which won them the 2004 election saving the Supremes the embarrassment of nullifying two elections in a row. They showed us with lucid clarity that we do not have democracy in America, no need to beat it into our heads with a hammer. If we don't get it, all the better.

Vote rigging means nothing, same as voting means nothing. The corporate system of government we have now doesn't care which side wins, both sides are bought and totally controlled. I've been observing with Obama that he has approved the continuation of the "Patriot Act," the constitution of the police state, and in his first two years when he had majority in congress, he conceded to the republicans over and over, Joe Lieberman style, though pretended not to. Gitmo? The Reagan Junta's strategy of divide-and-conquer has grown until the Corporate State put in a black man for president to further divide us. By now, thanks to half a century of propaganda that grows more sophisticated each decade, just about everything we believe politically is false and we've been divided unto maybe likely civil war. While the 99% are divided and focusing on the division, the 1% goes about their business of robbing the working people unnoticed. Investigative reporting is of the past, same as reason. Racial divisions are being used for smokescreen to keep our attention off the Corporate State, keep us pre-occupied. If we don't fall for the smokescreen, prison will take care of it.

American government has become OF, BY and FOR the Corporate entities now called people. We, the actual people made of meat instead of money are being shut down like the Tibetans in western China, regarded the lower class out of sight, the peasant class, in what was once their own world. The Obama administration bailed out the Banks that wrecked the economy and returned to them the resources they lost in overzealous attempts to rob working people. Among the millions of people who lost their own sustenance, thanks to the Bank's ruse, what do they get? It was government supported robbery on a massive scale. One major step toward fading the middle class into the peasantry. The kick that sent the ball between the goal posts. If I were to vote, I'd have to vote for Obama, just because my entire being would not allow pointing my attention to Romney. Yet I know one will give us the illusion he's for "the people," while the other is up front that he's dead set against "the people," the non-corporate people. Any way we vote, we vote against our own interest as human beings. To vote now is to participate in the great deception as a player.

I'm undecided in this way, to vote or not to vote, though I understand that not voting amounts to voting republican. Whenever my mind returns to thinking a vote matters, I remind myself that's how I want it to be, not how it is. I want to vote in local elections, because a vote sometimes matters there. I could vote locally and leave the rest blank for the voting machine to fill in republican. Maybe there will be a libertarian to vote for, but I haven't seen one on a ballot in NC in a very long time. Or maybe I don't notice. How I vote does not matter more than whether I vote. It's as meaningless as saying I don't want my country to be a police state, but that's like saying Dick and Jane ran down the hill. Nothing. Maybe this corporate police state is the karmic payback for the white and black people coming onto the continent uninvited, killing the entire continent of people living here, putting survivors in concentration camps called reservations for over a century. Whites came onto the continent shutting down the cultures and ways of life of a whole continent of people in the most violent way, killing. Americans have become the most murderous people on the planet, far and away the greatest prison population on the planet, and continually creating wars in poor countries. The wave of killing Indians from east coast to west coast kept on going and turned inward where land ended, the white and black populations killing themselves when killing Indians was over.

Our national karmic debt would have to be big. Wiping out an entire continent of people by killing them is no small thing. Now we kill each other. We've had one disastrous civil war and it feels like another is brewing. Evidently, it didn't matter karmically that White man had God on his side. We American white people and black people have been a deadly force against ourselves all along the way. Surely the American appetite for killing one another has its karmic root in the manner of collective takeover of the continent. Whatever the payback, it would have to cover the entire continent and be a mortal danger to ourselves. In this time we see our government turning on us as the enemy. We The People have become the Indians. Targets. Our guns can't save us, like their arrows failed to save them. The only reason I would choose to drop by the Whitehead schoolhouse on Tuesday the 6th would be a social gesture with the people I live among who still believe we have a democracy. I remember in Lillian Hellman's JULIA, early anti-fascists are never understood. So what's the point of attempting to be understood? I can't change anything but my own mind. No need to attempt to do otherwise.


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WHITE MAN SPEAK WITH FORK-ED TONGUE

         franz kline, palladio

         

Skipped the "debate" last night. Preferred to visit with friends and watch Monday Night Football, anyway the first half. Chicago and Detroit slugged it out. It was a tight game that the score does not indicate. Score looks like Chicago walked all over Detroit, but it appeared to me a well balanced game of back and forth. It's like the so-called debates in that way. What the corporate press tells about polls, saying Obama and Romney are neck and neck in debate scores, when it looks to me Obama walked all over Romney in the "debates," convinces me further that the press is as corporate as Britney Spears. That they give Romney's evasion jibberish any attention at all, let alone take him seriously, is more ridiculous than I can believe. Romney, as usual, lies, accuses with false information, obstructs with interruptions and misleading statements, the Karl Rove way. I'm mostly alarmed that the corporate press takes Romney seriously at all. They talk about him after a "debate" like he "made points," and sparred favorably with Obama, a man who (oh no) reads, even writes books.

I've questioned the use of the word "debate" for a verbal boxing match. Used to think debate was about logic, accurate information, and a given order. The only given order I find in these television "debates" is the American order of interruption as form of conversation. That was the only order I saw to be called consistent, and the mandatory aggressive style required of an American politician. I'm Scott Brown; I drive a truck! Identifying himself a white man. He's there for the white vote, like Romney. Doesn't matter whether he makes good sense or not, he's running against a woman (bitch), like Romney is running against a black man (nigger), and his only selling point is his white maleness. All that matters is that he speak with fork-ed tongue to affirm whiteness.

The odd part of this election year is the indifference to substantive issues by the white man, even smoke-screen issues, indifference to what he says, indifference to lies on his website that have been pointed out over and over, indifference to good sense. He's running as White Man vs Black Man in a land where only about half the people are racist anymore, and less than half of them active racists. Romney's only issue: the alternative to the nigger. The only thing he has going for himself is white skin and snooty wealth the republicans have stuck to as the only issues, because he has nothing else to offer, but interruption and false accusation. He's doing it right. White man does not want to appear too intelligent. That's effete intellectualism, a curse in Nazi Germany, China, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and USA. The act of reading a book in America invites outsider status automatically.

White man acts like a frat jock with a venal arrogance toward the peasants, whatever their race. You might say he's a class-ist in that he is unapologetic about his agenda, all going to the rich, crumbs on the floor left for the peasantry. I laughed out loud sometime recently when he was making it the point that the (Reagan revolution) trickle-down theory of the economy doesn't work and never has worked. A republican stating unequivocally that Reagan was full of monkey feces and sent us on a downward spiral because the people who call the shots found it a convincing enough lie to keep the peasantry fooled at least until the concentration camps were ready to occupy. The camps are now ready, begun by the Bush administration, finished by the Obama administration. Even a republican running for president is saying the "trickle-down" theory never worked and never will work. It amounts to a funnel-up reality. Thirty-two years later, the peasantry is beginning to get it, though still can be persuaded back to believing it by propaganda any time necessary.


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OBAMA v WANNABE

he done it

It's the day after the so-called debate with Obama and Romney. I was driving home from visiting friends who live a half hour away. I heard it on the radio driving home, laughing much of the time, every time Romney spoke. He is the greatest comedy on the airwaves these days. He makes Bill Maher seem brilliant when I really don't believe he is. I was heartened somewhat to see that Obama was up to the game this time. I'd heard one report of the first "debate" that Denver is a mile above sea level and Obama went there directly from sea level, the air so thin his mind was befuddled. It's the best explanation I've heard for his dazed semi-absence during that hour on the air. I'd imagined Karl Rove would send Romney in with a new strategy the second time besides interrupting and changing the subject, winding Obama up in his own words. Evidently Rove did not have a new strategy for a surprise attack, which I don't get. Like it worked once, it will work again. But it didn't work again this time. Obama and staff realized these debates are not about information. Aggressive style is the debate form, and this time Obama and staff were ready.

I listened to what they were saying while driving and, like I said, laughed much of the time, derisive laughter at republican buffoonery that has become so absurd since 1980 when Reagan strategists stole the election with Central American drug money from CIA drug sales, buying a deal with the Ayatollah in Iran to arrange hostage release after Reagan wins, and not at all if Carter wins. It was outrageous at the time, the same kind of outrageous as the republican supreme court decision to give the win to the loser in 2000 and next to re-define corporations as people. Rove is using these debates to make some advances for Romney by twisting up Obama's words and history with nonsense. Of course, Rove uses nonsense for the trump card, which works consistently. It's Rove's particular style, his signature. Last night Obama was ready for it and countered the nonsense. I'm recalling a moment where Romney meant to trip Obama up accusing him of his record, waited for Obama to react and Obama said something to the effect of, "Proceed, governor." That tripped Romney into gibberish, gobbledy-gook that people fall into on the air when they lose their script. I'm recalling Tom Brokaw ad-libbing during a San Francisco earthquake, "San Francisco is an isthmus in the Pacific island." I don't laugh at him, I laugh at the phenomenon that is consistent. I too would stumble all over my words unscripted on the air.

That was the corner Obama put Romney into, handing him an unscripted moment. Like: Live through this! That, for me, was the cleverest moment in their aggressive verbiage. I noticed Obama made the audience laugh a few times. Lawyers tell me that if you can make the courtroom laugh during a jury trial, you've got it in the bag. The audience laughter told me what I'd already guessed, that Obama was in control this time. I can't really go by what I assess of their back and forth verbiage, because news analysts and republicans say something happened that I never noticed. These "debates" are about snagging "swing voters," the ones not allied to one party or the other. The strategy for both parties is to use these television appearances on prime time to give the appearance of outwitting the other, a kind of verbal boxing match with referee. In American politics, aggression is the winning style. We get to listen to two politicians talk aggressively to each other to suggest to the audience they're in control. Daddy's home. It surely must gall the racist party to see Romney one-upped by the Kenyan-American on national tv. But I doubt they saw it that way.

It was a political experience I suspect everyone who heard it came out of the same as they went into it. Television noise, no dead air. A moment without noise on tv allows the viewer a moment to think, and somebody might think about turning it off. Once I turned it off in the car, I did not turn it back on in the house. I'd heard more than I wanted to hear. I just wanted to get a feel for the nature of their dance around the mental ring in an imitation boxing match. Right away I got it that Obama was trampling Romney, and continued to listen to hear him do it some more. Of course I prefer Obama, because I like having somebody for king of the world who has some intelligence. Obama, Clinton and Carter were the only presidents I've seen with intelligence I admired and felt good that the king of the world had a good mind for decision making. When we had Reagan we were saying this is the bottom for how ignorant a man can handle the white house. Then Bush2 showed us Reagan was not the bottom. Reagan's summing up of his administration at the end was: It could have been worse. W came along and proved him right. Romney is showing us W was not the bottom either. It can get worse. Karl Rove's purpose is to see to it.

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BAD TELEVISION FOR PRESIDENT

A few hours ago this interface was not working. Now it is. Thank you to whoever makes such adjustments.

I can't listen to the news without hearing some kind of comment about the so-called debate that happened on tv last Wednesday. I listened to about 5 minutes and turned it off. Obama was stammering and stuttering like it was his first time on tv and Romney, coached by Karl Rove strategies, played Reagan, sometimes even using Reagan's voice where he could. Romney wasn't saying anything, but gave the appearance of meaning by suspension of disbelief using references to Reagan's flippant attitude toward Carter. Though Reagan never said anything worth hearing, his "Where's the beef?" statement stole the show with a predictable theatrical device. He shot that educated liberal right down with the ignorance trump card. I'd been wondering what Karl Rove had up his sleeve with only a month left of the countdown. These things I know: Karl Rove does not lose; Karl Rove has no bottom to how low he's willing to go.

I felt for Curious George playing President, the man who lives every minute of his life in the cross-hairs of assassins. I know it's not right, but every time I see him, I see Curious George, the children's book. It is such a likeness I wonder if it had something to do with all the white middle-class twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings carried away in his run for presidency. They knew Curious George like I knew Howdy Doody. Would I be carried away like that if Ted Koppell were to run for president? I don't think so. Curious George was as familiar to them as Reagan was to Death Valley Days viewers in the Fifties, and movies I never wanted to see. He was down there with Burt Reynolds, Charlton Heston and Victor Mature. If a movie had him in it, that told me it was not worth the time it would take to watch it, and certainly not worth the ticket price, whatever it was, even a free pass.

I felt for Obama's experience with coached ignorance that night like I felt for Carter up against coached ignorance on international tv and radio. A tight-rope to walk. In the short time I heard Obama talking, I was ashamed of him, though not entirely. He knew he was up against Karl Rove. He knows Rove's strategic mind, has studied it. I could hear Rove laughing at Obama in my mind. I had to turn it off. Rove stumped him good. So far, Obama has countered Republicans by exposing the lies with facts. He'd do well to forget that strategy. Rove is coming at him stepping around Obama's reminder of lies. Yeah it's a lie, so what. He'll pull something else next time. These "debates" are already confessed to be about style only. Obama attempted to insert substance, but was shouted down by ignorance. That's what I hear when the news plays excerpts from the exchange. Why so curious? OK, so you got facts--nobody cares. Romney sounded to me like Faulkner's line, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. That's all I hear when he talks. I see now that Rove is using the "debates" for the home stretch strategy, go into the last turn high and swing low like a slingshot. It's all or nothing from here on. Obama better listen to Samuel L Jackson.


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SURREALISM IN AMERICA 2012

      photo by diane arbus

This particular election year has really been boring, and it's getting worse as it goes along. Romney is even more boring than the guy Obama beat so soundly in 08. Romney's running mate is even a male version of Sarah Palin--big mouth, not much brains. I suppose he's got some kind of smarts, Obama called him the philosopher of the Repubs, the title I thought Limbaugh owned. This guy must be about the equal of Limbaugh. Like I would say Limbaugh doesn't have much brains, except he's generated his stupid mouth into a $4million commodity pumping up white men to hate everything not white male. I hear on NPR now quite a lot of attention given to republicans. It's because the repubs have been breathing down NPR's neck since Reagan, taking money away from them, reducing them to syndicating BBC. Each repub administration threatens NPR a little bit more. And when we have a democrat administration they do nothing to help NPR. The most recent threat is include more news about republicans or lose more money. So they put on news stories about Romney and it's funny how much like dead air time it is when Romney is the subject. When he talks, he takes insincerity to new heights, or lows, whichever.


It seems like Obama is sitting back letting Romney & Co talk and get as much attention as they can, because they're so boring they make Obama look interesting. It's like they're playing Whiteman's Last Stand again. That's all the repubs are doing these days is playing Whiteman's Last Stand. All for the white man, nothing for anybody else. Freedom for the white man, bondage for everybody else. That's been the way of the USA from the start, so who's to say it's going to change now? It won't be long before white man in America is just another minority, albeit the most arrogant minority, the one the others allow the delusion of power because it's so important to white man to be number one. Every time I see Romney it's the same pose, same face, same expression, like the image of George Washington on the dollar bill, always the same any way you look at it. Or like a face on a postage stamp. It's a face. It's always the same. A bland American whiteman face gazing into the distance like in Soviet and Maoist "realism." Like the new Martin Luther King statue in Washington DC designed by a Chinese sculptor who evidently had his foundation in Maoist realism where peasants and soldiers gape at the rising red star.


It's hard to even believe this is an election year. A little bit of bland talk about Romney, then a little bit of an example of his bland talking that goes round and round like a roulette wheel without a marble. He's totally upper middle-class suburban country club, only the best, Mr Niceguy with a benign smile for all. He has the authenticity of Al Gore, the reason nobody much cared that the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice Junta used the Supreme Court to take the election away from Al Gore, the winner despite Ralph Nader making it difficult for him. I have a feeling that people generally get as enthusiastic about Romney as they did about Al Gore. Gore was a bland suburban Ken doll to the soulless max, as is Romney. In the Sixties they'd have been called Plastic People and Nowhere Men. They both were created by the political image machine from the time they were little. They play the role required of anyone in politics in America, a mask with a smile, nothing else. Whoever might be behind the mask has no relevance. Image is everything. Appearance is all. As seen on tv. And I'm told by people who want me to think they know what they're talking about that television is not having any kind of effect on people who watch it. I wonder if we'd have had these random sprays of rapid-fire bullets into anonymous crowds of people before television. No I don't wonder. It did not happen before tv.


Except: Paris in the time of Surrealism (1920s and 1930s); one of the Surrealists, possibly Andre Breton, envisioned the idea that the ultimate Surrealist act would be to walk into a crowd of people and fire a revolver randomly. It was held up as a kind of idea of the ideal, until one day somebody did it and it wasn't funny. I hear on the news about a whiteman taking an AK47 or something into a kindergarten classroom of Vietnamese immigrant children and blowing away the kids, the teacher and himself. How Surrealist is that? Kids shooting up a school. Surrealism. Suddenly, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, not even out of conception, a couple of guys start shooting in the cafeteria, in the library. Son of Korean dry-cleaners walks into a university classroom with an automatic pistol, shoots professor, several kids and self. The ultimate American statement. Maybe this is to say we are in a Surrealist time. When 98% of the population goes around during the day with last night's commercials, sit-coms and sports on television in their heads, there aint much going on but keepin on keepin on. Pantene for chlorine damaged hair. It's a riot how television leads us by imitating us; following the lead of a parrot, another word for the say-what-you're-told politician and reporter.


If you want to see mastery in lying with a straight face, check out Lyndon Johnson on YouTube telling the television audience about the patrol boats shooting at American ships in Tonkin Gulf, knowing it had not happened, that it was a fabrication to fool the American people into believing it was a justified war action taking place to start killing farm families in Vietnam. Before the March on DC in 1968 Johnson called a press conference and told the press what to report, a made up press release that was nothing like the event itself. They all had front row to the event and reported as told. Free press? Free to report as told. Only the Village Voice told about the press conference and told about the event as it happened. Later, Rupert Murdock bought Village Voice to shut it up. Too liberal. Politicians have to be good at lying the way a rock star needs to be good at screaming. I look at Obama when he is talking in so convincing a manner, the come-along-with-me appeal, and I think, What a good liar. He came out of his couple weeks briefing after the election with the FBI and CIA and the other top secret places of dark ops with deer-in-the-headlights in his eyes, up to and including the inauguration, where he so famously made a blooper. From then on, he's been a really good liar. The only reason Bush was busted for lying so much was he was not a good liar. He was just a dumb guy that lied all the time. Obama would be good on Broadway playing America's First Black President. The black man that lies as good as a white man. Electable.


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