IGNORE THE RIDICULOUS

 

beside waterfall road

 

Earlier in the week I wrote a note to self to keep on the desk where I'd see it frequently. It says, Ignore the ridiculous. I thought it was funny writing it onto a piece of paper to hold my attention. As every day goes by, it gets less funny, until by now, the note, itself, is the comedy. I'm seeing so much that is ridiculous since writing the note, I wonder how I can ignore the ridiculous. It's not as easy as it seems. As soon as I go online, the ridiculous begins. I meant the note specifically to cover the clerk in Kentucky. She gets more ridiculous by the day, somebody's ego newly bitten by the bug of national attention. Fake news will milk her to the last drop of the ridiculous she has inside her. Something in her eyes tells me that we are far from the end of her public spectacle. Her mind is going full speed in the county jail cell where she's treated like a guest celebrity, writing her book in her mind, thinking about how she'll justify herself on the Pat Robertson Show, seeing herself in the spotlights of mega-churches across the land with blond bee-hive hair, a glittery dress to the floor and lotsa gold draped around her neck and arms. She's writing a story in her mind. I suspect she has already begun to act out the story she's composing, manipulative all the way. I even have a feeling she's liking the reprieve from her husband. He looks like one of the guys from the movie, Winter's Bone.

 

beside waterfall road

 

Then we have the ridiculous responses to her, like, she has a right to her opinion, as if more relevant to her case than a dog walking down the road. And the reactions, like, slut, bitch, again, totally irrelevant. Judges put people in jail for contempt of court. She knew what she was facing. She's been talked to at length by right wing fundraisers and lawyers promising fame and money. All the way to the Supreme Court. National headlines. It looked pretty good with five republican justices, but her Fake news  idea of religious liberty failed to take in court. Why would a Supreme Court decision matter to the ridiculous? Reason doesn't matter. Why would the law? I have not taken the Supremes seriously since the coup of double-aught set up 9/11 and the police state that followed. Like Al Gore, I have no choice but to go with it. It is history now, the real history not yet available.  Another fraud, front and center, a smokescreen to keep the proles distracted, keep them bickering amongst themselves, asleep in television and misinformation, mental conflict.

 

beside waterfall road

 

This Kentucky clerk haunts me when I see her picture and read quotations spoken from her mind. I grew up in exactly the same kind of church mind as she adopted for herself, like my mother, who adopted it for herself to take control of her situation. I don't doubt that Kim Davis is a zealot. Her hair and clothes show she's a zealot. The zealots of this kind of religion are about making other people do what they're supposed to do, watching and judging everybody around them not doing right. By this time in the life, I'm weary of people telling other people how to live their lives in the name of God. They have not caught on that the spiritual path is an interior path to the heart, to the core,  to the soul of oneself. The kingdom of heaven is within. I've been the other side of the clouds in planes. It's not there. It's not about policing and condemning the actions of others. Nor is it about the appearance of piety, nor going to church with perfect attendance, nor bragging about God before tv cameras.  I have become so free of that mind, I feel liberated. I am liberated. It was the greatest of feelings of liberation when the last of that kind of thinking left my mind.

 

beside waterfall road

 

I am drawn to the pictures of Kim Davis, memes about her, updates on her court situation. She is so close to home, the very same mind that dictated my early years and had me believing it. Alas for my poor mommy, she birthed a free-thinker. He sure did not come by it honest. It was like John Milton parenting Nietzsche. New cosmologies have thence transpired. I could not live under God the judge and punisher. I preferred no God to that God. If God amounts to a projection of human neuroses, I don't want it. It took fifteen years to erase from my mind interpretations of God according to white male control issues down through the centuries. If God is that, then God is a creation of the human mind; therefore, not God. Looking back, a lifetime later, I am grateful for the falseness that spewed me out. The years of educating my mind out of religion opened my mind to the beyond. It turned out I could not see God beyond the religion, mistook the religion for God. It didn't compute. I needed to step out from behind the filter of religion, open up and allow self simply to be, unafraid, flow with chance. The spirit came through, rationally convincing. New wine for a new bottle. Kim Davis in the headlines playing pretend piety takes me back to the years I lived in that mind, increases gratitude I was able to find the way out of a coal mine of the male ego by following my own light.

 

beside waterfall road

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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GAY DAY FOR EQUAL JUSTICE

It strikes me strange in the Xtreme for the Supremes to go with Obamacare and gay marriage. It's strange from a court that predictably sides with corporate interest against the good of the citizen. I can see that Obamacare benefits insurance corporations, which helps me understand the court ruling with it. I don't see any corporate benefit for gay marriage, but PR, so I'm a bit slow coming to terms with how the decision happened as it did. I learned it was Kennedy who swung away from the Reaganistas. I read his paragraph about marriage, held up by a talking head as poetry, found it rational mixed with sentiment. It only took one of them to make the difference. The court was divided between the republicans and democrats, and Kennedy abandoned the republican ranks. The Supremes have lost so much credibility with me, it will take more than two decisions to convince me they deserve credit for anything but one man's mistake. The women have my full appreciation. The men are all intellectual feather-weights compared to the women. In fact, it doesn't feel right attaching the word intellectual to Thomas, Alito, Scalia and Roberts. It makes an oxymoron to connect one of the four names with the word intellectual. They render the word meaningless. They bring up in me the question, how did they make it through law school?

It is a new day, any way you look at it. The gay marriage decision was one step closer to the American ideal, unity in diversity, equal justice for all. It's been on hold since the time of the Reagan Trojan horse that brought us Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, the Bushes, and a crowded pen of others. We now have legions of white middle class women celebrating with gay couples over getting married. The other side of the coin,we have the working class, and so-called Christians hating everything about it. Representatives from different states are saying they won't allow gay marriages in their states, and won't have Obamacare either. It is the right's turn to gulp down a decision by the Supremes not to their liking. The Supremes gave us Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice, over-riding democracy for the billionaires that positioned them. Bobby Jindal called the Supremes yesterday, "completely out of control." That the congress has a few republicans breaking ranks, and now the Supremes have one, it's telling me the Reagan Revolution has wound itself down. It had no substance in the beginning and wound down from there. My favorite Reagan quotation, "Facts are stupid things." 

The republicans have declared Sarah Palin irrelevant. Took them awhile to get it. Rush Limbaugh's syndication is going away from him. Roger Ailes of the Fake News channel is on his way out.  A fun image popped up in my head, Ailes as Jabba the Hutt, Ann Coulter Princess Leia on a chain leash, and nobody comes to rescue her. America's forty-year pendulum swing to the right is slowing to a halt, and it's not due to resistance. A fundamentalist preacher somewhere in America promised he'd set himself on fire if the Supremes passed gay marriage. He's had several offers in facebook to give him matches and lighters, gasoline, anything he needs. My next door neighbors, Allan and Gary, were married at the coffee shop in Sparta a few months ago. There, too, the white middle-class women were ecstatic. These are the women in our midst. For all the American disdain for education, it still means something. I can't help but think that when the women in our society take to something with the enthusiasm given gay marriage, there must be something to it. 

In my own way of seeing, gay marriage makes sense, and tells me the society is taming somewhat, tuning itself to the obvious. I saw a cartoon that said, more weddings, more cakes. I am not a proponent of marriage of any sort. This is my own personal thang. It was around age 8 the kid already had a good case made for a solitary life, which became the kid's intent. Example of parents was not one to model self after. A silent battle raging between them all the time, tension in the house so dense it hit like a hammer stepping in the door, like Florida heat stepping out of an air-conditioned car. I did marriage for s'posed-to, and jumped out like the frog dropped in hot water. I realized I cannot live the rest of my life playing unacknowledged emotional mind games. I was the cause of the separation. I was the cause of everything. I saw the psychology I'd wedded myself to, understood my own better, and ran for my life. It was totally selfish. I could not live with a control harridan. I saw a lifetime of misery and said to self, this is not what I'm here for. Let her find somebody who wants her misery. I've been happily unmarried ever since. Understanding the popular zeal for marriage is out of my reach. 

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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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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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MEDIA DENIES OCCUPY

       annette messager

          

Every day I hear the news and every day I mourn for the human condition. Assad in Syria slaughtering the defenseless Syrian population. Now the population is developing defences and beginning to make some offensive gestures. This is the end of Assad. He has turned his defenseless population on himself by forcing them to defend themselves by striking out at their oppressor. The corporate media in the USA is not allowing any news of the Occupy resistance on the news. Not even NPR, which, again, is not liberal. A tremendously huge number of people gather to protest our citizens' treatment as criminals by our corporate government. The only thing the Occupy movement is accomplishing is individuals involved getting themselves tagged as disobedient. Bad name to have in a police state. Baptists say God sends the disobedient to hell, and we all know corporate government sends the disobedient to jail. How does corporate government arrest so many? We'll soon find out. FEMA camps, hundreds of them around the country, completed, ready to go, are waiting for the 99%. So what if it costs more to keep the peasants in prison. In prison they're contained.

It makes me crazy to see how all races of working men and women in all forms of labor built the USA as a democratic ideal where white men are created equal. Then came the liberation of the black portion of the population, by law only, and the liberation of women, as long as they keep it to themselves, and then the Reagan Revolution rolling back to before these liberation movements when white men ruled absolutely. The Reagan republicans have been systematically undoing every benefit to the human condition that arose since the Depression. The supreme court is stacked in favor of the oppressors of the peasant class, the 99%. It may not be known before justice Roberts publishes his memoirs why he went against his corporate bosses to let something close to reasonable health care happen for the peasants, those loathsome no-neck, thick-fingered, gum-chewing fat-asses without position or status, without taste. I'm ashamed of the American government. I believe Uncle Sam is too. The republican party that represents greed and ignorance has passed now from passive contempt for the peasants to active contempt. Roberts broke rank. He'll pay dearly. Very dearly. He knew it before he made the decision.

Throughout my lifetime any progress toward the good of the peasantry has been beaten back by government, consistently, all along the way. A government for and by the people is completely stacked against the people manipulated into believing their vote decides a matter. When the vote doesn't go predictably with the propaganda, we are shown the voting is just a bunch of shit, by having the supreme court reverse the decision of the popular vote. Lesson learned: we oughta pay closer attention to the propaganda, be less disobedient. We're learning. We're systematically being taught the best thing to do is get over democracy and get comfortable with poverty and martial law. The Robber Banks have impoverished hundreds of thousands of middle class families by robbing all of them overnight. Their money just went away. Makes me suspicious of how well this accident was orchestrated. Right after 911 when propaganda had the whole country ready to kill Ay-rabs, the Patriot Act appeared, a thousand+ page book, already written, already published, already in boxes to be delivered on cue, an emergency that needed to be passed before anyone had a chance to look at it. It was ready to go, waiting for Emergency 911 to kick it off. I wonder how they knew in advance, since it was towel-heads in a cave half way around the world that brought the towers down with cell phones.

Won't it be interesting in history courses of the future, studying the rise and fall of the very brief American Empire. War after war, subduing the poor, killing the defenseless, not even counting the dead. This is what our tax dollars do. Our government is such as to embarrass any person who has any sort of ethical foundation. The people appearing for the Occupy protests are expressions of that embarrassment. Michael Moore is an expression of that embarrassment. The anesthetized populace, happy on prozac, zoloft and a cornucopia of happiness pills, watches the news one night and it has no relation to the news of the night before or the night before that. It's about something new every night. That's why it's called the news. Can't keep up with all of it. It's right to be patriotic. Never question. Never doubt. America number one. Keep your foot on the throttle and your eye on the prize. Go in debt for more junk. It turns out the Bank is our enemy, and has been all along, but what can we do about it? Agree and go on. Our government has turned against us and what can we do about it? We assemble in embarrassingly large numbers and corporate government won't allow news coverage by the corporate press, NPR included. Obama is not in his chair to serve us. What a laugh to even imagine that he might be. He's serving a very few cell phone numbers he has memorized, each with its own ring. And they're not calling from caves in Afghanistan.


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HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD THE MOVIE

found art

The Supremes stuck it to the American people again yesterday, cross-hairs on women this time. We're spreading propaganda that what's behind the American military in the middle east is the status of women, equal rights for women. It's the same as the propaganda about forcing democracy in the middle east when our present Supreme Court is telling us, decision after decision since the year 2000, when they told us for a certainty this is not a democracy at home. That's  just high sounding words, democracy this, democracy that, like natural this, natural that, green this, green that. Sounds great and fools most of the people most of the time. When a thing works, go with it. I trust no one was surprised by the decision. Predictable as rising oil prices.

Today's film a well made low budget documentary of four guys in Baghdad who were rock star wannabes. Heavy Metal In Baghdad followed these guys in Baghdad who wanted to be a heavy metal band. They spoke American very well from video games, heavy metal cds, MTV. Evidently all their media input was American, as it would be, America the entertainment industry capital of the world, the cutting edge. One of them talked perfect American. He even looked American. Looked like he might be from Oregon or Colorado. Talked like it too. They were guys in their early 20s who wanted to be free to grow long hair, have a goatee instead of a beard and make some noise. Of course, the entire culture, police, religionists, everybody is repelled by the American infection of loud rebellious noise. Aren't the bombs enough American noise! These guys were swimming upstream. They stayed together as a band for 4 years without doing a stage show. They got together and made the music they wanted to hear, when the electricity was working. Sometimes they used gasoline powered generators.  

The film had quite a lot of bonus features of deleted scenes and a 45 min film that follows them the next step beyond the end of the film. They left Baghdad because it was dangerous, bullets flying everywhere, bombs, very little electricity. They joined refugees to Syria and spent some time in Damascus, where they put on a small show to some kids their ages, early 20s. They were the first heavy metal band to record in Damascus, recorded 3 demos. This isn't even a band with a van. These guys carry their instruments and walk. All of them living on the very edge, they had to get out of Baghdad. In Damascus they found peace, even liked the place, except that Iraqis were looked down on as the bottom people. Discrimination like being black in America, hopelessness for them, even worse, because they didn't have any laws on their side. They went on to Istanbul where they were allowed to grow their hair long, wear rock tshirts and even make some noise. They played a gig in a small joint with 50 or so twenty-somethings to an audience that received them wanting an encore. 

Then their time was up in Istanbul. UN refugee bureaucracies said they had to take a train on a 7hr ride to Ankara to apply for refugee status. There, they're told they have to wait perhaps 6 months in town off in the mountains of Turkey to see if a Western country will accept them. If they go back to Iraq they're dead, due to thoughtless circumstances on their part. We leave them at the end of the film isolated in a small Turkish city where they will not be able to find work and everybody will be against them, but the other refugees.

It's a swimming upstream story like Paul Theroux's novel, Mosquito Coast, the story of an American man on a tropical island manufacturing ice. These four young guys wanted to live in Baghdad with their families and friends and their lives, but the ongoing American war had been going on half their lives. They were beat down by it. They wanted to be rock stars. The whole world had turned on them for being Iraqi. Thanks to the American corporate lust for Iraqi oil, and one thing and another like SadSam Hussein, who knew too much and required elimination. 

I was watching these hopeless guys, who talked about their hopelessness, their every day despair, living through another day, and I'm thinking: brought to you by the big daddy of rogue states. My country, tis of thee, the most powerful police state ever, that only commits war on poor, defenseless countries, in the manner of the school bully, Gimme yer lunch money and I won't knock yer block off. He takes the kid's money and knocks his block off anyway. This is what I've seen of my country throughout my adult life. I've never liked it. In 1968 I got caught up in believing I lived in a democracy. It didn't last long. LBJ flattened that belief system for me like gum on the bottom of his shoe. I 've seen it so continuously since then, by now I accept it as how things are. The American Death Star vs the goatherding people of Iraq. Why? Because they're defenseless. Or so they appeared.

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