IDIOTS RULE

     eva hesse, 1962

Flipping through some headlines I see a Baptist preacher in Florida is now calling for assassination publicly, using the Bible for backup. Then there was that yo-yo in Kansas legislature calling for assassination of the president, using the Bible. Get it? Does anybody get it? This is what I mean when I say the Baptist attention given to the dark side they call Satan has now taken over their behavior. Shooting doctors is sanctioned by the religion same as using the Bible to publicly call for assassination of the president. This tells me what I knew back in the last half of the 1950s that the Baptist religion was giving its power to Satan and now I see the results. On tv you have evangelists with hair two feet high on the women and bad, really bad toupees on the men, and covered in gold and gawdy clothes, both men and women, preaching about Jesus, dreaming of gold toilet and bathtub fixtures like Tammy Faye. Now that the Baptists are given the illusion of power by Karl Rove's Tea Party, their colors are showing and they aint pretty. What's going to happen is they will self-consume and be no more. They have gone over to the dark side and that's the end of that. They'll be after political power now that the dark is their light.


I can see now coming to fruition what I saw back then listening to preachers preaching politics, anti-communism, still locked in colonialism, preaching No, Don't and You Better Not. Love? Who ever heard of love? It's a four-letter word, only to be spoken with quotation marks and a disclaimer. Now that ignorance has been unleashed and given political power in the republican party, backed with billions of dollars from pockets of corporate wealth that want to keep the proles ignorant, like Gore Vidal said, "We're out of business." Perry Ferrell's song, Idiot's Rule, especially applies now. It's one of those sayings like It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. It fits any and every time. Idiots rule is as universal as willful ignorance. I have to confess that in the days since the political conventions I've been somewhat concerned about election outcomes. The Supremes unleashed corporate billions to support republicans, knowing that the candidate spending the most money wins consistently. Pray for exceptions? Sure. Go ahead. If those muthas buy Romney in, I'll be all the more glad I'm on the edge looking into the other side.


The night of the Dem convention I talked with Ted Stern on the phone, him in Charleston. I asked if he was watching the convention. No, he laughed, he was watching football. He's 99, what does he care about the next administration, what it turns out to be? I hear Baptists and other right wing minded people I know saying in seriousness that if Obama wins we're going down the drain. Maybe white racism will, that precious institution that defines USA more than apple pie or baseball. I'm cracking up that this election seems to be bringing racism out from under the denial it's been covered by since the Repo party became the racist party. It was the Demos, then the Dixiecrats, then the Repos. In my lifetime. Now racism is out in the open again. Get the nigger! That's the Repo key (unspoken) words this election. Remember, the Repo party does not need to win an election for the Supremes to give it to them. The Supremes brought us the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice Junta against the will of democracy. Cocaine money brought us the Reagan Junta. These two juntas put an end to democracy in America. The sad part for me is seeing how happy the American people are to be done with it.


Why should I care? I don't have a great deal of future left either. I can count on not being subject for very long to whatever comes next. Police state. That's it. With or without Obama, Police state is it. I don't want to live in Police state for very long. Probably won't. If it gets really bad, like bringing troops home and turning them inward on the American people, I really don't care to be a witness to it. I can just stop taking medications. I pray for next lifetime to be someplace else, not Somalia either, please. I'd just as soon be born into a Tibetan refugee village in eastern India as anyplace. I have loved the USofA all my life and happily claim it as home and I believe in doing my part to further its well-being. It turns out this is self-destruct time. Even though I understand the wheel of fortune, what goes up must come down, it hurts to see it fall, undermined by ignorance, like rot at the base of a big oak tree's trunk. USA ran way up in international power at the end of WW2 when the other powers were compromised. Alas, USA, which calls itself a Christian nation, has no ethical foundation to stand on and did not have what it took to sustain power. In its time of power-over the rest of the world, it has only been a tyrant to poor nations of color. If USA is a Christian nation, why does it hate the poor so much? That's not Jesus-sanctioned behavior. I think he'd say, "I know ye not."

Now that ignorance is the theme of our time, there is no telling what we'll be seeing. It gets stranger every day. Not a day goes by that I don't hear something totally outrageous some ignorant American who would do best to learn to keep his mouth shut and pay attention to old country wisdom--keep it shut and nobody will know how ignorant you are. This is the time for ignorance to take voice and soar like the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, "Scares the hell out of the slopes and my men love it!" This really is the time of the Absurd. Art indeed precedes life by half a century. The works of Pinter, Ionesco, Beckett and others presaged the time we're in now, the time of the Absurd. TV news itself is theater of the Absurd. Most interesting right now it seems like is the break down of systems that hold fast to absolutes, religion. Absolutes as belief system is over. We haven't done absolutes in a long time. These are the last days/years of that kind of thinking. Religion and politics are the holdouts that time is catching up with. It's looking like their time is now. Both have gone off into absurd and find their satisfaction there. Whatever.


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EVOLUTION AND IGNORANCE

Found Katha Pollitt's column in the July 2/9 Nation. She writes about the curious phenomenon that almost half, 46% of Americans surveyed by a Gallup poll, believe "creationism" (religion and republican party) as opposed to Evolution (science and education). I had to laugh with recognition when she said, "After all, Americans are famously ignorant of many things---like where Iran is or when WWII took place...." It has come to the place where somebody says he is a "Christian" is to say he refuses to use the brains God gave him. The more vocal ones have made it a Christian creed to reject the scientific method. The republican party is appealing to the least educated half of the population for easy manipulation, which is visible everywhere. The "Christian" rejection of the evolution process has become a problem for everyone. Teachers in public schools have a great number of parents who adhere to ignorance in the name of Jesus. The republican party has validated the ignorance as ignorant enough to make a good republican. A couple weeks ago the top dog of the county's republican party shook my hand and hugged me like I was his best friend. I knew he knew otherwise, making me suspicious, very suspicious. I think he was mistaking me for an Obama fan, showing me republicans can cross-over too. Whatever it was, I don't care. It gave me the willies. Yet, what I believe was happening was him telling me that though we are of different opinions about the police state we're in, man to man we're ok. I gave a hug in return because I was saying within, the god in me greets the god in you, politics aside. I hoped he was too.


My problem when I am around republicans is the issue of raising ignorance to the highest good, which is, actually, American as it can be. Anti-intelligence has been the American way since the beginning. It is a conscious preference for ignorance. Brings to mind someone I knew in college years. She was in my Shakespeare class. A year or so after we were both out of school, we ran into each other and were talking. Something said reminded me of something from Shakespeare. I said, "Do you remember in the Shakespeare class...?" She retorted in a tone of voice to be certain I understood her meaning, "I forgot everything about Shakespeare when the exam was over." I thought: Wow. An unforgettable example of willful ignorance, the kind I grew up in, the kind I was trained from my beginning to become. The place where I fell down in church was Jesus kept harping about love, love your neighbor, love, love, and the preacher never noticed. He wanted to dwell in the OT. Being a kid in school who could read with minimal attention span, I couldn't help but think I got it when Jesus said "the kingdom of heaven is within." Why was everybody talking about beyond the clouds, out in the universe, out beyond the universe? It is not Out-There, it's In-Here.


In the time of the music store, a man and woman with white hair, living here about a year from Pennsylvania. We had very pleasant conversation. I saw right away they weren't going to buy anything, just seeing what's in the place. They weren't interested in mountain music. I didn't care if they bought anything or not. I enjoyed talking with people who came in. After we'd talked awhile, very pleasantly, here it came, "Are you a Christian?" I thought: Aw shit! Ruin a good conversation. I thought fast to find a way to put an end to this before it started, in a friendly way. I said, "Christian has become a political party and I'm not a member." Meaning, I am not a republican. Of course, next thing, "What I meant was, are you saved?" I wanted to say, What's it to you? That's my business. You see, they thought I was nice and couldn't stand to think of me going to hell for eternity. I thought: leave that to my mother, she's concerned enough  for you and her both. From then on, our conversation was awkward, explaining and explaining. I wanted them out the door. I didn't want to have to explain in a nice way that the scientific method really does have something about it to recommend itself. Like that car you're driving, the synthetic clothes you're wearing, your cell phone. I have a hard time when I am looking at an advanced adult and expected to talk to a child, all of a sudden. My head became occupied with editing everything I might say to suit a ten year old. My head became logjammed with sentences I wanted to say, but the editor within recommended against.  I became bored and they became restless. Soon we parted.


Back to Katha Pollitt, she tells about a biology professor at Brown University, Kenneth Miller. He's a Catholic and says, "Those of us in the scientific community who are religious have a tremendous amount of work to do in the faith community." Asked, Why bother? he said, "There's a potential for great harm when nearly half the population rejects the central organizing principle of the biological sciences. To have a near majority essentially rejecting the scientific method is very troubling." A republican in the Virginia state legislature made the claim, "Sea-level rise is a left wing term," and successfully had it changed to "recurrent flooding." Wouldn't he shit if he ever found out we wouldn't have television without science. He'd deny it. Left wing term? What left? There's no left wing in America, unless it's the half of the population that doesn't vote. And they don't care anything about sea-level rise or recurrent flooding or any of it. If republican agenda is to deny sea-level rise, it seems odd that the mountains are being inundated by what I call the White Tsunami, white republicans. Reagan republicans have been moving to the mountains in swarms until the republican "economic downturn" slowed them down.


I have to agree wholeheartedly that such willful ignorance is dangerous. Willful ignorance lost us our democracy. Willful ignorance is bringing on police state and happy for it. If you want to find out what we're headed toward in a police state, read some contemporary Chinese writings. Fiction tells it as well as non-fiction. USA has a lot more people in prison than China does. And China has a lot more people than USA. It seems to me a major shame that this is what the American experiment has come to: popular police state, ignorance the rule, the news media the propaganda wing of the police state. I've seen a convincing case made for ignorance as evil. While I complain about the Reagan Junta breaking down government, breaking down economy, the ruling class taking everything from the peasant class, I am distressed to see it all breaking down around me. However, I'm coming to see that this is the end of a belief system about government for the rich against the working people. We have become the working poor. It has to break down before it can be replaced by a better economic belief system. Like the way an old building needs to be torn down to make a place for the new building. The republicans are tearing down their own belief system with ignorance. As I watch ignorance devour the republican party from within, I'm willing to accept the economic downturn as the end of republican rule by ignorance. That can only be a good thing.   


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DON'T HAVE TO BE A WEATHERMAN

caterpillar


This winter I've tested what might be called home remedies found on these lists of wonderful tips that come Fw: in emails from friends. One told about putting vinegar on the car windshield to keep ice from sticking to the glass. The ice froze to the glass like never before, like it had bonded with the glass. Also wiped vinegar in the inside of the windshield, which created the first time I've ever had to scrape ice off the inside of the windshield. Scrapers are made for the convex curve of the windshield, not the inside concave curve.


Another I've tested this year, keeping an onion in every room to keep colds and flu away. This morning I woke with a running nose telling me a cold is beginning. First thought upon realizing I was getting a cold: the onions didn't work. If this were a corporate remedy, I'd be told I didn't do it right. Whatever the case, neither of these remedies worked, which was my initial suspicion when I saw the emails, but wrote the suspicion off as my jaundiced view of the world. Give it a chance, I thought. Didn't hurt anything, except I had about the worst ice ever to scrape off the glass, and now I have a cold. Still have some tylenol cold pills from last cold several years ago.



I have tested these hypotheses (presented as facts) empirically by scientific method to see if I could reproduce the results projected. Did not. Advice to perform these remedies gave no results of controlled studies, nothing to go by to attempt reproduction of similar outcomes. In the past, I've tried the spraycan remedy at the auto parts store of windshield de-icer. It made more ice. After quite a lot of winters, my empirical finding is that a plastic scraper works like nothing else. It's a handy little item that can be found for next to nothing at parts stores. I keep my scraper in what I think of as the tool box space for such things in the car's front door with 2 kinds of screwdrivers, an adjustable wrench and needle nose pliers. I've also found the windshield cleaning fluid that comes in a gallon jug advertised to work below freezing, doesn't. It makes more ice. Maybe above 25 degrees it works, but down around 10 and 5 it doesn't work so well, makes 2 Japanese fans of ice on the glass. The scraper works every time.



After 30 years of driving 3 Toyotas where the windshield de-frost only cleared the bottom quarter of the glass, I could see the hood clearly. The Buick's windshield de-icer works right now. Turn it on and the fog on the glass is gone. The heater works so well it can run me out in a hurry. The AC is not so cool. It cools the air to a degree, but never gets cold. Probably needs new freon, and I see no need for it yet. Sometimes in the mountains AC is a good thing on a summer day. In my 35 years in the mountains, the hottest day of the summer has advanced from 90 degrees to 100 degrees. Makes me wonder about the sanity of republicans, but we already know what that amounts to. It strikes me totally ridiculous that an American political party has for dogma required belief that scientific evidence is invalid, has no value, has no meaning. Makes me barf to think of such people making the laws of my homeland.


We are over the top on the Wheel of Fortune and running fast as we can go down the hill. India and China were the examples of the poorest of the poor the first half of last century. When we were at the top, they were at the bottom. They are now rising to the top and we're on our way down there where they used to be, crime and corruption the only work that pays, half our population believing evolution a hoax as a matter of political dogma and global warming the same kind of hoax for reasons of dogma. We'll be seeing what willful ignorance reaps. We already have, but the only people that see it are the ones with no power. We'll also see what a focus on nothing but money reaps. We already have, and again, like before, only the ones without power see it.


We are subject to the storms of war and economic calamity created by the ones with power, the same as we're subject to hurricanes and sunny skies. As far as we the people are concerned, it just is as it is. When it rains, use an umbrella. When it's hot, wear shorts. In winter, keep anti-freeze in the car. We will be learning over the next several decades what the Chinese have known for centuries and millennia, to lean with the way the wind blows. The ones with the power that make our decisions, we already know operate from self-interest only, even (especially) the ones that say they don't. When half the American electorate denies the findings of science in order to conform to a political dogma having to do with money, I think we have become the PeeWee Herman Show. Miss Yvonne, Mailman Mike, Chairy. Tell em Large Marge sent ya. I know you are, but what am I? Take a picture, it'll last longer.



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