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The Trump Success

31 Jul

So tiresome, the incessant media question . . . “with all of the ignorant, course, foul comments made by Trump how can he continue to do so well?” This is not a question; this is a well worn media strategy to keep a marketable story kinetic. In media land it’s like Trump, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. This maneuver masquerading as a question insures an endless parade of talking heads babbling on about how unprecedented and confounding it all is. This media position; this disingenuous search for the answer is as Madison Ave. as Trump himself. The repetition from program to program broadcasts to us that there is no explanation to be had, we are hopelessly adrift in the Trump fog but we, the media, will keep up our end by continuing to book experts. The covert aspect of “the question” is that it has boarders. Permissible on air conversation is confined to Trump’s charisma, media savvy, his sculpted persona of strength and decisiveness, his blue collar language and attitudes, his fearless use of deceit. For the supporters piece the boundaries include disenfranchisement, disillusionment, stagnant wages, perverted patriotism, and plain old rage.

What is never discussed is racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian bias. It doesn’t matter what Trump says it only matters what he projects. He constantly spawns new ways to say the same thing over and over, to reassure straight white people that they will not become a dreaded minority class; that they will always remain the ruling power in America. More than anything his supporters desperately need to hear that their whiteness will always be preeminent in the American caste system. There are millions upon millions of scared white people who can feel it, the shift. It’s been coming since the sixties and seventies. They thought they had it tamped down but beneath the boot mitosis was under way. People of color have been procreating as Jesus counselled. Also some serious mixing has been unleashed; unabashedly bi-racial babies are on the rise, why they’ve had to add a new box on the census form. The cultures of people of color have soaked permanently into main stream Americana: music, cloths, food, language, attitude, philosophies, the staples, the launch pad for life. For God sakes the TV ad folks have even bet their all mighty money on commercials featuring diversity. The white comfort of the 1950s, even for poor whites, is slipping further and further into the before time. Despite the white man’s premier military position it hasn’t knocked out anyone since World War II, even the shockingly under armed Vietcong kicked our ass. This evolution creates great confusion and fear for white folks. With the advent of the internet the white people’s control of US history is increasing being exposed to the light of day, authority over the narrative is being lost. The internet coupled with “devices” is neutering the once powerful tool of isolation. The masses can now communicate and educate at will, hell, give them a second and they’ll send you the video.

This is the very simple ugly unspoken answer to why Trump continues to do so well. May the Force Be with Us.

Power to the People

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Media and Politicians: Hear the Harmony

30 Aug

The language of TV commentators and politicians: so casual and assuming about US military “strategy” in Syria, Iraq, even Ukraine. They speak with a cavalier entitlement as if our military options in other countries are like coffee choices at Starbucks. Many accept a correlation between video games and a level of desensitization to violence but what of the media’s culpability in desensitizing us to terms like “US intervention”, “military options”, “surgical air strikes” and many more. Why is it wholly unremarkable to hear these people talking matter-of-factly about bombing here and bombing there like possible moves on a chess board? These televised parleys are relegated to debates about targets, timing of strikes, what kind of munitions to deploy and very occasionally about the various benefits of bombing but never about the actual right to bomb. The right to bomb is a given in these dialogs. We feel threatened or we feel there might be a threat in the future. After all there was 911, our “never again” moment (by the way, how has that “never again” strategy worked out for the Jewish people in the middle east?) We feel a paternity toward a world filled with nations and people centuries older than our own. We feel the power of unrivaled wealth (albeit morphing). The deal is we have the biggest stick, currently. Each of these fail to support the right to bomb other countries. Additionally, we continue to be inoculated against the principal question of the right to bomb with the “US interests in the region” serum. Now that covers a multitude of sins. Who defines all of these interests and which countries they are lodged in? We were once sold the very long and expensive Vietnam War as vital to US interests, ooops, not really. There’s the oil of course and the prime military base real estate to be considered to name a few. “US interests” can dissolve foreign boarders and sovereignty and our very own Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of The Constitution. “US Interests”: a powerful term that has migrated to normal. Who in the US profits financially by these critical decisions and who loses, always the same people.

Power to the People

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War

9 Aug

We have no business maintaining hundreds of military bases all over the world. We can’t afford them; we can’t even provide for our own people, maintain a basic infrastructure, run a robust even steady economy. This is rudimentary budgeting: revenue/expense. What kind of men satiate their need for global recognition at the expense of their own people? This base money is desperately needed at home. You don’t think the 1% is going to pick up the slack do you? These bases provide no benefit to us and worse they breed resentment abroad. They’re official State bling. If you must calm your paranoia use the satellites, the Navy, the Air Force, hell bring Snowden back, slap him in a cubical and give him a terminal. Other countries don’t need to have bases abroad to be successful and safe in the world. These bases are obsolete strategies marinated in testosterone and egoism.

We were not elected to police the world. Sorry flag wavers, Americans do not possess exceptional wisdom. We pick and choose our world policing based on self-interests; this is not noble and we’re not fooling anyone. We are not entitled to police the world. We are not special people touched by God; within the time space continuum it’s just our turn to be powerful. So far in world history the “powerful thing” has been a slippery commodity, transitory, continually sniffing out new players to test. Global policing is ego tripping not morality in action. We need to lose the cape and get over ourselves before the universe kicks our teeth in and moves on without ceremony.

The daily news is exhausting. Blowing people and stuff up is what cavemen would have done if they’d had matches. No country can afford war, not even the wealthy ones; not in deaths, wasted money, nor destroyed cities. Global resources are diminishing for everyone, for anyone to blow them up is nuts. WWII was the last war the US ever fought which was actually connected to defense. All the succeeding wars have been bogus, loaded with propaganda and hidden agendas. The path to national security is through boring long term co-operation and respect not the centuries old tradition of competitive chest beating. Agriculture and water would be a good place to start. This is not hippy dippy pie in the sky, it is hard work. Evolution is survival and then quality of life. Say no to war.

Power to the People

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Now Let’s Try The Carrot

14 Jul

“Peace in the Middle East”, as it’s called, could be had but we’d have to stop funding the occupation. We’d have to give up the scripted delusion that an occupation is in our best interest regardless of the Wall Street/K Street hype. Then we’d have to redirect all that big time “aid” money into actual aid, not just an annual wad to be gifted to the current whomever to be spent at their discretion. If we had a financial stake in Palestinian held territories, hospitals/clinics that we funded and helped build, roads, desalinization plants, comprehensive irrigation systems, seed banks, solar and wind farms, housing, etc. we sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone blowing them up. You can bet the American tax payers would lose their collective mind over blown up tax dollars; i.e. you see how we’ve protected our colossal investment to date in the area with an “Iron Dome”. This change, this positive use of aid money turned into construction, instead of destruction, would also be a huge help to the unemployment crisis in the Palestinian territories. You know, all those young able bodied men with no jobs but lots of rocks and plenty of time to throw them. As a bonus these projects would reduce the hatred coming our way from the folks in Palestine and their many watchful neighbors. Any such reduction in hate is an upgrade in our national security. You want to get rid of Hamas, try building something with the Palestinians; improve people’s lives. This is not a new concept; this is sound foreign policy. Yes there would be problems overcoming Palestinian skepticism; “you reap what you sew”, we’d have to work hard to dismantle the reputation we’ve built but we’ve taken on difficult challenges before. The hardest element is shedding a false premise, like WMDs, and replacing it with positive action. And who knows, if the Palestinians come to like us just a little bit maybe we could begin to work on that misogyny thing they’ve got going on.

Power To The People

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No Divine Appointment

30 Jun

Who are we to decide anything in Iraq/Afghanistan? Why because it’s so easy to trash their chronic dictator style of governance as oppressive and unjust? So what, oppressive and unjust circles the globe. Redrawing territories, ousting leaders, medieval laws, get over it, none of our business. Unless, that is, you slip up and get honest about the oil. We have misdirected trillions of dollars away from our dire domestic needs, infrastructure, economic growth, education, you know the list, and blown it instead on private security for BP, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chevron, Halliburton and others. But America is addicted to oil you say, and yes we are. Addiction is bad by anyone’s definition. What do experts say you do to eliminating an addiction, you stop using baby. Even Nancy Reagan gets it “just say no”. It’s not rocket science and not an over simplification. Many consider the US to have the most innovative people on the planet. Some alternative energy systems (solar, wind, hybrids) have already, despite all big oil efforts, been successfully introduced into our market place. Imagine the untapped potential. There’s a staggering amount of money to be made with alternative energy but we’ll have to cut the big boys loose to sink or swim, you know, capitalism style. We must stop subsidizing the big boys with corporate welfare: legal tax evasion, trillion dollar protection rackets overseas; it has destroyed their incentive, made them lazy welfare kings eating bon bons and driving Cadillacs on our dime. They have the option to take a chunk of their massive profits and retrofit their companies to alternative energy production or slip into an earned oblivion. To compete they’d have to actually work, build, invest instead of just brokering. The rest of us are constantly expected to adapt to the ever changing world usually with zero disposal income to retrofit a damn thing. The citizens will transition to alternative energy . . . . we moved from radio to TV, movie rentals to Netfix, rabbit ears to cable, land lines to cell phones, typewriters to computers, desk tops to IPads, 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders, leaded to unleaded. The list is endless. These conversions happen at an ever increasing pace. We hardly blink. We love upgrades. We’ve come to expect them. However, by in large our elected representatives are hopelessly indentured to big oil so cutting the cord will have to come from the citizens; we’re going to have to save ourselves from the ever hungry war/oil twins.

Power To The People

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Iraq: The Arguments for More

20 Jun

DEBT: IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

Why is it we owe the Iraqi/Afghani people anything?

We’ve never felt that we owed the Indigenous people of this country anything for invading their homeland, slaughtering them, diseasing them, decimating their food supplies, kidnapping their children, humiliating them, warehousing them in outdoor jails . . . to name a few.

We’ve never felt that we owed the kidnapped Africans in this country for turning them and their children into generations of slaves, selling them, trading them, raping them, whipping them, hanging them, working them, humiliating them, warehousing them in sheds . . . to name a few.

So why are the Iraqis/Afghanis so very special in our conscience? Certainly we’ve been carefully guided by our leaders for years to believe that we have a moral responsibility to do right by these countries that we’ve invaded, but why? What exactly has moved us to step so far out of character and spend gobs of our sacred money on people we don’t even approve of? Have we had an epiphany? Have we experienced metamorphosis? Have we come to Jesus? I’m not feelin’ it. I smell oil.

SECURITY: IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

In the last ten or twelve years, globally speaking, do you feel more like a respected citizen of the planet or more like a preferred target? If you travel outside the U.S. are you perceived less like the ugly American or more like that ugly American? And how do we measure security? Women, for example, often measure personal security differently than men. Understandably it is not unusual for a woman to experience apprehension in certain situations that wouldn’t necessarily alarm a man. Young children can often be oblivious to danger and old people are often fearful of an abundance of hazards real or imaged. It’s a subjective thing. We want to feel safe, it’s primal. We want to believe that we can orchestrate safe. We do all that we can; we take the generally accepted precautions in our daily lives but simultaneously, deep in our bones, we also know that our whole existence down here is a crap shoot. How much will you believe to feel safe? I smell oil.

Power To The People

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Letter to My President

14 Jun

NO on more money, soldiers, or equipment being spent on Iraq. There is no face to be saved, that childish notion was never an option. Every minute spent there only compounds the idiocy of our original transgression in 2003. Bush has definitely moved on, by what right are we still held hostage to this atrocity, why aren’t the rest of us allowed to move on? Whether we left in 2004 or left today or leave ten years from now there will be no difference in that county; women will continue to be regarded as chattel regardless of the rotation of men in power. This is the true raw measure of our irrelevance in Iraq. Despite all of our killing we’ve just been treading water in someone else’s befouled pond. Time to exit; take the usual pounding from the right wing about the resulting cataclysmic nation security failure that’s sure to come. It’s time to face the reality of our power within the universe. It’s time to get humble, go home and attempt to clean up our own abundant messes.

We can start with a job for me. I am 67 years old, worked damn hard all of my life, was laid off almost three years ago, cannot afford to retire, mortgage not paid off, have burnt through all but a few thousand dollars of my savings. These are the “Golden Years” American style. My daughter is 32 years old, was laid off four years ago, back living with me. Unemployment long since gone for both of us. I still send out resumes frequently, sometimes get phone interviews, occasionally get a face to face interview. Face to face interview from last week . . . was told they received thirty resumes for the one position, they granted interviews to only three applicants. I got one of those interviews but not the job. And my country’s priority is to dump obscene amounts of money into the black hole known as Iraq and Afghanistan, eh, to keep me safe. Hoorah.

Instead of sending me back a flowery form letter how about sending me a job, I live in the San Francisco area.

Power To The People.

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Racism Alive and Well

23 May

Many people try hard to say that racists such as Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are an aberration.  That all is ok in America now, really; after all we have the black president now, twice actually, so it must be true, racism must be dead in America.  What is true is that in the last two presidential elections enough non-racist Americans of all races voted and fortunately outnumbered the racists that voted.  Certainly not the same as racism is in the past.  One only has to look at gerrymandering to see the current strength of racism and bigotry in America.  There doesn’t seem to be much debate, republicans do have the smaller party, yet they totally dominate the House.  Despite getting fewer popular votes in the last election, because of gerrymandered districts they maintained control of the House.  If you contort the districts to concentrate the bigots and dilute the non-bigots in the correct proportions you can steal the prize, it’s math not democracy.  Not very honorable but then honor is not the objective; power, control, and ultimately money is the objective.  Regardless of district manipulations it still takes a real boat load of bigots to pull this off; a handful of left-overs from a mythical by-gone era won’t cut it.  Republicans understand well the potential inherent in bigotry.  They already have the rich folks but to stack the numbers they really need they cultivate these bigots like sand in oysters. And bigots are an easy mark; they are so consumed with their hate for the “others” that they can even be openly lead to vote against their own self interests.  And the media really needs to stop referring to these congressional republicans as ideologues.  It’s dishonest and makes them (the media) complicit in promoting the scam.  Call them what they are, hard core strategists protecting their individual revenue streams for as long as they possibly can.   This is classic hair on the knuckles.  The country be damned, the constituents be damned, it’s business, it’s about staying flush.   I get it, I wish I was flush.  Now if we were to follow the logic of black president = racism dead  we would have to conclude that if Hillary wins the presidency then wife/girlfriend beatings in the US will cease and desist, that girls and women will no longer be sold into sex slavery in the US, that pay for women will no longer be less than that of a man, blah, blah, blah.  

Power To The People

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Duck Dynasty

23 Dec

Christians: generally the worst messengers of god and christ. The bible was written by men. Right there, men are not characteristically the best messengers of the heart, women are. First and foremost jesus, by legend a supreme being not a man, spoke from the heart. The bible in all its iterations is what a bunch of guys thought, fantasized and said a couple of thousand years ago. And likewise a whole bunch of other guys have tweaked it over the ensuing centuries to further their own mortal agendas. The bible is a 100% faith based publication. You can’t prove that god or jesus said anything at all that is attributed to them in that book. The party line is that these men, the original propagators and the tweakers, were either inspired by god or jesus to speak doctrine or even better yet they claim that god or jesus actually spoke to them. Enter the faithful. I once asked a Jehovah Witness that approached me with the book if he would believe me if what I was about to tell him was truly a bonafide inspiration from god. He smiled sweetly and said no. I asked him why not and he just smiled nervously again, dodged the question, hit the reset button and resumed the party doctrine. Within any so called christian community if I were to repeatedly insist that god or jesus was speaking to me directly, using me as a mouth piece, I would be put on Halaperidol or Thorazine and moved into “the system”. It is unfortunate that christians can’t just get with the spirit of jesus and drop kick the book of man. This new pope would like to get there but he too has a hard time retiring the book. And sadly, even if he were so inclined his crew would never allow it; he would be muzzled and put to pasture tout suite. Actually, he better watch himself. Contrary to popular catholic lore the pope is not the head of the church, the institution is the head of the church and the pope is a sentimental suggestion. If Phil Robinson was really as tough and hard boiled as he sells himself on TV he would walk naked with jesus, no biblical safety net just the raw spirit of jesus.

Power to the People

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