Friday, December 18, 2015
Moribund
Behold:
I'm reminded of Athens, after Syracuse.
We are a foolish people, seemingly intent on destroying ourselves...either by actively working for our own destruction(GOP and Corpodems) or abdicating, and hiding ourselves away(actual Liberals).
Look what the last 40+ years of neoliberal corporate fascism/feudalism have gotten us:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/half-america-or-damn-near-close-living-poverty
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-e-stiglitz/us-middle-class-society_b_8759752.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-does-middle-class-even-mean/392471/
And yet I cannot even begin to discuss such things without some rube flinging inanities, or...worse...some troll attempting to threaten me into acceding to his surreality.
The idea of an aristocracy having stolen our government in broad daylight is “conspiracy theory”...while that of Fake Moon Landings is not.
Pointing out the obvious...like systemic racism, classism,etc...is grounds for public excoriation; while actually engaging in such behaviour is not.
Fear and loathing...the reptiles have won.
I must disengage from the whole mess.
It is pointless, in this far place, to attempt to reason...to cajole or even try to get folks to question their ill conceived and unexamined assumptions.
I will vote for Bernie in the Primary...and write him in in the General, after Hillary has been crowned.
Aside from that, I retire as a gadfly.
I will shore up our defenses, and prepare for the hellworld that Americans seem determined to create.
Fie!
Have fun in the Cave.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Misanthrope
A frelling week of cold rain, and now the sun's out.
But it's still cold...and I cannot get warm, it seems.
Especially my feet.
There's a thick layer of dew on everything.
Cold wet feet discourages work...especially the scaffold-kind...
I despise heights.
After a couple of weeks of too much family(brother's bunch came up, and before that it was my fucking former uncle's tornado of greed and stupidity(probate))
and Terror, out there in the world...another clinic shot up...Paris exploding...and a refugee crisis...this time from Syria...and a Pakistani-American couple, shooting up a place in Cali....
….and the knee jerk, ugly reaction to all of this....the Sniper for Freedom Charity Event next week, and the total lack of awareness of the brutal irony....
….and I think of all of the folks I know in meatspace, and despair.
I get reports from wife and kids about the various insanity that is routinely uttered, in public, by Good Christians and Ordinary Folks...Hang them all...Kill them All...Drop the Bomb...
Round them up...Kick them Out...
Take it Back...Fuck the Poor, the Brown and the Different....
God will know what to do...
Now, the news is filled with dire warnings of climate disaster...while a Super El Nino is busy causing the cold wet I so lament....
….and the comments below these terrifying dispatches: outright denial of established science...it's easier to believe in a giant nefarious conspiracy, somehow...
More ugliness....
You libtards are forcing it down our throats...
and sticking it in our ass...
We must go into the closet, with the Lord(just like it says, it turns out...)
Woe is us...gnash gnash...rend, rend....
A lack of ashes, because they have long ago forgotten the use of fire...
All of this....this, and the usual “Holiday” ennui and apathy, and patient, painful endurance...and I find that I hate Humanity.
All of our Systems select for Psychopathy...
One cannot take the High Road, because one's opponents are constantly dragging everything into the mud...
Probate...we say, “let it be fair and just and simple”
But No....
we must quibble over the least bit...what we are entitled to, by law(like an accounting of the estate) is withheld...so it's fight, tooth and nail...spend all manner of jack on lawyers, who further confuse the matter, until what should have taken a day, takes a year, or more.
This same thing obtains all through Human Life...at least where there's more than one Human...
The Good...the Sane...are well hidden, and largely unknown...
But the Screamers, and Grubbers, and Meddlers...psychopaths, all...are forever underfoot...under bed...in one's pockets...and in one's ears...
That it's Rational to take refuge in misanthropic solitude doesn't negate the weight of such feelings.
I snarl at passing cars...yell at airplanes...and cuss under my breath the cops and war mongers, racists and stupid people that I have known...
This is the Age of the Arrogantly Stupid.
Folks shout their Ignorance to the world...demand to be praised for their Mendacity and Greed....loved for their World Ending Hatred...and obeyed, for their Ignorant Certainty and Willful Blindness.
Bronze Age camp fire tales and Medieval fairy stories...borne out of confusion and pre-scientific unreason, are paraded as Rules to Live By...Reason is rejected out of hand, inasmuch as it contradicts the Mythos, never examined...
To examine it would be a Sin.
So I retreat, at long last...and resolve to hide my phone...and I kindle a fire, and wait for the 3 rooms of the central Library to heat up so I can remove my long johns...
I kindle another fire under the Hot Tub/Think Tank....for later...when it reaches a balmy 60 degrees.
Bach...violin concertos....
Dope...a cheap Chianti...and Hefeweissen and Shiner for later, if needed.
Commune with the neighbor's cows, visiting our back pasture...
I can see them from my window by my desk.
I realised the other day, that in four short years, I will be a half a century old.
Of course, I usually feel much older than that.
I worry
a lot.
When my eldest goes to a Junior High dance, I worry.
When my youngest goes on a field trip, I worry.
This is the world we're bequeathing them...full of violent and well armed crazy people, whom we cannot point out, because other violent, well armed crazy people might be offended.
Similarly, nothing can be done about disastrous climate change, or economic dysfunction, or the widespread systemic racism...because we're not allowed to speak of such things objectively.
The folks who most benefit from all of this destruction and disarray are exempt from being called to account.
Millions of our neighbors are delusional apologists for avarice and doom, who cannot brook any rational discussion.
I worry that when my boys are ready for college, that I will not be able to afford it...or, worse, that it will no longer be worth the expense.
Why go into massive debt, only to flip burgers?
Why learn a trade, or gain a work ethic, or get an education, when none of these things are valued...as evidenced by the employment situation?
Everything is broken...and we cannot even begin repairs, since we cannot even agree with half the population that there is an actual problem...let alone how to attempt to fix it.
But it's still cold...and I cannot get warm, it seems.
Especially my feet.
There's a thick layer of dew on everything.
Cold wet feet discourages work...especially the scaffold-kind...
I despise heights.
After a couple of weeks of too much family(brother's bunch came up, and before that it was my fucking former uncle's tornado of greed and stupidity(probate))
and Terror, out there in the world...another clinic shot up...Paris exploding...and a refugee crisis...this time from Syria...and a Pakistani-American couple, shooting up a place in Cali....
….and the knee jerk, ugly reaction to all of this....the Sniper for Freedom Charity Event next week, and the total lack of awareness of the brutal irony....
….and I think of all of the folks I know in meatspace, and despair.
I get reports from wife and kids about the various insanity that is routinely uttered, in public, by Good Christians and Ordinary Folks...Hang them all...Kill them All...Drop the Bomb...
Round them up...Kick them Out...
Take it Back...Fuck the Poor, the Brown and the Different....
God will know what to do...
Now, the news is filled with dire warnings of climate disaster...while a Super El Nino is busy causing the cold wet I so lament....
….and the comments below these terrifying dispatches: outright denial of established science...it's easier to believe in a giant nefarious conspiracy, somehow...
More ugliness....
You libtards are forcing it down our throats...
and sticking it in our ass...
We must go into the closet, with the Lord(just like it says, it turns out...)
Woe is us...gnash gnash...rend, rend....
A lack of ashes, because they have long ago forgotten the use of fire...
All of this....this, and the usual “Holiday” ennui and apathy, and patient, painful endurance...and I find that I hate Humanity.
All of our Systems select for Psychopathy...
One cannot take the High Road, because one's opponents are constantly dragging everything into the mud...
Probate...we say, “let it be fair and just and simple”
But No....
we must quibble over the least bit...what we are entitled to, by law(like an accounting of the estate) is withheld...so it's fight, tooth and nail...spend all manner of jack on lawyers, who further confuse the matter, until what should have taken a day, takes a year, or more.
This same thing obtains all through Human Life...at least where there's more than one Human...
The Good...the Sane...are well hidden, and largely unknown...
But the Screamers, and Grubbers, and Meddlers...psychopaths, all...are forever underfoot...under bed...in one's pockets...and in one's ears...
That it's Rational to take refuge in misanthropic solitude doesn't negate the weight of such feelings.
I snarl at passing cars...yell at airplanes...and cuss under my breath the cops and war mongers, racists and stupid people that I have known...
This is the Age of the Arrogantly Stupid.
Folks shout their Ignorance to the world...demand to be praised for their Mendacity and Greed....loved for their World Ending Hatred...and obeyed, for their Ignorant Certainty and Willful Blindness.
Bronze Age camp fire tales and Medieval fairy stories...borne out of confusion and pre-scientific unreason, are paraded as Rules to Live By...Reason is rejected out of hand, inasmuch as it contradicts the Mythos, never examined...
To examine it would be a Sin.
So I retreat, at long last...and resolve to hide my phone...and I kindle a fire, and wait for the 3 rooms of the central Library to heat up so I can remove my long johns...
I kindle another fire under the Hot Tub/Think Tank....for later...when it reaches a balmy 60 degrees.
Bach...violin concertos....
Dope...a cheap Chianti...and Hefeweissen and Shiner for later, if needed.
Commune with the neighbor's cows, visiting our back pasture...
I can see them from my window by my desk.
I realised the other day, that in four short years, I will be a half a century old.
Of course, I usually feel much older than that.
I worry
a lot.
When my eldest goes to a Junior High dance, I worry.
When my youngest goes on a field trip, I worry.
This is the world we're bequeathing them...full of violent and well armed crazy people, whom we cannot point out, because other violent, well armed crazy people might be offended.
Similarly, nothing can be done about disastrous climate change, or economic dysfunction, or the widespread systemic racism...because we're not allowed to speak of such things objectively.
The folks who most benefit from all of this destruction and disarray are exempt from being called to account.
Millions of our neighbors are delusional apologists for avarice and doom, who cannot brook any rational discussion.
I worry that when my boys are ready for college, that I will not be able to afford it...or, worse, that it will no longer be worth the expense.
Why go into massive debt, only to flip burgers?
Why learn a trade, or gain a work ethic, or get an education, when none of these things are valued...as evidenced by the employment situation?
Everything is broken...and we cannot even begin repairs, since we cannot even agree with half the population that there is an actual problem...let alone how to attempt to fix it.
A fork in the road:
The Dirty Fucking Hippies
Were Right
A fork in the road:
either “Generational War”,
(http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/19/its-still-world-war-iv/)
….or a Road Less Traveled,
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/isis-war-the-case-for-cut_b_8719368.html)
On 911, I was at work at my cafe, with my 3 employees, preparing for the lunch rush(which turned out to be my last big day)
My wife called and said “turn on the radio”.
So we listened to WOAI out of San Antonio, while we cooked and cleaned.
I remember, during the confusion and hysteria, ruminating aloud that perhaps we should ask ourselves why those folks hated us enough to do such things(it was already being blamed on Bin Laden, and Al Quaeda).
That Friday Night(my last busy night, it turned out), I was mobbed by a few folks in the kitchen, asking me what I thought about all of this...by this time, there was an uncharacteristic unity afoot in the USA, that we were in an existential war against Islamic Terrorists...and the Rhetoric was identical to that of the Cold War.(see: George Kennan, and the Truman Doctrine:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Doctrine)
I held forth...my impromptu audience in rapt attention as I slung steaks and soft-shelled crabs...and with a great intuitive leap, diagnosed the fundamental issue(which I still believe is true): that we had brought this upon ourselves...by meddling and screwing with other people's countries...by being an Imperial Force for greed and power, astride the world...all in order to maintain control of backward places where the oil lived...and that the Terrorists were being rather open and honest about their motivations...and that they had a point...and that we would do well to listen to them, and attempt to determine if their grievances were legitimate.
None of my listeners had ever heard of the numerous assholeries by the CIA...like Operation Ajax, that subverted the Democratic Will of the Iranian People in service of greedy oil barons...neither did they remember that our own government had all but created Al Quaeda in Afghanistan as a proxy to fight the Soviets.
I believe that my narrative that week was the biggest contributor to the failure of my cafe, over the next 2 months. Hunting Season didn't happen that year...and Foreign Food was seen as unamerican(Freedom Fries!)...and there was much uncertainty and fear and hysteria evident in the population...and I could see from the front window that the Greasy Spoon(and e coli palace) was doing very well, continuing to serve as the de facto Town Hall, and dishing up “comfort food”, rather than my Gourmet fare...but my Diagnosis is likely what killed my cafe.
Turns out I was right.
The actions of Our Government, and Our Military Industrial Intelligence Complex, going back 70 years, had created this mess...and continues to do so.
Now, after all these years of anti-Islamic hysteria, fueled by our own reactionary ignorance of the world, and fomented by a great wurlitzer of fear and loathing that passes for “conservative” media, as well as the socio-economic wasteland that we live in and studiously ignore, a couple of American Muslims shoot up a place...
Their motives are unimportant...aside from the ridiculous bromide,”they hate us for our freedom”--and the Drums of War....a “war that will not end in our lifetimes”...beat ominously, once more.
It doesn't matter that our increasing involvement in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, et alia is exactly what Daesh wants, and needs...that we, and our ill conceived war-making and drone strikes and the Islamophobia that drives it all, are their best recruiting tools...
It doesn't matter that by failing to address the Root Problems that drive those folks to want a Caliphate, we ensure their continued commitment and fervor...
I was right...that day in September,13 years ago...and I am right, right now.
The only way to end this conflict is to not play that game.
To admit our own guilt in fucking up that whole part of the world, and to resolve to mind our own fucking business.
To withdraw from the Arab World, and find our energy elsewhere, even if the oil and gas companies will suffer for it.
For Oil is at the very root of all of this...and always has been.
Our unending support for the vicious Saudi Regime, and their ongoing export of Salafist Wahabism...our unending support for a murderous Israeli Regime and their ongoing export of hatred and lawlessness...our unending meddling in the affairs of other people's lands, where we do not belong, and where we do not have a right to meddle...all because these places are where Our Hydrocarbons are...
Enough.
I will be called a Traitor...a Terrorist Lover who hates America...a Hippy Dippy Muddle Minded Libtard...If I'm listened to, at all.
And we will go to war, anyway.
Because nobody listens to Hippies...and nobody listens to Rational Arguments...nobody pays any mind to the Smart People who counsel that we Think and Reason and look Objectively at the actual History.
So once again, I am left with the question: does Humanity Deserve to Survive itself?
Does America?
I am inclined to answer in the negative.
We are too stupid to survive.
(http://stochasticterrorism.blogspot.ca/)
Were Right
A fork in the road:
either “Generational War”,
(http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/19/its-still-world-war-iv/)
….or a Road Less Traveled,
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/isis-war-the-case-for-cut_b_8719368.html)
On 911, I was at work at my cafe, with my 3 employees, preparing for the lunch rush(which turned out to be my last big day)
My wife called and said “turn on the radio”.
So we listened to WOAI out of San Antonio, while we cooked and cleaned.
I remember, during the confusion and hysteria, ruminating aloud that perhaps we should ask ourselves why those folks hated us enough to do such things(it was already being blamed on Bin Laden, and Al Quaeda).
That Friday Night(my last busy night, it turned out), I was mobbed by a few folks in the kitchen, asking me what I thought about all of this...by this time, there was an uncharacteristic unity afoot in the USA, that we were in an existential war against Islamic Terrorists...and the Rhetoric was identical to that of the Cold War.(see: George Kennan, and the Truman Doctrine:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Doctrine)
I held forth...my impromptu audience in rapt attention as I slung steaks and soft-shelled crabs...and with a great intuitive leap, diagnosed the fundamental issue(which I still believe is true): that we had brought this upon ourselves...by meddling and screwing with other people's countries...by being an Imperial Force for greed and power, astride the world...all in order to maintain control of backward places where the oil lived...and that the Terrorists were being rather open and honest about their motivations...and that they had a point...and that we would do well to listen to them, and attempt to determine if their grievances were legitimate.
None of my listeners had ever heard of the numerous assholeries by the CIA...like Operation Ajax, that subverted the Democratic Will of the Iranian People in service of greedy oil barons...neither did they remember that our own government had all but created Al Quaeda in Afghanistan as a proxy to fight the Soviets.
I believe that my narrative that week was the biggest contributor to the failure of my cafe, over the next 2 months. Hunting Season didn't happen that year...and Foreign Food was seen as unamerican(Freedom Fries!)...and there was much uncertainty and fear and hysteria evident in the population...and I could see from the front window that the Greasy Spoon(and e coli palace) was doing very well, continuing to serve as the de facto Town Hall, and dishing up “comfort food”, rather than my Gourmet fare...but my Diagnosis is likely what killed my cafe.
Turns out I was right.
The actions of Our Government, and Our Military Industrial Intelligence Complex, going back 70 years, had created this mess...and continues to do so.
Now, after all these years of anti-Islamic hysteria, fueled by our own reactionary ignorance of the world, and fomented by a great wurlitzer of fear and loathing that passes for “conservative” media, as well as the socio-economic wasteland that we live in and studiously ignore, a couple of American Muslims shoot up a place...
Their motives are unimportant...aside from the ridiculous bromide,”they hate us for our freedom”--and the Drums of War....a “war that will not end in our lifetimes”...beat ominously, once more.
It doesn't matter that our increasing involvement in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, et alia is exactly what Daesh wants, and needs...that we, and our ill conceived war-making and drone strikes and the Islamophobia that drives it all, are their best recruiting tools...
It doesn't matter that by failing to address the Root Problems that drive those folks to want a Caliphate, we ensure their continued commitment and fervor...
I was right...that day in September,13 years ago...and I am right, right now.
The only way to end this conflict is to not play that game.
To admit our own guilt in fucking up that whole part of the world, and to resolve to mind our own fucking business.
To withdraw from the Arab World, and find our energy elsewhere, even if the oil and gas companies will suffer for it.
For Oil is at the very root of all of this...and always has been.
Our unending support for the vicious Saudi Regime, and their ongoing export of Salafist Wahabism...our unending support for a murderous Israeli Regime and their ongoing export of hatred and lawlessness...our unending meddling in the affairs of other people's lands, where we do not belong, and where we do not have a right to meddle...all because these places are where Our Hydrocarbons are...
Enough.
I will be called a Traitor...a Terrorist Lover who hates America...a Hippy Dippy Muddle Minded Libtard...If I'm listened to, at all.
And we will go to war, anyway.
Because nobody listens to Hippies...and nobody listens to Rational Arguments...nobody pays any mind to the Smart People who counsel that we Think and Reason and look Objectively at the actual History.
So once again, I am left with the question: does Humanity Deserve to Survive itself?
Does America?
I am inclined to answer in the negative.
We are too stupid to survive.
(http://stochasticterrorism.blogspot.ca/)
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