Quiet Piggy!
Various commentary about the condition of the world as interpreted by twists and turning, mostly left.
(This was obviously written right after the first trump
presidential election. It’s enough said that though nothing changed in the
political environment or the state of the nation since, it gives pause to
believing that anything will now.)
Change
Change came to Paradise, Ca
this month. No one asked for it, no one deserved it, but it happened because it
was the Will of God, Mother Nature’s whim, mismanagement of the forests by
overdevelopment or ill planning by government agencies, or by just plain dumb,
bad luck.
Build it and they will come.
That’s our idea of Paradise. Build a senior center, the seniors come. They
trust they’ll be taken care of when the time comes. Like parents and their
children trust the education system to imbue the children with the proper ideals
to make them successful in the real world.
Hard work, knowledge, decent
wages, good things should follow along with the good and properly lived life.
Change is good or bad,
sometimes at the same time. Dependent on whose perspective, whose purpose.
In 2016 the people of the USA
voted Donald Trump into office, according to the constitutional structure
designed by Founding Fathers and maintained, redesigned by other men, mostly
men.
In 2016, the people of
Britain, practically the stepfather of the USA, voted to leave the European
Union, which was set up to unite the European block countries in a common
currency as well as to make other economic agreements easier.
Major changes. Scotland which
has always been at loggerheads with England votes to stay with England rather
than be on its own. Right wing dictatorships the USA supports such as Brazil,
Phillipines, N.Korea, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Guatemala, Israel are counter balanced
with left/socialist regimes the USA dislikes such as Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, any
country friendly to Russia.
Is there any significant
differences between any of these countries that would require special
considerations based on arbitrARY, assumptive conditions of hostility or
friendliness? They, like the USA are all swimming in the same shark infested
swamp of patriotic fervor, corruption, nationalism, aggression, and religious fantasy.
All these changes are
deserving of our attention and the news gives it to us non-stop, 24 hours, but
is any of it really telling us what’s wrong?
We human beings have become
the fodder for the cultural, political, and economic wars raging between
idealistic and fascist minds who control the wealth or who want to control the
wealth.
But that’s only part of it.
If we are fodder, then it is our fault. We’ve let it happen. The amorphous,
abstract god we originally gave to the churches, priests and religious
demagogues to be our connection to our beliefs has been usurped by the nation
state. In this day and age, it’s america that carries the mantle of Supremacy.
Why do millions of citizens as well as immigrants look to america for relief
from their problems and enforcement of their humanitarian rights?
George Santayana’s warning
that those who don’t remember their history are bound to repeat it.
The fact that the world,
growing as it is, cannot sustain the destruction of resources required to
support the american dream, let alone the rest of the world.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not
an isolationist, just the opposite. I don’t think a world-wide consortium of
wealthy, corporate profit minded masterminds should manage us either.
It’s in us. Our increasing
reliance on Drugs, uncontrolled reproduction, accumulation of wealth into fewer
and fewer hands, false belief in remedies like wars, sanctions, violence are
all ingredients for our destruction as Free beings. If it were just climate, we
could survive.
Drugs.
Being from the 60’s
generation where not just marijuana, which has always been around, was
acceptable but the acceptance of hallucinogens as contributors to
enlightenment, I experimented enough to understand with the type of work I did
that being high was not conducive to well- being. There is evidence that
many drugs, used properly, can become the tool to enlightenment. It’s
interesting that with many things on my list of negatives, the illicit drugs
become the outlaw drugs while the “controlled” drugs, those of the government
sanctioned pharmaceutical companies are acceptable.
It really is a difference
between philosophies. One, used properly, can suggest a movement toward change
in one way and the other, a control for things to remain the same.
Drugs and alcohol and the
emergence of gangs and military’s forces that control them has brought many
countries or certain parts of other countries to a standstill. As with wars and
tax laws that have depleted the treasuries, drug enforcement and warfare has
exacted a huge toll on the general population. In American and the western societies,
the drugs are controlled by the pharmaceutical companies based in a profit
motive while the costs of drug rehabilitation and addiction are borne by the
society at large, usually through under financed and under manned nonprofits or
agencies. Even with that in mind these society orbs are under strict
guidelines, strictly controlled and regimented by the very companies and
government agencies that are the source of the problem.
Wars
Today’s wars have changed us
in a lot of ways we can’t fully understand without at first studying PTSD in
the light of not just direct conflict, but the damage inflicted on the human
psyche by inference or subjective overexposure to all the political, cultural,
and moral implications on warfare which is no longer purely defensive but more
offensive in nature. There is an ancient Babylonian axiom that if someone comes
to kill you, rise up and kill them first. And that’s why America and many other
countries have taken on that role. America sees threats everywhere mostly based
on the pseudo truth that Envy makes the world the way it is. It’s an odd principle
to believe that those who want more freedom want to come and take ours, like
Freedom is some sort of jewel in a museum. America doesn’t really have any more
minerals and natural resources than anywhere else yet not having enough of one
thing creates a void in our national needs and wants.
According to the costs of war
project, the costs and use of oil and petroleum projects alone in the military
industrial complex put nearly half of America’s global contribution to climate
change.
Not to mention the depletion
of monetary resources to the cost of 5.6 trillion, yes trillion. The irony is
that progressives who wish things were otherwise are constantly criticized by
the powers that be as well as their more common, even decent followers, that
the entire repertoire of progressive
thought is detrimental to America’s future, little realizing that even if you
don’t believe so much in America’s large contribution to the human caused side
of climate change that the way wars are financed has changed so much that the
entire burden of financing America’s present wars is a swift way to bring
America to bankruptcy, not to mention it comes straight from the wallets and
pocketbooks of the lower levels of wage earners through tax cuts for the
wealthy and special incentives.
As mentioned above, PTSD puts
tremendous pressure on a gun society that fosters the notion that the learned
and acceptable way to resolve issues, either at the personal level or at the
international level is by a two-thousand-year-old Babylonian axiom. Ironically,
the belief that PTSD is only a warfare type of disorder has diminished its true
significance, specifically in communities with high rates of poverty, gang/gun
violence, and a low safe and secure living environment. Looking at gun use in
america one could conclude there is a consensus that anywhere there is a gun,
there’s going to be violence.
History
One interesting feature of
Change is the rewriting of history. We can, if necessary, see that some of the
legislation that has befallen upon common citizens, such as tax cuts, came
about through several presidents, both democrat and republican, and who have
escaped the pointing of fingers because along came trump who like the others
just made sure he got his share by upping the ante (by lowering the upper
percentage points share). From Clinton, bush, Obama the baton has been passed
and perhaps the buddy type of relationships of those past presidents will end
with Trump never joining them on the golf course, summits that enjoy.
There is no doubt the history
of these United States never quite settles in on specifics but the media, the
education system, the politicians continually treat American anomalies, such as
offensive war and it’s implied purposeful ethnic and religious cleansing by
treating civilian populations as enemy’s ( though to illustrate the difference
between us and Them, trump recently said in protecting the crown prince of
Saudi Arabia that our agreements are with the Saudi government and not with one
person) thus excusing murder in lieu of economic commitments, racist policies in law enforcement,
discriminatory practices in voting rights, to name a few.
It’s also imperative to
maintain the past lies as truth. A house of cards in more ways than one.
Pacific Trade Agreement
And all other tariffs included.
It’s not complicated, economics that is. If after a trade
agreement, a dairy product corporation in another nation can ship a carton of milk halfway
across the world and put it on the shelf in your local grocery store for at
least an equivalent cost as a similar local product, then something is wrong. It is
that something that's wrong that is the problem.
Rule #1 if something doesn’t make sense, then do nothing
about it but don’t let your nation of choice try and do something about it, either.
Rule #2 If something doesn’t make sense, then don’t let
someone else who thinks it makes sense try and explain it to you. If you do let
them explain it and it still doesn’t make sense but you accept it because you think they
should know what they’re talking about, you are suffering from a lack of
confidence whereby you will ultimately pay.
Rule #3 It's all about money, getting it, making it, and spending it. No one is thinking of you in any of those processes.
Empathy
I have sympathy and i got empathy, too.
the fear in the air is palpable blue.
Paranoia runs its course in America it's true
Like walkin’ down the street hearing people
talking to themselves but really, they’re talkin to you.
But I can't get angry anymore over and over,
the red white and blue, I’m the matador not the inflamed beast you view
It’s not like you don't have my sympathy
though I might be screwed up white and regrettably more like you than you’d
probably think, or like.
I just can't get angry anymore about who's
hating who
I'm getting old, not that much time to relate,
I barely understand my own fate, much less
yours
by the time I find what I'm looking for I
forgot what I wanted it for.
I know it's not nineteen sixty-eight, blind
revolutionary to the core, I had to relearn a normal life, the red and the
black, I had their back, but no one, not even you, can travel the swampland of
america, without breaking down and throwing up their hands
but I can't just lay down and take it anymore.
like Fred Hampton took his while he slept.
j Edgar ain't alive anymore, there's a lot of
people carrying him inside like there's a lot more of his kind spreading like
weeds like johnyappleseed, fifty years in future. history seeds 2025.
cloning as if they all are clowns, going to
give less, take more, as more of them/us walk through doors guns ablazin’.
You may be the generation didn't get more what
your parents earned from their daily bread, I can see you’re angry about that
in your head
You got my sympathies no mistaken about that
rap
but I can't just get angry anymore, over and
over the same ol’ crap, same reconciliations, same concessions, same
compromises and same lying faces.
But then if you go to Istanbul or I would
assume anyplace in Africa you'd already know the sky shines on a different set
of races, our Great Mothers birthplace, not only all our colors of all our
skins, also the disaster from our hatred, from which our fears arise amid our
futures born out of disguise into the worlds masquerade.
It looks as if we've all been shuttered and
closed for too long a time, dead and dying like n ghost towns, each of us
wishing to discover a new pot of gold inside our heads, instead of one last
suicidal binge, one last resurrection.
Now that the buffalo no longer roam the home
on the range and everything ever known got shot at, rusted out, broken down and
blown up, I just can't get angry anymore despite all that, deep down inside I
want change, just like you. Look at me now and you'll be looking at you in
futures past, I'm your future and you're my past, I need more change than that,
I need change, it's me I need to fix, and all the people like me, like you too,
change but we all come with dumpster trash and China and Malaysia don't want to
take it anymore and the beautiful sea is not shining from all the crap floating
like islands waiting to be discovered and preyed upon by building military
bases and making whatever lives die out there beyond our grasp.
we haven't found anyone or anything to save us
from ourselves,
Brother and sister we're all the first
generation without any illusions, no trust in what came before is delusion,
constitution unequal democratic institutions, nothing works as advertised nor
for as long nor in case of emergency only seeing if at least one will kill at
least one that’s bothering me, what's waking me up sweat, something on my mind,
killing sprees. We are what we want to see. Even so yeah, maybe you have my
empathy,
Maybe it's about time you got some, too. Or
gave some out. Without us getting down on our knees.
We're all the first generation of a great
extinction, everyone living out the shelter of dying expectations, everyone
dying because our unacceptable pride where everything from the bird in the sky
to the fish in the sea, can't we believe it isn't going to end or be rendered
null and void, stamped trampled and buried like some sort of spiritual
vendetta, the experiment failed, Frankenstein on the rise, more human, less
wise, and the list of oppressed gets mentioned at every dawn and sunset, like
calls to prayer or a litany that thrives, keeps us energized, that's our dope,
man, mantra for the coming slaughter.
It appears that hardly any of their shit they
spent so much manipulating us about, convincing us for, selling us what never
worked like it was supposed to.
The engineers that built it and the profiteers
that changed it, the government's that regulated it, the earth that was
destroyed because of it never made us as ecstatic as promised it would.
We’ve been taken for a long ride, like the one
out to Pluto to discover it isn't a planet we need to worry about.
like the one ride that convinced us that once
we die there's eternal life waiting for us, a long boring choir filled praising
of gods glory, instead give me at least what little there is of freedom left on
this earth, I’ll take it and go and try to forget what I was taught, I’m going
to die before all is lost, and that’s not hope, my friend, that’s the dope
fiend talkin, maybe you’ll want to join me, and we can start all over again,
rather than trying to keep the dam from busting, we can try and forget all these
delusions, illusions they keep killing us with, and figure out how to love and
be free without trying and dying over who the authority is going to be in 2025
or anytime.
The fate of the world doesn’t depend on who is
elected president but on who are we going to defend and when we get started by
not going to the streets but more by what we decide to eat,
I got empathy,
Maybe it’s time you got some too.
And giving a little too.
Before we rise like the tide, your time is done,
a vision of justice in one hand, a love of freedom in the other, we will not be
alone.
Beautiful Exiles by
Meg Waite Clayton and The Women by T.C. Boyle
These two books
illustrate the commonality of great men and the women who love them, in both
negative and positive ways/
Them
the men
they need you.
Ernest and Meg,
You two were born like
romeo and juliet
amongst the divisive rubble
and struggle for Spain.
Frank Lloyd Wright
and Mamah Borthwick Cheney
You were the other
two born in the panic, there was nothing to come home to except smoke and
mirrors.
In wars, the great
romantics, the swelling pride of it, their work is always so important, so so
important and every one of you, mistress or wife, understands that.
You nourish his fear
like a wet nurse, you bear his desires like an Olympus hero.
He languishes when
you aren’t there.
For you are his ghostly
inspiration, his spectral muse,
He needs you where he
can easily find you.
Cuba, war, Idaho, war,
Cuba, war, the memories of Spain kept you going, together, driving like some
deep- throated engined plow, push past the lonely days, months, years between you, opened
up as precisely as a surgeon’s knife,
When it is best and the
difference of what it is between now and never you must tread.
Without the inclusion
of time, we all can live forever
He always had the
fire to remember the murders, the charred desolation of guilt because he
wasn’t there. His beloved Taliesin and you,
Taken away, of the
two, only you could not be replaced.
Here we are so
contained in our own stories, looking inside ourselves for the things to hold
on to when we are drowning in our time.
Meg, it was on the
way back to him from Italy. He called you there. He begged you back to Cuba and you came with
all your memories.
Momah, Your ghost
interrupted him, beckoned him from Chicago, he drives all night in the rain,
that failing hope wasn't enough to douse the flaming slaughter.
The good and the bad,
The end pummeling you
into submission.
There is nothing
there waiting for any of you.
You are sure of it
when you see them, her and him, laughing and drunk, just like the wars when you
mastered him/
The rendezvous,
the love,
they always love you
until they don't.
When that final moment gets
to you, it's never clear when that started.
Fire always leaps to its
hunger like a new lover, voracious and hard to satiate,
Once it starts, it’s
hard to keep down the thrill of it consuming everything you once loved- the bottlebrush by the sea, the quaint villages amongst the pine, it's smoky clarity, your fresh
Sprite of hells delight ignites.
It all retreats to the safety of ignominy.