The Present is a Cauldron

The present is a cauldron of different recipes for survival, all of which are examples of too many cooks spoil the broth adage. No one in times like these could possibly find solace nor recidivism recommended in any one truth without becoming contradictory and confused. Here in California where I live we are being processed to be prepared for a super El Niño when statistics show it is La Niña years that have resulted in the majority of catastrophic floods and damage. Nevertheless, I will give cursory acknowledgement to the warnings because in this day and age, it’s best to put some effort in personal safety without acquiescing entirely to the rising fear mongering the world leaders and science and technology benefactors are either not warning us enough about or are overwhelmingly promoting or cautioning about. From worldwide travel restrictions, health concerns, data center building, nuclear/war violence, dictatorship/ anti-democratic politics, surveillance overreach, and, in general, a plethora of information and variety of truth/ untruths we are bombarded by, have all coalesced into one big bundle of apprehension and fear. On the surface, the best of us try and ignore or, at least, dissimulate and disassociate ourselves from most of it, but I still wonder why a ballroom and new monument in Washington, D.C. are prime examples of a reality I never saw coming, despite being a lifelong contrarian, in the mildest sense of the word. I read enough science fiction and understood and continue to understand, dictators and monsters sometimes take over the world, but super heroes, patriotism, idealism always has come forward and puts a stop to it or them. Or does it? 

When I was a young kid and bomb shelters were being made so we could all emerge after an undetermined time from a nuclear war ( with The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, remember that?), we’d be ready to get back to building the democratic, bigger, better, and, of course, heavily armed capitalist state. I, also cheered and sometimes participated in the anti-war, pro civil rights, modern feminist, anti- nuke (both weapons and commercial use), the Occupy, Arab Spring, pro- Palestinian, anti- Zionist, anti-surveillance Patriot Act, anti- war again and again, and again. I was also a veteran, or I can say proudly, I am a veteran, for once a veteran, always a veteran, a blue-collar working man, and now an old gray haired social security recipient favoring Medicare for all and some version of socialism for my grandchildren. The sad thing is seeing certain parts of the world continue to deteriorate into sacrificial lambs, Cuba being the biggest one to me because I’ve been there several times and I understand the people are being made to suffer simply because at one time in their history they fostered a relationship with socialism and Russia, ironically, socialism and Russia are more tolerated or accepted today than Cuba itself. That’s the way of America, Saudis fly planes into the twin towers and pentagon, and all Muslims outside of Saudi Arabia are intolerable. The banks bring America and the world to the brink of collapse, and they get the relief, while millions of ordinary citizens lose their homes, financial security, and faith in their country. A pandemic kills a million or so here, the worst statistical measurement in the world, and it’s called fake news. All culminating in the most crazy historical, literally crazy, example of when nearly all the so-called leaders of the so called free world begin to follow and emulate one of the worst human beings born in my lifetime, willing to destroy whatever small amount of civil, cultural, political, idealistic, philosophical principles which have been pushed and pulled and sacrificed for, into the modern age. It’s not as if he is Prometheus when we need warmth, but more like Midas and he brings us the Hydra, or Medusa. He, of course, is no Jason nor Perseus, merely a cartoonish version of how we see monsters in the modern age. Fat, lumbering, all powerful until the beheading or the successful assassination. Then it becomes mundane repetition, I won’t be around for the next edition. The historical rewrite nor the embellishments. Sent from my iPad

All history is the …

All history is the …

all history is indeed the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,—Nietzsche 

We, so much want the world to have a moral order, when it is actually composed of an integration of, not an opposition, to social disintegration and is an antidote to the morality imposed on everyone by those who subscribe to chaos through wealth and power.

 Humans have always perceived, or attempted to perceive, a sort of mechanized version of living, with centuries old development of philosophes and religions presuming we humans are at the very least, the culmination of evolutionary change, if not the apple of god's eye as told in their ancient stories.

All of this has been set up to thwart complex fears and mysteries of life, as we see it through religion and politics as resolutions, merely theories rather than surety. We all try so hard to make sense of the nonsensical. And the universe is nonsensical when we don’t accept the general belief that it exists only for us to star gaze on a first date. There’s nothing practical about it but that’s all right with me, some people think trees are unnecessary.

Why does a right to lifer, so profoundly passionate about the fetus and the unborn of their neighbor, so quick to be immune to the suffering of those children that their nation (not God) believes is an enemy?

Why do feminists or women in general remain so passive when girls (and boys) are used as sexual ploys, yet the more ambitious scholars complain only about the dollars they are worth when compared to the moral squalor of their genital opposites?

Why does justice seem to miss those who have the most to gain by it?

When Obama lets the banks and mortgage managers go, when all the president's let their militaries go, when politicians take money and let democracy go, it is inevitable, Justice will have to go. Now we have an outlaw nation, Israel, turning justice out to roam the pasture of historical genocide while we americans continue to cater to all the practitioners of a form of political necromancy.

Where has Justice gone, gone to no right nor wrong.

It's all about justice, we let them creep away. From bankers, mortgage houses, to those made-up wars and self -defense causes, girls getting messed up in their clutches, priests abuse, presidents and prime ministers confuse, this country isn't too big to fail, a walking heart congestion, like the president we're in it for a buck and out with a bullet.

Gaza is bad but not the worst we have seen or will see or turn a blind eye to, in my lifetime. America has leveled ancient civilizations like some Indian God of revenge, or Greek mythologies

We're so naive to believe that if the primaries, midterms go as progressives and lessor democrats want that Trump still has two more years of doing what he wants. America is not going back to 2015.

We're in it. Retrograde. Going back to when america thought it was great but never was except in the minds of the blind hearts and those unrepentant souls that quack like the same duck but somehow become so enduring

Do not put your faith in a god, or politicians, or billionaires. Put it in your own ability to know what you truly need, not in a contrived belief in a security state and a safety you don't have, not trust in a surreal authority that doesn't care about you, and then, go to work, build personal and economic relations with all the others who have the same needs. I'm sorry but you can't get anywhere with a headset covering your ears, a mask covering your mouth, and a form of mental aversion and inability to thinking.

I can't do anything without you and you can't do anything without me. We're all going to drag each other down or pull each other up. It's as simple as that.

It is us vs them. Not you against me, me against you. We know who they are, they've come out in the open, stalking about, roaring, bloodthirsty as ever. They've been there all along, carrying out their worn out hatreds and genocidal desires.

We've been ripped from our instincts and ability to smell trouble or rats. Our lives are being shred against our own lack of trust in our common sense.

If you're going to vote for some version of a donkey or an elephant thinking that's the solution, then just get out of the way, democracy went to hell and it's not coming back in any of our lifetimes.

But there is still our survival, as individuals, as a society and its time to sort out their stories and history behind everything and compare them to our own experience which no one can deny.

Living with your head in the sand while trying to keep up in the fast lane is suicide.

There are alternatives and I'm not going to tell you right now what they are. What they are not is electing a different set of politicians who have already broken whatever was minimally good, going along with undiagnosed insanity of those who really don't care one iota about what happens to you, having faith in an economic system designed for scarcity and minimalism for you and extravagance, greed, corruption, and power for them, and you really know in your heart who they are.

Okay, I'll tell you one thing among many things you can do. Step aside, step down and let their parade of hopelessness pass you by while you sneak away to fix your own sense of certainty that you were born with, before they sold and addicted you to the snake oil running your life. It's never too late to change, you know?

And I might add, it's not about picking up a gun and randomly picking targets, it's more about turning your back on just about everything they told you is true. Then go and find the people who you will need and who need you.

Sent from my iPad

Nuclear

Nuclear 

I think we’ve all forgotten that there are thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of nuclear power plants producing high grade plutonium around the world just waiting for the lunatics who run the world to go truly suicidal. Thankfully, thus far, they’re too concerned with their legacy and their money, not necessarily in that order. Someone like Trump, a megalomaniac may someday realize that he has no legacy like Obama but maybe like Hitler, and decide to answer his own question he asked thirty years ago, “If we have nuclear weapons, what’s the sense not using them?” Sent from my iPad

To think there was a time

To think there was a time 

when every minute I felt free til at one point- minutes, hours, days or years, no, never years, but time is only one segment of life making us who we are, then, now, or in dreams. Dreams are the future and you must know dreams are not real nor promises nor, well, what’s worse than “not real”?

Hate to blow the bubble but I realize every day that technology can’t outpace me, or anyone actually, but why do we think it can? Can’t because how many times have you tried to explain to someone, dried blood doesn’t often leave a trail, according to fbi and cia secret files. How do I know, because I know, I just don’t know how much I don’t know. None of us do, and some would call it depressing but most would call it a challenge. What’s on the line? Cavemen (and women, of course) or another worn, outdated revolution that addresses all the stops, starts and truths but turns out to be false.

It’s OK, at least we tried, and trying, failing, trying, failing always leads to some king of success, at least that’s what they tell us, and we believe. Walking us down the road to destruction, I say, not necessarily the wisdom of the new god, global capitulation.

Most of my friends I managed to keep are dead now, the others, along with wives, children, went missing along the path of time.

I’ve become cynical. Democracy had its heyday already, kind of like the Apocalypse that roams and settles in someplace, and leaves. Those that live through either of them end up telling their stories like it was a bad dream but can only remember it piecemeal. I’ve seen and sometimes participated in the fits and starts of democracy. I voted, I believed in some of those politicians, some others not so much. I’ve wanted a woman to be president, even knowing that it’s never made any difference (except, at best, temporarily) in the other places. Same for black and other ethnic groups, some bad, some good. And I’m not one of those old white men who automatically reverted to acknowledging the history of men, in general. The only thing I attribute to men is the recognition that they (me included) are responsible for every problem we have today simply because men wrested away and took control of technology. Everything from the gun (and its weapon progenies) to the gasoline engine, to the art of war, and the art of suffering, men have built a generic society based in incremental values of wealth, power, and violence.

Maggie Blackhawk states it in simple terms. “We keep looking at other countries in order to try and understand what's happening

right around us but it’s right here in America where the start of it all is.

For instance, when did the Jews get permission to defend themselves above all other moral codes?

Was it when god said, abraham kill me a son?

When the Messenger of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I am taking an oath on my own name, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not refused to give me your son, your only son, I will certainly bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of their enemies’ cities. Through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

.

Sent from my iPad

“If we have nuclear weapons, what’s the sense not using them?”

I think we’ve all forgotten that there are thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of nuclear power plants producing high grade plutonium around the world just waiting for the lunatics who run the world to go truly suicidal. Thankfully, thus far, they’re too concerned with their legacy and their money, not necessarily in that order. Someone like Trump, a megalomaniac may someday realize that he has no legacy like Obama but maybe like Hitler, or better, Mussolini, and decide to answer his own question he asked thirty years ago, “If we have nuclear weapons, what’s the sense not using them?”

Sent from my iPad

Allred and the Sheep Worrier

Allred and the Sheep Worrier 

The Sheep Worrier is a lot like Santa clause, the tooth fairy, god. “He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.” The Sheep Worrier only needs fear to keep the flock on its toes. It’s important to the SW to expand the surveillance state cuz the SW does not have the extensive fear oversight of, let’s say, a real god, if there is such a thing. Of course, god always has His minions of priests, rabbis and ayatollahs. 

History of the Left -Wobbly, vote, Nuclear disarmament, SDs, sncc, black power weather underground, civil rights, anti draft, women’s liberation, Arab spring, Wall Street, abortion rights, terrorist jingoism, anti- Arab, immigration, What’s in a name? I think just in my lifetime alone, I’ve seen the culmination of every religious, political, philosophical, cultural tradition prove over and over again one of the basic human fallacies, which is, that we humans don’t have a clue about any of these grand ideas about who we think we are. Basically, we’re either killing machines or fodder for any and all natural and unnatural destructive mechanical, technological truths. It still all depends where on earth you are, when whatever apocalypse is going to make you its victim. It’s not that we’ve entered a new era, it’s that modern technology has exacerbated and accelerated what would have seemed as containment or conclusions for periods of time of widening conflicts. The distance in time between conflicts, pogroms, genocides, has decreased and time is accelerating so that time itself is a monotonous white noise of sameness, called by different names. They say that the only power Coyote has is the naming of everything, and that’s all that’s needed. No drones, no guns, no stupid people running the show. Just donalds, Stephen’s, netanyahoos, Vladimir’s. Doesn’t that say it all? It’s a horrible life in places like Gaza, Cuba, and other named places we don’t know anything about but not everyone can think about it here in America because though we can’t experience it, and neither can our so called representatives, worse for us, we really can’t imagine it, and our politicians, representatives have neither imagination nor empathy. They are shallow empty people, and so we can be as well. Circular firing squad. First the revolution starts with disillusionment, then comes moral outrage, activism, cultural and political conflict, then, commonplace becomes routine, lastly, acceptance of defeat, ordinary, routine. Back to normal.

 Are we the world’s most invasive species to date? 13 rabbits were brought to Australia from Europe for sport and now there are hundreds of millions, ravaging the Australian countryside. I’m sure there’s a good analogy in there somewhere. Sent from my iPad

I saw on u tube a video called “What if the self isn’t something to find.”

I saw on u tube a video called “What if the self isn’t something to find.” So I watched it. It turned out that it was a discussion about how we in the western world are embedded in the great and not so great ideas of western philosophers, such as Marx, Freud, Jefferson et al, and are more or less trapped ( my interpretation) in whatever good or evil has been nurtured in that culture AND not only that but when we look at when those western philosophers looked at non western culture, such as china, they ( and eventually us) didn’t get institutionalized. W

 we can not see the true nature of philosophers and ideas that come out of china or non western cultures because western thoughts are different than non western thought. All in all, it was good food for thought. I thoughtfully expanded this basic principle to include African, Asian, Native, and Gender ideas, since western thought ( Age of Reason) included such a magnitude of contradiction, such as “all men are created equal” contradicting slavery and so many other oppressive institutions in which there was little or no equality at all. Perhaps the center of the discussion was the difference in search for self. Western thought seems to revolve around the idea that somewhere inside everyone is the self that is pure from the mess of what the culture entangles everyone with and accepting that mess ( as long as it isn’t dangerous to anyone) as defining not only who but what you are. This inner search is both a selfish and self loathing process. Finding oneself becomes a full time job, weighing in on one’s personal relationships. Some things are better left undiscovered, as somethings are better left unsaid. But let’s face it, in America, there’s little we want to ignore and little science wants to leave under the rocks of curiousity. What if upon the discovery of the self, we find there’s about seven billion different versions and they’re all dangerous. Let’s say many want guns, want to be kings, want to be porn masters, want to be multi-billionaires, or, simply, just want to commit crimes with impunity. In other words, the self is as corruptible as the devil believes it is. Sent from my iPad