Allred-Alive and Well in the Belly of the Beast

September 20, 2021

Words are going the way of the buffalo, though not yet extinct, the ones that are left are only for grazing the vast occupied plains of consciousness as items of interest to only tourists and natural cynics of environmentalism. A relatively few number of them have taken the place of hundreds of thousands of words and their distinctive meanings.

Americans have been the least curious lot when it comes to technical jargon. We’ve handed over the specifics of our technology to experts who on the one hand have made it so difficult for ordinary people to utilize any sort of practical ideological or technological advancement. Cars are driven but no one knows how one works. Most people cannot even change a tire. From phones to nuclear weapons, from democracy to fascism, from computers to reading a book, knowledge has been driven over the cliff like the buffalo herds driven from the plains by slaughter and the natural sin of capricious violence

Along with this invasion of ignorance, comes the authority of the expert, whether it be the mechanic or the politician.

But yes, the mechanic is a necessary rendition, it’s true we can’t know how everything works or influences us. One has to trust to some extent the experts who fix the things we don’t comprehend or have time to fix. But we cannot become their ploys.

The politician is another story. They hold the language keys to the ideological foundations of our social, political, cultural, and economic lives in the same way the preacher claims to hold the keys to paradise/heaven/ the blessings of Jesus/God. We give them the power because they’ve always told us we can’t get there without them.

Politicians and preachers are essentially no different since both dabble in the interpretation of the rules, behaviors of their own institutional making, i.e. religion and the nation. They’ve made the rules, they’ve created the enforcement of laws, everything spiritual or reasonable, as defined by them, goes through them.

The ironic thing is there is no second amendment in the bible. There is only one enforcer, rulemaker or breaker in the Old testament and if God did give over any power it was in the New testament and then, even then, sinners are to be punished by the heavens, not the self-deputized militias, armies, landowners of the rich and famous.

Politicians and preachers have usurped the power of their own God for their own purposes. It’s all there, like it is in any political freedom document, either God has relented and given them the power, like in the Pope, Patriarchal religious leaders world -wide, or presidents and prime ministers with technological dominance over their own citizens and other nations.

Here are a few facts about our current situation that demonstrate how little discourse and activism come out of it:

1.   The right wing insists on their own freedom withing this country but also insists due to racist, misogynist, and superiority philosophies that the rest of the world and their own nations citizens should bow, make homage, live by the standards set by them. Does our freedom as Americans mean everyone else has to relinquish their own freedom, even in their own nations or communities?

2.   The right wing also believes that socialistic adherence to principles, mostly natural and necessary, for social cohesion in any society, big or small need not apply to individualist standards of freedom which also are natural and should exempt them from what the society believes is necessary.( by democratic processes).

3.   The nations of the world today are a blend of both these tendencies in any society but this concept of nation is a false construct based in the, and I repeat, the usurpation of religious belief, coming out of superstition and fear of the unknown, being incorporated into the enforcement of laws, always by a small, elite group of powerful influencers, by force or governance of wealth ( meaning control over jobs, resources and the law that governs all necessary “survival” of the masses).

Sure, writers use a dictionary or thesaurus but for the most part, but common language, based on familiarized ideas promulgated through social media, regulated news, and a fractured yet stupefying education system which all guarantees unoriginal thinking for the sake of structure and adherence to rules. If you really want to be an Outsider just try and have a conversation with someone using a wide range of metaphor, simile, wide word usage parameters and you’ll soon see that no one is listening.

Oh, that’s what poetry and prose is about. Only scientists and politicians will try to explain what they mean in different ways. This is all why music makes much more sense. White people made language to confuse us though I wonder if eskimos or other indigenous peoples have only one sound for blue or rain.

 

I’ve seen fourteen presidents in my lifetime. I find it hard to distinguish one from the other. They are much like Kings or Princes and like the many foreign women presidents and prime ministers that have already preceded our yet to be elected first woman president, they are all pretty much indistinguishable from each other too. It’s not a fluke that this is so, since our presidents and the foreign ones also represent the same idea/ideology, much like corporate heads who represent their stockholders (as well as themselves), all leaving the rest (and most) of humanity to dregs of history.

When you have what many people believe is a clown for president, what you’re left with is a circus.

 

If “love’ is a real emotion rather than an abstraction, then “love of country” is another houdini trick about getting men to skip out, disappear on empathy.

Everything you really need to know about living is walking distance from Here and Now.

 

Be Humble

I'm sure the Buddha said, at one time or another, something like, "Be Humble." Which in lay terms means, Just because you haven't ever thought about something  and suddenly a realization comes to you like a flash of light, out of what seems Nowhere, try and remember that it's probably already part of a three thousand year old tradition, in some part of the world you consider more primitive and NOT your very own direct line self-proclaimed Enlightenment from the Heavens above.

 

The Future

The Future is always going to feel a lot like the past, it’ll just have alot more blinding accoutrements, illusionary embellishments, thus making it look different but it’s still the same old leftovers from yesterday.

 

The Apocalypse

I always loved the Apocalypse. There is nothing quite so entrancing as the Four Horsemen as followers of Assassin Creed or the Terminator certainly know. Everything from Zombies, deadly viruses, car accidents and measureable gun deaths counted in the millions thrown into the Horseman’s revelry and glee, all certainly being worthy killers of human beings history.

I just never thought it would be real until the day he took the government away, like some Whore of Babylon, dressed up in a red wig, suit and tie, just like the Good Book said it would happen. 

It didn’t seem to make me as crazy as it made a lot of other people so I began to think I was one of the chosen people. I’d be lifted, books and all, once the deadly job was indeed complete.

But alas, I too, like everyone, was to be undone by my own fancy -dancin dereliction of social duty and the machinations of time on the threshold of my life, bidding me to step forward to meet my maker.

04/14/21

We’re Only Human, Aren’t We?

One of mankind’s biggest problems is that there is a tendency, whether natural or not I don’t know, to lay a legal socially simulated architectural framework around every important philosophical and religious belief. This framework turns into more of a meshy( as well as messy) mental jail from which the intellectual cannot escape without leaving the truth behind, like a revered lover. From the Holy Bible, Torah, Koran to the Magna Carta, Constitution, or Social Contract there is the tendency to obfuscate whatever is written so it can fit the perusal needs of the obfuscator, as GWB or Sarah Palin might say. There is hope though. There is one firm example of a written philosophy that has been little toyed with and remains intact and free from legislators and their legal ilk who act as the oracles of Delphi in our political world, describing and reinterpreting those things we are already sure of. This one philosophy which has managed to escape these oracles is the Kama Sutra. What you see is what you get there and need no lawyer be present to understand. Long live mutually satisfying sex. Very few right-wing extremists wear their guns into coitus nor have Karl Marx, Adam Smith, nor the Fed successfully managed to either tax it or make revolution with it, though they've tried. Keep on fucking. It’s the last free state of being.

Some people ask, “How can you beat the past?’ and I say, “You beat the past by making the future?”

 

Evolutionary Theory, though basically true, is still filled with primitive stereotypical and contrived “facts” such as -Neanderthals are our imperfect cousins, they came along in full shaggy beards, thick skulls, and large brains, kind of like early computer models, less efficient than Cro-Magnon, our so called direct European ancestors, who came ready, willing, and able to go out and eat, shave every-day, or, at least, had enough sense to get a beard trim while Mrs Magnon was learning to set a mean New York dinner table.

 

The older I get the more I understand that there are Truths still uncovered nor discovered by human hands.

There’s a dark ray moment in every sunny sky and in the darkest night there’s a bit of bright star. It’s a world of change, pain, and contradictions that confounds us

 

To paraphrase William Burroughs. All Presidents look alike.

 

Sometimes I wonder where’s our Goldman, where’s our Berkman, where’s our Frick? The answer is we only get Fricks and constant SPAM..

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A cowboy once told me that everything he needed to know was within a days ride, that may be good for cowboys but for us, everything you need to know to get along in this world is within walking distance.

 

Love and Imperfection are, if not the only, certainly two of the most benevolent and universal traits with Imperfection being the more unacceptable of the two. Since you can't get rid of your own Imperfections, you can’t expect anyone else to do so by loving you and you definitely can’t expect perfection from anything or anyone you love. It works better that way.

 

If someone reads what I write and doesn't like it that's a matter of opinion, but if someone reads what i write and doesn't want me to write anymore then that's a matter of fight

 

It used to be they said only death and taxes are certainties, but since a few decades have passed under my bridge, I can add Change to that axiom because it is certainly going to change, like tomorrow is always coming but the axiom says it never comes but unlike tomorrow, Change will come.

 

The movement now is more about what happens on the internet. The internet has certainly made office worker's jobs easier, and those who learned typing in high school can take advantage of the progress a keyboard and the storage of documents has made life easier. And then there are the robots, programmed to take over the spot welding but I don't know why it's so exciting to think this is the way of the future because it still takes a season to grow food though mixing a few compatible chemicals might make a meal but the slow evolution of our bodies will make trying to fly as difficult as it's ever been.

 

Everybody has their day (history), nobody has tomorrow (revolution)

 

Take one for the Lord, take one for your government,

take a bullet in the head for freedom and the american way.

take one for the earth or the cheetah running down the gazelle,

but please don't say you're taking one for me.

 

 

Democracy: a political convention whereby common people select recycled politicians in order to officially maintain/retain the status quo. In theory, it is based on the traditional family kitchen table decision making process whereby everyone gets their say until a decision is made by one for everyone, including whoever is the dog.

 

If freedom isn’t free then it isn’t freedom. If freedom isn’t free then we must be in america, Dorothy.

 

 

Some of us humans most precious inventions have been double edge swords, such as writing, guns, and money. Writing because lies can become permanently imbedded as truth, guns because we no longer are equal to the animals, thus rarely can be humbled by nature, and money because it’s only intrinsic value is a purely psychological acceptance of authority and power.

Women know that gossip, rumors, and deceit move more quickly and make more noise than truth does to the ears and intuition.

Men, on the other hand, don’t listen nor dance, so there is no difference between true or false. It’s whatever goes good with beer, pizza, and guns.

That’s why if you want people to listen, first tell a lie to get whatever attention you can, then tell the truth. The lie will make history, the truth will make weak tea.

August 2020

They say on TV now we have to give Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a chance but first we have to get rid of the Fascist in the White House. And they said the world would never get another ego like Hitlers, a Caligula. Already I wander. Just seventy something more days, they say, or whatever the number is, then on November 4^th, we’ll (we being progressives and revolutionaries alike) start working on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Well, my friends, I’ve been watching you (the news) and here’s what I have to say.
If we’re on some sort of revolutionary countdown ten, nine, eight, seven six, five…and someone or something magical is going to happen on November 4^th, then I’m starting to write America’s (and the world's) epitaph right now. It looks as if from this perspective (from California), America has chosen cremation.
History marches on. Somebody has to be realistic. It can’t be me and Cornell West alone can it? He who isn’t being pessimistic isn’t being realistic. The fact of the matter somebody’s going to have to die to shake things up. Probably somebody who doesn’t want to for your sake or god’s sake either. There aren’t any Christ’s up America’s sleeve. They all came around in the sixties, all invoked in acceptance speeches when really the only important fact is when Mrs Schwerner, the wife of Andrew Schwerner, who disappeared along with Goodman and Chaney, insisted to Lyndon Johnson that he needed to get more feds down in Mississippi to search, Johnson, the great (now) signer of the Civil Rights bill, called J. Edgar to ask if HE thought there should be more FBI investigators and J. Edgar answered- she’s a communist- and Johnson answered-it’s worse than that, she’s rude and a (bitch).

That’s how we march along, like freed slaves heading to Nowheresville ( another sundowner town) with Hope.

Someday somebody other than Emma Goldman is going to blow the whistle on just having Hope and expecting a hell of a lot out of that magic.

you are living in the free world and in the free world you must stay. Phil Ochs

 I was one of those reluctant NPP (no political party) switchers back in 2018 just to get in to vote but that’s okay, I can always switch back if necessary. I enjoyed listening to the little one minute “speech” and was disappointed that only one, you, included US foreign policy as a necessary front to focus on. I assume one minute doesn’t cover much but still US foreign policy is the white noise behind everything this country does (especially with money and power). Equality and Justice will never happen as long as we continue to think of ourselves  (in the abstract) as superior and yet fearful of the rest of the world.

There are many people who have their finger on the pulse of what’s wrong here in America and around the world but unless we start acting in a “new” way, the old and traditional way will undermine and negate anything we do. The repetitive nature of historical facts has rendered the future (or even tomorrow) obsolete and impotent before it even gets here. As it is now, The future is just a long series of yesterdays, pasts. We need to eat less, want less, desire less, and most of all, fear less. We are Here

All of us kids lacked something essential to live in the modern world, the modern world being the world as it exists today rather than the way it was when we were all growing up. In thirty years of living we all become somewhat obsolete. We learn that business, the state, the institutions we adhere to or those we are cemented to by socialization or by debt, all that exists outside the very parameters we are told we must maintain. What we get is the particulars, the specifics, the nuances of the principles we live by and it’s within our nature to be confused as to what behaviors we must choose, which can only be defined by those others, the authorities that bind us.

Take citizenship for example. Citizenship is the specifically designed traditions and rules that give any person living within the confines of a nation the privileges of citizenship, usually the right to vote in most modern societies, this right to choose whoever represents the nation as well as the method of choosing, the processes. Other than that, there’s not much else to being a citizen, except maybe depending on the restrictions of living here unconditionally, free of harassment. But in most modern nations the rights determined to be irrevocable, at least on paper, human rights, those rights that every human has should not be usurped by citizenship. If all men should be treated equally under the law then that should not be a privilege given to those who have citizenship only and taken away from so called non- citizens, those not fitting the established standards of whatever society they actually live in. 

America like any other nation that confers upon its citizens certain inalienable rights only by way of citizenship is not a very progressive nation, no matter how high and mighty it’s ideals sound. That’s nationalism, racism, or any other ism by those very definitions. Any form of privilege whether written, practiced or insinuated which provides an exclusion to those who can’t be included and those restrictive practices being institutionalized within a nations traditions, legal, and social institutions is purely arbitrary.

We’re all born into this worldly strife, the same as a squirmy rat, the best thing about it is we haven’t been tattooed with a corporate logo yet. That comes later but for now, on that original birthday, we have no understanding of what awaits us upon arrival into our nation’s history. Depending on whether or not we’re born black and all the shades of equanimity, how much money our parents have (or parent in many more cases than is satisfactory), or how much luck and right circumstance we possess, we’ll plod through their authoritarian fogs ignonimously, each individual in various degrees, all the while lacking nobility.

Since he is getting older and especially since he, like the rest of the civilized world, is riding out The Covid-19 tidal wave in the relative safe environment of Amazon, Fed-Ex, UPS “essential” deliveries, making jobs for thieves as well as drivers, and contributing to the future by exposing himself to social media via Zoom, Hangouts, Duo, electronic banking- furthering job opportunities to hackers, thieves, African based scams, and homegrown sex illusionists, he is sharing the little pearls of wisdom he has gleaned from Life and living it to the fullest.

The security I'm looking for is the security of NOT knowing what my country is doing in my name. Or even yours. Call it the security of innocence, not naïveté, but Innocence. We've all lost all or so much of our Innocence and once you've lost it you can't ever retrieve it, even if you try and lose yourself in the nirvana of Buddha, or the big bosom of wealth,

Gone.

The rule of law

The rule of law has always been the continuous conflict between those who believe the law is suitable for everyone but themselves. Modern democratic nation states like to believe themselves capable of producing a higher and higher degree of sophistication in obtaining fair and impartial interpretation of the law.

That's their first mistake. Going back to the Bible, Talmud, Koran and many other standardized versions of what is law, who gets to punish lawbreakers, who are lawbreakers. In a fascist state, any fascist state whether ancient or modern, whoever controls the enforcement of laws gets to break the laws without punishment. So the question becomes, as Hannah Arendt didn't say, the fight is to see who can get away with breaking the law unpunished and who has to pay the price for breaking the law. 

All that is strictly determined by what questions and what answers they create for themselves when they decide what is a law. All the questions and all the answers contained in the above mentioned books and others have already been asked and answered in a thousand different ways. Every Anarchist should be proud to say, you can pick any answer to any question and you're probably right.

Of course, if climate change is left unabated the possibility that extinction would be the most extreme outcome is more possible. But let's be honest. Climate change is a slow process that for however long it exists, the troubles of society will continue to be exacerbated. A lot depends on the politics of economics. If capitalism is in place, I don't see any abatement there, the corporate interests will respond to dwindling resources in certain parts of the world, to redistribute temporarily unaffected resources to the parts of the world able to bring profit. Look to similarities to modern day distribution. In as much as the third world is already at the bottom of economic prosperity except as cheap labor, which it will continue to be. Resources in economically depressed areas will be protected and local communities will fight each other to be employed at these corporate strongholds, whose products will go from the ground to more wealthy nation states worldwide. Again, this is a current condition and the pressures of the current state of affairs will increase as climate change becomes more effective in destroying the more easily obtained, transported, and utilized resources. The small nations, not in the real food chain, will disintegrate into regional conflicts as extremist elements in all societies attempt to gain some control where there are none.

In other words, not much different than what we already have at the present time. Just different music to the world game of musical chairs.