Each Of Us Must Now Choose a Side

“These aren’t people, they’re animals.”  These are the words of an American President.

I really need for each of you to allow that to sink in for a second.  A person who is supposed to be the leader of this ‘nation of immigrants’ and the ‘free’ world has declared, publicly, that the poor and marginalized people who are risking their lives to try to find a better life for themselves and their families are not even human, they are animals; they are brownish…or, really, more of a sandstone, medium to dark tan.  Anyway you look at it, they’re not moderately wealthy, Western Europeans.  They’re from shit-hole countries, and we don’t want them.

[Aside: no sane, Western European would ever want to come here.  I wonder why.]

If you have not actually listened to Mr. Trump’s comments, then you need to.  The person to whom he was responding made a comment regarding MS13 gang members, but Mr. Trumps comments, after he declares these people to be animals, quickly ventured into speaking about Latin American immigrants in general with no delineation between them and the criminal element about  which he began his comments.  This was not accidental.  This was not an oversight.  This was Donald Trump revealing his inner-most thoughts about our Latin American neighbors.  He has declared more than once that in his view these people who are fleeing the most horrid conditions any imperial, white citizen of the United States can imagine; people seeking asylum and safe harbor in the one country on this planet that is, by its very nature, supposed to welcome them, to be animals, something less than human and undesirable.

Please don’t mistake my meaning here. I’m not trying to minimize the brutality of drug smuggling/human trafficking cartels like MS13 and syndicates like them. However, as father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Priest who has spent almost his entire adult life working with the toughest gangs in Los Angeles states; he has never met a member of any gang who wasn’t running from something. That something is hopelessness, despair, poverty, and a host of other factors that can take any person from the loving image of God in which they are born, and transform them into the hating image of a devil sent to steal, kill, and destroy.

Every example from the life and teachings of Jesus, the Christ, was quite clear that people should not, and from a secular perspective the President of the United States CANNOT EVER, refer to people as something less than human.

Folks, this can no longer stand.  This is the issue on which we MUST confront our legislators in this country.  Each of them must declare whether or not they stand with Mr. Trump on this issue, or if they stand against him.  However they stand, we must demand that each of them state so, publicly, on the floor of the House or Senate.  They must place their cowardly asses on the record.  Here, now, in light of these words spoken by the president, it is now plainly (if not painfully) clear that you can stand with Jesus, or you can stand with Trump, but you can not do both.

Jesus said it best in His sermon: “No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.”                                                                              ~Matthew 6: 24

I wrote in my last post that we have to ask ourselves if this is what we want America to be, because as long as Mr. Trump sits in the White House, this is what America is.

These words are how it begins.  When you begin to characterize people as less than human, as animals, it makes it a lot easier to deport these people, to destroy the families of these people, to slaughter these people.  In a sermon I gave a little over a year ago I quoted from Father Martin Niemoller, a dissident priest during the Third Reich in Germany.  He said the following:

“When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent.  I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent.  I was not a social democrat

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out.  I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent.  I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

I concluded my commentary on those remarks from Father Neimoller with the following admonition: “People, we are at a crossroads in the social evolution of this country.  We do not, any of us, want to have to ever say the following; ‘First they came for the immigrants…,’ because believe me, I don’t care who you are, if you don’t speak out, eventually they will come for you, and when that happens there may not be anybody left to speak out.”  Christ spoke truth to power, and if we are to be his followers, then so must we.

Even more frightening is that words like those spoken by Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago are the first steps toward genocide.  Words like those spoken by Donald Trump a few weeks ago are what allowed presidents and politicians of the 19th century to subject Native Americans to a systematic genocide.  Words like those spoken by Mr. Trump led to the lynching of black Americans.  Telling a nation that other people are less than human is what allowed people to stand silently by while almost nineteen million people, six million of them Jews, were sent to concentration camps and murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen.

Like Smoky the Bear used to say: “Only you can prevent genocide,” or something like that.  The only way to make smoky smile now is to do two things: always speak truth to power, and call out politicians without allowing them to double-speak their way out of an answer.

Niemand

Welcome to the Age of the Predator-in-Chief

The policies of Donald Trump are, by any realistic standard, absolutely repulsive.  It doesn’t matter what segment of America’s existence in this world you’re talking about, the bottom line is that any policy or procedure that originates in the executive branch of our federal government under the Trump Administration is toxic, repulsive, and a threat to the very fabric of the American republic and nation.

Beyond all of that, the absolute worst part of this tweeted theater of the absurd in which we find ourselves is that we now have a predator sitting in the White House trying to navigate this country through the white-capped waters of a troubled and dangerous world.  Donald Trump is a man who has spent his entire life serving no one but himself, and who has no compassion for anyone…anyone, not even, I would be willing to bet, his children.

Predators are strange creatures: they nourish themselves solely through the killing of other creatures.  They also feel a very strange sort of camaraderie with each other that apparently arises out of a dual sense of both commonality of purpose and the knowledge that they are each ready to pounce on one another at a moment’s notice.  The moment one predator shows just a hint of weakness, the other predators exploit that weakness and dispose of the ‘weak link’ in their predatory chain.  Strangely enough, the predator who shows weakness and realizes that its time is short, seems to welcome the fate that awaits it at the hands of its fellow predators.  It is an acceptance of the cost of living by the sword.

Don’t mistake my meaning here, I’m not saying that Donald Trump is a sexual predator…No, wait, yes I am.  Donald Trump is a sexual predator who has committed and, as far as the evidence shows, continues to commit acts against women that any decent human being would find absolutely felonious.  From his sick voyeurism and groping of young ‘beauty’ contestants to his outright belief that he has the right to “grab ’em by the pussy,” Donald Trump is, by any reasonable set of criteria, a sexual predator.

The worst manifestation of his sexual depravity is the revelation, delivered to a radio host from his own lips that if his daughter, Ivanka, was not his daughter, he would grab her by the pussy at his first opportunity.  I do not envy Ivanka Trump when she’s in the presence of her father; imagine having to look at a man with some sort of love in your eyes after learning that this is his attitude toward you.

His illicit and continuing sexual affairs, while trudging through multiple marriages, should be enough testimony to this predatory lifestyle to preclude him from being allowed to serve as president of the United States, but apparently, it is not.  His personal magnetism was enough, in 2016, to fool almost the entire population of non-college educated white males (and many of their baby-mommas) into voting for him.

This is not surprising, because this particular segment of the electorate feels, as a result of their own actions, slighted by the ‘elites who run everything,’ and Donald Trump is their vulgar comrade whom they worship.  He proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that having money does not equate to having any class at all.  He is as vulgar and ignorant as they are, yet is very wealthy (or claims to be, anyway).  They love him for this: he is their “White Trash in the White House.”

After all, those who will never be in management adore the one who is able to look another person in the eyes with a coldness which belies a complete lack of compassion for anyone and say “you’re fired.”  This is especially true of the non-college educated, non GED sporting cadres of white males who form a large segment of Trump’s base.  They are, after all, the second most ‘fired’ group anywhere; trailing only African-American males, who are only fired more because of the racist nature of the American social dung-heap.

By 2020 these new soldiers of the Confederacy may realize that all he wanted to do (if he even wanted to be president at all, which is in doubt) was to grab them by their collective pussy.  Welcome to the age of the Predator-in-Chief.

So, yes, I’m saying that Donald Trump is a sexual predator, but not a financial, or business predator…no, wait, yes I am.  Donald Trump is a business predator. You may be thinking: “That’s okay, business is business,” but no, that’s not okay.

Successful and conscientious business people (a.k.a. decent human beings) do not find themselves the defendant in literally hundreds of civil lawsuits arising out of how they conduct business.  The anecdotal evidence against Mr. Trump’s predatory business ethics are so numerous that reviewing them would make a lengthy book.  From refusing to pay contractors for work completed well and on schedule, to paying immigrant workers wages so low that they have to sneak into makeshift, on-site sleeping quarters at Trump construction sites, believe me, Mr. Trump’s business practices are well documented in the courts.

However, all of this is okay, because Donald Trump is a good businessman.  Whoops, no, he’s not.  I know one of the most fervent apologists for Donald Trump you could ever want to meet, and this man said, in a conversation regarding Mr. Trump’s numerous bankruptcy filings, that this proves what a good businessman he is; he knows how to use the system.

My reply was that yes, there are protections in place that allow people who fail in business to protect their families and personal possessions from their poor business practices.  However, good business people rarely have to make use of this system, and those who do, will generally only have to use it once.  Any person who files for bankruptcy no fewer than six times (as has Mr. Trump) is not a good businessman.

So, yes, Donald Trump is a sexual predator and a business predator, but at least he’s not a predator in his personal life.  No, wait, I think he is.

Donald Trump is a sexual, financial, and personal life predator.  This third category is why he doesn’t really have any friends.  He has many acquaintances; his wealth and active social and television life make that unavoidable.  However, anyone would be hard pressed to find another person who would honestly say that they’re a good friend of Donald Trump, at least not in the manner that humans generally use the term “good friend.”  Rudy Giuliani might, but he’s insane.

There is no one on this planet who goes out of their way to spend quality time with Donald Trump, because time with Donald Trump is the antithesis of ‘quality time.’  Perhaps that is why he is so desperate to be liked so much.  He has no friends because he is a predator, and predators do not have friends.  The very concept of a ‘friend;’ someone with whom your life is intertwined in a loving and respectful manner is completely foreign to the predator psyche.

Perhaps this is also why he tweets his anger, hatred, and loneliness to an anonymous world of people he hopes love him.  Perhaps this is why his wife does not live with him and largely refuses to allow Mr. Trump any opportunity to influence the life of her son by him, Baron.

Donald Trump is a predator in every aspect of life.  The question we must ask ourselves is whether or not we want this to be what America is, because as long as he sits in the White House this is what America is.

America has lost its way as an imperial power enough already over the last sixty-five years that we do not need a man like this sitting in the White House any longer than is absolutely necessary.  One day was too long, but now we must make certain that we do not suffer any more than a full four years of this vulgar, predatory rule, nor his cowardly enablers in the republican party.

VOTE!

Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

Dangerous Norwegians!

The following article is from “The Nation” magazine’s daily online email feed.

I didn’t receive any permission to put it here, but it’s all for educational purposes, and if some of you decide to sign up for The Nation and order the email feed and/or the print magazine, then I’m really a free-lance salesman.  Enjoy!

Norwegians for DACA

If Republicans Knew the Truth About Norway, They’d Be Clamoring to Build a Second Wall

A mass of Norwegian immigrants would pose a genuine threat to Donald Trump’s America.

By Ann Jones

In the past couple of weeks, thanks to the president’s racist comments about Haiti and African countries he can’t even name—remember “Nambia”?—as well as the stamp of approval he awarded future immigrants from Norway, we’ve seen a surprising amount of commentary about that fortunate country. Let me just say: Those Norwegians he’s so eager to invite over are my ancestral people and, thanks to years I’ve spent in that country, my friends. Donald Trump should understand one thing: if he and his Republican backers really knew the truth about life in Norway, they would be clamoring to build a second “big, fat, beautiful” wall, this time right along our Eastern Seaboard.

One thing is incontestable: A mass of Norwegian immigrants (however improbable the thought) would pose a genuine threat to Donald Trump’s America. They would bring to our shores their progressive values, advanced ideas, and illustrious model of social democratic governance—and this country would never be the same!

It’s hard even to begin to imagine what a Norwegian-ization of the United States might mean. But just for a moment, try to picture how strange our country would be. After all, based on life in Norway, you would have to assume that our beloved land would lose many of its 21st-century landmarks. Gone would be its precious ghettos and slums, its boarded-up schools, hospitals, and libraries in the heartland, not to speak of its heirloom infrastructure: collapsing bridges, antique trains, clogged roads, and toxic drinking water.

To grasp what’s at stake, consider how such immigrants would have reacted to the Republican tax-“reform” bill, praised by the president as “the greatest achievement” of his first year in office (which, by his own account, is the greatest year in American history). That bill, filled with miscellaneous handouts meant to ensure the votes of individual Republican legislators, guarantees that the super-rich and their mega-corporations will get richer still in perpetuity. It is, in its own way, a glorious hymn to future heights of economic inequality (in a country already ranked the most unequal in the developed world), as it cleverly passes on to the children of the un-rich classes a national deficit inflated by an extra $1.5 trillion.

It is, of course, the nature of any tax plan to redistribute the wealth of a nation in some fashion, even though Republicans use the word “redistribution” only to assail Democrats who occasionally suggest a little something to help the poor. But redistribute those Republicans did in a masterful way, surrendering yet more of our national wealth to the tiny team of people (many of whom also happen to be their donors) who already pocket almost all of it. As the Republicans were writing the tax bill, the top 20 percent of households were already taking home 90 percent of the American pie. Now they will get more.

That’s exactly the kind of “achievement” that no Norwegian parliament would ever approve. All nine parties now in that country’s parliament, from left to right, would have joined in tearing up that Republican tax bill and replacing it with a much simpler one aimed at redistributing the nation’s wealth equitably to every last one of its citizens.

As a start, they would have tossed in the trash can the single most basic project of Trump and the Republicans: making the rich richer. Norwegians have long worked to do just the reverse, based on a well-established conviction that inequality creates elites that corrupt and destroy democracy. That’s where politics come in: devising multiple systems to regulate a capitalist economy and safeguard democracy.

Equitable paychecks may slow down the creation of Norwegian billionaires, but the country’s overall standard of living is among the world’s highest. The United States ranks much lower on international evaluations, although with its immense and still rapidly growing gap between the plutocrats and the rest of us, it’s hard to calculate a meaningful “standard.”

While those new Norwegian immigrants were at it, they would quickly move to simplify our tax system. That, of course, is exactly what Trump and the Republicans promised—you remember that “postcard” you were going to mail to the IRS—even as they made everything yet more complicated. In Norway, the government not only simplifies the tax system, but figures out, on a progressive scale, what every taxpayer owes and then sends out the bills.

Those dangerous Norwegians are peculiar enough to be grateful. They gladly pay up because taxes fund the country’s universal public welfare system, which guarantees that strikingly high standard of living to a whole society. (That phrase “whole society,” by the way, is the meaning of the word “social” in the phrase “social democracy.”) Keep in mind that all Norwegians have the right to universal public health care, universal public education through professional schools or university and beyond, care of the elderly and disabled, paid parental leave for mothers and fathers, subsidized early childhood education (from age 1), affordable housing, state of the art public transport, and a raft of other services that take the worry out of daily life. The catch is—and I can already hear the thundering footsteps of the Republican herd as it heads in panic for its top-secret bunker —if Norwegians can’t trust the government, they kick it out and elect another.

We Americans, on the other hand, have been taught not to trust any government, but rather to admire our brilliant super-rich people who own this one, and so to let them pocket our tax money and think none the less of them for their dependence on Republican handouts like the tax bill.  Consider the situation this way: Norwegian Governments spoil their citizens, while President Trump and the Republicans despoil us ordinary Americans.  And that just goes to show how much they trust us to take care of ourselves — so much so that they’re now planning to slash Medicaid and Medicare, leaving us ‘free’ to set forth into sickness and death on our own.  And if that isn’t the good old American spirit of free enterprise, what is?

STRIKING “OIL” WITH FAIR WAGES FOR WOMEN

To explain how Norway pays for all those social programs, almost every American commentator, even when theoretically sympathetic to the Norwegians, points to the income from the country’s North Sea oil fields, discovered and developed in the 1960s. On that, however, they are mistaken.

Norway’s welfare state programs are supported not by oil revenues but by taxing the citizenry. (While some of those citizen taxpayers are paid for working, directly or indirectly, in the oil business, as of 2016 they made up only 7 percent of the Norwegian workforce.) So to understand how Norway can afford to pay for the genuine well-being of its people in such an impressive way, you need to look at those tax rolls, which very nearly doubled in the 1970s when women walked into the workplace (and politics) in a major way—and at wages close to matching those of men. In 2016, the Ministry of Finance calculated that the labor of women added to the net national wealth a value equivalent to the country’s “total petroleum wealth” created by that North Sea oil and held in the world’s largest sovereign -wealth fund, worth in 2017 more than $1 trillion.

It’s pretty scary to think of hordes of immigrants from such a country landing on our shores, considering the radical reality I’ve just described, the startling idea that you could upgrade an economy in a wholesale way just by requiring fair wages for women. Not to mention that with the taxes those women pay, you could fully fund free universal child care, the lack of which drives American women from the workplace back home, where Republicans think they belong. In the United States, none of our good-old boy leaders would dream of enacting programs so… well, unpatriarchal. Or how about another idea I’ve heard from many Norwegians: that gender equality is the key to the good life?

But about that North Sea oil money: It, too, represents a kind of thinking utterly alien to this country. Oil is something we Americans believe we understand. Spill it in Alaska, spill it in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, drill for it in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (thanks to the need to secure Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote for that tax “reform” bill), as well as up and down the coasts of the country (except for Florida, the home of Trump’s favorite golf club). We don’t mind what you do with it, as long as you keep down the costs of propelling our outsized vehicles over our outdated highways.

Norway, on the other hand, owns 67 percent of the shares in Statoil, the Norwegian oil company that controls those North Sea wells, even as it leads the world’s changeover to electric vehicles. It’s a country with a remarkable record of developing and adopting new technologies while phasing out the old, so its workforce is always employed. By law, the government spends no more (and usually less) than 4 percent of its yearly oil profits on current expenses. The other 96 percent or more, it pours into that trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. That, in turn, has been set aside for the future, for the country’s children and their children, although some Norwegians, famous for their worldwide humanitarian and peacemaking activities, now propose to give much of it away to other lands that may need it far more.

Here’s a question for future American administrations: Could they apply for some of that Norwegian money to build an East Coast wall against Norwegian immigrants or maybe to help our kids pay off that estimated $1.5 trillion in debt Trump and the Republicans just handed them in the new tax bill? Could we take advantage of those radical Norwegians without even letting them into our country? I’ll bet Trump could finagle that.

SELLING F-52S TO NORWAY

It’s likely that Norway came to Trump’s mind in that meeting with Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham (among others) as some idyllic source for future white Republicans only because, the day before, he had met with its substantial and very white prime minister, Erna Solberg. (Surprised observers of the meeting tweeted that Solberg speaks better English than the American president—as most Norwegians do.) “Erna,” as Norwegians—for whom everyone is equal and on a first-name basis—call her, is the leader of the Conservative party. She heads a coalition government in which the top three positions are held by women. That in itself might have caused Trump to keep his hands in his pockets, but apparently he wasn’t told. It’s likely he mistook “Conservative” for “Republican,” but as a matter of fact, all nine of Norway’s political parties now in parliament are well to the left not just of the Republicans but of the Democrats and, yes, even that independent “democratic socialist” from Vermont.

At the moment, only one Norwegian cabinet member, Silvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party, might be considered sufficiently neoliberal, über-Christian, and mean to fit into Trump’s regime. Perhaps that’s because her early training included a 2005 internship in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives.

In Norwegian terms, Erna often tilts dangerously to the right under the pressure of US and British neoliberal economic theorists. It has to be hard for the leader of a small country—five million people, half the population of Haiti—to resist pressure to conform to the autocratic example of a nation that styles itself the most exceptional on Earth. Erna herself is a polite, circumspect politician who, on returning from her visit to the White House, assured reporters in Oslo that President Trump was “a normal man” with “a sense of humor.” Apparently she didn’t mention Trump’s self-proclaimed political acumen, intellectual brilliance, or awesome “America First” foreign policy. Norwegians reading their morning papers could, however, fill in the blanks.

At a joint press conference with Erna, Trump proudly announced that, last November, the United States had delivered the first F-52 and F-35 fighter jets to Norway, part of a $10 billion order of American military equipment. Norwegians are, in fact, stubbornly averse to war and think of their reluctant acquisition of way too many over-priced, overdue, bug-plagued F-35s as a surcharge on NATO membership. But F-52s?

That thoroughly fictional plane, as it turns out, exists only in the video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. (Do you suppose Trump spends his executive time playing commander in chief?) Norwegians are having a good laugh, while their commentators are saying “thanks, but no thanks” to Trump’s immigration invitation. If they really mean it, then perhaps we can relax and forget about that wall along the Eastern seaboard.

On the other hand, judging by their press, an awful lot of Norwegians are even more appalled and angered than we are by Trump’s racist slurs about “shithole countries.” What’s more, just days after returning to Norway, Erna Solberg rolled out her new government, a coalition of three parties, all led by women, and a gender-equal cabinet to run ministries focused not only on defense or finance, but also on climate and the environment, eldercare and public health, research and higher education, family and equality. Erna announced that the platform of this new government would be “greener” and committed to sustaining the welfare state. And this, in Norway, is a center-right government.

You see what I mean about Norwegian ideas being totally at odds with Trump’s America. Still, Trump might play that to his advantage. If he and his Republican supporters in Congress decide to build that East Coast wall after all, they might be able to get the Norwegians to pay for it—not to keep them out, but to keep us in.

I hope this piece has been somewhat enlightening regarding this country and its place among the other nations of the world.  I will soon have a new essay posted regarding our society and what would possibly result in the election of someone like donald trump to its highest political office.

Practice Peace,
Niemand

Thoughts in Brief

I’m angry, and I don’t like to be angry.

This piece is not a singular, torturously long essay on a single subject, but rather a collection of a few thoughts in brief.  Sometimes I think I would like to change the format of the site in general to such a thing, but I just don’t think I have it in me.

I would enjoy making a point in brief and then waiting for people to comment requesting that I explain myself in greater depth on a certain subject, but no one sends comments on any of my essays, so that wouldn’t work.  Perhaps about 1% of the people I notify of a new post actually read them.  That’s okay.  If this entire thing is nothing more than an exercise in personal speech from me to me, then so be it.

Who is my enemy?:

In any political system, especially a republic, the state (Caesar) does not have the right to tell you who your enemies are.  That is and must be left to the sole discretion of every citizen and their freedom of conscience; for this principle is the absolute cornerstone of democracy.

The state can tell you of people or groups that they feel act in a manner that is counter to what they see as the ‘national interest,’ but that is all the state has the right to do.  From that point forward it is my right, your right, our right to decide who is and who is not our enemy.

This is the sort of foundational, unalienable right that is disappearing from the American social and political landscape.  It is not Trump, or his supporters.  This process has been going on for almost thirty years, and at this point, may be impossible to stop.

Please don’t worry, you will be able to choose between glazed, chocolate, or jelly far into the foreseeable future.  However, you may not be able to choose to remain silent, know protection from unreasonable search and seizure, be able to dissent without fear of governmental reprisal, or decide who is and who is not your enemy for very long.

The Satanists are showing themselves.

Before I begin this portion, I must offer my gratitude to Mr. Benjamin L. Corey, whose blog posts I read on a regular basis.  He recently posted an essay which has helped me to focus my thoughts on this issue.

Our embarrassment in chief recently stood before the United Nations General Assembly and spoke to the leaders of the nation-states of this planet.  This organization, established in the wake of the destruction and genocide of the Second World War, was formed and established for many purposes.  Chief among these is to offer the nations of this world a forum through which they can settle their differences in a peaceful manner; realizing through that process that the actions of two states toward one another affect all other states of the world as well.

Simply stated, the United Nations is an organization established to promote peace and to help realize Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” throughout the entire planet.  These four freedoms, as laid out by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, are: freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in one’s own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

However, Trump stood before this body and threatened to kill twenty-five million people in retaliation for the actions of, let’s say for the sake of argument, two hundred people, or, really, maybe, just five people.  The gathered persons of the General Assembly were rightfully appalled at his comments.  The fact that he would stand in that hallowed chamber and defile the very purpose of the United Nations is, in and of itself, disgusting enough, but the worst part is yet to come.

Several high-ranking “Christian” evangelicals came out cheering this speech, saying that it is about time that a president spoke up for America.  They praised this speech and all of the threats of death it carried with it.  They praised this speech that was diametrically opposed to anything Jesus would have said or done.  They praised this speech and the man who spoke its words in worship of the enemy of God.  Prominent among these were Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress; two of the most evil men to ever walk this planet.  The satanists are showing themselves.

Not until white people start doing it:

Recently, several professional athletes of color have been kneeling during the national anthem at the start of games of the National Football League.  This has drawn a mix of boos at the event and cheers afterward.  What are they trying to say?  I don’t really care what they’re trying to say, but here’s what I’m saying in support of them: “Not only do I don’t buy the lie anymore, but I refuse to sell it, too.”

Selling the lie, you say?  Yes.  Every time that song plays, and every time the pledge of allegiance is recited and you participate, you are selling something to the person next to you.  You are trying to sell them the idea that you support what this country does in direct opposition to what its propaganda says it does, and over what it says countries and peoples should do.  You’re trying to sell them on your patriotism; that you think “my country, right or wrong” is a valid argument for doing anything.  You’re trying to sell them the fact that you continue to buy the lie, no matter how expensive it is.  If you know me, then you know that patriotism, as a rationale for any action, pretty much makes me want to vomit.  It is, after all, “the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Colin Kapernick is a man of incredible bravery and conviction, and it cost him his career (to date).  The problem, however, it this; everything these black athletes do and say (most of them quite eloquently) won’t amount to anything in terms of solid change within our police forces and social policy until your average joe white guys start joining the fight.  Are you brave enough to suffer the momentary admonitions of a few jingoistic hyper-patriot jackasses to stand…I mean kneel beside him?

I’m going to stop right here and ask each of you to do something when you finish reading this post.  No.  In fact, please stop reading the post and do the following: Look up the email address and phone number of your state and national legislators, write them on something, and put that something on your refrigerator.  The saying that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” is true (although ‘get’ is not really a word) and if each of us squeaks just a little bit, it’ll make a big noise in the end.  If you place a phone call once in a while on a subject that means something to you (or the republic), that will squeak.  It will take three minutes and you’ll feel really good about it when your done.  You’ll also find out just how scared of you these people are.

Here’s a little something to spur some thought on this matter: One year ago the statistic was the following: an unarmed black American dies at the hands of the police every nine days in this country.  I don’t know what the number is now, but I think we can all agree that it’s not decreasing.  On top of this, the police are now targeting the mentally ill of all racial and ethnic origins; using their inability to immediately process orders barked at them as justification for murder.  It has to stop, and if demonstrating that you understand that murder by the police is what this flag, its pledge, and the anthem of this country really represent means taking a knee when they are recited, then do it.  Unless, of course, if you think that all of this is okay, and very cool.

America is a strange, ‘wild west showdown’ sort of place.  It really is.  This is because at some point in the history of our culture we decided that it was okay for the police to kill people.  Not all societies have made that decision, and it is not as common as you may think.  We, as a society, need to ‘undecide’ that.  We need to say “No, it is NOT okay for the police to kill people.  This is especially true in a society which is witnessing the rapid militarization of its police forces.

If there is one cornerstone to the system of republican governance that stands beside freedom of conscience mentioned in the first part of this post, it is that one is considered innocent until proven guilty in open court by a jury of one’s peers.  This, my friends is disappearing quickly at the hands of our militarized police forces.  They now posses the power and the authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner in the most real terms imaginable.  Sadly, our politicians are, for the most part, fully behind them, for the police murder in defense of the status quo.

This should all be reason enough to join our black brothers and sisters in calling attention to this brutality by refusing to participate in hollow patriotic rituals.  However, if you need more, just ask me and I will supply them.

Enough is enough!:

Las Vegas was it.  That’s enough.  I’m sick and tired of people being slaughtered in this country because the nut-jobs of the right wing seem to think that ever more guns will cure our cancer of gun violence.  Here is what I propose each of us do in order to cure ourselves of this disease:

  1. Confront the pro-NRA people in our midst.  The thing about these people is that they will shout their insanity in public places with the understanding that no one will speak up in opposition.  That has to stop.  Confront them and tell them honestly that they are the murderers of Las Vegas.  It wasn’t that mentally ill guy who went off the rails, it was them.  The lives of the dead are on their shoulders.  The shattered lives of the wounded and the witnesses who will carry the horror of that night to their graves are on their consciences.  They are the killers in and of this country.
  2. Tell them honestly that it will not be the government that will come for their automatic weapons and assault rifles, but the good people of this country who are sick and tired of them and their willingness to watch innocent people die because they think some foaming-at-the-mouth interpretation of the second amendment is what the framers of our constitution intended.  “Hey, boy, The 2nd Amendment’s all the 1st Amendment I need!”
  3. Tell all members of congress with anything ‘better’ that a ‘C’ rating from the NRA that they will be a target singled out for defeat in the next election.  Here is the call you need to make: “Hello, Senator Makeamericagreatagain’s office.”  “Yes, I am a constituent of Senator Makeamericaahellhole.  What is the senator’s rating with the NRA?”  “Oh, why the senator has an A+++ rating with that wonderful, patriotic organization!” “Good, then tell the senator that he now has a target on his back.  He is a A+++ target for defeat in the next election.  Unless, of course, he decides to leave the money of the NRA for the American people.”  It’s that simple.  They need to either fully enter the 21st century as human beings, or find themselves out of a job.  Then they can sit at home and watch all of the westerns they want; they just won’t be allowed to foist their insanity on our society anymore.

Note to the right wing: Chuck Connors’ character is not real, and you are not “The Rifleman”…or maybe you are.  Yes, you are!  You are “The Rifleman” on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay.

Question for the right wing: How many souls can you have on your individual consciences before you change your stance on gun control?  I think is must be in the hundreds of millions, because you do not, to my memory, ever support the policies of government that enhance life; only those that enhance death.

You oppose funding for general, public education, and support the most bloated military in the history of humankind.  You hide this perpetual war (off of which you and your shareholder friends make millions of dollars) behind the shroud of ‘protecting’ the American public.  You refuse to see basic healthcare as a human right and hold fast to the belief that exploitation of American families for the benefit of the insurance-pharmaceutical cartel is, in and of itself, good.  Cartel?  Yes, the term is appropriate, because what your politicians do and the policies you both support kill more people than the collective wrath of every Latin American drug gang in existence.

Really, I think the political right wing in this country is repulsive.  The worst thing about its adherents is that the vast majority profess to follow the religion known as Christianity.  They have turned this church; this beautiful extension of the body of the Christ into a parasite that feeds off of the blood of any it can infest, and defiles the name of Jesus with every moment of its existence.

Enough is enough.

Sometimes I think that love won’t work; that the only thing that will save us is wrath.  Sometimes I think that the time for peace is past.

Love and peace to all

Niemand

One Total State, One Autocracy, and Us

This essay begins at the first half of one central question: “Can it happen here?”  The answer, of course, is yes, it can happen here.  In fact, it can happen anywhere.  The evil in the human heart is universal, and each of us battles to subdue it every day.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I am certain that there are lots of people who do not fight the evil within them, but I don’t personally know anyone in the Trump Administration.

Also, in case you have absolutely no historical consciousness whatsoever and, therefore, no concept of what this question means, I suppose it is my responsibility to save you the trouble of ‘googling’ it.  ‘Can it happen here?’ refers specifically to the question as to whether or not a regime as totalitarian and brutal as the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler in Germany between the years 1933 and 1945 can happen here.  For us in the United States the question is specific to our society.  In fact, every nation must ask itself this question often and take the steps necessary to insure that it doesn’t happen here (wherever ‘here’ for them is).

Unfortunately, in the United States of America, it is happening here.  In the wake of Charlottesville, we must all come to grips with the reality that there are vast cadres of willing Sturm Abteilung (Storm Troopers) standing ready for a single word from their would-be Hitler, Donald Trump.  The moment he says “go,” they will unleash their violent fury on every minority person, women’s organization, individual they may suspect as being a member of the LGBT community, and ‘liberal’ they can reach.  Their reach will be long and they will be, for the most part, protected by local police forces.

Since I began this essay, one particular event has occurred that requires mention.  On Friday, August 25th, President Donald Trump extended a presidential pardon to convicted felon, Joe Arpaio.  Mr. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Mariposa County, Arizona, was convicted in federal court of criminal contempt of a court order to stop policing Mariposa County in a clearly and unapologetic racist and bigoted manner.  He instructed his deputies to engage in blatant ethnic profiling of Latino Americans and held them without cause or trial in conditions which one can only describe as ‘barbaric’ at best.

This is clearly anathema to everything for which we have been told, since we were children, that America stands and means; both to us and the world at large.  To put it in simpler terms, Joe Arpaio is as un-American as one person could possibly be; he stands in opposition to every reason why the good people of this world come here to make better lives for themselves and their families.  Mr. Arpaio slouches through his day as the darling little poster child for the white supremacists and nazis that have come out of the darkness since the election of Donald Trump. It is happening here.

Since we are all, now, acutely aware that it can happen here, the second half of the central question becomes the relevant point we must address: Can it succeed here?  This, my friends, is really the core of the central question.  Since it is happening here, the question is, can it succeed here?  The answer to this question is also ‘yes,’ but it will not be easy, and in this vein I will discuss the total state and the autocracy mentioned in the title.

The Total State:

We all know that it succeeded in Germany, and this success has, since the defeat of the Third Reich in the Second World War, given rise to what is known among historians of this period as “The German Question.”  Simply posed, The German Question asks: Is there something about the German that predisposes him to such brutal, totalitarian rule?  I believe the answer is ‘no.’  However, I do believe that there is something about humans that predisposes us to such brutal totalitarian rule.  A political map of our world showing the locations of political prisons should be proof enough.

Why did it succeed in Germany? After their team finished second in the First World War, Germany had a government imposed on it that was completely foreign to its history and the consciousness of its people: the Weimar Republic.

This experiment in republicanism in Germany might have succeeded, were it not for the circumstances in which it had to try to take root.  The government of Weimar became the scapegoat amongst almost all politicians across the political spectrum in Germany for the country’s social and economic woes.  The generals and politicians that led her into the disastrous war of 1914 – 1918 did not have to shoulder the blame for their actions, as many also blamed the republic for Germany’s defeat in the war, even though it was not even established until 1919.

We must also understand that the domestic circumstances in which Germany found itself in the late 1920s and early 1930s made the nation ripe for the message of a madman like Adolf Hitler.  A small sampling of these circumstances are: hyper-inflation which reduced the value of the Reichsmark to a low of four trillion marks to the dollar in the 1920s (it required a wheelbarrow full of money just to buy a loaf of bread), massive unemployment across all sectors of the economy and labor force, political unrest that saw the two opposing extremes, communists and fascists, engaged in regular street brawls, and perhaps most importantly, a vengeful peace imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles which stripped it of land in the Ruhr Valley (the heart of its industrial sector), much of its armed forces and, as many saw, its pride.  These are only a few of the elements that made the German people susceptible to the lies of the nazis.  Add to all of this the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, which gripped every industrialized nation on the planet, and you have a socio-political recipe for disaster.

Most importantly, however, within this context, is the fact that Germany had no history of liberal republicanism of which to speak.  In stark social and economic times a nation will revert to what it knows in order to find solace and peace.  The political system of Germany proceeded from numerous kingdoms, principalities and small city-states to one central government, essentially imposed upon it by Prussia, and under the rule of Kaisers Wilhelm I and II in the period from 1871 to 1918.  In the midst of their depression and humiliation the German people were ready to submit their liberty for the security of a new Kaiser.  Strange though it may seem, German unification into a single powerful and dangerous nation-state in 1871 occurred in a ceremony at the Bourbon palace of Versailles in France.  So I guess we can blame the French for Germany.

That’s joke, please laugh.

In order to be successful, a republic that functions through the democratic process must be something that the people choose.  It cannot be imposed, it must evolve from the desires of the people for freedom.  Luckily, people will always, as far as I have been able to deduce, choose to be a ‘citizen of a republic’ over a ‘subject of a kingdom,’ or a ‘minion of a total state.’  It is unfortunate for Germany and, indeed, the world as a whole, that the German people did not have the opportunity to experience this evolution among its political leadership prior to 1933.  The Federal Republic of Germany of the twenty-first century has over seventy years of democratic rule behind it and this should, for the present time, hold it securely.

The Autocracy:

It succeeded in Germany in 1933 and it is succeeding in the Russian Federation in 2017.

I’ll give Vladimir Putin one thing (other than my foot in his ass).  He is a very astute politician.  This is not because he turned Donald Trump’s entire inner circle of advisors (and a good portion of his family) into his personal bitches.  You don’t have to be astute, or even very smart to do that, you only have to be awake to wrangle a deal like that out of Trump.

I don’t like Vladimir Putin’s politics, but I can tell you this; he will go down in history as one of the most adaptable and renowned political minds of the early twenty-first century.  Regardless of the undemocratic nature of the policies he pursues and the autocracy he is trying to establish in Russia, his political legacy will far outlast his human life.  Unfortunately, that legacy will be what he is making of it; a return to the cruel and jack-booted rule of the Soviet Union.

The question for this essay is ‘why is Putin succeeding?’  I think it is, again, just like with the Germans of the Weimar Republic, a lack of history of political and personal liberty.  If Putin has his way, this will be the downfall of democracy in Russia.  We must remember that the people of Russia went from centuries of monarchical rule ending in the Romanov Dynasty, straight to the totally enveloping rule of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union.  It was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the Russian people finally tasted anything even approaching western liberal society and its basic freedoms and personal liberties.

Unfortunately, this liberalization of society was accompanied by a steep and noticeable decline in Russian military power on a global scale, and it is this decline that Putin has exploited to his full advantage.  As Russia turned inwards to try and heal the scars of Soviet rule, the United States government basked in a false glory of having ‘won the cold war’ and sought to establish a unipolar world pecking order with itself and its corporate partners at the top.

Russia, as a new democracy, had the opportunity to seize the initiative in pushing for democratic reforms in many, if not all, of her former satellite states, and she did, for a while, but the momentum could not be maintained.  The reasons for this are many, but the continued push of the United States into areas of former Soviet influence was as much to blame as anything else.  The results of these influences are — just as it was in Germany — a descent into the familiar; the strong man.

Us

“To be an Englishman is a fact, to be a Frenchman is a fact, to be a German is a fact.  The be an American is an idea.”  We have to ask ourselves a very important question: “What is the ‘idea’ of being an American becoming?”  Not to us, but to the rest of the world.  It is becoming this: “I guarantee you, you sons of bitches, that the last thing I want here is your damned tired, your filthy poor, and your nasty huddled masses yearning to breathe free camping out in my back yard.”  That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.  That is the new voice of America in the world.

The true America of today, in relation to that which it has always appeared to be to the rest of the world, is now nothing more than a bad joke.  Trump is the harlequin, the fool, the court jester running the tiny dog show.  His dogs are Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon, Betsy DeVos, and a host of others who bounce about him in a sycophantic delirium seeking to destroy all this country has marketed itself to be in this world.

Essentially, regardless of the problems we face internally as a society; rampant and increasingly vocal racism, a growing culture of unbridled exploitation of the worker, a corporate consumerist culture that devours the soul of any who buy into it, and a dominant fundamentalist evangelical religion that defiles the name of Jesus in the name of the American empire and ever greater profit for itself, America still represents something special to the huddled masses of the world.  America, since it is an ‘idea’ above all else is, first, last, and always, how others in the world perceive it.

Michael J. Koplow wrote quite well in his article in Foreign Policy Digest [Jan. 30, 2017]: “…people around the world have historically seen the United States not just as a place on the map, but as something bigger. The power of the American dream and the iconography of the Statue of Liberty mean something. They have value far beyond feel-good expressions of patriotism. They represent America as something for which to strive, as an expression of hopes and dreams for a better life, as a fulfillment of a quest for ultimate safety and prosperity and liberty. They represent America not just as a place for Americans, but, as John Winthrop stated, ‘a shining city upon a hill for the entire world.’ The power of the United States comes from many sources, but more than anything else it comes from the strength of the American idea.”

He continues a few paragraphs later with this:  “This is the challenge that we now face…in evaluating everything that comes over the next four years, do not lose sight for a moment of how powerful and important for all of us it is to maintain America as an idea. Doing so will be more important than the sum total of every individual policy outcome. In all instances, do your best to ensure that we continue to lift our lamp beside the golden door. Because when the idea of America is snuffed out, we forever become just another country.”

So, here is the crux.  The only thing that will prevent it from succeeding here is our history of personal liberty and the freedom of the individual.  This has been the core of this great American experiment ever since its inception and all of American history revolves around this core set of values.

Yet therein also lie the great problems.  First, our ‘history of personal liberty and the freedom of the individual’ is a lie and in truth applies only to white males over the age of twenty-one.  The dissipation of this ‘white male privilege’ as ‘human rights’ to all genders, and racial and ethnic minorities is the exact thing that Trump, his henchmen, and their solid voting block of poor white deplorables hope to destroy.

Second, though many will say that our constitution will protect us from such a power grab in this country, I think we all know that those who believe such a thing are living in a dream world.  No constitution is worth the paper or parchment upon which it is written unless the people governed by its articles and amendments are prepared to stand up and enforce its ideals and principles when it is challenged.  If we are unable or unwilling to defend our republic (in the streets if necessary), then we’re already done.  We’ve lost and it will succeed here.  If we leave it to the cowards in state and national Houses of Representatives and Senate chambers to defend our republic in the halls of government, then we’re already done.  We’ve lost and it will succeed here.

My friends, we have to do it.  The time will come, it is inevitable.  It will come in our lifetime.  The survival of America as an idea is in our hands.  We must not fail ourselves, our children, or, indeed, the world.  We cannot stop it from happening here (we are too late for that), but we cannot allow it to succeed here.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

The Ugly America: Part 1: Sports

All,

The following is the first installment of a multi-part series of essays titled “The Ugly America.”

America is an Ugly place.  I realize that many of you may hate me for saying that, but it’s true.  You can sing “America the Beautiful” all day and all night until you start to foam at the mouth and collapse in a spasmodic heap of hyper-patriotic anguish, but your sacrifice won’t change the brutal fact that America is quickly becoming a very, very ugly place.

Make no mistake, America, just like the rest of the world, still offers some great vistas for the occasional tourist, but when you scratch beneath the surface of the Grand Tetons, the Oregon Coast (that’s for you, John), the tall grass prairies of the central continent, and several other breath-gasping visual stimuli, you must arrive at the culture that runs through the veins of the people that inhabit the place.  This is where the ugliness of America pushes the small places of God’s beautiful planet we have allowed to survive to the side.  The ugly takes the spotlight of center stage, and the beautiful planet we should serve is barely even a backdrop.

Sports

Professional sports in america is, by any measure, little more than two very basic things.  First, it is a simulation and glorification of war, and second, it is a set of rituals which function very simply and directly as empire worship.  Sport in america is part and parcel of the ugly, out of control patriotism that now defiles our culture at every turn.

First, in the most popular venue of american professional sports, american football, we see represented in a perfect mirror the horror of war transferred to a more palatable format.  American football serves as the most grotesque example of the war-lust that is so deeply engrained in the american psyche.  The very format and rules are designed to simulate set-piece military combat.  One side is on the offensive, trying to occupy the territory of their opponent and the other side is defending their territory against the interloping invader.  If the invasion is halted, the counter-offensive is certain to come.  If the offensive is successful, the counteroffensive will come after a brief peace (and a word from our corporate sponsors).

The generals and their immediate subordinates, or coaches as they are called, pace the sidelines barking orders as if they were at the front lines of a military battle.  The little women, whom the team is sworn to protect, dance and jiggle their appreciation deeper behind the lines.  The injured soldiers lie in heaps as the medics scramble to stop the pain of injury so the player can get back out there and kill.  The highest ranking players gather their platoons and squads and urge them to fight on until death (or until the clock runs out).

I understand that the vast majority of mass-consumption sports possess this offense <–> defense dialectic, but no other sport is set out to represent the horrors of war more than american football. The soldiers, invincible in their 23rd century interplanetary battle dress confront each other with faces painted to look like demonic warriors of the inferno.  In spasmodic episodes lasting between five and fifteen seconds they exert all of their energy in an effort to do the opponent harm and conquer him; it is as if they are in their own “Operation Autumn Fog” (don’t raise your eyebrow, google it!).  If players of either side are carried off on a stretcher, then so be it; that’s the price of war, fame…and a fifteen million dollar a year contract.

Basketball may be seen as an even more disturbing example of the american need for war-like blood in their sport.  According to the rules, basketball is a non-contact sport.  It is designed to be a test of play and skill by hastily constructing functioning offense while avoiding the other team’s hastily constructed defense in order to have the opportunity to throw a ball through a horizontal hoop set ten feet above the ground.  Each team must alternately pass the ball between five players in an effort to gain a high-probability shot at the hoop.  The defense may do whatever they can to stop their opponent from throwing the ball through the hoop, but they are not allowed to touch them in the process.  Likewise, the offense is not allowed to merely proceed with the ball in their hands.  The must bounce the ball on the floor as they move, and, if stationary, they must pivot on one foot.

That is basketball ‘by the rule book.’  How many of you truly think that anyone would attend a game of the National Basketball Association if the referees enforced such fairie-ass bullshit?  Not many.  You may ask; “What drives this push toward violence?  Two things: American need for violence in their sport combined with the commercial need for high television ratings  This is why basketball has become the violent sport it was never meant to be.

This is also one reason why football will never be the success in america that it is in the rest of the world.  The laws of the game determine that it too, is, except for one very small circumstance, a non-contact sport.  Two players may engage each other ‘shoulder to shoulder’ within playing distance of the ball.  The referees appreciate this non-contact basis for the game and enforce it with zeal.  There is, of course, growing pressure to allow more violence in football, but we can only hope that all referees, the USSF, and FIFA resist this pressure.

That is, in brief the two most popular sports in america in terms of how they satisfy the masses’ need for violence during play.  Now I want to look at the empire worship of american mass consumption sport in the form of the ‘pre-game.’  My God, I cannot even bear to watch this!

In american football the corporate owners of these teams roll gigantic american flags onto the field, held aloft either by a darling, tear-jerking menagerie of multi-ethnic children (all christian, or at least no muslims), or soldiers of the american imperial death machine.  Then, as the field lies blanketed in the stars and stripes, the air force flies overhead with read, white, and blue smoke trailing from the asses of their fighter jets.  What greater spectacle of patriotic empire worship could there be???!!! [outside of a baptist church service].  The masses of blood-thirsty worker bees are stirred by this show into an ever more feverish frenzy as the chants of “USA, USA, USA!!!!” fill the stadium.

Insert: Please note that employees of the diplomatic corps are not invited to such ceremonies.  The bees are taught: “Hell, those ‘all talk’ fags couldn’t hold up that flag, anyway!  We need to keep meals-on-wheels and get rid of the State Department!  Diplomacy can be done at the end of the barrel of a gun for a lot less money!  ‘We’re america!  You fucking do as we say, or we’ll blow your fucking heads off!’  That’s foreign-fucking-policy, right there!  Every once in a while you have to fuck ’em just to see the look on their face!”  None of that is very grown-up, but what can you say?  I mean, after all, america is growing into a very ugly place.

Meanwhile the corporate sponsors of the state and their top 5% allies sit in their fully staffed, climate-controlled sky-boxes, detached from the filth sitting out in the elements below them.  They drink martinis and make their multi-million dollar deals; turning their attention to the war below only every so often.

Insert: If you find it difficult to internalize and understand why these oligarchs would rarely turn their attention to the ‘game,’ then allow me to explain.  The owners of these professional teams realize that as long at the united states is at war somewhere in the world (it doesn’t matter where), then their stocks in Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, L3 Communications, and host of other corporations who’s business is war, earn them incredibly rich dividends.  Hell, the US doesn’t even have to be winning, all that matters is that the war is happening, and the orders for for more materiel keep coming.  These sports teams, on the other hand, are really more trouble than they’re worth.  If the team loses more than it wins, then the investment quickly turns into a liability.

But let us return to the sports channel!

Once in a while the oligarchs laugh at how easy it is to convince the workers below them to vote for the interests of the 5%.  Allow me to remind you that to these people there is no america, there is no ‘west,’ there is only the flow of capital around the planet and between each of them.  Patriotism and nationalism are mere commodities sold to the masses for their internationalist-globalization benefit, and nothing more.

We cannot discuss the pre-game ceremony without returning to the National Basketball Association.  Although the venues are all indoors and  necessarily smaller in scale, the hyper-patriotic empire worship is no less intense.  Its purpose is to prepare the masses for the imperial violence of blood-sport soon to come.  The music (different for each player during their introductions), the lights, the build-up to the appearance of the mega-stars; it’s a show, it’s pure entertainment bathed in red, white, and blue.

I can hear the argument from some of you that it’s supposed to be entertainment.  This is true, but my point is the over-the-top, imperial extravagance of it all.  Each of you should compare the imperial display that accompanies the ‘regular season’ games and the championships of the american NFL and NBA leagues with that of a true world championship set of games; The World Cup finals of football.

The final matches of this tournament occur only once every four years, and qualification for a place in the final tournament of thirty-two teams is a two-year process in which the national teams of virtually every country on this planet participate.  Once you reach the final tournament of thirty-two, each match begins with the two teams walking onto the pitch side-by-side preceded by the referee team.  This would be impossible in the NBA and the NFL; each game would begin in an all out brawl, but as I stated earlier, if players of either side are carried off on a stretcher, then so be it; that’s the price of war, fame…and a fifteen million dollar a year contract.

Prior to even the championship match of the World Cup Finals, the entertainment is, compared to american imperial sport pre-season games, subdued, and once the two teams are on the pitch, the ceremony entails the national anthem of each participant; after that, the match begins.

Insert: “Holy crap, are you serious?  That’s nothing but a bunch of fairie-ass United Nations bullshit.  Damn, that’s it, I just figured it out!  Soccer is just a front for the the devil’s liberal ‘one world government’ scheme!  Fucking un-american, if you ask me.”

Lastly, allow me to venture into the realm of “two men enter, one man leave;” the precursor to the thunderdome, the revival of the Roman gladiator games: the UFC.  This, this, thing (I will not call it a sport) which is now disguised under the name ‘mixed martial arts’ marks the debasement of humanity to its most basic instincts.  I realize that this diversion originated in Japan, but it did so because the originators were not certain if the american market was ready for such violence.  Really?

It did not take long, after slowly releasing fights here and there into the american cable market, that the owners of the UFC realized that there was never any need to hide in Japan; america had been thirsting for and lusting after bloody person-to-person combat like this for a long, long time.  Soon thereafter, the league moved to the United States.  Granted, the absolute ‘no holds barred’ rules that were part and parcel of the league while it rested in Japan were exchanged for a few rules: one could no longer bite the other glatiator’s balls off  during a stipulated fight…makes sense to me.

This phenomenon gave rise to the ritual of the back yard fight; arenas in which two tough guys stepped up and fought it out any way they could until one of them surrendered.  The back yard fights even gave rise to their own set of celebrities; does Kimbro Slice ring a bell?  If it doesn’t, don’t worry, in fact, be thankful.  The point is that we now have the people who flocked to the false competition of ‘professional wrestling’ finding true gratification and the satiation of their blood-lust through the UFC and its octagon.  The violence of this endeavor knows no bounds, and I suppose it is only a matter of time before biting off balls is sanctioned by the competitions committee.

What then do I think that God makes of all of this?  I truly believe that God appreciates intelligent, friendly, and mutually beneficial competition among us.  These activities build our character and, in the end, lead us to appreciate the help of others.  It shows us that no person is an island and can make a successful life in His eyes by themselves.  We depend on each other, on our community, on those with whom we have formed bonds of kinship in order to fulfill the lives God wants for us; in order to love each other as He loved us.

This is type of competition not only builds bonds between one and their team-mates, but also with those against whom they compete.  This is healthy and beautiful.  However, when we take our desire to compete against each other into the realm of violence, gluttony, and worship of the earthly imperial powers that stand against God and His kingdom, then He cannot smile upon that.  The one who does smile upon it is that which is our enemy.  The one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.  The violent extremes to which our sporting interests have gone breeds only enemies and enemy hatred.  It is sickening and ugly.

Sport in america, my friends, is very often a very ugly thing.  However, what can anybody expect from the culture of a country that has been in existence for 239 years and has been involved in war for 222 of those years.  The ugly america is all around us, but it does not need to be the end of our cultural stagger though history.  Each of us holds the power to make amercian culture a beautiful thing.  It will not be easy, because in order to do so we will need to seek beautiful culture in all we do, and part of this will be do demand an end to the ‘ultra-violence’ of our sporting entertainment.

Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

What Do We See?

My friends…

It seems that now, more than I can ever remember in my brief time on this planet, that we, as a nation, see vastly different things when we look at the same object.  I believe that these differences are the product of our desires for reality, and not that which is ‘real’ outside of our own experience.  This, of course, raises the question: “Does objective reality even exist, and if it does, is it relevant?  Or is objective reality merely the whole collective of our individual realities?”

You can believe me when I say that objective, non-experiential reality does exist and it is quite relevant; especially when we each plow into it like a car into a brick wall.  The wall, my friends, is accountability for our actions and the composition of this wall varies with the level of your personal power, wealth, and race as defined by the current set of imperial social norms.

Examples:

If you are ‘poor and powerless,’ then the wall is not only made of brick, but there will probably be long, sharp spikes mounted firmly to it and facing the direction from which you approach.  You barrel toward this thing at a high rate of speed and, strangely enough, are thrown from the ’79 Mustang convertible by an ejector seat you had no idea existed mere moments before contact.  You then either smash directly into the bricks, or are impaled on the spikes like an enemy of Vlad Tepič.

If you are white, then there are fewer spikes and your chances of surviving your contact with the wall increase…slightly.  However, you will still be pretty messed up.  If you are black or latino, there’s almost no hope of even reaching the bricks whole.  The spikes are everywhere, and if you don’t hit the wall like an Olympic diver scoring a perfect 100, then it’s ‘spike city’ for you, and your rotting carcass will hang there as a warning to all who come after.

That is the ‘accountability wall’ for the poor and powerless.   It may seem a grim representation of the world in which we live, but I must insist on its accuracy.  I, and others who have witnessed the poor’s interactions with the state and its many bureaucratic tentacles, know this by experience.  It is not something that is intellectualized, or formed in the philosophical nether-regions of our brains.  We see it with our eyes, hear it with our ears, taste it on our tongues.  We touch it with our hands and smell it with our noses.  It is real.

But enough of that.  Let us journey now to a happier, more enjoyable existence.  If you are wealthy and powerful, then the accountability wall is actually a mountain of goose-down pillows.  You barrel toward this thing at a high rate of speed and leap from the driver’s seat of your Jaguar convertible just before you hit the pillows screaming “Wheeeee!!!” You are then gently slowed to a halt by the pillows.  If you are white, then there is little or no end to the pillows.  If you are black…well…then you’re not in this paragraph, you’re in the next paragraph. (please skip the rest of this paragraph and begin the next).  The wealthy white people lie there with smiles on their faces as a welcome to all who come after.

Unfortunately, even of you are a black American with lots of money, the pillows are actually bricks painted to look like a mountain of fluffy, welcoming fun.  You better stay in the convertible and hope that the seat belt and the air bag save your life, because if you jump from the car, your “Wheeeee!” is going to end with your brains splattering out of your cranium in every direction onto the wall.

There are those who deny the reality of the images above.  These are the cadres of the extreme political right whose political favorites now sit in the seats of power in this country.  Their general reaction to the images I painted above are that I, like all ‘liberals’ as they call us, just seek to divide us with such images.  This is ridiculous.  You cannot blame the divisions of race and class in this country on those who point to that which already exists, but that is what they will do if they can.

I have stated before the quote of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis [1856 – 1941]: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have our wealth concentrated into the hands of the very few, but we cannot have both.”  This statement stands as a charge to each of us to seek the equitable distribution of wealth to which it refers.  This equity of which Justice Brandeis speaks is not the equity generally associated with Karl Marx, but the equity desired by God.

God understands that on this earth there are only limited resources available and all of us must share these.  So we must ask ourselves how we want this overall distribution of wealth to look.  Do we, as followers of Jesus Chris want this to look like the oligarchies of the past and present; in which wealth and power are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, and the ever growing masses of the poor are left to fight among themselves for what is left?  Or do we want to see a world in which all people not only have an equitably shared access and right to the scarce resources of our Mother Earth, but also to the respect of each other, and to the right to worship the God of Love as their conscience dictates?

The former is an accurate portrait of the America we see today.  The latter is a portrait of the the kingdom of heaven we hope to establish here on earth.  That, after all, is the charge that Jesus gave us.  When he instructed His disciples on how to pray and said to them, as part of this prayer; “Your kingdom come, and your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven…” He did not mean “Yeah, if you could take care of this and send Your kingdom here as we sit on our asses and grow fat and lazy on the wealth we can extract from the planet and each other, we would really appreciate that.”

Unfortunately, the majority of evangelical Christians in the American Empire have decided that the second statement is what Jesus really meant, and the rest of us would see this clearly if we would just read between the lines properly.  I feel so stupid!  How could I not see that Jesus was not really The Prince of Peace, but rather the Sultan of Mutual, Unfettered Exploitation!

However, now that I have seen the light, allow me, before I close, to give you a few examples of American Evangelical ‘Power Church’ interpretations of scripture (these are, after all, the products of extensive research):

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” does not mean that we are engage in the thoroughly exhaustive work of looking at those who claim to be our enemies and tell them aloud I/we love you, let us set aside that which separates us and be friends. It really means “Bomb the shit out of those the state determines are your enemies and shut the hell up about it.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” does not mean that we should assist all people we see in making peace not only between them and others, but within themselves as well.  It really means “Are you kidding me?  Okay, sure, make peace with fellow Christians, but those God-damned Muslims gotta go.  This is a war for our very survival!”

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” does not mean that the desires of my life are always secondary to your will.  It really means “let your will be done…so long as it isn’t too inconvenient, doesn’t cut into defense spending, and definitely doesn’t cause me any physical discomfort.  Seriously.”

Folks, our world quickly approaches a crossroads and a point of decision.  On one side stands Jesus; calling us to follow Him and his commands to love each other regardless of all worldly concerns.  On the other side stands the red brick and white steeple church which defiles His name; calling us to obey authority, accept war, greed, hatred, judgment, self-righteousness, and to embrace all of the other evils of this world.

I suggest that you go with Jesus, and to help you, I have one piece of advice in the overwhelming bit of weirdness that this post has become.  Rid yourself of your bible, your ‘religion,’ and go somewhere alone; not once, but many times.  Once you’re there, have a conversation with God.  Start to know Him in a secret friendship that is just between the two of you.  This, my friends, is what Jesus meant for prayer to be.  This, my friends, is the relationship God wants to have with each of us.

Over time, I am certain you will find that His great love is not only never-ending, but that His love for you is His greatest joy.  You will also discover that His greatest sorrow is that much if not most of what humankind’s holy books contain is complete bullshit.  It is bullshit that has pulled us away from Him for the sake of worldly power; nestled comfortably in the hands of the very few, most of whom are rolling down off of their mountain of fluffy, welcoming fun.

Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

No Matter Where We Go, Here We Are

It has been quite a while since my last post.  Many months, in fact.  Although my posts to this site are not something for which people ‘wait,’ or in which they are particularly interested, I shall still apologize for my negligence.  I have not been particularly lazy, I have just been engaged in other affairs; my golf handicap is now in the single digits.  Thank you.  I sensed an audible “Wow, that’s pretty good” from a few of you who know what that means.

Anyway, let’s move on to the heart of the matter.  My father and I don’t agree on much, politically.  That is no secret.  However, we have found a strange kinship in our agreement about this presidential election cycle.  I believe he put it quite aptly when he said “It is as if you took every eligible voter in the United States, completely vetted each of them to determine their fitness to be president of the United States, and put them all on a list from 1 to 250,000,000, with, of course the most qualified being at the top of the list.  You then took that list, turned it upside down, and the two names that now appear at the top, you took and placed them before the world as the two ‘major party’ candidates for president of the United States.”

He’s right.  It’s completely pathetic.  Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are two of the most despicable characters ever to to emerge as figures of leadership in the history of this country.

Donald Trump…what can you say? The moment, sometime in 2015 when I heard he was running for president I said: “So what, I guess this guy thinks he is going to waltz into the White House and be CEO of the United States?”  Apparently he does, and if he, by some strange precursor of the apocalypse, becomes president, then the halls of the White House will become one big locker room where the boys can get together, get his business partner, Putin, on speaker phone, and talk about grabbin’ em by the pussy all night until they’re too drunk to walk.

Unfortunately, although that may sound appetizing to the NASCAR dads whose support he has locked up, that is not the type of person we want as our head of state.  It really isn’t.  This is because the type of person who does such things and holds the attitudes towards women and anyone who is not a white male in general which he does belongs in a locker room, not the White House.  Call him “coach” all you want, just don’t ever allow him to be called “Mr. President.”

As John Nichols in his article, “Predator and Strongman,” which appears in the latest issue of The Nation rightly noted: “Donald Trump is a son of privilege with regal aspirations, a well dressed grifter who has taken advantage of every loophole to avoid paying taxes, avoid paying contractors, avoid his responsibilities as an employer, and avoid accountability for his abuse of women.”

Fortunately, the institutions of this country and the system of checks and balances that have functioned somewhat well since the ratification of the constitution may be just strong enough to withstand a Trump presidency.  Then again, they may not be, and if this is the case, then our beloved republic, this great American experiment, will not survive.

This what I fear most from a Donald Trump presidency; the destruction of the republic.  Of course, I also fear the fate of minority communities in our country, but it is the fall of the republic that has me most worried.  This is not to say that I am not somewhat twistedly drawn to the daily ‘white knuckled thrill ride’ that a Trump presidency would entail, but I am willing to temper this dark love of chaos bordering on absolute mayhem for the sake of the republic…you’re welcome.

Hillary Clinton…What can you say?  Hillary Clinton will probably be the next president of the United States, but only because she is running against Donald Trump.  Were she running against a human being, she wouldn’t stand a chance, but she landed the illiterate orange monkey boy with the quick temper and small…hands who suffers from the worst grouping of mental illnesses imaginable.

I watched a short documentary on Ms. Clinton recently and someone that knew her when she was in college told the story of when she was falling in love with Bill and explained that she was going to go back to Arkansas with him because someday he was going to be president of the United States.  I sincerely believe that what she really meant was that someday he will be president of the United States…which will provide a perfect platform for me to then become president of the United States.

To want to be president of the United States is not a bad thing and it does not make you a bad person.  Hillary Clinton is not a bad person in the manner that Donald Trump is a bad person.  Donal Trump is just a straight up bad person.  Hillary Clinton has spent her life in politics and has worked very hard for various groups of underprivileged and marginalized people.  For this I applaud her.  Hillary Clinton is a bad person in that she represents the final downturn in the corruption of the American political system.

Debbie Wassermann-Shultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, admitted to this corruption, confirming that the primary process had been manipulated to award the nomination to Ms. Clinton.  This admission came mere days before the Democratic National Convention.  She then said that she, as a self-imposed punishment, would resign her position at the DNC at the close of the convention.  I am certain that she will be rewarded richly by President Clinton with a juicy executive branch appointment next January.

Hillary Clinton has been planning her ascension to the White House since she was in college and has been ramping up the organizational and financial necessities in order to do so ever since January 20, 2001; the day she, Bill, and Chelsea ended their residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and boarded Marine One for their trip out of town.

She thought she had everything she needed in 2008, but ran up against a cool, young, handsome black guy with an ass-kicking name, Barak Obama.  Now, in 2016, she is it; she has the organization, the money, and she has, for some time now, had the Democratic National Committee in her pocket.  Most importantly, however, she has silenced anyone within the democratic party machine who could seriously stand in her way.

Through corrupt dealing and outright intimidation by the Clinton political machine of any who seriously opposed her, she finds herself on the doorstep of history.  All she needs to do is give the secret knock, and the boys club is shattered forever.  Barak Obama shattered the white boys club and Hillary Clinton can finish the job.  Such a statement may sound like I support Ms. Clinton, but that is only 1/4 right.  I fully support what Ms. Clinton represents in this sense, but not her, and I shall cast my vote for her with the most reluctant stroke of a Sharpie you can imagine.  If we voted in Oklahoma with the cards Florida used at least until 2000, I would be begging for my chads to hang!

One of the main issues that make this presidential election cycle such a disgusting affair to watch is that both candidates are most concerned with them being president.  Everything else pales, or disappears completely.

Ms. Clinton did not expect Bernie Sanders’ message to resonate so strongly with the voters, and when confronted with the authentic words of an authentic progressive, what did Ms. Clinton do?  She echoed his progressive credentials, claiming them as her own.  She knows and we know that Hillary Clinton is not a progressive democrat, and now we also know that she will say anything to be elected president.

Donald Trump did not expect the truth about what an absolute monkey and animal unfit to be president of the United States he is to be laid bare before the electorate, and when confronted with his blatant disregard for anybody other than himself for his entire life, what did Donald Trump do?  He claimed that it further proved his status as a good businessman.  My question is; “In how many lawsuits must one be labeled ‘Defendant’ and how many times must one declare bankruptcy before the mystique of being a ‘good businessman’ fades away.

Through all of this one truth remains: No matter where we go, here we are.  The saddest part of this truth is that no one put us here but ourselves.  I always wondered where the “don’t talk politics” society would lead us, and it is here at the edge of this abyss.  If Americans relished the discussion of politics and matters important to the nation and humanity as a whole in their daily lives, then I am certain that we would not be in the predicament in which we now find ourselves.

First and foremost, public policy would be the result of intellectual consideration based upon research and not the superstition based knee-jerk reaction born of fear, bigotry, and hatred it has become.  Second, and perhaps more importantly, our politicians would know that they must have more on their resumé than ‘faith in God’, or “because I have a very good brain” to run for office with any chance of success.

So what can we do?  I have two radical solutions.

First, we do away with the electoral college.  If the people are to chose their representative in the White House, then let them do so.  We have seen in recent history what the electoral college can do in declaring the will of the people null and void when they have pens in their hands.

In the presidential election of 2000 Al Gore won a majority of the popular vote among Americans.  Yet, in Florida, through criminally fraudulent manipulation of the system, Jeb Bush’s Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters from blocs that generally vote democratic.  Through this criminal enterprise and the refusal of the conservatives on the United States Supreme Court to protect the integrity of the system, George W. Bush was able to garner the electoral votes of Florida, putting him over the base-line limit needed to secure the presidency.

Those men and women who wrote his name and that of his vice presidential candidate Darth Cheney on their ballots defied the will of the majority of the American electorate, and completed the crime of installing a man in the White House who did not carry the day at the ballot box.  The electoral college must go quickly into the landfill of history.

However, having said that, I must admit that the electoral college was put in place specifically for purposes of preventing a person like Donald Trump from occupying the White House.  Mr. Trump’s economic and social welfare policies are not the question, his blatant disregard for the democratic principles of our republic are.

When you declare that you will order our armed forces and clandestine services to torture enemy combatants for any information they may possess and kill their families as retribution for what they are suspected of doing, then you need to know that the electoral college is there to prevent you from ever becoming president of this country, regardless of the tally of the vote.

I must pause for one quick side note to the conservatives.  If your cause is aided when voter turnout is low, then there is something wrong with the principles for which you stand.  Also, if the ‘media’ as you call them, and the vast majority of ‘intellectuals’ as you have labeled them disagree with you, then maybe, just maybe, you are wrong.  Mike-Hillbilly Jackass-Huckabee wants us to believe that people who never finished high school because they couldn’t stay off of beer and meth are the smart ones, but I, personally, am not fooled.

Second, we must do away with the two-party system in favor of a proportional representation system.  In order to have the courage to do this we have to face the fact that the republican and democratic parties truly represent the political views of a small and ever shrinking percentage of Americans.  Soon, it will be only those tied to their machines by favors done and favors received; a small and corrupt cabal of benefactors and beneficiaries who are never invited to the really cool parties.

In a proportional representation system, the number of viable parties would grow, the percentage of the electorate actually participating in the process would grow, and those men and women in positions of official leadership would hold office with an actual mandate, instead of being the ‘lesser of two evils’ candidate.  I ask you; what more could anyone want out of their electoral system?

The progressives would have their candidates see as much air time and be able to participate in debates as do the republicans and democrats of today, and the white nationalist parties would enjoy the same benefits.  I don’t care how repulsive your ideas are, we should have a political system that allows them to be heard by as many people as possible.  This might even put an end to the ‘don’t talk politics’ society we have created.

Whatever your feelings on the debacle of November 8, 2016, I urge you to reflect on the truly pathetic depth to which our political system has sunk in order to be confronted with the two choices we have before us.  It will always be true that no matter where we go, here we are, but we have the right and the ability to decide what and where ‘here’ is.  If we don’t begin to exercise that right soon, it will be gone.  In fact, it is slipping away as you read this.

Practice Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

 

I Love Astronomy and Microbiology – Part 1: Astronomy

This overall piece contains two commentaries which I have had to split into two posts.  The first is on an organization in which the greatest spectacle of the astronomical universe all around us is about to occur.  The second refers to an organization that is experiencing microbiological change on a cellular level.

Both of these organizations like to portray themselves as different from the other, but are, for all intents and purposes, the same.  They are the republican and democratic party ‘establishments.’  These people are in trouble, and the trouble they have is the trouble they have made for themselves in recent history.

That trouble is, basically, that the people to whom both of these organizations have promised salvation and prosperity have seen neither a dime nor a day of deliverance from them.  They have both lied to the American people and they know it.  That, in and of itself, is not a problem, or wouldn’t be were it not for the fact that the American Nation now sees the very weave of the wool that has covered their eyes for so long.  The shroud of secrecy has been lifted and both the democrat and republican machines have been exposed for what they are; devices to maintain the status quo.

The Greatest Spectacle of the Universe: The Supernova

The republican party is just weeks away from going supernova.  Like a star that has used up all of the fuel it gathered during its genesis, it is now bankrupt and existing solely on its ability to eat itself.  Soon, the city of Cleveland will the be the site at which the actual event occurs: the site at which the star explodes.  It will be a glorious event to behold and, I must say, one for which I have waited almost all my life and definitely all of my adult life.

The only caveat within this event is the high probability that people are going to be hurt, and that is something I do not want to see.  I don’t mean ‘hurt’ in the sense that they will experience some form of emotional distress over the explosive destruction of their party.  I mean that people are probably going to be physically beaten and, unfortunately, killed.

I say this because I find it difficult to believe that no Trump delegate will leave his home for Cleveland without taking a portion of his arsenal with him.  When the republican establishment successfully wrests the nomination from Trump, thereby destroying any chance of making America great again, at least one of these characters is going to go off.  He’s going to return to his hotel, load up, and head back to the convention determined to show these people “who they’re fucking with.”  When I say “at least one of these characters,” I mean at the very least, one, but I assume it will be more.

At the time of the writing of this essay (late March, 2016), a group of satirists have placed a phony petition online to allow open carry at the convention.  The petition speaks of how any ‘open carry-free zones’ are an affront to our second amendment rights.  As I’m sure you can imagine, the average republican cannot discern truth from satire and more than 25,000 gun toters have signed the petition calling for Quicken Loans Arena to allow them their God-given right to carry guns everywhere.  The owners of the arena will not allow this, if for no other reason than the certainty that if they did, the republican convention would end a bloodbath.

I can guarantee you that if the party was to convince the owners of the Quicken Loans Arena to allow the foaming at the mouth expression of the Second Amendment at their convention that the republicans have tried to foist upon America as a whole, then we will hear the pundits on Fox Noise in a conversation that will go something like this: “Obviously, the Trump delegates did not expect the Cruz delegates to be so well armed and organized.  If they hadn’t been, the death toll among Cruz delegates would have been much higher, and the death toll among Trump delegates would have been negligible at best.  As it turned out, five hundred white ‘good guys with guns’ who despise each other insured our freedom for another generation.  Well, it looks like Kasich will get the nomination, since he has the most delegates left alive.”

Ah, Trump!  He is sucking up the last bit of hydrogen left in the star and he loves the uneducated, doesn’t he?  One of the loudest and longest sets of cheers I have heard in this entire election cycle occurred when Donald Trump was speaking to a mob of supporters and said (and I paraphrase): “We have the educated, the poorly educated…Oh, I love the poorly educated!” [begin wild, unending cheering of the poorly educated].

The star is going to go, so please allow me to explain my view of how the republicans arrived at their own ‘end of time’ and explore the reasons of how we arrived here at the doorstep of the republican party supernova.  It is a tale forty years in the making.

The ultra wealthy republican party oligarchs are a “Dr. Frankenstein” of sorts — Or perhaps they are the monster and their various constituencies are the doctor — that is a proposition I will have consider further, but not now.  Either way, the truth of the matter is that the republican party has quite carefully and recklessly coddled various fringe groups and has, for decades, told these groups that they would make their un-american fringe agendas part of of its traditional “money talks and bullshit walks” platform.

The primary example of this process is the ultra-fascist Christian Right.  In 1979, Jerry Falwell formed an organization called “The Moral Majority” and immediately aligned his group with two other sets of organizations, thereby forming a bridge between them.  These organizations were the republican party and the various loosely associated groups of the far-right wing fundamentalist Christian churches in the United States.

Since right wing fundamentalists first began to coalesce into the moral, ethical, and spiritual black hole it has become today, the republican party has courted this constituency carefully.  They have promised this group over and over again that the party would incorporate their hatred for others and their defilement of the legacy of Jesus Christ into their party platform.  They promised this every four years, and every four years the creationists and bible-only home-schoolers were left standing off in a corner like a wallflower at the big dance.  However, unlike your average wallflower who is nice and courteous, but just a bit too shy and insecure to get out there and dance, the christian right is mean, ugly, vindictive, judgmental, and full of hatred for a world that continues, to their continuous consternation, evolve.

In the mid- to late-1990’s the christian right began to understand that as long as they remained silent partners in the republican conspiracy; never outwardly violating the democratic cornerstone of the separation of church and state beyond the confines of their own individual churches, no republican would ever ask them to the dance.

Perhaps they made overtures to the democratic party, I don’t know.  One thing I do know is that if they did, the democrats laughed and said: “You’re insane!”  This avenue to political power closed, they knew that they had to strike out on their own, but to do so successfully would mean that they needed partners.  They couldn’t count on the vast majority of educated Christians, because most of these people despised them for what they were making of Christianity.

Enter the “NASCAR Dads.”

The NASCAR Dads are the perfect spouse of the Christian right.  Neither have any need of or respect for education, history, science (beyond generating lots of horse power), art, equal rights, human rights, or anything else that marks the ascension of man toward God.  They courted for a short time, discovered their innate compatibility, and were married at an ‘off the beaten path’ chapel on the outskirts of Vegas.  The marriage was quickly consummated and the spawn which heralded forth from the loins of this unholy man-bitch is the tea party creature.

The tea party; the descent of mankind into a base existence consumed with gun culture.  Their battle cry? “The Second Amendment is all the First Amendment I need!”  The tea party; a clearinghouse for racism, bigotry, harsh judgement, and hatred of all those different than them.  The tea party; a loose confederation of groups, populated with the type of people who will look into the cart of someone at the grocery store who they think might be on food stamps just to make sure they’re not buying any name-brand items like Oreos, or ‘luxury’ items like shrimp or steak.

The tea party creature, dripping with the stench of its bizarre conglomeration of ‘values’ and interests, knew that it did not posses the self-regenerating life force necessary to live as anything but a parasite, so it looked about for a host.  It identified its target quickly, and lunged with all of the vindictive hatred it could muster at the republican party.  It thereby attached itself and began to suck the life out of something which, strangely enough, was already devoid of any philosophical justification and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Like all parasites, the tea party creature gave something back to its host.  It brought votes, hate radio, the televised growls of Fox Noise, and the church-based grass-roots organization of the far right fundamentalists.   However, like all parasites, the tea party creature depended on its host for its survival, and the christian right portion of the monster found itself in almost the same position it was before.  Except for one very important difference: it now had secular claws with which the tear apart the fabric of american cultural progress.

These are the new constituencies of the republican party and there are a lot more of them than there are old rich white guys.  Therein lies the origin of the supernova we are about to see.  The tea party creature is stealing the republican party from the old rich white guys, and there’s nothing they can do about it.  The establishment oligarchs became lost in the heroin-like ecstasy of the ‘votes’ venom the tea party creature pumped into it.  They welcomed the parasite into their party to try and insure enough votes to be competitive in national campaigns and, as before, lied to them over and over and over again, somehow expecting them to remain complacent lap dogs to the monied interests dogma of the republican establishment.

The tea party creature is composed of people that the republican establishment would never allow within five miles of one of their garden parties if they could manage it.  These are people they will never allow into their gated-community fourth of July celebrations.

The tea party creature has become the driving force behind Dr. Frankenstein and now controls the republican party; and the creature’s man for president is Donald Trump…or Ted Cruz.  To have either of these men as your party’s candidate for president is tantamount to living out the final scene of Thelma and Louise.  Those two are in the car barreling toward the cliff and the republican party is the passenger in the back seat who, though he knows what is about to happen, either can’t bring himself to, or doesn’t really want to jump.  The republican party has become a suicide machine.

Grab a good seat kids, because believe it or not, the republican convention is going to be “must see TV.”  The whole bankrupt house of cards is about to blow up like a star devoid of the fuel it needs to continue its coherent life.  it is about to let out its last gasp; giving up its life to the universe.

I only hope that it does not do so in a hail of gunfire.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

It’s Time For A Counter Counter-Revolution

The American political landscape is moving in a dangerous direction and the counter-revolution for which the republican party has hoped and dreamt for decades is now at our doorstep.  It is deliverance for the racists, bigots, and war mongers of the Christian right, and the ‘white nationalists,’ ‘neo-confederates’ and war-mongers of the tea party secular right.

They are bolstered by books by people like Mike Huckabee in which he tells those living in eternal bliss that “You are really the smart ones, not these people with education, culture, and any semblance of a progressive mind-set.  No.  You, with your hateful God, your idiotic guns, your nasty grits, and your delicious gravy are the smart ones.  You are on this pedestal because you do not seek deeper understanding; you simply accept prima facia, and when the Texas textbook commission hands your children textbooks that portray Moses as one of the elitist oligarchy of men who engineered our separation from the British crown, you will cheer and accept that too.”

In fact, it has been my experience that no counter-revolutionaries seek to understand anything other than that with which they are already familiar.  They do not question, they obey.  They accept the voices of FOX noise and the hatred of Rush Limbaugh without question, and this embracing of democracy-destroying ignorance, hatred, and harsh judgment of those who are different than them, they are told, is what makes every one of them great Americans.

These forces have coalesced into the modern 21st century fascism they told us could never happen here, and their vision of an America in which white men once again dictate who lives and who dies is given voice through the three-ring circus which is the entire field of republicans vying for the office of president of the United States.  If we allow them, they will turn the ‘Statue of Liberty’ into the ‘Statue of Bigotry.’

The ‘Revolution,’ of course, has been going on since the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment and continues today.  This is the revolution that took western European culture, from the age of faith in God by superstition, and guilt of the accused by association into the age of scientific method, innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law by a jury of one’s peers, and faith in God by adherence to His command; that we love one another.

The problem is that the revolution became bureaucratized and fell victim to the political wing of the Age of Enlightenment.  The ideals of equality of and equality for all people before all people, and beside all other people in their theoretical mist are still beautiful and relevant, and I am certain that all but a small handful of people in this world possess an intrinsic understanding of the justice inherent in them, but practice can often become a contagion.

Creating a gentle rainstorm of practice out the of the theoretical mist of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” is not easy and has not been done well.  This is not to say that those who have made the mistakes that have ground the revolution to a halt were possessed of malicious intent.  Quite the opposite; their intentions have been pure, and they have been courageous in their continuing attempts to bring about the ascension of mankind to a higher level of relationship with each other and with God.

Unfortunately, if one is to pierce the darkness of ancient judgments and hatreds, they must have a dagger of sufficient length and sharpness, and that dagger must be the bureaucracy.  If you ask me, that is a real catch-22; the primary tool necessary to bring positive change to all of humanity is the very thing that will, in the end, inhibit fulfillment of that change.

Now we have the counter-revolution before us.  The white nationalists, neo-confederates, tea party activists, and pro-birth christians of the political right have emerged from the shadows of their previous status as ‘fringe’ elements to execute a coup d’état in the republican party.  The kingdom of hell is at hand; all they have to do is reach out and grab it.

The self described ‘Goldwater republicans’ are a thing of the past and are no longer welcome.  The new republican party is here!  The new republican party wants to to know what consenting adults are doing in their bedrooms, and intend to police the gender of the participants: More than two is to be declared unsavory, but as long as there are more women than men, charges will not be filed.  The new republican party wants civil rights for all…white, protestant christian males.  The new republican party wants boundless economic opportunity…for the wealthy.  The new republican party wants no money to be spent on programs that enhance people’s lives; including education and health care.  After all, the wealthy can already afford all of the education and health care they need.

That may sound grim (and it is), but this is what your reward will be when you spend your time and money appealing to a minimally educated, culturally illiterate, and openly racist base in order to acquire votes.  Those beer drinkin’, gun totin’ hill folk are eventually going to demand their payment, and payment is being demanded now.  This why the republican party has drifted farther right than Hitler.  The candidates are all trying to sound crazier and more full of hate than the next one in order to appeal to this freak show base.

That is the eye of the storm of the counter-revolution hurricane and I know it is difficult to understand them.  I wish I had time in this short essay to delve into the psyche of this phenomenon, but I will have to reserve that for the various one-on-one conversations on this subject I am certain I will have.  For my purposes here, I need to return to the revolution and the counter counter-revolution we must initiate and carry out if the American republic is to survive and all of mankind is to advance.

“The revolution will not be televised!”  Chuck D shouted that in the late 1980s as the voice of Public Enemy.  That may be true for a portion of the revolution, but part of the revolution must be televised.

The part of the revolution that will not be televised  is that portion that happens within our hearts.  It is the change within each of us that becomes dedicated to the revolution; it is God’s participation in the revolution.  When we allow His portion of the revolution to take hold of us, then the revolution cannot fail and will not become petrified in a forest of antiquated systems and processes.

When we surrender and allow His gentle voice to urge us on to even and ever more and greater love and compassion for others; for the poor, the immigrant, the refugee, those who have been or are in prison, all those who are marginalized by consumerist society: in short, for all of the least of these, then the revolution lives and breathes in each of us.  When we include and not exclude, we are living the revolution.  As we do to them, so we do to Him.

Part of the revolution must be televised so that all can see the injustice against which we rise.  We, as revolutionaries, need those who have the skill and the courage to televise the revolution.  Better yet, we need those with the skill and the courage to televise the counter-revolution.  Only then will the ugly truths of our world enter the eyes of those who either sit on the sidelines, or oppose us altogether.  Only in this manner will the seeds of the revolution spread to those who can not yet see.

“The eyes are the window of the soul.”  I don’t know who originally said that, but I believe it is the truth.  Also, I know that Jesus said this: “The lamp of the body is the eye.  Therefore, if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light” (Matt. 6: 22).  That is what televising the revolution can do; fill the body with light so that the part of the revolution which can not be televised can take root in the heart, establish and then nurture the revolution of the King.

It is time, my friends, for the counter counter-revolution: the revolution which will chip away at the crust that has immobilized the revolution and sets it once again on its path toward Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood for all people.  It is a revolution that marks another step in the ascension of man to community with the living God who wants nothing more than to have community with us; to be our father and us his children.  However this new revolution looks to you, we know its core values and its core messenger; Jesus, the Christ and his sermon.

Each of us know its truth, and we cannot believe the lie anymore.  The lie of consumerism, racism, bigotry, wealth, and exclusion has been allowed to fester in this world because people will not debate each other peacefully.  Therefore, we do not work things out like adults are supposed to do.  So, if I can offer any practical advice in this essay, it is to never be afraid to talk peacefully (yet with all of the conviction your heart possesses) and in an adult manner of the revolution.

It is time.  No, it is beyond time.

VIVE LA CONTRE CONTRE RÉVOLUTION!

Peace and love to all,

Niemand