FACISM ALERT

 This latest obscenity targeting Dr. Fauci is straight out of the Karl Rove handbook: The best way to assault a political opponent or someone who doesn’t support the cult, but is a decent person, is to determine their most admirable characteristic. Next, attack it by using paid deplorables. Then, have Fox news and other tawdry sources spend untold assets promoting the character assassination, over and over and over, until it becomes cult dogma and even tempts some decent people to succumb.

It worked on Senator John Kerry, who commanded a Swift boat in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. Yes, they defamed a sailor’s character for performing a highly dangerous mission on behalf of his country. And the sons of bitches got away with it.

They also condoned the tactic when used against John McCain, a Navy Aviator who suffered imprisonment for six years after the Vietnamese shot down his plane.

So, allow me to borrow a United States Navy expression those shipmates and I would use to say that, if you support demeaning the service a Swift Boat Commander or Naval Aviator for political purposes, you would suck shit scupper.

CLEANSING

 Seems I’m now the family patriarch. In a dream last night, someone asked me to form a short message of hope for the younger set in these troubled times. In the dream, I said, “What I offer is this: When I was born, one of the wickedest governments ever to sour the earth had turned my ancestral homeland into a cesspool of hate, murder, and carnage. In my lifetime, one lifetime, mind you, Germany transformed itself from a fanatical abscess on the body of humanity to a peaceful and prosperous country worthy of emulation. In our country, we now face primal deterioration. Our America is strong. We can learn from history and cleanse our nest. Let’s do so, and let’s not take an entire lifetime."

WAR

 As I’ve said, been studying the life of Herbert Hoover, a complicated person who was responsible for saving millions of lives around the world during its wars and disasters but bears the historical onus of neglecting his own people in our great crisis. In Kenneth Whyte’s massive biography, I ran across an interesting passage. It states how Hoover felt that WWI would forever change how societies dealt with each other.

“Total war [Hoover] realized engendered total hate.”

That’s an interesting observation. World wars tend to change the paradigm of history. Our politicians today spend the money that could be used to feed the hungry to buy bombs. In an oxymoronic dribble that only fools would cherish, they claim that war brings peace.

Does it? Or does our warlike compulsion resonate more like peeling away layers of an onion representing our society, revealing a more pungent evil with each stripping?

When one considers how so many so-called followers of the Galilean have abandoned his sermon of love and now embrace and worship our dictator’s rages of hate, we weep for Zion. It seems that in the history of Homo sapiens, we have learned much more about how to destroy than how to love.

In short, we have abandoned our better nature, layer by layer.

WARS

 If you hear or see me say something disparaging about our military, please know that I am not referring to the brave women and men who serve in the various uniforms of our armed services. Nor do I intend any criticism of the remaining conscientious officers who have chosen to serve in a noble career and to do it nobly.

If I grouse about the military, I refer to the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about. These are people, companies, and institutions who must have wars, or rumors of war, to finance their insatiable demand for riches and power. Satisfying it is not an option. It will not be satisfied, cannot be satisfied. Like Monty Python’s famous character, it will feast until riches spout from every orifice and then demand more. And we will feed it while the last child starves, the last veteran dies from wounds acquired while serving it, while the last neighborhood withers from the effects of drugs and wars, while the last institution of learning smolders in ashes, while our planet burns, and while the last family stumbles from a collapsing home into a barren world.

EVIL

 Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a silent drum but, hey … a malignant dictator has been ruling my beloved country since, as he promised, the day he took office. He has continually trashed and degraded every promise of hope and tradition we have built in this country of such promise. He is a nasty, vile, and degenerate person who rules the country for which I gave up four years of my life.

That bothers me.

There are six elected officials, elected to national office, in my state who have chosen to become politically “joined at the hips” with this creature, enabling each of his antics with their silence. A majority of our state officials frolic behind him shouting hosannas.

This bothers me.

But, people I once knew as kind, generous, patriotic, and righteous souls laud his every act because he has attacked, or promises to attack, people they don't like or ideas they don’t agree with. Many of those ideas come straight from the mouth of the Galilean. Cult members support each destructive move as long as their enemies are in the line of fire. Good people now praise evil and worship the evil one.

That's what really bothers me.

RICHES

 Sometimes I worry that a dictator now rules my America. A scary aspect of this is that the dictator has only one goal in mind.

DRUGS

 Long before I read “The Fort Brag Cabal” by Seth Harp I had determined, through my experience, study, and observation that drugs, illegally obtained and used, represent a top, if not the top, problem facing America. The book didn’t reinforce this. It only created a primal fear that my country has been elicit in teaming with international drug warlords. They help our government fight anti-capitalist regimes and our government allows them to amass fortunes by creating havoc in American neighborhoods.

Now it seems that havoc is even more pronounced in certain of our military units.

Thinking people with whom I discuss things tend to believe that the case of a majority of American voters choosing to elect a total charlatan, grifter, and demon as president of our country is a unique phenomenon.

My primal fear this morning suggests that maybe that isn’t true. I worry that the metaphor for the election of this monster is closer to the peeling of an onion. As each layer is removed, it reveals a rottenness that began when the first slave stumbled in chains from a prison ship to work lands obtained by murdering the original inhabitants.

I wish nothing more strongly this morning more than that I be proven wrong.

THE UNCIVIL WAR

Today marks the symbolic end, 161 years ago, of the Slaveowners’ Revolt that tore our country apart for four long years. It had cost the lives of some 750,000 soldiers on the two sides, roughly two percent of the population. That would equate to six million deaths today. It left cities in ruins and farms in ashes awaiting the return of the armless, the legless, and those suffering from “soldier’s heart” as they called it back then.

Though it officially ended slavery it did not end the vicious cruelty imposed upon those who arrived in our country in chains, a sin still visited upon their descendants.

Now we are engaged in a great, but differently fought, civil war to determine whether the imbedded promises of April 9, 1865 will prevail. How long, we wonder, must the battle for human decency last?

We can hope, but the monetary resources of a great international cabal face us as the murderous artillery faced American soldiers from Missionary Ridge and the cliffs of Omaha Beach. Their power flourishes within from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Even the purchase of a chicken sandwich or hobby tool bolsters their power. What we need more than ever is the will to prevail against monstrous odds.

We could use a man like Ulysses S. Grant again.

WOODEN SHOES

 Lately I have travelled a good bit in my state. I've seen things.

I've seen cities that were not blessed by the vagaries of history drowning in despair. I've seen blessed cities drowning in traffic congestion and their own refuse.

I've seen individuals suffering from debilitating illnesses abandoned by an uncaring government.

I've seen sign of an impending drought of maybe biblical proportions descending into some of the richest farmland on earth. I've seen interstate highways that will become parking lots in five years.

As water may become our most precious commodity within a few years, we are allocating it to large data centers, not to humans.

At our state level, the top priorities are the construction of a monstrous prison to house who knows whom yet and the destruction of the public school system.

At our national level, the top priority is world domination through military invasion. Yes, it has been tried before.

My ancestors had a saying: "Wooden shoes to wooden shoes in three generations."

Over my lifetime, the generations since the promise of post-WWII America have marched by like gray horses moving into a morning midst. It is becoming increasingly painful to watch.

UNDERSTANDING

 My limited study of evolution convinces me that Homo sapiens have a genetic urge to understand. Both religion and science grew from the earliest efforts to control, in the first case and learn in the second. How does this apply to the current state of America?

It doesn’t seem conclusive to me simply to say Donald Trump is crazy mean and getting worse. I’ve scraped my mind and can’t imagine an historic member of the United States House of Representative or Senate who would not speak out against the current shenanigans. Now there are 217 in the first case and 53 in the second. Their silence drowns out the cries of the hungry, sick, and misbegotten. Why?

Our ancients discovered early on that neither sympathetic (imitative) nor contagious magic resolved emergences due to the weather. Later, science helped by uncovering the causes and developing protections.

It makes more sense to understand that our current crisis evolves not from the mind of a madman but the orchestrations of an international cabal of oligarchs who seek a world more from the minds of Orwell and Huxley than those of Locke or Mill. Their operational strategy follows Capone more than Lincoln. They understand very well how to impose silence and guarantee obsequiousness.

Doesn’t that make more sense?

GETHSEMANE

 Last week I travelled through the forgotten part of our state, the Arkansas Delta. I passed through a community named, of all things, Gethsemane. Folks there pronounced it “Gessymane,” as in, “He’s from over ‘bout Gessymane.”

Years ago while travelling through I would see homes scattered around and even two grocery stores. One would see neighbors visiting, children playing, and machinery serving family farms. Over the years the stores disappeared, then the homes and people, and then the farm equipment as corporate farming reduced the work force and equipment required to feed the world. Eventually, all that was left was a road sign noting “Gethsemane.” On this trip through, the sign had disappeared.

The Garden of Gethsemane holds deep significance in the Christian religion as the place where Jesus Christ experienced profound emotional and spiritual struggle.

It is important in the Christian religion as it represents anguish, sorrow, resolve, human weakness, but spiritual resolve.

For Christians, Gethsemane serves as a powerful symbol of prayer, obedience, and perseverance in times of trial.

It dawned on me as I travelled that lonely stretch of highway, that my America has lost, sadly, the physical reality of Gessymane and now seems bent on abandoning the spiritual value of Gethsemane.

PRIORITIES

 I remember reading somewhere that, in late 1944 into early 1945, as Nazi Germany was collapsing:

The Allied bombing campaign had crippled Germany’s rail network.

German troops at the front were desperate for transport of fuel, weapons, and reinforcements.

Despite this, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and a central architect of the Holocaust, continued to prioritize deportations—especially in 1944 during the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Trains continued to deport Jews to concentration and extermination camps as a top priority.

I dunno. Just thought about this the other day on a trip into lower Arkansas, i.e. LA.

Passing by bald areas where farm communities once stood and concrete-pad strewn strips where downtowns once thrived, I thought about us.

Conditions now suggest that those areas may be facing a drought of Biblical proportions, threatening the only industry left to those communities.

Then I saw where our president said we couldn’t afford to address the health of our people anymore because we need the money to make bombs and kill people. Actually, it wasn’t money but debt-capacity, which he equates with money.

Leave saving humanity to the states, he said.

In our state, they want to direct resources to the destruction of public schools and construction of a monumental prison facility.

Is this what y’all voted for? Is this what y’all want?

Really?

VIRTUE

 This morning as Bessie Smith the Rescue Dog and I rambled, we listen to “Cannery Row,” by John Steinbeck. It was perhaps my thirtieth encounter, but she likes fiction, so we reconnected. Came across a phrase I had forgotten: “Misunderstood Virtues.”

Wow. Got me to thinking. As I have said before, I’ll never understand why they say I have a derangement syndrome because I don’t think, for among many reasons, that the grifter that dishonored the military service of John McCain should even be imagined as the president of my beloved country.
Here’s the thing. I don’t honor what Lt. Col. McCain was doing when they shot him down. He was following orders. They were evil orders but that’s what his country asked him to do and he had taken that oath. For the next six years, however, he served with as much dignity and patriotism as one could ask. He was the very picture of a virtuous individual.
It’s the same with Jane Fonda. I don’t respect what she did, but she did it for a defensible reason. I hold no lingering hatred. After all, hers wasn’t the greatest sin associated with that miserable war. Trust me.
Virtues, in my opinion, are complex. That’s why we should read, and why we should think about what we read.
Today we might remember that 161 years ago, the United States Army was within a few days of ending the institution of slavery, with all its sickening manifestations, in our country. There were those among both the victorious and the vanquished who felt they were operating within the most glorious of virtues.

Retribution

Sometimes I wonder if, in some bizarre case of cosmic retribution, America isn't getting what she deserves.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen us allow the tragic effects of the Jim Crow bigotry to exert catastrophe after catastrophe upon the lives of decent Americans.

I’ve seen (been victimized myself) us invade a country that had done us no discernable harm and wage a seemingly never-ending war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. For nothing.

I’ve seen us wage wars for profit that have de-stabilized large segments of the planet.

I’ve seen us make great strides in destroying the planet that succors us. Signs suggest that the next few months threaten a drought that might make water more precious than diamonds.

And now we choose to be ruled by international oligarchs using a mindset similar to what ruled the American South in 1861. They want to take over and rule us our country that once held such promise.

And they are doing a damned good job of it.

Coincidences?

Maybe. Or maybe there is a great spirit in the sky observing and controlling our destinies. If so, I’m guessing she’s pretty put out with us.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 A little piece in which I predict the future:

Morning began with a thud as an empty beer bottle hit a Christmas tree in the next room.
“Hon?”
There was no answer.
“Maria, are you okay?”
No one answered and Joe rose. Entering the next room, he saw his wife slumped on the couch, staring at the straggly tree with no presents beneath it, just the beer bottle.
He sat beside her. “What’s the matter,” he said.
“Everything.”
“Everything?” He put an arm around her. “Everything all at once?”
She moved her eyes to his and said, “Why? Why do they have to move here?”
“They are my parents,” Joe said. “They have no place to go. Can’t you understand? What if they were your parents?”
“Mine are both dead,” she said. “Remember the last flu epidemic? Why can’t he get a job?”
“He tried,” Joe said. “It’s hard. No firm wants to hire a man in his late fifties. Particularly with a break in his leg that never healed. He got that at his last job, remember? He’s on the list.”
“What about her?”
“There’s only stenography jobs,” he said. “And they go to the young ones. The ones they call ‘the company ink.’”
“Couldn’t we just give them some money to find a place?”
“You forget,” he said. “Having a child with smallpox doesn’t do much good for savings accounts.”
“Tommy can get a job when he gets out, can’t he? The damned government must let him out eventually.”
“Sshh,” Joe said. He glanced around the room and covered the cell phone in his pocket. Then he spoke toward it. “Now you know the government is trying to help. The news says incomes will rise even higher this year.”
She shook her head. “What did Tommy say when you saw him?”
“Good news,” Joe said. “He is pretty sure his lawyer can get ‘Helping Immigrants’ lowered to ‘Improper Empathy.’ Now doesn’t that make you feel better?”
“And the ones he helped?”
Joe looked around again. This time he was more nervous than before. “Now don’t you worry about them. They are being well cared for. Things are going to get better for us all.” He kissed her forehead. “And… “
“And what?
“Merry Christmas.”

MORNING THOUGHTS

More thoughts on obsessions.

Continuing my thoughts inspired by my current reading of “Moby Dick,” let’s return to the concept I call, “exclusionary obsession.” This refers to an obsession so strong and overpowering that it eclipses any concern for the welfare of all. Once afflicted, one will support, vote for, and follow the most otherwise evil of persons who swear to address the obsession.

Last trip, I mentioned abortion, now let us consider what may be the next in order of prevalence, the obsession regarding devices that use explosive force to propel a projectile through a metal tube at a high velocity. Yes, a gun.

Now I would never demean a gun owner. We store nearly a dozen, well-hidden and secured. Two we purchased. One served as gift to a 12-year old raised in a “cowboy culture.” The rest drifted down from the ownership of deceased relatives or their friends.

There was another. The federal government confiscated it from me on the second happiest day of my life.

But I digress. From whence comes this obsession that would cause a person to actually vote for a Donald Trump? Confiscation would be an impossibility. Future purchases fall under the protection of the United States Constitution.

As a result, some 46% of American households own a gun. They have that right.

The Constitution protected flintlock muzzle-loading firearms with a rate of fire of, maybe, three rounds per minute in the hands of trained users.

One of the heaviest weapons today that might be carried (by a strong soldier) today is the M-60 machine gun capable of firing between 500 to 650 rounds per minute using a caliber known in the civilian market as the .308 Winchester. A well trained and hefty father could protect his home and family with one, I suppose, if it were kept ready, handy, oiled, locked, and loaded.

Why would a person support the most despicable candidate possible simply because they feel denied personal ownership of an M-60?

Let’s return to “Moby Dick.” We might say Ahab hated the whale because he no longer owned both legs, but no. It was something more cosmic. The whale demoted him to a secondary status in the Universe, impelling him to vow, "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me,". What created and then nurtured this obsession? One wonders, but:

What if, each morning of his life, a messenger came to Ahab with a note from a trusted source saying, “The whale has plans to take your other leg?”

DEFEAT FASCISM

Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Spent the evening watching a video about Blues Music in America. Of course it covered the enduring myth of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for mastery of the guitar. This morning, my “hair shirt hour” featured reading Adam Smith on the development of currency. From Abraham's paying four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Machpelah to the modern evangelicals selling their decency for political power, we love the concept of bartering. This is true even though we’re not quite sure why Judas wanted his 30 pieces of silver. Sadly, we’re now bartering the life of our planet for a few generations of mobility and the fun it brings. And a cult is bartering the health of our children for the strained concept of “owning the libs.” When someone asks me why I accept being labeled a liberal, and thus “owned,” I’m reminded of the tale, a wonderful but likely apocryphal one, featuring Henry David Thoreau in jail for not paying his poll tax. According to the story, when friend Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau and asked why he was in jail, Thoreau is said to have responded, "Waldo, why are you not here?”

This draws one to the line from John Steinbeck’s "Sweet Thursday": “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen".

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical:

Watching a video of historian H.W. Brands, from the U. of Texas talking about his book on Ulysses S. Grant. He shared an interesting question he poses to a group of 18-19 year-old students: “What would make you go to war?” He admitted to a plethora of answers, and it made me think. Why did I?

Know what? It was my Sainted Mother. Anyone who has observed life at all knows how Southern boys are about their mommas. I know it figured as high as the rigging on a topmast in my decision.

I remember standing before the Great Tidepool near Monterey, California after a long walk from my Navy Base on the grounds of what was once the old Del Monte Hotel. In one pocket of a Navy Peacoat, I carried a letter instructing me how to begin an escape to Canada. In the other I carried orders for training as a member of U.S. Naval Security Forces at Da Nang, Vietnam. This meant I would carry a weapon for a year with the option of killing other human beings if ordered to.

I needed to decide that day.

That’s where Sainted Mother came in. Daddy? He didn’t care. He never thought I should have gotten involved in the military anyway, as if I had a choice.

SM wasn’t for war, but she disliked cowardice more. I remembered her words, “You don’t want to be like [unnamed relative]. They took him into the Army and he bawled and squalled and wet the bed until they sent him home.”

In the long run, I could not accept the fact that I might not ever see a woman with that kind of American spirit again.

She won.

Why would you go to war? Might better decide today for we are near one. The Forces of Darkness are closing in upon us fast.

I’ve decided. America took the place of Sainted Mother. Join me.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical

Remember reading once (can’t verify the veracity)  that Archibald Alec Leach, a young performer, fashioned a persona for himself by mimicking a number of famous personages, one for voice, one for accent, one for bearing, and so forth. Whatever, it worked for the result known as Cary Grant.

I’ve been thinking. These increasingly seem to be the “end times” for the American Experiment. How would I like to be perceived as the final curtain falls? Let’s amalgamate the personages, real and fictional:

• -          The Andy Devine character of the “Happy Soldier” in the 1951 film version of “The Red Badge of Courage.”
• -          The unidentified character in the 1958 film “A Night To Remember” who, as the Titanic sinks, retires to the smoking room and calmly reads on a tilting deck.
• -          Joseph Campbell, the American scholar who once sought refuge at Woodstock, NY and read for five years.
• -          Bill Moyers, who produced the marvelous documentaries on Josehp Campbell and then on the song, “Amazing Grace.”
• -          The actor Keanu Reeves who appears, from all accounts, to be one hell of a great person.
• -          Liberace: A person highly skilled in his profession who never denied who he was and never took himself too seriously.
• -          Any journalist who saw early on that Donald J. Trump was a total fraud and grifter who had the magaligarch backing and degenerate moxie to destroy our country.
• -          Oh, best of all: Mr. Rogers, from one who will pass from this mortal coil wondering how the same country produced him and Cadet Bone Spurs.

Certified as Non-AI Generated and not ICE approved.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: There came a blessed day in my life in which I thought I would never face fear again. Oh, I’m not talking about the temporary scare of a spring storm, a near automobile accident, or being lowered from a ship in a small boat into six-foot seas.

I’m talking about that gnawing, primal fear that forms when you have no control over your life and you are well aware that there are forces all about you that wish you dead. It’s that “any minute, any second” fear that some know more about than others and which most have never known. It is at its rawest and most fearful on a dark night between midnight and dawn.

Extended fear can seep deeply into places you desperately want to be sacred and untouched. It changes a person, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I was right for over 50 years. There were storms and there were moments of deep concern, any number of temporary fears. There was even fear that she would say, “No.”

But there wasn’t the raw kind that steals your soul and makes you shrink from strange faces.

Until now.