The Time is Now

In the days of my youth social struggle was our calling.  There were many movements working for change, and some people within those groups called for violence.  It was hardly surprising since the cruelty and viciousness directed toward the vulnerable, the disenfranchised and the socially unacceptable were pronounced, institutionalized and even codified by organized religion.  People of color, women, children, the disadvantaged and disaffected were in point of fact the property of – Emancipation Proclamation notwithstanding – the white-male establishment.  That stratum of society itself was ranked by hierarchical privilege into the moneyed and powerful at the top and those who, along with the marginalized just mentioned, earned that money and surrendered that power falling far to the bottom.

Into the maelstrom came a visionary capable of seeing clearly past the here and now into the possible.  Dr. Martin Luther King believed that only nonviolence can achieve honorable, real and permanent change, as did his mentor Gandhi.  I suppose to some it felt and even now can feel absurd to suggest peace when children are being shot down by militarized cops and idiots like Rudy Giuliani, still clinging to the forlorn hope of living in the White House, persist in playing race against race, cop against civilian, Obama against everybody.  

Nonetheless, Dr. King and Gandhi were unequivocally right.  I say this even now as we watch the dream of the former rolled backward by a politicized Supreme Court and rabid, racist statehouses all over the country.  By way of demonstration I suggest reflection upon the fact that had anyone told the greatest colonial power in history in the middle of the 19^th Century that her Empire in India would be brought to its knees by a robe-draped, Hindu scholar with poor eyesight, mighty England would have laughed in their face.  Still in all, that is exactly what happened.

On the other hand, even in the warm light of love the cold shadow of violence lingers; and the oppressed have risen up with rocks, spears, arrows, knives and guns throughout history when they have had enough.  From the sacking of the Roman Empire by the Visigoths to the American, French and Russian Revolutions rage has driven the victims of tyranny to war. 

Today we see the modernization of Roman brutality; of the divine right and entitlement to exploit held sacred by the many British monarchs; of the opulent decadence enjoyed at the expense of the people by the French Kings, and of the profound indifference to the suffering of generations under the Czars of Russia.  One can’t help but see the buffoon Nero, who preferred performing in the theater to the business of state, in Rudy Giuliani posturing in the press; King George III in Jami Dimon’s insistence that the United States Congress be at his beck and call; Louie XVI’s self-indulgence in Wall Street and Czar Nichols’ dearth of care and compassion in Congress. 

To me it seems obvious that on the other side of the intense apathy seen in the electorate this past November a mounting fury – growing in the streets as of this writing – will inevitably explode when the American people who failed to participate in the last election realize just what they have let themselves and the rest of us in for with a Republican House and Senate elected by default.  The thoughtless unresponsiveness of many to the requirements of citizenship in a free country is, to my way of thinking, as responsible for the rise of government by the minority and by money as are Citizens United, Scalia and the conceited harlots in Congress. A recent study at Princeton and Northeastern Universities would seem to confirm what many of us has long feared. This great democratic republic has deteriorated into a fulminating oligarchy, and we have no one but ourselves to blame in many ways.   Accordingly, oligarchies lead to tyranny which is followed by revolution as surely as night follows day. 

As Lord Byron said, "History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page."  That page is often written in blood.  The only safeguard against revolutionary bloodshed in this country is the franchise. It must be protected, secured and defended on behalf of all the American people.  Anyone who isn't prepared to do that is not fit to serve in any area of government - on the bench, in the executive or legislative field.  Anyone who is to indolent to vote, even when their very freedom is threatened, deserves neither the safeguard of the franchise nor the dignity of freedom.

It is no longer possible to ignore the monster under the bed or the perpetual children who prefer to sleep therein.  Greed and apathy do not a civil society make.  Complacency is a velvet cage - softly enfolding those it imprisons as surely as steel bars.  We can't all be activists, but we must all participate.  We can't all be firebrands, but we must all be alert.  It is time to stand up, speak out, hold ourselves upright and defiant before words and peaceful action are no longer enough and out of desperation and wrath we shred our humanity and rip ourselves apart.

Time to Stand Up

I have been watching Conservatives bleat about their wave and mandate since the November election. The media has been patting itself on the back for predicting this wave. What wave, I ask? Only 36.6% of the electorate turned up to vote, according to Time Magazine. The lowest turn out in 72, I say 72, years. Hitler was Chancellor of Germany the last time the electorate fell asleep at the switch in such a glaring display of apathy. 

A new study by Princeton and Northwestern Universities has pronounced our great experiment, our democratic republic, a bloody oligarchy. Question: What is the relationship between apathy and oligarchy? If people believe money is more important and powerful then they are, do they not stay home? When in point of fact an angry electorate storming the polls makes a mockery out of any amount of money. I give you 2012 when the billionaire class lost millions trying to defeat Obama. 

Set aside the overweening gluttony for power of bastards like Scalia and Mitch McConnell who brought the original lawsuit that resulted in Citizens United. Set aside the sheeple who vote against their own economic interests because the object of their loyalty uses the name of Christ like a bargaining chip. I believe this country is center-left. I believe there are enough of us to put the common good front and center once again. I believe it is time for a nonviolent, revolution at the polls. Question: How do we achieve that?

New Year’s Resolution, 2015

It is time that we stopped looking to moral invalids for moral rectitude.  It is time that we realized that most of the people elected to office in this country are nothing more than swaggering harlots – peddling influence to the rich and Christ to the gullible.  It is time that we understood that the decline of our society is directly proportional to the swelling of religion in our body politic - owing to the rise of false prophets.  It is time we began to think.  

A Message from the Masses

IF THE BUDGET BILL PASSES, I think it is time to tell those monsters in Congress what we think of them. Let us send them, individually or as a body, a red light bulb to hang over their door with a note stating that the light is not a Christmas decorations, but a way for Wall Street and other Johns to identify them in the dark. 

Definitions

Dick Cheney says that the ends justify the means.  That is what Caligula said; what Hitler said; what Stalin said.  Indeed it is what all tyrants have said.  It works for them because it sets them above the law they pretend to serve, and/or the God they pretend to love. 

The mentality of a man such as Cheney spreads through a culture like plague.  This is particularly true when it is sent forth into the Gestalt via the bullhorn of televised media and then regurgitated in the brothel of what was once the United States Congress.   

Bit by bit the malevolent symptoms of the plague including, but not limited to, cruelty, violence, abuse and revenge become acceptable.  Thus it should surprise no one when a society that will engage in torture will not recoil from killing its own people – especially the vulnerable. 

A word, however, to those who think they are safe.  Should the definition of scapegoat expand in the blink of an eye – as is the arbitrary and capricious nature of such things – from skin color to eye color, hair color or shoe size; well, good luck with all that.

Hopeless

The budget bill that has been passed on to the stooges in the Senate by the hoes in the House has a number of noxious provisions that are contraindicated to the fiscal and sociopolitical health of the American people.  One which sent me into a rage last night goes something like this: the least productive, least effective, least responsive group of parasites in this country today – that would be the 113^th Congress – has taken it as their privilege to legislate a cut in the private retirement benefits of millions of people who worked hard every day of their life.  Rather than saying that what they are doing is serving the likes of UPS and others with whom they have a relationship closely resembling that of a high priced hooker to a regular John, they persist in telling the country that they are saving the retirement fund of all those workers.  Yes indeed, these creatures are always saving something.  They are in fact saviors like the God whose teachings they have bastardized and whose memory they have peddled by the ounce for votes and campaign money.  

Let us not forget that this legalized theft is largely the work product of the cynical, money grubbing, false prophets that have been handed this country on a silver platter by 36% of the electorate while most of the rest stayed home.  This is the lowest turnout in over 70 years.  Can you beat that for stupid?  

When I was finally able to think about sleep around 3 a.m., I lay down with a crushing headache.  Anyone who suffers from hypertension knows what I am talking about.  I was taught to call it a pressure headache.  Unable to raise my head off the pillow or even close my eyes for some time, I began to think about what it is that anyone owes such a nation.  How much can be done for people who would stand in the full light of day and cut their own throats with malice of forethought?

I am a Pagan.  I don’t view the concept of sacrifice in the same way as a Christian.  To me to sacrifice is to sanctify or make sacred in the eyes of the Goddess.  Pissing away one’s time, happiness and health in the service of people too thick or foolish to sever themselves is, therefore, sacrilege.  This is a hard saying, I suppose.  Nonetheless, it is how I have come to feel.  

In point of fact, I have never felt as disillusioned and disheartened save when Bobby Kennedy was shot to death; died for our sins if you will.  For twenty-six hours from the instant of his mortal wounding until the moment he breathed his last, time seemed to stand still.  When the tick-tick-tick of the seconds began again just after 10 a.m. MST something was missing, gone, never to return.  For me it was a brightly colored thread in the rich tapestry of hope, a belief in the goodness of the world.  I was seventeen.

Tonight I am sixty five, Bobby is gone near fifty years, and my hope has worn through.  The men and women who will be impacted by this legislative emesis of a budget bill will find themselves hurting.  All retirees will have yet more evidence that pensions and earned benefits may be lost in the darkness of the next two years as politicians insulated from their electorate by money sell their soul to the devil.  To those who voted for these Republican scoundrels I say, you reap what you sow.  To those who didn't vote at all I say, you reap what you didn't sow.  To everyone else, in the words of the great Bette Davis, incomparable star and committed Liberal, “fasten your seatbelts it is going to be a bumpy night.”

The Gift

I have a suggestion for my Christian brothers and sister.  Owing to the fact that Religious Fundamentalists have been misrepresenting your faith since the poster child for God-bothering frauds, Ronald Reagan, was in the Oval Office you might want to start setting the record straight by telling Nicole Wallace to shut the fuck up because the God she is thanking for torture might be anyone of a number of Gods but certainly isn't the peace loving man from Nazareth.  With His agreed upon birthday looming on the horizon that might be a wonderful gift to give Him.  After all, people like the bargain basement Barbie, Wallace, and her partner in slime, Joe “Whatever Happened to My Young Intern” Scarborough, will be taking over the government in January and promise to do even more damage to your Christian Creed in the name of power, wealth and control.