Testimonials

• The Betrayal of America’s Values & Principles -   “We have met the enemy and he is us” — Pogo            What does this quote from the old, comic strip character, Pogo, mean? It means that our greatest enemy isn’t outside ourselves but within. Sadly, far too many Americans are intellectually lazy, apathetic, & obsessively focused on material things and wealth.  …
• The Truth Behind the War on Drugs -   “I think I understand, fear is like a wilderness, stepping-stones or sinking sand.” — Joni Mitchell   The truth behind the war on drugs is that big pharma clearly doesn’t give a fuck about our health and safety. And our political leaders, through a combination of willful ignorance, greed, & apathy, don’t either. I’ve…
• Neoliberalism as Class Warfare -   “All for ourselves, and nothing for other People” — Adam Smith (1723-1790)   I came from a working-class background & I will always be a working-class guy. The town I grew up in — my adolescence through my twenties — is Paramount. It’s an inner-city, industrially zoned town across the L.A. riverbed from the…
• MAGA Projections and Perversions! - The supreme hypocrisy and irony of the MAGA hordes is their moral outrage directed at Democrats, liberals, & Leftists for supposed grooming their children to become homosexuals, transexuals, pedophiles, etc. while their messiah, Trump, boasts on national television that he’s allowed to grab women by their pussies. When Trump started his campaign to run for…
• National Security for Whom? -     “Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.” ― William Blum   This is a subject so vast, I could start virtually anywhere but I recently…
• The Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, & Vietnam - I received an “Undesirable  Discharge” from the U.S. Army because I trusted my gut instinct & kept going AWOL after being a “good soldier” for six months. And no, I was anything but politically aware back then. I didn’t follow the news, so I didn’t really know much about what was happening in the Vietnam…
• The Boredom Cop-Out -   ‘’It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.’’  [quoted in The New York Times, March 13 1949, p. 34]. — Albert Einstein   I was a substitute teacher at the secondary level for L.A. Unified Schools in the San Fernando…
• The Real Joe Biden - He didn’t cancel the portion of the Student Loan Debt through the Higher Education Act Obama picked him because although he’s a democrat, he votes Republican He has a really dirty voting record He went after Anita Hill so Clarence Thomas could sit on the Supreme Court He was one of the most fervent advocates…
• Poor Choices? -   An acquaintance of mine for over 50 years said to me several months ago that I was in the position I am in because I have made poor choices over the course of my life. I felt infuriated at this heartless dismissal but didn’t respond because I was so emotionally raw at his comment.…
• Infantilization and Integrity -   Infantilization is the process of treating someone as if they are a child. This can be done for various reasons, including to make someone feel more powerless or to make them easier to control. Infantilization can have negative consequences, however, as it can foster feelings of dependency and insecurity. It can also lead to…
• The Conspiracy Against Public Education began with The Trial of Socrates -     First of all, this isn’t simply another one of those dumb-fuck conspiracy theories by the QAnon brain-dead. I used to be a lot more susceptible to conspiracy theories in my 20s but have long since matured. Yet, there has been a nagging question in the back of my mind for decades & that…
• My Friendship with Noam Chomsky - Perhaps appropriately, Noam Chomsky was born on Dec. 7th, 1928. I say this because as you know, America was attacked by the Japanese on Dec. 7th, 1941, in Pearl Harbor. And in my not so humble opinion, Chomsky is like a force of nature & luckily for us & the rest of the world, he…
• Whatever happened to Common Sense? -   Common sense is sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge in a manner that is shared by (i.e. common to) nearly all people.[1]   My common sense tells me after four years under an absolutely bankrupt morally & mentally Trump administration that common sense can no longer be trusted. Critical & analytical…
• Do Smart phones make us Dumber or Smarter? -     I confess from the start that I’ve been against “Smart phones,” from the beginning. I look out at our cultural wasteland & the armies of zombies hypnotized by their phones, and it depresses me deeply. Americans are reading less & less and they’re communicating less & less even though they believe they’re more…
• How we lost our Democracy - Hurricanes, wildfires, floods & other natural disasters have become far more destructive and frequent thanks to what we benignly call “Climate Change.” In fact, the damage they leave behind is so cataclysmic that they are anything but natural. And like climate deniers, who deny the reality of our environment’s destruction, we also have election deniers…
• Since You’ve Been Gone, Jeri! -   (actually created on first Mother’s Day after Jeri’s passing on August 18, 2013) April 2024 S M T W T F S  123456 78910111213 14151617181920 21222324252627 282930   « Jul     Meta Log in Entries feed Comments feed WordPress.org RSS - PostsRSS - Comments
• “We have met the Enemy and … - … He is Us!” (Pogo) First of all, I wish to be very clear that this essay isn’t about lamenting the end of the American Empire but it is a grieving for the unnecessary pain & suffering that has gone before & will continue for the millions of innocent victims of the corporate cockroaches.  …
• Will We Wake in Time? -   This is simply, my perhaps feeble attempt, to explain the why and how we have arrived at the edge of the cliff overlooking Dante’s “Inferno.” And while I have no official expertise or credentials, I have been studying these particular factors for well over 30 years. Moreover, this isn’t a claim that these are…
• Anti-Elitism? -   “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” ― Isaac Asimov Tragically, we’ve lived through four years of a president who believes just this, yet he continues to strut…
• Student Debt in America -   The fact that we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of students in debt up to a quarter of a million dollars for pursuing college degrees is a national disgrace! Is this one of those “American values” we love to boast of? As Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, when a student…
• Death by Ignorance -     In some respects, this essay could be seen as a sort of autopsy on the death of America. And death certificates are required to state the cause of death, these are some of those causes in my opinion.   I have recently been re-watching the excellent series, “Band of Brothers,” & the episode…
• Dangerous Illusions Part II -   Notwithstanding the possibility that my thoughts here will be dismissed as yet another absurd Alex Jones conspiracy theory, I am once again going to sound the alarm bell. I believe to a large extent; complacency is behind the scary state of being America is in.   How else would you explain the fact that…
• Blaming the Victims - “Ever wonder why you work all the time, but never seem to have enough money to actually do anything but… work? Apparently, you complain too much. That’s the opinion of many wealthy Americans, those in the top ten percent who’ve managed to “work their way” into financial security. They believe the American dream is alive…
• The Return of the Know Nothings -   “It is not possible to make a mistake. In the beginning, God created all this stuff, then put Adam and then Eve in the middle of it, and they could dig it all right. It was paradise. Then God, who was no dummy, said, “Look kids, I’ve got some business to take care of,…
• Pernicious Myths -   Pernicious; having a very harmful effect or influence (dangerous, adverse, apocalyptic, detrimental, devastating, corrosive, do more harm than good, insidiousness, malicious, negatively, troublesome, unwholesome, kiss of death, murder, rogue state, unholy)   These are in no particular order & vary in terms of the degree or extent that they undermine the principles of social…
• The Con in Conservatism -   The con in conservatism is hidden in plain sight. They are con artists.   a person adept at lying, cajolery, or glib self-serving talk. a person adept at swindling by means of confidence games; swindler.        “There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual…
• Our Choice, Fascism or Socialism? -     In our “social environment,” here in the U.S., it seems that being “social” or “interactive” with one another no longer requires reading & most definitely not writing. And when I check on the “readability level” of the essays I post on my blog, I usually get critiques of my writing as too difficult,…
• Evangelical Family Values -   “A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.” Bertrand Russell   I attended Church up until I was approximately 14 or 15 years old. My family moved sometimes…
• How America was Trumped -     “There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.” (Gore Vidal)   No, this isn’t another conspiracy theory & the elite haven’t exactly been discrete about their agenda of “dumbing us down,” i.e. “We want one class of persons to have a liberal…
• Trump made the Stupid Feel Proud -       “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” — Donald Trump, Donald Trump on Nevada win: CNN Video       I can understand why so many people voted for Trump & fell for his cheap, con man snow job but I can’t forgive them! What’s the old saying; Fool me once,…
• Not Talking about Politics…. - If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson   …is what allowed the Twitter-toddler Trump to become president of the most powerful nation on earth. And not speaking about politics doesn’t make our problems disappear much the same…
• What Trump has Wrought -   This picture as the old saying goes, says a thousand words & poignantly expresses what the humans among us feel. Yes, I am inferring that Trump believers are sub-human because they have no compassion for anyone outside their insane asylum.   Many of us senior citizens, myself included, fear a horrific end of our…
• The Greed Pandemic -     I have been in a state of shock pretty much since the coronavirus pandemic struck. I mean, Jesus Christ! Just how much more brazen or in our faces does the 1% have to be? Have Americans become so dumbed-down that they need a giant poster of Wall St. & Congress flipping off the…
• In Defense of Edward Snowden -     “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”  –Benjamin Franklin       A friend of mine and I in a recent telephone conversation touched on the subject of Edward Snowden but it wasn’t the time or place to get into a long,…
• Drain the Swamp? -     “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” —Edmund Burke, the philosophical founder of modern Conservatism   Trump has redefined “corruption” in our political elite much like Caligula redefined orgies in the ancient Roman Senate, and only someone who has been lost in a swamp for…
• Let Truth & Falsehood Grapple in the Free Marketplace of Ideas -       Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? (John Milton, Areopagitica)  …
• Making America Great Again -       Yeah, if you consider the 1918 flu pandemic that killed anywhere from 20 to 50 million worldwide, and the approximately 675,000 Americans who died, a great America?  Moreover, Daddy Trump said today; “If only 100,000 Americans die from the coronavirus, that means he’s done a good job.”   Yep, the 99%’s lives…
• What you don’t Know can Kill you! -     “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.” —H.G. Wells     The Trump supporters I have met over the last three years have been fairly consistent…
• Reality T.V. and Reason -     “Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” —Thomas Paine     For those of you who may not be familiar with who Thomas Paine was, he played a very significant role in the launching of The American Revolution.   Just when we need our Reasoning faculties more desperately…
• Mafia Nation -       Isn’t it time to just come out & admit that we’ve thrown in the towel and given up on democracy? We’re certainly not fooling the rest of the world, they are scratching their heads in confusion as to how we could’ve elected such a corrupt moron as Trump to represent us. And…
• A Critical Point -       I remember something I learned almost 40 years ago in a basic introduction to computers class i.e. G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) & it struck me recently how relevant that is to American society today.   I have been struggling for over 30 years to connect the dots and/or simplify some of…
• A Recipe for Disaster -     Ingredients   “reality T.V.” FOX “News” Facebook Twitter Breitbart Apathy Willful ignorance Half-cup of shameless republicans Half-cup of spineless democrats A good dose of post-literate society “smart phones” Google Cup of Trump yeast   Mix thoroughly with a dash of conspiracy theory, Glenn Beck, & some Rush Limbaugh & ¼ cup of Alex…
• The American Taliban under Trump -       I first heard the term; “The American Taliban,” on the series; “The Newsroom,” which was created & written by Aaron Sorkin. But as is often the case, intelligent television doesn’t go over well with American viewers so it was a short-lived series. However, we were fortunate in that Sorkin laid out the…
• Dangerous Stupidity! -       Of course, nowadays on the Left side of the political spectrum, it’s not PC to call people stupid. No, we’re supposed to be sensitive of others’ feelings, etc., no matter how hate & violence-spewing they are.  Well I say, fuck that shit!   We’re being killed and you tell me to be…
• Barbarians at the Gate -       My title is a reference to several sackings i.e. raping, pillaging, & plundering of Rome by various “barbarians” in ancient history. Yet today in another one of those perverse or ironic twists of history, we have a barbarian setting on the throne in 21st century America?   Yeah, except our “barbarian” would…
• What the 1% Think of Us -       In a word, Trump. What do I mean by this? Here is a person who is perhaps the most vile, corrupt, detestable person who has ever occupied the White House & most of us know that no one gets even close to that position without having been approved of by that tiny…
• Bartlet for President! -     “The government you elect is the government you deserve”   —Thomas Jefferson   For those of you who don’t recognize the title of this essay, you clearly weren’t fans of what I consider perhaps the best television series in my lifetime i.e. The West Wing.   So, what say you about Thomas Jefferson’s…
• Reality Deniers - If you're at all troubled by the fact that a third of our nation actually believes this ignorant, greedy, compulsive liar & will defend him until he is marched away in hand-cuffs says a helluva lot about our intelligence as a nation that is the most powerful country on earth in terms of destructive power.
• So, You Don’t Care about NSA Mass Surveillance? -       “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”[17] “When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ —Edward Snowden   Mr. Snowden…
• How We Could Reduce the level of Ignorance in America -     A good starting place would be for us to frog-march Trump, the Commander & Chief Dunce, out of the White House in an orange jump-suit to match his tan & in handcuffs right into Pelican Bay & throw away the key.   I know, wishful thinking but hey, we don’t have much else…
• America’s Zombie Cult -       First and foremost, I can relate to Trump’s followers’ anger & frustration at our establishment because I have been battling the establishment ever since I went AWOL from the U.S. Army back in 1972. And for a young man of 19 years, that was one of the scariest periods of my life.…
• Facebook’s Friendly Fascism -     “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”  —Sinclair Lewis   “Fascism is when corporations take over the government.” —Bill Maher         Because of American’s aversion to history and as a result, our general ignorance of history, I’m going to start by…
• The Fake News President -     The ultimate irony is that this phony braggart who keeps accusing the press of being fake, wouldn’t have become president were it not for the tsunami of fake news posts on Facebook. And depressingly, almost half of all Americans get their news from Facebook. This conspiratorial assault on the hearts & minds of…
• Trump the Terrible! -     Invariably when I meet someone new and the subject of Trump comes up, the first words out of their mouths are; I like Trump because he tells it like it is. And my spirit sinks every time I hear this moronic mantra come out of a person’s mouth. Can a third of the…
• Democracy’s Delusion -     “Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.” —Thomas Jefferson   One of America’s central delusions is that of free speech. And the powers that be, those CEOs who run the mammoth, corporate conglomerates who tell politicians & presidents when to shit & when to get off the pot, silence those who speak…
• Facebook & the Road to Fascism -           I fear that those of you who may take the time to read this essay will be tempted to dismiss my thoughts as those of a paranoid conspiracist? And yes, this is going to be a very convoluted or complicated subject because it involves the very technology that affects every…
• The Center Cannot Hold - Obviously, America has become extremely polarized politically. I worry about the future of our democracy given the current state of affairs. Could somebody please explain to me how we’re supposed to resolve our differences when we’re in a verbal straightjacket when it comes to talking about politics in pubs & taverns?   Taverns are where…
• The Politics of Resentment in Post-Literate America -       We are living in a very dangerous time because just when we need a well-informed citizenry more desperately than perhaps any time before in our history, we have a moron in the oval office throwing gasoline on the fire.   Trump’s rallies i.e. his non-stop public spectacles staged to boost his ego…
• The Christian Supremacists Pact with the Devil -     Admittedly, my use of the word “Devil,” is sensationalistic but in today’s America, The National Enquirer appears to hold more sway than The New York Times with Trump automatons so this should appeal to their sensibilities?   Many of our fellow citizens have clearly fallen under the spell of the Charlatan in Chief…
• The 1%’s Idea of “Choices” -     An acquaintance of mine recently brought up the issue of “choices” again & basically said that I am in the situation I’m in because of the “choices” I’ve made in my life. This is my rebuttal, and instead of going into the centuries-old debate of “free will” vs. “determinism” and nature vs. nurture,…
• My Love - My Love,   From the moment I laid eyes on you as you walked across the room in that bar where we met, my soul recognized you and my spirit soared.   It was like kismet and so appropriate that one of the songs we danced to that night was “With You I’m Born Again”…
• A Son’s Betrayal -       I want to start by assuring you that I loved being a dad well, up to about the time Ryan was 13 or 14 years old. That’s when I began to see him turn into a stranger that I no longer recognized. I especially loved when he was a toddler & I…
• Social Skills in the 21st Century -     Full disclosure; some may dismiss my remarks as being those of just another old curmudgeon but that’s disingenuous. And even though I came of age in another era, I believe that the core of social skills remains the same even though they’re becoming rarer in these times. It gives me little pleasure &…
• Trump, the Malignant, Mendacious, Moronic, Malicious, Malevolent, Miscreant, Misanthrope, & Megalomaniac! -       I used to get tired of hearing people say, “They all lie and they’re all crooks,” and felt it was a cop-out for people who couldn’t be bothered to get involved. But as I get older & have been paying close attention to politics for well over 30 years now, I have…
• Not Interested in Politics? -             For most of my adult life, I have heard ad nauseam whenever the subject of politics came up, “I’m not interested in politics,” or “I don’t care about politics.” And I must confess that up until Ronald Reagan became president, I too, didn’t care about politics. As the featured image above…
• The Truly Pornographic -   The other day, my ex-wife got upset at some photos I had printed of some nude women. I believe these photos are excellent examples of natural beauty & are every bit as lovely as Michelangelo’s “David,” Botticelli’s “Venus on a Half Shell,” the Mona Lisa, etc. Of course, beauty is in the eye of…
• Willful Ignorance is a Cancer on America - In a recent essay by Henry Giroux, “Resisting the Weaponization of Ignorance in the Age of Trump,” he starts with; “Ignorance now rules the U.S. Not the simple, if somewhat innocent ignorance that comes from an absence of knowledge, but a malicious ignorance forged in the arrogance of refusing to think hard about an issue.”…
• The Business of America is Fraud! - Watch the film; “Inside Job” by Charles Fergusson if you give a shit about fraud at the highest levels. The pic above shows (Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury under Bush; Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury under Obama). Of course, we mustn’t forget Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers,…
• Anti-Intellectualism & Our Extinction -     To Be or Not to Be, the haunting existential question that plagued Hamlet’s soul has now morphed into a universal nightmare stalking us all in our waking hours as well as in our nightmares. And what is the “Christian fundamentalists’” response? Celebration & thanks be to God.   This is the beast drooling…
• Knowledge is Power! -       Alternative media is obviously crucial for us to inform ourselves but the most important tool for empowering ourselves is a solid grounding in critical and analytical thinking skills. There are several factors which have contributed to making us a citizenry so easily manipulated intellectually. The Christian fundamentalists assault on Secular Humanism, the…
• The Return of the Flower Children: A Social & Political Fantasy -     A raindrop fell on my face and woke me. As I slowly woke up, I remembered where I was. I was camping out in the last of the great Redwoods in Northern California. The ‘compassionate conservative’ president with his ‘healthy forests’ initiative, had allowed his buddies in the lumber industry to invade &…
• The Art of Manipulation -       We are gradually morphing into a fascist society, yep, right here in the land of freedom & democracy. Fear mongering, exaggeration, being an alarmist, you say? A third of the American public believe that Trump is the populist champion of their dreams & he uses these tactics and many more and they…
• Living in the Land of Trump-speak -       Talk about surreal, we have clearly stepped through the Looking Glass & are living in a waking nightmare world. Every Trump supporter I have met proclaims from practically the first sentence out of their mouths that they like Trump because he “tells it like it is.” I have to try hard to…
• The Corporate Cockroach Conspiracy -       …is to keep the 99.9% of us scared of one another and therefore hating each other. By keeping us focused on hating our fellow victims, their (the transnational corporations) crimes aren’t discussed or delved into. These corporations instigate one war after another & we are in a state of perpetual war as…
• Why We’re Losing -     Because technology has enslaved us! Yep! Everything from our “smart phones” to our “social media” platforms like Facebook to our entertainment world of television, movies, & the Internet. I’m going to limit the scope of this essay to just these forms of technology for the sake of brevity, especially in this day &…
• Trump Telling it Like it Isn’t! -       I was watching a video clip recently of Michael Moore being interviewed about his new film, “Fahrenheit 11/9” and a couple of things he said, really hit home with me. He said that he had interviewed the notorious S.O.B. (my description) Steve Bannon, the hatchet guy who was probably the key factor…
• “Reality T.V.” and Trump-world -       I believe the disturbing phenomenon of “reality t.v.,” coincided roughly with the equally disturbing introduction of what’s called “FOX News?” I’d like to begin by stating up front that I may be guilty from time to time of “lecturing” but sadly, I’ve learned that I can’t take for granted what so often…
• Fake News and a Fake President - Fake News and a Fake President          If it weren’t so deadly serious in terms of the harms already done & yet to come from this fake & shameless blowhard or as I prefer to call him, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, it’d be hilarious. And the fact that he has the audacity to…
• Why They Hate Us - Imperial powers, the U.S. to be specific, take the natural resources of other, weaker nations and we use our military to do so. Our intelligence  agencies support, train, & finance dictators who allow “our corporations,” to rape, pillage, and plunder other countries’ resources and people. This is why the U.S. has more than 800 military…
• Trump’s War Against Journalists - Trump’s War Against Journalists “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”                                                     —Thomas Jefferson  For those of you who may…
• The Politics of Patriotism - All my life, I have watched politicians stand on the national stage & proclaim, “It’s your duty as an American to fight for democracy and freedom when your government calls you. As I gradually became more politically aware after decades of study, I saw that appeals to our patriotism are a con job by politicians.…
• The Naked Truth about Public Education in the U.S. - The picture above says it all i.e. All too often this is the fate of our young people who because they have such a poor education, must choose between flipping burgers or joining the military! Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m now 65 years old & that the love of my life, my best friend…
• The Big Short - The Big Short…. is a movie based on the reality of what caused the collapse of the world economy in 2007. In the financial “services” sector of the U.S. economy, a “short” is to bet against something. The financial “elite” bet that they could get away with defrauding the American public indefinitely by purposely selling…
• Nuclear Winter or Global Hell? - Well, as our Zen master of linguistics & global politics, Noam Chomsky, has put it, the two greatest threats to humanity are nuclear war & climate change. And I find it absolutely incredible that we, especially in the West, are still so remarkably silent & passive about these very real threats to our existence? Perhaps…
• The Failures of the Fourth Estate - The Failures of the Fourth Estate “No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most…
• A Clear & Present Danger - “Clear and present danger was a doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States to determine under what circumstances limits can be placed on First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, or assembly.” I borrowed the title for my essay from the movie of the same name with Harrison Ford as the star of…