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 & I feel sickened unto my soul at their blindness. And I sympathize with their righteous anger because I too, have been screwed-over countless times in my life—I’m 66 years old—by the government but even more so by the corporate giants which I refer to as the Corporate Cockroaches.
Trump defenders will undoubtedly spin this as proof of the witch-hunt against Trump
As far as I’m concerned, the key difference between myself & many, if not most, of Trump’s supporters is the fact that I have been paying serious attention to politics for well-over 30 years & I understand how the 1% who are truly running the world, have duped so many into believing it’s an elite cabal of liberals who are behind our troubles. (though there is an element of truth to this to some extent but the reality is it’s an amalgamation of greedy, self-interested forces, liberal, conservative, & numerous other perspectives)
If you’ll just take a brief survey of Western history, you’ll see the horrific history of what happened when the Church & the State worked together i.e. the individual got fucked royally (pun intended). And this is why our Founding Fathers were very clear about the importance of separating Church from State. Sadly, far too many Americans today either never learned the critical lessons of world history re: this matter or they simply don’t give a shit & are willingly ignorant on the subject?
substitute all the amoral/immoral acts of Trump for the word “Satan”
You see, my imaginary reader, when the power of the church i.e. Christian evangelicals & their steady encroachment into the halls of political power on the local, state, & federal levels over the decades, is united with the power of the government in the same spheres of influence & control over our lives, the overwhelming majority of citizen activist groups/organizations are steamrolled over.
Moreover, in today’s “connected” world via the power & scope of the Internet & the myriad so-called “social networks,” it’s very easy to spread fear, hate, & lies. And if we won’t, don’t, or can’t take the time to check out the validity of the claims by those trying to sucker us into their web of deceit, we become just more cannon-fodder for the morally bankrupt.
Believe it or not my friend, I do wish that I could offer you a simple method or answer to this complex state of affairs but unlike the con-man in the oval office, I won’t insult your intelligence as he does day-in & day-out. Sadly, in this crazy world of ours where the quantity of our “wealth” is just about the only thing that matters when it comes to our public “influence,” I am only wealthy in terms of the amount of time, energy, & love I have expended in my life-long pursuit of knowledge.
And yeah, I know that some of you, especially you die-hard Trump fans, will dismiss me as just another elitist & were this not so absurd, it’d be amusing. Yeah, me the elitist? Single parent (my mom), multiple cruel step-dads/mom’s boyfriends, drunkenness & violence throughout, piss-poor public schools, hundreds of Mickey Mouse dead-end jobs in factories, pumping gas, flipping burgers, etc. , standing up to the U.S. Army & refusing to allow them to send me to Vietnam even though they wanted to make me an officer, scoring at the 11th grade, sixth month level in reading when in the sixth grade but never given the opportunity or the encouragement to rise to my intellectual abilities. Yep! Obviously, I am just another one of the elitists that the humble Trump detests.
a dear friend who helped me emotionally weather the storm while AWOL from the U.S. Army
So, you decide for yourself, are you going to use your “common sense” which so many of our fellow working-class citizens love to proclaim, or are you going to continue to believe the perhaps billionaire—we’ll never know for sure because he’ll never release his tax returns—or is there the slightest possibility that I could be telling you straight-up?
“Christian” Supremacists new version of Morality & Ethics
Sorry if I get side-tracked & veer off course a bit but like our recently anointed Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, I too like beer & I’m drinking beer as I write this. Yeah, there used to be a modicum of decorum, civility, or just simple decency but with the illegal insertion of Trump as the symbolic head of our government, all that has vanished out the window & the bar has been lowered to such an extent, that it’s about as difficult to step-over that “bar” as it’d be to step over the proverbial line in the sand.
I mean, seriously people? A president who brags about grabbing women’s pussies & getting away with it & a supreme court judge who was rammed-through the confirmation process under a very dark cloud of not being that different from the commander-in-chief when it comes to matters of morality? To say nothing of the assorted other despicable excuses for human beings that made up the Trump cabinet & keep getting replaced by more of the same.
How any of these self-proclaimed “Christian Supremacists,” or politicians or corporate spokesmen, etc. have the audacity to stand-up in front of television cameras on the world stage & defend this cabal of amoral human cockroaches, defies incredulity.
I stopped calling myself a Christian when I was about 14 years old. The hypocrisy just became all too obvious & in hindsight, I am glad that I did because I can proudly disassociate myself from all those wolves in sheep’s clothing who kiss Trump’s feet like spineless slugs.
In a nutshell my imaginary reader, the powers that be, the power elite, the status quo, or however you may care to refer to them, have used a tried but true strategy of divide & conquer. Yeah, this is a military term & tactic and is very appropriate because they, the 1%, have been conducting class warfare against the rest of us throughout recorded history.
Of course, they deny this vehemently & get all bent out of shape, stand up on their hind-legs spitting & foaming at the mouth in self-righteous indignation whenever accused of this. And it doesn’t take much effort to see the three clubs they wield with usual success i.e. God, Guns, & Gays. Trump merely added Mexicans & Muslims to the recipe & roughly a third of our fellow citizens swallowed the poison whole.
And even though I gave-up on Christianity as it is preached in most of America’s churches & not practiced in public & certainly not in politics, I can remember my Sunday School lessons like Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In my agnostic/atheist humble opinion, anyone who has a kind heart can see that the Beatitudes summed Christianity up in a nutshell and oh, so beautifully.
What part don’t you understand?
Yet it never ceases to amaze me & depress me at the same time how many of these “Christian” fundamentalists, Dominionists, evangelicals, white supremacists, Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, Alt Right, etc. seem to honestly believe that they are Christians?
I’ve never really been that much of a “pot-head,” and in fact, many of my friends over the years have been amused & amazed at how long a quarter ounce of pot can last me i.e. usually a year or longer. But I am proud to identify myself as an old hippie because it was very simple, and yeah, naïve of us but we basically believed in peace, love, & dope (the natural dope such as pot, peyote, mescaline that wasn’t adulterated by greedy & unscrupulous drug dealers).
We viewed “drugs” as a tool to help in our enlightenment & we cared about one another, the environment, justice, equality, freedom, truth, etc. —not that different from what our founding fathers believed in & tried to establish in our Constitution & our form of government (and yeah, I am aware of the hypocrisies & contradictions).
I for one, would love to see a Renaissance of those idealistic values of the hippies, the student protestors, the dope smokers, the non-conformists, the radicals, the wanderers of the 1960s and I am 100% in favor of the proposed “Green New Deal” that is drawing more & more of us like the Pied Piper of Hamlin towards a Shangri-La, a Paradise Lost. Excuse me, it’s the literature major in me. But what do we have nowadays, if not our dreams?
“Reality T.V.,” which gave us the likes of Trump and the glorification of lie, cheat, steal, backstab, whatever it takes to win. Are these the values of Jesus? And how in the hell can Mike Pence stand up there next to Trump & believe he’s still a Christian? No, it’s as clear as the nose on your face, these faux Christians will & have sold their souls and any semblance of decency they may have had. Why?
Because of their lust for power. They are every bit as fanatical as the worst of the “Muslims” who claim to be Muslim but commit terrorist attacks. And like those phony “Muslims,” many of the American Taliban, gladly commit their own versions of domestic terrorism in the name of their god, who more honesty should be acknowledged as the Anti-Christ.
Isn’t this a pitiful state of affairs when an avowed non-Christian has to remind you “Christians” that you’re not behaving very Christ-like? I deliberately used the term “devil” in the title of this essay because to me, the words “devil,” “Satan,” “Lucifer,” etc. are really synonyms for evil and evil in my book is all that hurts, denigrates, physically attacks, humiliates, rejects, attempts to silence, shames, judges others, fears, intimidates, discourages, etc.
I could go on and on and on but I believe my point is clear? I believe down to the marrow of my bones that all of us who clearly have love for our fellow human beings in our hearts, are the truly righteous. I don’t want to rule over others & I sure as Hell don’t & won’t let anyone rule over me though I do have to appear to play along with this evil system.
In conclusion my friend, there is so much more that unites us than divides us. These divisions are grossly exaggerated & are used by the 1% to keep us divided so they can more easily control us. Why? Quite simply, for the wealth of the world. We have been indoctrinated our entire lives—for me, since 1952—into believing that there was a vast conspiracy of evildoers out to enslave us or kill us i.e. the Communists, the international drug cartels, and currently, terrorists.
And no, I’m not denying the existence of nor the destructiveness of these forces but, if you’ll do a bit of research, you’ll discover that each of these bogey-men have been used to keep us in line & paying our taxes, and dying or being maimed in the perpetual war system that has existed my whole life. Communist Russia has/had something like seven countries under its “control.” America has over 900 military bases around the world & who knows how many secret bases? Don’t believe me, check out Chalmers Johnson for yourself. America has been financially supporting, training the secret police of dictators, & often sending in our special forces & our regular army to back bloody dictators for decades.
Too much to swallow? Check out Major General Smedley F. Butler of the U.S.M.C. (United States Marine Corps) if you think me full of shit and spend just ten minutes reading his quotes re: his tenure. And here’s probably the most bitter pill for you to swallow? America, manipulated by the transnational corporations that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address i.e. Beware the Military-Industrial Complex—he wanted to include Congress in this unholy alliance but was persuaded to leave it out.
The data, the information, the knowledge, the truth, the wisdom is all available for any who seriously care & are willing to search for it for themselves. I have spent conservatively, 50,000 hours in my pursuit and no, this doesn’t mean that I have the corner on the truth but it does mean, that I am light-years ahead of fuckin’ cold-blooded mercenaries like Trump!
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 & no comfort to note how different the “socializing” of today’s youth is from when I was a young man.
remember the argument against homeschooling i.e. they need to develop social skills???
First on my hit list of things that I believe are having a deleterious effect on the young people of today is the “smart phone.” Everywhere I go, I see young people & increasingly, middle-aged people with their eyes glued to their “smart phones.” It’s like they’re cult members or zombies addicted to this techno-drug. And it saddens me to see so many people not interacting with one another because of their obsession with their gadgets. Perhaps these portable entertainment centers will serve them well as the corporate cockroaches slowly poison & strangle our natural environment? When all the trees have been felled, all waterways have become so polluted that it’s no longer safe to swim in any of them, when our air is so toxic that the entire human population is forced to wear masks like in China’s industrial zones, watching video clips of the days when humanity was nurtured by the real deal will have to suffice?
One of my pet peeves is when I’ll be involved in a conversation with a young person & their smart phone rings and they simply answer their phone & engage in a conversation, sometimes at length, with their “friend,” and leave me sitting there with no apology. It says to me that my feelings & my time is insignificant and reveals how pernicious the grip on their attention their phone has become. This is the height of rudeness & inconsiderate behavior in my opinion. And when this occurs, I will often just get up and leave to the surprise & amazement of my young acquaintance. They have no idea of why I left and if you have to tell them why, what’s the point?
Continuing on, I am personally disappointed in myself for allowing myself to get sucked into the Facebook orbit & its near universal capture of the younger generation. My gut told me long before I ever succumbed to its temptation, this is a platform for teenage girls and I resisted joining it for several years. But, a cousin of mine told me that it was how I could connect with relatives I’ve never met—which by-the-way, never panned-out—and I soon became addicted to the political posts.
You see, I have become obsessed with politics over the past 30 years or better & have conservatively invested over 50,000 hours or more in reading, researching, & writing about politics. And with Facebook, I deluded myself into believing that I had a real platform from which to speak and be heard. I would get an encouraging sentence or two every now & then, just enough to keep me going and God knows how much time & energy I invested in writing lengthy responses, observations, etc. on political issues over the several years I was a Facebook zombie?
I’ve always been a bit slow—perhaps that’s why I was a good fit as a teaching assistant in the special education field—but after the introduction of the emoticons as a way for people to “communicate” their responses on complex social & political issues, I slowly became more & more disillusioned. I finally saw the light after several, self-imposed exiles from this “Social media” megalith and had to accept the reality that my absence didn’t mean shit to my 3,000 or better “friends.” A couple of months ago, I finally took the leap of faith to sanity and permanently deleted my Facebook account after saving my history. Who knows, there may be something worthwhile to write about there?
Okay, onward & upward my fellow freedom fighters! You may be tempted to write me off as just another one of those Alex Jones conspiratorial nut-jobs like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan but bear with me if you will? I’m not claiming that this is an overt or covert conspiracy on the part of the government but in terms of the harmful effects of the “social media” & the technological gadgets absorbing more & more of our attention, it may as well be a conspiracy. And the irony of calling these devices “smart phones,” would be hilarious if not for the fact that they are seriously undermining our ability to communicate with one another because of their built-in superficiality & manipulative functions.
Look up Tristan Harris if you doubt what I’m saying? He was high up on the food chain so-to-speak, in the Google corporation & has laid it out very succinctly i.e. smart phones are like mini slot machines in our pockets that people are becoming addicted to like gamblers addicted to gambling.
Obviously, reading is becoming an artifact from the past. Just do a brief search of Americans’ reading habits & the sad statistics that reveal how few of us have actually read a single book in the past year. The visual i.e. video clips, movies, video games, etc. has become the overwhelmingly favored mode of “learning” and “entertainment.” And returning to the subject of “smart phones,” this reminds me of another aggravating thing about them i.e. I’ll be having a conversation with someone & if I ask them a question about a subject or person or etc. that they’re not familiar with, they’ll pull out their smart phone to look it up. I try to politely tell them that I’m not interested in what their computer has to say on the subject & that they’re not being graded by me on our conversation. Sadly, far too many people today seem to believe that if it’s on the Internet, it’s a fact. But I’m old enough to remember the acronym G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) i.e. just because someone entered the data on the Internet doesn’t make it truth or a fact. We have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the machines we’ve created & people have all but lost completely, the ability to think critically or analytically for themselves. And how convenient this all is for the corporate cockroaches who only have one agenda i.e. sell us as much of their crap as they possibly can!
Furthermore, thanks in large part to the beloved Bill Clinton & his signing of NAFTA into law, manufacturing which used to be a major part of our economy, has mostly disappeared from America so the powers that be aren’t really worried about worker strikes, etc. So, where do they think we’re going to get the money to buy their crappy products? And with their polarization of the public so effectively done by Trump with his hateful xenophobic rhetoric, along with our increasing isolation thanks to our smart phones, the status quo is smugly kicking back in their executive suites with their feet up on the table laughing at our gullibility.
This onslaught against working class Americans in particular & the public in general really became pronounced when Reagan became president. Exhibit A, one of Reagan’s first acts after becoming president was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike, for life. This sent a clear message to corporate America i.e. it’s open season on unions. And when Reagan proclaimed that the 1980s were the “Me Decade,” it was again evident that he & the G.O.P. were all about greed & selfishness and their “philosophy” was that of Ayn Rand’s. Do I need to remind you of that minor hiccup we experienced in 2008 when the world’s economy imploded thanks to the greed of bankers, hedge fund managers, the credit agencies, lack of regulations & enforcement of the regulations that were on the books, etc.? Yeah, a universal collapse that cost tens of millions of people to lose their homes, their pensions, their health insurance, their jobs, their life savings & their self-respect. So now when people tell me that they’re not interested in politics, I say, so none of the things I just mentioned above matter to you?
In today’s America, I rarely hear we or us, it’s usually me or I. Consider the very name of one of the most popular tech gadgets, the “i-Phone.” And they also offer the iPad, the iTablet, and God knows how many other “I” products? Get what I’m saying? It’s all about normalizing the glorification of the individual & selfishness or self-centeredness. Still not convinced? Consider the fact that Apple through clever tax avoidance schemes & loopholes takes advantage of Ireland’s low corporate tax rate of 3% to avoid the 35% it’d have to pay if it were honest in America. Again, greed is good & the hell with the public’s general welfare. We, the U.S. taxpayers pay our taxes because we can’t afford expensive whores like the corporate lawyers Apple pays to keep their profits growing. Never mind the fact that our taxes pay for the roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports, police, fire depts., military, etc. that these corporations rely on to conduct their business operations here in the U.S. even though they claim their headquarters are the P.O. Box they have in the Cayman Islands, etc.
I could go on and on about corporate corruption but I’ll try to refrain from doing so here. The point is that selfishness, which used to be considered a negative trait, has now become almost glorified or at least accepted as perfectly normal. Referring back to Reagan’s reign of error & terror, homelessness in America got a big start when Reagan closed down most state mental hospitals.. And for many, they became homeless because of medical bills or their companies closing down. Again, it was the greed & heartlessness of the corporate CEOs of the companies they worked for.
Moreover, this isn’t a partisan issue, Clinton also signed the bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which FDR signed into law. If you aren’t familiar with it, it forbid commercial banks to make risky, speculative loans with people’s savings. And this too was a significant factor in the U.S. economic crash & the ripple effects in the world economy as a whole. Greed is just as popular and common in the democratic party as it is in the republican party.
Where has our humanity, our compassion for our fellow human beings, our empathy for others’ suffering, humiliation, & degradation gone to? Will you only care when it happens to you or a loved one? By then it’ll be too late. United we stand and divided we fall and division is what the corporate cockroaches are all about i.e. the centuries old strategy of divide & conquer.
It’d be laughable if it weren’t so damn serious that these “social media” are the antithesis of helping us to become more social beings. But I know that you’re probably still skeptical of my thesis and perhaps you will simply dismiss me as an alarmist or conspiracy nut so here are a couple of guys, one who is considered the father of Virtual Reality & a veteran of Silicon Valley and the other who was a part of the original team at Facebook;
and
Admittedly, I should emulate my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky & read the New York Times and several other notable newspapers but my disillusionment with them was so deep that I turned against them decades ago. I get my news from the alternative media (not alternate facts but honest, in depth reporting) like Democracy Now! And Ian Masters on Background Briefing. I bring this up because I too was allowing myself to be manipulated by many of the “news” posts on Facebook but after it was revealed that Facebook sold our data to companies like Cambridge Analytica which played a major role in the election of Trump, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me & directly led to my escape from Facebook forever. Sadly, most Americans get their news from Facebook & not even having a modicum of critical or analytical thinking skills (I was an educator for over 20 years) they are easily manipulated by deceitful propagandists like Steve Bannon & FOX “News.”
In a nutshell, “social media” has taken over the role of mainstream media in terms of training us to be fearful of our government, fearful of our bosses i.e. will they fire me for something I wrote or posted on Facebook, etc.? fearful of terrorists, fearful of Muslims, etc. etc. etc. As I touched on earlier, people using these social media don’t want to have intelligent, fair debates on the serious issues facing us. No, they want to express their fears, their prejudices, their hate. And most are too lazy to even read more than a sentence, let alone respond in a calm, reasoned manner.
Obviously not only the corporations but also the U.S. government’s surveillance agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the N.S.A. and etc. are all tapping into our social media accounts & building detailed files on all of us. If you don’t know this by now, you must’ve been living in one of those caves that Osama bin Laden supposedly hid-out in. And please excuse me for a brief visit to Alex Jones land but how convenient for the masters of the universe who have access to all our personal histories. As Snowden pointed out, it’s all about control. Some theorize that should you become a problem to the powers that be, all they have to do is bring up all your personal history & build a case against you from there should they want to silence you.
Okay, back to my thesis. The reality we (not the 1% born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths) are faced with the fact that every last vestige of the “social safety net” that FDR established after the colossal harms done to us by the Robber Barons, is being slashed again & again & again. The Republicans have been very public about their opposition to the New Deal & have been doing everything in their power since it was established to totally eliminate every last vestige of it and have been largely successful in doing so. Trump is doing his best to help in their destruction & the simpletons who support him haven’t a clue.
Another aspect or result of our obsession with smart phones & social media is that they have become our shelter, the place we go to in search of solace & comfort. Have you ever noticed someone sitting alone in a café & how they attempt to escape their feeling of loneliness by bringing out their smart phone? This is yet another example of the closed, doom-loop system that is engulfing us.
We have Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and a president who twitters like Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum rather than read a book on history or politics, etc. etc. etc. I can’t even keep up with all this nonsense nor do I care to. We’re so alone but we have convinced ourselves that we’re not really alone because we have thousands of “friends” on Facebook, etc. Artificial reality, alternate facts, alternate reality? Where does it all end if we don’t take a cold, hard, honest look at our lives and our values?
Consider if you will, the fact that the tax rate on the super wealthy was 91% under President Eisenhower’s term in office and today, it is under 14% and many of them have found loopholes so that they don’t even pay that. I bring this up to highlight the fact that there will never be enough personal wealth for them & therefore they keep finding ever more ways to take every last dime in our pockets. And because most Americans have been reduced to working two, three, four or more minimum wage jobs in their desperate attempts to avoid becoming homeless, one of the few remaining ways the wealthy can still profit from our desperation is by locking us up in their prisons for profit which have the additional benefit of forcing prisoners to work for private corporations like:
American Express Company, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan & Company, Allstate Insurance Company, GEICO, ExxonMobil Corporation, BP America, Johnson & Johnson, Sara Lee Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Communications, United Airlines, Wendy’s, McDonalds Corporation, Fruit of the Loom, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Quaker Oats and Microsoft.
And you thought the old chain-gang days where prisoners had to dig ditches, work for farmers, etc. were over? Yeah, welcome to America, the land where the rich are above the law & the free market is a bed-time story for the ignorant masses. Yeah, some prisoners earn as much as $1.15 per day but then the phone company charges them outrageous rates for personal phone calls which pretty much nullifies that.
Continuing on, every which way we turn, it’s all about quantity, not quality. How much money we make, how many friends we have, how expensive our clothes, our cars, our food, etc. is. How much time we saved on our drive to work. How fast our communications are not the quality of that communication just the speed. As a society, America is among the dumbest in the so-called “developed world.” Consider who’s representing us in the oval office. Every time he speaks, I feel nauseous or like someone is scratching a blackboard with their fingernails.
The vast Midwest has become a series of ghost towns because they were usually one company towns & when their CEOs realized they could make a lot more profit by shutting down and moving to countries where people are so desperately poor that they’ll work for a couple of dollars per day, they abandoned their loyal employees in the blink of an eye. And cities like New York & L.A. have become too expensive for the vast majority of us to live in. Mind you, I have nothing against someone who works hard & becomes rich except when they do so by lying, cheating, stealing & in general destroying people’s lives in order to become obscenely wealthy.
In conclusion, I’ve spent my life informing myself. I’ve been an avid reader since I was in the first grade & for the past 30 years or better, I guesstimate that I’ve spent at least 50,000 hours reading books on history, politics, philosophy, etc. and making copious notes in many of the books in my extensive library. I’ve watched countless documentaries, listened to political & social speakers, written hundreds of essays & over 4,000 pages on two major books I’m writing, etc. etc. etc. but I have nowhere to turn to for social interaction.
In fact, this reminds me of an amusing anecdote. As I mentioned earlier, I have been corresponding with Chomsky for the past 13 years, well in one of our exchanges, I complained about the social taboo against speaking about politics in bars & Noam wasn’t aware of it. Yeah, that caused me to chuckle but it depresses the hell out of me because the few times I have gotten away with talking about politics in bars, I saw people’s eyes light up & they became very animated and really enjoyed the conversation. Some have even said that it was the best conversation they’d had in years. Is it merely another “coincidence” that we’re not allowed to talk about politics in bars? Think about it, how convenient for the powers that be i.e. if the working class can’t share their thoughts on how they’re being screwed, it makes it easier to control them? Where else in our society can people gather & freely exchange their ideas, thoughts, worries, etc.?
But like babies in their cribs with those colorful mobiles with animals & sparkly objects to draw their attention, we have our smart phones to distract us from our troubles. And our cribs have invisible bars that surround us. I still keep spitting in the wind so-to-speak by posting new essays on my blog that no one reads or comments on. And just before I hit the publish button, I am told again & again that my writing is too difficult, that I should write simpler sentences and should write on trendy topics. Fuck that! Our collective apathy & intellectual laziness will be our downfall and we may very well end-up living in a version of Mad Max’s world. As for me, I escaped from L.A. with my wife & son over 25 years ago. We moved to Portland, Oregon and it was a great new life for a while but my wife & I drifted apart and she passed away five years ago now. So, I move up and down the coast in my RV staying for six months or so in one little coastal town after another but I may as well be living alone on a deserted island for all the social interaction I get. Paradise isn’t so pretty when you have no one to share it with & no one to talk to!
—Rob DeLoss, St. Patrick’s Day 2019 in Trinidad, California
P.S. My wife always took the time to read my work and give me constructive feedback even though she was always swamped with paperwork because she was a Special Education teacher. And even though we were divorced, I never refer to her as my ex-wife because there was nothing “ex” about her. She was truly my best friend and we never stopped caring about each other.
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 reflects, this could be our future if we don’t stop entertaining ourselves to death. Trump & the other dictators around the world only succeed when their citizens sit silently by. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Perhaps my trips to Europe had something to do with my awakening, and the fact that, as a college counselor pointed out, most students don’t get serious about college until they’re around 27 or 28 years old? This meeting with the college counselor was amusing because I’d been attending community colleges for several years and all of a sudden, they figured I needed counseling? The counselor asked my age & I told him that I was 27. He then said “yeah, we’ve found that our best students are usually about 27 or 28 because by the time they have reached this age, they have had several dead-end jobs & realize that they’d better get serious about getting a good education if they want a shot at a good career.
I had been to Europe three times when Reagan first took office. And one of the things that struck me on my visits to Europe was the fact that it was very common for people—young and old—to have long, heated debates on politics. My friends in L.A., and just about everyone I met in my travels up and down the West coast of America, usually only talked about money, cars, sports, & women. In fact, there is somewhat of a social taboo regarding discussing religion & politics in taverns in America. Isn’t this strange in a country that is quick to boast about our freedom of speech? Could it be that just underneath this thin, veneer of friendliness & civility that we like to portray, is an ugly and ignorant cauldron of intolerance, hatred, & racism amongst other things?
To return to why I became interested in politics upon Reagan’s presidency, he said & initiated so many spooky things that it’s hard to select just one but here’s an example. My wife and I were on our honeymoon in Paris & a reporter, who identified himself as the “Dan Rather of Czechoslovakia,” & his cameraman approached us & asked our opinion on Reagan’s recent speech regarding the possibility of fighting a “limited nuclear war” in Europe.
Reagan, George “Dubya,” & Trump (Dumb, Dumber, & Dumbest)
I said that Reagan scares the hell out of me & I think he’s a moron! The reporter thanked me and said that he was somewhat relieved because the American couple he had interviewed just before us, had said that they thought fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe was a fine idea. The ignorance in America is truly frightening, and especially so when you consider that we are the most powerful nation on earth. And I never realized just how truly ignorant we are, as a whole, until I started visiting Europe & getting a much wider perspective of my country.
Trump’s ignorance & childish behavior is a very real threat to humanity
Furthermore, I can remember my feeling of embarrassment when I met my friend, Ruedi, who is a Swiss citizen, and after spending a week hanging out with him, realized that he knew more about American history, literature, politics, philosophy, etc., than I did! And amongst my friends in L.A., I was considered to be pretty intelligent. Yeah, right! Well, since those days, and with Ruedi serving as my inspiration & unofficial mentor, I have become obsessed with politics & read hundreds of books, essays, newspaper stories, magazine articles, etc., on the subject. And recently this insight came to me regarding the typical, apathetic “I’m not interested in politics” or “There’s nothing we can do.”
One of the simplest definitions of politics is that it’s about the study of power i.e. how to get it & how to keep it. And of course, the gaining & maintaining of power is to a large extent about economics or wealth. In fact, I heard somewhere that politics & economics used to be taught as one and the same subject in universities but somewhere along the line, it was divided into two separate subjects. That brings up some interesting questions but that’s for another time & essay. So, politics is about power & wealth. It’s not mere coincidence that the majority of politicians are lawyers. They are lawyers because they know that those who run the legal system i.e. the law game, gain access to the reins of power because they have people’s lives in their hands & when people are facing prison time, they’ll pay almost anything to stay out of jail. And as lawyers, they can worm their ways up to becoming judges & politicians who interpret & write the laws which affect not only the ordinary citizens but also the corporations. Naturally, the corporations pay handsomely to have the laws written & interpreted in ways that are favorable to them.
People who say they aren’t interested in politics, speak & act like politics is something that is outside their lives, something vague or abstract, and something which they have absolutely no control, no influence, & no stake in. And they couldn’t be more wrong! To say they aren’t interested in politics is tantamount to saying they don’t care whether their pension plan is stolen by their corporation’s executives. It’s to say that they don’t care if their health insurance is taken away by politicians or greedy, corporate officers. It’s to say that they don’t mind if their homes are foreclosed on. It’s to say that it wouldn’t bother them if Social Security was privatized & opened up to the stock market sharks & frauds. It’s to say that the fact that their children have received a pathetic, public education is of no consequence to them. It’s to say that the fact that corporations are given tax breaks for closing their plants here in America & going overseas & that they may lose their jobs is no big deal!
Moreover, because politics is about power and those who wield it, to say you don’t care about politics is akin to saying that you don’t care who has power over you. Therefore, by this logic, it wouldn’t matter if Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc., were our leader. If so, then why are we fighting in Iraq? Wasn’t one of Bush’s justifications for our invasion, the removal of a terrible tyrant? By the way, this was a total sham because we are supporting dozens of bloody dictators around the globe and have done so for decades.
In conclusion, and I know this is going to sound very harsh but it is long past the time for politeness because we, and the rest of the world, are in very serious danger & we need to be honest with ourselves and stop letting the bastards get away with their murderous deeds!
Robert De Niro telling Trump what I & the other two-thirds of America feel about Trump
To say you are helpless, don’t care, or aren’t interested in politics in this terrible time is in effect saying that you don’t care if your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, your brother, or your sister are maimed or killed in a war that was initiated by a pack of liars in order to enrich themselves & their cronies. And if you look close enough, you’ll see that the war isn’t only in Iraq, no, the power elite are waging a war on us right here in America. The Patriot Act & Homeland Security are the legal disguises they are using. Our Bill of Rights has been shredded. We are in effect becoming prisoners in a police state called Fortress America! Go ahead, write me off as just another nut case. But you can’t say that you haven’t been warned. Check it out for yourself. Or are you too afraid? Or are you simply too lazy? We still have a chance to turn things around but time is running out. United we stand and divided we fall!
Only the willfully blind could fail to see that Trump’s swamp is overflowing with felons & frauds
this is the truly pornographic i.e. the continuous death of war & for what?
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 the beholder & so is “pornography.” The true pornography is the pornography of violence that America reveres & is awash in.
I have never bought a Penthouse magazine or Hustler, etc. because to me, they are tasteless. I have bought many copies of Playboy over the years. But what occurred to me after my ex-wife got upset & felt so offended was that the true pornography is the pornography of power & the pornography of ignorance that allows or turns a blind eye to so much of the pain, suffering, degradation, & death all around us.
Trump & his “Christian” base don’t give a damn about these innocent victims of their wars for the corporate cockroaches
First off, what I mean by the pornography of power is the obscene levels of power that we have allowed our government & transnational corporations to acquire. Time and time again they have in effect, spit in our faces. The American public in poll after poll, voted against the bailout of Wall Street but the government went ahead & bailed them out. They tell us they don’t have the money to provide health care for all of us but they keep funding these wars in Iraq & Afghanistan to the tune of a billion dollars a week.
Of course, the “other’s” suffering & death never counts when it comes to America’s “good intentions”
Our public school system has been steadily crumbling for decades & they tell us there isn’t enough money yet the weapons manufacturers & the private mercenary corporations like Blackwater are flourishing. Our infrastructure is disintegrating
Obama’s stunt in Flint revealed his betrayal & sell-out to the powers that be
while the president of vice, Dick Cheney’s corporation, Halliburton is making record profits supposedly rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which we destroyed.
U.S. sent 363 tons of shrink-wrapped cash to Iraq & $9 billion goes missing, but, oh well?
These are but a few of the many truly pornographic or obscene acts that are going on & I wish my ex-wife and all Americans were even a fraction as outraged at these acts as those “Christian” fundamentalists are at abortion & gay marriage. It’s the pornography of ignorance that has allowed things to go so wrong for so long in this land of “freedom,” “equality,” & “democracy.” And the corporate media & the purposeful “dumbing down” of our children have deliberately spread this pornography of ignorance in our public educational system. The standards of academic or intellectual excellence have been watered down steadily over the past decades & as a result, many high school graduates aren’t even equipped to handle a minimum wage job. The paramount skills of critical & analytical thinking are taught in only a few, isolated school systems. An uninformed & unable to think clearly & rationally citizenry is easy to fool and easy to ignore.
And in Trump-land, being stupid is worn as a badge of honor
No, I’m not a ‘conspiracy nut,’ the elite have publicly declared their goals time and time again. Look up President Wilson’s statement regarding public education for a prime example of their contempt for us.
To continue, we’ve become so disengaged or psychically numbed that we don’t have sympathy or compassion for the soldiers returning from the horrors of the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. I don’t see those outraged fanatics screaming that abortion is murder, scream about the suffering & humiliation of the homeless. Many if not most of the homeless are veterans of the Vietnam War, the Gulf war, & now the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Bumper stickers proclaim “Support Our Troops,” but this is the same shallow or simplistic jingoism as those bumper stickers commanding “America, Love It or Leave It.” If we truly supported our troops, we would house them & we would give them the best medical & psychological care available immediately. I just watched a panel of “Winter Soldiers” testify before members of Congress about the horrors of war they’d experienced in Iraq & Afghanistan and several told how they & many of their comrades turned to alcohol & drugs to escape the pain of what they’d seen & done in war and when they seek help, they are ridiculed, told they’re faking it, & put on waiting lists for up to a year or longer. Some tried to commit suicide & some succeeded.
This is the ugly truth behind the corporate cockroaches’ agenda of perpetual war
This is the true pornography and obscenity. The politicians & the military commanders turn these young, idealistic people into killers & then tell them they’re phonies or weaklings and turn their backs on them. Our soldiers are trained to dehumanize the “enemy,” in order to make the killing of the “enemy” easier to live with psychologically yet when they return to America, they are also dehumanized by the very people that told them it was their patriotic duty to go to war & defend America and her values. My family & “friends” have long told me that I’m “too sensitive,” and it has been both a blessing & a curse because I empathize with all the downtrodden of the world e.g. the working class who break their backs for a lifetime & live in a constant state of dread, despair, & pain; the scared immigrants who risk their lives to get here only to be treated like sub-humans & to be exploited by the wealthy;
Could it be that Trump & Co. doesn’t need cheap immigrant labor anymore when we have our prisoners to do the work? see A.L.E.C.
the people of countries that our military has invaded & bombed and killed & maimed their loved ones in the name of democracy & freedom. The corporate cockroaches & their lackeys in the government have duped us all.
To sum up, we should all be so outraged that we take to the streets en masse & bring business as usual to a complete standstill because it’s not until the greedy swine holding the reins of power, feel it in their bank accounts, will we begin to reclaim our dignity & honor as a people.
We need to find that spirit we had in the 1960s when we cared about one another
I’m not a religious person but when I see the picture of or an actual lovely nude woman, I feel she is a beautiful reminder of God’s handiwork just as much as those majestic Redwoods or the waves crashing on the Pacific coast. No my friend, the true pornography is that which degrades us as human beings & makes some of us do obscene things because the pain has killed that most precious gift, the human spirit!
Does this offend you more than the little Vietnamese girl burned by U.S. napalm? If so, you should look into your soul.
If we persist in our apathy & ignorance, this may come about sooner than we think, especially under Trump!
Reminds me of Dick Cheney & his smug arrogance but Trump is a moron!
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.” I wrote this essay originally back in 2013 but wanted to insert this quote by Giroux because it is so right on the mark in this nightmare world with someone as astoundingly stupid as Trump in the oval office. And what’s worse is having to see that smug look on Trump’s face every time I watch the news or that nauseous smirk on his mug which radiates contempt. I believe he’s so self-satisfied because he knows the depth & breadth of the crimes & fraud he’s committed throughout his years. If there were a prize handed out for the most willfully ignorant person in America, Trump would win it hands-down, & willful ignorance is allowing Trump to destroy America!
“Christian” fundamentalists & White Supremacists
Preface: before I begin I want to state that my aim is to be briefer than usual because I know that most people aren’t willing to take the time to read anything “too lengthy.” Moreover, many on-line sites that allow you to post your writing, censor how long an article/essay can be. So, don’t criticize me if some of my points aren’t as clear as perhaps you’d like them to be. In fact, I was tempted to just make this a bullet-point list but upon reflection I realized that I must do more to “connect the dots.”
My simple definition of “willful ignorance” is that a person purposely blocks out new information, knowledge, or wisdom because it is basically too threatening to their belief structures. And by contrast, “innocent ignorance” simply means that a person doesn’t know something through no fault of their own, they simply have never been exposed to the new information. My thesis is that a pervasive willful ignorance is killing America and I am very concerned not just because I fear about America’s survival but also because America is such a major player in this global game of Monopoly, the survival of our planet is at stake!
an “option” for not having to go to prison for the rest of his life?
The recent revelations regarding our Justice department’s spying on Associated Press reporters motivated me to write this essay. And the general sense of apathy among the general public regarding our government spying on us so blatantly ever since 9/11 truly saddens me. When I bring this issue up to people I know or have recently met, the usual response is “Oh well, I have nothing to worry about because I’m not doing anything wrong!”
Yeah, like what you don’t know about Trump won’t hurt you either
This is mind-boggling to me & I ask myself “Then why have our soldiers died or been maimed in this perpetual state of war we’ve been in my whole life?” The constant refrain I hear is “Support Our Soldiers because they are fighting for our freedom, Democracy, etc.” How can this be when our freedoms, democracy, etc. is being seriously undermined & eliminated altogether here in America?
has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined
Case in point; President Obama has prosecuted more “Whistleblowers” than All the presidents who preceded his administration. Like so many other terms or words, the word “whistleblower” has been twisted to the point that it is now almost completely understood as a negative thing. This is truly Orwellian because “whistleblowers” are the true patriots & are doing us a great service by warning us of illegal & immoral actions on the part of our government & the corporate cockroach elite.
Some of you may not be familiar with I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Edward R. Murrow, or Robert Scheer but these men were/are amongst a relatively small handful of our greatest whistleblowers & often labeled as “Muckrakers.” Another derisive term implying they just stirred up trouble & threw mud at political officials, corporate Robber Barons, etc. because they were jealous, mean-spirited, unpatriotic, etc. etc. etc.
and he absolutely idolized Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan/Chase the largest of the four most powerful banks in the U.S.
This is another example of willful ignorance and absolutely wrong. These men and women were the most patriotic and courageous people this country has produced because they dared to stand up on their hind-legs and blow the whistle on the thieves in high places by stating publicly how politicians & businessmen were breaking our laws as a nation & the higher laws to which humans are responsible for—the laws of humanity commonly known as ethics!
the only guy who could lose money owning casinos & now he gets to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury?
Today’s America is but a dim shadow of those golden ideals & principles that we were told we believed in & practiced as a nation as we went through public school. Most Americans are now either afraid to speak up or are too apathetic & as long as they have their inane television sit-coms, soap operas, sports, & “reality” shows, don’t give a shit! Willful ignorance is now held up as the way to be & well-meaning friends admonish me to not fight the system, it’s futile. I have been fighting this apathy & willful ignorance all my life and it’s been a lonely journey. For example, several years ago when my son was still in high school, his mother & her brother started saying they believed that it would be a good thing for my son to join the military. This scared the Hell out of me because I was in the U.S. Army and came close to being sent to Vietnam & knew after 30 years of serious searching for facts, knowledge, truth, & wisdom the lies, the needless slaughter of Vietnamese innocents, the death of over 55,000 American soldiers, etc. how wrong & how dangerous a game they were playing with my son’s life! (I know that my wife was innocently ignorant on this subject though)
So, I sat down at the kitchen table & wrote for two days, (see my post; The Politics of Patriotism https://cockroachconspiracy.com/the-politics-of-patriotism/ )every reason I could think of as to why my son, or any young person should not join the military. And to this day, I haven’t been able to persuade my son to read this outpouring of my soul in an attempt to save his life. Thankfully he didn’t join the military but I still feel the pain & suffering of all those poor, young people who have joined the military and had their souls crushed.
Continuing on, this isn’t a self-pity party but merely to substantiate my argument regarding America’s general sense of apathy & willful ignorance. I have been mocked & dismissed for most of my adult life because I am almost always in the minority regarding these issues & people take comfort & believe they must be right because they are in the majority when arguments arise about these topics. If we had more courageous journalists like those I mentioned earlier, then perhaps we could have averted invading Iraq and all the horrible aftermath of that war of choice?
Furthermore, I contend that because of our general sense of apathy and our willful ignorance, the powers that be have been, are, & will continue to erode & destroy America as a nation. And lest you think me an alarmist, conspiracy nut, or whatever, I challenge you to do a little research for yourself starting with the late, great Gore Vidal and his book “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.” In this simple little book, Vidal lists the over 200 military incursions or whatever you care to refer to them as, since 1945. Here is a blurb relevant to this point:
In all, the United States has only made 11 separate formal declarations of war against foreign nations encompassing 5 wars.
War with Great Britain 1812 (Act of June 18, 1812, House 79-49; Senate 19-13)
War with Mexico 1846 (Act of May 13, 1846, House 174-14; Senate 40-2)
War with Spain 1898 (Act of April 25, 1898, House & Senate voice votes)
War with Germany 1917 (Act of April 6, 1917, House 373-50; Senate 82-6)
War with Austria-Hungary 1917 (Act of December 7, 1917, House 365-1; Senate 74-0))
War with Japan 1941 (Act of December 8, 1941, House 388-1; Senate 82-0)
War with Germany 1941 (Act of December 11, 1941, House 393-0; Senate 88-0)
War with Italy 1941 (Act of December 11, 1941, House 399-0; Senate 90-0)
War with Bulgaria 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 357-0; Senate 73-0)
War with Hungary 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 360-0; Senate 73-0)
War with Rumania 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 361-0; Senate 73-0)9
Since 1942, of course the United States has not led the world in a seventy-years’ peace. Despite Roosevelt’s relative ease in obtaining six formal declarations of war, since World War Two Americans have been drawn time and time again into war without a congressional declaration. Gore Vidal commented:
“Since V-J Day 1945 (‘Victory over Japan’ and the end of World War II), we have been engaged in what the historian Charles A. Beard called ‘perpetual war for perpetual peace.’ I have occasionally referred to our ‘enemy of the month club’: each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us.”
Vidal goes on to list several hundred wars and operations conducted against Communism, terrorism, drugs, or as he puts it, “sometimes nothing much” that occurred between Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001. Based on casualties alone the costliest conflicts following the last official declaration of war include the Korean War with 33,686, the Vietnam War with 47,424, Iraq War with 3,542 and Afghanistan at greater than 2,000.http://inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2013/volume_5/number_1/war_is_declared.php
And with the latest brainstorm on the part of the Pentagon & the politicians, we now “embed” our journalists in military units so they can “report” the facts of war protected by the units they are embedded with. Is it just me or does anyone else see the dangers inherent in this new version of war coverage by journalists? This is a very clever tactic designed to keep an even tighter leash on journalists by making them dependent on soldiers for their very lives, journalists will naturally be a lot more reluctant to report on abuses, crimes, etc. committed by the soldiers they are embedded with. And as a result, we, the American public will be left even more in the dark regarding the truth about the wars, police actions, incursions, etc. that we are continually involved in around the globe.
” We learned that the United States has approximately 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called “lily-pond” bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe. David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World,” https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-has-military-bases-in-172-countries-all-of-them-m
One of the most pernicious myths about the Vietnam war is that it was the “liberal media” which caused us to lose that war because they were broadcasting all those horrible images of war back to our homes and as families sat around the T.V. and watched those images day in and day out, Americans gradually began to turn against the war. The movie “The Killing Fields” showed how bogus this claim was because it revealed the fact that most of the journalists covering the Vietnam war would wait until after a battle and the military had brought them to the battle scene after it had been “cleaned-up” and take their pictures & accept the military commanders’ version of what happened and dutifully transcribe it for their newspapers. Noam Chomsky clearly proved the falsity of these claims and the myths regarding the liberal opposition to the Vietnam war, etc. And again, because i don’t have the space to go into great depth, you’ll have to check out the truth of what I claim for yourself.
The myth or “truism” that there is a “liberal media bias” in America is just that, a myth. And it has been mostly been thanks to FOX News and the “mainstream” or corporate media which have vested interests in maintaining the status quo in America. It’s very well known that FOX News, especially during the Gulf war and the Iraq war, took their daily “talking points” directly from the White House so as to keep all their talking heads on the same page and hammering the same pack of lies day in and day out. And this brings me to an extremely important point e.g. just because a newscaster, a politician, or anyone keeps on repeating something it’s not necessarily true or a fact. I have gone around and round with people, including my ex-wife, on this matter and in particular, far too many naive people don’t recognize the difference between opinion and objective fact. Facts can be backed up or substantiated and yes everyone has a right to their opinion but not all opinions are valid or perhaps I should say, equally valid. FOX News is the farthest thing from news because it is mostly opinionated, loud-mouth bullies who believe that if they scream loud enough to drown out their disagreeing guests, they’re right and the guest has been proven wrong. Moreover, even sticking to mere opinions, if one person in an argument is arguing about a subject they have formally studied for years & have earned a degree in the subject is arguing with someone else who has never even read a book on the subject, their opinions are not equally valid. One is arguing from knowledge & experience and the other is arguing from an emotional perspective or a set of beliefs. And this is not elitist but simply logical or scholarly and is the basis for most of human progress. I know that for a lot of people I have met over the course of my adult life, this point regarding the validity of arguments is a bitter or hard pill to swallow. It sounds very arrogant of me to make such statements but consider it from this point of view if you will; I have next to no knowledge when it comes to mechanical aptitude or matters and if I tried telling some guy who had 30 years of experience as a mechanic that he was definitely wrong about some mechanical problem I was having, it would be just as absurd for him to tell me I was off my nut about some political issue which I had spent 30 years of my life studying.
Naturally, the power elite or the 1% want to keep the general public as ignorant as possible because it’s much easier to control an ignorant populace than a well-informed one. Why do you think they cracked down so hard on the Occupy Wall St. movement? These protestors were constantly derided on FOX News as dirty, lazy, young kids who didn’t want to work, etc. They weren’t allowed to use microphones at their meetings, they weren’t allowed to even carry a backpack but at the Tea Party rallies, they were allowed to use microphones, they could even bring their guns, and they were covered by the corporate media because they were the dupes of FOX News and the so-called conservative Republican party. Free speech in America? Yeah, right. Only if you agree with the corporate cockroaches are you allowed to be heard.
I didn’t start listening to what was going on politically until Ronald Reagan became president because I grew up in L.A. and I’d seen what he’d done as governor of California. Reagan the “great communicator,” cracked-down on student protestors with a vengeance & probably would’ve like to have them all shot down like dogs.
If you were rich, you loved Reagan, if you were poor, you knew he was the enemy of the people
So, when he became president I got worried and ever since his presidency, there has been a steady & stealthy building of power on the side of the rich in America. They built a network of think tanks and hammered away at the American public with their rhetoric & propaganda telling the public ad nauseam that it was the government that was making their lives tough & it was the liberals, the students, the illegal immigrants, gays, in short, anyone who wasn’t rich was the problem.
Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers for life signaled corporate America it’s open season on unions
And just as Hitler’s minister of propaganda, joseph Goebbels realized, the more you repeat a lie and the greater the lie, the more people will accept it as truth. The Right-wing extremists in America now have the microphone almost exclusively & when people like myself who have been paying attention, try to speak up, we are shouted down as communists, terrorists, etc. It’s gotten so bad e.g. we’ve become such a corporatocracy that the Democratic party which once stood for the working Americans has now almost completely gone over to the corporate controlled side.
“THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill Clinton’s presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this apparent reversal?….According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient. Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class.” http://inthesetimes.com/features/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites (In a nutshell my imaginary reader, this is why we’re so screwed today & have a supposed billionaire posing as a populist in the White House.)
I thought I was pretty savvy politically speaking but Obama even fooled me but only for a few weeks. After he was elected and appointed Bernanke, Summers, & Geithner to the top financial & economic positions in America, I knew I & America had been duped yet again. And if you still need convincing of this, as many “liberals” do, note Obama’s speech where he said he wasn’t interested in “looking back” in reference to calls for Bush, Cheney, et al being prosecuted for lying us into the Iraq war and wrecking the U.S. economy. Yet Obama is going after ‘Whistleblowers’ with a vengeance & he has prosecuted those who are trying to protect America more than all the other presidents did in total. Obama the Oreo as I call him (black on the outside, white on the inside) not only hasn’t given up any of the illegal expanded powers of the presidency that Georgie Bush stole, he has expanded the imperial presidency and he personally participates in a weekly meeting where he & his advisors act as judge, jurors, & executioners as they select people to assassinate around the world, even American citizens.
At the risk of being dismissed as just another “conspiracy nut,” I think all these racist attacks against Obama on FOX News may serve the financial elite’s hidden agenda because it keeps the yokels, both the innocently ignorant & the willfully ignorant occupied & focusing their anger on Obama rather than the truly heinous criminal class who are sucking the lifeblood out of America. We have witnessed the largest transfer of wealth from the poor, the working class, & the middle class to the obscenely wealthy in the top 1% of our population over the past 30 years or so. The traitors at the top have almost completely eliminated unions, have outsourced almost every manufacturing plant that used to be in America, have gained ever more tax breaks, have made our land, air, & water toxic, and are now focused on getting their bloody talons on Social Security & completely gutting Medicare & privatizing our public education system.
By keeping the ignorant public focused on guns & gays & abortion, they have emptied the federal treasury and bankrupted America & turned us into a Third World nation. And the horrific events of 9/11 were the perfect excuse for them to hide their sinister agenda behind. With the passage overnight with no Congressional review & very few even took the time to read it, of The Patriot Act and Homeland Security, they have almost completely eviscerated our Constitution & Bill of Rights. We more closely resemble Stalinist Russia than the America I was born into in the 1950s. We hear the talking heads on television, the political pundits, the politicians, the corporate crocodile C.E.O.s, the televangelist preachers, etc. constantly telling us how great America is and how proud we should be of our soldiers fighting in the steady stream of wars overseas for freedom & democracy right? So then why are so much less free here in America? We are truly living that book by George Orwell “1984” here in the United States in 2013.
Again, as Gore Vidal has pointed out, just about every month there is some new enemy of the month and we must again spend billions of dollars fighting this never-ending stream of villains. As they slash our programs that were supposed to act as a Social Safety Net such as Head Start, food stamps, welfare, health care, etc. they keep spending billions & trillions on weapons systems that often don’t work & kill our own soldiers. They lose pallets of money in Iraq. They pay warlords in Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of dollars month in, month out for the past decade, those same warlords who also control the poppy fields that produce the majority of the world’s heroin. Yeah, it must be nice to be stupid & not think about all these blatant contradictions & hypocrisies that are going on, but this is why you’re being fucked & losing everything but don’t strain your brain, and don’t be surprised when you join the millions of other homeless haunting the landscape.
We were forced to bail-out the Wall St. wolves and the Banks too big to fail as they stole our homes, our pensions, our health care, our self-respect & dignity but hey, let’s go beat up some gays, some illegals, some Occupy Wall St. protestors because they are the ones causing our pain.
If you want to be a “success” in America, it’s really simple, all you have to do is ignore your conscience & be as cutthroat, ruthless, cold-blooded as you can be. Look at Colin Powell who made it up the ranks to the highest position in the military services. He showed the powers that be that he was their boy back in the 1960s when he was sent to investigate the My Lai Massacre and returned a report saying nothing had happened or no wrongdoing had been done. If you’re tired of being ignorant about the Vietnam war, check out a book by Lt. Colonel David L. Hackworth called “About Face.” This guy was a true Audie Murphy and had been wounded more times than is almost believable. He fought in N. Korea, Vietnam, etc. and after a few years of serving in Vietnam, he couldn’t take the lies & the waste of human life anymore and started speaking out and finally resigned in disgust. And Lt. Colonel David L. Hackworth was the most decorated soldier of his time & created and commanded a unit he called ‘Tiger Force’ which used guerrilla warfare tactics to fight against the Vietnamese guerrillas.
Furthermore, we have the case of another highly respected officer who tried also to wake up our military commanders in the Pentagon & the political leadership as to the folly of our involvement in Vietnam:
John Paul Vann became an adviser to the Saigon regime in the early 1960s. He was an ardent critic of how the war was fought, both on the part of the Saigon regime, which he viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and, as time went by, increasingly, on the part of the U.S. military. In particular, he was critical of the U.S. military command, especially under William Westmoreland, and their inability to adapt to the fact that they were facing a popular guerrilla movement while backing a corrupt regime. He argued that many of the tactics employed (for example the strategic hamlet relocation) further alienated the population and thus were counterproductive to U.S. objectives. Often he was unable to influence the military command but used the Saigon press corps including Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne to disseminate his views.
The volume begins with a prologue giving an account of Vann’s funeral on June 16, 1972, following his death in a helicopter accident in Vietnam. The author, Sheehan, a personal friend, was present. The subsequent account is divided into seven “books” detailing Vann’s career in Vietnam and America’s involvement in the conflict. Book I tell of Vann’s assignment to Vietnam in 1962. Book II “The Antecedents to a Confrontation” tells of the origin of the Vietnam War. Book III gives a detailed account of the shambolic Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963 in which the South Vietnamese army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Viet Cong. Book IV details Vann’s criticism of the way the war was being fought, his conflict with the U.S. military command and his transfer back to America. Book V tracks back to give Vann’s personal history before his involvement in the war. In the final chapters, Books VI and VII give an account of Vann’s return to Vietnam in 1965 and his doomed attempt to implement a war winning formula for the beleaguered U.S. army and how he eventually compromised with the military system he once criticized.
(A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam)
But of course, if you don’t mind sending your sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, or mothers to slaughter or being maimed for life in these wars to make the rich even richer then by all means enjoy your blissful ignorance! Moreover, we are kept in the dark about the epidemic of sexual assaults against not only women in the military services but of men as well. We are also ignorant of the fact that a good percentage of the homeless wandering our streets like ghosts on the landscape are veterans who were used, chewed-up and spit out on the street with little to no assistance by the government who had promised them the world to get them to enlist.
As for me, I will continue to speak out, to argue, to scream about the true betrayers of the American promise, the real traitors like the politicians, the top officers in the Pentagon, the corporate cockroaches, & the cowards who crow so brazenly on television. Against the wolves in sheep’s clothing claiming to be Christians as they preach hatred, fear, & call for the murder of those whom they don’t agree with. Against the Bush administration who “leaked” Valerie Plame’s identity but weren’t prosecuted by Obama, the Constitutional law professor. True Christians know that Jesus focused all his time & energy on taking care of the homeless, the sick & disabled, those shunned by society such as the prostitutes, etc. and that he detested the rich for their greed, oppression of the poor, & their apathy. And I know what the true agenda or the motives behind the prosecution of whistleblowers are, it’s to silence the true patriots who sound the alarm warning us, the willfully ignorant, that the power elite are killing America just as surely as an inoperable cancer but under the guise of National Security. But what they mean by National Security is the military/industrial/congressional complex that gives the overwhelming majority of our tax dollars to the already obscenely wealthy while impoverishing the rest of us, the 99% forced to work for slave wages & pay taxes or be imprisoned! I choose to inform myself and will fight to inform others but of course if you prefer to be willingly ignorant, there’s nothing to be done and I feel no sympathy for you as you wither & die!
—Rob DeLoss, Gearhart, Oregon, May 16, 2013
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
a trio of the top insiders who crashed our economy in 2008
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, etc. This film won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary & was narrated by Matt Damon. It is about “the systemic corruption of the U.S. by the Financial Services Industry.”
Yes indeed, the business of America is fraud and the higher up the food chain from small companies to megalithic corporations, the more prevalent fraud is & the less likely they will be held accountable for their crimes.
a world of corporate conglomerates & no more sovereign nations
I recently spent three months traveling around the state looking for a place to retire & a home to buy. I was looking for a small, used manufactured home, but unfortunately, they’re almost all in trailer park “communities.” And these “communities” like corporations, are private tyrannies as Chomsky has pointed out. I’m not being facetious, each of these “communities” has its own set of rules & regulations and a number of hurdles one must pass for entrance.
I was going to pay cash for the home and then have to pay “rent” for the privilege of living in this “community.” Rent usually includes water, sewer, & garbage and an incredible number of restrictions which, if violated, could get you evicted. Most of these “communities” won’t allow you to have a dog or a cat. The few that do allow pets, often tell you what size dog you can have, what breed of dog you can have, etc. And most of these “communities” won’t allow you to park your RV there but will allow you to park them there if you pay an additional fee. I won’t go into the absurd assorted other rules & regulations but it is truly mind-boggling.
I was told that my income must be at least three times the rent amount which was going to be $375 per month. I get Social Security and it is several hundred dollars more than this rent amount but because I have a “bad” credit rating, my application was denied. So, I paid $50 to be rejected by the petty tyrant owners of this “community.” The owners are a husband & wife and I dealt with the wife. She tried to persuade me to pay off the debtors who made claims against me which give me the “bad” credit rating. It was all I could do to refrain from screaming nasty epithets at her over the phone.
A few days before this rejection, I was in her office going over my application & the notebook full of rules & regulations. I mentioned that I write about politics & she asked whether I was liberal or conservative. I said I’m definitely liberal & she said they were conservative. I responded with yeah, most business owners are conservatives. I had also mentioned that I started collecting my Social Security early because I feared that the GOP would get their hands on it soon & had been trying to do so for decades. She argued that it was democrats who wanted to tax & spend.
Yep! It’s always those damn tax & spend democrats
This is the non-thinking mantra of the so-called “conservatives,” and they’ve been repeating it ad nauseam for decades as well. I was very tempted to ask her, well, tell me, who was it that started the war in Afghanistan which is the longest war America has ever been in & what have we accomplished there.
why we’ve been in perpetual war since WWII
I also wanted to mention that it was again the republicans who started the war based on a pack of lies, in Iraq and we, the taxpayers have been forced to pay a billion dollars a week for all these years to finance these wars but I knew that I should keep my mouth shut & not antagonize the boss so I kept my mouth shut.
and he’s going to reduce the $21 trillion dollar national deficit? Yeah, right!
A little later in this enlightening conversation, this petty tyrant informed me that people on food stamps & government assistance are lazy & dependent and don’t want to get off this assistance. Yep, once again it’s clear that those with all the money & privilege see the rest of us as the unwashed masses intent on stealing their hard-earned wealth. Although I was looking forward to settling down in this area because it’s only a few blocks to the ocean & a nice area in Newport, Oregon where I’ve tried several times in the past to get a foothold, it’s probably for the best that I was turned-down. I can only bite my tongue for so long and sooner or later, I probably would’ve told her just how stupid she is.
I use this personal experience to highlight the bigger picture of what’s happening all across America i.e. a return to debtor’s prison. Charles Dickens is revered by many scholars as being on an equal level, if not superior to, William Shakespeare. And I believe he has attained this degree of respect largely because of his vivid portrayals of the down & out in England at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. And this “revolution” has clearly run its course in America and the so-called “First World” nations & has now moved on to the “developing nations.”
King Trump’s economic plan for the 99%
Dickens’ own father was imprisoned in a debtor’s prison & this is why his son could write so powerfully about the degrading & devastating effects of this relatively modern phenomenon. I have also experienced the horrors of growing up poor in America because my mom basically raised four children by herself & worked two or three jobs for a good part of her life in her struggle to keep us out of the gutter. This is why I have spent the last 30 years or better teaching myself about politics, economics, history, etc. And this is why my writing is often passionate & full of anger.
and Trump fans just ask that he uses Vaseline before proceeding
Don’t worry my friend, I haven’t forgotten what this essay is supposed to be about i.e. fraud & private tyrannies. In our so-called “advanced” society, the corporate cockroaches have only refined their methods of oppressing us & keeping us under their thumbs. As I said, in today’s world & in America, the home of the free, if you want to rent an apartment or a house, etc. you must not only pass a credit check but also a criminal background check. Imagine if they required all politicians and CEOs of corporations to do likewise?
And not only does this apply when seeking a roof over your head, it is also becoming the standard when applying for a job & they often require that you pass a drug test as well. The 99% in the United States of America, you know, all us suckers & victims who are forced to pay the taxes that enrich the wealthy or face prison, are trapped in an ever-smaller vicious circle. This circle or cycle is like a noose around a prisoner’s neck that is slowly tightening around their throat & it’s a Catch-22 from which there is little to no way to escape.
If you’re part of the 1%, you got there because you’re either a sociopath or a psychopath. But, if you have any semblance of compassion or empathy, you realize that many, if not most of our most vulnerable citizens i.e. the homeless, the working poor, the shrinking middle class, etc. often turn to drugs & alcohol as a means of temporary escape and/or relief from this nightmare we’re engulfed in. I believe pot is the drug of choice for most of us & I believe it’s relatively harmless in the scheme of things. Unfortunately, pot stays in our systems far longer than the more harmful drugs like crack, meth, heroin, etc. I’m not excusing those who commit violent crimes against others but if we truly gave a damn about crime in terms of the devastating personal toll it has on us as individuals, as families, and as a society, we would lock-up most of the corporate CEOs in this country.
the true face of crime in America, the untouchable super bankers
Reflect on this if you will, try to name a single, major corporation that hasn’t been guilty of defrauding its customers/consumers at least once? Most of the corporate behemoths have been charged with fraud repeatedly yet they are still allowed to go on doing business as usual. And to rub salt in the wound, they don’t even have to admit guilt in a court of law. They are occasionally required to pay a small fine relative to the amount of profit they made from their fraudulent practices. Yet, if you or I write a “bad check,” because we’re down & out and are just trying to feed our family and we’re out of work, we’re sent to jail or today’s “debtor’s prison.”
The Land of Opportunity for Corporate Cockroaches
Speaking of prison, are you aware of how profitable cheap, prison labor has become in this land of the free? Moreover, Walmart which is touted as the largest & most profitable retail business in the world, uses mostly prison labor & a de facto slave labor force from China. I believe that most of us have become desensitized to the fact that advertising, like it’s cousin, public relations (P.R.), a powerful tool of the politicians & the business class, is the art of lying or fraud in all its malevolent glory.
the president who made a career out of fraud
So, corporations are freely & legally allowed and encouraged to lie, cheat, steal, & manipulate us. They’re allowed to poison us with their GMO foods, their contamination of our air, water, & land. They’re partners with the politicians who are their high paid whores i.e. Dick Cheney & Halliburton and use their high paid PR whores to dupe us into wars of aggression i.e. Iraq. Our poor & desperate citizens who see no way out of their misery & poverty and fall for the military propaganda, reluctantly join the military & risk their lives and sanity in the never-ending stream of wars. And when they return, often with a limb missing & serious mental issues, they are denied benefits or receive pitiful care, in terms of the quality of assistance available to them. By the way, remember our reverence for the law in this nation based on Law & Order, and our reverence for business? Then why is it that contracts we sign, like the contracts I signed with telecom corporations who defrauded me, are airtight for us and can have such significant impact on our lives as for example in causing me to be denied residence in the trailer court I applied to, but when the military invents their policy of “Stop Gap,” they are free to break the contract you sign when you join a branch of the military? A soldier, whose tour of duty is complete & their spirit is soaring with the anticipation of returning home is told, sorry, we need you & you’re going to do another tour. Some poor souls have been forced to do three or four more tours of duty than they signed up for.
the only escape from the corporate cockroaches
For these and oh so many other reasons are why I say that the business of America is fraud. It’s a sad & truly horrifying Brave New World the corporate cockroaches & their lackeys in Washington D.C. have created for us. You may believe that if you play by all their rules & zealously pay all your bills, no matter how many of them are fraudulent, that you may escape the nightmares I describe but you are only deluding yourself. How many horror stories have you heard of people who were obedient & quiet all their lives only to retire & discover their pensions had been stolen by their corporate executives, their health coverage they were guaranteed for life was wiped-out, etc.? I have been spitting in the wind most of my adult life & I know that I’m probably little more than a modern-day Don Quixote but I also believe to the marrow of my bones that it’s better to die standing than to live on my knees!
—Rob DeLoss, Newport, Oregon (January 21st, 2015)
P.S. I forgot to point out that because of my “bad credit” rating, I am now forced back into renting an apt. where I must jump through all the same unfair & outrageous requirements and if I disturb a neighbor by playing my music too loud if I’ve had a bit too much to drink for example, I face eviction. We face ever more outrageous rent prices & are de facto prisoners in our own homes. We are de facto all living in debtor’s prisons, it’s just that some have bars on the windows while others don’t. I confess though that I’m seriously considering abandoning ship i.e. leaving America for good and seeking asylum, spiritually speaking, in some other country where there is the possibility of owning my own home & peacefully retiring with fewer fascists dictating when I must shit, go to sleep, etc.
this is the truth behind the “free market” myth
Addendum
Well it appears that I did lose track of the central point I wanted to make regarding “bad credit.” I did mention this to the petty tyrant who rejected my application for becoming a resident of her luxurious (sarcasm intended) trailer court, though. Charles Ferguson pointed out in the brilliant documentary that he wrote, produced, & directed, “Inside Job,” that just a few days before the world-wide, economic collapse of 2008, the three major credit rating agencies in America gave the “Super Banks,” and many, if not most, of the hedge fund firms, the insurance giant, A.I.G., etc. triple A or at least double A ratings. The petty tyrant’s response when I told her this was “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.” So, in other words she didn’t grasp the connection or the point that I was trying to make i.e. the big boys can tank the economy of the world & cause tens of millions of people to lose their jobs, their homes, & their life savings but you’re going to reject me because I refused to pay my “bill” to a few of the telecoms who defrauded me? This is the world we live in my friends & this is what passes for justice in this corporate cockroach infested society of ours! By the way, my mom worked for AT&T for 36 years but when she died, they kept denying that she had a pension. My aunt was co-executor with me though & she refused to give up and after months of persistent phone calls, my aunt got through to an honest employee there who told us, yeah, there’s $39,000 in a pension account.
Perhaps this is Trump’s “end game” i.e. he, the corporate cockroach master will survive Armageddon?
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 & cut these precious old wise ones to the point that a mere one percent of what been living when I was a boy in the 1950s. I was recently divorced and couldn’t find a job for the life of me. My rebellious ways had always made me one of those who seems to constantly swim upstream and because of my ‘unstable’ work history and being ‘overqualified,’ I couldn’t even get a minimum wage job flipping burgers or pumping gas. Of course with the introduction of background checks, credit checks, urine tests, & the countless other ways that Big Brother Georgie had invaded our privacy, I was on who knows how many government lists of subversives, undesirables, etc. Fortunately, a distant relative I had only met once when I was in my early twenties, had remembered me in her will & I inherited close to $50,000.
But the dollar was at an all-time low thanks to Bush & Co. and all their giveaways to their rich cronies, along with the bankrupting of the federal treasury. I decided to get out and live some more of my dreams before the coming apocalypse that Bush & the fundamentalist crazies were doing everything in their power to make a reality, actually came true. I bought a nice cruising bike before I left Portland and towed a small, lightweight trailer with some basic camping gear & other necessities. I had made my way down the Oregon coast in a little over two weeks and was just taking my time. This had been my first night in the Redwoods and I had arrived late at night & too tired to even eat or pitch my tent. As I soaked in the serenity of my surroundings, the majesty of these magnificent trees filled me with a calm I haven’t known for many years. It was early spring in the year 2008 & my spirit was sorely in need of recharging. I was estranged from my son because he thought I was just a bum & couldn’t understand why I couldn’t hold a job down or didn’t care about all the material things that he & everyone else valued. The last of my “friends,” i.e. drinking buddies, had deserted me and I had fallen into such a depression that I had let myself get fat, didn’t care about my appearance, & mostly stayed in and watched TV. I did occupy my mind by watching & listening to the alternative media and I wrote on a semi-regular basis but couldn’t get any of my “friends” or acquaintances to read what I wrote. My ex-wife and I had been separated for several years and I’d occasionally take off and do a bit of traveling & try to start a new life. But time and time again, I’d fail and would end up back on her couch and feeling like a loser. I was determined that this time, come hell or high water, I was not going to return and was going to succeed in starting a new life. A life where I could regain my self-respect & find a sense of purpose again.
As these thoughts were flooding through my mind once again, it dawned on me that I should celebrate being back in perhaps my favorite spot on earth i.e. the Redwoods. I had some good pot that I brought with me so I got out my pipe & put enough pot in for three or four good hits and lit up. Oh yeah, that was just what the doctor ordered. I laid back against my backpack and watched the mist rise among the gentle giants, and marveled at the giant ferns & thick moss everywhere. All of a sudden, I heard a faint sound. It sounded sort of like chanting of some sort. I decided to investigate as to what or who was making these hauntingly beautiful sounds. I walked perhaps 300 yards and just as I came out of a thicket of ferns, my eyes beheld one of the most gorgeous sights they have ever known.
Maybe twenty feet or so in front of me, sat a completely nude young woman with her legs crossed & her eyes closed as she chanted the Buddhist mantra of Nam-Myo-Ho-K-Ringe-Kho. She had a healthy, golden tan and appeared to be Hispanic or Native American with an exotic quality in her high cheekbones and eyes.
Karina, goddess of nature
She must have sensed or heard me because her eyes opened but there was no alarm or fear in her eyes, just a warm smile that melted my soul instantly. Her smile was wide and revealed a mouthful of pearly-white teeth. Her hair was thick and wavy & hung down covering her luscious breasts. I must’ve stood there like the village idiot with my mouth open and my eyes bulging for several moments because she chuckled and said “hi, are you alright?” I eventually managed to stutter “uh, yeah?” And as I stood there paralyzed by the beauty of this princess of the forest, she stood up and walked up to me. She was somewhere around 5’7” and 120 lbs. When she got to within a couple of feet of me, I could see her eyes were brown and I was transfixed. I thought I surely must be dreaming. But when she leaned in and gave me a light kiss on my lips and then said “welcome,” I knew she was real. My heart must have been beating a thousand miles an hour and I instantly had an erection that I feared was going to bust right through my jeans. She noticed the bulge in my pants and blushed slightly with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. I finally managed to say “hello, my name is Rob. Sorry for disturbing you but I heard your chanting and was curious.” She responded “oh, no worries, I was just doing my daily meditation. My name is Karina.” I said, “that’s a beautiful name.” Then in an instant, she gently took me by the hand and said “I want to show you something,” and led me through the forest for several hundred yards until we came upon a secluded little pond fed by a narrow river and surrounded with giant ferns and lush vegetation.
She let go of my hand and graciously strolled into the middle of the pond and about waist high in the water & her eyes said come join me. I immediately peeled-off my clothes and rushed into the pond with this delightful water nymph. As I neared Karina, she opened her arms to welcome me in & I wrapped my arms around her as in a bear hug. We kissed passionately and fell under the water briefly. I picked her up and carried her in my arms to a thick patch of grass beside the pond and we made love for hours losing all track of time and all inhibitions. We alternated between mad, violent thrusts and slow, tender moments of just laying in each others’ embrace. We slowly explored each other’s bodies with the innocent curiosity of a young child just discovering the world. Eventually we fell asleep in each other’s arms and I slept like a contented little cherub and had never known such bliss! When I awoke a few hours later, my head was in Karina’s lap and she was stroking my hair and humming a strange sort of lullaby. I asked her what she was humming and she replied “it’s an ancient song of the druids.” I then said “it’s strangely dark yet also beautiful,” and she gave me a knowing smile. “Tell me all about you. Who are you? Where do you come from?” Karina again smiled and responded with “there will be plenty of time for that later. I am a child of the flowers and the forest. I was sent here to do my part to help protect the wise, old ones whom the sick ones are killing. A revolution has begun and my part is to guide all those who come here, on to their path. I used to live in Berkeley until I met one of the masters who helped me find my path.” Before I could open my mouth, she leaned over and kissed me more deeply than I have ever been kissed in my life & we again made wild, crazy, beautiful love for hours. And again, I dozed off but when I awoke this time, she was gone.
At first I thought, she probably went to get her clothes and will return shortly. I got dressed and waited for what seemed like an eternity but she never returned. I began to question my sanity and wondered if it had all been a dream? I retraced our steps back to where I had first seen Karina chanting and she wasn’t there either so I continued on to where my bike and sleeping bag were. Laying on top of my sleeping bag was a piece of paper folded in half with a rock on top of it. I anxiously opened the note and it simply read, “Rob, you are a very special man & you have an important part to play in our revolution. Our paths will cross again. I hope you will persevere. You are a divine lover.” That was it, no clue as to where she had gone or how I could find her. My heart sank and so did my spirit. Finally I had met the love of my life after having been alone & lonely for so many years and she disappears like a fairy tale princess into the mist. It had been a long & exhausting day if you know what I mean, so I made myself a gigantic sandwich & devoured it. It was getting dark so I figured there was no point in moving on until the next morning. I didn’t feel like getting rained on again though so I pitched my pup tent before it was totally dark. I started a small fire and set up my CD player with the lightweight external speakers & put on a Joni Mitchell CD. I had one last bottle of wine and smoked a couple bowls of pot as I savored my wine. Joni’s lyrics & plaintive voice from her album “Blue,” struck the chords of my heart & were very appropriate considering I had just lost such a lovely dream. As I was wallowing in self-pity & slowly getting stoned, a thought came to me “wait a minute! She said she came from Berkeley. Maybe if I go there, I can find someone who knows her and can tell me how to find her?” And with that, I was back on Mount Olympus and confident that I would find my lady again but this time I wouldn’t let her go. I could hardly sleep with all the anticipation in my heart and was impatient for the sun to rise so I could be on my way.
That night I had one of the best dreams I’ve had in ages. I dreamt that I found Karina again and that we built a cabin in the Redwoods overlooking the Pacific Ocean and spent our days wandering around the forest naked, laughing, dancing, getting stoned, & in a state of constant bliss with no worries whatsoever. I awoke before dawn and quickly packed my tent and ate a bagel & an apple and was on my way as the sun was rising. I headed for Eureka and made good time. I was riding on the wings of love and felt like I was twenty years old again. I made my way through Fortuna, Garberville, & the various other little hamlets I had hitch-hiked through so many times over the years. If I was somewhat near a town I had fond memories of from earlier days & it was nearing dark, I’d go to one of the bars I remembered. The locals must’ve thought me a nut case or something because I usually sat alone, smiling to myself, & played a lot of old sixties music and would occassionally get up and dance to a song that I particularly liked. I made good time getting to the San Francisco area and got into Sausalito late on a Sunday nite. I spent the night at the ferry station and slept on a bench with my bike & gear, locked to the bench I was sleeping on. I caught the first ferry to Richmond the next morning and then rode my bike down San Pablo Ave. to Berkeley in search of a youth hostel to stay at. It took a little doing i.e. searching and asking around but I found a great hostel that had a place to store my bike and free Internet access. It was around noon and I was famished so I decided to treat myself to a good meal before beginning my search for the mysterious Karina. I stumbled across a Mexican restaurant that looked promising and went in. I sat down at a booth and a lovely, young Hispanic woman waited on me. I think she was trying to get a rise out of me because she kept leaning over towards me and because she was wearing a very low-cut blouse, her tits just about fell out each time she leaned over. Ah, lust for life! I had a delicious meal of huevos rancheros & left a generous tip for the sexy waitress and told her thanks for the view as I was leaving. She gave me a big smile & said “gracias.”
While I was waiting for my huevos rancheros, I had asked the cutie serving me if I could borrow their Yellow Pages and made up a list of every bar, cafe, & nightclub in Berkeley. I had a map of Berkeley that the hostel provided in their lobby and mapped out the most logical route to pursue my Indian princess. Each bar or cafe that I would go into, I’d order a beer, a cup of coffee, or juice and would just observe the staff for awhile & try to determine who’d be the best ones to ask about Karina. I’d start out by saying “excuse me but I was hoping that you might be able to help me find a friend of mine? She’s about 5’7″, 120 lbs, long, wavy brunette hair down past her knees, & she has an exotic kind of look. I’m not sure but she could be Hispanic or maybe Native American? Her name is Karina.” I must’ve hit a dozen bars & cafes but no one knew her. With each “sorry,” my spirits sank a bit further. It was getting late & I was tired so I headed back to the youth hostel and went straight to bed. I awoke early the next morning and was still feeling a little depressed and beginning to think that I was on a fool’s errand & that the chances of finding Karina like this were very slim. I went back to the Mexican restaurant thinking that the sight of that waitresses’ lovely breasts would pick my spirits up a bit but of course, she wasn’t working. Instead, an old guy with a limp waited on me but he was pleasant. I had a huge breakfast burrito this time and while eating it, I thought I’d take a ride down to the Berkeley marina where I had spent so much time when I was here a year ago.
The last time I was in Berkeley, I was living out of my van. It wasn’t too bad a life except for the loneliness. I had a 1983 Ford Econoline van with a box spring & mattress in it. I’d cook one hot meal a day on a hibachi & kept my perishable food in a large ice chest. I had a good assortment of books & music CDs which I played on a boom box. I also kept my big tent & camping gear with me in case I found a spot where I could set up camp for awhile. I was working temp jobs through Labor Ready that slave-driving rip-off joint that treats you like shit. Sometimes I felt like king of the road with the world at my feet & reveled in that sense of freedom because I could pick up and go wherever I wanted & whenever I wanted. But at other times, I felt so alone & isolated. I spent my evenings after getting off work, at the Berkeley marina drinking beer and watching the bay. My time in Berkeley came to an abrupt end though when I got a D.U.I. on Friday, October 13th 2006. I was tired of feeling so lonely and after downing several beers, went out nightclubbing. I spent six days in the lovely Santa Rita jail which was really more a prison and quite an experience. One day while I was in the cell outside the courtroom waiting to go before the judge, several young black gang-bangers got into a serious religious conversation & after about half an hour of being silent, I couldn’t resist so I raised my hand and the young guys cracked up. There were a couple of older black guys about my age but I was the only white guy and I sort of served as mediator because I would politely intervene at times & point out that so and so hadn’t had a chance to speak his mind. The gang bangers dealt drugs for a living and spoke of their guns & the violence of their lives. I think they tripped on me because I was sincere, polite, & respectful and they liked what I had to say. It was lucky for me that I met these young dudes because we were released around 2 in the morning and we were out in the boondocks & they took me under their wings and helped me to get to the BART station so I could get back to Berkeley. They warned me that downtown Oakland was no place for me even in broad daylight and especially not in the middle of the night. When we went our separate ways, a couple of them gave me a brief hug & called me O.G. I was flattered and thankful.
Okay, back to the present. I rode my bike the short couple of miles down to the marina and had left my trailer back at the hostel like I had the day before. I sat down at the picnic table where I had spent many an evening the year before. I smoked a few bowls to get my head right and plot my plan of attack for the day. Somewhere around the third bowl, it came to me like a bolt of lightning, Karina was obviously an intelligent woman and where do intelligent people like to hang-out? Bookstores! And I remembered the old guy who had given me a ride when I was hitch-hiking from Berkeley south towards L.A. last March. He was driving a van that said Cody’s Books on the side of it & we had a great conversation about the Bushwhacker president and all his cuts to social welfare programs. I wanted to ask him if he worked at Cody’s Books or if he owned it but I thought it’d be impolite so I didn’t. I decided that I’d make Cody’s Books the first bookstore I’d check out in my search for my lovely lady. I found Cody’s by looking in a phone book in a gas station phone booth and when I walked through the front door, there was a checkout stand with a young guy behind the counter. I described the guy who had given me the ride several months earlier and the young guy said “oh, that’s Fred, him & his wife are the owners but they won’t be in today, but they’ll be here for sure first thing tomorrow morning.” I thanked him & decided to browse a bit. As I was wandering around, I noticed a wall covered with pictures of famous writers who had given talks here at Cody’s.
Anniversary of the bombing of Cody’s Book store
The wall was a virtual who’s who of the American Left. Here are a few of the author’s pictures who caught my attention: Michael Parenti; Alice Walker; Allen Ginsberg; President Bill Clinton; George Lakoff; Jane Fonda; Ken Kesey; Kurt Vonnegut; Norman Mailer; Studs Terkel; & Ralph Nader to name just a few of the dozens of celebrities hanging on this auspicious wall of fame. As I stood there gazing at the pictures, it dawned on me that this bookstore had to be a sort of intellectual Mecca and Karina had to have been a regular here if she’s part of an underground revolution. A feeling of impending success was growing in me & I couldn’t wait for tomorrow to be here. I was so confident that I was going to find Karina once I spoke to Fred the next day that I decided to take the rest of the day off & went into the Acme Bar, a place I had stumbled upon when I used to live in my van and hang out at the marina. When I was here last March, I had an interesting night in the Acme. I was on foot and when I walked in there were no other customers. I leaned my big backpack & two smaller packs against a wall in the corner and ordered a cheap beer. The bartender was a young gal with rings, piercings, & tatoos all over. She was a little heavy set and had bright red dyed hair & a great personality. She asked me where I was from & where I was headed. I told her that I’d just gotten off the Amtrak train from Portland and was hoping to find a cheap place to stay because I’d like to live in Berkeley for awhile & she said that she’d ask around & might know of a place where I could squat. She said there’s a website run by squatters and that it was a growing movement. People slowly filtered in and I continued drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. I wasn’t quite sure if it was a gay bar or not but got a strange kind of feeling. Nobody hassled me and if it was a gay bar, it was one of the most low-key gay bars I’ve ever been in. A couple of bar stools down from me was a guy about my age & his friend who I’m pretty sure was female but she had a goatee. After awhile, the guy asked me my name, and I said “Rob.” He said, “Hah! I got you beat. My name is Ed and is only two letters and it ends a lot of words.” I had observed him with other customers for a few hours & he seemed to revel in being somewhat of a smart-ass so I couldn’t resist when he made the last comment, “yeah, Ed like in fuck-ED!” He gave me a quizzical look & I instantly apologized but his friend laughed and said “that’s a good one.” Ed smiled at me and knew that I was just joking and didn’t seem to be offended. In fact, he insisted on buying me a drink. I met several characters that night and when I finally decided that I had better be on my way because I didn’t even know where I was going to crash for the night & the bartender didn’t have any luck in coming up with an idea of where I could stay. I walked several blocks and it was a pain in the ass being drunk and having to carry three packs. I finally spotted an elementary school and was just about to hop over a fence figuring I’d sleep on the playground and get up early before the kids started arriving. All of a sudden, a young, good-looking black gal walked up to me and asked me what I was doing and I figured there was no point lying so I told her. An older black guy joined us and when I said that I was looking for a place to crash for the night, he said, “you can stay at my place for $20.” I hesitated for a bit and figured that I’d take a gamble & since they already knew what I was up to, if they were going to rob me, they’d know where I was. We walked a few blocks and while we were walking, the gal asked me if I wanted to have sex with her for $60 I believe? I politely told her I would but I was almost completely broke and that’s why I countered the guy’s price with an offer of $10 for the night. The gal went off another way and when we arrived at the guy’s house, he told me I had to be very quiet. We went down to a basement & he turned on a light that revealed a simple cot next to a pile of dirty clothes and a washer and dryer. He told me that I had to leave early before anyone was up. I surmised that this was his parents’ house and he and the gal were tweekers grabbing a buck wherever & however they could to support their habits. The guy left and I was feeling very nervous because I thought he might try to creep in when I was sleeping to steal whatever he could. And I had over $900 on me that Jeri had just wired me so I could get my van out of impound from the D.U.I. I had just gotten. I took my wallet out and buried it under the pile of dirty clothes figuring that’d be the last place he’d look if he did try to rip me off. A few hours later I woke up having to pee desperately and couldn’t find the light switch but remembered the general location of the washer & dryer so I felt my way over to them & raised the lid of what must’ve been the washer and did my business in it. I dozed off and on and didn’t sleep well at all because of the worrying. I awoke just before dawn and slipped quietly out and felt better the farther
away I got from that basement. What a life I sometimes lead!
The Love of My Life & my guardian angel!
It was a rather uneventful evening at the Acme Bar but I was in top spirits and returned to the hostel early to get a good night’s sleep in anticipation of tomorrow’s meeting with Fred of Cody’s Books. I woke up early and went for a ride down around the marina. After my bike ride, it was still too early for Cody’s to be open so I went for some breakfast at the Mexican restaurant I went to on my first day here. And low & behold, the sexy senorita was working and gave me a big smile when I walked in. I ordered Huevos Rancheros and as I was eating, the waitress who had just asked me if there was anything else I needed & was walking away, dropped some silverware & when she bent over to pick it up, because she was wearing a short skirt, I was treated to a full view of her lovely ass & she wasn’t wearing any panties. I almost choked on the mouthful of food I was chewing & she turned around and gave me a wink. When this little vixen placed my check on my table, she also gave me a slip of paper with her name & number on it and whispered, “call me if you’d like to go out dancing or for a drink.” I blushed and said “thank you, great food & an even greater view. You certainly made my day!” She just laughed & walked away with a provacative sway of the hips. I slowly regained my composure and tucked her number into my wallet and headed off on my bike for Cody’s. I got to Cody’s just as they were opening up and I recognized that it was Fred, the guy who had picked me up when I was hitch-hiking, who was unlocking the door and getting things ready for another day of business. I locked my bike up to a nearby tree and walked in with my heart pounding in the hope that I was going to get lucky. Fred was unpacking some boxes on a table and I walked up to him and said “excuse me but I believe you gave me a ride last year when I was hitching on the ramp near the marina & headed for San Francisco?” Fred paused for a moment as he looked me over and then he said “your face does look vaguely familiar.” I reminded him of our conversation about Bush and all the cuts he’d made to every social welfare program he could get his hands on & I told him that he’d given me a bottle of water when I got out of the company van & that he’d let me out right around the corner from the police department. Fred remarked “oh yeah, you were heading south to L.A. if I recall?” I answered, “yeah and the real reason that I came in to talk to you is because I met this beautiful woman about a week ago up in the Redwoods on the coast north of Eureka. She said her name is Karina and she’s about 5’7″ & 120 lbs., long brown hair, and she sort of looks Native American or Hispanic.” Fred took a good, long look at me as if he was trying to size me up and finally asked “so what makes you think I might know this gal?”
My heart dropped into my stomach as I fumbled for an answer & at last I said, “well, she mentioned that she was from Berkeley and something she said to me in a note she left & in the brief conversation we had, made me realize that she’s obviously a very intelligent person & I figured that since your bookstore is famous for its Left wing or progressive atmosphere, this would be the kind of place a woman like her would frequent?” Fred’s demeanor all of a sudden became somewhat furtive or suspicious like and he said in a low voice, “what exactly did she say to you?” I responded “she said that she was a child of the flowers & the forest and was sent there to do her part to help protect the wise, old ones whom the sick ones are killing. A revolution has begun and her part is to guide all those who come there, on to their path. She also said that she used to live in Berkeley until she met one of the masters who helped her find her path. And in the note she left me, she said I was a very special man and have an important part to play in the revolution. In addition, she said that our paths would cross again & I hope you will persevere.” When I finished saying this, Fred’s face broke out in a big smile and still whispering, he said “welcome my friend, you have done well & have taken the first step necessary for what lies before you. It’s not safe to speak here though so I want you to meet me at this address one week from today at this time of day & I’ll direct you to where you next must go.” My head was swimming with questions & I blurted “but wait, what about Karina? When can I see her? Where am I suppose to go next?” Fred smiled again & gave me a fatherly look & tone “I know, you’re dying to see Karina, it’s natural. She has that affect on most people but you have to be patient and follow my directions to the letter and it’s critical that you memorize that address I just gave you & destroy it. I’ll see you in one week.” I felt both frustrated & elated at the same time but accepted that I had no choice but to do as Fred instructed & reluctantly left. As I was unlocking my bike, I thought, “great, what am I going to do for a week?” I decided to mull this all over down at the marina so I picked up a six-pak of Guinness and rode down to the marina & my picnic table. After openning my first bottle of stout, I filled my pipe and once again visited the Elysium Fields of euphoria. I had my CD player and speakers in my backpack along with a fair selection of my CDs and put on Joan Baez’s album “Diamonds & Rust.” Ever since I had met Karina, my head & heart were in a swirl of emotions, dreams, & an enticing mystery that left me feeling befuddled. I pulled out the address that Fred had given me again & read “10 Birdview Lane, Sausalito.” I had repeated it so many times in my mind that it had become a sort of mantra. I felt confident that I had it memorized so when I lit my next bowl, I burned the paper Fred had given me. It was a bright, sunny day and I enjoyed the beer buzz along with the pot high & my music. It was around three in the afternoon when I remembered that sexy Hispanic waitress who had given me her phone number. Her name was Theresa & just thinking of that lovely ass when she bent over, gave me a hard-on. I thought, what the hell, I have a week to kill and God knows how long before I see Karina. Besides, it’s not like we’re married or are a couple and wasn’t San Francisco & the flower children the center of free love? I knew I was rationalizing but I was lonely and had too much time on my hands so I called Theresa on my cell phone.
Theresa answered with “hola!” I said, “hi, I’m the guy who had breakfast in the restaurant you work at this morning and you gave me your phone number.” She giggled and said “oh, I thought you were never going to call, it’s been six hours! What are you doing? Where are you?” I laughed a deep belly laugh and told her that I was down at the marina and just learned that I had a week to kill before I had to leave town and thought I’d give her a call. Theresa let out a squeal of delight and insisted that I stay right where I was because she’d be off work in half an hour and would come right over. I asked her if she’d mind picking up some beer and I’d pay her when she got here. She admonished me “don’t worry about it sweetie, I’m so happy you called. What kind of beer do you like?” I replied that almost anything was fine with me, get whatever kind you like to drink. I’ll see you in awhile sexy.” And we hung up. I thought, well, this is indeed my lucky day. I have gotten one step closer to finding my lovely Karina & this femme fatale, Theresa, appears to be very interested in hooking up. I smoked another couple of bowls and laid down on the grass and felt the gentle breeze off the water blow across my face and watched the sea gulls coast high above me. I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I knew, I heard Theresa’s seductive voice and openned my eyes to discover her standing over me with that same skirt she had on this morning and still without panties. What a beautiful sight to wake up to! I had felt my life was cursed for so many years with all the bad luck I’d had that I had a really hard time understanding how things could be going so great for me now. This thought quickly vanished because in a instant, Theresa had plopped down next to me & in a flash was lying on top of me smiling with those big, beautiful Hispanic eyes that have always melted me since my high school sweetheart who was from Ecuador. We started kissing and I don’t think we stopped kissing for over an hour before we came up for a breath. Finally I said “hey, where’s that beer?” Theresa chuckled and said, “keep your pants on, well, at least for now.” And with that she got up and walked over to a little Toyota pickup truck and returned with a six pack of Heineken. As we were enjoying our beers, Theresa asked me where I was staying and I told her that I was staying at a hostel on San Pablo Ave. She then offered “well, we’ll have to do something about that. You know what? I’m house-sitting for this rich family that are in Europe for a month and I’d love it if you would come and stay with me to keep me company. You’ll love it and they have a fantastic pool like you’ve never seen, half of it is outdoors and half of it is indoors.” I was probably grinning from ear to ear and asked “why are you so good to me? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t understand what you see in me because I am not exactly Brad Pitt and we just met?” Theresa laughed and replied, “you remind me of my first boyfriend who was the love of my life & you have warm eyes. You know what they say about the eyes?” I said “no, what do they say about the eyes?” She quickly declared “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” and I feel you are a good soul.” And lest we forget the horrors of the Vietnam war, which I came very close to being just another casualty of, watch this video;
Theresa, la senorita mas fina! And reflect on this young woman’s pain;(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)
Well, my mom didn’t raise no fool so I said, “I’d love to spend some time with you la senorita muy bonita.” Theresa clapped her hands with joy like a little girl openning her presents on Christmas morning, and with that we loaded my bike in the back of her truck and then drove to the hostel where I collected my things. The house Theresa was house-sitting for was up on a hill overlooking the bay and had an awesome view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had to be over 5,000 square feet and she was right, I had never seen such a gorgeous pool and boy was it inviting. We were standing next to the pool & the next thing I knew, Theresa had given me a friendly push and I was in the pool with all my clothes on and my shoes. I yelled “you’re going to pay for that!” She just laughed and started a slow strip tease and jumped in. Wow! What a voluptuous little body. Theresa was about 5’2″ and 130 lbs. with pitch black hair that hung in ringlets down just past her shoulders and her breasts were like luscious fruit hanging from a tree that were absolutely mouth watering. She must have been something like 38 double d. She swam over to me and started helping me out of my clothes as we were passionately kissing. We made love right in the pool and afterwards Theresa led me to the guest bedroom she was sleeping in & we both fell asleep in each other’s arms. I must admit that for some reason I did feel a twinge of guilt for being with Theresa and as I was making love with Theresa, Karina kept popping into my thoughts. I awoke late at night & went in search of some food because I was famished. I found the kitchen and the refrigerator and was snooping around to see what I could find when all of a sudden those warm breasts of Theresa’s were pressed up against my back & I said “hello beautiful.” Theresa quipped “why thank you kind sir, can I help you find something?” “Why yes, I’m starved and was just looking for a quick bite,” and the next thing I knew, she bit my butt. “Hey, what are you a vampire?” She laughed and said “you said you wanted a quick bite.” I turned around and lifted her in my arms to where her breasts were level with my mouth and suckled at those mounds of joy like a newborn babe. Theresa groaned soft & low with contentment & when I set her back down on the floor, she said “okay, now it’s your turn,” and led me to a gigantic easy chair in a den right off the kitchen & had me sit down in the chair and lean back. And then this red-hot Latina went down on me like I’ve never known before & I was in pure ecstacy. When I was totally spent, my lovely lover kissed me deeply and said, “you just relax honey & I’ll whip up something for us to eat.” She and I were both butt naked and it felt so good and natural & I didn’t feel self-conscious one bit even though I was at least 30 lbs. overweight. Before I knew it, she had returned with an ice-cold beer for me & then hurried back to the kitchen. I sure loved watching her walk away from me because that ass of hers was a work of art. She yelled from the kitchen for me to help myself to the stereo system or the T.V. or whatever I felt like doing. I found the remote for the stereo system and it took me sometime to figure out how to even turn it on but I discovered a CD player which you could program to play random songs from whatever genre or combination of genres of music you wanted. I selected a bunch of particularly romantic songs I thought Theresa might like.
my foxy, little Latina Betty Crocker!
(this is Chapter 1 of my novel which is over 2,000 pgs. and on-going; contact me if you’d like to read more)
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 believe him yet the majority of them most likely would dismiss my argument here? Okay, for those of you who are still able & willing to read an essay that’ll require 15 minutes of your time, here’s an overview of the subject for you.
It Can’t Happen Here, Right???
Most people are aware of the fact that Freud was the father of modern psychology but did you know that his nephew, Edward Bernays, was the father of the public relations industry or as we usually refer to it, the PR industry? There’s an old saying, “Advertising is what you pay for & Publicity is what you pray for.” Well Bernays soon became the darling of New York’s elite circle of businessmen because of his skillful use of his uncle’s insights into human behavior in his P.R. campaigns for many, if not most of the major corporations of his time. (by-the-way, Bernays published a book in 1928, its title was “Propaganda.”)
And to give you an example of just how pernicious & powerful the P.R. industry became, let’s take a look at how he helped to make it acceptable for women to smoke cigarettes. Before this PR assault on America, it was considered a social taboo for women to smoke;
After WWI, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to encourage women to start smoking. While men smoked cigarettes, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. Bernays staged a dramatic public display of women smoking during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. He then told the press to expect that women suffragists would light up “torches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. Like the “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads, this campaign commodified women’s progress and desire to be considered equal to men
Evidently, Bernays had stumbled upon the golden formula that generated millions in profits for the corporate cockroach class i.e. employing psychological appeals in their advertising & P.R. campaigns. By manipulating peoples’ fears & desires, corporations could sell their products that people didn’t need & condition them to want or desire the products which would serve as symbols of their elevated class status & thereby enhance their self-image. Need I illustrate? Look at all the car ads that show beautiful women flocking around a guy in a fancy sports car for example.
tell me again how different we are from Russia?
Well, as the 20th century rolled on, so did the power of corporations until the point we’re at today where these corporations are more powerful (in terms of wealth & influence) than many nations;
Walmart
Exxon Mobil
Royal Dutch Shell
Apple
Samsung
Amazon
Microsoft
Nestle
Google
And this is just a partial list. Let this sink in for a minute if you will? Private corporations so rich & powerful that they hire armies of lobbyists to seduce politicians into writing legislation that further increases their profits, protects them from lawsuits, provides them with millions & billions in tax subsidies for research & development, allows them to use the public infrastructure (highways, bridges, ports, airports, etc.) to conduct their business and most of these behemoth corporations pay little to no taxes—some even get back millions & billions in their tax returns.
What did our soldiers die for???
If this doesn’t morally outrage you, you are either a member of the corporate cockroach class or are a sociopathic narcissist like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. By-the-way, Donny is a great admirer of authoritarians & dictators in case you haven’t noticed; (Saddam Hussein, Putin, Kim Jong Un of N. Korea, Mussolini, Gadhafi, 1980s Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping of China, Duterte of the Philippines, President Erdogan of Turkey, Egyptian President el-Sisi, the Saudis, & Brazil’s new president, Boisonaro. And Trump not only admires these murderous authoritarians & dictators, he envies them & wishes he could be America’s authoritarian like the role he played on The Apprentice “reality” T.V. program. Note; Trump insisted that as part of his contract with the producers of that absurd show that every time his name was mentioned on the show, they had to also say that he was a billionaire. Talk about manipulating his public image, are you beginning to take my point?
So this is defending freedom & democracy?
Moreover, speaking of Trump’s admiration of Mussolini, some have credited Mussolini with saying;
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
I know how die-hard most of Trump’s “base” is but I am a proudly stubborn (determination undisciplined) Irishman & I don’t give up easily either so here’s a sampling of the mountain of evidence proving Trump a malignant, greedy, megalomaniac:
*Trump consistently attacks peoples’ characters when he can’t refute their argument
*he’s a non-stop braggart i.e. I’m the smartest, I’m the best, I’m the greatest negotiator, etc. etc. etc.
*his biggest lie is his wealth & that’s why he will never reveal his tax returns
*he’s intentionally vague so he can deny having said what he’s said because his words are often open to a variety of interpretations
*he’s been exaggerating his wealth, his popularity, his skills, etc. his entire life
*he minimizes others so he can exaggerate his own significance
*he is fond of making false equivalences
*he likes to use the lesser of two evils argument (which is bogus)
*repetition ad nauseam is one of his favorite deceptive tactics i.e. I am the most famous president ever, the most successful real estate developer in New York City, etc. etc. etc.
*Scapegoating was his lead-off in his presidential campaign i.e. Mexicans are rapists, murderers, etc. & he blames everyone except himself for everything that doesn’t go his way
*Emotional Appeals—a favorite tactic used by dictators throughout history i.e. Hitler’s constant claim that the Jews were behind all of Germany’s problems (using fear, guilt, & calls for loyalty to him)
*Bandwagon—everyone else is doing it, so why not me or we
*Black & White/Either-Or; it’s us against the democrats
Burden of Proof—trying to turn the tables & demand his accusers prove their credibility rather than answer a question
*false flattery—try to flatter your opponent to keep them from attacking you
*Incredulity—I am offended that you would even ask me such a question
*labeling—any journalist who criticizes him or disagrees with him is with the “fake press”
*Ridicule/Mocking—his shameful mocking of handicapped guy during one of his rallies
*slippery slope—if we don’t stop the illegal immigrants, we’ll soon be overrun by terrorists, etc.
*Dehumanizing—something Trump has a particular talent for especially when it comes to anyone who dares to say a bad word about him
*Slogans—replacement for serious thought i.e. America, love it or leave it
I could easily provide you with hundreds if not thousands of examples of Trump’s manipulative techniques/tactics but I realize that no matter how much proof I provide, Trump supporters aren’t open to logic or rational thought but are ruled by their passions & Trump is a master at pushing peoples’ emotional buttons in order to win them over. So, why should I waste my time talking to the willfully ignorant or rather trying to persuade them to reflect & trust their own judgment rather than the circus master Trump the Vile?
Trump as Jim Jones & the kind of loyalty Trump expects
I am providing a public service that some may seriously consider or may pass it on to some of those who haven’t drunk the Jim Jones Kool Aid yet, and that is my only solace. And in that spirit, here are the eight signs of malignant narcissism, and if you dare, see if any of them are accurate reflections of Donald the psychopathic narcissist:
Sense of entitlement
Lack of conscience and empathy
Sadistic streak
Egocentrism
Grandiosity (I am the greatest, smartest, richest, etc.)
Paranoia (it’s a witch hunt by the democrats)
Manipulative nature
They project their bad behavior onto others
In conclusion and to prove that this isn’t merely a one-sided attack on “republicans,” Obama bears a large part of the responsibility for Trump becoming president. In fact, Obama was so good at his “bait & switch” tactic that he used on us to persuade us that he was going to be the champion of “Hope & Change,” that his campaign for his first term as president won two awards at the Cannes Festival for Advertising:
“The campaign that drove Barack Obama to victory in the US presidential election has claimed two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards.
The campaign, submitted by Obama for America, has been hailed as a masterful combination of new media, door-to-door and community grass roots campaigning with a clever tactical use of traditional TV advertising.
The campaign won two grands prix in the Titanium and Integrated Lions categories.”
Yep! Obama swore up & down and everywhere he went that he was going to enact real changes, be the transparent president, etc. and what did he do within the first few weeks of his presidency? He appointed several of the top Wall St. wolves to the most powerful positions regarding our national economy i.e. Summers, Geitner, Bernanke, etc. And right then & there I knew I had been suckered just like the millions of other Americans. I detested all the racial attacks on him & Trump barely concealed his own racist campaign against Obama with his “birther” issue which he beat the drums for ad nauseam. But Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Wall St. culprits, the “Super Bankers” who were “Too Big to Fail & Too Big to Jail,” his war on Whistleblowers, etc. etc. etc. only fanned the flames of anger in America which should rightfully be directed at the corporate cockroach class because the politicians are merely the willing tools of these creatures who have no loyalty to America whatsoever. Look into how Obama sold out the residents of Flint with stunt pretending the water was safe to drink. Obama the Oreo President!
And Trump with his appeal to peoples’ fears and hate using his racism, bigotry, & the other techniques I listed above, managed to slink into the oval office. I recently permanently deleted my Facebook account for several reasons but a significant factor was that every time I criticized Obama, many so-called Progressives came unglued and practically accused me of being a. troll for Trump. Yep! A sad reflection of the myopia on the Left that just like the so-called conservatives who are blind to the crimes of their party, are willfully blind to the crimes & betrayals of the democratic party.
Lastly, what should really worry us all is what my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky has been warning us about for quite some time now i.e. the catastrophic, perhaps already irreversible destruction of our climate or environment. Exxon Mobil & several of the other oil & natural gas conglomerates have spent millions, perhaps billions pushing their fake news sowing the seeds of doubt about climate change. Of course, Donald Duck is doing his part by claiming it’s all an elaborate Chinese hoax. In this Alice in Wonderland World where Trump is the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, and can start a nuclear war in a childish fit which he is notorious for, we should all be quaking in our boots!
May we persevere!
Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA 1/28/19
P.S. It must be a sign of old age but I forgot some juicy tidbits regarding Trump that I want to include. Trump’s supposed War against the “Fake News Media” would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive of a vital institution in any democracy. Moreover, where would Trump be if it weren’t for all the free media coverage he received in his campaign for the presidency—some estimate over $5 billion while Bernie got a tiny fraction of coverage. Trump learned from his slimy mentor, Roy Cohn, that any media attention i.e. publicity is good whether it’s scandalous or not because it keeps you in the public eye. Cohn’s “wisdom” which Trump assimilated into his very DNA was “to always hit back & never apologize.” You see, Trump’s “brand” is his most prized possession because he sells his brand i.e. logo, all around the world & people pay him millions to use his logo. Sadly, far too many Trump supporters believe that everything that has Trump’s name on it, is owned by him. And once again we witness just how destructive advertising & public relations can be.
Addendum
Oh yeah, another minor little detail i.e. our government launches P.R. campaigns to “motivate” us to go into wars. The Iraq War is one of the most blatant campaigns of lies to date. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al spent weeks & months going on the Sunday morning talk shows warning us what a threat to our freedom & democracy the Iraqis were, how they had weapons of mass destruction, etc. and it was all proven to be a grand conspiracy of lies afterwards but not a single one of these war criminals was held accountable. In fact, Cheney got rich off the war because his stock in Halliburton went through the roof because they just “coincidentally” were awarded the lion’s shares of the contracts for supplying our troops & rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure but neglected to do most of what they got paid for. And oh yeah, billions of dollars went missing, but what the hell? Moreover, the New York Times, the supposed bastion of liberal thought in America, beat the war drums every bit as loudly as FOX “News.” So, to some extent, Trump is right about the fake news of several of our “news outlets” but he clearly uses this label in his pathetic attempts to silence all his critics. Let’s see, officially we lost 4,486 military personnel & 32,226 casualties but if you dig deeper you’ll discover that our casualties are much closer to half a million if you count PTSD, depression, heart & breathing problems, etc. etc. etc.
And can you tell me again why we’ve been in Afghanistan now longer than any other war in U.S. history? Well, as Calvin Coolidge said, “the business of America is business.” Or to put it more bluntly, Welcome to Amerika, where the Corporate Cockroaches Rule!
…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 Gore Vidal called it. These wars are about stealing the resources of other nations & these corporations pay no taxes & are subsidized by us, the taxpayers. But if we don’t pay our taxes, we are sent to prison, a thriving industry in today’s America. This is all part & parcel of how the corporate cockroaches maintain their control or power over us.
Why do I call them “corporate cockroaches?” Because like cockroaches, these human vermin hide in the dark & run away when we turn the spotlight on them. And like cockroaches, they spread disease but the disease they spread is fear & hate. Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating? Then how else do you explain the utter depravity of the Nazis? Or that virus of hatred so virulent that inspired their ingenious methods of killing, torturing, maiming, experimenting, etc. on Jews, intellectuals, artists, homosexuals, gypsies, etc.
Trump distracts while McConnell & Ryan destroy our Democracy
Orwell said; “Those who control the present control the past & those who control the past control the future.” Trump is the master distractor, he has done this all his life in business & now he’s doing it for the corporate cockroach masters hiding in the shadows.
We have become Fortress America & perhaps Trump’s “wall,” isn’t so much about keeping the oppressed out as it is about keeping our oppressed trapped & controlling us from within? Manufacturing has all but completely abandoned America & we have lost most of our value as “consumers,” so about the only way they can make money off us now is to lock us up.
A common thread amongst all authoritarians, tyrants, & dictators is their goal of silencing their critics & that is why they attempt to silence the press. They strive to create a “reality” where the only “truth” is what comes from them. Trump has repeatedly told his followers, “Don’t believe what you see or what you read, only “believe me.”
from the 1950s to 1990s Tobacco lobby lied re: nicotine as addictive
People are fleeing the drug lords, the vicious gangs, the police, the military, floods, famine, lack of clean water, etc., not because they’re violent, greedy thieves but because of our natural human instinct to seek to survive & protect the lives of our children. Americans’ general level of historical ignorance is truly depressing & is a significant factor in why we are in this sad state of affairs. I wish more people were aware of Major General Smedley D. Butler of the USMC for example or were familiar with a few of his amazingly honest quotes;
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
And speaking of conspiracies, several of America’s largest corporations tried to enlist the general as leader in their plot to overthrow F.D.R. because they despised his “New Deal,” program to help America’s oppressed suffering from the Great Depression. Check it out for yourself if you doubt me.(It’s critically important that you don’t dismiss this as just another Alex Jones crackpot conspiracy—I despise Jones personally for all the fear, hatred, & harm he has caused; you can check the Congressional Record, etc. to verify Major General Smedley D. Butler’s testimony before Congress)
I don’t believe it’s much of an exaggeration to claim that the overwhelming majority of humanity’s problems stem from these corporate behemoths who have more power than most of the nations around the globe. So, when it becomes just as desperate here in America as it is in so many parts of the world as it is right now, we too will attempt to escape but where will we escape to? Answer: Nowhere! Climate destruction threatens our very existence as a species;
I know how overwhelming & depressing this all can be but if you bury your head in the sand, that won’t save your children & grandchildren from what we, as humans, have allowed to happen. We are still reeling from the world-wide economic collapse of 2008 & Trump’s corporate cockroach masters of Wall St. have continued their corrupt practices under Obama & Trump has given them the green light as well. What’s coming could make 2008 look like a walk in the park?
If Trump & his masters win in their propaganda war against reason, facts, & empathy, we may find ourselves locked in this vast, open-air prison we call the land of freedom and democracy?
