Roe vs. Wade 1973

I'm not surprised. Republicans started pounding the abortion wedge into people's minds 50 years ago, after the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling in 1973. Don't be depressed. Be Ukraine. Take back the night! Take back the day! Take back your rights before they take them all. Just don't quit.

Putin's "off-ramp"

Some say we must protect putin's "pride" so he doesn't feel ashamed over his genocidal war in Ukraine. HA! He's already shamed himself beyond repair. He doesn't care. Nothing matters to him. He uses everyone and everything. Drive the son of a bitch back into the hole he crawled out of.

Here's a great article from Substack on the subject by Timothy Snyder : The folly of "off-ramps" When Ukraine wins the war, Putin will build his own" Check it out.

Strange days

Strange days have found us.
Strange days have tracked us down.
They're going to destroy our casual joys.
(The Doors)

Test coming

One of my friend Lawrence's favorite stories was how his martial arts teacher could shout TEST COMING and always manage to rattle the class and, even though we all knew what he was going to say, whenever Lawrence told the story, we'd also twitch and laugh nervously every time he told it. Turns out Lawrence's test was cancer. He stayed centered right to the end.

Industrial battles

Industrial farming corporations battle nature but it is Nature who taught the Kung Fo masters.

Who made them cry?

 Why not ask the palace staff who were driven to tears
who, exactly, "made them cry"? Megan or Kate? 

It's not a mystery to the people it happened to yet the press and palace carry on as though this is an impossible question to answer therefore why ask it, just go on with the hand-wringing and suggest answers to questions that are not theirs to answer in the first place. It's all a sham.

Reality check

Time to check the Fact Checkers. It's more important than ever.        

Stand back and look at it. Is it a "whisper" or does back itself up? Ask yourself, who's talking? Find out their sources and methods for determining what is ACTUALLY a "fact". Find out where their money comes from. Find out who agrees with them. Find our which institutions, political pacts, fact checkers, authorities, and public figures agree with them and know who pays THEIR bills.

Ask yourself, who's talking? Find out their sources and methods for determining what is ACTUALLY a "fact". Find out where their money comes from. Find out who agrees with them. Find our which institutions, political pacts, fact checkers, authorities, and public figures agree with them and know who pays THEIR bills.

And if this is all too hard for you, if you accept something as "fact" because it fits what you already think or someone you like tells you it's true then, my friend, you're an easy target for anyone appealing to your fear and anger rather than your reason and strength.

Want to give yourself a chance? Learn to tell the difference between the shit and the ice cream. Know how to check the facts and the fact checkers AND be willing to change your mind when the fact checkers don't check out.

American Exceptionalism

I'm putting this article here from Medium for my future reference and yours if you're interested in seeing America without makeup.

"American Exceptionalism Is Getting You Killed
Indi Samarajiva

America is choking to death on its own mythology. The ‘strongest nation in the world’ cannot defend its own Capitol. The ‘oldest democracy in the world’ is attacking the right to vote. The ‘richest people in history’ are broke and dying in lakhs upon lakhs.

(White) Americans consistently refuse to believe what is happening to them because it’s not supposed to be happening to them. Our democracy cannot be collapsing, it’s so old. The pandemic cannot be out of control, we’re rich. From the crazies of Q-Anon to sober talking heads on TV, everybody agrees, America is exceptional and things cannot be exactly what they are.

The country cannot be corrupt, that’s for Africans. The country cannot have a coup, that’s what we do to South America. The country cannot be collapsing, that’s the ‘third world’. And yet here you are.

American exceptionalism is wrong. Worse than wrong, American exceptionalism is precisely what’s getting you killed.
American Myths

As CLR James said, “a myth that has lost all contact with reality is the direct source of immeasurable confusion, catastrophes and disasters.” That’s precisely where America is today. The myth of American greatness has come completely unmoored from American reality, and disaster has ensued.

The most central myth is that America is a city on the hill, destined for greatness, blessed and best among nations, leader of the free world. Every country has some delusions of grandeur, but no one believes it with the confidence of an American. Because for many years, they’ve been right (as in might makes right). America was the lone superpower for years, with consumer goods and power to rain death anywhere upon the globe. Now a microscopic virus has shown how fragile it all was.

The fact is that the central myth of America — that it is an old, strong, and prosperous democracy — is not true. None of it is true, but the fact that this has become a quasi-religious belief makes it impossible to fix anything without also melting American brains. People would rather die than believe that America sucks. So they’re dying.

Let me unwind these myths as gently as I can (not very gently).

    American democracy was founded by black people just 55 years ago.

Your democracy is shit

American democracy is only 55 years old and it was founded by black people. Modern democracy is one person, one vote, and America only got universal franchise in 1965, after 56 other countries. American democracy isn’t old at all, it’s very young, which explains a lot. The fact that your founders are black people like Rosa Parks and John Lewis, of course, completely short-circuits many American brains.

American democracy is also not very good, built as it is on a centuries old voter suppression system. Literally nobody else waits for hours to vote. In most countries the popular vote winner wins. Nobody waits for two months to seat the President. Your democracy is honestly quite shit, as you may have noticed, because it’s on fire.

    Your security forces are more likely to join white terrorists than to resist them.

Your defenses are weak

Americans are surprised that their Capitol was so easily overrun, but that’s misunderstanding what American ‘defense’ is, and who it is. America’s ‘defensive’ troops are actually ‘offensive’ troops, bombing poor places and torturing Muslims for sport. Starving people in Yemen or endlessly occupying Afghanistan has nothing to do with your freedom and security, as you may notice as you can’t fucking go there.

America is wholly unprepared to defend itself against its greatest threat, which is white America. Your intelligence services merrily drone an ‘Allahu akbar’ from 10,000 miles away but won’t track public Facebook events in their own city. Your security forces are more likely to join white terrorists than to resist them. Your cops and and border police are the same, they’re offensive forces pointed at brown and black people. When it comes to the actual threats America faces, your ‘defenses’ are more likely to turn against you than help.
Image for post
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    The modern image of America is a car in a bread line, the perverse juxtaposition of seeming prosperity with actual poverty.

Your people are suffering

The general myth of America was that all its sins were OK because it somehow worked and delivered prosperity. This doesn’t work anymore, and it never did for many people. America has worse public health than Ghana, worse infrastructure than China, and a weaker democracy than Malawi. Much poorer countries have better healthcare (like Cuba) and literally no one goes into debt peonage for education like Americans. Nobody imprisons as many people. Nobody has active-shooter drills in schools. Nobody is dying of COVID-19 so bad.

America has also completely divorced its ‘economy’ (ie, rich people’s yacht money) from people’s actual lives. Stock prices go up while people go hungry. The modern image of America is a car in a bread line, the perverse juxtaposition of seeming prosperity with actual poverty. Life is pretty shit, as you may have noticed if you’re alive.
America Is A Country In The World

I say this not to dunk on America (well, a bit) but just to welcome you to the world. We’re all in some shit, aren’t we? In the third world we regularly get printed reports about how much we suck and how we can do better, and a lot of its true. You guys should now take some feedback from us. The central myth of American exceptionalism is that America is not like other countries and is thus not comparable (except maybe to other rich, white people) but that’s not true. America is just another country in the world. We can send consultants. Or just ask the black, indigenous, or ‘illegal’ people in your midst. They get it.

White Americans are not used to examining how you suck, but this dooms you to never getting better. It’s like never going to the doctor because you were in great shape in high school. Uh OK, that’s how you die of gangrene in the modern world. Your nation has literally turned into a Bruce Springsteen song, which is not a good thing.

America has been a failed state in a Gucci belt for years, and now even the belt has fallen off. I’m telling you, the empire has no clothes.
The Mental Collapse

This should actually help you because you could then see your problems, learn about other solutions, and fix them. Rather than looking down on the third world, you could look up to places like Mongolia, and learn. Unfortunately, this just isn’t human nature. People will literally die before swallowing their pride.

Rather than admitting that they voted for a grifter, many Americans have created a whole-ass world where Trump is a hero, secretly fighting Satanic pedophiles, and not, you know, just a grifter. Rather than admitting that America has failed on COVID-19, they’re saying COVID-19 doesn’t exist. This sounds crazy, but it’s one way of resolving the cognitive dissonance of America’s collapsing myths.

Even liberals really struggle with the core fact that America is a just another country in the world. April D. Ryan asks “what makes us different from a third world country & dictatorships?” The answer is nothing, besides hubris. Nothing makes you different. Looking down on these countries just makes you ignorant. April Ryan seems cool, but even she inhabits the same mythology of American exceptionalism.

Pete Buttigieg will say “weapons like the one I carried in Afghanistan have no place on our streets or in our schools — least of all in the hands of white nationalists” ignoring the fact that white nationalists shouldn’t be carrying weapons in Afghanistan either, and that chickens come home to roost. Buttigieg seems like a douche but not evil. Even his brain cannot process that Americans should not be using these weapons on anyone. Even to him, America is an exception.

This idea that exceptionalism is some protective secret sauce (ingredients: blood of Jesus, 11 herbs and spices, OxyContin) is precisely what’s getting you killed. There is no fucking sauce, you’re just another country and you’ve committed the cardinal mistake of smoking your own propaganda. Just look at where you are, look at other people, and try to do better. You’re not better than everybody else. It is this idea that’s made you so much worse.

Again, I’m saying this ‘solution’ like it’s possible, which it is, theoretically. Just not psychologically. People would rather believe that Americans are the victims of their own demise rather than their cause. People will literally believe in a modern Protocols of The Elders of Zion rather than looking at the elites looting in front of their eyes. This stabbed in the back mentality leads, of course, right to Hitler ’32.

So this is where you are. Face down in a ditch, insisting you’re among the stars. The first rule of being in a hole is to stop digging, but half of Americans don’t even believe in holes.

Perhaps you think I’m building to some solution but I’m not. I have no idea where you’re going (your children will have to figure that out) but you’ll never get there without understanding where you came from, and where you are. All I can tell you is this. America is exceptionally fucked."

Autumn equinox 2020

My eight-year-old grandson to his mother the other day . . .

Frank's flowers

"Mom, this is all so big. First the Covid, then the fires, and then my friend's house burned down." He proceeded to go into the yard, collect some flowers, and put this little bouquet on his desk."

Our changing world

Irregardless of what you or I may think is the biggest problem facing us today . . . whether it be Covid, or the economy because of Covid, or Trump himself, or Nancy,

Bones in the Desert

or Boris, or Vladimir, or Xi, or Bolsonaro, etc etc. they are not it. And, vile inexcusable and unacceptable as it is, racism is not the biggest issue of the day, or sexism. Nor is abortion, animal rights, free speech, freedom for or from religion, freedom to wear or not wear a mask . . . whatever, whatever . . . cause, right, privilege, power, belief, or hope anyone individually or collectively cherishes . . . with all those things still squarely on the table and more and urgent as ever . . . the greatest, most urgent problem facing America and the world, both human and wild, is our deteriorating climate. 

It's not happening tomorrow. Earth's climate has deteriorated to the point that it has now become its own cause. It threatens all life as we know it, not just the poor, starving, dirty poster-polar bear stranded on a chunk of ice that broke off a melting glacier. Earth's climate is rapidly deteriorating by the day, by the hour, and threatens all life on earth . . . yours, mine, theirs, its . . .  ours . . . because in this we are one.

Our house is on fire and we humans, the cause and only hope, are inside oblivious, arguing about other things as it burns.

Morning rant

America is infested with fascists, beginning with our corporate overlords and their political wing, the Republican party . . . their media wing, FOX News . . . their army of battle-ready fascist cops protected by standard issue Get Out Of Jail Free cards   . . . their power-hungry colleagues, the racist evangelical churches, the party's foot soldiers, you know, that mob of ignorant motherfuckers worshiping Confederate generals in the name of Christian Jesus, those fucking alt.right vigilantes cheered on by the NRA . . . and the Karens and Kens of every color . . . fascist all. I'm done with all of it, all of it, all of it.

Where is America, shelter for those "yearning to breathe free"? Where is America, the "land of the free, home of the brave"? Fascists aren't free or brave. They are maggots fat on hate who scoff at facts and science, who think because their skin is "white" they are superior, or because there's a dick and balls hanging between their legs they're superior, or because they make a show of worshiping the white-skin version of brown-skin Jesus of Nazareth it's ok to betray their own ethnicity for a ride on the gravy-train. They're maggots thinking money and connections will forever keep them immune to the chaos they have created.

I'm done with the billion and trillionaire elites who hide in the ivory towers of their corporations then shove their US Supreme Court approved Corporate Personhoods into the world to do their dirty work. Corporate Persons . . . legal entities . . . created to absorb the consequences of criminal corporate activity, thus insuring the human power players remain above and beyond the law. I'm am so fucking done with them all.

The ultra-rich have turned America into a tax haven for anyone with enough cash and credit to buy-in. They are the ones who pay to change the law to fit their business plans and are draining the planet of its resources, destroying the beauty, poisoning the air, poisoning the water, poisoning the oceans, rivers, springs, lakes, wells, clouds . . . poisoning and eliminating top soil. They are destroying the very climate upon which life as we know it depends.

I am so done with the Republican Party and its president, Trump Corp, and all their climate change backers who live above the law in their corporate structures, skyscraper hideouts, island retreats, insider enclaves, underground palaces, international tax havens and whatever other fantasy worlds they have created to escape the consequences of their arrogance and greed.

There is, however, a footnote to all this.

Where do we go from here? It's chilling how successful the alt.right has been at brainwashing the unaware with their lies and loathing. I pity their obedient, hapless supporters who embrace wage slavery for themselves and their poorly educated children. I feel sad for everyone in America and around the world waiting for their fascist overlords to give a shit about them. They never did and they never will. 

It's heartbreaking realizing that collectively we humans have triggered a mass extinction on the planet, that all species on earth are being sucked into the environmental collapse with us. It's surreal looking through the web of lies America is suffocating in because . . . no matter what . . . no matter who or where we are . . . no matter what we think, feel, or believe . . . we are all in this together.


###

Ok. Sometime I just have so yell into the void. Rant over. I've included an antidote to all this poison below . . .

The Polite Press

 

Don Winslow, @donwinslow, just posted this video on Twitter. It's agonizingly years behind necessity but still an extremely important message.

I don't know about you, but I've been yelling THAT'S A LIE! at TVs, my laptop, and phone since Trump first came down that escalator on his way back to Hell but, on no! The Polite Press magnified his lies, paved his road to the White House with them. Poisoned and broke America with them.

Hey Polite Press! Stop being enablers and become the reporters you started out in life to be. Butch up! Get real! Take this son of a bitch on! Do it! Tell the fucking truth to his face, on camera, in print, every time he lies! Trump has no power unless you give it to him. This is war. Which side are you on?

Hands up. Please don't shoot me

How many have died with these words on their lips? Portland's Black Lives Matter's eerily beautiful protest chant evokes a haunting, and devastating question.


.Hands up - Please don't shoot me - Hands up - Please don't shoot me.

.Hands up - Please don't shoot me - Hands up - Please don't shoot me.

Happy 4th of July, America - Mask up!

Republican Pres. Donald J. Trump
Flag humper

For the past 50 years, Republicans have chosen either oil men or actors for Presidents and mostly elected Senators and Representatives who are racist and/or evangelicals dedicated to shoring up the crumbling legacy of the King/Priest rulerships of yore. As a result, America is now isolated from all it's traditional Democratic allies, as it slides into a corporate dictatorship run by men indifferent to the millions of Americans ravaged by COVID-19 while the President gallivants around the country at the taxpayer’s expense doing photo ops to feed his insatiable vanity.

Yesterday, America had the world's largest daily increase of pandemic victims, 55,000 reported in all, with 10,000 new cases in Florida alone.

Happy Fourth of July. Be sure to wear your mask and keep your distance.

Note to self - Stop playing Divide and Conquer

#1: Stop arguing.
#2: Silence is compliance.
#3: Blend these and change the narrative.

Silly questions

There's a lesson here . . .

Tuesday with questions

I am coming to terms with the possibility that Trump's so-called "luck" (aka fix) may not run out. As the dim bulb son of a pimp he was born with a trust fund for a diaper and grew up to become a money laundering racketeer somewhat centrally located in the international web of sleaze-bag politicians, two-bit dictators, crooked banks, hired killers, media whores, spineless sycophants, fascists, racists, professional criminals, conniving psychopaths, zealots, morons, and reckless fucktards of every persuasion, and corporate-protected billionaires dedicated to plundering the planet until the last possible moment, and all looking for a mound to fly their flag. 

This asshole may just ride his bloody rainbow straight to the grave but I comfort myself with the idea that his spawn will not be so lucky. Don Jr? Jarad and Ivanka? Eric? Lara? Barron and Ivanka? Who are they as the eco-system collapses? They are baggage. Yesterday's news. Leeches. Big Don dies and who gives a fuck about the "Trump brand"? Really, who gives a fuck about the "Trump brand" now? 

What happens when their criminal network falters, as countries increasingly struggle with economic uncertainty, increasing numbers of climate refugees, as sea surge increases, as drought, plagues, and wildfires become more common and intense? What will they do? Will they still be flying around the globe on the American taxpayers dollar like they are now, cutting lucrative deals for the Trump Organization?

What will any of us do?

Cnoc a' Cairn

Last October we visited a few of Ireland's famine graveyards. The first was in the town of Dingle. Our host encouraged us to visit the town's famine graveyard, Cnoc a' Cairn (Carin Hill). It's one of several such cemeteries in the country. A million to a million and a half people died in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 during what I grew up hearing was the Great Potato Famine. I have since learned it wasn't the loss of the potato crops that killed them. It was England's colonial indifference and greed.

Even in a small town like Dingle, so many people died in a day that there was no time or room to make coffins or dig individual graves. Over 3,000 men, women, and children are buried on Cnoc a' Cairn. There are no tombstones, no names—bodies were laid one on top of another in long trenches and covered with dirt. Only an occasional unmarked stone stands watch along the way. It is an incredibly lonely place.

That evening I wrote a poem about the place. It was published, with little editing, in Dingle's hometown magazine, the West & Mid Kerry Live (pg. 24).

The impeachment circus comes to town

Ivanka waving to delegates at the UN General Assembly
September 23, 2019

 
I haven't spent much time here on American fascism these last two years. I wrote plenty of political blog posts during the Bush-Cheney-Rove era but at that time, I at least, failed to notice the fascism just below the surface. Now it defines the Republican party and Twitter has been the outlet for my rage against it, Trump, FOX not News, climate deniers, both-sides-ism, nutjob evangelicals, white supremacists and all the other throwbacks, like radicalized incels, the NRA and its minions, go-along-to-get-along Americans, Repub or Dem, who remain silent as the sewer of fascism rises in America and around the world.

Silence is compliance.

So I tweeted an offhand comment about Ivanka Trump being a bimbo at the UN General Assembly in NYC yesterday and got banned for six days. OK. It's a public space and it's not the first time. I'll dial it back but damn . . .  today the impeachment circus came to town.

Actual quote from Donald J. Trump

 
Nancy Pelosi finally launched a formal impeachment inquiry into this ham-fisted mobster trying to install himself as King of America for life. It's going to be fun on Twitter the next few days and I'm locked out. Oh well. It won't be over in six days, six weeks or probably six years. The Republican Party serves the same entrenched international oligarchy the late Jeffrey Epstein served. It supports abhorrent things like baby jails, environmental destruction, and the retooling of America into a Christian theocracy, genocide. Time it implodes and goes away or, at least, vomits out the fascism and joins the 21st century. As for Trump, his cronies, and spawn . . . I hope they spend rest of their days in court fighting criminal charges like flies caught in a web from which there is no escape then, dare I hope, in jail for the rest of their miserable lives.

Trump shutting down government

Shutting down government hoping to force America to pay for his wall be the first thing Donald Trump has ever claimed credit for that, in fact, he actually did.