Tuesday, October 12, 2021                                               1:57 AM

You Never Give Me Your Money…   (2021Oct12)

( -or- ‘Reproof To Any Claim’)

Money was meant to be utile. Those who have learned to abuse the concept seem to believe it confers honor and power upon them. They have complicated society to the point where everyone has become complicit, for survival. That still begs the question: Why do we let them ?

Today, we let most of them because—they’ve hired mercenaries as a ‘security detail’. That was the point they were supposed to understand that it’s wrong to take so much, and give nothing but betrayal in return—but they went with ‘security details’. I guess when you start stupid, you continue Stupid.

My point is: the power of wealth is founded on the Fiction of money, the legal fiction of a corporation’s ‘personhood’, and human nature. We can address that as an issue, or dismiss it. It’s killing the planet & threatening to genocide humanity—but, hell, we can dismiss it. Who really cares, right? Not me.

I’ll be dead (according to my doctor, at least) long before my kids face the hellscape created by Big Oil—& (if you can believe) they’re still trying that three-card-monte doubt-&-denial game, with the planet already Aflame! What a bunch of MF-ing scumbags! Could you imagine? They must remove the mirrors from their fucking houses.

I am a learned scholar of 65. That’s not something I would have ever said, in the recent past, pre-Tea-Party-fascist-resurgence, when it was both self-evident—and something folks respected me for. I had no need to describe myself in the pre-Post-truth Era. And I am even now uncomfortable, talking about my ‘gifts’, such as they are.

But, I have them, just the same. I know our nation’s history as well as most professors; I’ve read most of the literature of America and Britain—fiction, plays, and poetry, and translations of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote de la Mancha”, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers“, Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha“, et alia; I’ve studied painting, sculpting, mosaic, draughting, fresco, woodwork, wood-carving, horn-carving, and I have used every “shop” power-tool, big or small. O, and I also dig music.

I’ve met top execs in their exclusive, pent-house dining halls; I’ve shared pup-tents with homeless junkies; I’ve ridden a bus from NYC to LA, and flown a jet back (tripping, re-reading LOTR) from my failure to make a go of Reed College, in Portland, OR. But I made my fortune in what was not yet a college course—programming.

So when I claim to understand the basics: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Medicine, Engineering, Economics, and Realpolitik—I don’t mean I have a Vague feeling that I ‘understand’ these subjects (nor do I claim Expertise)—I mean that I can follow a careful explanation as well as the next PhD. I mean that I’ve followed progress, on the daily, for decades—while learning more and more about the trail of time that led us here.

To be blunt, I cannot respond to a brat who confronts me with “What They Know”. The proper procedure is to Ask me if what you heard is true—I will gladly confirm any facts you’re new to. When someone (who was hitherto not exactly scholarly-inclined) begins to scream and shout ‘new information’ which is true by virtue of how Intensely they want to believe it—I have to wonder who wound up these poor, too-easily-manipulated ‘despera-mericans’?

“Pride cometh before a Fall”. In our American Pride is our downfall. We grew great by having open doors, if not open arms. We grew great by having few laws, but those ‘greats’ lobbied those laws in-shut for others who might compete or disrupt. We supported our needy only when and where the Church gave us license to also Condescend to those needy.

The tremendous wealth, held in the hands of those who, additionally, decide who goes without, is an insult to justice, and reproof to any claim to faith or decency those fatcats may make. All hail Democracy! May it survive the decade.

Saturday, October 09, 2021                                              12:09 AM

Beer & Football   (2021Oct09)

Disinformation, the cynical misuse of ‘Freedom of Speech’, has become the prime weapon of the Capitalists and Republicans. Secrecy, the cynical misuse of ‘Right to Privacy’, has always been an important part of the criminal arsenal—and another weapon of Capitalists and Republicans.

Black-Lung was denied and dismissed by Capitalists and Republicans in West Virginia. Frack-caused Earthquakes were denied and dismissed by Capitalists and Republicans in Oklahoma. Liquor, Tobacco, Hexavalent Chrome, Acid Rain, and Asbestos were denied and dismissed by Capitalists and Republicans, everywhere, for years, sometimes decades. The Oil Biz is still (unbelievably) doing it.

A whistleblower told the truth about Facebook recently. Facebook’s first response was, “She’s a dirty girl, with no knowledge of Facebook, and other bad things.”—or words to that effect. Who is supposed to take that seriously? Why start off, step one, with an outrageous, obvious lie? The lady had paperwork—her standing at Facebook was not the issue—she had memos.

Why is corporate and Republican lying de rigueur in our time? The rule used to be: don’t lie if you can get caught at it. Today’s rule: If you get caught lying, lie some more. Everyone can see they are dishonest, but they persist in pushing their false narratives, as if they were brands or personal styles.

And the trouble with that is it makes them so attractive to bubble-brained high-school-dropouts desperate for involvement, but without the trouble of engagement. There are more than a few kids whose childhood was so prolonged, their adult lives are, in a sense, a pursuit of the same irresponsibility they’ve always enjoyed.

Yet, if beer and broadcast football are to be the height of human achievement, let’s all get together to make that happen for everybody. If not, we have to start eschewing beer and football—such is meant for the exhausted minds of slave laborers.

America is such a great idea—it has worked for heroes And villains, for two centuries. But we have reached a point where the villains are just unreasonably irresponsible, and must be kicked out of the house—ere they divide it with their ignorance. America must choose Civilization—or watch idly, as the least-of-us lead the masses into violence and riot.

Did you think America’s greatness would go unchallenged? Did you think the rich, spoiled, power-hungry bastards in this land would just sit back and let others hold the power, by virtue of a democratic election?! O, you simple soul.

America needs fighting for. It’s not the best for nothing. If you let Fat-cats and Right-Wingers F this nation into regression, into the filth that makes up most nations, you will never get it back again.