Tag Archives: xperdunn

Goodness Me   (2017Jun02)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, June 02, 2017                                               12:16 PM

The media have put our society into a glass jar—and forgotten to poke any holes in the lid. Why would a News-channel talk about one thing all day—and still claim to be News? Newspaper editors go crazy, trying to decide which of the thousands of significant News stories they can fit into each issue—while CNN and the rest confine themselves to one subject—and then struggle to find something new to say about that one subject, for weeks on end—until the next ‘top priority’ subject wanders in.

Denzel Washington recently quoted Mark Twain’s quip to the effect that one can ignore the News and be uninformed, or follow the News and be misinformed. But, Twain lived in a world of Newspapers—nowadays, we can remain uninformed—even with a cable-News channel blaring into the room all day.

Printed News cannot show the same sentence over and over—it cannot type two peoples’ essays, one on top of another, so that we can’t read either one’s words—Newspapers don’t distribute re-runs of previous days’ papers. But, when the medium is a noisy light-show, as with TV and video, content becomes optional—this hypnotically vacuous disgrace is open to them. Yet they’ll still swear that it is Journalism.

Plainly, TV News could supply far more information—if information delivery were truly its goal—by airing the prompter. Just turn that camera around and let us read it for ourselves, why don’t you? But then, it’s not really Journalism—no, no—this is Infotainment. Big business—why is it so easy to make money by degrading people?

It’s all about terminology—any old thing can claim to be ‘News’, but ‘Journalism’ is a different animal—a more rigorous bar to be met. We have many TV News shows—even News channels—but we don’t have much TV Journalism. The attention-based economy has stomped its footprint into our lives. While this predator ranges the landscape, we’ll have to look to books and newspapers for our hard facts—any info from media more ephemeral is tainted—ensnared by the commodification of sensational attention-getting—and thus suspect.

And most of all we must look to ourselves—the easiest thing we could possibly have an impact on—our own thoughts and feelings, how we live, how we treat others—one could conceivably spend an entire day ‘making the world a better place’ simply by being a better person—and it’s so convenient. I mean—you’re right there, already.

To avoid unnecessary conflicts without letting fear be the guide—to stand tall without the need to coerce others—these are the real problems of life. The rest is just details. If I mean well but do nothing, I am failing to interact with reality—but, if I do something, it’s hard to be sure it’s the right thing to do.

I have to search my heart carefully—ask myself what my true motivations are—whether I act out of righteousness—or just some tempting ego-trip that looks good. Then there’s the thinking through of an action, beforehand—will it get the results I seek, or simply show me off as a crusader? And will there be further consequences, beyond my immediate acts, that would ultimately worsen whatever situation I’m trying to help?

The bottom line usually is this—I can’t be of use to other people if I’m not with other people—if I don’t get involved in my community personally, I can’t really know what their problems are. So, I usually confine myself to not doing anything to cause trouble for others—living as a shut-in makes it hard for me to help others—but it’s still very easy for me to make other people miserable, if I’m not careful. Still, I miss being of use—the challenge and complexity of being a good person amid the hustle and bustle—those were the days. Not that I was very good at it—but I love a challenge.

Motivation means everything to me—when I catch myself doing something for unacknowledged motives, it really embarrasses me. I don’t like the image of other people seeing me argue for something and seeing what I’m really trying to say, and that I don’t even know it.

Motivation is, to me, like Body Language—in the way that Body Language can say much more than the words someone says—and can say it without that person’s awareness—motivation is the personality behind someone’s actions.

When I look at the talking heads of the News—or the politicians the News is about—I take note of what they say and what they do and how they vote—but I also keep an eye out for where they’re headed with the sum of their activity—I ask myself, where are they going with this?

I get dismayed by the number of public figures whose motivations are impervious to reason—people for whom facts can get in the way. I simply don’t understand it—if my stance on an issue runs counter to the facts, I cede the point—life’s too short to get mad because things aren’t the way I wish they were. Better to move forward towards something that promises a better future—and leaving reason out of that is madness (well, by definition, too, yeah).

We get a lot of debate about ‘alternative facts’ lately—people argue over what’s true or false, partly or *wholly, proven or merely alleged—and paste labels onto facts which they dislike, as if to cast them out. We all know that such a situation could only arise if one party were working very hard to obscure the plain truth—although, by now, we are dangerously close to it being all parties that are jumping on the bandwagon, when it comes to ‘fact-curation’.

I’m tempted to point the finger at the party with the ties to Russia—but I’ll let you puzzle that bit out for yourselves. Maybe it was incautious to so completely empower a man who’d made a career out of pushing the ethical envelope—that’s not very presidential. He’s so good at surprising us, keeping us off-balance—it makes some people nervous—even panicky. But not Congress—nerves of steel, those folks.

 

* (I spelt this ‘wholely’—but Word corrected me to ‘wholly’—I googled it—the first is English spelling, the second is American. Guess I read too many Brit authors.)

Respectfully   (2017May31)

Posted by XperDunn on

Wednesday, May 31, 2017                                               7:07 PM

This whole political snafu is about respect. Our president is supposed to champion our country—and for most people, that means championing what America stands for. It was perfect, in its way—because a lot of bullshit gets sold under the rubric of ‘American Values’—bullshit just as coldblooded a scam as Trump’s administration.

Pompous peacocks have gotten a lot of mileage out of ever-so-solemn reference to our founding principles—and while I disagree with Trump that political correctness is clogging the works—it’s not nearly as bad as the political bullshitting—I agree with the premise: We need to get our government back. So while the country’s middle became unhappy with the neglect and corruption, they sought a champion that would shovel the bullshit out of Washington and get the pipes working again. Unfortunately, all they got was a new layer of fresher manure.

Individuality and new perspectives have always had value—but they are not absolute goods, just an ingredient in a healthy whole. For the individualists and free-thinkers that support Trump, he represents someone who will bypass all the red tape and get stuff done. They applaud when he upsets the bureaucratic apple-carts and garners gasps from the liberal media at all the false gods he throws to the ground. They love the Tweets signaling them late at night that, behind that sober guy at the desk, there’s a fool with no concept of probity—just like themselves.

But in giving respect, finally, to these overlooked groups of people—people who say they want less government—when what they need is good government—Trump has, through ignorance or otherwise, signaled disrespect for things that made our government better. It is no better to blame American values for being in the mouths of corrupt politicians than to blame Islam for being in the mouths of mindless animals.

When Americans support Freedom of Religion, we do not support religious freedom—we do not support religion at all—not in our government. And we do this for the very good reason that people have different religions. Our government has consciously, purposely kept its distance from religion since the Pilgrims settled—they came from Europe—where people killed each other over religion for centuries—and they had no intention of just bringing in the old problems.

There is an unhealthy Fundamentalist Christian group in this country that promotes the ignorance to misunderstand this important principle—and tries to twist it into an excuse for their overweening influence on legislation. These people are dangerous extremists—using our legal system to subvert our way of life—and they can pray ‘til doomsday and it won’t make them any righter. These are some of the people who are finally getting the respect they pine for, from Trump.

Money influences (or simply bypasses) government in much more direct ways than lobbying—often the only way to stop corrupting influences is to arrest the people who break the rules—very rich, very connected people. That can only happen in a country where the law cannot be bought, not in broad daylight.

Many people work for rich people who use their wealth to influence their employees, enlisting them in getting around regulations put in place to protect those employees—and whistleblowers, especially undocumented ones, are a rare breed that usually gets crushed, no matter how the big picture works out. Business owners like it that way—and they don’t like inspectors—and they are finally getting respect from a guy who does business the same way, Trump.

Rich people have a sad habit of starting to look down on others—as if their money put them in a higher level. Money madness—poor people know who they are—they don’t look to possessions to define themselves. I’m not saying we should hunt down all the rich folks, or anything, I’m just saying it doesn’t hurt to put them in their place sometimes. But they too see a kindred spirit in Trump.

I think it’s the American Dream idea—lots of people dream of making it big, having it all, and giving back. Some people leave off the last part, making their American Dream into a lonely, rapacious video game, where you never win enough money and possessions. America used to whine less about helping others—we were eager to do what we could to lift up the less fortunate, to let them and their children have a shot at living a nice life. Now all we do is bitch about our taxes being used for ‘no-accounts’—like, who died and made you the fucking king of the hill?

Let some of those rich bastards fall on hard times—suddenly, they’re filled with wisdom—from living on the street, from feeling like they need help and it’s not there. Like you couldn’t empathize with this back when you could have done something to help? You had to have your face rubbed in it? Eau de humanite.

Anyway—getting off topic there. So: respect. Middle America wanted it—and they got it. They did not get better government (my money is on worse, much worse) but they did get respect, for now, and they’ll keep supporting him until something changes their minds. What that is I couldn’t say. A lot of them will be dead by the time their kids and grandkids have to deal with the damage from the Trump presidency—so I guess they did the right thing, as they saw it.

But I can’t help pointing out that Coolidge tried to create the League of Nations after the first World War—and failed. Truman tried to create a United Nations after the second World War—and when that failed to fully form, NATO was created to act as a bulwark against any future rogue alliances bent on war.

If you will consider their times, you can see that they not only wanted peace—they were sick of the horror of war. Millions of corpses littered the world’s largest land mass—twice—and sensible people felt that war had no profit for anyone—and led to much death and destruction—no brain-teaser there. But we have had half-a-century to develop amnesia, or extreme myopia, call it whatever you like—and we don’t have the least idea of the suffering that a third global conflict would visit upon us.

And that specter demands some respect, too.

The Russians aided the Trump campaign—and characterizing that as an ‘excuse for losing’ misses the point. Being infiltrated by Russians is a bad thing—and the worst thing about it would be not to recognize that the Russians have fed you lies. The next worst thing would be the reasons why we were so easily played—how could this work on us?

The bad guys have found a way to weaponize Free Speech—and that makes it important for all of us to become smart-asses—people who look things up and study original sources and work on checking the math. We need to become too smart to fall for their bullshit—and it starts with recognizing that it happened.

Public education was one of America’s great advantages against the rest of the world—and we have fallen behind, forgetting the tremendous value of educated, highly skilled, even innovative young people. And we are blind to the great expense of being negligent of citizens in need, especially the young. A productive citizen is an asset—a neglected citizen becomes a liability. It’s simple logic—there’s no bleeding heart here—it just makes sense to do the right thing. Anyone who says different has a touch of the sociopath.

So, Trump has taught us a valuable lesson—the road paved with bullshit leads to madness. We can no longer rely solely on the United States to function automatically—we have to build new voting blocs of people who want to do the right thing, who feel better with a real leader at the head of our state, and will not condemn their own children in their eagerness to deprive the children of strangers. Which is harder, getting the voters or finding the candidates amongst honest Americans? It’s an impossibly huge job—but that’s what happens when you put democracy on two-party cruise-control for a full century.

Or we could just wave Democracy bye-bye, as the fat cats work their mindfuck magic on the unsuspecting pod-people, and we all just watch TV.

Unfollow The Leader   (2017May19)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Friday, May 19, 2017                                               8:01 PM

Oh how the proud are humbled—our president has prompted the world to baby-proof their embassies prior to Trump’s arrival—short sentences, plenty of calm—and that is not the usual prep for a visit from (whom we can hardly any longer call) the ‘leader of the free world’. Because America’s preeminence has never stemmed from its military or wealth—in fact, those things cause more trouble than they’re worth, often as not—but from our dedication, to a citizen, to the founding principles of this place.

The rest of the world is not all bad—but it’s not all good either—and for a long time, America was the best place to be. Other countries didn’t care about our tanks and planes, or our banks and factories—that stuff, quite frankly, fits into whatever culture it finds itself in—and eventually gets warped in the same way, making things worse instead of better.

No—people wanted to come here—to live as free people. And most of them were not being oppressed by their laws—they did not suffer for a lack of our Constitution—they suffered from their friends and neighbors—even their families—deciding what their lives would be, what work they would do, who they would marry, how they could live their lives. Most foreigners want to come to America for the same reason young people want to leave home—they want to live their own lives.

The Melting Pot took them all in (I should say took us all in—my grandparents were Irish and English). Making a living isn’t any easier here—in some ways, it can be more difficult—still, what you do with the rest of your life is entirely up to you. That’s freedom with meaning.

But an important part of that freedom is not giving other people grief over their choices—that’s just being a dick. Don’t start none—won’t be none. You can’t claim freedom for yourself and take it from someone else. It doesn’t work that way—that’s like stealing. Freedom doesn’t just enable us to respect each other—it demands that we respect each other—or it isn’t real freedom.

That is why freedom of religion is the bedrock of America—and free speech a close second. We cannot hold each other captive to dogma or censorship. An American can walk away from his family, his faith, and his hometown—not many do, but the choice is there—no one is classified by birth in America.

That is why racism is so divisive—some of us are raised with a hate that is born of old tradition—and some of us are raised to despise racism for the betrayal of America that it represents—and we will never agree to disagree, because hate is not something a person can just ignore—and it becomes a source of injustice and misery.

People talk about the history of the Old South, the Confederacy—I say Fuck that shit. We used to be a British Colony, too—but you don’t see a bunch of New York yahoos, proud of their Tory heritage, yearning to be back as part of Great Britain. How stupid are these people? And to link it with racism—as a cultural touchstone? Fuck me, but there’s more stupid in the world than I can deal with.

Pardon the digression—the idea of bigotry makes me ill. Where was I? Oh yes—the rest of the world looked up to America as a better place to live—a better place for their children.

But now we have a president who doesn’t respect America. He hasn’t studied—he’s been too busy making deals, cutting corners, wheeling and dealing—he doesn’t really even know what the presidency of America is, beyond it being the ‘prize’ at the end of the election.

We have a president who dismisses our sacred vow of religious freedom. We have a president who questions the value of free speech—and of transparency. People can stay in whatever hell-hole they’re already in, and get the same lies, corruption, and incompetence as are presently on offer in the Great United States—land of the free—for now, at least.

More Than Anything   (2017May18)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Thursday, May 18, 2017                                          1:45 PM

Humankind has a pretty long history—even the special case of United States history, alone, is a pretty thick almanac of ups and downs, bests and worsts—centuries of heroism and villainy, celebrity and infamy, achievement and catastrophe.

When Trump says ‘Never before in history…’, he does not speak as an historian. He is using the phrase ‘in history’ as a synonym for ‘very’. He is not merely being (laughably) ignorant when he claims his historical superlatives—he is also, subliminally, undermining the concept of history as meaningful archive. For Trump, a meaningful archive is a threat—evidence of the past.

For an old wheeler-dealer like him, the point of mistakes is to get people to forget about them—to gloss over any negatives and make that sale, close that deal—and move on to new sales, new deals. But for an elected official, the point of mistakes is to investigate them—to scour the records. It would be odd indeed if Trump were a history enthusiast—most of his mistakes have been made before.

But me—I am a history enthusiast—and Trump offends me on many levels, not least of which is his pretense of scholarship:

“This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” – D. Trump

“No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly…” – D. Trump

These are professorial wordings, usually used by someone who isn’t pulling facts out his or her ass—Trump uses the words of intellectual rigor, as if to give his bullshit respectability.

Getting down to cases: Mandela spent decades in prison before becoming South Africa’s president. Lincoln and Kennedy were both shot in the head. Hitler and Mussolini were ridiculed in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” so ruthlessly that the government tried to block its release in theaters.

If we want to talk history—Donald Trump may have a claim to being the biggest pussy ever to take office—as far as his other historic deeds go, we’ll have to wait until after the investigations to say with any real ‘surety’.

Get Ready   (2017May16)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Tuesday, May 16, 2017                                            9:02 PM

Little things go unnoticed in all the hub-bub—like the continued absence of a replacement for James Comey at the FBI. The only other FBI Director to ever get fired was fired for blatant corruption. And Comey hasn’t been criticized by Trump, in his firing—and certainly not accused of doing wrong. Trump presented it as a preference-based thing, like a re-mod he’d been mulling, just a change.

However, if Comey did no wrong and the president simply wanted someone else in there, why did he wait until the day he fired the FBI Director before he started considering a list of potential replacements? If there was no urgency to the change, why wasn’t a replacement standing by, already chosen, for being better suited to the country’s (and the president’s) needs?

That’s not what the president did—he ‘got rid’ of Comey, and worked out the next steps afterwards—Trump didn’t need someone else in that post—he simply needed Comey out of it. And that has the appearance of obstruction—even if it doesn’t meet the technical, legal definition of it.

My feeling is that Trump dropped a stitch and had planned to make a ‘contest’ out of the selection of a new FBI Director, complete with graphics and dramatic announcements—hoping  to crawl back into the reality game-show realm he’s so comfortable in. Now he’s furious, because everyone else is looking at it the wrong way—and it’s ruining his contest plans. Nobody even much cared about what he and Erdogan talked about today—it’s all Comey, Comey, Comey.

Trump should have picked a replacement—he should have been getting ready to act while he waited for a ‘good time’ to act (“and, by the way, there is no good time to do it…”—our fearless leader). ‘Foresight’ is an important part of the presidency—‘Vision’ is nice, but it don’t pay the bills. In Donald Trump we are finding out what a sore lack foresight can be, in a president.

Trump is used to being the team leader—but he doesn’t know how to be a team player. A bully like him would have never made it up through the ranks of the political arena—and no one so ignorant of the backstory of America, and so unpracticed in the art of compromise—could ever become president within the ‘system’. He had to catapult in, a pure neophyte, from a world that sneers at politics. And many Americans enjoyed sneering at politics, and voted for him.

But now the harsh reality is this: our new president has less working knowledge of Washington than the littlest Congressional page, the very first-day SCOTUS law-clerk, the Pentagon private, or the least-senior White House wait-staffer. President of the United States of America is not a learn-as-you-go job—and we are witnessing the proof of that today. He didn’t even ask his wife if she’d be willing to spend four years First-Lady-ing.

Part of the problem is that Trump’s Traveling Circus becomes more and more embarrassing—and that narrows the pool of people willing to work for him, with every passing day. The Republicans are starting to realize that carrying this guy for four years of ‘legislative gravy-train-ing’ isn’t going to be as easy as they hoped. And if Trump makes it to November 2018, who knows where Congress will end up? So get ready.

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We All Better Hope (2017May12)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, May 12, 2017                                               4:06 PM

We All Better Hope [ or – The President’s Tweets – ]     (2017May12)  

One of Trump’s tweets today was to the effect that “Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our dinner…” And I find this representative of Trump’s virtuosic ability to appropriate the culture of the liberals. Every time we find a new way to express our dismay, it is flipped back at us. People have been using the phrase ‘we better hope’ a lot lately, mostly in terms of the few things that stand in the way of Trump’s autocratic vision of the presidency—and his dark purpose in destroying the established order in DC.

So, of course, the phrase turns up in Trump’s PR blasts, i.e. his tweets. He glories in his ability to obscure the truth in any paradigm: he’s done it in his rallies, his interviews, his debates—and now that he has a five-person team to further explain both what he said and what he meant—well, let’s not even talk about the 25 or so news-anchors who add their own translation of what those five (and the president) said, and what they meant—plus, what he Tweeted.

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I saw Sean Spicer say to a reporter today, “The president’s tweet speaks for itself and I have nothing to add.” This was the response for four questions in a row—and on the fifth try, Spicey said, ‘I’ll move on now.’ So, somehow, the President’s Tweets have become some sort of oracle which the press secretary is excused from divining—it’s just supposed to be read—like the Ten Commandments or something—can our president become any more publicly unhinged than he already is?

I also enjoyed his whining about how a busy president finds it hard to coordinate his messaging with his staff—and an ex-press secretary commented, on air, that “Yes, it was difficult, but the former president felt it was important to get accurate information to the public.” I think that news-panel was overlooking the extra time involved in getting the narrative straight—as opposed to simply transferring the facts, without embellishment—I think that may be what the present president is too busy for—lying is hard work—even harder as a team of people who don’t really trust each other. Or should I be polite—and change ‘lying’ to ‘spin’?

This business about loyalty—that takes us to a new level of crazy. Trump isn’t satisfied with being president—he wants his ring kissed, or his dick sucked, I don’t know—he needs to be kowtowed to, overtly—he’s really quite pathetic.

I remember when Obama whined about having to surrender his Blackberry PDA upon taking office—it was considered a security threat, because it was vulnerable to hacking. Obama felt the loss of a technology that allowed him to more easily keep up with a complex agenda. It’s a stark contrast to the Tweeting moron who holds the office today—the national security threat here is what Trump wants people to hear—not what secrets he’s keeping.

My overwhelming reaction to President Trump is shame—not just for what he is—but for the army of fools who voted him into office—at the prodding of Putin’s spies. It’s just like when Bin Laden flew two planes into our biggest skyscrapers—and misled America into decades of panic and hysteria—starting wars by mistake, bankrupting our banks, dumping half our people into unemployment—make no mistake—Bin Laden won that fight—hell, we’re still fighting—and he’s been dead for years. America’s new image in the world is, apparently: the Most Gullible Stooges on Earth—go ahead, trick them—they never look past the nose on their faces—it depresses me to say this—but I can’t lie.

And because Trump embarrasses me, as an American, I burn with a desire to see him impeached—just to say to everyone, here and abroad—‘fool me once…’

I can understand that, in the heat of a two year campaign, all of Trump’s shock-jock tactics kept everyone off-kilter. But for us to allow him a full four-year term of malfeasance and misanthropy—that would seal our reputation as the country that voted itself to death. His incompetent pretense must not stand.

DrEvil

I Got My Eye On You   (2017May11)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Thursday, May 11, 2017                                          4:56 PM

Repeated cries of ‘This is not normal’ inhabited media-space on Tuesday. That is always the first reaction to Trump’s mental dekes—i.e., ‘normal people would never be this irresponsible’—which opens the door to the question ‘Who’s normal?’—and a morass ensues (point to the other team). So they say ‘This’ is not normal—and they can’t be contradicted—Trump makes history every day (though it seems unpleasant history to be making—but that’s just me perhaps).

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Here is my takeaway from the week so far: Comey asks for more resources for the Trump/Russia investigation—Sessions sends a letter to Trump about firing that head investigator of the case Sessions has ‘recused’ himself from—Trump fires Comey with a letter that says “You said I’m clear three times, so it must be true—you’re fired.” Then Trump bars American press from a meeting with the Russians, with the Russian press present, and says they were ‘tricked’ by those pesky Russians when Tass releases photos from the meeting.

 

I think the trouble with the phrase ‘This is not normal’is that you can only repeat it so many times. I think a more honest phrase might be: ‘This is disruptive—in a way so criminal that, if it is not illegal, it should be made so.’ But then we have to address the elephant in the room—people voted for this guy—and many of them still support him.

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How this happened will be answered, in part, by a thorough investigation into Russia’s social-meddling techniques. Some of the wildest disinformation on the web last year, against Hillary and supporting Trump, came from teams of Russian hacktivists—and we still aren’t sure the Trump voters understand that they were ‘hacked’—in some ways, worse than we were.

But it hurts us all the same—threatens all of us the same—that a seventy-year-old with no experience had such a swollen self-regard that he thought he’d try running our country, just for the bragging rights. He doesn’t know what he’s doing—like someone who’d never before been in office—it’s all new to him. Ordinarily, someone thrust into that position would rely heavily on their staff—the experienced staff of the experienced predecessor—but Trump has gutted not just the West Wing and the NSC, but the State Dept, the DOJ, the EPA,—now the FBI—virtually gutting the machinery of government. And by jettisoning all those old hands, the lifers who knew how it all worked, Trump has lobotomized the Federal government, as well.

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Many of his own picks have been turned away or fired—other picks seem designed to destroy the agencies they oversee. Most of his executive orders and legislative motives are: undoing Obama policies—whatever they are, so long as however much of Obama’s legacy can be erased, no other consideration need be added. It’s rabidly racist—but I’m sure Kellyanne Cop-out could explain why it’s actually the very picture of inclusion.

We can only hope that more Republicans awaken from their poppy-sleep long enough to see Trump flying them towards that mountain-face. The grounds for impeachment are there—have been for a while—it just takes the GOP to stop stepping over that pile of dog-poo, pretending they don’t see it.

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Trump’s Lying Treason   (2017May10)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017                                               2:11 PM

There was a Daily Show Reunion on last night’s Late Show—most of Jon Stewart’s old gang reminiscing about the ‘halcyon days’ of 9/11 and the Dubya presidency. Airing on the same night as the news about Trump firing Comey, it poignantly reinforced the difference between the old warring ideologies and today’s faithless partisanship. Back then, we argued over interpretation—today we argue over the plain facts—and the schism doesn’t lie in our hearts, but in our sources of information.

What we overlook is the fact that when two people tell opposing stories, one of them is lying, or just plain wrong. Comey is not a liar, whatever his other faults may be—but Trump is a liar—from Obama’s birthplace on, he has told lie after lie. Only a rabidly pro-Trump partisan would fail to be suspicious of Comey’s firing—he is the third person to be fired while investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, after Sally Yates and Preet Bharara.

Where is the limit? When will the Republicans accept the fact that they are shielding a traitor in the White House—and begin to scrutinize him in the same way they harried the last president? Trump’s impeachment, at this point, is purely a matter of Republican will—it’s right there, if they had the honor to reach for it.

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Emphysema (2017May08)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Monday, May 08, 2017                                            12:32 PM

Emphysema III   (2017May08)

Improv – Deuce

 

Improv – Trey

 

Improv – Quatro

 

Improv – Embracing the New

 

Improv – Having Fun

 

Improv – Persistence

Forgive the cliché, but it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. At long last, everyone who wanted me to quit smoking (including myself) is getting their wish—on the other hand, I’m quitting smoking—or, at least, I’m striving to do so—and there is some discomfort involved.

I started with patches and single-digits of cigarettes per day, then I stopped patches and went back up to double-digits for a day—but now I’ve been back in single-digits, and without any nicotine patches, for a couple of days. Learning to use my Advair corticosteroid inhaler twice-a-day has added a wrinkle—lately I’ve been waking up with huge pupils and no irises. It goes away after an hour or so—but apparently I’m tripping in my sleep.

I don’t know if that’s nicotine withdrawal or cortisone side-effects, which I could say about my mood-swings, tremors, and more-frequent spasms as well—and, in a way, not being sure helps with avoiding the cigarettes—I thrive on chaos, and at the moment, it’s non-stop.

Reaching zero total cigarettes is not the challenge for me (well, not the biggest one). Once I full-stop on the cigarettes, I will experience a healthy, calm stillness—I won’t be reaching for things, I won’t be drugged (except for caffeine), my mind will be relatively clear and my ears won’t be ringing.

That will be torture—that yawning void will be begging me to put the cigarettes back into the mix—you know, for fun—and nothing will distract me from that nagging voice—that’s going to be the real challenge. Stillness bugs me—clarity seems like a waste, a self-imposed chore.

That behavior used to have a function—my old mind was always threatening to over-rev itself, always in danger of over-heating—it needed an extra-viscous lubricant to reduce the friction. Nowadays, I’ve merely become used to that approach—my mind has little risk of overexerting itself nowadays, but it still enjoys a bit of viscosity to the thought-process—it’s what I’ve become comfortable with.

But, good-bye, comfort! It’s cigarette-quitting time. And please—don’t mention it. Talking about cigarettes is the worst thing I can do—and I certainly don’t need anyone else bringing it up.

The doctor switched me to a new anti-depressant—it’s hard to say, with all the rest of the chemicals, but I’m pretty sure it’s an improvement. And I’ve stopped taking vitamins every day—I’ve switched to a multi-vitamin every other day, and a B-complex every four days. Apparently that’s more than enough—every day is overkill, or so I’m told—and it makes less work for my stomach.

I could go on, but you get the picture—I’m going squirrelly, trying to become healthy—and I’m so unstable that the whole thing could crash and burn any minute—my kingdom for some will-power!

Tuesday, May 02, 2017                                            11:13 AM

Emphysema II   (2017May02)

Back to the doctor’s office we go—to get the skinny on my breathing and how to use an inhaler. Apparently, I have 75% use of the lungs of a 91-year-old.

Thursday, May 04, 2017                                          2:45 PM

Advair is the brand name for my new cortico-steroid inhaler—it’s a pain in the ass to use and very weird. Sometimes, being sick makes you a helpless, involuntary drug-tester for future users of new drugs.

Inhaling steroid dust is nothing, though, compared to trying to quit smoking. I’ve been messing around with a mixture of nicotine patches and will-power—it’s heavy sledding. I wasn’t sure I had it in me. However, Bear has obtained Chantix for me—it’s a quit-smoking drug with side-affects like you wouldn’t believe. I think I might have just enough will-power to quit smoking, if it means I don’t have to take that shit—I don’t want to give up tobacco for my health and, in the process, go mad or bleed internally or whatever Chantix might do to me.

I’m sure not-smoking is a wonderful thing—but it will never be anywhere near as nice as smoking. How come every time I have to do something for my health, it means making life less enjoyable? The biggest problem with quitting is that I spend all day not-doing-something—which is weird and unenjoyable—and I’d much rather be so involved in doing something that I didn’t think about what I was missing. I need a hobby, I guess.

Thursday, April 27, 2017                                        12:22 PM

Emphysema   (2017Apr27)

Emphysema is fun—a true smoker’s disease, unlike lung cancer or heart disease, which any old Tom, Dick, or Harry can fall prey to, emphysema is virtually unheard of except in the case of long-term smokers. The little bubbles at the end of the bronchioles, the alveoli, become enflamed—or even necrotic—thus disabling their function (to be the exchange-point for oxygen). The lungs can pump away like a bellows—but the oxygen being breathed in does not make it into the bloodstream.

Without that fuel, the body works much harder—shortness of breath, fatigue, and weight loss are common symptoms of emphysema. Most people notice shortness-of-breath right away, but those who lead a sedentary lifestyle may not notice this—or connect it to something other than lack of exercise. Idiots like that may wait until their lungs actually hurt before they get a chest x-ray.

I got a chest x-ray yesterday. Fun’s over. I now have to quit smoking. I already had to quit drinking—this is the last straw. I’ve run out of vices. How does one live a life without vices?

But never mind that. How do I quit smoking? I’m four hours into this brave new world and I’m clenching my jaw and feeling dizzy—that’s with a nic-patch, mind you—so it’s all in my head. We fear change—and this is a perfect example of why.

Since I was eighteen—so that’s about forty-three years, about 16,000 days, at two packs a day—that’s over 600,000 cigarettes, give or take. Honestly, I may have spent more time smoking a cigarette than I’ve spent on anything else. Also, I kind of liked smoking—as an activity—it was relaxing and enjoyable.

But now I have to confront tobacco as an addiction—I’m not ignoring nagging doomsayers anymore, I’m ignoring my own health by any future smoking. As with my old liver problems, the lungs don’t self-repair—emphysema is forever—and while nothing can reverse the damage, each cigarette can worsen it. Good times—as usual. Well, Claire is happy, at least, at last—without ever truly nagging me about cigarettes, she has hoped I’d quit for a long time.

Double Standard Much?   (2017May08)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sally_Yates_Cropped

Monday, May 08, 2017                                            6:48 PM

This afternoon, Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general, and James R. Clapper Jr., former director of national intelligence, testified before a Senate subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism – Russian interference in the 2016 United States Election. I enjoy these hearings when, as a by-blow, they point up our new president’s habit of discrediting all authority: Courts, House, Senate, scientists, journalists, or recognized authorities of any kind—leaving us to wonder what his ‘special sources’ are, that so compellingly contradict all known information from every normal source?

I also enjoy watching professional, ethical people being questioned by pols—as both sides of the committee try to ‘message’ with pointed, weighted questions—questions that tell a goddam story before they end as questions. It’s fun because good folks like Ms. Yates simply answer yes, or no, or they give a specific date or number or name—and the occasional ‘I don’t know’. When she is invited to give her opinion, she demurs.

At one point I was distinctly annoyed by one GOP Senator making a point of Ms. Yates having ‘determined for herself’ that Trump’s original Muslim ban was unconstitutional—he even asked very snidely when she had been appointed to the Supreme Court. However, Senator Franken promptly re-directed, allowing Yates to point out that “any first-year law student could determine that a Muslim ban is unconstitutional”.

Sally_Q._Yates

That first senator’s smug assertion that the former AG had a lotta nerve, thinking for herself, is a compounding of the annoyance that the Senator himself did not see the point as glaringly obvious—which seems ignorant. Perhaps I’m being too harsh—or listening too closely—the Republicans hate it when anyone else tries to split hairs or stickle over details.

One detail from today’s spectacle stands out—the several weeks between Trump being apprised that his NSA pick was disqualified as a security risk—and Flynn’s eventual firing ‘for lying to the Veep’. If I remember the Benghazi hearings correctly, Secretary Clinton was often questioned about how many days it took her to act on intelligence—at some points she was asked about hours and minutes—at no point was she ever asked why she lolled about for weeks before doing her job. I’m just saying—double standard much? Flynn attended weeks of high-level security briefings, after he was revealed as compromised by the Russians—were they feeding him disinformation to pass on to Putin? Or we’re they just flailing around like incompetents? Hmmm.

Stephen_Colbert_November_2016

But my favorite scandal this week is that Stephen Colbert said Trump was “Putin’s c**k-holster” during his recent monologue and suddenly, he’s a walking hate-crime who should be drummed out of the media. First of all (and it seems this never gets through from the last big huff) it was a joke. Secondly, Colbert has done a pretty good job of scaling back the scathingly raw humor that made him such a hit on cable TV, first on John Stewart’s Daily Show, and even more popular as host of his own satiric talk-show, Colbert Report.

Trying to domesticate Colbert to the ‘family-standards’ of CBS would be hard enough—without this maddeningly stupid president providing a daily dissolving of all that made us civil in years past. To jump all over him because he got a little racy on late-night—please. Talk about McCarthyist tactics—they’re actually calling for hearings—on that one joke! I think it might have been a funnier joke, but it certainly isn’t a crime to let one’s frustration with corrupt politics creep into your nightly monologue about same. Long live Colbert—and comedy—and freedom of speech.

Operation Iraqi Stephen

Stephen Colbert greets troops and civilians at Al Faw Palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, June 5, as part of his “Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando” tour.

 

Friday, May 05, 2017                                               1:24 PM

Saying Goodbye to Health Insurance   (2017May05)

DrEvil

I’m not interested anymore. The politicians can’t be a source of constant controversy—having proven their disability to govern properly, their unashamed bias towards the moneyed interests—these folks can’t be reported on as if they were inherently interesting.

The tragedy of their being elected to public service is old news—all we get now, daily, is a progress report on the rot that accompanies corrupt governance. Meanwhile, stories that lay low for a while simply disappear—it doesn’t matter how big the stories seem—if there’s no movement on a story, it disappears. In a way, it’s evidence that the news-media isn’t practicing real journalism.

It’s all very exciting and entertaining—sure—in its own small-minded way—the hustle-bustle of tweets and rants and bombs and back-walking and self-contradiction—whoopee! But no one talks about the new paradigm: voters can be misled to the point of voting against their own best interests—so, how badly can the GOP overtax them, and screw them over, before the con stops working? And will it ever stop working? Is it an iron-clad mind-fuck—or can people awaken from it? These are the real issues of today—and inquiring minds want to know.

A blow-by-blow of what these public servants (that lied their way into office) are destroying, daily, isn’t so much news, as a death knell.

Think about it—this new healthcare legislation is supposed to scrape 24,000,000 people off the health insurance rosters—and put the onus of paying for serious illness only on those who are seriously ill. And the question isn’t whether people want that—the only question is whether people can be convinced by this, that Obamacare was worse.

Now, the people have been told to hate Obamacare—but they have also gotten used to having health insurance. When it disappears, will they blame the Republicans? Will people have the presence of mind to see they’ve been betrayed? And, with supposedly the free-est press on earth, how did they get conned in the first place?

The truth is that hate and fear have won this round—simple as that—the forces of good got their asses kicked and we have to wait ‘til next time. I can’t help wondering how the bad guys got so much better at getting elected—that’s just not right, is it?

Now, don’t listen to me—I’m an old man, and sick to boot. I can’t get out there and run for office or help someone campaign or protest or any of that good stuff. Maybe you can. Odds are you’re younger and healthier (my sympathies, if you’re not). Maybe you can make a difference—people can, you know. They do it all the time. I used to, in my small way—it felt good. All that is necessary for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing. Be good.

Fancy Words   (2017May01)

Posted by XperDunn on
President Barack Obama is photographed during a presidential portrait sitting for an official photo in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Monday, May 01, 2017                                            2:35 PM

If you had never heard of, and then got health-care eight years ago—and it then paid for some health problem in your family—you are not a Republican. If your parents are on Social Security—you are not a Republican. If you are on Medicare and Disability (like me) —you are not a Trump supporter. If you employ non-English-speaking help—you are not a Republican. If you think people are more than employees—you are not a Republican.

If someone just explained to you that the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are the same thing—that one is its correct name and the other is its nickname—then you are not a Republican, or a Trump supporter. You may say, “O, yes I am—don’t tell me I’m not.” Let me explain—you may root for that team—that may be your favorite brand—but you don’t support their policies.

No one supports them—no one supports playing nuclear ‘chicken’ with Kim Jong Un—no one supports trashing the environment—no one supports naked bigotry and elitism. They run a great ‘show’—they tap-dance like a mothafukka and they all have a B.S. in BS—but there’s nothing there, behind the scenes, except maybe cynical gloating and paranoia.

There is a struggle going on—in simplest terms I’d call it good vs. evil—but that is too simple—and oversimplification is one of the tools of the forces of evil. By calling one side ‘evil’, we reveal a lack of nuance—better to present a situation, an illustration—and allow others to come up with their own judgements.

For every example I can think of, I usually can describe its good side—and then go on to describe its evil. Even then, while I’m thinking it is good to be open the interwoven nature of good and evil—to see the nuanced, detailed panorama of a certain choice or issue—I’m also thinking that firehose of perspectives can be just as useful in confabulated obfuscation.

It is sad that the grand elegance of the human mind’s mathematical discoveries (or is it ‘inventions’?) is the same mental skill used in contrivance and fraud. Some industries combine the two—marketing, for instance, is the deep-drilling, sociological science of separating people from their money. Likewise, banking and finance—industries that have decided to specialize in business banking—and leave the personal business to the worst of their ilk.

If I sound bitter or critical, it’s not my fault—to be honest about business and politics and such, without sounding so, isn’t possible. It’s pretty common, too—I hear others talk this way all the time—regular-type folks—and the only ones I ever hear push back are hired guns—PR hacks, campaigners, spokespersons (O—and the occasional homunculus sitting outside her trailer).

Flippy

Adult Freedom   (2017Apr30)

Posted by XperDunn on

20160818XD_Yard_08

Sunday, April 30, 2017                                                      12:53 PM

Some of us see being adult as taking responsibility for being a part of a family, of a community. But there’s an aspect of adulthood that is simply the freedom to tell parents (or teachers, or anyone else) to go to hell— freedom to do whatever, and not care what other people think. So being a grown-up is a mix of being let off the leash, and learning to guide yourself.

Currently, many adults show signs of emphasizing their freedom, without any commensurate responsibility. They insist on freedom from facts—if those facts run counter to their preferences—raising the question—where is the line between freedom and irresponsibility? Even our own president shows irresponsibility in his words and his behavior. To hear him blather, one might suppose that some Americans are more free and equal than others—i.e., that freedom includes the right to impinge on another’s freedom.

I marvel at the continuing election of Republicans—they stand for things the majority of citizens oppose—and oppose many of the things that truly matter to the majority of citizens—or, just as often, pretend to ignore things that most of us consider important. Their supporters tend to insist that, since society has always had a pecking order, society is supposed to have a pecking order—as nature intended.

Many people cannot conceive of anything more nuanced—and who can blame them? Everybody has people they must answer to, and people that answer to them—an almost military-style tree of authority overlays every aspect of our communities.

The strength of this pecking order was once inviolate—rejection by a community, in pre-industrial days, was next to a death sentence. In the modern era, the chokehold is capital—cold, hard cash—communities can no longer demand total conformity, but now workplaces can. Your employers can drug-test, credit-check—even restrict bathroom breaks—American freedom ends abruptly at the entrance to your workplaces.

I believe this lust for authority has become the true motivation behind Capitalism. Competition no longer makes sense—humanity’s total production could easily support every single human in comfort far above what we see around today’s chaotic globe. Automation and digital tech are erasing jobs with increasing acceleration. If we extrapolate capitalism out to the next few decades, it results in maybe a thousand really wealthy people, 50,000 people with service jobs, maybe another 50,000 maintaining the tech, and I guess the other (by then) 9,000,000,000 of us are supposed to just curl up and die? If I have that wrong, please explain how it can go any other way.

Now the joke here, to me, is that people counter calls for socialist-leaning policies as ‘attacks on our freedoms’—ha! There has to be more precision in our discourse. Our ‘freedoms’ as individuals remain untouched by regulations on business—unless we’re talking about employee rights—which we never are. It is our ‘freedoms’ as business-owners that are under attack by socialist programs. (According to the ‘American Dream’, anybody could end up being a business-owner, so it really applies to all of us, right? O—wake the hell up. And besides—it’s ludicrous—if everybody had a business, who would they hire?)

It’s as if America were Amway, writ large—lots of promises, lots of ‘opportunity’—but no guarantees, no protections. This is a great thing for an employer—but makes a cold, cruel situation for employees. Consider the years we’re expected to spend on schooling and experience before we can be considered for a good job. Now consider how quickly a person’s life disintegrates when they’re let go—money for food runs out within a week, within a month or so, the home is lost (and most possessions, since you can only own what you can carry with you).

There is no justice in American Capitalism—the opportunities it once boasted have shriveled down to match the odds of a lottery win—the lack of regulation wasn’t enough to satisfy business-owners and has become a surplus of business-centric legislation, a dam against any employee push-back—assuming an individual could afford to sue a company in the first place. The stuffed suits that rail for their ‘freedoms’ are concerned that justice might turn off their taps. The manifestation of their destinies depends solely on neglecting the destinies of the rest of us—their freedom is the freedom to take advantage of us, to curtail our freedoms whenever it conflicts with their profits.

The digital age offers a profound enhancement to the lives of the well-off—but it has zero impact on the poor. The income-inequality divide is partly due to this bisecting of society into digital haves and have-nots—like college degrees on steroids, digital technology makes it easier for owners to take advantage of employees and consumers—and harder for the poor to keep up.

Plus, after more than two centuries of ingrown affluence, our government rarely stops meeting with lobbyists long enough to glance at the needs of the people—so any adjustment of this unfairness is, ultimately, in the hands of those few who benefit from it—while the rest of us watch jobs continue to evaporate. It’s a recipe for disaster.

statue-liberty-evacuation

Harder and More Complicated   (2017Apr28)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, April 28, 2017                                              4:34 PM

Trump recently commented that the presidency is more complicated than he thought. Just yesterday, he commented that the presidency is much harder than he anticipated. I heartily agree—having an incompetent president is much harder and more complicated than having a fit candidate in that office.

Just imagine a prepared, informed, sane president—aaah, how easy that would make everything (comparatively speaking—and for us, not the officeholder—but all fit candidates who run for president expect their hair to turn gray, or white—they wouldn’t be surprised by the nature of the office they spent a year campaigning for). Trump, in attracting his base, displayed a total lack of respect for the demands of being president—because he, and they, were constitutionally unable to respect President Obama.

President_Barack_Obama

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Which brings us to Trump’s favorite burn—pretending that his job is harder because Obama didn’t do it properly. Trump’s trademark is self-contradiction—so now, having pooh-poohed Obama—and by extension, the job of head of state, he turns around and says he’s shocked that being president doesn’t leave him enough leisure time.

But, basically, what disgusts me beyond bearing is his constant surprise—yes, Donald, as an ignorant, empty-headed ass-hat, all new information will no doubt surprise you. But you seem to think we, too, are being surprised—no, no, Little-Fingers—we were surprised by your Electoral College win. We were surprised that so much ignorance lay beneath the surface of the electorate, especially the rural areas. We were shocked by that revelation—but, that you are clueless is no surprise at all—doing the job well, now—that would have shocked the hell out of us.

We were not surprised that healthcare is complex, that foreign affairs are complex, that taxes and trade are complex—we knew. And we knew you were clueless by the way you dismissed these issues during the campaign (as if past presidents had neglected to use the UPS tracking number to locate these answers)—your total ignorance and zero experience is what made your election such a shocking surprise—they were clearly on display throughout your campaign.

Trump, you discover something new about our country every day—with the wonder of a newborn child, you gaze at the enormous task before you and notice some new, little detail every day—surprise. But the rest of us read newspapers, stayed informed, followed current events—as part of a lifestyle. Believe it or not, some of us perceive our vote as both a right and a responsibility—which means it behooves us to know what we’re voting about. That is why it is true—anyone who didn’t vote for you could probably do your job better—just because things like the Syrian civil war (or the First Amendment) are not surprises to these people.

You were a traitor the second you took the oath of inauguration—because you swore to protect and preserve the Constitution—and you lacked the sincerity of someone who knew what it says in that document. You would have been more honest if you had said, ‘yeah, sure’, like people do when they just want to avoid a subject they don’t really understand.

Speaking for the rest of the planet, let me assure you—if you feel this job is too much of a strain, please feel free to resign. We’ll manage, I promise.

Beltway-Collar Crime   (2017Apr25)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, April 25, 2017                                          12:50 PM

I dunno.

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/04/24/senate-republicans-just-busted-sabotaging-trump-russia-investigation/

and then there’s this one, too:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/two-republicans-break-ranks-call-for-trumps-taxes/article/2616360

Excerpt: “Two House Republicans joined more than 160 Democrats on Friday in calling on President Trump to release his taxes.

Reps. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., and Walter Jones, R-N.C., signed a letter to Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, calling on them to ask Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to compel Trump to release his taxes for the past decade to those committees for review.

The letter is the latest move by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in trying to finally pry Trump’s taxes loose.

“Disclosure would serve the public interest of clarifying President Trump’s conflicts of interest in office, the potential for him to personally benefit from tax reform, and ensure that he is not receiving any preferential treatment from the IRS,” the letter leads.

“The Founding Fathers were so determined to prevent corruption among public officeholders that they wrote into our Constitution the foreign emoluments clause,” it continues. “Yet President Trump has chosen to keep an ownership stake in his businesses, in which we know that state-owned enterprises in China and the United Arab Emirates are involved. We know that his business ties stretch to India, Turkey, the Philippines and beyond. None of these potential conflicts and violations of the emoluments clause can be verified until and unless we have disclosure from President Trump.”

This all seemed pretty clear to me, back in January. Two GOP Representatives, now breaking ranks with their party, to address an obvious potential fraud—is proof to me (finally) that one does not have to take an ‘asshole’s oath’ to be accepted as a Republican. That there are only two—and here it is already April—puts a pretty hypocritical face on the rest of the party. We aren’t talking politics here—we’re talking complicity and collusion in a criminal conspiracy.

That the papers and the TV (and the people) talk about it endlessly, while our government pretends to oblivion to this ongoing conspiracy, is a crystal clear ‘FU’ to the American people. The rules only apply when you’re not in power, I guess—all evidence from the beltway certainly points that way. Hey—we may have been stupid enough to elect this guy—but there’s a limit, ya know? Are we supposed to put up with this Trumpster-fire for a whole year, two years? I don’t think so.

Fooling us into allowing you into the White House was easy. But now that you’re there, you have to obey the law to stay there—and Congress is supposed to impeach you when you flout the law, whether they want to or not. Odds are, Trump, you’re breaking several laws, right this minute—how long do you think the GOP is going to stonewall for you? I get that you love walls, but perhaps you don’t realize that you campaigned to put yourself in the brightest spotlight there is—and the truth is coming for you. The real question is whether the entire Republican party will be justifiably dragged down with you.

Let Momma Through   (2017Apr22)

Posted by XperDunn on

Saturday, April 22, 2017                                          11:02 AM

Improv – For One and All

I guess it’s time we went full matriarchal up in this bitch—recent indications provide mounting evidence that women are better able to deal with modern life. In a global, hi-tech environment, cooperation works better than competition—giving the feminine mindset the advantage over the male. In the old world, a bellicose nature helped to grab up land and resources—now that all the land and resources have been grabbed (‘post-frontier’, if you will) civilization benefits more from teamwork than from pioneering.

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While our premiere female politician, Elizabeth Warren, rails against income inequality and corruption, our premiere male politician, Trump, neglects his leadership role and uses his high office to stuff his own pockets. Women are more inclined to nurture the group—where men are inclined to compete for the alpha position. And fighting to be king of the hill, in a hill of seven billion, is more disruptive than empowering.

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Seven billion means cooperate or die—and men just don’t get that—even now, they’re busily destroying the environment for a quick buck—deadbeat dads to the world. ‘Have your fun and don’t look back’ is bad enough when a child is involved—when it’s the atmosphere, or potable water, that’s species suicide. Women, for whatever reason, seem less inclined to ignore their children’s future—or their present welfare, for that matter—or their education… Would it be sexist of me to suggest that women are more concerned with children than men are?

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As capitalism leads us all over a cliff, I’m thinking women are more likely to be able to let go of its siren song—to see past the status quo to the requirements of sheer survival. If that is true, it is only because women are the ultimate minority—they have always gotten the short end of the capitalist stick, so they are well aware of its shortcomings. Their lack of fealty to America’s traditional upper-hand, capitalism, is the one spark of hope in an ever-more-hacked democracy.

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Not that there aren’t bad women—or good men—that’s not what I’m saying—I’m talking about our approach—the things we choose as goals as part of our nature, as much as our judgement. Do we look for advantage or compromise? Do we look for primacy or partnership—command or community? Fragile egos tend to go for all the former—and who has the most fragile egos, men or women?

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Eternal Argument   (2017Apr19)

Posted by XperDunn on

Wednesday, April 19, 2017                                              1:51 PM

A good person, we are told, avoids fighting unless it’s absolutely necessary—but the one who throws the first punch has the best chance of winning a fight. A good person, we are told, cares about others—but then again, one is supposed to look out for number one. Honesty is the best policy—but a little white lie can sometimes be the difference between life and death.

If these sound familiar, it may be because they are often the crux of a drama: to fight or not to fight, to give or to take, to be honest or not. So, one might assume that ethics adds drama to life—ethics tell us to find a way around our animal impulses—and that’s where the drama comes in. But, if we are successful, we feel that we’ve risen above our animal nature—ethics is our way of proving to ourselves that we are above dogs.

No offense to dogs—some of them are far nicer than people—but if you try to reason with a dog, you won’t get far. Then again, trying to reason with some people is no different. They use the pretense of reason to rationalize the behavior of an animal. Even math can be warped into the service of bullshit—4 out of 5 dentists agree.

Some claim that ethics are pretentious luxuries, a thin veneer that falls away at the first sign of deprivation or hunger. But the same could be said of friendship—and while that may be true of many friendships, or ethics, it is not true of all of them. Some people are kamikazes about their friendships, or their ethics—are these people mad? Or are the rest of us missing out on some key factor?

I think it depends on how much you value yourself—if you consider yourself a part of something, you’re less likely to see yourself as irreplaceable—you’re more likely to see sacrifice, on your part, as benefitting the whole. If you think of yourself as a ‘lone-wolf’ individual, you’re more likely to see your own survival as the bottom line.

So, it seems our choices are: 1. suicidally sacrificial or 2. selfishly self-centered—at this point, we realize that everything has two sides and there is no simple, rote answer to any question. A-little-of-each presents itself as the obvious answer—but is it really that simple? Sorry—no, nothing is simple—then again, it can be, if you shut your mind to the endless variety of existence. This accounts for the effectiveness of some douchebag giving out with a derisive ‘whatever’ as a rebuttal to common sense. Apparently, ‘I don’t give a shit’ is an acceptable substitute for ‘I know what I’m doing’.

I don’t respect people that walk away from a losing argument—to me, losing an argument is the most educational experience there is—to find out that there is a better answer, a better way of seeing things. What could be of greater value? When I argue, it’s not to win the fight, it’s to communicate a different point of view—and if I lose the argument, I’m obligated to recognize that the other person had a better grasp of the issue than I did—and that I’ve learned something.

Even if someone hears me out and insists on disagreeing with me, because of their ‘faith’ or some such non-rational bullshit—even that I can respect more than someone who enters into an argument just to be belligerent—and walks away with a ‘whatever’ when they can’t bully me with their rhetoric. That’s just being a jerk, in my book.

The glut of such jerks online is similar to the increased hate and xenophobia that we see today—and it has the same source. Trump is a bully-arguer, and a racist fear-monger—and he won the election (or, at least, the Electoral College)—so, other bully-arguers, and racist fear-mongers, feel emboldened, having such a prominent role-model. And in the end, the bad example of our head of state may do more lasting damage than his bad governance. Bad laws can be rescinded, but encouraging people to hate is a poor lesson that can have a life-long impact on our society.

That is my strongest reason for wanting Trump impeached—conduct unbecoming an American. A leader should be an example—and his incompetent, unethical leadership isn’t nearly as damaging as his bad example. Trump isn’t just a bad president—he’s a bad person. #Sad!

Improv – Late in the Day

 

Thursday, April 20, 2017                                        3:29 PM

The Job of Jazz   (2017Apr19)

The R&B brass section, the vocal back-up trio, the echo effect—and then the electric guitar comes in. It’s got smooth power—and makes you feel like you’re madly in love. But the drums seal the deal—you fall into another world—a world that was hiding behind the silence. At that point, anything the front man sings will sound like sexy poetry—he could be reading from a phone book. And that’s the artifice in art—to the audience it is transporting—to the creator it is hard work, made to seem effortless.

Poetry is much the same—Eliot called it ‘a mug’s game’. Writing in general is a matter of pacing and rhythm—even the graphic arts have a sweep to them that is the visual equivalent of rhythm and pacing—composition and contrast, highlights and empty space.

The paradox is pure—self-expression is not for the creative worker—it is for everyone else. It is an expression—which presumes a listener, a viewer, a reader. Yes, it is your unique and personal self-expression—but it is still an expression—a message sent—and why send a message if not to connect to a recipient?

That is the nakedness of it—to be honestly self-expressive is to reveal who we are—and who we are is the sum of our lifetimes. Thus honest self-expression becomes one’s life story—who we are and how we live. Its revelatory nature is the thing that frightens many people away—and they are all quite sensible people. Apparently, strong feelings and conflict drive some people to creative self-expression—contented people can enjoy art (I’m in that group) but they aren’t as driven as those who live and breathe their art as an almost exclusive preoccupation.

Some people insist on being the audience. They’ll call out to a celebrity actor by their TV character’s name—ignoring both reality and the hard work of the actor in an unconscious effort to merge entertainment with reality. To the actor, I imagine, that’s a double-edged compliment—the high regard of the delusional—but with their numbers so high, ratings are guaranteed—in some way, he or she is making their living by feeding that delusion.

And am I any saner, just because I know to turn off my willing suspension of disbelief as the credits roll? We all crave seeing our lives as something other than the reality—we love to connect to feelings we share, to experience vicariously and empathize with the challenges and exertions of heroes and heroines. Reading a good book isn’t much different from living in another time and place as another person. Coming to the end of a great movie is like waking from an incredible dream. Sex, drugs, and liquor have their place—but there is no escapism like the arts.

Hadyn – Sonata in C (Excerpt)

Friday, April 21, 2017                                              12:42 AM

These new videos I’ve posted today include one that is a sight-reading of the 2nd and 3rd movements from a Haydn Sonata in C (I forget the number). First of all, I misspelled Haydn’s name in the video, which is always embarrassing, yet I always do it. Secondly, I don’t keep any kind of rhythm and everyone knows that you have to keep a steady rhythm. Try to think of it as conversational sight-reading. Talented musicians sometimes take exception to my posts—they are the antithesis of good technique—and I get tired, sometimes, of explaining that I can’t play the piano as well as I would wish—but I like to do it, and I like to share it with people who aren’t so picky. I had a run-in just the other day and I wrote it up, but then I decided not to share it with you. Now, however, as a preemptive disclaimer to my poorly-played Haydn, I share it herewith:

 

Friday, April 14, 2017                                              6:28 PM

YouTube Scuffle   (2017Apr14)

“Every Time We Say Goodbye” by Cole Porter (2013Jun06)

https://youtu.be/4BMa7HEE1Uo

This is a video I posted four years ago. Three years go by—nobody watches, nobody cares—then, a year ago:

plica06 (1 year ago) This is so bad. You could have at least practised a bit before uploading.

xperdunn (1 year ago)  plica06: What a perfect opportunity for you to show us all how it’s done with your own video performance. Or are you all talk and no go?

US GameRat (4 months ago) xperdunn: good thing you know how to handel this and im not being sarcastic at all, im being serious. dont worry about what he or she said, because even if you did or didnt practice that is one beautiful song and you deserve the love because i know what music is. i know why this was so good and it still is, so thank you for making this video become true because without this video i woulndt have any other help, and this is the only video i found because i have the same music, and i found it online and so youre basically helping me learn this song. but this video was better that what i thought than what i would find. you impressed me thank you! i dont care if this plica06 guy calls me some random 13 year-old-piano-player-wanna be, i dont give a shit. i love music, and no one can make me stop. i really have an extreme, basically addiction, or really really deep love over music. but yea. thanl you. at least you made this come true than someone judjing you by who you are because i know truly youre an amazing person. really. and im talking to xperdunn 🙂

xperdunn  (4 months ago) US GameRat: thanks for the support, guy! We music-lovers must fight the forces of musical snobbery, encouraging everyone to enjoy music, no matter the trolls. Be well.

US GameRat (4 months ago)  xperdunn yeah! thank you 🙂

pianoplaylist (2 hours ago) plica06 was extremely lacking in tact.  I disagree though that he or she is a mere troll or a just a musical snob.  You, sir, should fight the forces of mediocrity and make a version that is worthy of your years of investment of time and worthy of the genius work of art that this song is.  It’s a free country and you can upload whatever half-baked, sight reading practice session you desire, but you obviously have the talent and the knowledge to refine your rendition and make it more pleasing to the ear.  That would be more encouraging to the learners.  Sorry for being harsh.  I wish you the best in all things.

xperdunn:

So, you can see that plica06 is critical of my poor piano playing—and because I post my videos to encourage other non-talented music-lovers to go ahead and share what they love, I don’t take crap from nobody—that’s part of it, showing people that a troll is nothing but a guy wasting his time at the keyboard.

But pianoplaylist is critical because he thinks I can do better. That’s the trouble with the internet—everyone has an agenda and nobody knows the whole story. I can barely hold a cup of coffee in my left hand—intentional tremors are just one of the symptoms of nerve damage—poor short-term memory is another. My decades-long struggle with HepC and liver cancer and a liver transplant—and all the permanent damage that was done to my body and my mind—make my poor attempts something of a triumph, even though they suck by the usual standards.

And that is the reason I post my videos—anyone else out there who has been told that they weren’t meant to play music—ignore the critics. Anyone out there that is embarrassed to post their music—post it anyway—be brave. If you have even a pinch of ability, you will soon be much better than I am, or will ever be. As long as you love music—play it—share it—don’t stop to listen to anyone else—they should be playing their own music, not stopping your bliss.

I was extremely gratified that my sight-reading was able to help US GameRat to learn to play this beautiful tune by Cole Porter, an American legend. If he is the only person that takes heart from my posts, so be it—good enough. But who knows, maybe there are more young beginners out there….

Improv – First Star

Factuality    (2017Apr18)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Tuesday, April 18, 2017                                          12:52 PM

There are seven billion people on the planet—and that’s a large number of people. If every one of them used the same amount of resources and energy as the average American, the Earth would ignite like a matchhead, leaving a gray, smoking waste where once we had green, lush bounty. I don’t say this to bedevil my countrymen—I’m just stating a fact.

Neither do I believe we are guilty as people for living as we do. The evil logic of Capitalism creates the over-abundance of pollution and waste, as much as our lifestyles do. In many cases, as in the use of a personal, gas-powered vehicle, the choice of whether to use one is made a matter of ‘can one afford to?’ rather than ‘should one use a car, at all?’ And it isn’t the citizenry that decides how much public transportation is available—it is wealthy capitalists who determine what industries are most profitable—and the health and safety of people does not enter into that formula.

On the one hand we have politics and government, which we all debate with enthusiasm. On the other hand we have the obvious—that each of us wants to live his or her own life without restraint. Simply put, we don’t want the government interfering in our lives—just in everyone else’s.

Government governs best which governs least—except for my next-door neighbor, who needs a lot of governing, right? But government can’t manage the welfare of the citizenry without some control over the citizenry. We try to make that okay by providing the citizens with control of their government, through democracy, but in the end that government must impose rules upon us, whether those rules were democratically arrived at or not.

So, ideally, we want rules that will constrain everyone’s behavior, but which we ourselves find little or no burden. For many people, the criminalization of pot carries no onus, because they don’t smoke pot. For those who do, the criminality of it is an outrage. For those earning minimum wage, income taxes are no great burden—a little bit less than too little is no big deal. For those who must pay millions, taxes seem truly hurtful.

Politics, as we have lately seen, is a far cry from government. Politics used to be an arena for those who felt they knew, better than the main run of folks, how to govern—but politics has devolved into a kind of industry, where motives (if there are any, beyond money or power) are no longer ideals. There are exceptional politicians, still—but their tiny numbers make them less than the main thrust of political discourse—and they are often ridiculed by the ‘stuffed-shirts brigade’ for trying to do something unusual—as if the ‘usual’ had some sanctity to it.

Plus, politicians have surrendered themselves to the moneyed interests as the natural course of things—where, in the past, their reluctance to bow to pressure was their only difference from the businesspeople they now submit to, as if business had the rights instead of people. If they must be so craven, they should just scrap the whole wasteful circus and let the businesspeople run things for themselves. That’s not a bad idea—let business deal with the problems of humanity for a while and maybe they’ll realize that neglecting people is, in the long run, as bad for business as it is for the people.

But let’s be real—people are so stupid they’d burn this country to the ground, if only they can keep making a fast buck. The few sensible people among the crowd talk too softly to be heard over the shouting of the self-important. We haven’t lived like the other animals for a long, long time—yet we still think and act like them. We have the ability to coordinate the entire human race into one, united family—but that is the last thing anyone in power wants to do. They tell us to focus on the ‘economy’, meaning the shell-game that they are currently winning, rather than any bigger picture that involves a higher form of civilization.

I see us all too clearly—and I’ll tell you true: if we destroy ourselves, it will be no great loss. If we can’t do any better than we are right now, the entire Earth and everything that lives on it (or what’s left of it) will be better off without humanity’s thoughtless abuse. And why are we all working so hard—seven billion sweating and striving so that seven hundred or so can enjoy the fabulous wealth and power that humanity is capable of?

All you hard workers out there—start taking long lunches—let the assholes figure out where the toner is for once. And stop watching the news until they rediscover journalism—or at least until they start ignoring Trump. Trump may be president, but still, we are all stupider every time he speaks. And that is only slightly less true for every Republican politician and spokesperson. Let’s face it—they are not another side of things—they are the wrong side of things—else why would they have to hack the system with Wikileaks and Citizen’s United, etc.? They do not express a different side of the truth—they seek to obscure the truth—and that’s not acceptable. Not to me. Only to a media that thrives on confusion and sensation and distraction.

I don’t want to bring down clownish assholes like Trump and the rest of the GOP—I want to incite a rising up of the people who’ve given too much and gotten too little in return. I want people to stand up on their hindlegs and start barking back at these slimy crooks—bring enough light into our society that the flimsy facades of these bastards become as transparent as onion skin. Then we won’t have to topple Trump and his ilk—they’ll crawl back into the holes they came from, their putrid skin burnt by the sunlight of reason, justice, and tolerance.

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Monday, April 17, 2017                                          3:20 PM

Jerks Of a Feather   (2017Apr17)

Like calls to like—Trump is more interested in Kim Jong Un than in anyone in our country. That’s because both leaders are far more concerned with their egos than with the welfare of their citizens. Un inherited poor citizens and Trump grabbed up the rich citizens—and even the world’s largest ocean won’t keep them from standing toe-to-toe, puffing out their chests though the rest of the world holds its breath against the possibility of nuclear winter.

Trump’s got it easier—all he has to distract us from is his treasonous campaign, his ignorance, his incompetence, his taxes, and his nepotism. Un has to actually distract his people from their starvation in a country with no electricity or telephones—a much heavier lift. But give Trump his full four years and who knows? The two countries may end up looking much the same.

Retail stores are hurting from the rise of Amazon, etc., and the cheapness and convenience of the Post Office, UPS, and FedEx. The USPS may not be carrying any first-class letters anymore, with the internet and email rendering them obsolete, but the package biz is booming—our local postal worker complains about the packages that clog up his office when we don’t pick up our mail every day. And with their price-point (and certain grandfathered-in legal restrictions) the post office maintains a strong advantage over third-party delivery services, like UPS.

The fact that many entry-level jobs at retail stores are disappearing, as site-specific shopping disappears, would be no great loss, as careers—but many of those jobs were taken by young people—who were already hard-pressed to find employment, or work experience of any kind. Technology always subtracts jobs from the economy—tech-positive types will assure us that they create new jobs while they destroy the old ones, but let’s take this retail business as a case study.

Floorwalkers and clerks were once needed for every shop in the mall—will there be an equal demand for UPS and FedEx drivers? And will that experience prepare young employees for future jobs as well as working in a retail store? I don’t think so. I think it’s time Silicon Valley started designing apps that use people instead of code—create jobs, not programs. Otherwise we’re headed for a fully-automated society with zero employment.

That would be doable, in a somewhat socialist society—but in pure capitalism, unemployment means poverty, period. So we can either start progressing backwards—or embrace socialism. Yes, it’s ironic that capitalism created the situation, our present race towards human joblessness—and for profit, no less. But that doesn’t change the facts: that a capitalist society requires consumers, and consumers can’t pay without jobs. It’s also ironic that business owners are even more vulnerable than workers, in that any business, nowadays, can disappear overnight—and losing a business is a much greater fall than merely losing a job.

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Sunday, April 16, 2017                                            3:00 PM

Happy Easter   (2017Apr16)

Pick your preference—the solemnity of a holy day, or an Easter egg hunt and a fight over the Cadbury egg. I prefer combining the two and watching Turner Classics’ day-long re-airing of the Hollywood treatments of the Christ—kinda like Eddy Haskell reading the New Testament to June Cleaver.

As a boy, in Catholic Church every Sunday, I would look at the bas-reliefs on the walls of the church—the Stations of the Cross were depicted in small, white-marble tableaux and spaced along the walls on both sides. I was fascinated by the way everyone had a different way of sticking their tongue out to receive the sacrament—it was cognitive dissonance to walk up to the priest and stick out your tongue, but you had to do it.

I never liked Easter egg hunts—they were competitive, but you weren’t supposed to be greedy—very strange, conflicting messages. You were supposed to find as many as you could, but you shouldn’t find them all, because then the littler kids would be left out. Stupid game. We did it for our kids, but we put their eggs on opposite sides of the yard so they each had a search area and could take their time.

I don’t like Easter—it’s like Christmas without the fun and presents. And way too many hard-boiled eggs were involved—which meant deviled eggs, egg salad sandwiches and just plain hard-boiled eggs, with salt, for a snack—for days afterward—yuck. And I hate mint jelly, which only appeared at Easter dinner.

I think Americans like Jesus because he dissociated faith from the state, just like our founders dissociated the state from the monarchy. And it’s a grand story—death and resurrection, freedom from the pains of this world—I’d buy it—who wouldn’t. But faith is like quitting smoking—it sounds a lot better than it is—especially when you’re down in the dumps.

So happy Easter, everyone—and enjoy the movies.

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Nihilism   (2017Apr15)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, April 15, 2017                                          10:51 AM

Do we have laws or don’t we? The Trump campaign colluded with Putin and Wikileaks during the election—and that’s treason. Trump refuses to divest himself of his businesses—or release his tax returns—or close his D.C. hotel—all in direct violation of the Constitution’s banning of emoluments of any kind from foreigners to the president—and that’s an impeachable offense. Trump has hired unvetted, unqualified family and friends to important posts in his ‘administration’—which is nepotism. Do we have laws or don’t we?

Trump spent millions of taxpayer dollars to bomb Syria (once) and bomb Afghanistan (once)—and, as intended, we are all taking about those non-events now, instead of running him out of office, as the good lord intended. There are at least ten different reasons for impeachment proceedings—and the only reason they aren’t proceeding is that Trump is in their party.

You know partisanship has gotten out of hand when the Republicans turn a blind eye to blatantly criminal behavior in a president. And you know that media-hype has gotten out of hand when the president so obviously blows things up for no reason other than distraction—and the media run with it, anyway, as if his unfitness for office suddenly disappeared.

This whole thing is beyond sanity—don’t try to tell me that our politicians represent the people, when we the people stand aghast at the perfidy of the Republicans and nothing is done to rectify their total dismissal of any laws or ethics. These skeezy bastards deserve to go to prison—they all seem to have a hard-on for more prisons, so let’s send them there.

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Of course, the real shame is us. Racism elected Trump—his ‘platform’ is nothing but the erasure of any accomplishment of Obama—and the enormous number of haters and pigs in this country voted for him because he promised to take away their healthcare (and everyone else’s—especially minorities). Our government sucks the big hairy throbbing red one—but we citizens aren’t much better—we brought Trump on ourselves, through our own ignorance—no wonder the pols are in no hurry to oust him.

Trump

Piano Tuner   (2017Apr12)

Posted by XperDunn on

20170413XD-SenOnTheScramble_01Wednesday, April 12, 2017                                              3:17 PM

Chris Farrell has tuned the piano and spring has officially arrived—the sour flatness of a far-too-long winter is broken into shards of light by the bright eagerness of our perfectly-attuned piano. If you don’t see much of Chris lately, it’s because the Danbury WestConn needs him to tune all their pianos, all hundred-something of them, all year ‘round. Also, he’s working up a new website and writing the occasional song for the UN—yeah, that UN. His daughter is also busy—involved in two recent films “The Fits” and “Salero” (I forget if she directed, produced or both) and you can see them on Netflix if you’re looking for the good stuff.

It’s easy to stay humble when my piano tuner plays my piano far better than I ever could—come to think of it, that was also true of old Steve Anderson, who used to tune our old keyboards—I’m just not very good. But I sure sound better on a tuned piano—they practically play themselves.

Improv – Rainy Spring

 

Well, the world is a troublesome place—and it seems we add to its power and convenience at our peril—in this present time, with anonymized global comms, shoddy fissile-material security, jet bombers, and alt-news websites recruiting for terror, bad actors have never had it so good.

Every great thing our technology can do is diluted, polluted by the entrenched interests, especially in fuel-energy. Every great thing our Internet can do is smeared by the insecurity of hacking and phishing—the more we welcome it into our lives, the greater the risks. Every great thing our country meant to do for the world has been consumed by our military-industry complex abroad and the NRA at home. The eternal health crisis of modern drug use has been opaqued and diverted by our blind insistence on ‘criminalizing’ drugs—meanwhile Big Pharma bankrupts families (and promotes drug abuse) selling ‘legal’ drugs by prescription.

 

 

Improv – Thoughtful

None of the misbehavior is new—but the means, the opportunities, and the exploding variety of white-collar crimes, child armies, and gang activities all combines to demonstrate the kind of explosive change the good guys could be enjoying, if we weren’t being snookered into complacency by vested interests and politicians who see their very existence threatened by the possibilities of digital voting and online government transparency—these things will happen over the cold, dead bodies of the establishment’s entitled. And all the while politicians’ll puff up their chests and orate about democracy—and afterwards, a lobbyist will hand them a check for their reelection campaign.

The English had their mad King George—but unlike us, with Trump, they didn’t suffer the shame of having elected him. Trump is the triumph of ignorance and the death of representative government. And the Republicans who use his populist carnival-barking to advance their partisanship are truly “dogs who have caught a car”—up until now, we had the sense to expect them not to govern—but we foolishly made them our governing body, and they don’t know how—they’d lost for so long, they forgot that ‘winning’ wasn’t the actual job.

Thursday, April 13, 2017                                        2:04 PM

Dumber than Dirt   (2017Apr13)

Trust in Trump—to perfectly simulate what a child would do, as president. He just dropped ‘the biggest non-nuke bomb in our arsenal’ on a suspected ISIS site in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? That’s the country we armed in the eighties, so that they could repel the Soviet invaders—and when they did, we lost their phone-number—leaving the Afghanis with a ruin for a country and no post-war aid or support—like we have traditionally given, even to our enemies.

Twenty years later, in 2003, as we prepared to invade, we even joked that we couldn’t bomb Afghanistan ‘back to the stone age’ because they were already there—and there was truth to that. Fifteen years further along, Trump figures that one big bomb oughta do it—what do you think?

I think he’s dumber than the dirt he kicked up. The arms-makers must be drooling at this guy—it cost millions to send that single flight of Tomahawks to Syria—and I bet it wasn’t cheap to drop the world’s biggest bomb, either. At least he saved us the expense of getting congressional approval.

Poor Afghanistan—we love to fight there, but god forbid we help them keep their peace. That’s the trouble with all these trouble-spots—when the firing stops, everyone turns their backs. Why don’t we try fighting to help some of these people—is that too far beneath us? But then, Americans aren’t big on fixing stuff, even in their own country—I think we’re missing an opportunity here—infrastructure is universal—if we started fixing our own, we could globalize—there are plenty of places in the world that need rebuilding. Of course, they’d have to stop shooting first—and so would we.

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Bear’s Birthday   (2017Apr10)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Monday, April 10, 2017                                          9:53 AM

It’s my lovely Bear’s birthday today—may she live forever! O, how the celebration will ring out across the universe. O, how joyous are the people of Earth to have the mighty Bear in all her glory, marking another year with all of us.

The Bear celebrates her day with special yoga sessions and perhaps a jar of lingonberry preserves. We don’t know—the mysterious Bear moves about the community with speed and stealth—she is not presently here.

Improv – Jones Beach

 

Bear’s home! And it’s time for bagels with lox and cream cheese—yay! I got Bear a selection of Swedish jams and soda-bread for her birthday—from Hemslojd, you know. I think she liked the printed tin more than the food. Well, enough of that—Bear doesn’t like to be talked about online.

Improv – Pop Patchouli

 

Monday, April 10, 2017                                          7:34 PM

Pete came by today—we got just one improv out of it—I haven’t been playing well lately. It’s very frustrating. But Pete is great and we had fun, so one improv is all we get. Considering how much trouble the piano has been giving me lately, I’m grateful for the one.

 

Improv – Five Dollars

 

Improv – Appalachian Trail

 

Cover: “Girls On the Beach” & Improv (Coda)

 

Improv – Breezy Meadow

 

Improv – Water Sprite

 

Tuesday, April 11, 2017                                          6:59 PM

I’m almost done with new videos—including Pete and I from yesterday. I watched “Hidden Figures” today—what a great movie—I’m going to get the book—movies about history always leave out a lot from the book. It’s one of the few times you can still enjoy reading it after watching the movie—because it still has surprises in it.

 

Improv – Crocuses

 

Kosinski Redux (2017Apr09)

Posted by XperDunn on
Jerzy Kosinsky

Jerzy Kosinsky en rechts Harry Mulisch *28 februari 1969

Sunday, April 09, 2017                                            1:48 PM

Jerzy Kosinski, the enigmatic and controversial writer of the 1960s-1970s, is perhaps most famous for his screenplay “Being There” (1979). That successful Peter Sellers vehicle has become a classic tautology: given a stylized-enough established order, a complete idiot can stumble his way to the presidency. The Trump administration, to date, has been so fraught with purposeful malfeasance that we tend to overlook Trump’s Chauncey-Gardener-like qualities.

Now, with the advent of military strikes, his perfect ignorance comes to the fore. As usual, there are documented past statements (that is to say, as always with Trump, Tweets) where he criticized Obama for taking similar actions in Syria, and in the same way (absent Congressional approval) and calling it a mistake. And, as always, our military action is spurious, when what we really need is a definitive plan, a long-term road-map towards specific goals—and one that accounts for the existence of other countries—you know, something like Obama was doing—facing the reality that a ‘Big Stick’ is of limited use.

But the would-be-funny-if-it weren’t-so-scary part is the news media, seriously discussing what amounts to knee-jerk militaristic grandstanding—as if it did indeed have a definitive plan behind it. This is Chauncey Gardener to a tee. Serious panelists mistake vague mindlessness for inscrutable subtlety, chasing their tails to find the adult philosophy behind a child’s wanderings.

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What lowers the present situation beneath even “Being There” is that these talking heads know that they are debating the impulses of an idiot—they simply discuss everything with a bias towards false gravitas—out of habit. They can’t help themselves—bullshit has become their lifestyle.

Thus we see that 59 cruise missiles don’t end a six-year-old civil war—fancy that. A military fellow pointed out that the strike didn’t even target radar or surface-to-air installations, which makes it safer to come back and do it again, and is SOP for a first strike. Even as a spurious first move, the Tomahawk flurry didn’t make sense—it was a display of impotence as much as anything else.

So by all means, talk about Trump’s increased Presidential-ness, now that he’s a big-boy Commander-in-Chief—keep that bullshit flowing, because god forbid anyone on cable news talks like a sane person with their head on straight. Just keep in mind that Trump didn’t do a goddamned thing for those poor, beautiful children he ‘cried’ over—or any of the Syrian refugees like them whom Trump is presently afraid to allow to live here.

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R.I.P. Don Rickles   (2017Apr06)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Friday, April 07, 2017                                             11:20 AM

Today’s one of those days when I feel like anyone with a lick of sense would avoid discussing politics—why bother thinking about it, when thinking seems to be the only thing politicians regularly avoid?

April showers—and winds tearing rooves in South Carolina and mudslides erasing towns in three South American countries—spring has sprung—and April really is the cruelest month this year. Mass deaths—another topic I’d prefer to avoid. Then again, it’s raining sarin gas and cruise missiles in Syria, so all things considered I’d rather be in South America, digging out from the mudslides.

Or best of all, you could be at our house, where everything is always beautiful and sweet (knock wood). I mean, yeah, it rained today, but it wasn’t an existential threat, fer cryin out loud. And there was that thunderstorm, yesterday (I had successfully reassured myself that it would never hit the house—until I saw on the news this house that had been hit nearby—but my luck did hold, so my crossed fingers worked).

So I feared for my life briefly—but don’t we all, every once in a while? In a car, in a bar—at work during a bad day—I mean, who doesn’t trip and nearly bash their brains out, or slip on the ice, or almost touch a light socket every now and then? Young people—the immortals, that is—but I’m a geezer now, no more bouncing back up again for me. And I’m house-bound—most accidents happen at home—I’m living in the danger zone! How exciting.

Don Rickles passed away—I loved that guy, ever since I was a little kid—he could insult someone all day long and never hurt their feelings—just make them laugh—what a genius. Jimmy Kimmel teared up talking about his memories of Don Rickles last night, instead of doing his monologue—I did too.

Other people died yesterday—and many babies were born, I’m sure—so the balance is maintained—but for someone in their sixties, things start to get unfamiliar—the store you loved is gone, the entertainer you loved has disappeared, friends, family—even enemies pass away. And little children only love you long enough to grow and learn and run off to live their own lives. Nothing makes you feel your age like having your kids grow up—or losing your favorite comedian.

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I, Or Anyone I Know   (2017Apr06)

Posted by XperDunn on
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Syrian security tries to quash dissent in Douma, but residents remain defiant, Jan. 14, 2012. (Elizabeth Arrott/VOA)

Thursday, April 06, 2017                                        2:24 PM

Devin Nunes, having erred on the side of Trump-partisanship to the point of public misconduct, has finally bowed to the inevitable result of such mischief and stepped down as head of the House Intel Committee investigating the Trump-Putin collusion. How many Trump-people does that make, so far? How many have been fired or resigned in disgrace? And how many good people have refused his appointments, refused to be complicit in his collapsing administration, or have been fired simply for being competent, long-term civil servants (the ‘enemy’)? There’s at least one Russian spy who’s been released from jail and whisked off to Moscow before he can be called in for questions.

Apparently, Trump’s hatred of visibility, and its accompanying disapproval, has led to a lot of empty government offices where, ordinarily, people would be pointing out unethical, counter-productive, or downright dangerous policy problems. The EPA has been put in solitary confinement, along with the NFS and many other agencies with a watchdog component. Trump likes rules, but only when he’s the one making them.

This helps distract us from him being the first president to ever be elected without any experience in government or the military—and helps him line his pockets with whatever international deals he makes. While all the people in DC, outside of his inner circle, have devoted their lives to public service, Trump’s career has been about greed—and old habits die hard.

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Pro-government demonstartion in Latakia

But worse than his shady dealings, his hypocrisy about Syria is sickening. He speaks of seeing photos of ‘beautiful children’ who were gassed by Assad and his determination to do ‘something’ about it. The Syrian Civil War is six years old now—is it finally real because Trump saw a photograph? Who is this asshole? And the pretense that he’s starting from zero—what a narcissist. Hey, bub, the world has been trying to put this fire out for a long time—it’s not new—you are. And the same could be said for Trade, Healthcare, or Civil Rights. All these things are well-discussed issues—the only thing new is that you are pretending to care about them now—just like you pretended to care about the Constitution to win an election, without reading the damn thing.

I saw his ‘interview’ with the New York Times—I have an institutionalized schizophrenic friend whose phone conversations are more coherent—and more human. Okay, I’m sixty-one—I’ve seen a few miles of road—so, I am older and wiser now—but I still never thought we’d elect a president whom I’m sure I could do a better job than. Understand that I’m not claiming I would be a good president—I’m saying I, or anyone I know, would make a better president than Trump. How did one-sixth of eligible voters elect a pig that the rest of us despise? It’s like the NRA’s stranglehold on gun rights, writ large—a small but vocal group of delusional yahoos defeat common sense among the majority.

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Anti-Assad protests in Baniyas, April 2011

In that interview, he urged the Times to follow that ‘Susan Rice’ story. Trump, do you mean the criminal allegations you spuriously made without proof or evidence of any kind? That story, you lying bag of shit?

Our democracy has been hacked—and the proof is that maniac in the Oval Office. I don’t care if it’s the Russians or the Super-Wealthy, but some sons-of-bitches have taken over our democracy—and majority rule is dead. I’m sick of it and I’d like to take a flamethrower to the bastards responsible.

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Protests in Douma

Transparent As A Window   (2017Apr05)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Wednesday, April 05, 2017                                              6:12 PM

When Trump spent years lying about President Obama’s birth, it was excusable—a private citizen can say whatever they want about the president—even a filthy lie. When Trump spent a year lying about Hillary Clinton in every possible way, it was excusable—he was in a hard-fought election and things get said on both sides. Even when he lied about the dozen or more women who came forward to accuse him of groping, etc.—even that was still within the heat of the campaign.

When he fired Susan Rice because she was honest about the unconstitutional nature of his travel ban, he was as much as saying, “The law is whatever I say it is.” The courts disagreed, thank goodness—but the mindset remains.

Trump is under investigation—has been since before he was elected, it turns out. He and his people are colluding with Russia—and the bad press has spurred him to try to make the investigation focus on how the information was collected—instead of what it found. It still found something—and the sooner the quicker, as far as either removing his administration or absolving them of collusion. Either way, whining about procedures can only divert and delay for so long.

But trying to smear Susan Rice—trying to throw her under his own bus—is cold, even for a POS like our President. There is no excuse for this kind of blind thrashing around, tweeting untruth upon untruth—even if Obama, or Rice, had done wrong (something only a pig like Trump could imagine) it wouldn’t change the fact of the Trump-Russian collusion.

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I’d appreciate the media highlighting an important aspect of these tweets. The reason everyone finds them so shocking is that we know they couldn’t be true—the only reason Trump finds them credible lies to tell is because he and his people would behave improperly under pressure—in a hot minute—and they assume that everyone is as cold-blooded, cynical, and absent of ethics as they are.

But they are the aberrations, not Obama—and certainly not Susan Rice. I feel this aspect of Trump’s tweets has been overlooked—but it is an obvious and important aspect of his disinformation campaign. Only a man lacking any shred of honor could be so quick to assume that behavior in others. The media has already recognized that Trump always uses the word ‘fake’ whenever the news really hurts him—it’s almost a confirmation that they’ve hit it on the nose, at this point.

And during the campaign, he always had a ‘tell’—if you accused him of something true, he always accused you of exactly the same thing, in the same words, even. So, now that the glamor has worn off, Trump is pretty self-damning. We know what he accused HRC of, after she said it of him—Confirmed. We know which news he called ‘fake’—Confirmed. And we know how he views the presidency, by the accusations he makes against Obama—Confirmed.

And now he attacks an unemployed civil servant, Susan Rice—how long will we hear this nonsense, before we simply laugh in his face? I wish I could be in that room with Sean Spicer—I’d tell him what I think of his psychotic boss and his tissue-thin web of lies.

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The Partying Continues   (2017Apr05)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Wednesday, April 05, 2017                                              10:15 AM

I’ve never had an ‘edge’, like my late brother—he was cool. He could be dismissive, confrontational, and disruptive—just like a rock star (and it didn’t hurt that he sang like a rebellious angel). That’s not me—I’m more of a gullible rule-follower with an annoying habit of obsessing over detail. And one of the rules I like to follow is ‘try to be positive’. When I write my dismissive, confrontational, and disruptive blog-posts about politics, I often tell myself, “You shouldn’t be such a downer—why not write about positive things?”

But I think I’m over that—you can’t write happiness—if there was anything to say about being happy, I’d have said it—but most happiness is too ephemeral (and too fragile) for words—it’s a feeling. Happiness is hard to share and impossible to write about, at length. Problems, now—there’s no end of things to say about problems.

And there’s no end of problems with today’s politics—leadership requires idealism, but the promise of power attracts the less-than-ideal. When Obama pushed through Affordable Health Care, he knew that it was a political misstep, but he did it anyway—because it was the right thing to do. By contrast, we have Trump recently signing an executive order to un-ban pesticides the EPA had determined were too toxic—and handing the pen to the head of Dow Chemical.

That would suggest that Trump favors business over humanity—but there’s more to it than that. Business can’t thrive in a place where no one makes enough money to have discretionary income (spending cash). Businesses can’t, in the long run, make a profit if all their customers are dead. Favoring business over humanity is a false equivalence—it is really a matter of preferring short-sighted greed over long-term reality, of ignoring warnings—not because they’re false, but because they are not yet true. Businesses love to project their future sales, but they’re uncomfortable with projections of reality.

That’s where science-denial and doubt comes in—they don’t want to admit that scientists’ warnings aren’t yet true—so they claim that such warnings aren’t true at all. Short-sightedness as public policy—for the purpose of immediate profit—resembles an addict grubbing for a fix. Capitalism becomes slow suicide. Socialism becomes the rehab we’re not ready to check in to. The partying continues.

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Zero Day   (2017Apr04)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Tuesday, April 04, 2017                                          6:05 PM

Our niece, Joanna, is on a long hike and, in her blog, she talks about taking a ‘zero day’—which is when you cover zero miles for the day, i.e. a rest day. But when you’ve hiked the woods for weeks and you finally stop in town for a day, it’s hardly idle time—showers and laundry and hot meals seated at a table are just a few of the wonderful things about hitting a town while on the trail. So, it’s not a ‘rest’ day, per se, but a zero day.

It should surprise no one that hiking has a panoply of jargon—it is as much a different culture as it is an escape from everyday culture—I’m surprised it doesn’t speak an entirely different language altogether. Our niece commented recently that the hiking life, once normalized, seems quite like any other lifestyle—new expectations and new anticipations become habitual and life returns to what it was, pre-disruption (but with better views, no doubt).

Zero days seem to be what we are all taking lately. For most of my life the news was about what was new, and what progress had been made. But now the media never talks about anything new, and our government makes no progress at all—it is actually undoing the last six months of work, as much as it can.

Fatigue has set in, as well— it was frustrating enough to rant about Trump before the election, it has been beyond frustrating to rant about Trump since the election, and now that it’s come out that he and his inner circle may have colluded with the Russians, we don’t even know if there’s a traitor in the White House or not.

I think there is—and not just because he’s Putin’s plaything—although I tend to credit that intelligence—but for swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution, when he obviously hasn’t read it. So an ignorant, vindictive traitor is holding the highest office in the land and there doesn’t appear to be a single person in DC with a pair of balls. I’m not blaming the women—our female statespersons are doing what heavy-lifting is being done—but every male congressman and senator is being a coward in the midst of this country’s greatest crisis—Trump must be ousted before sanity can return.

In the meantime, I guess we’re all taking a zero day—the whole damned country. I heard that 10,000 women have signed up to be politicians—I don’t think that’s going to be enough.

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Susan B Anthony

The Most Dangerous Game   (2017Apr03)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Monday, April 03, 2017                                          10:47 AM

We like to pride ourselves on our progress—we’ve conquered the apex predators with stones and bones, conquered the elements with clay and lumber, conquered hunger with agriculture and husbandry, conquered thirst with aqueducts, pumps, and plumbing, conquered winter with fire, and conquered boredom with the arts and sciences. Using these tools, we expanded our species from its niche-point to cover the globe.

Taking all that success as encouragement, we entered an industrial age, an atomic age, and a digital age—our control and manipulation of matter, energy, and other life is impressive. But there’s one thing we don’t control—ourselves.

We have laws, treaties, and understandings—but these are frail things that leave us still with a substantial amount of war, crime, and violence. We have some socialism, but it still leaves substantial numbers of children hungry, sick, uneducated, and generally underserved. We have some equality, but it still leaves substantial numbers of wealthy people able to take advantage of others and skirt the law.

We have a representative government—but somehow it fails to represent us all. As soon as the Constitution was ratified, self-serving people have sought to circumvent its spirit—two centuries later, they’ve got the whole thing pretty well hacked. Now, it is a joke, and we elected a clown who, evidence indicates, has no idea what it says in the document he swore to uphold and defend.

I could live with a venal president who wanted only to line his pockets. I could live with a conservative whose ideals are premised differently from my own. That’s democracy—but how does a perverted, ignorant narcissist get elected? Border-line-legal corruption and intentional confusion are the only answers. We are still waiting for the answer to the question of whether legality’s borderline was, in fact, crossed—and the crooks are in charge of the investigation, so we’re not holding our breath.

Trump is the poster-boy for our present day crisis—people need to have unity and inclusion. Patriotism, capitalism, tyranny, and secrecy are all opposed to unity—these ideas split us into ‘teams’ that work against each other and fear each other. Wealth also breeds disunity, making poor people resentful and rich people paranoid. This is a bad thing for a global community that is on the edge of climate change, habitat loss, resource shrinkage, and overpopulation—and anyone considering making the whole thing worse with a ‘limited nuclear exchange’ is just flat-out psychotic.

Income inequality wouldn’t be such a big deal if there were a bottom to the lower end of the income scale. If everyone could be sure their families had plenty to eat, public education, internet access, and all the other necessities of modern life—then having rich people driving around in fancy cars would simply be an annoyance, at worst. The reality is that these people take and take, in the face of millions who go wanting—and that’s sociopathic.

Capitalism was founded back when the class system was still the norm—that is why the vast majority of its participants, the laborers, fight even today to get their due—their nature was defined back when their equal value as humans was ignored. That is why capitalism, an inherently mathematical idea, became nothing more than a re-tread of monarchial rule. Capitalism allows us all a loophole, where we can ignore the Constitution (and all decent human instinct) in favor of owners’ rights and the laws of property.

Now, I want to keep my property as much as the next guy—I own a home on a piece of property, a car, appliances, and books and other sundries. Compared to most of the third-world, I’m in the lap of luxury—and I consider myself to be so. But there should be limits on property—if I had $85 billion, like the Koch Bros., I would consider it only fair that I disburse some of that money to other people, perhaps hungry children or college students who can’t afford their tuition. Just keep a few billion—anyone who feels strapped because they only have a couple of billion bucks is living in a fantasy world.

Financial institutions try to frighten us with ‘Cold-War’-like warnings of the Chinese or the Russians having bigger financial cannons—that’s nonsense. A more grass-roots, localized economy is stronger in the long run—and less likely to abuse its power. Greed will continue as major motivation for so long as we refuse to recognize the unfairness of capitalism—and greed, at this point in our civilization, is a fatal addiction. Unity is the only health food that can wean us off of greed.

So we must recognize that our government is infested by greed—and our mass media, too—and we must begin some sort of underground that circumvents all these broken institutions, without becoming just another problem in the mix. Human nature defies us to try—nothing has yet withstood the rot of corruption—even the great experiment that was America is frayed and torn. But those men in Philadelphia made a good jab at the problem—and perhaps our best tribute to them would be to try for something new, like they did, in spite of the odds against success.

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Have Fun   (2017Apr01)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, April 01, 2017                                          2:02 PM

When the world is in an uproar, it works for me—I can get riled up, even spending my life here in helpless, idle boredom. My head fills with blog-post ideas and I write like a fiend—and others are equally busy online, voicing their reactions to scandals and violence. What with Obama, the Tea Party and Trump and Putin, it’s been a riot of chaos and protest for years now—but I think the wave has broken. Trump’s tweets and rallies have become commonplace and dismissible, finally. We’re all just waiting around to see if Trump & Co. will be scoured from Washington by impeachment for treason (or maybe ethics violations, or whatever) or if his corrupt presidency will be allowed to stand for the full four years.

In the meantime, the crimes against humanity, and against the United States—in the form of Trump’s XOs and the GOP’s legislation—have piled up to a point where it would take a three-day seminar just to review them all. And our inability to reverse the course of our hacked democracy leaves us helpless witnesses to the most cynical corruption this country has ever seen. So a stunned silence descends—we stop interacting on social media for lack of a single ray of sunshine, we stop watching the news due it’s determination to keep things in the air instead of getting to the bottom of things, and we wait for a champion to rise among us and strike back at evil.

Fortunately, for most people, this means that spring, and soon summer, are upon us, and it’s time to get out of the house and have a little fun. Go out to lunch, go to the movies, head for the beach, maybe—a winter full of online bickering and Trump-watching is over. Time to get out of the house and out of our heads a little, finally.

But not for me—I’m still stuck in the house. Still, I’d rather see social media go quiet than have it continue the batting back and forth of lies, half-truths, and rationales. And no longer giving a good god damn what Trump has to say will hurt him a lot more than it hurts me—so go, have fun. Ignore that fucker until people with the access to our government can figure out what to charge him with, and eject him.

Wish List   (2017Mar31)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Friday, March 31, 2017                                            6:22 PM

Wish List

Feel the beauty

Don’t turn away

Don’t dismiss this moment

Taste the pleasure—drink it in

Dive deeply into the moment

Don’t ask questions, don’t hesitate

Just open your eyes—open your soul

Take in the totality of all the existence around you

You’re there, too—right in the center

You can center yourself in yourself

Feel the beauty

Be the universe

Pray for rain

And dream of tomorrow.

 

Rest your head on the pillow

Let your breath come easy

Empty your heart of burdens great or small

Fill your mind with possibilities

Past, present, and future have their way

Be the stone in the river

Be the eagle on high

Be the one who hears the music

Catch the melody in the air

And dance in its stillness.

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Saturday, April 01, 2017                                          10:16 AM

There—I’ve tried to be positive. It only works while I’m reading the poem—it doesn’t ‘stick’, as it were—but at least I tried.

Life is good—too good. When I was born, we could only gaze up at the moon—we couldn’t go there. Nobody had a computer, the phone was stuck to the wall, and the TVs were in black and white. Women were infantilized, minorities were openly persecuted, gays were institutionalized, children were beaten—not incidentally, as today, but as a matter of course. When people today speak of a ‘return to traditional values’ I look at them as fools.

And I also shudder. If I consider that we could easily devolve back to that evil—or worse, devolve into the violent upheavals seen in other countries—I realize that the goodness of my life is a fragile thing—a moment in time that could blow away like a leaf in a breeze.

When I watch Trump and friends actively try to make that happen, I smolder with rage—only an entitled little prick could be so cavalier with our hard-won progress. Only a sociopath could think that undoing the prior president’s work was his job. And how ignorant does someone have to be, to be the worst, most unpopular president in history—and not know why?

So I view America’s upward-trending awareness and conscience since 1956 as a miracle—and Trump’s taking a sledge hammer to it all in 2017 as a crime against humanity. Only decades of the greatest security and comfort ever known could reduce our citizenry to the impotent bunch of I-phone-starers that let this happen—and, unfortunately, only a great suffering will again steel us to fight back against the darkness. I’m thinking a ruined planet might do the trick. Or a world war. But I try to stay positive.

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Citizen Without A Country   (2017Mar31)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Friday, March 31, 2017                                            9:50 AM

The repeal of North Carolina’s HB2 is no repeal—it simply removes the rally-point word ‘transgender’ from the new bill—which still allows discrimination and eternal foot-dragging by the State. In spite of pressure from colleges and businesses, nationally, who oppose North Carolina’s puritanical homophobia—at the risk of their own bottom-lines—North Carolina has reworded their bias into a bill that repeals only the use of the word ‘transgender’, not their control over who ‘goes’ where.

This is similar to Trump’s 2nd (and still blocked) Muslim ban, which changed only in that it removed the word ‘Muslim’ from the ban. The hate-fueled neo-cons of recent ascendance care nothing for the disapproval of the courts or the business establishments, much less the people they affront. Even when they get a rolled-up newspaper across the snout, they still try to hang-dog their way around them to resume eating their own feces.

And ‘bad dogs’ are an apt comparison, as they prove incapable of sensing their own immorality, turning puppy eyes on the nation, as if to say, “Why would you deny me this?” When Trump tweeted that he’d been ‘tapped’, he was trying to claim that having his peoples’ side of conversations with foreign-spies-under-surveillance should have been redacted. Even for Trump, that’s some childish hypocrisy, on the level of ‘wasn’t me—the cat broke the cookie jar’.

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Meanwhile, he continues to kick down the sand-castle of Obama’s legacy—undoing both environmental and civil protections whose only crimes are that they annoy some entitled industrialists—and bigots who still resent having had a black president. The totality of the evil in Trump and the Republicans is overpowering—they haven’t a single decent motivation amongst them. We are literally being governed by our enemy—while they ‘investigate’ their own ties to the enemy.

I hope all you Trump supporters out there are comfortable with the term ‘traitor’—because that’s what you are, that’s what he is, that’s what making a “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is. I won’t even be able to think of this place as the United States of America any longer, until and unless we get him out of there, and elect a Democrat majority to Congress in 2018. Until then, we live in the Trump-Reich.

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Be More Careful Next Time   (2017Mar28)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Tuesday, March 28, 2017                                        12:21 PM

I think Fascism may have been a temper tantrum that Western Civilization threw after their God died. They thought, “Well, we can’t worship the unseen anymore—let’s worship ourselves—or our leaders.” Capitalism, too, seems to have become a tawdry equivalent—“Money is life, so worship money above all else.” But the Earth has always provided us with much more than we give ourselves, or can buy with money—if worshipping Gaea wasn’t such an old, primitive meme, it’d get more play in the West. Instead, many choose Trump—a crossbreed of Fascism and Capitalism.

Still, we don’t need to worship the Earth—taking care of it would be sufficient—not poisoning it or chopping it down would do the trick. Ironically, that which connects us inexorably to the planet is the thing that makes us destroy it—we are animals. Born in blood and feces, breastfed, raised on roasted flesh, making waste, making babies, striving, fighting, and dying—take away the clothes and the gadgets, we’re just a bunch of animals. And when we’re asked to control ourselves, we claim ‘freedom’ and do whatever we want, instead.

It’s true—nothing makes me want to start a fight more than someone else saying, ‘control yourself’. Language becomes a cage, and when it starts to close in, we shout our way out. That’s what all that shouting on TV news is about—animals trying to break out of the cage of facts, rationalizing their predations as if their lives depended on it. You’ll notice that everyone stays calm until their reality is attacked—that’s when the confrontation comes, when they’re challenged. It no longer fascinates, or even frustrates, me—it just makes me sick and tired.

Trump and his gang make a big deal of manners—manners make it okay to condemn a statement without denying anything in the statement. That they are the rudest bunch of thugs seems to escape their notice, interstitially. They talk down to the whole country—but still puff themselves up and stand on ceremony whenever anyone else approaches frankness. I’d never thought of hypocrisy as a lifestyle choice before this administration came in. It’s endlessly embarrassing to see the depths of ignorance and self-service to which Trump, his gang of traitors, and the Republicans as a group, are willing to stoop.

It’s almost funny—if they weren’t so desperately self-involved, they could see for themselves how utterly transparent their cynical mendacity is to the rest of us. If there was ever a perfect example of the adage ‘be careful what you wish for’, Trump is it. That crowd of fools, who so ferociously rejected the female candidate, were just enough to get Trump through the Electoral College—and now that he’s in office, it seems that the delusional chaos of his campaign speeches is being transcribed to paper, as if he spoke with judgement instead of mere authority.

I can guarantee that a referendum, tomorrow, on President Trump would remove him from office—but we are so used to getting a usable President that we have no machinery to dispose of a broken one that snuck in by accident. Any other elected office would be vulnerable to a referendum, but when you’re the President, you’re the one who calls for it—I hope we’ve all learned a lesson here. Be more careful when you vote for a president, from now on. They ‘investigate’ themselves, once sworn in—when we should have done so, prior to the election.

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But that stuff isn’t news at all—the sudden, precipitous rise in the level of lies and stupidity is a shock—but it’s really just the old way, with a super-charger on the Evil. Government has never been totally innocent or idealistic—but it’s insistence on the pretense of civility has worn so thin it’s transparent, or gone completely, really, when you see the Administration’s latest antics and mouthings. The treacly bonhomie that Sean Spicer was giving off today was more nauseating than his rudeness-fit faux-pas from yesterday—that clown is no actor—and I have no more stomach for smiling hypocrisy than for angry cynicism.

We have a representative government—but because of the Electoral College, our current administration represents the most resentful and ill-educated third of the voters—and the voters themselves were only half the number of eligible voters. At this point, we should make voting a legal requirement, like jury duty—sure, we’d be forcing the more irresponsible people to participate, but being irresponsible is better than being foolish enough to vote for that profiteering Russian puppet, Trump.

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The Infamous Lying President   (2017Mar27)

Posted by XperDunn on

Monday, March 27, 2017                                        10:26 AM

Another week, another bunch of stuff will happen—I’m gonna try not to get too upset about any of it. Used to be, if I didn’t follow current events, I felt I was being careless—now, the news isn’t so much ‘events’, as machinations.

Back in the Seventies, if a candidate was suspected of colluding with Russia, we wouldn’t still be discussing it on the news, three months into their elected term—we’d find out—and PDQ. And just what level of stupidity is Trump assigning us when he tries to characterize the incidental collection of info from his team, during surveillance of Russian spies—as him being under surveillance? Opposite day is over, Donny—turning the truth inside out only works during a campaign—not while serving in office.

Meanwhile, Trump is the hand we’re watching—while the other hand, the GOP Congress, pushes through crap legislation for their donors—dumping coal waste in local streams and hunting bears in hibernation. Who are these evil monsters and who the hell is dumb enough to elect them?

Public education, which made this country the greatest nation on Earth—and by example led every other country to higher literacy and science research—has become a libtard scam? Seems pretty clear to me what the real scam is—profiteer politicians who don’t care about our civic health.

And what’s this new BS about ‘accesses’? Access to health care, or access to education—is code for ‘you can buy it, if you have the money’. Nobody is fooled by this cynical word-play. Yet these duplicitous ‘conservatives’ still get equal time on the news to spread their completely transparent BS and misdirection. Even MSNBC, a supposedly leftist news channel, gives these hypocrites an unconscionable freedom to deliver their used-car-sales spiel all day, every day.

It is long past time for the news to stop representing evil as the ‘other side’ of an issue—truth will out—but if you run a cable news service, it will ‘out’ only between equal parts of lies. Those spin-doctors are slick—I’ll give’em that—but once their BS is deconstructed, it’s still blatant BS. Trump has really ridden that horse hard—that’s why he’s famous as the lying president.

Still, I can’t figure out why exactly it’s taking so long to settle this question of our president being a traitor. Is it because the case is really that complicated—or are we just too embarrassed to admit how badly we’ve been bamboozled?

Latest Offerings   (2017Mar25)

Posted by XperDunn on

Saturday, March 25, 2017                                        2:26 PM

Cover: “Can’t Smile Without You”

This weekend started with a bang—but it sucks that we have to get our jollies from seeing our criminal president and his cynical Congress get their asses kicked. If only we could acquire the knack of electing statespersons instead of lickspittles. Well, there’s supposedly a surge of young women getting into politics as both activists and candidates, so maybe our choices will improve in future—let’s hope so. Not that men can’t produce the occasional Al Franken or Tim Kaine, but such men are rare as hen’s teeth on the beltway, or in state legislatures. Women can hardly hurt things.

Improv – Spring Dance

 

But enough about worldly matters. Oh, one last thing—the ‘Spring Dance’ video I posted today includes pictures of the grandbaby at her first Women’s March in San Jose—such a cute little protestor! There are also shots of the princess (and family) at her first California vineyard wine-tasting and a St. Paddy’s celebration. Even more exciting are the videos of her first attempts at crawling—that kid’ll be mobile any day now—poor parents.

Cover: “Who Needs to Dream”

 

These videos have taken me two weeks to get posted—I’m slowing down some, lately. But even without the cheat-factor of using cute baby pictures in the video, I think the music is okay—as always, it’s the best I can manage. I yam wot I yam, as Popeye would say.

Improv – Retro-Chrome

 

I’ve recorded the Barry Manilow covers before, but I enjoy them so I did them over again. Barry is the king of schmaltz—and I’m a big fan, even if my playing (and singing) doesn’t show it.

Improv – Hymnal

 

I guess I’ll have to get busy at the piano—these six new videos represent only a part of the pile of pix and video that’s been coming from Jessy lately—and I can’t show you all the baby cuteness until I have music to go with it. Still, I think what I’ve posted today should keep up anyone’s cuteness quota for awhile.

Improv – Haunted House Blues

 

Okay, I’m done—please enjoy these latest offerings.

 

ttfn.

Information Analysis   (2017Mar23)

Posted by XperDunn on

allegovirtunvice

Thursday, March 23, 2017                                                7:16 PM

There’s a new industry—information analysis for public consumption—you can see it in the deer-in-the-headlights look of recent guests of shows like The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Real Time with Bill Maher—people whose life up until now consisted of research, data analysis and synthesis, in quiet, dusty offices, are suddenly guests on a TV talk show.

Sometimes they’ve written a book, but just as often they’ve had an article published in a newspaper—either way, they’ve spent months, perhaps years, doing research on some overlooked, obscure, but important piece of our civic life. News today has a cornucopia of subjects, many of them medical, scientific, financial, legal, or something equally complex—and that complexity increases by an order of magnitude when we get down to cases—specific aspects of Antarctic microbiology effected by climate change, perhaps, or the difficulties of fighting the spread of Zika when each municipality has its own mosquito-spraying schedule.

And it’s more than an understanding of principles, either on laymen’s terms or as a professional expert—there’s an overabundance of data to deal with as well. Congressional bills run to the thousands of pages of legislation. Unmanned drones send back data from Pluto that will keep astronomers busy analyzing it for years to come. Wikileaks dumps thousands of pages of raw, hacked text and data—friend or foe, that stuff doesn’t index and summarize itself. Then there’s the galaxy of social-media texts, pix, likes, emojis, and what-all that can target-market, sociologically analyze, or just plain stalk almost anyone under the age of thirty.

There’s a lot of information floating around. If there weren’t, perhaps we’d have less trouble with the creeps that insert disinformation into the social conversation—misrepresenting a person or group for purely partisan aims. But it would seem that someone has to go looking for that stuff—I mean, the fact that it’s out there also speaks to the fact that a lot of people want their prejudices confirmed by an authoritarian media voice, no matter how shaky their journalistic cred. Their audience pre-dates them—they’re meeting a ‘need’, so to speak.

And the Alt-righters are not alone in seeking comfort. Americans are glued to their I-phones as much to hide from this frightening new world of information, as to make use of it. We can obsessively play video games or surf Instagram all day, take selfies or duck-pose ‘til our eyes bug out—that avalanche of information is still there—even if you don’t look.

The rich people started it—denying that smoking was dangerous so they could keep selling tobacco, denying that drunk-driving was a problem so they could keep selling liquor, and still denying that climate change is a threat when scientists are screaming in their faces. And if they can deny reality, why can’t we? Hey, new cars are expensive as hell—better to say ‘fukkit’ and keep the old gas-guzzler.

There’s much more information being denied than just climate change—the economics of socialized medicine (detached from the vested interests of existing insurers and drug manufacturers), the economics of socialized higher education (including the future cost of an tech-illiterate citizenry)—just name anything where an industry is making a good buck and you’ll find the conversation being steered away from anything that amounts to significant change. This is especially true of finance. And while the unseen machinations of lobbyists are certainly a big threat, the lack of free thought and public conversation about these areas is just as much a roadblock to change.

Some unpleasant folks like to say I’m ‘drinking the Kool Aid’. When Rush Limbaugh tells them that the New York Times is lying to America, but Paul Ryan is as honest as the day is long—then they tell me I’m the one that’s brainwashed—I really can’t respond. I might as well be trying to explain things to a cow. But, again, it comforts them to believe that they are right in their prejudices. It’s almost frustrating enough for me to want the consequences to hurry up and show themselves—if my words are useless, maybe reality can convince them. But that’s a pyrrhic victory of the worst kind—I get to say ‘I told you so’ while we all die—not much of a win there.

Here’s the problem—the world has gotten complicated—and crowded—don’t forget, overpopulation is still a global issue, even with first-world birthrates in decline—and we, instead of embracing that unpleasant consequence, are creating a world of doubt and rumor, where the nasty facts can’t reach us. But that is like avoiding the doctor when you don’t feel well—it’s a bad idea. While we’re putting off facing the problem, it’s just metastasizing.

I wish we could put all these fake-news-zombies to one side, and get everyone else to huddle up, and say, ‘look, we know this is real—fuck those people—let’s do something before we all die’. Wouldn’t that be nice? Politics today seems to be the art of avoiding just such a come-to-Jesus moment. And it’ll work fine—until Jesus comes to see us.

I think we need to take a hard look at the paradox of the Internet—its vulnerability to hacking makes it unreliable—so why are we in such a hurry to rely on it? As it stands, the Internet just adds another layer of confusion on top of an already confusing situation.

But the main problem remains the intersection of the power of government and the power of money—their relationship should be, to some degree, adversarial—the age of assuming that what’s good for business is good for the country is long past—and we need to face that, too.

avarice

My Work Is Done   (2017Mar23)

Posted by XperDunn on

Thursday, March 23, 2017                                                10:54 AM

I haven’t been blogging much lately—my health prevents me from exerting myself and it has been worse lately. My blogging, and the obsessing over politics that spurs it on, have really taken their toll—railing against the current tidal wave of lies and corruption for the last several years is a job for a young firebrand, not a beaten-down, disabled shut-in. The stress of watching America fall victim to its worst ‘side’ is exhausting.

Besides, I feel America catching up with me—why should I blog when I’ll simply be echoing the Wall Street Journal’s latest op-ed? With the majority of America up in arms over the reality of ‘Prez Trump’, my work is done. In fact, my obsessing over how we screwed the voting pooch is actually a step backward—and I lack the energy to keep up with the torrent of fresh lies and counter-lies from the alt-right, over TrumpCare, Russian-colluding treason, hiring his kids, and disavowing every non-shooting government program.

If only the alt-right could disseminate logic with the excellence they display in spreading ‘talking points’—imagine. The 37%’s latest jab is to tell me to keep ‘drinking the Kool Aid’. I can’t imagine what sources they use to determine that observed reality is the product of deluded followers of some hippy agenda. Neither can I fathom how these yahoos miss the fact that they support the wealthy 1%, when at least 36% of them can’t be a part of them—and will be just as poorly served by government cuts as we ‘kool-aid drinkers’.

Here are some thoughts from the past week that I hadn’t the strength to post before today:

Wednesday, March 22, 2017                                            5:00 AM

Politics? What the hell am I doing worrying about politics? Could I be less socially active? I don’t think so. Could I be further from involvement in current events? Not and keep breathing, no.

And all this time I’ve got piano music and videos of my granddaughter learning to crawl, as alternatives. Why I would waste a moment’s time on filthy politics is totally beyond me. I guess I’m just mad because it used to be safe to ignore politics—ethical failings on both sides and reluctance to change used to guarantee that elections wouldn’t mean much.

But the combination of lobbyist seepage and Russian bot-attacks have hacked our democracy—and now we have a huge disconnect between what the majority of Americans support and what the politicians claim needs to be done. And now, to quote John Oliver, the list of program-cuts scrolls up the screen “like the end-credits to America”.

What part of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is hard to understand? A Muslim Ban is as un-American as rotten-apple pie—it is the antithesis of the freedom we pretend to stand for. And it offers as much national security as a wall between us and Mexico.

The GOP want to cut social programs out of ‘concern for the taxpayers’—but they don’t intend to lower taxes—instead, that money will be transferred to military spending—as if America doesn’t spend enough on our military already. And a president that compulsively lies doesn’t help a bit. Paying attention to our present politics is intellectual suicide and I warn any sane person away from it.

That goes for the media as well—when they start trying to get our attention by saying ‘ten stories that have nothing to do with Trump’, you know they’ve long ago lost any sense of perspective. This is America, not the fucking Trump Show. Besides, what’s worse: an insane president, or a significant proportion of voters insane enough to elect him? We have the media to blame for both.

But which media did the most damage—the mainstream media, with its venal fascination with Trump’s idiotic rallies—or the alt-right media, with its delusional conspiracies and Russian Twitter-bots? That’s a tough call. Both doubled-down on their HRC-bashing (with a little help from Comey at the FBI)—one supposes because she was the only candidate with both a career-record and a coherent policy-agenda. Both failed to represent Trump as pure psycho liar and con man. It’s a tough call—we’d be our own worst enemy—if we didn’t have an actual enemy, in Putin.

Monday, March 20, 2017                                        6:21 PM

Angela Merkel gave him the well-deserved fish-eye—the Iraqi leader nervously tried to joke with the guy—Britain, as one voice, said he was patently ridiculous—are we embarrassed yet? Or does making America ‘great’ again include reverting to our condescending attitude toward every other country—which renders his buffoonery a moot issue?

So, let’s see, who do we not care about now? Well, there’s women, there’s poor people, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, minorities, students, old people, sick people, scientists, judges, journalists, artists, environmentalists, Democrats, and anyone who isn’t legally an American citizen, no matter where they live. Oh, and Trump supporters—let’s not forget how he wants to shaft them, too.

As fast as journalists, congressional committees, and intelligence agencies can put the lie to Trump’s tweets, he tweets out new re-hashings of those lies—if he wasn’t in the White House, we’d all be highly amused by now. As it is, unfortunately, we don’t know whether to impeach him for treason, impeach him for lying, or impeach him for insanity. Trump’s tactics abide—send a tidal wave of bullshit out into the media and let the adults scramble to align it (or not) with reality—meanwhile, who knows what evil nonsense is going on behind closed doors.

It’s very effective—as long as the GOP keeps its devil’s bargain with him—allowing his madness as long as he supports their vampire-like legislation. Should they ever awaken from their ethical coma, perhaps something could be done—but they haven’t finished using him yet.

Pack of Dogs   (2017Mar17)

Posted by XperDunn on

magrittepipe

Friday, March 17, 2017                                            8:51 AM

I can’t say enough bad things about the Trump administration, or the Republicans who collaborate with him. I could simply describe what they’ve been doing, or, thankfully, what they’ve been trying to do (judges have, so far, held back his most traitorous executive orders). It makes my blood run cold.

And the evil goes so deep—first there’s Trump and his coterie—a ranker bunch of troglodytes is hard to imagine—but then there’s the Republican Congress as well, quietly doing even worse, more long-lasting damage to this country. Then there’s the barrage of hypocritical distractions—like Trump’s ‘Obama tapped me’ claim, or his wishful thinking about the media being unreliable. Then there’s the gutting of the State Department’s career lifers—the institutional memory of government—and the firings of Federal D.A.s—including the one who was investigating Trump. And the rolling-back of Obama’s last six months of legislation—for no reason other than it being Obama’s.

The perfect storm of a popular criminal winning popularity, the media’s lobotomy over HRC’s fitness to serve, and the extreme partisanship of the GOP, making them willing to go along with Trump’s mendacity—all of this puts our country in the hands of the worst bunch of cronies imaginable. One of these assholes actually used the word ‘compassionate’ when talking about cutting the ‘Meals on Wheels’ program.

I don’t think we can wait for grounds for impeachment—we need a national referendum on our confidence in Trump as head of state—followed by a special election. Otherwise, we stand on ceremony while this pack of dogs chews up America’s best furniture.

And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? You and I—we’re capable of feeling shame, capable of feeling a sense of responsibility, unable to see ourselves as better than our neighbor, unable to ignore ethics. What a disadvantage that puts as at! We’re like an old-fashioned guy, who’s too much a gentleman to strike a lady, facing off against a deranged bitch with a razor. We need to climb on our high horse, to strike down this monster with all the justifiable outrage of good Americans.

All that’s needed is a consensus that Trump is beyond the pale, that he is a mistake we made—we don’t need to wait politely for four years—we need to act. I call for a national referendum and a vote of no confidence in this pig masquerading as our leader. Or we can wait until they’ve done all the damage they can—and spend the next twenty years struggling to get back to where we were three months ago.

20160702XD-RevWar_03

Robot Doom   (2017Mar16)

Posted by XperDunn on

Thursday, March 16, 2017                                                3:59 PM

20170306XD-BabySoxMardi Gras, Pi Day, St Paddy’s, Easter… do you get the feeling that people are desperate for a party by the time winter finally starts to end? Yet here we sit, between two snowstorms—snowstorms that didn’t bother us all through January or February. But, hey—power’s back up, no harm, no foul—and who wants the year to go by without a little snow, anyway, right?

Lovely day today, however—sun shining, snow glaring—warm inside and quiet. Got some music I’m working on posting—can’t be too good or I would have done it already. The crossword was pretty easy for a Thursday. I’ve already watched two whole movies today—I can’t watch any more or I’ll get movie-theater-headache.

I could try reading, but that won’t help the headache situation any. Sure could use some new pics from the grandbaby—what a cutey-muffin. She makes me smile. And Jessy says her first tooth is just peeking through—soon she’ll be smiling back.

20170225xd-improv-freedive_grfc_02

Well, shall we talk about the horror-show in our nation’s capital? I don’t know, they change the details, but there’s a sameness to all of this foolishness. They try to lie—the media calls them on it—they call the media dishonest—respected people side with the media—they move on to new lies. It’s frustrating and tiring—but I don’t see them getting much more out of it than we do.

I’m tickled by all the yahoos that say, “He’s elected, get over it”. Like their man, Trump, these people don’t seem to get it—being elected is just the very first thing you do. It is not an achievement—it is permission to achieve, or to fail, for four years. We’ve barely begun his first year and already grandma’s Medicare is on the chopping block—how does that create jobs, again? And about those jobs…are we waiting for a bill to outlaw robots? Because there won’t be any great job market until we put our technology into reverse.

Anyone who can look ahead and extrapolate what’s next can see that jobs are going to decrease, inexorably, down to none, sooner or later. The real issue is not creating jobs—it’s figuring out an economy without labor—how do we distribute wealth when no one works for a living—because no one needs to, because no one can.

20170204xd-improv-noshoes_grfc_01

You need to give those people money—otherwise the businesses won’t have any customers. Plus, having millions of unemployed, angry people wandering around—that’s going to cause problems—bad enough they have nothing to keep them busy—they’re also hungry. That is why Socialism is so attractive—Capitalism is based on the assumption that everybody works—it doesn’t function if computers and AI and robots do all the work.

I know it’s—what do you call that?—disruptive, yeah, disruptive. I know it’s hard to wrap your head around. But it’s one of those ‘Sherlock Holmes’ things—once you’ve eliminated every other possibility, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the solution.

Let’s look at the history of books. The first books were written, and copied, by hand—there were very few books. Then the printing press came along—suddenly, there were lots of books—and no room full of copyists was required. So they were out of a job—they had to find something else to do. Then computers came along, and typesetters were out of a job—they had to find something else to do. Then the internet came along and all publishers and printers were out of a job—they had to find something else to do. But what? An entire industry disappeared—where are those people supposed to find work? And that’s just one industry—it’s not alone.

You can tell yourself that ‘there will always be jobs’—but that is not guaranteed. It is, in fact, unlikely. In spite of its effect on other businesses, the people who invent new computers, AI, and robots are working day and night trying to make better ones. They just invented a machine that picks lettuce, right in the field, cleans it, wraps it, and puts them in a box. How many farmhands just lost their livelihood—hundreds of thousands, maybe? And what’s left? Maybe three jobs, running and fixing the machines. But a lettuce-picker is never going to get hired to maintain the robots—so they don’t have a shot at even those three jobs.

Trouble isn’t just coming—it’s already here. Unemployment remains a problem—but no business is shouting for more manpower—they’re fine—which means we’re screwed, especially if we just sold our souls to the bank to get sheepskins. Might I suggest a degree in computer science?

20170128xd-improv-frombangor_grfc_02

Another Break With Ethical Tradition   (2017Mar15)

Posted by XperDunn on

ShirtwaistFire_01

Wednesday, March 15, 2017                                            3:32 PM

The Ides of March are upon us. And how fitting, when here in the present our would-be empress was character-assassinated, leaving the throne to a pack of criminals. And how paper-thin their pretense at public service—a quick bill to allow coal-waste dumping in local waterways, as an appetizer for removing 24 million from health insurance—and gutting the EPA (something even that old crook, Nixon, saw the point of enacting).

In what way are these shameless epicureans serving the public good? In what world are we not being sold out to the moneyed interests? And does wanting a ‘change’ in Washington mean wanting more protection for the big corporations and less concern for the average citizen—along with a heaping helping of incompetence and malfeasance? How is it that legitimate leadership has never before required so many PR people to be expert liars?

I saw a few minutes of FOX News today—they were clawing at Rachel Maddow’s reputation for revealing some information about Trump’s tax returns—claiming that making a big deal about them was liberal hysteria. No discussion (that I heard) addressed the fact that he is the only modern president to hide that information during the campaign—and continue to hide it, even after taking office. Neither did I hear anyone question why that is. But, boy, did they have fun ragging on Rachel.

Not that we should expect much different from a guy who won’t even put his assets in a blind trust for the duration of his term—another break with ethical tradition. Listen, my dad used to put me in charge when he was on vacation, too—it didn’t mean it wasn’t his business anymore. Ironically, while Trump has become the world’s most famous liar, he gets very emotional about how we should trust him to always do the right thing—I’d like to see him do one right thing.

An objective observer might remark on how ‘bigly’ the Trump camp jumps on any error, real or imagined, from anyone outside their circle—yet they minimize any errors of their own as if the rules don’t really apply when talking about such important poohbahs as Trump. But hypocrisy is a big word—and remember—‘nobody knew how complicated’ it would be to be president. How much more complicated would it become if he were to attempt to be a good president? Please. Let’s be realistic.

Ending the EPA is such a disastrous wish that many people are reassuring themselves by thinking, ‘oh, Trump’s too incompetent to make it happen’. My concern is merely the fact that he wants to. There was a famous fire in NYC’s Triangle Building a century ago—many women were killed due to the fact that the owner chained the exit-doors shut. The outrage over that mass immolation caused a few labor reforms. But here we are, one hundred years later, and Trump wants to chain the safety-doors to the entire country.

In what universe is this pig making a successful pretense of leadership?

ShirtwaistFire_02

Even If Millions Die   (2017Mar14)

Posted by XperDunn on

SimonLegree

Tuesday, March 14, 2017                                        9:11 AM

Blizzard today—trying to make up for a virtually snow-less winter—everything’s shut down—we cross our fingers that the electricity stays on. They named the storm ‘Stella!’, mostly so everyone could do a bad Marlon Brando imitation, I think.

The SCOTUS nominee is being heard today—the Dems have found a case where he ruled a man was legally fired after he deserted his broke-down truck in sub-zero weather. This sort of warm-blooded-humans-vs.-cold-blooded-cash dichotomy seems to be the real dividing line in politics today.

Bernie Sanders’ socialistic leanings are the one side of it—recognizing the dysfunctional aspects of Capitalism and having a desire to make government more humane and supportive. The Right wants money to remain money, should mountains of corpses pile up or not. Of course, they can’t be that blunt—so they go with ‘small government’—meaning a government that stands by and watches while business owners eat their fill of human misery.

And it isn’t their cruelty that disturbs me—it’s the mindless inefficiency of allowing millions to sink into difficulties—difficulties that will become a public expense, eventually—instead of implementing a significantly smaller ‘preventative’ public expense, up front. That’s the thing with the Right—they bitch about spending money on people, about ‘caretaker’ government—but they never address the costs, going forward, of neglecting those people.

The Right has taken education and health care and made them profit centers—and dysfunctional. College graduates start their careers as indentured servants to the banks—two centuries ago, you had to commit a crime to be treated that way. Still, it pairs nicely with all the for-profit-prisons that are reintroducing African-Americans to slavery. Surgeons and specialists hold out their hands for money, like maître de’s who keep out the riff-raff. To the Right, life, liberty, and learning are commodities to be paid for, or withheld. Inefficient. Short-sighted. And, yes, cold-fucking-blooded.

Trump

No wonder Trump is their idol—the most thoughtless, uncaring, authoritarian pig they could find. And don’t be fooled into gleeful celebration that Putin is now criticizing Trump—Putin wanted him in office because of the disruption he would inevitably create—now that he’s there, Putin is free to pile on with the naysayers—it even makes him look less complicit—so don’t be fooled.

But there is a strange beauty to the Right’s agenda—politicians who convince their voters that government is a bad thing—genius! Rich people who convince the middle class that the poor are the problem—inspired! Children of immigrants, in a nation of immigrants, that want to spend billions on a wall—to keep out the immigrants—incredible!

The Democrats, as uninspiring as they may be, are the only party that makes sense for a non-millionaire, or anyone who works for a living. That the Republicans can still make a pretense of representing the Silent Majority is indicative of our muddled journalism and our lack of education. The CBO estimates that 24 million people will lose health insurance under TrumpCare, but the GOP are rushing it through anyway—yeah, they’re on your side alright.

And with all the stumbling and bumbling in DC, the stock market still thrives—those people know what most voters do not—that the GOP is good for business, and will always be good for business, even if millions die.

MrPotter

Knowledge is Three-Dimensional   (2017Mar13)

Posted by XperDunn on

rodinevilspirits

Monday, March 13, 2017                                        11:16 AM

Cheese und crackers, can I write a suicidally depressing blog-post. But never fear, dear reader, I wouldn’t ask you to read that last one—not everything I write deserves posting. Let me try again—let’s see if I can be a little less direct, a little less my quintessential self.

Weather? Well, it’s cold as a witch’s tit, and weather is the death of conversation, so no joy there. Politics? Please, don’t get me started—neither one of us will enjoy that. The day of the week? Do you really want another smug joke about the Monday blues, the Monday blahs, the…oh, forget it.

I put myself back on anti-depressants yesterday—but I messed up and just took a full dose—you’re supposed to ramp up slowly, but you know how my memory doesn’t work. I spent the whole night in the crapper and my tummy still hurts. But, rocky start notwithstanding, I’m now safely back inside the drug bubble—protected from the flashes of rage and frustration, the obsessive behavior, the sleepless nights.

It’s always struck me as funny that the one thing anti-depressants can’t cure is depression. I’ve never stopped being depressed on these things, have you? No, anti-depressants modify your chemical response to depression—they don’t change the thoughts in your head—just the way that your body reacts to them.

Young people don’t usually make much of the connection between their feelings and the effects of those feelings on the body—or the effect of the body’s health on their feelings. Maybe that’s because the hormonal turbulences of young people easily overshadow that resonance—maybe that’s why I’m just starting to notice it, now that my hormones have gone ‘deep background’. For all we know, young people feel the oncoming rainstorm in their joints, too—but their hormones are shouting so loudly they can’t hear it.

I’m reading a story that posits the existence of ancient civilizations with technologies we’ve never learned. I thought about it. When the discovery was made, about electro-magnetic inductance and about EM radiation having a spectrum, from microwaves to radio waves to visible light to infra-red heat, et al., we shouted ‘Eureka!’ and decided that we had plumbed the mysteries of electricity. But what if there’s more to it—what if we ran with EM radiation, and in doing so ignored another basic principle of electricity that goes unknown and unnoticed today?

It’s a valid question: how much of our science is the development of physical concepts we discovered, or figured out, and excited us enough to overlook some other basic concept? What if our standard idea of EM radiation, as perpendicular waves of electricity and magnetism, is actually missing another pair that fit in diagonally—say, unicorn power and ESP, or something? After all, dark matter and dark energy are references to things that we can’t see or sense, thing we can only deduce through corollaries—is it any less likely that there are a few phenomena in physics that we can see, but have not yet deduced the meaning of?

If you’d asked me about this question a few years ago, I’d have been dismissive—but my opinion of human intelligence has taken a nose-dive of late and now, if there’s a question of ‘can we be that blind?’, I’m leaning always towards ‘yes’.

And, really, could electricity be more mysterious? Even after we figured out the basics—the Edison stuff—we still had waiting to be discovered: resistors (materials which change in a current), super-conductors (materials which transfer current without any loss of strength due to resistance), and solar panels (materials which convert sunlight into current). Think about it—Edison invented the electric lightbulb prior to our discovery that light itself was electricity (well, electromagnetic radiation at a certain frequency, if you insist on being technical).

Some discoveries, in short, are brand new ideas no one ever conceived of or guessed at—but some discoveries are of a deeper understanding of the already known. Galileo built the first telescope—but Newton was the first to figure out the optics of it—to explain why a telescope works. In reaching that deeper understanding, Newton was also inspired to invent the reflecting telescope—a smaller but more efficient use of magnification optics than the straight spyglass type.

In summary, there is always more to learn, to discover—but there’s always more to learn about what we already know, as well. Knowledge is three-dimensional.

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I Haven’t Given Up   (2017Mar11)

Posted by XperDunn on

caravaggio10

Saturday, March 11, 2017                                        1:40 PM

I started out as an exceptionally intelligent person—but disease and CNS damage made me kinda stupid. I have trouble remember things or maintaining a line of reasoning for more than a few steps. I don’t argue with people anymore—I just assume that they understand things better than I do and defer to their judgement.

With one exception—I’m still smarter than conservative trolls online—these bastards log on and post their truly ugly foolishness, thinking they’re tweaking the beards of the intelligentsia—you can almost hear the ‘hyuk hyuk’ at the end—like Lenny in “Of Mice and Men”, crushing a mouse.

Well, technically, it’s not that I’m ‘smarter’—it’s just that the average Trump supporter is celebrating the dawn of the age of the idiot—their time has finally come, and they proudly display their ignorance as if ‘freedom of speech’ had magic dust in it. Then, doubling down, these dull blades take offense at being called stupid while they’re trumpeting their stupidity to the whole world—but I don’t let that bother me—tit for tat, bub. If they don’t want to be called stupid, they shouldn’t work so hard to prove it.

It’s ironic that these ‘tough guys’ who are so eager to let the poor starve, or die of treatable illness, have such delicate sensibilities when you call them out (‘let them eat cake—but don’t you dare hurt my wittle feelings’)—but if you want to make the world a darker place, strap in, because you’re going to hear from me, and you’re not going to like it.

We tell ourselves we’re living in a grown-up world but, every now and then, that ‘persistence of the high-school hallway’ bleeds through—and we find ourselves back in the world where might is right and ‘normal’ is dictated (and beat up the weirdo, for fun). We humans are contradictory beasts, knowing right from wrong, but not necessarily bound by that knowledge—they call it free will—I call it ‘people are assholes, sometimes’.

Does that sound bitter? I don’t see it that way. I think I’ve confronted the worst humanity has to offer and I have decided not to simply damn us all as hopelessly lost, but to characterize us, instead, as complex and contradictory. I think that’s pretty optimistic, really—given the evidence. In so many ways, this wonderful, modern world is just a few bad days away from a return to the Dark Ages. A lot of the conventions I’d like to think were rock solid, if I’m honest with myself, are relatively new and superficial—hell, some of them are younger than I am.

I was born two months after Rosa Parks was arrested. When I was a child, comics joked about women holding ordinary jobs, like policeman or construction worker. When I was a teenager, gays were still being beaten to death in public without the police getting upset about it. The world I’ve grown up in has gotten more and more enlightened with every passing year.

It is inexpressibly saddening for me to watch the whole thing start to swing backwards now. As our outer lives grow closer to science fiction, our inner lives revert to primitivism—in space we build laboratories—back on Earth, we kill each other while the true villains loll about in untold wealth.

Computers were a surprise, huh? I can still remember when I was the only person in the building who knew how to use one. Now that they’re everywhere, do we use them to streamline our government or make our lives more humane? No, we tweet. How disappointing.

Or how about the environment? I was in junior high school when Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader started to wake us to the fact that our burgeoning technology had consequences—that everything has a price. That was 1969—the year of the first Earth Day. Almost a half century later, the fat cats are still yelling that it’s not true—and that we can’t afford to save the earth, even if it were. Fifty years they’ve been saying that immediate economic disaster is worse than looming existential disaster—any sensible person would have used that time to prepare.

And I get it. We’re not saints, we’re not geniuses. We get through the day the best we can—and if the world is going to hell, what are we supposed to do about it? What can one man do? But still, as a group, humanity is embarrassingly stupid and suicidal. We all have our excuses—but we can’t deny the results, either. So, no, I haven’t given up on us yet—but only for lack of options.

AmorVincitOmnia2

Abortion   (2017Mar11)

Posted by XperDunn on

work

Saturday, March 11, 2017                                                 12:06 PM

Abortion has existed since ancient times. Earlier civilizations used certain herbs to terminate pregnancy, even before surgical methods were known. And abortion is still practiced today, even in countries where it is illegal. Like so many things, abortion happens whether the law allows it or not.

To imagine that making abortion illegal or unavailable will end abortion is the kind of simplistic thinking that causes more trouble than the issue itself. Shuttering Planned Parenthood, or even legally banning abortion, won’t stop abortions—it will only make them more dangerous and increase criminality.

Please note that I’m not advocating abortion—as a man, it’s really not something I’m prepared to have an opinion about. I’m advocating that we recognize human nature. Outlawing abortion won’t stop abortion. Defunding Planned Parenthood won’t stop abortion. Such things will only make it more dangerous and less controlled.

Don’t get me wrong—defunding Planned Parenthood will do something—it will take important health care away from women. If that’s what you want to do, then close it down—but it won’t stop abortion.

The history of our Prohibition era could teach us a lot, if we were willing to learn from history. Things like drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll happen, with or without legality—the only difference is that illegality creates an underworld, a criminal subculture that undermines local and federal government and increases violence.

Look at our DEA—initially an army against drug-abuse, now nothing more than a central focus of corruption and payoffs. Meanwhile drug abuse grows by leaps and bounds.

The thing these outlaw-crazy people miss is the fact that regulation is far more effective than a ban—it provides quality control, commercial control, age limits—hell, you can even collect taxes off it. And people don’t fight as hard against regulation as they do against deprivation. We have accepted this truth regarding alcohol, but for some reason we try to pretend that it doesn’t scale-up to everything else.

So you think abortion is a crime, an offense against God—whatever—I’m not going to try to change your opinion. I’m simply pointing out that abortion isn’t going anywhere—driving it underground actually ingrains it more deeply into our society, making it a cause instead of a mere service.

The stronger your sense of personal morality, the less sense it makes, to me, that you would want to take that personal choice away from someone else. If you think you have the right to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, how can you possibly believe that other people don’t have the same right?

If you want to disapprove of people who choose to get an abortion—that’s fine—you have your own morality—now you only have to learn to let them have theirs. Take that away from them and it’s only a matter of time before someone decides to take yours. This stuff works both ways, Einstein.

thought

Tough Tomatoes   (2017Mar10)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, March 10, 2017

I’ve been wondering lately how we ever got to a point where our public servants serve themselves and still get people to vote for them. But then I remembered history.

The Native Americans didn’t get slaughtered overnight, you know—there was over a century of people giving lip service to humanitarian relations with the Natives, while others argued for White Supremacy, or Christianity uber alles, or whatever other rationale presented itself—or they simply snuck out at night and ambushed innocent Natives, without bothering with excuses.

Likewise, slavery was debated and fought over, long before the Civil War. And, as with the Native American genocide, good Americans sat around their breakfast tables, saying, ‘tsk, tsk, it sure is a conundrum’—and went out and voted for public servants that wanted to rid the land of Indians, or keep our Africans safely in chains.

So our entire history is one of good people, sitting around and discussing politics like a spectator sport instead of a battle between good and evil. Yet a battle between good and evil it has always been—and continues to be in the present. We vote our fears more than our beliefs. We are more easily frightened than inspired. And, sadly, we get the government we deserve.

Our present government is on the ironically-tragic side of being a joke. But we elected them. We even heard them say incredibly disqualifying things, then voted for them. They go on TV every day and embarrass themselves trying to call a pimple a beauty mark, or call a lie an alternative truth—and we support these con artists.

Yesterday, a profoundly stupid man named Scott Pruitt, recently appointed head of the EPA, remarked that he didn’t believe in chemistry, optics, or physics in general—more specifically, he questioned the greenhouse effect of CO2 in the atmosphere—an unquestionable fact. He was appointed to head the EPA because he could be counted on to either be this stupid, or pretend to be this stupid—and, in that context, he’s doing a bang-up job.

Americans have gotten into the bad habit of questioning the veracity of things they don’t like—and politicians, seeing this as a new tool, are leading the charge. Had they had the advantage of being raised by my father, they would be more familiar with the motto of normal people who don’t like an unpleasant fact: “Tough tomatoes”.

And so I offer this sentiment to all you fat bastards who don’t like the fact that the way you stay filthy rich is by destroying our society, our environment, and given sufficient time, even yourselves—you stupid brats. Tough tomatoes. Stop yer crying (and lying and pollution) and let’s all move on to a future where the inconveniences of science and truth are dealt with, rather than squirmed around.

How childish is it for Paul Ryan to respond to a question about what’s not in the TrumpCare bill by saying, “Read the bill”—when he knows that there’s nothing in the bill to answer the question either? That evil rascal needs a foot up his ass. But that’s the trouble—we voted for these criminals—and now that they are safely in office, they get to tell us, ‘tough tomatoes’—not because they’re right, but just because they can.

If any American ever votes for a Republican, ever again, it will be proof positive that we are all idiots and deserve to be inveigled by these fuckers for however long this country can last, without real leadership.

Health Careless   (2017Mar10)

Posted by XperDunn on

20120930XD-GooglImages-WllmBlake-DeathOnAPaleHorse

Friday, March 10, 2017                                                     12:42 PM

Snow covers every branch and twig, mounding on the evergreen shrubs and making the birds take two tries to sit on a branch, without a tiny avalanche. One timid chickadee outside our kitchen window almost cleared an entire tree, trying to find a safe perch. The cardinals are all fluffed up like nerf balls. I hope everyone got a snow day—or at least a delay—it isn’t as though this winter set records for snow days. And there are still a few days until spring.

Okay—this new health care plan is opposed by the Democrats, as you’d expect—but it’s also opposed by the AMA, health care providers, and conservatives (who think it not harsh enough). Meanwhile, all indications are that the only beneficiaries of the changes will be the wealthy.

Wealthy people used to be happy to be rich—they didn’t feel the need to keep everyone else in hell just for emphasis. But now, I guess, wealth no longer represents mere comfort and security—it means power—and what good is power if you don’t abuse it? How will they know we’re unhappy in our need, if they don’t do everything they can to make us suffer?

But even wealthy people have occasional need of an ER now and then—why would they turn all the ERs back into overcrowded homeless shelters? Don’t they even care about their own quality of life? Next thing you know, they’ll be claiming that they can’t afford to cart away corpses—they’d rather step over the dead bodies than waste money on meat wagons. Does becoming wealthy damage the brain, erasing the concept of ‘community’ from any mind that owns an expensive car? Or is it just that hiring enough people starts to make you believe you own them?

These bastards are pretty quick with the tough love when they have no conception of tough. Spoiled little pricks with attitudes have seemingly found a way to get people to vote against their own self-interests—how mysterious. Is Paul Ryan’s shit-eating grin that effective? It was only a few months ago that we hand-picked these monsters—and now we’re all up in arms over how criminally incompetent they are—how does that happen?

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POEM:    Belonging   (2017Mar09)

Posted by XperDunn on

20170308XD_SelfPortrait_02

Thursday, March 09, 2017                                                1:49 PM

 

Belonging

The piano growls at me from the corner

The wind blows memories against the window-glass

The ache circles within me, an adversary in waiting

The air stings my skin with the numbness

The time flails my thoughts, world encompassed

Within my tiny brain of electrified glop

The computer invites me to crawl inside

The speakers hug my ears—the monitor titillates

Then the music ends.

Alone in a room with the atmosphere battering

At the house as the only sound—eerie and lonesome

I can’t type you away.

 

By Xper Dunn

 

ttfn.

Flippy

 

Obama – The Final President   (2017Mar08)

Posted by XperDunn on

FDR_1944_Color_Portrait

Wednesday, March 08, 2017                                            12:06 PM

In 1941, when our country was attacked, FDR told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. After the war, Truman assured us that the buck stopped with him. Eisenhower, a former general who knew about such things, warned us, in his farewell address, that a military-industrial complex was commodifying violence and leaching our strength during peace-time. JFK inspired us to reach for the stars. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Nixon, while a crook, at least ended our military involvement in Viet Nam. Ford pardoned Nixon, but in his defense, he always pointed out that accepting a pardon was an admission of guilt. Carter helped us begin to accept responsibility for our effects on the environment and the planet. Reagan won the Cold War. Bush-41 freed Kuwait. Clinton defended abortion, saying it should be kept ‘safe, legal, and rare’, and signed the Family Medical Leave Act, and Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell—the first acceptance of gays in the military. Bush-43 enacted No Child Left Behind—an attempt to democratize our educational system. Obama recovered from Bush’s ‘great recession’, passed the ACA, and killed Bin Laden.

George_H._W._Bush,_President_of_the_United_States,_1989_official_portrait

As you can see, every modern president has made a significant contribution to our nation and to the world. By being responsible, semi-woke leaders of the free world, they all used judgement, insight, and patience to achieve things that few people have the character and determination to achieve. And those presidents had educated, responsible legislators to work with.

44_Bill_Clinton_3x4

So join me in having a good cry—those days are gone. America has been broken into tiny pieces by a bunch of selfish, ignorant hacks and poohbahs. The world laughs at us, as their ‘Igors’ go on TV and parse ‘alternate truths’ and unfounded libel against the former president. They hand us to the Russians for thirty pieces of silver. They rush to pass laws that allow coal waste to be dumped in our drinking water—but dither over ongoing lead-poisoning in Flint that is destroying the nervous systems of a whole generation of kids.

George-W-Bush

Photo by Eric Draper, White House.

These evil cynics and hypocritical truth-twisters don’t need to be resisted—they need to be lined up against a wall. They call themselves conservatives—but they only conserve their bank accounts. They call themselves people of faith—but the only faith they have is yours (if you’re fool enough to give it to them). They confuse governing with poker—where lying with a straight face is an integral part of the game. They have no ethics. They have no honesty. They have no shame.

President_Barack_Obama

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

And me? I was proud to be an American. There was a lot to be proud of. And we were just about to go on to even greater things. My dreams are shattered. My heart is broken. I see only darkness ahead. Where did this sudden lobotomy come from? Can we really blame the Russians for voting in this clown? And, if so, can we really expect his cronies to uncover the truth in these investigations? And even if we nuked Russia tomorrow, would that rid us of the yahoos that shouted ‘Trump that bitch’? I don’t think so. The explosion of racism in this country of late is all on us—election notwithstanding, we have people being violently xenophobic at every opportunity.

Stupid people have decided that they have a voice. And they do—it’s the voice of stupidity—and I have a message for them in return—shut your fucking mouth you stupid fucking asshole. I want America to go back to when stupid people had at least enough sense to respect intelligence, even when they didn’t understand it. And for all those of you who’ve gone all the way past crazy, to science-denial—here’s a special message for ya: Go eat a bag of dicks. I want my fucking country back.

Pete— and Political Depression   (2017Mar07)

Posted by XperDunn on

20170306XD-BabySoxTuesday, March 07, 2017                                        7:38 PM

It was fun playing with Pete yesterday, as always—we did Sixties covers and an improv at the end—shorter than usual, but I’ve been somewhat fatigued lately—this post also has two solo videos I’ve been trying to upload for a few days.

I enjoyed the annual arrival of March 4th on Saturday (You know… ‘What’s the only day of the year that’s like a military command?’) The worse a joke is, the better I like it. It was also brother Russell’s birthday the previous day, March 3rd—had he lived, he would have been 59 last Friday.

Lots of politics in the news—but I’ve decided it’s all a big conspiracy—the politicians, the media, the wealthy, the corporations—they do their little school play and we all applaud, like they’re responsible grown-ups instead of empty suits with staring fish-eyes. As Al Pacino once said, “I’d like to take a blowtorch to this place.” Now that they have us arguing amongst ourselves over what’s true, we’re doomed—they’re even dropping any pretense of ethics, they have us so locked up—it’s pitiful.

So I’m taking the night off from playing their bull-pucky games. I tell you what really gets me—the pretension to respectability, so transparent, so far removed from actual respectability. All we expect of them is that they can speak intelligently about the job they’re supposed to be doing—and they can’t even get that much together.

But pose? Man, can these monkeys pose. I suppose, given the majority of them having no ethics, it’s just as well they don’t know much. But enough about politicians—competent people are hard put to throw themselves in with mongrels and such saintly folk are thus eternally doomed to labor in the minority—like Warren, Franken, and Sanders. My blogging, about what that gang of thugs in Washington is doing, is even less effective.

Well, there goes my plan to write something cheery. Dammit.

What can I say? I’m not a chipper guy. And I really am feeling tired lately—it’s not helping. I think I have political depression—they’ve changed our democracy into a reality show/game show/talk show—and I get depressed remembering the good old days—when people still had working heads and democracy was a serious responsibility. Remember? It was just four years ago.

Anyway, thanks as always to Pete, for being such a good sport about playing music with me—and for being such a good friend.

20170306XD_Pete_n_Me_GRFC_01

ttfn.

Who Needs The Russians?   (2017Mar07)

Posted by XperDunn on

marinerg

Tuesday, March 07, 2017                                        9:03 AM

Trump’s ‘wiretap’ lie is an attempt to convince us that serious planning happens inside Trump Tower (and by extension, in the Oval)—but tweeting it without consulting anyone else on his staff proves the exact opposite.

I’m so deeply ashamed of my country and my countrymen right now—especially those who voted for the vile vanity who struts golf-courses as our head of state. That offense-against-decency-in-chief is backed by a gang of soulless, conscienceless Republicans who began the new administration by sending him a vital bill—allowing our waterways to be used to dump coal waste. That was their top priority—and a bill speaks a thousand words.

Now they want to rescind the legislation that offers health care to the underserved—sending them flooding back into the country’s ERs. These elitist vermin cackle to each other as they dismantle everything good they can find, while promoting whatever unethical, money-grubbing fat-cat sends a lobbyist to blow them.

Who needs the Russians? We have hate-filled voters and hypocritical politicians destroying the American Dream as fast as they can—denying religious freedom, denying First Amendment rights, denying science, and making some sort of new art-form out of bullshitting—as if blatant untruths are okay, as long as your TV spokespeople are sleazy enough to keep all their obstinacy-balls in the air until the break.

As if using the Citizens United ruling to pretend wealth spent equals free speech were not enough, they promote and support outlets of untruthfulness, called ‘alternate news sites’ (‘alternate’ is the new euphemism for ‘dishonest’) which they can then feed their own propaganda and hear it regurgitated back to them as ‘news’. Then they call the New York Times dishonest. And people fall for this blatant bullshit. It’s so humiliating—and the irony is that most of the voters and pols who are dissolving America’s greatness before our eyes are people who believe that American Greatness is something they were born to—not something that requires effort or engagement. Of course they bridle at the label ‘deplorable’—it’s perfectly apt—and they have to look it up.

For all his talk about making America great, Trump has patently never bothered to learn what America truly is or, more pertinent to a president, how America is supposed to work. But this is where Republicans can offer pointers on making up rules as they go along—they know how America is supposed to work—and they stay up late figuring out how to gerrymander their personal gain past the will of the people—or, failing that, using psy-ops-like disinformation to convince the voters to support their own persecution.

I suppose we should be grateful that these monsters are too selfish to work together as a team—they’re doing plenty enough damage just flailing around as independent self-servers.

Death To Republicans   (2017Mar05)

Posted by XperDunn on

delightd

Sunday, March 05, 2017                                          1:59 PM

The Republicans are dead meat. Sure, we were distracted by Trump and the Russians, but Trump is a Republican, and Putin works for the Republicans—so really, this is all about the Republicans. Trump’s ‘who-gives-a-shit’ antics allowed him to garner popularity votes—but he can’t sign anything important unless the Republicans put it on his desk. And the Republicans’ attacks on Obama’s last six months of legislation sound more like a list of crimes against humanity than any kind of political agenda.

While we stare aghast at their straw-man, Trump, we overlook their willingness to allow his cronyism, his lying, his criminality, his conflicts of interest—and his ties to Russia—to go unchallenged. Why? Because that idiot will sign whatever bill they give him—he’s a free ride for their darkest fantasies of corporate overrule and climate denial. Trump is a travesty—but these cynical goons in Congress know exactly what they’re doing. They know the difference between right and wrong—and they wouldn’t squirm on TV so much or be so reluctant to give a straight answer if they didn’t know they were guilty.

We even give their defensive guilt-trips cute names like ‘push-back’ and ‘spin’—but only the guilty need to modulate the truth. They mask their reluctance to confront their constituents by claiming town-hall attendees are too rambunctious—or even that those people are being bussed in by political activists—one of their many easily-disproven lies. How do they convince themselves these lies will be effective?

Well, they have a market for their lies—a support-group who strain upward, beaks agape, like baby birds waiting for any scrap of delusional thinking the alt-right drops down their gullets. I think this is the first time the ‘militia’ demographic has gotten a voice in American affairs—up until now everyone readily recognized them as treasonous malcontents with psychological issues.

Trump’s responses to his faux-pas have been, “I didn’t know.”; “This was started before me.”; and “Nobody knew it was so complicated.” Trump is an ignorant buffoon—but the Republicans stand behind him, to a man—supporting ignorance even greater than their own, knowingly, willingly, for cynical partisan gain.

I say no one should ever vote for a Republican, ever again, for any elected office. A Republican, from all current evidence, is a traitor to his country and to its citizens—these gerrymandering, scandal-grinding, science-denying, disinformation-addicted sons-of-bitches have got to learn that Americans will only take so much shit.

These are just a few of the horrendous bills the Republicans have introduced:

  1. HR 861 Terminate the Environmental Protection Agency
  2. HR 610 Vouchers for Public Education
  3. HR 899 Terminate the Department of Education
  4. HJR 69 Repeal Rule Protecting Wildlife
  5. HR 370 Repeal Affordable Care Act
  6. HR 354 Defund Planned Parenthood
  7. HR 785 National Right to Work (this one ends unions)
  8. HR 83 Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Bill
  9. HR 147 Criminalizing Abortion (“Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act”)
  10. HR 808 Sanctions against Iran

If your senators and reps aren’t saved in your phone yet, text your zip code to 520-200-2223. You’ll get a text back with everyone’s contact info. It gives you Federal and State.

Call your House Representative and ask them not only to vote ‘No’, but to speak out against their party and its administration.

delightW

When Crazy Gets Too One-Sided   (2017Mar05)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sunday, March 05, 2017                                          11:36 AM

20160826XD-NativeAmericansProtestPipeline_02Trump supporters are too foolish to realize they’re being lied to. Trump himself is an ignoramus, a fool, and a crazy person—and not in a cute way, but as in a raving lunatic with a gun. The Republicans are hypocrites who, in their own quiet way, are just as toxic—more so, when we consider that Trump just flails about, while these jackasses are serious and considered about their demonic agenda. Lies are being told. Laws are being broken—or repealed, if they’re really good ones. Hate is being touted as national security. And the media is reporting on the tweets of a madman, just because he lives in the White House.

The majority of this country didn’t vote. Of those who did, the majority voted for someone else. Some people see this as chaos, but I see it as a kind of pressure cooker—somethings gonna blow, sooner or later. It’s just too crazy an environment not to pop out a few maniacs—and who knows what they’ll do in their hysteria? Who knows what I’ll do? Thank god I’m disabled—I can’t be tempted to anything ambitious, like insurrection.

But there are plenty of healthy, sane people out there—and they’re about to call your ‘crazy’, and raise you a ‘furious’—in the end, Trump won’t be impeached—he’ll be torn apart on Penn Ave by a howling mob. You can’t treat people this way for very long without getting a reaction out of them. They were too lazy to vote for HRC, but that was when Obama was in office and all was right with the world. Now they’re about to lose their schools, their doctors, and their trade partners—and an amoral scumbag tweets at them in the night. Hey Trump, I got bad news for you—the only constant is change.

I’ve got a new fad for the nation—every election, we vote for anyone or anything that isn’t a Republican. From now on, we think of Republican as a synonym for Russian. It doesn’t matter how much you hate the other guy or gal—if they’re not Republican, they get our vote. How’s that for matching your crazy with our own? Evil, greedy traitors don’t get a free ride anymore, not now that we’ve seen your true colors.

Kamps for Kids   (2017Mar04)

Posted by XperDunn on

Saturday, March 04, 2017                                        7:08 PM

Americans are crazy. We started our country by revolution—and then decided we’d keep our guns, just in case, forever. If you think about it, to this day, if a state threatens to secede everyone takes it very seriously. Imagine—an over-two-century old union of more than fifty sovereignties—and if a single one of those states said, ‘we’re gonna secede’ no one would laugh. Even with the Civil War’s failed secession as an object lesson in how destructive that is—Americans still like to think of our country as a work-in-progress. States still like to think they are stand-alone entities.

It’s a natural mistake—look at Brexit—a union even greater than our own—and one of its strongest members sees no better move on the geopolitical chessboard than petulant isolation. The European Union may outweigh the United States, but they don’t have our experience—guys, you’re only supposed to threaten to do something as stupid as quitting.

I shouldn’t brag, though. With our new ‘alternate reality’ schism, I’m sure the citizens of several states would grab their guns and stand at the barricades, if Bannon told them to. And even without declaring civil war, the gun-related death-toll in America outnumbers the body counts of several military hot-spots around the globe. We love our guns and if you don’t like it, I’ll plug ya.

Which makes it kind of strange that military service is such a rarity in the USA. A very small percentage of our young people go through military service as a rite of passage. Enlistment and training were an assumed stage in any man’s life, in any country, for many centuries—a man who didn’t serve in the military was no man. This tradition stretches back to the coming-of-age rituals of tribal societies. And we have broken that thread.

Don’t get me wrong—I was turning eighteen the same year that draft registration was abolished—I was one of the first people to find out what it was like to live life without any contact with military training. And while the Viet Nam war was winding down, it was not yet over—so being left out was a good thing, as far as I was concerned.

And I’m not advocating military service as part of a healthy upbringing either. But the practical results concern me. With military training confined to the innocent bystanders of drive-by shootings—and that being pretty poor training by any standard—one wonders how well-prepared we are to deal with countries where military service is still the rule.

Not because they have bigger armies or anything—just because their young people have the harder side of life rubbed in their faces as a part of their life—and while that is extremely unpleasant, it is also very eye-opening. I think a lot of young Americans are walking around with droopy eyelids—and they are in danger of becoming caught unawares by others—not just on land or sea, but in science, in business, and in trade. And from what I hear, a few of them could use the exercise, also.

It’s natural for a sixty-one-year-old to go on about how kids today need this or that—and military training may be the worst possible choice. But it seems to me that America doesn’t need a large army—not today, anyway. So, enlisting a bunch of young people in a government program of a less-exclusively-military nature might be a workable idea—it would fit in with a well-planned infrastructure renovation program and have the kids leave with some job skills, too—kind of like FDR’s CCC program.

I don’t know. I do know that coming-of-age rituals are beneficial—they help confront young people with self-discipline and the rigors of adulthood—and prepare them to be serious members of the community. There are too many places for people to gather online—and not enough places where people literally gather—it’s easy for young people to just drift off and get lost. With some sort of civil service program, we could at least reduce those who drift off to those who really want to.

When we make it hard for young people to find jobs, we send a lot of good people down into cellars with bongs, where they wait for the world to come find them. What a waste of all that youthful energy and enthusiasm. This country’s aversion to anything socialist in nature will be its undoing in the end—some things are better achieved through socialist programs—that’s just a fact. But there’s always that handful of people who’ve found a way to make a buck out of the lack of a program—and they shout bloody murder about the reds taking over, as soon as you go for their rice bowls.

Of course, if anyone listened to me, I’d be eternally damned. The reality of such a program would be corrupt, inefficient, possibly even predatory, by the time the ‘serious’ people got hold of it. But if it was done nicely, people would actually benefit from it—and so would the country as a whole. Still, we have the Soviet Union as the ultimate example of a good idea that became a genocidal crime against humanity—so perhaps I should just shut up about camps for kids.

‘Bugsy’ Trump   (2017Mar04)

Posted by XperDunn on

gangsters_01

Saturday, March 04, 2017                                        10:16 AM

Today one of Facebook’s featured news-stories concerned a Trump tweet that accused President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower. This is the sort of thing he used to confuse us with—we’d be so busy laughing at how ludicrous he was we’d overlook the delusional nature of such statements. But I’m not laughing at his antics anymore—and the idea of a president who tweets his paranoia is no longer amusing.

To begin with—if such a thing were true, it would be as serious as a heart attack—it would require investigations and charges and who knows what else—and it would certainly, at some point, need a shred of proof. So, any sane normal person would not make the bald accusation, alone—no, they would say, ‘I have this proof here that something bad was done.’ We wouldn’t even need to ask for proof—a sane person would recognize that such a libel requires it—if for no other reason than as a starting point for an investigation.

But Trump seems to be free-associating, as he did when he accused Obama of ‘founding ISIS’ (just breathe—count slowly to ten…) after Obama had correctly pointed out that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was promoting the extremists’ agenda. Trump’s just telling stories to his base—stories he knows they’ll enjoy—they don’t need to be true, or have proof. Trump saying it is the only proof his base needs, now that we live in a bifurcated reality.

Then there’s the question of what exactly Obama would get out of ‘bugging Trump Tower’. Normally, one might wish to know a rival’s plans and strategy—but Trump doesn’t have any—we’re still waiting on his Health Care plan, his Jobs plan, his Infrastructure plan, his Education plan, etc. In short, there is no intelligence to intercept inside of Trump Tower. His tactics are petulance and disinformation to promote ignorance—it’s no great secret. There’s nothing to bug.

Let face it—it’s a false accusation. False accusations fly out of Trump’s mouth whenever he’s threatened—and they are always a mirror-image of the threat against him. Hil calls him ‘unfit’ and suddenly, he’s calling her ‘unfit’. She calls him a puppet of Putin, he—well, you know the clip. When the media exposes his lies, he calls them liars. When generals criticize him, he says the generals are incompetent. If this were a comic book, he’d be the evil villain using a mirror-shield to defend against the superhero’s laser-gun.

And we notice. At some point, we realize—this is a confession—this is Trump deciding he’s been tagged ‘it’ and he has to run up to someone else and tag them, or he’ll lose. So we wonder—is this Trump worrying that a Russian-interference investigation is starting to look inevitable? Or is it something more childish—say, a reaction to the Obamas’ enthusiastic reception on their return from vacation?

We continue to be puzzled by the media’s willingness to broadcast Trump’s tweets as news—he has followers who have volunteered to receive his personal disinformation—why can’t we leave it at that? They got fed up with Kellyanne Conway’s inability to resemble truth or reason—why shouldn’t they conclude the same about our president? Does the dignity of the office actually legitimize bullshit? I hope not.

So, I offer a new nickname for our pumpkin-in-chief: ‘Bugsy’—a fitting moniker, once used by a gang of criminals for a criminal even those psychos thought had a screw loose. When will the GOP get tired of ‘winning’ this country into an early grave and cut themselves loose from this deplorable Donald? Hey, Bugsy—take it from me—you’re going to make history. And, yes, that is another comparison of you to Hitler.

gangsters_02

Hello?   (2017Feb28)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, February 28, 2017                                             11:42 AM

Feeling a little disappointed lately with the traffic on my blog and YouTube channel. Makes sense, though—I’ve been so busy writing posts and posting videos that I haven’t spared any time to appreciate other people’s blogs and music videos. I do follow some bloggers and YouTube musicians—I’m not completely self-absorbed—and besides, isn’t the point of the Internet to allow us all to bounce our ideas off each other? Sharing ideas and creativity is the only real communication—everything else is entertainment—click-bait and eye-candy to lull the masses.

So, I’m thinking maybe the end of Winter is a particularly fertile period for people to get work done, get new ideas, and feel inspired to create. Like me, everyone else is too busy doing their own thing to check in with my stuff. Either that, or I’m getting old, predictable, and uninteresting—always a dark possibility that I’m sure I won’t recognize when it happens—if it hasn’t already.

Today’s videos use new pictures of the baby—some of them are a little dark because I just used them, as is, to make the video. I’ve been processing hundreds of pictures lately, and for this batch of 376 new ones, I decided to take the easy way out—no photo-shop, no enhancement, just the candid camera. Fortunately most of the pictures are just perfect, like their subject, and my only worry was in recording some music that would be suitable accompaniment to such a beautiful baby.

I tried to play one of Bach’s French Suites—the b minor—but my left hand is getting so spasmodic that I may have to stop sharing my piano-playing and go back to playing for my own amusement. It’s never been that good, but it’s really starting to mess up everything I play. And I really hate not being able to play a strong bass line—it’s my favorite part, dammit.

With our new president, I have a bug up my ass about something he says or does nearly every day—so I’m struggling to come up with non-political posts, just to break the monotony of my constant bitching. I need ‘happy’ posts because I don’t like to put my beautiful granddaughter’s videos on the same page as a post about that horror-show.

But here I am, bitching anyway—and about people ignoring me, no less. What an idiot. I look at YouTube Creators notes sometimes—they always talk about requiring a minimum of 1,000 subscribers for certain programs they offer—and I go check my channel and see that, for my eight years of posting videos, I’ve amassed a whopping 60 subscribers. Usually I’m grateful that there are that many—but YouTube always reminds me that I’m not really ‘in the mix’, as it were. It’s depressing to be a music-lover and be such a terrible musician. Still, it beats living without music in my life.

All’s I can say is—if global warming is going to destroy the world, it’s surely offering us some lovely weather for the apocalypse. Last day of February and it might as well be the first day of June. The crocuses, snowbells, and what-all are simply exploding out of the ground. I should get my camera out there while it’s all blooming—those flowers come and go in the blink of an eye. Even indoors, we’ve got red and white amaryllis blooming all around the kitchen. It’s a very flowery day—too nice a day to complain. Hello.

D is for Dummy   (2017Feb28)

Posted by XperDunn on

battlodseagods

Tuesday, February 28, 2017                                             9:11 AM

According to the New York Times, Trump wants to add $54 billion to our military spending, saying, “We have to start winning wars again.” This sorry fuckwad doesn’t see a problem with wars—just with losing them. It may be difficult for those of us living in reality to understand what this drooling moron means when he spews his ignorance. I believe this particular tid-bit was meant to suggest that we will go to every hot spot on Earth and use American Might to slaughter everyone involved, thus ‘winning’. I guess when you’re that old, mere diplomacy and world peace won’t get your dick hard.

BLOTUS says, “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” He doesn’t want to admit it was just him—so he says ‘Nobody’ knew. This is the beauty of seeing reality as a story to be shaped, rather than a true thing—you can adjust the facts to make yourself look sane. Every-fucking-body knew—and everyone has known for years and years, that Health Care was complex—only someone who completely ignored politics until last year could possibly have missed the fact that Health Care was complex—and guess who that sounds like.

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I know that facts are unpopular nowadays—but here’s one: the ACA was based on a Republican governor’s successful state program—it addressed several injustices that existed in commercial health insurance, it saved lives, and the only way it could be improved or made more economic would be to put back the single-payer option that Obama was forced to drop when he pushed the bill through. That’s the simple truth.

But Republicans and Trump campaigned on the notion that the ACA was evil incarnate—a curse upon the nation. They wanted to repeal it so bad they could taste it. They passed repeal bills in the House like sixty-something times. We can see now why they were so desperate—people have gotten used to health insurance—they like it and they don’t want anyone to take it away now. It turns out that some people look on this evil curse as a blessing—who knew that keeping kids healthy would be popular with parents—even dyed-in-the-wool Republican parents?

But how can they rail against something for years—and then turn around and claim they had no idea how complicated it was? How can they justify ending a government policy so popular that twenty million people signed up for it—and without any kind of replacement? Trump went on to say that his Obamacare-replacement plan is going to be incredibly super-terrific—he doesn’t have one yet, but he knows that it will be terrific. Is that just his subtle way of reminding us that ‘terrific’ has the same root as ‘terror’? I’m afraid so.

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But I’m not going to condescend to you, dear reader, as if you were some brainless Trump supporter. You know he’s an ignorant, confused old elitist who snuck into a position he is unfit for. You don’t need me to tell you that the GOP has to use gerrymandering to win elections because their priorities don’t include serving the people. You don’t need me to tell you you’re being lied to—you can tell the truth from a punch in the face without any help from me. I only write these posts because I’m consumed with a thirst for vengeance, just dying for truth and justice to make a comeback.

Trump’s statements, his behavior, his so-called policies—I see them as proof of treasonous criminality and incompetence. Others see them as something to vote for. That’s an incomprehensible gap in our perception of things. I believe that a quarter of this country is made up of people who had trouble with school, with comprehension and reading skills—people who’ve spent their lifetimes being corrected, confused, and condescended to by intelligent people.

They hate subtlety, they hate ideas and ideals, they hate science and math, they hate history and education—and most of all, they hate eggheads, nerds, brains, or intelligentsia of any kind—study and knowledge are the enemy to that quarter of our population—the quarter who see Trump as their champion. Trump told them it’s okay to stand up in public and be an idiot, to say something that three-quarters of Americans laugh at for its inanity—that being a perfect fool is nothing to be ashamed of—and they love him for it.

Of course, it’s a little uncomfortable to come right out and champion stupidity, so they rebrand intelligence as ‘being liberal’. Then they change it to ‘libertards’, to imply that thinking is the real stupidity (and to get away with using ‘retard’ as an insult without anyone being able to call them on it). Sadly, they condemn thinking as if it’s something they would never do—when the truth is that thinking is something they’ve never been able to do.

That quarter of our population got Trump into office—but they had help. The people who didn’t bother to vote (which was fully half the country) may not have been stupid enough to vote for him—but they were stupid enough to let it happen. I give them a D.

allegovirtunvice

Evil, Ignorant, or Psychotic   (2017Feb27)

Posted by XperDunn on

wealthnbenefits

Monday, February 27, 2017                                             5:40 PM

What do we mean when we say someone is ‘psychotic’? I don’t know anything about psychiatry—but I know it doesn’t mean misbehavior—we have criminal law to define what misbehavior is—and it even has conditions that attempt to separate crime from insanity—so ‘psychotic’, whatever that means to us, is not merely doing something bad. I’ve always assumed it meant disassociation from reality—perceiving reality in a way that is fundamentally different from sane people.

And we’ve seen several media reports recently that go out of their way to point out that psychosis, in and of itself, isn’t evil, per se. They give examples of people who are diagnosed as psychotic, but functional, meaning that such people can take care of themselves and don’t make a habit of hurting anyone else, but are nevertheless technically psychotic. That would seem to bear out my assumption that being psychotic isn’t the same as being a bad person.

I think, when we discuss modern politics, we often use ‘psychotic’ to label someone who thinks they have a good idea—and we recognize that ‘good idea’ as a very bad idea, the badness of which should be self-evident to any sane person. Thus Trump and most of his coterie are often described as psychotic—their ideas, if you can call them that, have been seen before, have been discussed before, and have been discarded as shortsighted, or just plain wrong, sometimes years or even decades before now. Their ignorance and willful blindness suggest someone with a malevolent agenda—and rather than call them evil traitors, we give them the benefit of the doubt—and say they must be crazy.

But these are our choices: evil, ignorant, or psychotic—they’re either doing wrong because they intend to, because they don’t know better, or because they fail to grasp reality. Not great choices. Rachel Maddow did a segment on this last week, giving examples of seeming malfeasance, or incompetence, depending on how much volition and knowledge you give them credit for. With each example she repeated the mystery: ‘Are they evil, or are they ignorant and incompetent? You choose.’ But she left out bat-shit crazy—and I can understand why she wanted to keep it simple, but she still left out a very real possibility.

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And I can also see where a knowledgeable reporter would shy away from the question of psychosis. Capitalism is psychotic, when we consider that we are destroying our planet as fast as we can, meanwhile shouting to all who will listen that we can’t afford to slow down. American Politics is psychotic, when we consider that Trump won the election. Religion is psychotic on its face—the very definition of insanity—believing in something that there is no evidence of. And you and I are somewhat crazy as well—everyone is a little crazy, or a lot, depending. I like to think I’m only a little bit crazy, but who knows?

But a true psychotic is like a runaway robot—it will follow its programming, and it won’t slow down just because people start suffering or dying. It won’t adjust for outside input, peer pressure, ethics, morality, or any other reason—it will do what it is doing, and god help you if you get in its way.

And if that sounds a little too much like Trump and his administration, then you and I are in agreement. He may be evil. He is most certainly one of the most ignorant people ever to wield such power. But whatever else he is, there’s some crazy in there, too, no doubt about it.

Look at his life before politics—always skirting the far edges of propriety when it came to personal behavior, always skirting the far edges of legality when it came to acquiring profits, always dismissive of anything like ethics. Had things gone a little differently, Trump would have been campaigning from a jail cell, arrested for one illegal or perverted act or another. It is entirely possible his entire campaign was meant merely to give him immunity from prosecution for many actions he dismissed so quickly, while yelling that his opponent belonged in jail.

The fact that Trump University was found to be fraudulent, during the campaign, and even this clear indicator was ignored by his supporters—means that a good quarter of the country’s voters are a little t’eched in the head, as well.

Then there’s Putin—a murdering crime-boss who wormed his way into the Russian establishment and will kill anyone who threatens his primacy, now that he has it. Trump admired him openly during the campaign and now, as president, he urges America to ‘get along’ with this mafia thug. Crazy loves crazy, I guess.

But America is funny—we’ll do the whole four years with a madman in the White House—but if he takes off his pants and starts running around the front lawn singing nursery rhymes—we’ve got him. This is ironic since, if Trump were to do that, it would be among his most sensible activities—and his least harmful agendas—in the last year.

musesuraniancalliope

Stuck in the Snow   (2017Feb27)

Posted by XperDunn on

sigmarpolke-hopeis

Monday, February 27, 2017                                             11:29 AM

I’m tired of discussing it. I’ve been in meetings with people I respected, people who knew what they were talking about—and still, at some point you reach a time when you just get tired. How much more tiring it is to have an argument (I won’t dignify them as ‘discussions’) with someone who is speaking from an emotional, partisan obstinacy.

They trot out their syllogisms, their zingers, their disdain for other points-of-view, their outrage, hurt pride, and puffed chests—the tools of those for whom reason holds no fascination—just a lurking fear that calm, sensible thought will prove them wrong, and a blindness to their emotional attachment to maintaining the wrong, if that’s the case.

It reminds me of a story. I was hitchhiking on I-684 in a snowstorm, coming back north from a visit to a friend in White Plains. Four guys in a real boat of a seventies car picked me up. Their friendliness was greater than their care for their automobile, for the windshield-wipers weren’t working and the driver was trying to reach out his window and wipe the snow from the windshield as he drove.

Traffic moves right along on 684—we must have been doing sixty when the driver’s attention to the windshield caused him to stop paying attention to the road and he went onto the shoulder. The shoulder had deeper snow, and so pulled the car further off the road—the steering wheel, at this point in the snowstorm, had become more a suggestion than an instruction.

Soon we were basically sleigh-riding the car through a field full of saplings by the side of the highway—shearing their tops off as the car’s inertia plowed us unerringly towards some older trees—trees with trunks that would put a quick stop to even the largest vehicle. The car, luckily, slowed to a stop just a few feet in front of one such tree. We all breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t met the tree, and piled out to try to push the car back from the tree and towards the road again.

The car wouldn’t budge. We pushed and pushed and nothing happened. I got down on the ground and looked under the car. I could see that we had sheared off a healthy sapling’s trunk and the base of the young tree was not only jammed up into the carriage, but bent towards the larger tree we had just avoided smashing into. Five men with slippery shoes in the snow would have had a tough time moving the car had it been free to roll. But this was five men trying to push a car hard enough to uproot a small tree—while pushing a car.

I tried to explain the physics to my kind travelers—but I couldn’t express myself clearly enough to make them understand that we would have to literally lift the car off the ground to extract it from the spot it was in—I couldn’t even get them to look under the car, as I had. They wanted me to continue helping them try to push the car.

At the time, I felt more stuck by my inability to get through to my new friends than by the car being physically, inextricably stuck where it was. I’m not an alpha-male—I’m not the assertive sort—when I say things, I don’t shout or insist—I just say them. It never fails to surprise me that no one ever listens—it’s not like I’m wrong all the time—and you’d think people would notice that, right? But, no—no one ever says, “Hey, we better listen to Chris—he’s usually right.” I only got noticed when I made a mistake. In that way, I’ve always identified with Hillary Clinton—the smartest person in whatever room she’s in, but the last person anyone wants to hear from—and just let her make one little slip….

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Of course this was all long ago, back when I had a pretty sharp mind—I’m wrong all the time these days—I live in a fog. Yet, I still see some things that seem obvious, even in my fog, that I simply can’t believe others don’t see clearly. I still get exhausted trying to argue with people who don’t think about what they’re saying, just saying whatever seems like a ‘good argument’ or a clever rebuttal—and fuck the big picture.

And I’ve found that most people are not at all stupid—even the Trump supporters are not as stupid as one would expect a Trump-supporter would have to be to support Trump. They don’t lack intelligence. They lack respect. They don’t respect reason—because they’re afraid of it—maybe having a hard time in school taught them that logic is not their friend—I don’t know. They don’t respect themselves—and that pushes them to reject any show of respect for people that know what they’re talking about—or even for the subject under discussion. Most Trump-support boils down to self-loathing, turned outwards towards the rest of the world. They’re basically saying, “I’m gonna make an ass of myself—and you can’t stop me, because I voted for the king of the ignoramuses—and idiocy is in charge now.”

The Russians support Trump. Bannon is a confessed anarchist who wants to destroy the government. Conway got so used to lying she tried to give it a name: ‘alternative facts’. At least ten of Trump’s hires since inauguration have been expelled due to unfitness. And Trump has claimed that a free press is the enemy of the people—if I was crook and a liar, I’d say the same thing. The Republicans—jeez, these scumbags—whenever one of them opens their mouths, I want to shoot’em for treason. How do these trolls get elected—are their constituents in a coma? What? I just don’t get it—and boy, am I tired of pushing this car.

tcole-crossndwildrnes

Sunday   (2017Feb26)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sunday, February 26, 2017                                               1:52 PM

Sunday—and February almost over—these months just whip by if you don’t stay on top of them, eh? I’ve gotten a whole slew of new baby videos in from the fam—so, new YouTube videos are the order of the day.

I sent a Rusty-the-Robot teething toy—which appears in the videos—she seems to get a kick out of it, so I’m a happy grampa. Lil Sen is really starting to crawl now, so there’s lots of action in the videos—Sundance here I come.

With a February like Spring, it isn’t that I deny Climate Change—it’s just that I kind of like it. Is that wrong? It’s not like I’m the guy causing it.

I’m reading a new sci-fi book called “Breakthrough”—it’s about a lady scientist who tries to tell people that ocean levels are falling. No one will listen to her because they think she’s a climate denier—but it turns out there really are aliens running a star-gate on the ocean floor in the Bermuda Triangle, siphoning off seawater for their parched planet. It’s fun—I hope the earthlings win—we’ll see.

I’ve been adding a lot of sappy stuff to my Spotify playlist recently: Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic”, Johnny Mathis’s “Chances Are”, Billy Holiday’s “I’ll Get By”, Dusty Springfield’s “Spooky”, and some Chopin Nocturnes—even some Carpenters, and Barry Manilow—I guess I’m getting backfire from Valentine’s Day, I don’t know. I’m always into sappy, but I don’t usually dive this deep.

So, that’s Sunday, here at the Dunn’s.

Not Flat—But Maybe Our Brains Are   (2017Feb25)

Posted by XperDunn on

 

Saturday, February 25, 2017                                             7:34 PM

20160107XD-NASA-MagneticReconnectionIt should be no surprise that the era of Trump has brought back a resurgence of Flat-Earthers—in the quest for distraction and chaos, no idea is too ludicrous. (And if Trump didn’t generate three scandals per day, our gaze might linger on one of his fouler failings.) Believing that the Earth is flat is kind of like a religious thing—it didn’t exist for the ancient Greeks, who knew better, and it doesn’t exist today, among most developed nations’ peoples.

The surface of the Earth is observably curved. If you watch a sailboat pass below the horizon, the boat disappears first—the masts remain visible for longer—this is not something that happens on a flat surface. If you send a perfectly horizontal laser-beam across the desert floor, someone a quarter of a mile away would have to hold a piece of paper ten feet over their heads to catch the beam’s reflection—that’s because the light is a straight line—the Earth’s surface is not.

The ancient Greeks did not need to see Earth from space to know that it was round—it is perfectly plain to see, from several simple exercises like those just described—not to mention the Moon—also visibly, patently spherical, is hanging in the sky half the nights.

But beyond this—we also have proof that Earth is not only round—but spinning like nobody’s business—the Coriolis force is what causes Foucault’s Pendulum to work the way it does (and why the water spins in a flushing toilet—clockwise here, and counter-clockwise in Australia. Without the Coriolis Effect, water would simply fall down a drain, not spin around it).

And there’s the question of why nights are longer at the poles—why we have seasons in the temperate zones—and why it’s so hot near the Equator. Ultimately, one has to stay indoors, both physically and mentally, to maintain a belief in anything so easily disproved as a flat Earth. I find that those who insist on a Flat Earth are not merely stating that single mis-fact—they are attempting to delegitimize Facts themselves.

In effect, it is a declaration that a person has the right to dismiss reality, for no reason at all—and that is the case—but the result, in a perfect world, would be a diagnosis of insanity, not a debate with serious people. In my youth, a person purporting the flat Earth theory would be told to sit down and shut up—we were busy going to the Moon back then, and had little patience with willful ignorance.

Now it is all the rage—getting someone to say something wildly stupid is irresistible click-bait to the so-called journalists of mass media—a Flat-Earther is money in the bank to them, regardless of how low it puts the bar of public discourse, or eats away at the fabric of modern society. And here is where we find the connection between the rise of Trump and the sudden resurgence of Flat-Earthers in the media. They both substitute attention-getting for intelligence-gathering. They are both subtle attacks on our way of life—perhaps too subtle for us to defend against. What do you think?

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Global Disgrace (2017Feb25)

Posted by XperDunn on

marinerb

Saturday, February 25, 2017                                             1:40 PM

This world could be a beautiful place—we could all be working towards a happier, safer, more just world—so, how did we end up with a bunch of crooks in the White House and in Congress? How do the most ignorant, most thoughtless, most corrupt people come to power—especially considering that they all needed us to vote for them? How is that possible?

Well, for one thing—goodness is quiet. Evil shouts and punches and razzes its opponents—evil trumpets its false goodness to the mountaintops. Real goodness doesn’t do that—goodness is kept busy doing the right thing; it doesn’t waste time on PR.

Also, Democracy itself is a flawed concept—it assumed a sober judgement on the part of voters (an assumption that never held true, but fell completely apart last November). Democracy allows voters to confuse leadership with popularity—and Democracy makes elected officials cower away from unpopular but necessary policies.

No policy in America can ever be right enough to survive disfavor—which is why a ‘tax-cut’ is always popular but rarely wise. Policies get fought over in the media based on anecdotal memes, rather than serious analysis. Democracy is, in many ways, a political lobotomy. I don’t have an alternative to democracy—but being ‘better than tyranny’ is a pretty low bar—and when democratic dysfunction allows for tyranny, even that bar isn’t overcome.

The Electoral College was our founders’ only concession to popular idiocy—but the Electoral College is made up of people—people no wiser or more infallible than the voters—and, as in the recent election, even a minority-vote candidate with severe fitness issues can slide by them, like they weren’t even there. So much for the Electoral College. It’s official—the only thing the Electoral College does is make our elections less democratic—hence the clown with the least actual votes winning, this last time around.

I don’t think people see this as clearly as I do—I think a lot of Trump voters thought they were voting in a one-day protest against the establishment—none of them thought of their vote as a request to be led by a madman for four whole years. See, we’re a democracy—but once you elect someone—even a Trump—that person has awesome power that no protest can change—the only way to get rid of a bad politician is to wait for next election day and run someone else against them.

So, when we made a mistake with Trump, it was a four-year mistake—those voters made it impossible to get rid of Trump until 2021. End of story. Impeach him, you say? Well, his new AG is in charge of the Russian investigation—and was part of Trump’s campaign while the crimes were being committed—and refuses to recuse himself from the investigation! So, don’t hold your breath on impeachment—and don’t think Pence will be any great prize, either.

I believe that what really complicates politics is the spectrum of empathy—some people are willing to make significant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, i.e. other people; some people are only willing to make small sacrifices on behalf of the common good; and, of course, there’s the people who say, ‘I got mine, Jack’, and could care less about anyone else.

That’s only natural—but the problem is that government is not supposed to be about one person or one group—it’s supposed to be about all of us. Within that context, a spectrum of empathy certainly complicates things. But we are now in a fantasy world, where ‘all of us’ is considered an exclusive club—and immigrants, refugees, gays, women, Muslims, and African-Americans are not really part of us. It’s a sick paradigm created by a perverted fraud and traitor—whom we just elected. His idea is to improve our lives by discounting the value of the lives of others—I hate this fucking guy with every fiber of my being. It is ironic that Trump says, “America first” because he’s that stupid—and not because he knew it was the Nazi party’s slogan.

I’d like to say he’s ‘not my president’—but that is sadly not the case. He is my president—and I may never get over the shame of it. The rest of the world will mock us for rejecting a true leader, because she had a problem with her email account, for the next hundred years. I can almost hear them laughing at us from the other side of both oceans.

marinerc

Bunch Of Geniuses   (2017Feb24)

Posted by XperDunn on

marinerj

Friday, February 24, 2017                                                 8:19 AM

Why is everyone so excited about a new solar system 40 light-years away? Do you really think we’re clever enough to suss out interstellar travel, when we can’t even pick a president?

We still have a whole branch of government that does nothing but kill or be killed—but don’t worry—we only use our military when it’s absolutely necessary for national security, i.e. when the Wall fails.

And even though Jewish people have been around longer than anyone else, we still manage to teach kids to hate Jews—shouldn’t it be the Jews that hate us, at this point?

If you can’t look at a woman without undervaluing her or thinking of ways to mistreat her or take advantage of her—that’s not a definition of what it means to be female—that’s you, being an animal. But I get it—women are strong, women are powerful—they’re scary, and we men need every handicap we can heap upon them, to avoid being totally intimidated and outclassed.

Any man who can afford a suit and tie, and has the ability to have his voice heard on television—has no business commenting on the poor, the underpaid, or the underserved. Miss a meal or two, be ignored for a week—then maybe you’ll have the slightest idea about it. Until then, your entitled, elitist, overbearing, smug thought-bubbles are worse than useless and you should really be keeping that verbal embarrassment to yourself.

I’m all for guns—everybody should have them—especially kids. Take some kids, kids who’ll only be thirty-five or so when the rising ocean levels are due to wipe out all the coastal cities—give those kids some guns, and the address of the Koch Bros. compound. Second Amendment rules!

And let’s stop blaming Trump for everything—he’s an idiotic clown, yes, but he’s an idiotic clown who’s being propped up by cynical, wealth-grubbing Republican party-leaders and a willfully misinformed constituency. These suicidally foolish people maintain their support for Trump, even after proof that the Russians have their hooks in him, and helped get him elected. Oh yeah, let’s get that group of geniuses together and design that starship.

marinerg

Aspera Ad Astra   (2017Feb23)

Posted by XperDunn on

Thursday, February 23, 2017                                           8:26 AM

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The discovery of seven earth-sized planets orbiting a dwarf star, Trappist-1, makes me wonder how big the ‘goldilocks’-zone is, when talking of a star that isn’t much bigger than Jupiter—and if the orbits of all seven planets could all fit in that little slice of space. Being the same size as Earth means the gravity would be the same—but without placement in the ‘goldilocks’-zone, a planet will be too cold or too hot to live on.

I’m so used to thinking in terms of science fiction that it’s hard for me to get excited about seven planets orbiting a dwarf star forty light-years from Earth. But even from a non-fiction point of view—forty light-years is a ‘fer piece’.

Do the math: one light-year equals 5.8 trillion miles (that’s 10 to the twelfth, for those of you playing at home). Here—we’ll do it the kids’ way: 5,800,000,000,000 miles. That is a very long walk. If we traveled at 1,000 mph, it would take about 6,600 years to travel one light-year. If we traveled at 10,000 mph, it would still take over 660 years to travel one light-year. Thus, in practical terms, a light-year is a distance that a person has never traveled—and has no way of traveling, at present, within a single lifetime. The new solar system that was just found—that’s forty-of-those-things distance from us—that’s just a ridiculous distance away.

Light-years, the unit of distance, was created by and for astronomers—it allows astronomers to discuss the relative distances of stars—but don’t let that fool you into thinking of light-years in terms of human travel—it’s not a human scale of distance.

Plus, if you want to fly through space at 10,000 mph for 660 years, you’re going to need a very big gas tank. Carl Sagan told us that we could avoid this problem by using a Bussard ramjet, a spaceship that collects hydrogen atoms as it moves forward—and uses fusion to propel itself. The Bussard ramjet would use the near-vacuum of space as its fuel—imagine!

But that still leaves you with the need for food, water, and breathable air for however many people for however many years—and even with great recycling tech, that’s a lot of supplies to push through space. And again—forty light-years—if we could travel one light-year, we’d still need to do it forty times to reach that dwarf star with its seven planets.

Also, once you arrive at the dwarf star, you are completely cut-off from Earth—and Earth from you. Forty light-years means that even a radio message would take forty years to go in one direction—which means, if you got on the phone, said ‘hi’, and waited for the other end to say ‘hi’ back—that’s eighty years.

If we ever send people out there, we won’t be ‘colonizing’, we’ll just be sending little samples of humanity out into the cosmos. Maybe their great-grandchildren will communicate with Earth, but never in a “Hi, How are ya” kind of way. Assuming they survived, they would become a totally separate civilization from our own.

And this is the sad truth—space exploration will not ‘save’ the Earth. Sending people to space, even into our local solar system, will help protect the human race from extinction—but it won’t do anything for the people that remain on Earth. And living in space will never be as safe and easy as living here, on the cradle of life.

There is enough raw material in the asteroid belts and the Oort cloud for us to build several ‘earths’—but we will never be able to move significant numbers of people up from Earth ‘s gravity well without a space elevator—and we still don’t have the technology to build one of those.

In summary, space exploration is not easy or simple. It will take more determination than the human race has shown itself capable of, to date, to get there in any meaningful way. People often theorize that an alien invasion would help to unify the human race—and, in the same vein, the destruction of our biosphere would help to motivate people into space. But why do we need a global disaster to get our asses in gear? Can’t we just be grown-ups? Let’s reach for the stars.

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What A Tool   (2017Feb22)

Posted by XperDunn on

Wednesday, February 22, 2017                                                 9:59 AM

Ain’t it weird to sit around feeling attacked every day? Here I am at my desktop, nothing happening, yet every day I feel more and more threatened. And the truth is—I’d be more pleased if I were delusional—if it was all in my head. Sadly, it is not my imagination—cynical horror-shows like Trump, Bannon, McConnell, Ryan, and an evil host of others all get up each morning with no aim other than to screw the American public. And I don’t think they’re even working towards some end or trying to help their rich friends take advantage—I think it comes down to outright psychosis on their part.

These are sick people. They harried our fine previous president every minute of his eight years in office—and no amount of good could dissuade them from their simple-minded robotic attack on the ‘enemy’. They all lied about each other, all through their primary, culminating in the nomination of the lowest among them (which reminds me—what’s Ted Cruz up to these days?) and continued the lying-fest right through the general election, smearing HRC as if she had horns and a forked tail—and somehow enough people fell for their barrage of bullshit that Trump won the Electoral College.

So now we have these psychos in power—their psychosis has spread to the heartland, the non-urban middle of our country—as if those people didn’t have enough problems without making a deal with the devil. So now we have a situation where evil monsters have taken over—and cast a spell over many Americans, making them believe that they’re living in a fantasy world where things get better simply by accusing others—no hard work required, no change is asked for—we just have to punish the guilty and all will be well. Sorry, I don’t think so.

So we have unemployment woes, low wage woes, crumbling infrastructure, crippled educational systems, terrorists, and hackers—but these monsters, with straight faces, mind you, tell us that our highest priorities are taking away healthcare and banning abortions. It’s like living in an insane asylum. Elitism and gerrymandering have done an end-run around the Constitution, misinformation has created a zombie army of self-destructive supporters who couldn’t find their asses with both hands, and while the majority of the country disapprove of Trump, he keeps yelling that everybody loves him. What a tool.

Mismanagement can kill a company—Trump didn’t file for bankruptcy three times because he’s a wizard of management—he went bankrupt because he’s the kind of boss who throws his weight around, ignoring warnings and advice alike, until the wheels fall off—in other words, a bad boss—a terrible boss. Now, I’ve worked for bad bosses in my time—that was something many of us suffer through in the course of our career. But no one, ever before, has actually picked a bad boss, voted for him to mismanage the whole country. That’s new. Maybe someday someone can explain to me how people can be so enormously misled.

Hurry Spring   (2017Feb21)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, February 21, 2017                                             4:06 PM

Well, today settles it—I get maudlin towards the end of Winter. I start writing poems, I start playing piano in a minor key, I write bitter diatribes with far more than my usual cynicism. My taste in music gets a little weepy, a little dirge-y—I read more than watch TV. It’s a whole ‘Spring-better-show-up-soon’ depression-fest.

Also, I tend to write a lot more personal stuff—half of what I write this time of year is either too personal or too depressing to post—and I go on and on about stuff that I’m pretty sure isn’t driving the throngs to my blog—but that’s February for me. I’m fading fast—and I need some sunshine.

Well, things have settled down a bit—I’m used to either rooting for a Democrat administration, or I’m worrying about the one, really-big mistake that a GOP administration is currently making—I’m not used to purely dysfunctional—that’s a new one on me—and, I suspect, on all of you as well. But normalization is inevitable—short of storming Penn Ave, we’re stuck with the Clown until 2020—and the more avidly we stare, waiting for an impeachable offense, the less likely one is—‘a watched pot…’ and all that.

I’m still getting used to an America that is not actively trying to exceed itself—I’ll miss that forever, or until it returns, whichever comes first. Never before has a candidate won an election with a message of despair. “Make America great again”—I’d like to punch that fucker right in the mouth—the only thing that isn’t great about America is your benighted ass, you fucker, and the cowering, feebleminded jerks who voted for your sick agenda.

But let’s not get ourselves all worked up, every damn day, over the same old tragedy. What’s done is done. The odds on Trump sitting his whole term are long—one definite drawback to not knowing what you’re doing: you don’t know the rules. And while Trump may rubber-stamp some of the GOP’s worst legislation, they will find it hard to actually work with him—everyone does.

Fortunately for the Republicans, their platform was already custom-tailored for wealthy bastards with no public conscience—but they will inevitably try to mollify their base with something—and that’s where they and Trump will part ways. Trump’s penchant for blaming the establishment will ring rather hollow in 2020, after four years of being the establishment, so it’s hard to see him pull this off a second time—unless he actually does something.

But like most of his kind, Trump’s greatest ally would be military strife—even Bush-43 looked more dignified with Americans dying all over the place. Thus, it isn’t that I don’t want Trump to do anything—it’s that I’m afraid his ‘anything’ has some dark options waiting. Improving education, creating jobs, fixing our infrastructure—these would all be laudable accomplishments—if Trump can improve anything on such fronts, I’ll be glad to reevaluate—but I’m not going to hold my breath.

As much as I look forward to the coming of Spring, it will be all the more bitter for being a time of rebirth in an new age of tyranny—for 2017, T. S. Eliot will have got it right: “April is the cruelest month….”

Today’s poem and videos all contain cannibalized artwork from my one and only book of illustrated poetry, “Bearly Bliss”. It may seem ironic that my hand-tremors make me unable to draw, yet I still try to play the piano with the same hands—this is because I’m used to sucking at the piano, whereas I was once pretty good with a pen.

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Monday Blahs   (2017Feb20)

Posted by XperDunn on

Monday, February 20, 2017                                             1:14 PM

It’s February, it’s Monday, and I’m feeling fatigued—I’m tired of Winter, I’m tired of watching politics, and I’m especially tired of wondering why—did you ever just throw up your hands and say ‘people are crazy’?

Why do people see governance as a team sport? How does gerrymandering work—do all the rich people get together and decide on which crook is getting elected this year? Isn’t there a point at which even wealthy people say to themselves, ‘Jeez, what about our children, our grandchildren—what kind of future community will they live in?’

People try to justify their support of the Republicans, or worse, of Trump, but I never hear a lot of carefully reasoned objectives and agendas—I just hear a lot of anger and confrontation and defiance—and these people aren’t really mad at the Democrats, or even the Left as a whole—they’re mad that the world has become a place that belies their conservative nature. That the Republicans, and much worse, Trump, are willing to play on those fiddle-strings is a shame and an unexposed scandal.

Science is king. Defy it in small things if you want—but notice that you take an airliner to get to the rally, that satellites inform the GPS in your rental car on your way to the venue, and that the Internet has made it possible to gather a large crowd at short notice.

Science rules. It even controls our money—cash was already a mathematical construct, even as mere paper—a utilitarian fiction for the sake of liquidity, but now cash is stored digitally, magically, like a genie in a bottle—kill the science and you kill the cash.

Advanced tech keeps us all clothed and fed and safe and warm—kill the science and you find your family living in a cave—if they survive. People talk about the economy—about how we need money to maintain order and security. Well, you need science just as badly—and that’s just the existing science—that’s not even going into the question of what happens to countries that fail to keep pace with science, moving forward.

Yet science is under attack in America—it’s downright oedipal. Where’s the erstwhile pride in ‘Yankee ingenuity’, in being first on the Moon, in inventing the Internet? We have taught the world that the real Olympics, the truest of international competitions, lies in science and technology—how have we managed to lobotomized ourselves in the process? How did the country that invented Public Education sink lower in scholastic achievement than Zimbabwe? People are crazy—and I’m tired of it. Trump is a traitor, not just to America, but to humanity—but then, that just makes him one of the Rich, doesn’t it? O right, it’s Monday….

***

Journal Entry   (2017Feb19)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sunday, February 19, 2017                                               3:28 PM

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I’ve spent the day creating new piano videos for my YouTube channel. These are something a little new—I’ve taken my ‘masterpieces of art’ graphics collection and interleaved them with baby pictures of Sen—so you see one old master, then Sen, then another old master, and so on. The baby watches the videos at naptime, some days, so this will give her something to look at besides herself—and all the paintings are colorful with vivid images (which was why I collected them in the first place).

One of the videos is fairly long—that’s partly because it includes a ‘cover’ of the old Carpenters tune, “Yesterday Once More”, which I play rather freely, for a wonder—and the following improv is about twelve minutes—so, a rare recording in several ways. The other one is shorter, just an improv, and only remarkable in that I chose to name it ‘Toothpick Charlie’, for no reason on earth—it’s a funny name, is all. But I’m satisfied with both performances, making it a good day’s work.

My mom’s not well—the doctors are trying to figure her out but so far the best they can do is a morphine drip. I wish I could travel—I’d take up residence in the bed next to hers—I could use a good morphine drip—and those damn doctors could get around to me once they’ve figured out my mom. Meanwhile, we’re all pretty concerned.

Been doing a lot of reading lately—nothing to write a review about, but passable fare. It’s like that old bumper-sticker about ‘a bad day of fishing vs. a good day of work’—a bad book is still better than your average TV show.

Nothing much else to go on about.

20170218xd-courtingcouples

ttfn.

To-Do List   (2017Feb15)

Posted by XperDunn on

godessette

Wednesday, February 15, 2017                                       12:37 PM

We get it—you guys love a good debate—if I had Kelly ConJob as my truth-squirmer, I would too. Spicer, as well, though no Kelly, has been described as “the M. C. Escher of bullshit”. So, let’s say that your delusional reasoning wins every argument—that still leaves the question of what to do. And, on that score, even “He won—shut up and sit down” doesn’t really cut it.

Let’s look at the proposals we’ve heard so far. At the top, there’s ‘build a wall’, which I consider more of a ‘what not to do’—it’s efficacy is questionable, over and above (if you’ll pardon the wall analogy) the question of the cost and logistics of the actual building. We made it through two centuries and two world wars without a wall—the crying need for it, here in 2017, still eludes me. And if America truly requires a wall, why are we stopping at one? Where is the wall for the Canadian border?

Then again, sea-walls on both coasts would actually be of use, in the global warming and ocean-level rises to come—why are we building a wall in the only place we don’t really need one? Never mind.

Moving on—we have the travel ban, the refugee freeze, and the repeal of Obamacare—but these are things being undone, not things we’re going to do. They all represent giant steps backward—and even if you don’t agree with that sentiment, there’s still the question of, outside of what we’ll undo, what (again) are you going to do?

Trump’s excuses for re-upping our carbon-footprint may sound like they are designed to bring back manufacturing and other jobs—but that’s not what they actually do—they simply make profit for Big Oil. The opportunities we are losing by our reluctance to embrace alt-energy industries is the real, long-term effect of his petroleum-friendly policies—and his bent towards commodifying education isn’t going to help the job market either.

It may be a misnomer to label Trump a traitor to his country. I suspect that wealthy people don’t see countries as rallying points in the way most of us do—they look at concentrations of wealth as the sovereignties of their world—and they’re not far wrong, though their patriotism is mere lip-service.

His continuing confusion of his presidency with a more familiar role, that of a commercial executive, is further indication that when Trump commits treason, he is ignorant of that aspect of his actions. He thinks he’s running a business, or worse yet, a TV show. Unfortunately, neither of these roles ever expects responsibility of its holder—except for the bottom line. And we’ve seen Trump’s bottom lines—often in the red—so, there’s little joy there, as well. Yet there are still those who insist they voted to put a businessman in the top slot—I might agree more fully if they’d specified a successful businessman.

Trump might have more readily caught on to the fact that ethics were involved, had he not become a member of the Republican party—but they are the Party of the Rich, so what choice did he have? As Vonnegut said, ‘we are what we pretend to be’. So, even if Trump is not the billionaire he pretends to be, he stills has to act like one.

In the end, I point out the lack of goals not to spur Donald to create some—truly, the less damage that a-hole does while in office, the better for all of us—but to point out its very comfortable absence from Trump’s agenda—he’s a fighter—he loves confrontation—but he ain’t much of a doer. His egotistic impetus to run for the office contained no vision of a better America—he only meant that, if elected, he would consider America great again—because we had elected him. And in this he is very much a Republican.

combwbattle

I’m Already There   (2017Feb13)

Posted by XperDunn on

Monday, February 13, 2017                                             7:11 PM

Actively dysfunctional—is that a thing? Do some people go through life thinking that their job is to screw everything up? Is it possible that people realize the fragility of the status quo—and some are actively making it as bad as possible? I mean, you wouldn’t think so, would you?—because it wouldn’t make any sense at all. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

People do lots of disruptive things—and for a wealth of rationales: to strike back at ‘authority’ (whatever ‘authority’ may mean to the disruptor—and whoever is picked as its representative)—or simply to feel empowered by being capable of disruption—or to use disruption as a diversion for something else that won’t bear close scrutiny.

This is something I don’t think a lot about. I’m overly earnest in thought and deed. It would never occur to me to kick over an apple-cart, because that would just mean someone had to pick up all the apples. I’m all about cooperation and efficiency—thinking otherwise, for me, is a trip across the line into insanity—but I’ve come to recognize that we all have our own sanity. Just because I can’t think of a reason to put a knife between my ribs doesn’t mean no one else is thinking about it.

Surely you have wondered, like I do, how we can reconcile the incredible powers of communication, where people from twenty distant parts of the globe can interact as if in the same room, with a globe that is such a shit-storm—how can this be? How can we have reached a point where we can do momentous things, as if by magic, but we don’t do any of them—because of the rules we’ve set up? What crimes do we commit against each other in our enslavement to Capitalism? Beyond poisoning the planet, that is—I’ll leave out the obvious.

I’ll grant you the fact that imposing order is easy if you don’t care about people’s rights or feelings, and a just organizational plan is far more complicated than trying to rule the world by fiat—but with modern organizational tools and our ability to transport materials and communicate with each other, it remains a mystery how we could be so shoddily led by our government, or all the world’s other governments, for that matter, absent a tremendous lack of will—or possibly even intentional disruption. I’d like someone to explain to me how we can make progress in every avenue—except that which makes government more efficient and transparent, life less scary, or people less helpless.

The whole world sits around while Aleppo is bombed into rumble, for years on end—and yet the whole of the world’s nations can’t summon the will to defy those two or three countries for whom all the deaths and blood and suffering are part of some cold calculation of power and profit. We have the technology to watch the whole thing on TV, in real time—but we act like it’s fucking Twain’s weather—everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

And when the helpless women and children come crawling from the ashes—do we spring into action then? Oh no—those people are a threat—they might blow us all up at any minute. Let’em suffer.

I tell you—I wrote a blog the other day about how I am still embarrassed to be white—but I think it’s becoming more pervasive than that—I’m about to become ashamed to be an American. Too late—I’m already there.

I’m still in love with the idea, the history, the memory, and the dream of America—but I’m living in a country I don’t recognize—a country where hate and fear have become, somehow, popular—popular enough for them to elect a modern incarnation of Hitler. Truth itself—and Science, are both under attack by forces that can only be bent on disruption. America may recover some day—I haven’t given up—but I still don’t know how we got here—so how will we ever get back? It’ll take more than a twitter-war.

You think Trump is crazy now? Just wait until they try to tell him his term is over.

thought

Chopin   (2017Feb11)

Posted by XperDunn on

Saturday, February 11, 2017                                             9:48 PM

Fryderyk Chopin was tutored in piano by Wojciech Żywny from age six until age eleven. From age 13 to age 16, Chopin (a child prodigy) studied at the Warsaw Lyceum, then composition under Józef Elsner. Chopin lived in Warsaw until the age of 20, in 1830, when he and several friends decamped to Paris—just prior to the November Uprising that same year. This marked the start of a doomed Polish struggle against Russian rule which Chopin is noted as supporting from afar throughout his brief adult life.

Chopin was such a consummate pianist that some of his compositions, when they do not cross into virtuoso territory (which was often the case) are technically accessible even to someone like me—though reading-through and playing the correct notes (mostly) is still a far cry from a true, capital-P performance of a Chopin work. His delicate lyricism and serendipitous, near-improvisational freedom of expression are found nowhere else in written music—and merely playing the notes as written is just a beginning towards reaching the full effect.

But I try—there is something about playing a piece oneself, on the piano—it is the reason that I play, albeit poorly, and with no hope of ever mastering the instrument. When we listen to music, we hear only the sound it makes. But in reading the music, as written by the long-dead genius (or any other) and in pressing the keys with my own hands, I feel an understanding and a connection to Chopin that is easily equal to relationships I’ve had with living people—I get not only the end result, the sound—but also the roots, the human source of whatever musical invention I happen to be playing. It is a wonderful kind of rush that transformed the way I listen to music, as much as it included me in the making of music.

Thus, when I play Chopin, I can stop dead in the middle of the piece—odds are I had to, but even still, I speak to Chopin—I say, ‘clever, that bit—and very beautiful.’ And Chopin replies, ‘I thought you’d like that.’ It’s amazingly like a vicarious composition of my own—as if I was creating it instead of playing it off the sheet music—as if I were Chopin. Despite the fact that my end results are hardly praiseworthy, in the playing of the music myself, I can hear it as Chopin first imagined it—in some ways, sounding more beautiful than the most polished artist’s performance of the same piece.

I was a weird kid. I enjoyed classical music in grade school—I had a lot of LPs, and many more that I borrowed from the Katonah Village Library. I sometimes fought with my siblings about playing classical music on the big stereo in the living room (rather than their rock n’ roll—not that I didn’t enjoy some of that, too) but most often, I would stack’em up on my record player, turn out the lights and lie on the floor to listen in the dark. My dad hated that—he’d burst in and turn on the lights and say, ‘What the hell are you doing in here in the dark?’ or whatever.

But my point is this—I’ve always loved classical music. But it wasn’t until I was fifteen (way too old) before I took piano lessons. There’s something about hitting the keys and making the notes play—feeling the music as an activity, as a part of you, instead of listening to music—it gave me a heightened appreciation of music that I don’t believe is possible without some experience, with some instrument, or with the voice. Glenn Gould’s Bach recordings, for instance, went from relaxing to fascinating—without changing a note—it was like a veil was lifted for me. Music is a wonderful thing to hear—but it isn’t until you make your own that you get the full picture, as it were.

And I’d say that’s why I improvise at the piano every day, too. I can’t make great music, but I can make music—and there’s something very empowering about playing music that no one else has written down, music that I make up as I go along. Survivalists prepare for a life after civilization—I suppose I’m preparing for a life after I-tunes?

ttfn

Trump Is God   (2017Feb11)

Posted by XperDunn on

inferno25

Saturday, February 11, 2017                                             10:02 AM

Supporters of Trump show similarities to evangelicals—blind faith, blindness to the truth, and an eagerness to pick a fight with non-believers. And I think we can put some of the blame for our political chaos on our collective blind spot—religion. Do you have a religion? I do not. Many Americans have a religion which they are deeply invested in—and many Americans have absolutely no belief in the supernatural—horror-, or Christian- based.

America believes in religious freedom and the separation of church and state—which is good in that it protects Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists. The trouble resides in its protection of orthodox and extreme religious sects—anything short of public terrorist acts is permissible—including science-denial, misogyny, and racial discrimination—all features of certain, otherwise ‘legitimate’ religions.

Just as freedom of speech is sometimes misused—as when a neo-nazi’s public speaking goes unmolested—so, too, is freedom of religion misused to perpetuate ideas like those of Julius Evola (a hero of Steve Bannon’s) who was a little too radical for Mussolini, but is enjoying a resurgence due to Trump’s administration.

America made a great leap forward when it founded itself on the idea that religion was too iffy to form a basis for our laws or our government—where, hitherto, no government was without its state religion—a partner of the secular power structure, enforcing a deeper obedience than can be achieved by mere physical intimidation. Nonetheless, in separating the church from state, we only solved half the problem.

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Atheism’s numbers are growing—now that we have ‘magic’ in flight, in medicine, in digital electronics, etc., we have less interest in the non-responsive magic of angels and deities. Open study of archeology and variant scriptures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls have given us a clearer picture of the human side of religion—offering proof that, even if the original supernatural encounters had happened, the leaders of subsequent sects modified the original faiths to meet the exigencies of change and power.

Over the centuries, changes in society and culture caused changes in religion—and modern findings of this destroy the monolithic, unchanging image that religion likes to project. If God were real, neither he (nor she) nor his rules would ever change—which makes today’s religions either false, or sacrilegious, i.e. false unto themselves.

We also have a much smaller world now—the different religions across the globe are used to being insulated from each other. But now, especially in America, one can have a neighborhood containing members of every religion on earth—and while religious freedom protects each of those faiths, it can’t protect people from noticing that these other faithful are blindly true to something entirely unconnected to that which they are blindly true to. It may seem a small thing—but the old joke is true: everyone is an atheist about all religions except their own. It is only a small step from recognizing that everyone around you believes in hogwash, to recognizing that you are in the same boat.

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Aside from the competing magic of science and technology, and the pitfalls of ‘comparison shopping’ for religion, perhaps the most insidious threat to organized faith is our recognition of the hollowness of authority. Where we once looked to religious leaders and political leaders and respected journalists as authority figures, we rarely get through a month without one of these archetypes being indicted, exposed, or debunked. Today’s surge in atheism is just a symptom of a larger tendency to distrust those in power.

To me, the whole thing is an issue of being wishy-washy or not—you either accept the magical thinking of your faith or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways. If the afterlife exists, if souls exist, if God exists—then a lot of what we are doing is wrong—and we shouldn’t be doing it. I respect the Amish for their refusal to indulge in tech. I respect the Christian Scientists for their refusal to use modern medicine. If you’re going to believe in magic, don’t be half-assed about it. These religions with one foot out the door seem hypocritical to me.

But they are in the majority—and their dilution into something modern people won’t laugh at is a far greater retreat from faith than all the furor over abortion or evolution. Their own embarrassment is a far greater enemy of their faith than any argument we atheists can provide.

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I remember when, as a boy, the Catholic Church demoted all the saints that were too close to fairy tales—my own name-saint, Christopher, and other popular saints like St. Valentine, St. Patrick, and St. Nicklaus—were considered too apocryphal to be included in the Church’s saint’s-day calendar. They were not entirely disowned or erased, but their high visibility became an embarrassment to modern Catholics, and they were no longer to be part of our serious rites of worship. That may be where the seeds of my atheism were sown—don’t name me after the guy who supposedly carried the infant Christ across a torrential river (the Christ-bearer) and then turn around and tell me the guy might just be a fanciful legend after all. That’s no way to cement my faith.

Times change—and religions change with them. The fact that times change slowly—and that each generation is presented with a religion as if it were a static foundation—has kept this simple truth from becoming an obvious fact—until now, when change is swift and communication swifter. Religion has become pitifully threadbare in modern times—the idea that a man can have a special connection to the eternal is hard to maintain when that man gets busted for pedophilia, or when that man decides that suicide-bombers are his favorite converts.

We are stuck now between a rock and a hard place—the Muslim extremists would be perfect poster-boys for atheism, if we weren’t so dead-set on pretending that there is a significant difference between one Judeo-Christian-Muslim faith and another. People even go so far as to argue that Christianity has never indulged in murder or terrorism—a patent falsehood that only reveals a deep ignorance of history—and not very ancient history, either.

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To me, the most ugly, yet hilarious, paradox is that we, as a nation, are not ready to contemplate a presidential candidate who is an avowed atheist—yet we are completely unable to take a presidential candidate’s faith seriously. While ‘God will provide’ might make sense at home, it is beyond the pale when speaking of public policy. Reagan, Bush, et. al. were always at their most laughable when they reached back for their fundamentalist rationales to explain their decisions. And that’s overlooking the more basic paradox of one faith’s extremist becoming the leader of a multi-faith nation—or designating one faith as more quintessentially American than all the others.

Then there’s the darker issue—that, for many Americans, money is their God, and hypocritical playing on religious heartstrings is fair play, as long as there’s a profit to be made. Religion has been used as a prop for the powerful since the dawn of civilization—Karl Marx was very clear that he felt religion was used to keep the masses subject to state-determined morality. America is famous for having severed the direct link between power and faith—but such things have the ability to morph into other paradigms. We have recently seen many Americans embrace the return of faith as a political power-base—an ignorance that saddens any educated student of American history.

Religion fills a need. Even I, knowing that faith is an imaginary construct, still feel the lack of its warmth and security. My atheism has not made me feel happy or safe—I have simply had to accept that religion is false, and live with that. I even avoid promoting atheism, since I wouldn’t wish it on a happy believer. But when religion gets on its high horse, as if it were real, I am the first to rise in opposition. This defensive posture is a weak one—and the rise of atheism has spurred a sudden strength in the religious—but religion itself has weakened in its obsolescence.

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So now we have a new president who got himself elected mostly through demonizing violent extremists of a certain religion—and pretending to support the more popular Christian one. No one is blaming religion itself for any of these problems—most Americans react to Muslim extremism by redoubling their faith in Christianity—even though their differences are minor details. The insistence on blaming Muslims for terrorism is a backhanded way of avoiding religion as the true culprit. Extreme religion of any kind always puts faith above reality, worship above humanity—and there isn’t a one of them that hasn’t descended, in the end, into bloody violence.

So why this blind faith in Trump—why do facts simply bounce off the Trump supporters? My theory is that religion has become too embarrassing, but people still need something to believe in—and Trump fills the bill. Like a god, he offers easy answers, no explanations, and an unbounded self-regard. Further, he sees no obligation to jive with observable reality. If you are an evangelist, or have evangelist leanings, in a world that is slowly waking up from the dream of heaven and hell, Trump is a perfect substitute. Plus, he allows you to attack someone else’s religion without even having to stand up and declare yourself a member of your own.

Xenophobic Nonsense   (2017Feb07)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, February 07, 2017                                             6:47 PM

Okay, time to slow things down. Trump’s blitzkrieg of incompetence has the overall effect of forcing us to play his game, on his timetable. He does and says so many inflammatory, imprudent, borderline-illegal things that we simple folk are spurred into instant response—there’s never time for sober discussion—his stupidity is faster than light.

And while it may seem impossible to justify ignoring Trump and his minions for even one second—I sense that pulling back from his shit-storm of non-ideas, and taking the time to laugh at him and them—and to remind ourselves that life goes on, madness in the White House be damned—is the correct course. When caught in an inane conversation with a drunk, we don’t try to win the argument—we try to move away from the drunk—and this seems the sensible course in the case of Trump’s fascist Justice League of Losers and their obsession with media-storms.

Granted, Trump’s Electoral College win is a huge blow—in spite of the majority voting against him, he holds the presidency for the next four years—and that’s a lot of power for a crazy egotist. But the sub-set of Americans identifying as Trump supporters is still, in many ways, a far more ominous threat in the long term. These people are trapped within the echo-chamber of ‘alternative’, resentful, paranoid fantasies about how the world works, outside of their town.

Where their existence was once threatened by the ubiquity of information, the rise of biased information sources has now strengthened their grip on such self-excusing delusions. Bigotry is back in fashion. As long as Trump (and their portion of the Internet) reinforces their balky refusal to open their minds, they’ll feel infinitely justified in maintaining even the craziest notions.

These people have even been convinced to vote against Health Care, for themselves and their families. Think about that. It’s not far different from offering someone a juicy steak dinner—and them punching you in the mouth, like you’d insulted their mother.

You tell them the globe is warming, sea levels are rising, untold disaster awaits—and when their boss at the oil company, or the coal mine, sez, ‘No, it isn’t’, they dutifully jeer at the scientists. Scientists! People who make a career out of sweating the details—and who, more to the point, have no dog in this race—unlike their deniers.

I’ve seen regular people—not rich business owners or anything, just regular folks—who actually oppose the Minimum Wage. The sole purpose of a minimum wage is to make it hard for employers to pay you less than you deserve. Do these people think that the rule will only apply to immigrants—and even if it did, do they hate immigrants that much? How will they feel when their own kids can’t find work that pays their rent? Minimum Wage might start to look a little more attractive then.

So, in my humble opinion, there are some tragically, self-defeatingly, self-destructively stupid people out there—and a lot of them vote. For the most part, they don’t really oppose the changes that the Left promotes—they simply fear change—and that is their only real point of agreement with their leaders, especially Trump. Imagine a 21st-century American putting billions of taxpayer dollars into a wall—a big, stupid wall. Hasn’t he read Clausewitz?

A wall can be swum around, tunneled under, and flown over—if Trump’s idea was to stop immigrants, he’s a failure—if he merely wants to inconvenience them—good work, Donald, spend away. Although it should be noted that immigrants are no strangers to inconvenience. The act of building a big wall can be seen as less of a practical exercise and more of a desire for the world to be so simple. It is a statement more than an achievement—and those familiar with Trump’s pre-presidency resume will recognize this theme.

The sad truth is that rich people raise lazy kids—and rich countries raise lazy citizens—America maintains its preeminence by constantly blending in fresh blood. And if the newcomers are not creamy white, that is beside the point—they are eager—even desperate, for a chance to make something of their lives, and their families’ lives. They work like dogs. They take everything seriously. They listen to what’s going on around them. Basically, all the stuff that you and I are too ‘over’ being Americans to bother with.

These people prevent the rest of us from drowning in our own toxins of apathy and entitlement, selfishness and irresponsibility. They recharge the battery of America and they always have—our own ancestors were part of the process. Deciding to stop now, to shut it all down, to ban travel and build a big honking wall—suicide—sheer suicide for our country and ourselves.

Don’t take my word for it—look at Europe. A lot of those countries are accepting refugees, not simply out of the goodness of their hearts, but also because their populations are becoming too small and too aged to maintain their economies. They need immigrants—and the only reason we don’t is because we’ve always had them. We’ve never known what lack of change, lack of growth is really like—stagnation is foreign to us—but not for long, if we keep up this xenophobic nonsense.

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DeVos Wins Electoral College   (217Feb07)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Monday, February 06, 2017                                             9:27 AM

I’m sorry—is my title “DeVos Wins Electoral College” a misleading, inaccurate statement that does more to confuse than enlighten? I thought that was how we were doing journalism now. My bad.

Name one reason to endorse Betsy DeVos. Senator Frankin nailed it—the $200,000,000 she and her family have paid the GOP—the one and only reason she was picked. She flunked her hearing—she was so unfit that even a GOP-controlled Senate had to bring in Pence for the tie-breaker. She appeared on television, demonstrating to the whole world that she has no experience, insight, or education for the job she’s supposed to undertake—and that she has become a partisan hack without having first even become a politician. We know she’s a hack—because if you or I were to embarrass ourselves so completely in public, we’d slink away in shame.

This could never have happened if Trump hadn’t already made Unfitness the hallmark of a Republican. But if a game show host is sufficient for the Presidency, why not have an empty-headed rich bitch head the Department of Education—it’s a free-for-all—don’t think about it too hard.

Trump is a fraud and a lecher. Bannon is a hate-monger. Kellyanne has a PhD in Pants-on-Fire—but, well, they all lie like rugs—she merely enjoys it the most. The Cabinet appointees are all shills for the wealthy. And every last one of these pigs, from Trump on down, is incompetent—they have no idea how to run our government—except perhaps as a game show.

The far right will make equally inflammatory remarks—but their outrage is based on delusion, or hypocrisy, or ignorance—not, like mine, out of disappointment that these con artists have hijacked a once-great nation—and that you Trump-supporting yahoos will cheer him on, as this country’s proud heritage dies.

But then, people are stupid. I’m stupid. You’re stupid. We none of us knows what we’re doing or saying half the time. We look at computers, space stations, and airliners—we think, oh, how brilliant we are—but those things were created by unique, educated, highly-trained people—individuals and small, tight-knit teams. You want to see how smart people in general are, as a group—just look around.

Banks make profit from indenturing college students. Prisons make profit from prisoner labor. Employers scoff at a minimum wage—as if having someone work for you all day doesn’t entitle them to live. People rail against socialized medicine, even though it seems to work better than the Insurance Industry’s idea of profiting from tragedy. And distinguished-looking farts in fancy suits will tell you that saving the environment is for sissies.

This is the wisdom of the greatest country on earth. Couldn’t make so much as a paper airplane with that bunch. And don’t point to that precious bottom line—money don’t mean shit when you’re choking for air, dying of thirst, expiring from the heat, or living in chains. If the economy can’t take responsibility for our survival, then the economy is a mental disease—beyond the mere stupidity, into the insanity of the mob.

How many of us are ransoming our children’s future for the sake of a paycheck? Too many, I’d say—since a bunch of people who live off of destroying the planet (like coal miners) will tell you that their jobs are much more important than global anything—but they’re not being selfish—oh, no. They’ve got ‘mouths to feed’. They’re wasting their time—if we don’t change soon, all those mouths will perish in a poison wasteland—so what was the point? It’s just math—how the hell do they politicize simple math?

Oh, I know! Betsy DeVos.

Hail Mary Pass   (2017Feb05)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Sunday, February 05, 2017                                                2:30 PM

Super Bowl LI today—it may have started already, for all I know, but even non-sports guys like me can’t help but hear about it—and the commercials, and the half-time show. It’s a national institution, there’s no denying that.

And a business watershed—the ad people can spend the whole year getting ready their Super Bowl commercial—and if they get it right, it’s an instant classic, a feather in their cap for the length of their career. Between the ratings fluctuations and the reviews of the half-time entertainment, it’s a show-biz watershed as well. And, of course, it’s a sports thing, first and foremost.

My experience of football was brief and uninspiring—so I don’t want to get all ‘sour grapes’ about the game—it’s exciting stuff. Still, I can’t help worrying that Football will go the way of Cigarettes. With cigarettes, we had that first study showing it was dangerous—and that made the sensible people quit.

But, between industry pushback and personal inertia, smoking remained quite commonplace. Then a second push, following a few court cases lost by Big Tobacco, virtually wiped cigarettes from the face of society—and that was a good thing—I remain a rare smoker, still, but I’m not complaining about the non-smoking movement.

So, too, with football—we’ve already had the big announcement—that hundreds of micro-lesions can form in the brain through repeated concussive blows, making football a very risky way to get rich. Industry has pushed back fairly successfully, minimizing the risk and making noises about helmet sensors and increased vigilance—but the basic facts have not changed.

Now that symptoms can be linked to their true causes, and autopsies include inspections of brain matter for long-term damage, the connection between a youthful football career and a middle-age of drooling vegetation, or suicide, will become nakedly obvious. If we are just now getting rid of bullfighting, how long can we continue to support a sport that kills its human players a few years after they retire? It doesn’t look good for American football.

 

Still, chain-smoking somehow seemed to make a World War into a bearable ordeal—so, if we need a weekend of football to get us through the new World Order fumbling into being, down in Washington, so be it. At this point, any diversion is a gift from above.

And I come bearing gifts of my own—two new improvs with pictures of the world’s finest baby. The music is so-so, but the pictures are adorable. Somehow, the Big Game got politicized—but all I care about is the new “24” series that follows the game—hey, if Keifer isn’t in it, why are we watching? Couldn’t they just call it something new? Well, I’m ‘too old for this shit’, as they say—maybe Sutherland is too.

 

 

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The Dust We Stand On   (2017Feb04)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, February 04, 2017                                             5:31 PM

So, I was reading about my hero, Joseph Henry, who grew up in Albany, New York at the turn of the nineteenth century. That got me interested in the history of New York State. Today I started reading one such history and it described the Native Americans of the area prior to First Contact with the West—the Iroquois and the Oneidas, Mohawks and what-all—what was the Five Nations and would become Six. It described their early agriculture—the Three Sisters, which were beans, corn, and squash—the beans climbed the cornstalks like a trellis and the squash leaves kept the moisture in the ground, plus their root systems descended to three different levels, so the three crops weren’t competing for nutrients.

The East Coast Native Americans were different from the Plains Tribes and others further West and South—and certainly different from the Natives closer to the Arctic Circle, up North. They lived harsh lives, from our perspective—but looked at differently, they lived in the ultimate health spa—living and dying exactly as nature had evolved them to live. They hadn’t even gotten around to metallurgy before the Europeans came along.

Yet there was a civilization—with a spiritual framework, a wide-spread confederation of oversight (one couldn’t call it governance—since their lifestyles precluded the need for taxes or prisons) and, more to the point, a society just as complex—and more humane—than any we have created or seen since.

It is melancholy to imagine what the Americans would have done with their land, left to themselves. A land without livestock, mining or metalwork—an incentive to live less bellicose lives. Who knows how that would have panned out, given some space? But now we’ll never know—and given the reality, we are fortunate that any record of their cultures survives (not that all of them have).

So, I’m going to slog through this pre-invasion history—and then try not to think about it, as I move forward to the more modern history of colonization and ultimate statehood. What else can be done—rewind the past? There’s no helping the fact that the birth of the United States was the death of something else, something that had a right to exist, something beautiful—but no one can undo the past.

The genocide, like Henry’s discovery of Electromagnetic Inductance, is both a foundation of the present—and entirely irrelevant to the present. It is now nothing more than dust—but it is the dust we stand on. A fascination with history can turn sour if we don’t keep our heads above water—there’s a limit to empathy and we are only human.

The early chapters of my history also describe the geography—the many lakes and rivers—particularly the Hudson River and the Great Lakes—and what a convenient harbor New York had at the mouth of the Hudson. It is strange to think that waterways, today, tend to be obstacles to transport rather than a means. The vast majority of international shipping still travels the oceans—but today’s technology makes inland travel almost entirely a dry-footed affair.

The Native Americans hadn’t much technology above the bow and arrow—but they had invented canoes (and moccasins—a technology the Europeans first ridiculed—then instantly adopted). And water was kind of handy to have around in those days, even if you didn’t travel. They had a great trail that went from Manhattan all the way up to Canada—today we call it Rt. 22, mostly—and 90% of New Yorkers still live along that trail. But when they weren’t walking, they were using the profusion of rivers and lakes that New York offered.

I read somewhere that New York State has the greatest diversity of trees of any state. I read somewhere else that an early European colonist once described flights of migrating birds so vast that they would darken the sky from horizon to horizon. Can you imagine what it was like back then? Virgin forests, pre Iron-Age culture—golly.

 

I feel a little jinxed, peering into the details of the improbable history of the Empire State—the stuff of legend, half of it, and the rest merely incredible—here at a juncture in time when the whole thing may be balanced on a knife edge—and only because the entire world as I’ve known it seems bound and determined to hurl itself into the abyss as quickly as possible. From what I can tell so far, what we call New York was a great land before anyone ‘discovered’ it—it became a colony and a state that was an empire unto itself, regardless of the federal government—and the tip of it became a city so busy with power and life that it, too, became an entity unto itself, outside of its state.

New York State is one of those things so large and diverse that we are taken unawares by the sudden realization of its existence—this massive determiner of so many destinies—so much a part of our lives that we hardly realize it’s there. And it is even easier to overlook, given that each of its nooks and crannies—particularly within the five boroughs—is a province unto itself.

New Englanders are known to be flinty, anti-social types—but they are a step down from Manhattanites, who are actively antagonistic towards their neighbors. Yet New York City remains such a gravitational force on the globe that we can excuse the inhabitants their need to be actively repellent—they need to make sure you really want to be there—it’s crowded enough already. And the pressure at the center of human civilization is not for the faint of heart.

It makes me superstitious—as a computer guy, I’ve spent a great deal of my life learning about things that disappear—old hardware, old software, old businesses that have faded away—all my precious knowledge becomes so much sewage clogging up my brain—and it’s not as if that stuff was easy to learn, dammit. And now, as I study American history—and my home state, no less—I feel a cold draft on the back of my neck—it could be melting ice caps, it could be Trump’s inability to resist the big red button—I can’t help worrying that I’m learning about something else that may disappear someday soon.