Hundreds of homes, rentals in this town empty, rents too high... first last and deposit and perfect credit ... is almost 5,000 just to rent..
Everyone holding out for the 'right' tenant to fly into town and give them the bucks.. And they can 'write off' the lost rent at a 'high' price on taxes as profit and loss...
people, men women and the youth... walk the streets ... faces drawn with long term hunger.. the junior high kids... single moms probably moved in with a man and they are on the street... it is so sad.. we had good weather until today.. rainy windy and cold.. when it turns this far north.. it stays until next June..
I am working on writing and doing what I can to help them..
I am scared.. I am at risk of losing 3 bedrooms of furniture because I do not have $157 for storage... it will be due again $132 on the first.. on the 10th it will have a lein and will be 'inventoried' and sold... they just dump it... and you have a lein for $2,000 or $3,000 because they 'inventoried' at $10 per hr every bottle cap in a 30 foot storage unit.. I am just sick with worry over it..
for $300 I could save myself all that. I get Soc Sec because of my heart.. I could pay back some a little at a time... I am overdrawn and when my check goes in ... I hope to have $300 left for my xxx xxxxx that I am sleeping in.. I am terrified.. so little could save me..
I am a Realtor, with a $1.4 Million listing... and my car is parked behind the art studio in a vacant lot... no money for gas since the 10th and I have been riding a bike to show property... I can't get away with that now.. the rain has started.... I passed it off as fun and yuks before now..
I am worried about the others on the street that do not have a dry place to hold up in.. I am at my desk on the net on my computer... I hope to keep my position until the end of the year..
I will check the other story you sent tomorrow. I have 2 miles to ride across town and it is almost ten pm.. I wore shorts today... it will be a cold wet ride.. thats the news... V.
When I toured Europe, some years back, I was kind of surprised by the size of the old churches, relative to the size of everything of age which surrounded them. I went inside many. Huge resounding open areas are common to all of them. And every one of them has, as an integrated part of its construct, a great high and elaborate podium. I realized something. For a long time there was only the spoken word for the passing of information. There was writing, but Guttenberg took some time to really get print off the ground. And people had to learn to read. So, where did people go to get the news of the day? Or of the week? To the church, where they sat or stood down below an 'announcer,' or News Anchor...although he was officially titled a minister or a priest. No wonder the power of religion is so strong, even extending to and through this very time. The 'anchor' of those times could reach hundreds of people, potentially thousands, at one setting. Nobody else could come close to that.
Here we are today. We have the same problems with reaching the people, although everything has dramatically changed in scale. Who has that podium, microphone, or television transmitter controls what is transmitted as the news. And messages beyond the news? Those are delivered in papers, books, the television and the internet, although they cross all over one another in content and kind of delivery.
So how do you get a message out to 'the people' if you do not already have possession of one of those 'podiums?' You beg. You cajole. You appeal. You attempt to cast yourself as an interesting enough voice to be of value to whoever and whatever it is that controls ascension to the podium. And it is unbelievably hard to do any of that. The myth is that only the best work gets to the top. The truth is that only those who have some sort of access, or can angle some sort of access, get their message heard at all. In fact, it is so very very hard that only a very tiny percentage of people ever get 'read' at all. To be 'read' is to be considered for publication or airing, not to be given the podium.
The internet is marginally changing things. You can get read by writing blogs. You can Twitter. You can comment on Facebook. You can get viewed by making a video for Youtube. Those things are advances which are new and most unusual. But those advances do not get you in front of 'the people.' You might get twenty or thirty 'hits' a day on your blog if you develop a following. You might get a few hundred views of your Youtube video. To really reach any of the public at all, you have to be 'touched by God.' I once talked to Jacqueline Mitchard, just after she had written Deep End of the Ocean. I told her that I believed that her book would become a bestseller. She responded with something completely prophetic: "...from your mouth to God's ears..." God touched her through Oprah. Oprah picked her novel to be her first book club selection. And that was it. Mitchard is the top speaker at the Hawaii conference I will be speaking at in September (I am a lowly entity compared to her, although I really like her so I don't mind). Somehow, I do not think Jackie is going to recognize or remember that guy who stopped to comment so long ago at Barnes and Noble in Madison. Fame is not especially complimentary to long term memory.
You can have a voice out here, true, but it is more like being a town crier on a soap box, compared to having the podium. People stop briefly, look at you funny, and then pass on by. Your only message, probably, is that you are a weird person standing atop a box as people pass you by. You have a message, and it might be the single most important message anyone could have, but it matters not at all if nobody hears or sees it.
Competition is extremely stiff. Everyone is shouting into that darkness. And you will note that the greatest stuff is not like the cream rising to the top. Note that every word that Sarah Palin says is duly reported, over and over again. It does not matter what she says. The same is true for Joe the Plumber. No matter how stupid, vapid or idiotic their strung together words are, they have the podium. How do you persevere through all this? How do you get a shot at the podium? I am not sure. I am still down here with you, the few, thinking about it and wondering myself. I reach many more than most who try, but my numbers are really small too. The message on House is influenced by a large writing staff and a bevy of producers, not to mention the director. It is not really mine, even if some people think it is. And I am constantly asking myself another valid question: "why is that I think my message is important enough to be considered by 'the people' anyway?" That is, indeed, a good and valid question of merit. I ponder that, day after day. I believe I do have a message. A message of compassion, concern, intellect, tribalism, work, thought, relationship, love, honor, integrity, and losing causes. I have traveled far. God did touch me with His finger when it came to that. But is it enough to get atop that podium and tell it all to you? As i said, I sit here, with my coffee and my laptop, and I ponder.
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This week's news story of note, aside from whacked out coverage of the medical expenses issues set before the Congress, is all about a black Harvard professor who was accosted inside his home by a white police officer. Barack Obama has chimed in with some comments of his own (to the effect of labeling the police officer 'stupid' for taking on a citizen inside his own home), and the press has decided that this event, and all the stuff that surrounds it, is the story that should occupy our culture for two weeks, or so. It is what television is doing to us these days. They decide, and you sit here, with me, and get only what they vomit out over that screen. We get almost nothing international. We get no real substance on anything nationally, and the medical costs issue is a typical example of that. Has anybody really talked about what doctors, dentists, and hospitals are really making in actual take-home cash? Is anybody talking about why it is perfectly legal for medicine to use extortion (you pay or you die) to collect money, and make profits from such behavior? Is anybody talking about why these drug companies can charge whatever they want for any drug, even to the point of copyrighting our very genes as their own property, and selling them back to us in a tube? Nope. Nothing. Nada.
We get all this crap about a truly stupid-acting police officer (whatever his merit as a human being and intelligent person may be) who encounters a black professor in the professor's home, does not like the professor's attitude, so illegally and unethically violates him. This story should occupy small news slots locally, not occupy all of us, nationally. The police officer should be promptly indicted, arrested, and then relieved of his badge and gun after being released on bond. He, most probably, broke at least three laws. He entered a private home without the owner's permission (that is criminal trespass, even for a cop). The police officer placed the professor in handcuffs, against the professor's will. That is assault (yes, even for a police officer, as cops must act within the law at all times). The police officer removed the hand-cuffed professor from his home, forced him into a police car, then transported and held the man in a cell at the police station. That is called kidnapping. Yes, the big felony. Police officers are specifically denied the right to do just what this cop did, every step of the way. He should be charged and then prosecuted for his crimes. The onus of the legal system (called our system of justice) should fall with a terribly weight upon this man's shoulders, and life.
What will really happen? Nothing. Most probably, the professor will be awarded some sum of money for the embarrassment he went through. The only saving grace of the entire affair is that the professor is black and the police officer is white. Only race can keep this affair in the spotlight, not that that spotlight should be national. The spotlight is needed to illustrate that policemen, especially post 911, cannot be allowed to brutalize citizens. Ever. And this kind of behavior is going on all across the nation. Our citizenry is afraid of the police. How has this come to be? It has come to be because of a surrender of public trust. Our police have come to resemble skin-headed thugs, dressed up like Star Wars soldiers of the Imperium, and acting like out of control school yard bullies. Thank God nobody got shot at the professor's home. These school yard bullies have guns!
When a police officer deals with a citizen of this country, any citizen, he or she should do it with respect and full consideration. If that police officer wants to enter private property, then he or she should ask permission, and, if denied, consider getting a warrant if the situation merits it. The other officers who showed up, at the site of the Harvard professor's arrest and kidnapping, should also be taken in. They permitted a felony to be committed in their presence. They, the police standing around outside of the home, should have sprung into action to stop the illegal series of events from going any further. They did nothing. They acted just as actively stupid as the arresting officer. Now, the Chief of Police (behind this errant acting police office) is standing behind the man and stating that he was acting within the scope of his authority. The Chief of Police reduces himself to just another stupid acting cop.
It is regretful that our President has chosen to withdraw most of what he said about this series of illegal and unethical behaviors. I expect more of him. He now throws the professor into the same puddle as the dumb cop, by saying that both men 'over-reacted.' Bah! Humbug! The professor can say anything he wants to the cops...within the privacy of his own home. That is speech protected by our Constitution. You can call a cop a pig and not get arrested! I was a cop. I was actually trained to accept talk, directed my way, of this kind. But no cop can break into a residence, enter it against the will of the owner, cuff the man, drag him from his home in front of the entire neighborhood (and most of his fellow-idiot-acting police officers) and incarcerate him in a prison cell far from home. Those things are not 'over-reactions.' Those things are crimes. We are a nation of laws. If our enforcement officers do not act to support that then we do not have a nation (not as we know it) anymore. We have a police state.
Meanwhile, the health issue resolution (or, so it is hoped) languishes on the sidelines, almost ignored by the media. Will we ever be graced with a regular newscast that seriously takes apart our legislation and makes its provisions apparent and understandable to us? Before and after the voting? A long time ago, when a man I now despise (Rush Limbaugh), took a piece of legislation apart (it was called NAFTA) on the radio I was so very impressed. I had never had anyone go through a bill, page by page, and make me aware of what was in it...both good and bad. I did not even mind the man's obviously skewed opinion. I just enjoyed getting in on the front end of a coming vital piece of legislation. I have never had that experience again. Neither on television, nor on the radio, does anyone do this. Instead we get idiotic sound bites which usually have nothing at all to do with the bill's potential effect. The Medical mess is all about over-charging. It is not about uninsured Americans. It is about such things as the 'rent' for a surgery theater being fifty thousand dollars an hour. The surgeons, other doctors, tools, x-rays, chemicals, medications, and all other things are add on charges. An X-ray is five hundred dollars. The surgeon gets three thousand for ten minutes work. And so it goes, on and on. But nobody is talking about any of that. And all of that is outrageous.
I was a police officer myself, as I stated. I do not lack respect for the profession or for the problems endemic to doing that job. I understand it. I admire many of the people who wear the uniform. But, and especially since I am a former cop, I am very demanding of the requirements which must lay at the foundation of performing police services. We need the police to be friends of our citizenry, acting in partnership with the societal public. They cannot be the 'parents' or the 'guardians' of our cultural values. We, as citizens, must never surrender our position as purveyors of those values. We must create the rules by which we live. We must insist, from our servants (in this case, the police), on the manner of how those rules are enforced. The police do not get to decide. They get to follow up on the decisions we make
Joseph Campbell was interviewed years ago by Bill Moyers. The product of that interview became known ad the Power of Myth. Mythology is vitally important to the success strategy of the entire human species. We a deep need to believe in things in order to fully apply the magnificent intellect were have been given. Any living organism can respond or react to stimuli. It takes belief to fully engage the intellect, and then change the very environment within which we live. Lately there have been studies which have elevated the status of other animals who inhabit this earth. From apes to elephants and dolphins, among larger mammals, and even among birds. These other animals are toolmakers and users, like us, but within certain limits. They are social and capable of self-awareness (in narrow testing) and communication. But only one animal reshapes the environment around it. And that is us. We have homes, cars, computers, heat, air-conditioning and space craft. We have tools so complex that only some of us understand what they do. We have specialties and study. We have books and electronics of such complexity that it takes years of schooling just to read or come to terms with them.
And all of this is because of belief. We believe we can do it. We believe that we are the pre-eminent species on earth, and so we are. We believe we are the pre-eminent species among the universe, and so we are (so far). We believe that things will get better, and so we get out of bed every morning and attempt to make that so. We dream from believing, and then come to believe from our dreaming. There is nothing like us and there never has been, that we know of. And, more amazingly, we are even capable of dreaming and believing that there might be greater creatures than we are. We can dream and believe that anything might be. We have the power of myth as an integral part of over very being. The power of myth is the spine of every culture existing on this planet, and none of those cultures, or the myths, are the same.
But the power of myth causes us great problems, as well as it allows us great advances. For example; we come to believe things that are not true. That is okay if a culture is believing in a supreme being of mysterious origin. But it is not okay if that same culture is believing what it is being told about something as seemingly simple as profits. Yes, profits. When you make something and then sell it, after you have subtracted the costs of manufacture and sales, then you have money leftover, if you properly charged a good price for the product. That leftover amount is called profit. What has profit got to do with myth? We just had two of our huge remaining banks declare multi-billion dollar profits, following a lengthy period of giant losses and government bailouts. Where is the myth? Part of the financial problems we are experiencing today is because of these kinds of mis-stated (lied about) profits! The bank managers and financial house gurus figured out that they could ask for a big chunk of any enormous profits they made for investors over the past twenty years. Then they sat down with their mythically responding accounting firms and lied about how great the profits were. They inflated everything, then gook great gobs of the mythical profits as their own. Their fair share, so to speak. Mythically speaking.
Now, here we are again. There simply is no way in this current market to make huge profits. But, they have gotten together again anyway, waited a little bit, and simply created new numbers to demonstrate mythical profits. The bonuses will flow again across the Madison Avenue conduits. The liars and mythologists will cream great gobs of non-existent profits and take them offshore, or convert them into Bentleys, hundred foot yachts, G-4 private jets and opulent residences. Once again. A few months from now, or a few years from now, more bail-outs will have to be made. After all, we cannot allow these big banks to go down. The damage to our mythical financial structure would be too great. Or so the same rotten and powerful thieves mythically claim.
This is where the power of myth hurts us. And this is where television will not allow itself to be used to help us. Television (remember, Marrow, Cronkite, et al) has been emasculated. It cannot penetrate, will not penetrate, this area of mythology and reveal to the world what is going on. And so I curse the damn thing, as I watch it, because I too have nothing else.
I am also still hurting over the loss of mythology that has doomed our space program to a tattered broken future. We are unlikely to go back to the moon or on to Mars. Our children will watch Chinese astronauts or Indian spacemen make those trips. And I hurt deep down over this loss. The power of myth is such a many edged sword. Will this comatose and sleeping culture arise from it's collective couch, put down the Miller Lite, set aside the glass of wine, and rise back into consciousness? Will the sword of the power of myth once again be wielded by this brash collection of made-up men and women to swing outward toward the universe in great expressive thrusts? I don't know. I do know that we cannot allow the finances of this country to be used only for the self-enrichment of a very few. We must get our act together. If we do not then that couch, and that tankard of beer, or that glass of wine, is all we will have, that and the bland nothingness of a thousand blaring channels of droolingly stupid 'reality' television to guide us on into a meaningless death.
Cry, this beloved country! Stand up! Look around! Do something! Anything! Throw these bastards in Congress out. Make Obama lead us to a better future. You deserve it. Our ancestors paid for it. I deserve it. I want it. Do you? Well, just how bad?
Over a hundred years ago a phrase came into our lexicon. It was called 'Gunboat Diplomacy,' and it was a phrase dedicated to the use of naval forces to effect decisions or change in favor of the nations who used it. It might possibly have best been used by Teddy Roosevelt when he sent the Great White Fleet around the world to prove that there was muscle behind the words of his foreign policy. We need to see a return to this form of intentful communication among nations. Maybe not all nations, but definitely a few. I am not writing about Iraq or Afghanistan here, or even Iran or North Korea. I a writing about gunboat diplomacy to effect the surrender of hidden asset and deposit information. So my ideas for the new form of gunboat diplomacy would be effected against such places as Lictenstein, the Channel Islands and even countries running up and down the Carribean. Throw in Switzerland. Nobody has threatened Switzerland (militarily) in quite some time.
We need to recover the lost assets of this nation. The liquidity which has been purloined from our banks, insurance companies and even top manufacturing companies. Financial instruments, devices and shadow accounts have been used to hustle many many trillions of dollars to these offshore havens. We need the money back. But before we can even consider getting it back we need to know about it. You read this blog and your belief level is low. I have no account data, institutional names, or even real suspects. All I know is that we are missing about three hundred trillion dollars and that that money has been drawn down from our financial institutions and companies over the past twenty years. Where did it all go? What is it doing now? What form is it in? If it is not in an account then where was it transferred? Who are the people who took the money? Where are they living now?
And so we come to gunboat diplomacy. We have this one thing going for us which we ought to seriously consider. We are the pre-eminent military power on this earth. I mean, however, only if the very people who are running the country and in charge of our military are not heavily involved (if they are, then we are simply screwed). We can get the information we need to find the answers to those questions if we use gunboat diplomacy. It probably won't even involve the loss of many lives (we lost forty troops in Afghanistan this month, so far, alone!). All we have to do is aim our cruise missles, and maybe even some of the bigger stuff. We call a bank in the Channel Islands and tell them that we want all their records. That our people will be there in 24 hrs to audit the institution. If they say they can't, or won't, do that then we send a cruise missile and blow the bank off the face of the earth. Then we call the next bank. Somewhere, as we proceed through our list of banks out there, we are going to begin to get compliance. If the countries behind these financial holding banks and companies protest, we simply offer them the same deal, or go to war. We have not gone to war for any of the right reasons for the last fifty years. We will have a good reason to go to war if we are denied the privileges of having this secret information on our own citizens. A much better one than we used for Vietnam, Iraq or even Afghanistan. We will be going to war to save our culture. To save our way of life. To save our children and their children to come.
Why won't we do it? Most probably, I mean. Well, why do we still have PayDay loan places located in 35 states? They are allowed to charge unlimited interest from the poor people who use them. Some charge five hundred percent a year or more! They lie to the people borrowing the money, of course. How could this be? How could we, as a purportedly free country, allow this sort of horrid death-dealing unfairness to go on? We do though. I imagine we will not pursue these outrageous robber barons who have stolen the country blind either. And for the same reason. The people who did this are the same people as the ones who own the PayDay loan places. They are evil bastards, and they have a lot of power within the political structure of the United States. Credit card companies are fully involved, as well. How can they possibly get away with the outrages they pull? They deliberately hold bills until the payment is late. Then they charge late fees on the bill, and change the interest rate of the card holder from twenty per cent a year to thirty or more! The other credit card companies hear about this 'default increase' and increase their rates too!! How can this happen in a purportedly fair country?
So, I don't think we will be using gunboat diplomacy to fix this mess. Unfortunately, for you and I, that means there is only one other way out. If we can't or won't get that money back, then the U.S. currency has to eventually go down. Yeah, that's right, the dollar goes away to be replaced by some other instrument. The new money is issued and then a conversion factor is used to convert old dollars to the new. When people convert to the new currency they have to reveal where they got the money they are converting. That fixes the problem (unless those people are not asked!). But that is a mighty painful way to solve the mess. If we don't do that then the rest of the world is going to create a 'World Dollar,' which we will have no control over and will have to convert to, as well, in order to do any international business. No more printing money to get ourselves out of trouble. But no more secret stashing offshore either. This kind of trouble is right around the corner. The 'bail-outs' are not working. They are not nearly big enough. We don't have enough money to make the bail-outs big enough. We can't even print enough money to fix the problem (what do you suppose printing a couple of hundred trillion dollars would do to the world economies?).
I like the gunboat diplomacy solution, however. It has some real justice, with teeth, at its foundation. Like the United States of old.
I stare out from my home in Southern Wisconsin, over the magnificent desolation of the United States of America. The moon landing, which occurred as I was standing at a huge television screen in Disneyland...my first outing from the hospital after becoming ambulatory from my wounds received in Vietnam, seemed to go a long way toward making up for a really lousy nineteen sixty-eight, and the few years rotten which had proceeded it. There was hope that hot July day. There was celebration. There were some damn good reasons to dig in and participate in my culture and in life itself. And what have we, just now, right out there beyond the panes of my window? I am living in the best financial time of my life. I have never been more successful. I am, in years, well advanced in wisdom, having made so many mistakes that I just had to learn from them or die. And here I am. What do I lack that I had when I was back in that amusement park, my wounds still seeping, my one year old daughter gurgling away in my wife's arms. I had no job and no prospects of finding one. I had an apartment with two months of rent due to a kindly old and gentle landlord. Yet I had great high hopes, and a sense of participating accomplishment. Those guys on the surface of the moon, a quarter of a million miles away, were beating new trails for me and about me. Things mattered. There was 'magnificent desolation' on that rocky airless body, but there was a great future on planet earth far below.
Even Charles Krauthammer, a man whom, like Bill Bennet, I have vilified over these past few years for being a self-serving, silver-spooned, big mouth, possessed of little real life experience, seems to 'get it' when it comes to what I am writing of. Where the hell has out hope gone? Why have we allowed our leadership and our media to treat the future of humanity, and our culture, as if it is simply another sound bite? How do we get our "Mojo" back? Yes, I am back to discussing the electronic medium of television as part of the great evil here. We have allowed this channel into our hearts and souls to become the purveyor of our belief systems. And that medium is all about sales. Pure and simple return on the investment of a dollar is the only thing it is about. What sells ads gets on the television and stays there. You might as well redefine Fascism using only that one word: Television. The companies that can afford to buy the time get to shape the programming. They determine what programs their ads will run during. They decide what news programs will be supported by their ads. Who but they can spend three million dollars for a small bit of time for an ad on television? And so we have Fascism, which was a word coined prior to WWII to describe society run by corporations and business alone. It was an evil sounding word created to describe just how unjust and cold a culture can be if it is run strictly for commerce and by people who respond only to financial concerns. Have you watched that television over the past six months and viewed bankers? Have you watched our government throw trillions at these 'fascists' to little or no effect, other than that they take the money, declare more 'profits' and then wait for the next 'bailout?' You are watching fascism unfold all around you.
Krauthammer, in his column today, did not indict the media. He blamed us. We are weak. We do not understand, and without his saying it directly, we are stupid. We, the audience of that television media conglomeration, is whom Charles is referring to.
Were you alive when men walked on the moon? If you were not alive yet, do you still thrill at the idea, the videos and the interviews with the people who went there? That feeling of nationalism, Americanism, and humanity that comes over you is the feeling I want to write about. I want to believe that we can get it back. I want to believe that we can take this whole financial mess and turn it around just because we want to. I want to believe that we can go after these banking and investment thieves and take that money back from where they have sent and spent it. I want to believe that the worker in this country is our hero. Those guys on the moon only got there because of unions, scabs, workers working for little and workers working for a lot. And the public that sent them up there is not, and was not, stupid. We were just joined in a cause then. And now we are alone. We all sit in front of that tube and watch alone, or with only a small group nearby. We are not together on anything except hope. And fear about our future and the future of our families and friends.
We should have rebuilt those goddamned towers and built them bigger and better. We still can. Screw all the plans and the private investors and City of New York. They are part of us too. Let's build real airplanes, tough, modern and economical, which we can fly without taking off our shoes to get aboard or huddling afraid, with our little plastic baggies of toothpaste and makeup clutched to our chests. We can go back to the moon. Big time. And we can do it in a lot less than ten years. And we can do in such a manner as to make our own children stand there at Disneyland, like I did that day, with little or nothing except an overwhelming feeling that they are going somewhere with a bunch of winners. We owe it to these kids and the one's coming. We owe it to the world, and to all those people out there counting on us to be what we, indeed, really are. We are a singularly great culture that came out of the muck. We are made up of ancestors who fled prison, execution, famine and disease to come here. And look what we have become out of that! We have become a people who can do anything. We are the only people on earth who can right now. If we will.
Now we need to get off our craven little asses and get busy. We need to make our great leader, and yes I believe that Obama is all of that, give trillions to these projects. We can even throw in highway bridges and the proper generation of intelligent energy. There are no limits. Trillions for these things and no more for any banks. Not one damned cent. If I lose my accounts and my cards, well, I'll be right there with you...and, if I have to go back to Disneyland at my age and stand there with nothing again, then I will do it, if I can watch that giant screen and see hope, pride, and a future projecting out of it and deep back into my hurting soul. Are you willing to risk it and stand there with me?
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"You are me & I am you. We all have a stake in one specific future (OURS)"
--- Jordan J Fowlkes
EDUCATION is our primary tool to restructure the fractured based of America’s minority family. ENTERTAINMENT is the psychological tool to positive or negative peer pressure which instills confidence in our YOUTH to stand against or with the bureaucratic system of failure and vulnerability. BUSINESS is the development stone of success and prosperity or enslavement amongst the ignorant. So, WE must unify the entities of EDUCATION, ENTERTAINMENT, & BUSINESS positively to omit the robust crisis in our YOUTH COMMUNITY.
---- Jordan J Fowlkes
I read David Brooks column in the New York Times this morning. The Times still gives me plenty of material to analyze and consider, even if it is only a vestige of its old 'get them the objective news and get it to them right now' self. David Brooks wrote a very fetching article about dignity and manners, and how we have, as a culture lost both of those things. He used the incidents of Governor Sanford's blatheringly stupid comments about his own infidelity, Micheal Jackson's conduct of a child-like life, and finally Sarah Palin's applied confusion about life itself, as his examples of a culture gone to the dogs. There is no dignity left, he asserts. There are no manners, public or private, which are consistently followed or applied. It is all out here right in front of us. Brooks rails against self-promotion, even to the extent of running for the office of President of the United States (that insults the dignity of the candidate). But then he turns, in typical, and very modern Republican form, to use Ronald Reagan as an example of a relatively current public figure who had dignity. A bigger self-promoter there never was, except maybe P.T. Barnum, but that is ignored by Brooks.
The entire neo-con rant by Brooks is about being wealthy. You can ignore everything if you are wealthy. You do not need help, or money, or even much in the way of relationship, if you have enough money. That is the man's basic forlorn tenant. He harkens back to a day, George Washington's, to be exact, when a man like our first President could exercise all of the well-mannered characteristics of not promoting himself or herself, speaking when spoken to, standing when spoken to, and, of course, not requesting or even accepting help from anyone. That George Washington was extremely wealthy is not mentioned at all.
You read an article like the one I am discussing and the material almost sounds rational. You almost pine for those old days when such great-seeming principals of conduct supposedly ruled all of social life. Until you begin to think about it. Washington's family had droves of slaves and tons of servants. I wonder how they conducted themselves with respect to the 'rules of dignity.' There were throngs of struggling new Americans trying to barely get by or survive on subsistence farming or in slave-like manufacturing jobs. We still had bond-servant versions of slavery all over the countryside. What a load of dignity they possessed, and displayed.
Today, we are all trying to make it. We are trying to feed our families, just like before. There is absolutely no dignity whatever in not paying your bills or being foreclosed on. None. Not one shred. Try it, if you think there is. I encourage anyone in dire financial straights to self-promote the hell out of him or herself. I absolutely encourage them to ask for assistance from their friends and family before putting their children in shelters or onto the mean streets of our downtown cities. Dignity be damned.
David Brooks is wealthy. Can you tell?
I read the New York Times this day and was not surprised. On the left side, all the way down the front page, they began a story about protesting Catholic Nuns. There are about sixty thousand of them left out there in the world. At one time there were many many more than that. They, apparently, do not wear the revealing (and respect demanding) habits of the past. I kind of knew that from somewhere, but it hit home with this article. The substance of the article was about how the leadership of the Catholic Church (read Pope Ratso) is opposing the Nuns because they have kind of gotten together to argue against a few idiotic things still supported by the Roman Catholics of Rome. They oppose, for example, the required celibacy of priests. The Pope is still big on this malformed and unsuccessful doctrine. And it is not, or at least I do not think so, that the sixty thousand remaining nuns are simply horny and want all those priests for their own. No, I am afraid that the nun's logic is more factually grounded (however fun it might be to think otherwise). It seems that, over time, the celibacy thing just has not worked at all. Priests have been out there screwing just about any human they could get their hands on for many many years. The Catholic Church is currently paying out billions in reparations because of the failure of celibacy among its priests. It seems that the pent up sexuality of these guys has led them to exploit young boys under their care. But the payouts have not fazed Ratso. He contends that celibacy works and must be kept in place. All priests must be male and they must not have sex. The male only thing is another piece of studied stupidity that the nuns oppose.
I was raised a Catholic and went to Catholic schools all the way up through my undergraduate degree in college. My elementary school nuns were the most noteworthy of my teachers. It was Hawaii right after the big war. The nuns at St. Augustine Elementary School, just off Waikiki, had just returned from surviving the entirety of WWII in Japanes prison camps. Those nuns were in no mood to take any garbage from elementary school children. Later, I was to train and then serve in the United States Marine Corps. The Corps had nothing on those nuns. My D.I., SSgt. Baines, could not have gone one round with Sister Michael Marie (a.k.a. Sister Joseph Louis), much less the dreaded Sister Gregoria (called the 'Flying Black Axe' for reasons unknown).
I am a writer today because of those nuns. I miss their disciplined learning techniques. Techniques no longer applied to school children anywhere. I learned the ABC's, how to decline a sentence, phonics, and the Chicago Style Manual of English. I learned them by trial and error, and the studied application of attentive pro-active pain. Those nuns did not have to strike often. They used a form of willful psychology and parental support no longer existent within the confines of our culture. I learned to speak in front of groups and to overcome embarrassment and failure. I got a C Plus in English at the end of 5th grade. And I still write very regularly to Sister Michael Marie and Sister Gregoria. In fact, when my book was recently published, I sent Sister Michael Marie a copy of the book (lovingly inscribed) and a copy of my fifth grade report card. I high-lighted the C Plus I received in English with a yellow marker, to point out the error of her conclusion. That was a month ago. I got a letter yesterday. She sent me the report card back with a note stuck to it. "You have improved" it said, and there was B Plus written in red over the crossed out C Plus. She also noted a few grammatical errors in the final production hard-cover novel! I suppose that is why I, and my publisher's editors, did not get an A.
The Catholic Church has not supported nuns in any way for fifty years. The older ones live in near poverty under poor conditions in run-down care facilities. The few younger ones do not even get habits to wear. They are allowed to work for the Church for free and get by as best they can. It is a shame. The value those women provided to millions of children across the world goes unrewarded and barely even thanked. Yes, they did it for the love of God, but come on! The Catholic Church is run by men. By White old men living in splendor inside stone chateaus. They are just like human leaders everywhere on earth. There is no difference, and there is about the same level of compassion exercised and exhibited toward those whom worked to put and keep them there, as exists in the civilian world outside.
I loved those nuns and tried my heart out for them. I did that because I knew, down inside, near the bottom of my little well of souls, they wanted the best for me. I really believed that they wanted me to succeed and enjoy life, and a good measure of bliss. They wanted me to be successful, simply because, well, in their prayerful and hallowed way, they loved me. They loved God above all, and then all the children in their charge. They still do. Their belief in me, and my belief in them, sustains me to this day.
The numbers of nuns are dwindling rapidly, as the older ones die off and no new ones come aboard. This is part of the design of the Catholic Church. I do not know why. Maybe, like most male leaders everywhere, Ratso and his Italian Mafia fear women. I just don't know. But I lament their passing. They have been a force for good and love out here, across the surface of this troubled earth. Those nuns left now deserve honors and a great retirement. The young ones, the few, deserve our endearing support...financially and emotionally, because it is good for us all. I am not much of a Catholic anymore, but I know a good thing when I experience it. I love those nuns, and you should too.
The drums of the Middle East keep on pounding away, far off in the distance, but routed direct through television to the living room of our homes. Year by year, month by month...right down to moment by moment, the twisting turns and sinuous paths of those vibrations are changed to meet the behavioral control needs of a very few. We, those of us who think of ourselves as intelligent interpreters of this jumbled mess of communication, are nearly as stumped as the rest of the population, as to who those few are. We are not sure, either, of what real direction they are caging us to follow. Is the combined power of the media really simply the beast of finance? Does it only respond to what makes it money? Or are there other motivations as to the messages channeled so personally into the heart of our very lives? And where, among all these messages, across all the mediums, is there any truth at all? We watch the network news, looking for clues (or maybe just laying there...senseless after a very hard day's work for too little pay), then move to the cable channels for more. Some of us listen to the radio, attempting to 'true up' any of what we have received from the other sources. Near the end, there are the newspapers. All those sources of supposed news contain 'vetted' stories, which means that someone has looked them over and checked them out to make sure they have some semblance of truth in them. Finally, there is the internet. From blogs to YouTube, and then down into the Facebook and Twitter stuff. And what are we to make of it all?
Iran has had an election. Some kind of election. We are never sure of any of that anymore. We have such deep suspicions about our own elections to the point that now, when we see or hear the word 'election,' we take the information in with a skeptical, barely contained, sneer of disdain. The message streaming from almost every source tells us that the current leader of Iran has stolen his re-election bid. The loser really won. We are given no figures because we have nobody, at all, in Iran (from any part of the mass media). The few that were there merely filmed what they could from hotel windows before they fled to the airport and got the hell out of there. Since Iran is connected to the internet, we have gotten YouTube footage and Twitter reports. But what can we make of them? Anybody can say or do anything on the internet, using video as well, if they are schooled in the technology of its use.
But lets look at the overall message we are getting from almost all sources. Iran's leader is bad. He stole the election. People are protesting. The runner-up should be crowned leader. Iran's leader should step down. All peoples everywhere have the right to peaceful assembly and protest.
Now re-read that paragraph. What is the message we are supposed to be getting? Maybe we should get more elemental than that. Okay, let's ask a more elemental question. Why should we care one whit? The current leader of Iran is just as big a hater of America as the runner-up! Yeah, the other guy was running around with that same screwy Iman who spear-headed the whole hostage crisis which catapulted Reagan into office. And the peaceful protest garbage! What is that? We don't have the right to protest here in the U.S.! Have you not noticed? Our cops and Secret Service have carte blanche to arrest and incarcerate anyone who assembles to protest, if that protest is anywhere near any of our big leaders. At the presidential conventions last year the protestors at both events were relegated to cages specially built to hold them, miles from the actual events! And this is in America! There is no right to peaceful protest of big leaders anywhere in the world. So what the hell is going on? This nonsensical 'reporting' is just like the idiocy that gets printed about torture. We decry all forms of torture...except the torture we commit as a nation. Yes, your nation and in your name.
We hate the Arabs. As a culture we hate them. We don't really want to, but we do. We hate Iran, Iraq, Libya and even Afghanistan. We are scared crapless of islam and everyone over there who follows its teachings. If they come here, to our country, we accept them...conditionally. But not over there. We have given Israel (now there is a bunch of cool-headed clever dudes living in a desert oasis!) nuclear weapons and every bit of high tech weaponry we can make. That is how scared we are. And so our news reflects this fact. There were supposed to be tons of YouTube tapes and Twitter comments about the riots in Iran. Those did not materialize after they were predicted. What do you suppose our vaunted mass media had to say about that? They said that Iran had gotten really good at internet suppression! All those Youtubes and Tweets were there, but suppressed by the brilliant internet hackers from under the sand in Iran. Oh please.
What humor, if you sit back and look at it. There were no YouTube tapes or Tweets because there were no real riots of any kind. I think you can pretty much take that to the bank (well, a bank in the Channel Islands, if you have connections and are smart). Oh sure, there was some demonstrating and crowd interaction. But that was it. And we are not even sure what any of that was about because our own media high-tailed it the hell out of there.
We believe the the Persian's hate us. And we keep asking the question about why they do. The question is meaningless because the premise is bogus. They do not hate us. They are frightened to death of us! How would you feel if a monster country, possessing more nuclear weapons than any combination of countries in the world, hated you? A monster country that has proven it will indeed use nuclear weapons if it fears and hates you enough? We need, as a culture, to begin asking the right questions. Why do we hate them? What exactly is it about them that we are so abominated by? Why do we fear these small groups of strange believing peoples living in awful desert conditions so very much? If we can't even ask ourselves those things then what are we to do? Wait for just the right opportunity to blow them all into oblivion? Is that any kind of answer at all?
Osama Bin Laden. There are all kinds of small groups around the world who want power. Individuals crave it. We are hard-wired by sociobiology to crave it. The leaders get to impregnate more females (if they are male) or secure a quality future for their spawn (if they are female). Just look at Michael Jackson as an example. He was one miserable human being. I don't think that that can be denied. His personal life did not exist. But he craved public attention right up to the end. Osama does too. Cheney does too. These people never go away, unless it is to 'write' another book and then return. Or make another video. We must understand, as a culture, that this will always be the case. There will always be an opposition party. There will always be militia groups and terrorist outfits. It is hard-wired into our genetics. Evolution will only allow that to change if 'survival of the fittest' no longer includes getting rid of those presumed to be weaker. I, personally hoped, when I was younger, that technology would eventually allow us to vault up from the murder pit of amoral evolutionary expedition. As I age, I wonder, and the wondering is not a good thing.
We are so hurtfully directed to success. We are driven by fears so deep and dark that we cannot ever discuss them. If they are revealed by others we deny them and put down those others or label them losers or the weak. Only success matters. It permeates our financial sector, our trading mercantile sectors, our sports and even our television shows. It is all, and only, about winning. And it means that most people have to be losers. Do the math. "There can only be one Highlander," is a favorite expression of mine.
We must all be of Persian Persuasion in order to stop hating them. We must know them to care for them and about them. It is applied anthropology. Anthro, closely followed by history, is one of those disciplines, however, which interests many but is practiced by only a few, and almost none of the few are leaders of any sort. If we had paid attention to the anthropology of Iraq we would not be there. If we had paid attention, right after WWII to anthropology, Iraq would never have existed as a country for us to attack. Anthropology is about understanding other cultures. Amazingly, once you understand other cultures, guess what? You come to like them. So, in reality, our problems with the Middle East are all about schooling. We don't teach the right things in our educations system here, and then the media fails miserably to educate when we are done with that formal system.
This internet 'cloud' phenomenon, as some are terming it today, may be our only hope. Only here can words be written and read everywhere. They are not read everywhere for most of us who write here, however. There is just no easy or simple way to get people's attention to be read. That attention is being consumed by the famous. The Krugmans, Krauthammers, Coulters and Limbaughs gather the people in, but in becoming famous, they surrender telling the truth about what they are communicating. They communicate to stay famous and become more famous. Until they too are ready for their last shot of Demerol. But then, maybe, it only takes a few thinking human beings to influence the course of events. I pray that is so.
We have come so far and flown so high that it is nearly inconceivable we may have gone right beyond our areas of normal expansive and progressive interest. Flight. Ever since I was a child I have loved flight. Any kind of flying machine, or person who operated a flying machine, was of great and endearing interest to me. My father was in the military, which allowed our family to fly from duty station to duty station across the land and over oceans. And I loved it all, from the aluminum framed web seats, to the loud piston engines of mixed dependabilty...and even the boxed chicken lunches, which were commonly distributed. Although planes were not on time or always able to take off due to weather or mechanical problems, it was okay. Airports had few services and little in the way of entertainment while we waited, interminably, to fly.
But we waited and we waited willingly. We loved to fly, and we loved all the preparation that went into the process. We loved the unseen 'John Wayne' pilots, and we loved the stewardesses in their wonderfully stylish attire. We loved the big aluminum monsters that flew us through the air. Most of us knew them all, by airline, model description put out by the airline, and even the manufacturer.
So what the hell happened? United is losing money...again. The rest are losing money, or making little, while they shrink the number and length of their flights. And that is all over the world. The airlines are all complaining about falling revenue and passenger miles. And they are correct. So what happened?
We don't like to fly anymore. We fell out of love. Flying today is a bitter experience of humiliating phony service. It is a series of unending embarrassments, to those who fly economy, and almost intolerable in first class, which is so expensive as to be almost humorous. We have horrid parking at airports and worse intra-airport transportation. Just the act of dropping somebody off or picking them up is to be avoided at almost any cost. Homeland Security is rotten. Rotten attitudes and stupidly rotten procedures. More humiliation. Once aboard an aircraft it is just as bad. Less room for carry-on, if any room at all. Charges for everything. Crammed planes outfitted with ever smaller seats and spaces. Tickets that cannot be changed. Tickets that cannot be returned. Fear of being run through some security system and denied the right to fly. Fear of everything connected to flight or the geographics where it occurs.
We don't like to fly anymore. That is what happened to revenue and passenger miles. We attempt to avoid it. We take a car or a train, but, more and more, we don't go at all. And it is getting worse. With less disposable income, we fly only when we absolutely have to. Our hatred for the experience is obvious to all around us at the airport, making matters all the worse. We hate the security guards, even though we understand their work. We hate the airplane crews even though we know that it is not their fault. We hate the dirty unsafe equipment we see all the time.
And so, we are beginning not to fly. It is the airlines fault. It is our governmental leadership's fault. It is the caving in to vapid stupidity at fault. There are not going to be any 9/11's because no passengers will allow it anymore. Heard of any hijacked airliners lately? Me neither. But I think it is maybe too late for the current airlines to recover. Flight will have to change. We won't accept it the way it is. We will kill it off, by not going. Then something will replace it. Like cars. I noticed, the other day, that I was standing at a Borders bookstore magazine rack in the automobile section. I have always bought automobile magazines. I looked and then bought nothing. My love affair with that method of transportation is dying too. I used to love to read about powerful sports cars, the faster the better. Now I think they are a joke. I do not want to pay for gas to support a 500 horsepower engine. An engine that will spend all of its time idling in traffic, or in the very very unlikely event that I can drive fast at all, idling by the side of the road as the ever-more aggressive highway patrols write me expensive tickets, accompanied by idiotic morality tales about safety.
And the other car stuff is boring. Oh, I know we gotta have the hybreds and the electrics. It is for the good and economy of all, not to mention, green of all. But those cars are boring. You just can't read very far into an article about a Prius. So the cars are going to go too. We are driving less. We are driving less for the same reason we are flying less...because we don't like to do it anymore. We are so simple to figure out, if you take the time and trouble to study us...the people...the fabric of the culture. We work because we have to, and because we believe in work as a part of our foundation of worth. We play because we want to. We'll continue to drive the trucks and cars for work, and fly for work, but we won't do those things for fun anymore. Unless there is just no other way to get there, and then we may not go at all.
There is a damned good reason why the investigation of all torturing done by the United States, and its allies, is vital to our current and future cultural health. That reason is simple, yet responding to it may be one of the most complex undertakings of this new 'mired-down' administration. The reason we must investigate fully is to know. We must first know what was done. We cannot evaluate data we are not given, or allowed to know exists at all. If we cannot analyze and evaluate, then we support what occurred. Tacitly, we go along with what took place. Our sense of justice, outrage or even understanding, is suspended...and our future becomes bleaker because this. The United States Government, under almost every administration, has been right up there near of the top of the pile of controlling social orders. The public has been treated like it consists of cows, bunched into herds, fed hay, watered, pastured, but told nothing. After all, what could cows possibly understand? By treating the public this way (think the Kennedy Assassination, TWA 800, 9/11) the public is left totally out of any possibility of being part of decision making. Okay, so we don't know who killed Kennedy, really. We don't know what the hell happened to 800, really. We don't know what happened about the towers, really. We just know that we don't know the truth. It rankles inside of us. The 'us' who are not conspiracy theorists, even.
But, we also know that we voted for people who we wanted to run things. We gave them the ability to know things we cannot. We gave them the ability to make decisions for us when we could not. We trusted them. Not all of us. Most of us. It is how it all works here. Occasionally, however, there are things that happen which we need to be involved with. Our leaders fall into habit patterns, now supported by this whacked-out media, and tell us less and less. That is what has happened here. And we must protest. Torture is not an event. Torture is a putrid infection that forms a crack in our social order. It works its way in and then festers, eventually killing the cultural being we have fought so hard to grow and mature. It spreads. It spreads slowly and insidiously. We must find out what happened, no matter how terrible (and hundreds, or thousands have died terribly painful deaths), and then we must confront these acts. We do not even need to punish the real physical perpetrators. Public revelation would probably more than deal with that. No. We need to confront our fear. The fear that allowed us to allow our leaders to direct such acts in our name, and then to deny they did it, or cover up the very acts themselves.
If we can bring all this out from under the black cloak of intended secrecy, then we can rise up and apologize. Yes, apologize to the world and to the survivors. For our good, as well as the good of all. After apologizing we can put this horrid diseased Genie back in the bottle. We do not need to punish those who acted, but we can certainly establish and isolate some of our draconian imprisonment penalties for future perpetrators. We are a nation of laws. But those laws are interpreted by, and applied by, men and women. We need to direct these people by law, and then let them know what is in store for them if they ever commit, or allow to be committed, acts like this again. This is called taking a stand!
We cannot heal this potentially terminal infection by putting a bandage over it, even if the bandage is skin colored. We must clean the infection out, then provide antibiotics to actively fight the remaining tendrils that run through our cultural body. Laws are the antibiotics. Laws without exceptions for this area. We, as a country and a people, cannot go through life being known allow such things as 'rending' other people, or tearing them limb from limb, or drowning them, or delighting in their pain, for the simple reason that we wanted something from them. We have raised up quiet, and not so quiet, enemies against us. You know it and I know it. And I'm not writing about the stupid 'war on terror,' or any of the other Orwellian terminology adopted to keep fear in control of the masses out here. I am writing those men and women who are the families, relatives and friends, of the tortured by us, the missing under our care, the dead because of our studied sadism. Those people are coming, ever coming, and we are going to have to deal with them. We have empowered them by acting like frightened school children. We have been cowardly. And we cannot simply ignore them or provide them with silence and denial. They know. We know. We must come out of this closet. Let the healing begin.
And then there is the rest of it.
Where the hell is the new World Trade Center? Why are there not two towers standing this very day, twice the size of the old ones, in central Manhattan? You think American would not have collected and paid for such a demonstration of cultural will and strength? Where the hell is Osama? You really believe that if a country like our country, of its size and power, could fail to find one man on this earth for eight years? Where is my beloved space program? (for Christ's sake, we are about to 'rent' Russian space vehicles for the next ten years to put our people in space!!!!). Where are our factories? Where are our car companies? Where are our bridges and roads? Where is the money that all these hedge-fund and derivative executives have stolen and hauled away?
Where the hell are you and what are you going to do about it? Get off your couch and your butt and do something, even if it is just to write and say something about it all. I am not the voice of this culture. I am merely a participating observer, like you. But I am writing about it and I am asking hard questions. And I am mad as hell that my present, my future and my children's future has been stained, soiled and trampled under foot by selfish thieving bastards. And its all happened on my watch.
Our newspapers are failing because they will not write this. You need to read this. You need to think about these things. You need to reflect, argue, complain, disagree and take action. Our television media is a morass of mediocre crap fed to us daily by weak-kneed pitiful people who could not work effectively in a General Motors assembly line. You need to scream at Obama, Roberts and all of them.
I want my honor back! I was a Marine Officer. I am still a Marine Officer. But I am supposed to be that proud being, not because of the honor of the Corps, but because of the honor of the United States of America. I want my honor back. I want those things back that allow me to have bliss, and to share that bliss with the world. I want to know I am doing the right thing. I want the Christmas Eve feeling of waiting for the morning, and what I will find under the tree! But I want that back, about life itself. Have you ever lived a time when you could just not wait for tomorrow because it was going to be so great? You just knew it! I want that time for my children and my grand-children, and yes, even for me. Help me get it back. Help yourself in getting it back, or maybe having it for the first time.
I wrote a book called "The Boy." It is about honor. Honor lost. Honor won. About internal honor. Getting it, and then holding on to if for dear life. The book is going to be a movie (at least, as of yesterday!). I am not encouraging you to buy my book. I am encouraging you to write your own! To think. To write. To take action. This is all about you out here so start acting like it.
I love the Marine Corps. I love America. And I love you.
I woke up to Rush Limbaugh....cough cough cough....that's what he does when he is about to make a derogatory statement....to get the maximum attention and phony disdain going....
Just bashing in general terms that were not substantiated...'...she's unmarried,...I'm not discriminat'tin because she's female or Hispanic,...which is a way of doing it while decrying that you are not....the worst of it for me was the ...."...worst judge on the appellate bench there is...."....[why?]...[...for real...what makes it so?...]
Time for the American People to say ....ENOUGH...of these self appointed ....can't say it here...the site is moderated now....but goes a little like this....'...burned out old...#$%@'s.....'
you get the picture.....they raped and robbed the country and the middle class...are responsible for wars,...medical and insurance costs,...looted Social Security...dumped the funds into the general fund...then LOOTED ...the treasury with war contracts....they send young men out to wars...to people who do not hate us...YET.....to kill, maim, and degrade them....to lower the numbers of competition for POWER AT HOME....that was all Vietnam was about...they HATED us.
They called us FLATBELLIES....because they were PORKERS....and used the young women left at home like a box of tissues....divorced there wives...and neglected their own children....emotional and financial abandonment....
TIME TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK....FROM THESE BLOW HARD LOSERS....
WE PICKED OBAMA ....AND HE IS THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES....
WE PICKED HIM...TO MAKE JUDGEMENTS AND DESCISCIONS...AND SUPREME COURT PICKS FOR US...END OF STORY....
Me....?....I am just another Republican that left the party....to support and elect Barack Obama.
MEDIA....DON'T YOU HAVE THE MESSAGE...YET?
Yours always....V.
Let me establish some basic fundamental principals in dealing with the application of what we have come to understand is torture. By the way, we know that torture is not really the playing of loud music at all hours, or having the cell, where your victims are stored, too cold or too hot. We know that torture, the kind of torture I am writing about, is the application of physical misery to such an extent that the agony of the pain generated is impossible to endure. Now, understanding that, let's look at application a little closer.
People who have no experience with physical torture also lack an understanding of the psychology of its application. You see, the torturer does not work (or 'play,' depending upon the mindset of the practitioner) in an environment of need. The needs of the torturer are analytical. Empirical data is sought, which the subject of the torture is thought to have in his or her mental possession. There is no emotional need on the part of the torturer. The emotion is experienced on the part of the tortured subject. Torture is probably the most emotional personal experience a person can go through. Total body rape. Penetration, severing, incision....all of it. And, on top of this, the burden of revelation is placed firmly on the subject! The subject, in order to lesson or stop the application, must find some way to convince the torturer that the information is valid. The torturer only moves to prove something through pre-established corroboration or proof. It is quite common, as a matter of policy, once the subject has been properly 'softened' up (by, say; being drowned ten times in a row and revived immediately by nearby doctors), to tell the subject this truth. "You must find some way to get me to believe you, in order for these procedures to be stopped." Think about the enormity of that question for a moment!
Many problems in torturing, as I discussed in my earlier essay, revolve around figuring out the right questions to ask, not evaluating the answers. This creates its own problems. It is never the "you have a nuclear bomb hidden and we need the location" kind of thing. That would be just too easy. Too Krauthammer or Jack Bauer. No, instead, the questions usually revolve around the social order. Who do you know? How do you know them? What have you done? Why are you here, in the first place? Yes, that last one is asked all the time, as astounding as that might seem.
Another problem here, especially when you are torturing cross-culturally, is language and cultural differences. How does the torturer come to understand what the subject of his or her torture is saying? How does he or she fit this into the cultural norms and rules of his or her own culture? Is our 'normal' torturer a linguist? An ethnologist, perhaps? More iikely not. More likely there are interpreters involved. And interpreters add another level of filtering. Most interpreters are indigenous to the culture of the subject (else how is the actual torturer to understand the language?). Which means that the interpreter has a vested interest is what is going to happen to the subject. If, for example, and this is all too common, the tortured subject is a higher ranking member of a tribal unit, and the interpreter is from a lower rank. If the tortured subject is removed from life, then the interpreter's situation rises in that tribe. The tribe may even come to understand that the interpreter had something to do with the removal, thereby increasing the interpreter's rank even more. The tortured subject is likely killed or returned as such a shambling wreck as to be ineffective at anything.
Unfortunately, the discussions in and around the subject of torture, as we see them in the mass media, are not dealing with the real torture that has been done. Those subjects (the really tortured) are long gone to their final relief. So there is murder here. And murder is not looked upon nicely in the American culture. So we have people willing to do just about anything to keep themselves from being found out. Then can do that by destroying records, yes, but they can also do it by threatening to expose the whole ugly mess, so that many many more people are touched by the horror of their conduct. And, we come to Dick Cheney. That is what he is trying to do, and he is doing it successfully. Barack Obama knows pretty much everything by now. His job is to protect you and me. He is torn between going after these rat-bastards or allowing most of the country to maintain some kind of positive self-image, in a time of pretty damned poor self-imaging. I feel bad for this nice man, who I contributed a lot of money to help make such decisions. So this is my apology to Barack. I'm sorry that I did this to you. I cannot make the decision, on this one, for you, and you would not have me make it anyway.
If you decide to allow all of this to remain buried, then I will also be sorry. We are doomed to repeat this history, if you decide that. We are already repeating this history, which we thought long learned years ago. Whom of you reading this right now would ever have believed, twenty years ago, that we would be having a discussion about our military and intelligence people torturing people, as a matter of policy, and in great numbers? I would bet that number would be quite small.
Finally, there are people who have been ordered to torture other people, in our name, who did not want to do it, and are having night terrors over their participation this very night. Post Traumatic Stress lives with them, like a constantly beating drum and inescapable drum. Should they come in, their counseling at the Veteran's Administration will be unmercifully cold and harsh. That's only if they have the idiotic temerity to reveal what they were involved with. They have come home to live alone among people. To die alone, hoping that there is no life after death....hoping not to die and have those subjects appear before them, as they do each and every night while they live. And we, this people, of this United States of America, have done this to them. We need to know a measure of shame for our participation. We elected Bush, twice. We elected Cheney, twice. We allowed Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Gonzalez and Rice...and yes, Colin Powell too. If there is no butcher's bill for all of this, then we too need to hope that there is no afterlife.
I have not written much on torture, after all, I once worked in operations for the Agency. I read so much about it, and even see fictionalizations on television, as in the ever-present Dirty Harry of our time....Jack Bauer on 24. Jack represents what is right. What is definitively right. Only television can allow such definitive right to be truly known. We get to actually see the bad guys and gals being, and intending to be, the bad guys and galls. With that definitive righteousness in hand, Jack can take drill bits, hack saws and other implements into his own hands....and do the actual cutting. And he gets the information that is so vitally necessary to save whatever city, or other large population center, is in peril.
And it is all poppycock. And Jack is forgiven, on screen and off screen. After all, we have seen the evil for ourselves. We can see that the torture applied really worked. And then we can carry this fiction over into reality. We can believe that the people we are having do the torture, those who are our own 'real' agents, are practicing this horrid unforgivable behavior on proven evil bastards and bitches.
And it is all poppycock. Here are some truths about real torture applied:
1. It is often applied to people who know nothing. They have simply been alleged to know something, or rumored to know something. We never ever get the scenario of 'We have the person who planted the bomb and knows where it is but won't tell us.' We instead get lots of rumors and snitching on friends, enemies or those who other people want out of the way. The information givers know that the person who is going to be tortured will probably never be seen again.
2. Real torture does not lend itself to having the tortured person left alive after it is administered. Real torture is not something that can even be told to the public! How about the simple fact that for real torture to work the subject must believe that he or she is not going to survive it, no matter what. They are made to 'talk' only so the pain can end. How do you induce that state of belief in a subject? Why, any number of ways; like cutting their limbs off, or other body parts. That is done just to get the subject's attention! Is this data that our public can stand to hear or know about? Not on your life. Not in the real world. Only on 24 is that okay.
3. People who do the torturing like to torture people. They are the same people who liked to spray cats with gasoline and then light them in grade school, or tear the wings off birds. They are out there. All one has to do is offer them a job. Do you think the Nazi machine had to force people to gas all those Jews? They simply asked for volunteers to serve in the crematoriums. They got plenty. And look at the record. Those people, killing Jews all day long, partied on into the night and on holidays, like they were building cars or making boxes. We actually reward deviant behavior by allowing, endorsing and applying physical torture. Then we bring these sickos back into our culture as honorably serving heroes.
4. Judges put people in prison much more readily if they don't like them. Cops give tickets and make arrests much more frequently if they do not like the victims. We all know this. We are all cowed in their presence, because we know this. People torture people they do not like. It is simple logic. Especially for the kind of people who want to do this sort sick thing. They are sick, and they are loosed upon a pack of victims by us. Some of the victims may have done terrible things, or know terrible information. We might even get it through torture. Then we can live as the dark black creatures we so abominate and decry. And what have we then saved?
5. People, like Charles Krauthammer, encourage torture, like combat, if they have no exposure to it. From back here it is all clear and distant. Like dropping bombs from forty thousand feet. How many air force guys suffer from PTSD? Not many. It is clean and very very distant, and also kind of unknown. And so it is with creeps like Krauthammer. He has not life experience at all. Gifted with money from birth. His only saving grace at all is his disability, but he has learned nothing from it. I encourage people to read his stuff. Although I never want to see anybody on this planet tortured, I sometimes harbor day dreams about people like Krauthammer being tortured, then allowed to write a column. Think it would be a little different?
6. We won't punish anybody for torturing in our name. We cannot have it come out what we really did. Obama knows this. He has all the data. He believes he is there to save us from ourselves. From knowing ourselves, even. Mythology is important. Read Joe Campbell. He sure has. Sometimes it is only mythology that gets us through. But Obama is wrong here. We will repeat our torturing period again, if we don't 'out' this mess. We will bring torture down upon ourselves in the future, if we do not proclaim the people who did the torturing as sick servants of our secretive intelligence culture, and then deny them a welcome return to our society. And that goes for each and every leader who supported or endorsed their actions.
7. We had physicians and psychologists who supported, and even applied, torture to many subjects. These people must have their licenses to practice pulled, at the very least. They are coming back here to work on this population. They are coming back to be you and your families doctors. You don't have to be afraid of combat veterans. If they were involved in real combat then they do not want to be involved anymore. But not so those sick doctors. They have come to know what works, and they will use those tools again, if they can find a way to.
8. Physical torture always works. Always. Nobody can stand against it. McCain did not. Why do you suppose he has remained so vitally opposed to POW investigations or searches? Think about it? He does not want any of those veterans left to reveal that he broke down a lot further than has been discussed. And I like John McCain! But John broke. Everyone breaks. Most just don't survive. Almost none survive. So where are the stories? On paper. Paper can be burned. And do not forget that torture always works, but with one single caveat. It must be applied to someone who has the information you want or need. That is what is uncommon. Most people tortured don't know the answer, and they die that way. The torturer simply tells his or her assistants: "next."
Argue with this essay, if you will. Krauthammer would, except I am too small for such a known pundit to bother with. Torture is another thing that I never ever would have thought that I would be writing about anywhere or at any time, in conjunction with the conduct of American Military or Intelligence Units. It is a subject of shame to me, as it should be to all Americans who consider themselves true patriots.
We are not living in a period where lies are told, and deceit committed, without discovery. No, we are living in a time where those things are done, witnessed and even re-stated, then denied....and the denial is accepted as valid. We all understand that recorded history is not entirely accurate. We know that history is often recorded by people, and in ways, that change the perspective of what really happened. Television, one might have thought, and modern video, would have changed all that. But it has not. We are 'taking back' things at an inordinate rate, as well as denying that they ever happened. Has this happened because of the influence of television? Probably not. Television just makes it easier to understand that it is happening because we can actually go back and check it out. Let's look at some recent examples:
1. A month ago a very noted columnist, named Seymour Hersch, came out and stated that he had confirmed evidence that Dick Cheney was, while V.P., the head of a domestic assassination squad who's mission was to take out people who acted as a threat to the administration for which he worked. Seymour said that there was also evidence that this squad was formed under Richard Nixon and operated under the table in every administration since. This information was noted in the New York Times and on television. The video is still available out there. A few weeks after Seymour stated this and offered to make his evidence known to defend it, he recanted. He came out and stated that what he meant to say was that there were assassination teams run by the military to take out terrorists discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan. What was he talking about and where was the evidence he discussed? Gone, as if it had never been. Seymour was not even required to statw why his original proposition was so different from what he finally stated. Then Seymour disappeared from being in front of the media, probably for some time to come. Denied. Gone. Accepted by the public.
2. Joe Biden, with respect to the supposed Swine Flu, stated that people should stay away from contained areas, like airports and airplanes. Instead of admitting that he has stated that on television, he simply denied he had said it, by using the device of "What I meant to say was..." Accepted by the public.
3. Back during fresh Post 911 days, do you recall the passport? The one that the police found, supposedly at the base of one of the towers. It purportedly belonged to one of the terrorists onboard one of the aircraft that slammed into one of the towers. The television showed us close-ups of that passport, all burned around the edges. When engineers and 'experts' a few days later stated that no paper products whatever could have survived the intensity of heat, fire and explosions from those events, the passport was denied. It was not denied that there was a passport, but it belonged to somebody else. It was too late for that. They just denied that there ever had been a passport. We all saw it. Gone. Just like that. Accepted by the public.
4. Forty-seven people saw a streak of light go up from the sea toward the jet liner that was destroyed in the air over New York. The final report stated that there was no streak. Forty-seven separate people were simply wrong. The jet-liner just blew up on its own. Denied. Gone. Never was. Accepted by the public.
5. Back a bit further, we have the Kennedy thing. We all saw the Zapruder film over and over again. It still runs through my mind. His head was hit in the front, with debris flying off the back, with his head and body rocking back. We know what happened. We saw it. You know the final report. Denied. Gone, Never happened. Accepted by the public.
6. Torture. We all know, unless our head is made of homogeneous rock, that waterboarding is not the slow dripping of water over a subjects mouth. We drown people. Then revive them. Then drown them again. Over and over, until they are beat down into almost nothing. You cannot get real data, the way the torturer's see it unless the person thinks he or she is going to die. There are no rules if you are going to kill the subject anyway. But, instead of any truth, like what some of the surviving subjects are saying and even some political people are admitting, we just get denials. Even Abu Graib, with its obvious shots, was basically denied. Is basically denied. Gone. Did not happen that way at all. Accepted by this public.
What is happening has happened before. We have all been shown the truth, and then by the television and video. We do not believe that what we see is valid, later on, if our belief system is powerful enough to overcome the facts. The facts are all there, in graphic detail, and we still deny them. We want to deny them because we are made to want to deny them. We are given a belief system to induce that denial. And it works amazingly well. We all know, for example, that there is no longer one member of Congress (House and Senate) that is not a millionaire. Obama is a multi-millionaire. So is Biden. So are the Clintons. And so are all the announcers on the news. Yes, all of them, down to the local level. The television anchor in Milwaukee makes 3.7 million a year, for God's sake! They have a vested interest, all of them, in you believing the mythical presentations they create and propagate. They are insulated and they want to make sure they keep it that way.
So, what good does knowing all this do you, as a citizen, a non-millionaire, a person with a regular job, or maybe no job right now? Am I writing this to simply give you a feeling of glum despair, or to make myself famous? Neither. I am too small to become famous, and I will remain so, even if you buy my books en masse. It takes more than that. No, I am writing this so you will reflect, watch, observe and think. You see, this whole thing spins off of you. You have just been led to believe that it does not. Your thoughts percolate through the system. Your actions have meaning, as small and hidden as you may think that they are. Talk to others. Look for kindred observers. You are not out to look for lies and deceit. I sure wasn't with respect to the Kennedy assassination or 911. I wanted to believe. i don't really know what happened in those situations but I know it is not what I have been told. You know it too. Just open your mind and watch, and think, and then talk to one another. It is so very important if we are ever to take the next step in humanity's development. We are stuck here, mired in these applied lies, stuck in a mud field of deception. We will not get out without great ambition, effort and endurance.
There is a ride at Disneyland called Pirates of the Caribbean. It is a gentle sort of roller coaster ride through some movie theme pirate sets. Cannons go off, the pirates are fake scary, and there is some good music and sound effect material. I mention the Disney ride simply to illustrate the vast gulf between real pirates and those we have been exposed to by the media, of late. The supposed Somalia pirates.
They do not exist. There are no Somalia pirates. Whatever those extortionists from that part of the world are, they are anything but pirates. You see, it just does not compute, at all. For one thing, there just is no way that some twenty-five foot skiff, powered by an old outboard motor, can overtake and claim a huge transport ship at sea. Out there, on the real ocean, the waves run pretty high, the wind is unpredictable, and the currents are ever present. The big transports do not run close in to the shore. Those skiffs we see on the television would not fare well at all out on the surface of the wide open ocean, much less be able to run at twenty or thirty knots to overtake the ships. Then, how do you, as the captain of a pirate vessel, transport your men from the skiff to the big high ship? I mean, if you can latch on to the giant metal monster, in the first place? It is all beyond improbable. So assume the obvious. The pirates are revenue gatherers and sharers. They have the crew, or other interests located wherever the ship is from, coming from or going to, already in their pocket. They take the ship without combat or loss or violence of any sort. They 'hold the crew and cargo' for ransom. They get the money and depart. Then they quietly split the cash among all the paid off sources. The crew is one of those sources.
That is the only way this new piracy can work. The only. Real pirates kill people. All over the place. Just like in the old days. The violence, not the theft, is what brought all the civilized countries in the world down on them. How do you take a ship at sea that refuses to be taken? You shoot the hell out of it, lose some of your own people, then kill the survivors because you are mad as hell at them for hurting you! That was the way it was, and that is the way it would have to be today. Without all the communication we have today, that is. Now the 'pirates' can reach out through telephonic or computer means and contact their 'victims' to negotiate a deal. It is all money shifting. Who ends up with the money, really, and who loses it? Find the answers to those questions and you will have your pirates. And, trust me, you will be really really surprised!
The captain of that vessel, by the way, the one taken a few weeks ago, just spoke to Congress. Listening to him was just great good entertainment and high humor. He supposedly, and without serious injury to himself, surrendered his shop to the pirates overwhelming force. Then, while he was still (apparently) free aboard, he offered himself up as a hostage so his crew could go free. What a crock!!! Like any self-respecting 'real' pirate is going to take that deal? Why would he? Absolutely no reason whatever. And this 'heroic' captain, he is in front of our Congress speaking about how to prevent such occurrences in the future! Here is an easy and quick partial solution: Don't hire him, or his crew!!!
The media is playing right along with the whole pirate mythology. They do not care about the truth anymore at all. They just want headlines. They want heroes, fake or otherwise. They plainly have no surviving ethical standards. That factor alone is why nobody wants to watch them or read the newspapers. The Pirates are a huge manufactured lie. The Swine Flu is a lie. Torture is a lie (oh, we did it all right, but we did real torture, not this watered down 'sleep deprivation,' 'hanky-over-the-nose' crap!). What is going to come our way over the next few weeks? We can always bring back one of those, and maybe improve on one of them, here and there. More likely, however, we will have some more giant lies to merely replace those.
I wrote of 'Dark Matter' and the Uncertainty Principal last week. I am working away toward discussing the real problem about all of this. If everything is fake, then nothing is real. If the roof is fake, then making believe you are not wet when it rains is absolutely required. If the food is fake, then you must work very hard to believe that you are full, and not hungry. If the heating is fake, then you must find a way to think that you are not cold. Or not. You can look up and see there is no roof. You can check your waistline and tell that you are emaciated. You can check around and note the frost covering everything about you. If you do those things, and only if you do those things, can you get to a point where you take action. If some external source, or group of sources, is constantly selling you on the idea that those fake things are real, and you are believing that, then it is very very hard to take any action.
We are being sold a package, about life itself, by the media we allowed, and encouraged, to be in all of our lives. We have to start paying attention to what we can truly perceive for ourselves. We must stop listening, reading and looking at that tube and believing. We have to find a way to get back to reality. Only then can we take rational action to do anything about anything. Our roads and bridges are crumbling. Our space program is a tottering disaster of a fake. Our airlines are barely airlines at all anymore. Our car industry is in shambles. Our factories are broken down and closing, those that are left. You know these things to be true. You drive the roads and bridges. You see the factories, or the shells they once occupied. You ride on the cramped crummy airplanes. Do you see that? Our culture has lost its feelings of bliss and hope. Do you feel that? We have become a nation of depressed souls living off pyschotropic drugs and sleep medications. Do you understand that?
We are at the point where we have come to understand that what we are being presented, almost everywhere, is fake and phony. But we do not yet see the truth. We are in the Twilight Zone, caught between those two things. We are depressed, and have lost hope, because we cannot understand what to do about any of it. Yet.
My daughter lost job at the end of the year....the Company lost its contract to Aetna...WA employees health provider..
7 1/2 years she as commuted in all weather about 30 Freeway miles. During which time she had a child and drops him off to day care then drives to work....
No fault of her own...her Christmas Present this year is ...no job Dec 31st.
250 employees, mostly women,....affected.
She just this minute sent a text message. ....Yep, Aetna signed.
The owner of the house I live in....the 2 floors on the only hospital in the county...no longer will have that service...May 1 he was out of work after over 7 years...no fault of his own....
When will the true numbers of the ....Financial Flu....be counted. 2 other people have died...stress, and bad decisions....after job loss in the town....WWIII ....Financial War.
My daughters Mother's Day is going to be sad...and a sadder Christmas....V.
