It's a Wonderful Lie

Christmas seems to bring out the worst in Americans, particularly the ones who still think "hippies" are burning flags to protest a war that most Americans don't remember.  You know, those Bully Boys who walk around with a chip on their shoulders daring you to say anything that allows them to pick a fight with the "politically correct" or those who have read history.

This thing has been making the rounds today and judging by the comments, not too many people realize that the "founding Fathers" version of that propaganda aimed at school children was written in 1892, not 1776.  When Eisenhower was pressured by godmongers to change it in 1954, during the height of the cold war, it wasn't mentioned that it had been written by a Socialist -- surprising in an era where that other relic, inseparable from the holiday, It's a Wonderful Life was seen as containing secret Communist messages to corrupt the young mind and was investigated by HUAC. After all it does criticize the Sacred Banks and other institutions of Capitalist  greed.  The original pledge called it "My" flag after all, suggesting that it belongs to all of us, not just to some Armed Patriot's Sovereign Citizen Christian Militia of God, Guns and Guts.

Am I suggesting that these penis-waving patriots are possessed of disordered personalities as well as a fair amount of ignorance and dishonesty? Well yes I am, thank you very much and thanks to them for another Fuck You Christmas.

I suppose the dark days of the late 1940's and the 1950's are that

great golden age these Trumpish idiots would return to: forgetting all the while about those 90% marginal tax brackets and dramatically higher poverty levels.  The middle class was doing pretty well after all with all that commie stuff like a 5 day work week -- and Socialist Security didn't bankrupt the wealthy after all. With all the bitching and moaning at the time, we still remember it as a wonderful life with the same hubris we talk about Christmas as a time of peace while making it into a Jesus Jihad against Liberals, atheists and Mooslims who once had the audacity to see the sacred flag and this sacred soil as theirs.

Yes, Christmas, that Holiday Christians have denounced and promoted in equal measure since the Romans invented it is nothing but a billboard, a soap box on which meanness, anger, aggression and greed are proclaimed throughout the land. To say Merry Christmas has become too much like that debauched and sordid "pledge" wherein the oppressed abused, exploited and downtrodden are forced to acknowledged the gods of greed and to pretend that the USA is a place of "liberty and justice for all."  It's a wonderful lie, once again.

SEAsons Greetings from (O)CT(O)PUS

No well-wishers left behind:

Rocky

Shaw

Captain Fog

Rational Nation

Jono

Flying Junior

okjimm

The Anger Games

"Like all of you, I'm angry"

That's a bit presumptuous actually, but of course Carly was speaking to Republicans, and they've been the party of recreational anger for quite a while.  I listen to Republicans all the time and can see how much they enjoy Obama bashing and displaying the anger that makes them feel relevant: anger which only requires a tiny bit of processed information to justify it and some little and dubious story to draw attention away from an ocean of enormities.

At a Christmas party on Saturday night, someone told me that because of the way that Obama was prosecuting "whistle blowers" we were becoming just like Putin's Russia.  "Are we talking about Snowden?" I asked and she nodded.  Puzzling, of course since  Putin's Russia is sheltering him and the Republicans as I recall saw the man as a traitor, but I can't speak for them when they can't get their own stories straight in the first place.

They get the anger straight though, even if it's as crooked as their policies and based on fiction. Anger is the bait. Anger is the chum they cast overboard to attract the fish and that sort of fishing has been going on forever, stirring up the rabble and intellectual refuse as well as the rich and greedy. Every demagogue and tyrant and every oppressor has mastered it.  Victims are very easy to control and so many are willing to see themselves as victims and willing to see the scapegoats provided as targets of hate and outrage.

Of course there's humor in these "debates" since they are anything but.  There's humor in these assemblages of the least qualified-for-office actors one could possible find outside of prison. There's even some fulsome humor in the way the media pay attention to them as though there were anything respectable in the enterprise, angry people being the sort of people who watch their endless harangues.

But no, I resist playing the anger games.  I try to remember that the best revenge is in the ballot box and that having 30% of  the support of  a minority party is not terribly threatening.  Matching Trump or Cruz or  Rubio against  even  Berrnie Sanders can't make them feel too confident.  If it did, their tactics would be more rational and less racist.  They have only the angry mob while we have the votes if we will stop fighting with ourselves over terminology and doctrine and a host of matters that seem rather small when viewed alongside the potential horror of another Republican madman in office.

Stop Intrusive Internet Advertising: Boycott!

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Has anyone noticed an invasion of intrusive advertising taking over Cyberspace?  Some pop-up ads have held my browser captive and literally took over my computer.

At the Huffington Post, an Ebay advertisement blackened my computer screen and held my browser captive for eight seconds.  No big deal, you say?  Not on my computer, not in my home -- if you value your life!

If you click on videotaped reports at the CNN website, you will be forced to watch a 30 second commercial.  Canceling the commercial message returns you to the headline menu: If you are unwilling to endure the message, no news report.  

At the weblog of our friend and colleague, Rational Nation, a message from the Advertising Council disabled the comment function.  Even after several attempts, I was forced to give up.

In many instances, advertisers have made Internet sites inaccessible and useless.

For my part, I intend to boycott those advertisers that encroach upon freedoms I formerly took for granted.  I will boycott Ebay, boycott CNN, boycott the Advertising Council, and boycott any web site that capriciously mistreats its readers.   

Send the f*ckers a message.  May the BACKLASH begin!

LET'S GO VIRAL!

For Bart, 1944 - 1995

Café de Flore, and reading Kerouac for the first time ever and lingering over coffee and the heat is building because it's late morning and it’s August -- and because we're young and reading Kerouac, it's time to leave like everyone else. Flogging the Fiat down to Juan-les-Pins, and we do it non-stop except for coffee and gasoline in stations where you're invited to Mettez un Tigre dans votre Moteur as though it would help.  Cars and dust and white cups at metal tables.

Arid August hills and distant ruins,

winding roads descend

in complicated turns

Driving too fast for the car,

we skitter,

revving a bit too high

and suddenly

in the V of the hills 

a blue-white glimpse of sea

and the road screamed YES

as we came down.

And all those mornings. My sandals and my woven mat; coffee in a bathing suit and all those Paris girls down for the summer.

Night of the Living Jesus

It's been interesting to observe the progress of  Zombies in popular culture in America, from the brain damaged product of some Voodoo poisoner to the brain eating corpse from Night of the Living Dead to the complex creatures with many characteristics and features we see in The Walking Dead.  There are versions of course, but  the Zombie of Hollywood fame has evolved.  We know you have to shoot one in the head, that Zombies don't climb, that they transmit the condition by biting their victims, that they don't die even if they don't eat and if they rot away to almost nothing. Those beliefs have been added in the last half century, but like the things that stick to folk heroes and mythological creatures over the centuries, we see them as always having been the way they are now.

It's sort of the same with Jesus.  History tells us nothing about him, Nobody who ever saw him wrote a word about it.  What we get from the selected texts is contradictory and loaded with bits of earlier myths, but the Jesus today: the personal investment adviser/Lord of the Universe has become very complex and diverse, with every generation, each age adding or removing features and characteristics.  We even know just what he looks like.  He looks a lot like Albrecht Duerer in fact and that's a lot different from images found in early churches.  But human creations, passed from generation to generation evolve much as Darwin suggested that living things evolve.

So why not a Zombie Jesus?  Nothing is more mutable than that which never existed outside of fiction and myth, yet nothing is subject to more Denialism, rage and aggression when change is proposed.  Just ask the Dixons of Cincinati, Ohio who set up a Zombie Nativity scene on their front lawn, thereby raising Holy Hell.

But where's the beef?  Isn't Jesus risen from the dead?  Isn't he still around?  Well one thing never evolves and that's eternal self -righteousness and humorless zealotry.  The idea that religious tolerance means protection from insult adds a bit of  sweetness to this confection, coming as it does from a religion famous for defaming and persecuting any and all other religions and even variations of the same one.  All beliefs, all religions deserve equal protection under the law -- and praise be: a tax exemption.


The Dixons are getting resistance from Zoning boards and neighbors who know just how and where Jesus was born and to whom and what he looked like.  They know all about his parents and their sex life and everything they know is the accretion of thousands of years of speculation and unwarranted assertion - and of course invention.  Look, it's a free country and no matter how much you hate the idea,  Zombie Jesus is risen. He lives forever. He gives eternal life and destroys sinners when he brings the apocalypse, and like religion in general he eats your brain.  It's been foretold and the Church of Jesus Christ, Zombie is here to take your donations.

Hark, the Trump of God Doth Sound.

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End Times

These are the end times our Christian friends have been warning us about and all the signs are here -- including this one.  War, Famine, Pestilence and Death have been with us as long as men have been men, but the long feared, long awaited fifth horseman is galloping toward us with flying hooves: Immigrants!   

You'll note that the building houses a church that caters to Hispanics, mostly Guatemalan and Mexican. It's undoubtedly where they meet on a Sunday and plot their rapes and drug deals: plot to spread disease and to steal our lawn mowing and dish washing jobs.   Only Trump can stop them. Only Trump can stop the Infidel from blowing us up and the Atheist from doubting the most ridiculous story ever told.  Only Trump can make us great again.  Only Trump can explain just when that was and why it was we were so great, because when I look at our past it looks angry, superstitious, intrusive, bigoted, racist, militaristic, amoral, violent and wanting to expel people like Trump's ancestors and mine, with their funny names and strange languages.

Vote Trump -- for the way we were.

How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death

Scarcely a day after the San Bernardino massacre, many questions remain unanswered. Thus far,  among the 14 dead and 21 injured were clients with developmental disabilities -- helplessly handicapped -- and their caregivers. What else do we know?

According to reports, there was a heated exchange at the social services center. A man stormed angrily from a meeting room. He returned later with an accomplice. Together, they aimed for maximum body count in the shortest possible time.

The shooters were a man and wife armed with assault rifles, handguns, tactical gear, and high capacity ammunition magazines. Hardly a spontaneous act, these superficial details suggest advance planning and preparation. 

Was the massacre a work-related revenge killing, an act of terrorism, or a hybrid of motives and methods as yet unknown?

Yesterday, our news media reported unsubstantiated rumors with headlined hearsay and mindless blather. Tomorrow, no doubt, reactionary voices will jump to conclusions with reflexive blame, opportunistic pandering, and ritual scapegoating.

No doubt, the NRA will place “good guys with a gun” on a pedestal alongside Buffalo Bill’s Defunct -- American idols of anachronism, snake oil, and sleaze.  Once again, the NRA will blame victims for failing to defend themselves. Rehearsed rhetoric from recycled scripts will condemn victims to silence -- shades of Aurora, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Roseburg, Tucson, and Virginia Tech.

All of which makes me madder than hell. No longer will I accept carnage as currency in exchange for unfettered gun rights. No longer should we tolerate errors of mystification that lead to an overwhelming conclusion: Nothing can be done.

Those who perpetuate the madness -- the NRA, the gun lobby, 'open carry' extremists, and politicians of every stripe on the NRA payroll -- have blood on their hands.  From this day forward, let us treat them as enablers, collaborators, and co-conspirators.  Never again should we accept partisan deadlock and Congressional gridlock as an excuse for protecting this American death cult.

14 Dead in San Bernardino

And so they were Muslims.  Every time I read of some crime in the papers, I hope the perpetrator isn't Jewish.  When I see some bad behavior on the road by a motorcyclist, I cringe. Humans habitually make generalizations and form prejudices that get applied to me and I know there are millions of Muslim Americans feeling sick to their stomachs this morning.

There is fear of reprisal as our Republican leaders in waiting talk about rounding them up, tagging them, watching them, spying on them -- and we are probably doing some of that already.  One Republican leader talks of killing terrorist's families  while his followers nod together in agreement like turbaned viziers in some Arabian night.  One can almost hear the bedrock cracking, the foundations of civil liberty splitting apart under the mortar fracking rhetoric.

Those fourteen dead are not the only victims.  Our silly and arrogant claim to be the "leader of the free world" is shot full of holes too and for good reason.  I got emails yesterday challenging me to prove that Obama isn't a Muslim and listing damning bits of evidence such as not visiting France after their latest terrorist attack.  I'm sure that in his mind the president is smiling over this incident while plotting more of the same.  I should mention he's a retired Air Force Intelligence officer. People believe this garbage with the same unquestioning faith they have in their sacred books and imaginary gods.

Strange to say, amidst the predictable litany of calls for unidentified gun control the only concrete idea I hear this morning comes from our duly elected president.  What about making gun and explosives purchases by those on no-fly lists illegal?  Indeed, why not?  Neither Obama nor the mayor of San Bernardino thinks it will stop the war now going on but it might help and it will be no inconvenience to gun owners like me.  It won't likely happen though because of the fear of the NRA in Congress.  Sure, round them up, make them wear scarlet letters or yellow stars or pointed caps, but let them buy guns because any gun law is a blow to freedom.  It won't happen because Obama is a Muslim and because Democrats are gun grabbers.

When next I travel abroad, I may speak only German.  As I said people make generalizations. . .