The GREATEST Threat to AMERICA

I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts on the last debate, or, as we call them here in the South…  the last Dee-Bate.  Like most of you, I’m sure, I was absolutely sickened by the rudeness directed toward poor Mr. Romney by “Obama”.  Where did that come from?  Where did he get the idea that he could say insulting things and get away with it?  It was just so unfair and, if you will excuse me… so Un-American and Un-Presidential to say, or even imply that someone of Mr. Romney’s stature and reputation could, or, would be anything less than honest.  I think it must be a Democrat thing because you never hear Republicans insulting people they disagree with.  Not even that lying, America hating, Communist, TelePrompTer reading, “Community Organizing, Muslim monkey-faced Black B@$!@RD who wants to take away our guns and institute Shirea Law.  You know…. The Kenyan.

But I digress.

The question was asked……  “What is the greatest threat to America?”

The answers given by the candidates were dead wrong.  They blathered on about the economy, China, nuclear weapons and other such nonsense because neither one of them dared to touch the third rail and brand themselves as traitors by telling the truth.  Neither one of them could, or would, dare to break the unwritten, but, most powerful and strictly enforced law of this land.  None would mess with the ultimate TABOO.

What I’m talking about, the greatest REAL threat to America, is our TOTAL inability to self reflect, self criticize and correct our shortcomings.  Even suggesting that America isn’t the best at anything and everything is considered treason and an admission that you hate America.  As a direct result of this ridiculously misplaced national narcissism we are blind, as a culture, to what the rest of the world can clearly see.  Given the choice between knowledge that is uncomfortable and ignorance that will eventually prove deadly we choose ignorance every time.  Rather than recognize that something is broken we choose to procrastinate and pretend that it isn’t.  We fix NOTHING and watch everything get worse because to admit that anything in America isn’t already the best that it can be is, as I stated above, treason.  We have become shameless.   So, we are fucked.

So what’s the greatest threat to America and the American way of life?

Americans….  and the American way of life.

(You may enjoy this)     http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/

Ghost Shirts (again?)

As usual the truth, or, reality if you prefer, turns out to be far more strange than anything you can make up in the way of fiction.

Anyone who reads this blog, or, knows me either personally, or, professionally understands how taken I am with attempting to understand what it means to be human.   How fascinated I am with the little “reality creation” projects that make up such a huge and vitally important part of our existence.   What you see pictured above are Mormon Temple Garments, known to us non-Mormons as “Magic Underpants”.  They are believed, by Mormons, to provide the wearer with spiritual protection and tales are told of Mormons who credit their temple garments with helping them survive car wrecks, fires, and natural disasters.  I have it on the highest authority that Mitt Romney would consider himself naked without them.

Now, here is what tickles the heck out of me this morning.   By the 1890s what was left of the Native American population was on its last leg.  The good Christian descendants of the God Fearing explorers who had lied, murdered and raped their way from coast to coast were about to finish, in the name of Jesus, the genocide begun moments after the first “decent white folks” laid eyes on the rich and so poorly defended real estate we know today as America.  As far as the Native Americans were concerned the writing was on the Tee-Pee and the jig was up.  Their way of life was over and they did what humans do when they realize their way of life is over.  They turned to magic!

A magical religious movement (excuse me for being redundant) arose among what was left of the Native American Tribes. Those who joined this movement were encouraged to believe that through magic and dancing the white man could be made to simply “go away” and that his bullets could be rendered harmless if warriors placed upon themselves magically protective “Ghost Shirts” and rode boldly into battle.  They were known as “Ghost Dancers”.   I bet I don’t have to tell you how well that turned out.

Here is the really funny part.  Can you guess where the Native Americans could possibly have gotten the crazy idea that magic clothing could protect them from harm?

You guessed it and historians and anthropologists specializing in that time period and location point almost unanimously to……. Mormon Magic Underpants!

So, where are we today?  The lies, murder and rape of the planet has continued and there is no end in sight to the damage more time will bring.  Whole nations, cultures and peoples now stand where the Native Americans once stood and like they did they long for someone, some power, to bring back the good times and the security and the power they once enjoyed.   Do they face this calamity with logic?  Do they say to themselves, “We are all in this together and, together, we can make a better and more equitable world”?

FUCK NO!

They choose to follow a man who wears magic fucking underpants and tells them stories of a magical future where lowering taxes produces more revenue and cutting spending on education produces more jobs.  I wondrous future where eliminating birth control produces less unwanted babies instead of more.  A magical land where we will ALL be rich if we can all just learn to blame the poor for anything that goes wrong….. And the minorities….. And the Chinese…… And the blacks…..  And the Government regulations…..

What’s left of that tribe once known as “The Middle Class” will soon learn what the Native Americans did.  Life on the Reservation ain’t all the Great White Father in Washington promised it would be.

Oh, and there ain’t know such thing as magic.

Embarrassing Moments

I’m having one of those long, drawn out, embarrassing moments again.  Episode is probably a better word for it and even that doesn’t convey accurately what I am feeling because deep in my gut I know that this isn’t really going to end.  I will have times of diversion and there will be times when my mind is so occupied with other things that I will temporarily forget where I am and, more importantly, what I am.  I’m human and I’m an American.  Today I can’t forget either.  I understand that as a red blooded American I should be feeling “Exceptional”.   I DO!

Children are our future.

Unfortunately, the only thing exceptional I feel is exceptionally embarrassed.   That’s the whole damn problem with self awareness.   You can’t hide everything from yourself all the time.  A lot of the time you can, but, not all the time.

I watched the debate last night between the Kenyan and the White guy with the “Magic Underpants”.  To be more accurate I should say I watched a little of the debate and then went to bed.  There were so many things about it that I just couldn’t stand.  One of them was the people in the audience, who provided the questions.  People who just couldn’t quite make up their mind yet.  So, after being bombarded with information 24/7 and exposed relentlessly to the enormous philosophical differences between these two characters….. what kind of a mental midget says… “Jeepers, I just can’t decide.”?  I’ll tell you what kind.  The kind I don’t waste my time listening to.

So, I went to bed with a book and learned that there are approximately 50,000 nuclear bombs in the world and that if just 1% of them were set off it would probably render this earth of ours uninhabitable for humans.  So you have to ask yourself, where the hell did we get the idea that humans are “intelligent creatures”?  When you are done with that beauty ask yourself how the Bozos debating last night ever came to the conclusion that an economy…. ANY ECONOMY…. dealing with the finite resources of a closed system planet with a rapidly growing population could continue to GROW FOREVER?

I stopped to get a cup of coffee this morning and the young lady behind the counter called me Sugar.  They do that down South all the time.  Call you Sugar, or, Honey Bunch, or, some other equally cute name, but, that’s not the point.  The point is she had holes in her earlobes about an inch across that were kept open by short lengths of white PVC pipe that had been cut to fit, probably by her boyfriend.  Personally I think it detracted from the spider & spider web tattoo on her neck.  As I turned away she sold a hard pack of Marlboro Reds to the next Sugar in line.

I remembered the National Geographic magazines that used to have pictures of natives with bones in their noses and big plates in their lips and I thought….. soon.

I seem to remember a man once walked on the moon.  It was an American kind of man.  Dang, you would never know it to look at us now.

Rude, Crude & Socially Unattractive

“No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.”  [Paul Gallico]

So, what is the difference between calculated rudeness and abuse?  Is it the “calculated” part that separates the “studied insult” from simple abusive language?  Can abusive language directed toward an adversary be transformed into not only a socially acceptable form of communication, but, a potent weapon?

I think the answer to the last question is a resounding yes!  I have long marveled at the ability of those highly skilled in the art of the “studied insult” to accomplish with humor what can never as effectively be accomplished with debate, or, simple conversation.  I believe it is a form of art that has a very long history in the person of Court Jesters and comedians.  When deflating the Big Shot is what is called for I do not believe there is a more powerful means than laughter.  I do not think anything strikes more fear into the heart of the powerful than the prospect of being laughed at.

So, what stops us from seeing a whole lot more of this… this “studied insult”, this “calculated rudeness”?  Why is it we, as a culture, find this business perfectly acceptable on “Comedy Central”, “The Daily Show” and other designated venues for comedy, but, not in our daily lives, or, political debates such as that ridiculous bit of nonsense that took place in Denver last week?  If it is such a powerful tool for deflating the overly pompous why is its use limited to venues that are designated as “non-serious”… all in fun….. or, not to be taken too seriously?

I guess what I am trying to ascertain is why, in American political life, the use of the “studied insult” and “calculated rudeness” are to debate & discourse what nuclear weapons are to warfare.  Even if we possess them… we dare not use them… AS POLITICIANS.  Comedians can use them.  It’s funny when comedians do.  It’s sometimes devastating when skilled comedians do and everybody I know enjoys it.  But NEVER directly into the face of the politician (or, person) being made to look foolish.   THAT is considered rude, crude and socially unattractive.

I often wonder who made up that rule.  I bet it was the powerful.  I bet I know why and I bet you do too.

I think it is a foolish rule and I would like to see it fall by the wayside in the interest of HONESTY!

Lets face it folks…. “If” politicians can lie through their ass every time they open their mouths in a debate SOMETHING more powerful is necessary to counteract the power of the lie.  That “something” is the artful application of calculated rudeness.

THIS is the kind of technique President Obama should be boning up on for the next debate.  Here is the work of an expert.

Happy?

What is man but the animal who steadfastly refuses to believe he is an animal?

I read with interest the other day that both “postpartum depression” and the “Mid-Life Crises” are psychological conditions that only exist in modern “Western” cultures.  Can you imagine my surprise?  All along I assumed, as I was informed by our health care professionals and their allies down at the pharmaceutical research laboratories, that they both were simply one more example of that seemingly ubiquitous condition commonly known as “a chemical imbalance”.

The picture you see above is, if we are to be honest with each other, the TRUE depiction of what it means to be an American.  The Great Seal of The United States of America badly needs updating.  It is wildly inaccurate.

Capitalism and Consumer Culture have not increased human happiness.  There, I have said it.  What we are left to determine is not what we want, but, what we “are”.  What we want is determined and taught to us by culture and, as we all should understand, culture is the pack of lies we, collectively, agree to pretend are truths.  What we are… are animals.

Wilhelm Reich astutely observed that “all human belief has essentially the same message, namely that we are something other than animals”.  That helps us understand what Ernest Becker said in The Denial of Death:  “No mistake- the turd is mankind’s greatest threat.”

…”Our beliefs attempt to distort the apparent truth, which is that nothing makes sense, nothing rhymes, and that we are all rushing toward the the soon to be forgotten compost heap.”…

So, what can I offer you?  How can I help the unhappy toward greater happiness?  In truth…. nothing.  My life makes no more sense and is of no more value or consequence than yours, or, the next guys.  But, I can give you this to contemplate.  The following is an excerpt from the journal  of one Captain James Cook, written in 1770, upon his first meeting with the local inhabitants of a primitive land that would come to be known as Australia.

…”They appear to be in reality far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them.  They live in tranquillity which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition; the Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not magnificent houses, household-stuff etc., they live in a warm and fine climate and enjoy a very wholesome air, so that they have very little need of clothing….. In short they seem to set no value upon anything we gave them….

“There were several early accounts of the Natives themselves who were baffled by the obvious unhappiness of the European arrivals.  They did not dance, sing, or celebrate.  They laughed very little unless they were intoxicated.  They had no magic.  No miracles.  The Australian Aborigines, who lacked any signs of pathological anxiety when they were first encountered, were struck by the perpetual agitation of the Europeans, their dumbness about the happiness contained in nature.”  (from, “In Search of Happiness” understanding an endangered state of mind)

We were never cast out of any Eden.  We were just tricked into believing there was something better.  We “made up” all that apple & snake bullshit just to cover up the fact that we, of our own free will, chose to be such greedy assholes.