Me No Speaky...

Tweets, Twits, Birds, and Democracy

Back in the recent dark days when Lies, Blood Lust, and the Iraq Apocalypse curdled America's soul, I would tell myself  “The birds know not the name George Bush, so why need I?”

Today new and old politicians tweet their daily 140 radioactive characters into the skies, to be bounced back by satellite.

Can this be the true face of Democracy? Are we all twits? Has it always been such, and only now have we the technology to divine our true image?

Pandora's Box and American Dictatorship

I understand today’s frustration with politics, but we should have waited another 4 years. The winds of change were evident in this campaign, and the next election (had we waited) would have consolidated a new direction that would have preserved our Democracy. Instead we have opened Pandora’s box and a road to Dictatorship.

It seems clear where we are headed. Yesterday Trump fired the Attorney General. Of course Nixon did that but ultimately he resigned rather than be impeached. Does anyone imagine today’s Republicans would ever, no matter the offence, impeach and convict? What would be left of their party? Just most of the top 20%, the Republican Establishment, and a seething rebellion of less-privileged Republicans who know or care little about our Constitution or history.

And does anyone imagine that Trump that will not transgress and trample more than a couple of our most fundamental constitutional constraints and guarantees?

That said, I will always blame Democrats for having lost the white religious and under-privileged classes over the course of many, many years. And of course, most of all, the Republican establishment.

Suppose in a Couple or Few Years…

Our nation now faces a crossroad years in the making. Suppose in a couple or few years… just suppose (as some fear) that President Trump ultimately ignores fundamental and critical Constitutional protocol. Then either Republicans must join Democrats to impeach and convict, or more likely will refuse to convict, in which case we will have a de facto dictatorship, perhaps even supported by a majority. This worst case scenario seems most likely, and that likelihood will swell if the political climate degenerates.


After all, President Trump’s fervent supporters have felt (with good reason) betrayed by politics for years. Then we have an election, and that election isn't respected, or so many will feel given the unprecedented protests that began even before the inauguration. Not rational, maybe, but think human nature: Everyone now knows that vast swaths of the electorate on both sides are entirely irrational.

So political action must be palatable. Rather than demonizing President Trump’s many earnest supporters, it is vitally important that Democrats strive to cultivate a climate of understanding and respect. Protest has its place, but argumentation generally accomplishes nothing, and venting just exacerbates and polarizes.

The stakes are too high now for that kind of indulgence. We are all in this together, there is no escape, it is our country.

Reflecting on Protest in the Sixties and in Today's Cyber-Social Milieu

Thinking about the Sixties, it’s fascinating to reflect on today’s changing times and speculate… especially about the dynamics of protest in the cyber-social milieu. And just now I had a contrarian thought. So follow me just a bit:

Back in the day, people were un-connected (we’re talking 50 years ago when the only “mobile” in telephone was you walking to a phone booth (if if you knew the number to dial)). The point being that social interaction used to be relatively fresh and exciting!



And people did get excited!!

Two Kennedy assassinations, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Vietnam, LBJ, the bloody Chicago convention, draft protests, Charles Manson, Black Panthers, Kent State killings, Nixon, Cambodia, the Weathermen bombings.... 

Kind of like now, I mean people are kind of excited, but – and this is the crux of my speculation: Four more years… Of this??? We are drowning in rage no matter the hour, it is constant and deafening, even in silent text.  So I’m thinking that before the next election, in less than four short years, 95% of us will be zombified and no one will care.

Of course I could be wrong, my wife tells me so about something every day. But it’s a serious thought. I truly wonder if the crush of cyber-social politics, with all of us literally in each other’s face day and night, might simply implode?

ME


NO


SPEAKEY


POLITALKY

You Might Be Right (but I am Righteous)

There are 325,000,000 people in America, the nation is 240 years in the making, and the unfathomable pace of technology will continue to create even more complication. So… in your face confrontation is exciting, but… I’ll let you figure it out, I really have no answers.

Still, the one thing that REALLY baffles me is how little regard so many Democrats seem to have for the under-class struggling with two part-time minimum wage jobs, pay-day loans, etc. Even now I see relatively little specific mention of these issues. I know it isn’t pusillanimity [you better look it up or you will totally misinterpret what I am saying].

And about being self-righteous... 

I certainly am, unfortunately. Probably many of us are.

Sincere apologies to anyone offended.

The Zen of the Red, White, and Blue

Politics is an insoluble problem. Human affairs will always be messy or worse, that is in the nature of our fallen world. But people exaggerate their ability to create change relative to the magnitude of the problems, generating much futile anger and unhappiness, making the world more sad and even ugly.

Our political system is terribly flawed, but we do have periodic elections and opportunities to rectify the most serious problems. That is more than most political systems have ever offered.

And that is enough for me. The 2016 election is past, a new President will be inaugurated, and I will move on.

Some well-meaning friends might be disappointed, and perhaps we really do need some conscientious activists year-round. But never forget:

Action always creates reaction, and unwitting activists can (and often do) create per reaction more harm than good, weakening their own objectives.

In the meantime

Look for the Light
and

Smile on your Brother

be his thinking

(or yours)

Right or Wrong

Out beyond ideas of right and wrong doing, there is a field. I will meet you there ...

(quote by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian Muslim poet and Sufi mystic)

The American Way

FIGHT HARD

Go All Out

it’s the American way

but we are a young and foolish nation

older traditions are wiser

Jesus, Buddha

Better to fight soft

Be more sensitive

More tolerant

Less absolute

March Not

To the Bugle Fife and Drums

Nor Rintrah’s Rage

Rather Listen

for the sacred music

we all share

However enlightened we believe ourselves to be

However deplorable we believe they are

WE ALL ARE WRONG

in so many
fine and nuanced
ways

MIDNIGHT AND MOURNING IN AMERICA

I voted yesterday. Terrible choices, but ultimately I could not vote for Trump because: 

(1) The post-midnight tweets about a beauty contestant demonstrate an utter lack of seriousness. Really - with so much at stake, what fills this man’s mind???

(2) Trump’s fixation on jailing Hillary [as much as I dislike her] is entirely un-American, and suggests a Stalin-like Gulag mentality, not to mention his oft-repeated praise for Putin.

(3) Trump has created a cynical and nihilistic new mode of politics where the idea is to always make 3 contradictory statements, knowing his emotional followers will cling to the version they want to remember, without regard to the contradictions. That way he can always rebut a critic by pulling out the ‘right’ card, however false the reality.

 (4) Trump has consistently demonstrated the temperament of a spoiled child, or at best a very immature adolescent. Such a man cannot possibly govern, and his out-size failures will cause far more harm than we can now imagine.

(5) He has no respect whatsoever for people; rather, he goes far out of his way to gratuitously mock and demean anyone within sight. Our 300 million+ people are not one bully’s playground, and we need a president who knows this.

(6) Really, I blame the Democrats. Hillary has learned nothing in the past 24 years, yet the party coronated her without any debate except from a lone socialist who almost beat her!

(7) Still, Trump is the most unacceptable candidate America has ever seen. Better luck next time.

And finally, do you imagine I voted for Hillary, Bernie, or someone else? May you ever wonder! But harbor no such question about Trump – he would have to water-board me for that vote, and I have no doubt he would like to!


Post-election results note:

I am and have been conflicted throughout. The working  class has been exploited and abused for 36 years (since Reagan), and demonized in this election. The social fabric will (I hope) improve now that they believe they have a champion, and in any case will be more civil than if left alone with their trumped-up and understandable frustrations and hatreds.

Yet I must expect that Trump's many and deep flaws will damn the nation just as 
much, with one critical difference:

Were Hillary elected the strife would continue, but maybe not forever - the right leader might ultimately appear... though I expect the damage Trump will do might make for a hard recovery.

Cyber-Politics: A World Where Everyone Knows Everything (but nothing is true)

Publisher: Faux Books

This is my satiric metaphor of the 2016 US election campaign and the alternate reality it has spawned.

The “publisher” Faux Books [faux meaning “fake”] is surely the largest in the world! Everything you hear or read these days is either a lie or is hyped to such a degree that the only truth is that everything is fake (including this "book") !

Then note the spelling of “Demockracy” on the cover page. Indeed, what a mockery of democracy our nation has become.

The term “Cyberclops” is my take-off on the Cyclops that devoured Odysseus’ men in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, now re-imagined as “Cyberclops” devouring our present--day consciousness.

Finally, there is the forward by Dr. Armand G. Eddon, a fictitious name suggesting the Armageddon at hand if we persist in such folly.

So in one sense this really is a book… One page long and pregnant with more truth than a 100 US Senators, 435 Representatives, and the babbling millions who know everything that is not true!

NERO’S FIDDLE

Hark! I hear Music and Song…

Hark the herald Angels sing of Death!

As the Galilean weeps and turns his cheek

Forsaken again and again

It is Nero’s Fiddle!

Bittersweet Karma…

As History repeats

While hordes run amok

And grandeur that was

Is once again grand no more

“Vengeance is Mine” sayeth the American Jesus!

“Vengeance is Mine” sayeth ISIS!

Shock and Awe!

They hate us because we are we

Shock and Awe!

We hate them because they are them

Muslims Blacks the Poor the Rich

the Them

O say, can you see

By the white heat of hate and the rockets’ red glare

The twilight tomb of our nation?

Our Karma

Truth crucified

Un-resurrected

Radioactive lies

Rotting in the maw of History’s stench

Nourishing but Jackals and Hyenas preying on toxic remains

Again and again and again…

Nero’s Fiddle

Our Karma

Stephen Rowe, July 8, 2016

DeMockracy

The “DeMockracy” playing card is a multi-level commentary on:

(1) Donald Trump's constant mockeries of others.

(2) Trump’s mockery of Democracy itself.

 (3) His propensity and ability to control discourse per mockery rather than reason. Linguistically and literally, “mockracy” would mean “rule or governance by mockery.”

 (4) The Joker graphic suggests that he and/or his believers are fools.

(5) But the card itself is generic; the dynamic can be often observed sans Trump.

How might this play out should Trump win the presidency? Suppose he is ultimately impeached and convicted of high crimes, but refuses to step down. Will the military, which is sworn to uphold the Constitution, remove him?

A pretty ugly and dangerous scenario, but that might be our Karma.

The graphic can be downloaded from my Google drive by clicking here.

Of the Free and the Brave

Most Americans are far better off in almost every regard than most of the world’s population. Still, there is plenty of room in this big country for improvement, albeit the political path is unclear, to say the least.

My view is that political discourse is currently so partisan, so corrupt, and so poisonous that no light will come from those channels in the foreseeable future. So what to do in the mean time?

I believe that if fundamental facts pertaining to the past and present were to be presented in as unbiased a context as possible, without reference to parties, politicos, legislation, current events, etc (and without spite, scorn, venom, etc),  then many people now at odds might in time find considerable common ground.

The fundamental facts I have in mind will surprise many, as they conflict with national myths which have prevailed for a hundred, even two hundred years or more; myths shaped by establishment perspectives and establishment histories, which ignore or seriously discount the real experience of this great nation’s people.

The discrepancies between our myths and realities are often quite surprising, and their consequences – political, economic, and human - profound. Fortunately, antidotes (that is, truth) can be found in two excellent books:

·         A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present, by Howard Zinn

·         The Price of Inequality, by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz

For example, consider these facts: 

Looking at children born to the bottom 20% rank, relatively … 

68% more Americans stay in the bottom rank than in Denmark

40% more Americans stay in the bottom rank than in the UK (England)

75% fewer Americans rise to the top 20% rank than in Denmark

50% fewer Americans rise to the top 20% rank than in the UK (England)  

Astonishing, isn’t it? So sacred our myth of opportunity, yet stodgy England herself, still with a Queen, engenders more upward mobility than her rebellious offshoot!

Now consider the national economic (not to mention human) loss when so many are held back from their potential. And don’t imagine this dynamic holds only for the bottom 20%; upward mobility in America is constrained throughout all ranks (except the highest, where there is no higher rank).

Finally, consider the myth’s impact on political action: Instead of seriously addressing causes, those satisfied with the status quo can simply coast on the backs of your children. More fundamentally, who will even look for causes if they believe we already offer more opportunity than any other nation on earth?

I believe a national, sustained, ten-year effort in benign, non-political “truthing” is necessary:

·         Just discover and present the fundamental facts without mentioning parties, office-holders, candidates, legislation, current events, etc.

·         Without spite, scorn, venom, etc.

·         Seeking no political advantage or “points.”

Nothing else is digestible! (If you don’t believe this, just try to count the number of minds you have changed since the last election.)

And let these two books guide you, at least at first. Then if you want to go farther, more power to you.

Frankly, I am sorry to confess I have neither the energy or will to go much farther than these couple blog pages. I am exhausted by politics, world affairs, etc, but exhausted especially by writing. And I believe it is futile. You, your children, our children, the people will be devoured by the global elite. They are singularly focused, organized, ruthless, and now corporations are people who can win even more profit by voting in the only curren$y that counts with legislators.

But if you want to change the world, I hope you might find at least some wisdom in the above.

And if this makes sense to you, I hope you will share this brief blog with others. 

“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, painted between 1819 and 1823. The Greek Titan Cronus (“Saturn” in Rome), fearing that he would be overthrown by his children, ate each one upon their birth.

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)