Maybe Lemmy's Right

 

It's so hard not to get discouraged when every four years we find ourselves voting for the lesser of two evils.

Walls

 

"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." ~Leviticus 19: 33-34

You have to do some fancy footwork to make that mean "Build a wall to keep those filthy drug-addicted disease-ridden foreigners out."

But I've seen pictures of Donald Trump holding a bible (albeit upside-down) and Joe Biden makes a point of going to mass every Sunday, so I guess there's a way. 

If Barack Obama had prosecuted George W.'s torture teams, Ron DeSantis wouldn't be governor of Florida.

He'd be in jail right now.

But Obama didn't prosecute them. In fact, he ordered all the evidence destroyed so they could never be prosecuted.

Thanks, Obama.

I am!

 

The Real Ones

 

This aged well.  Sadly.

It just seems to be a never ending cycle:  The Republicans win and get everything their black little hearts ever desired, the Democrats defeat them by promising to undo the damage, they don't undo the damage because of Reasons, then their demoralized base stays home on election day allowing the Republicans to win again.  Wash, rinse, and repeat.

After a while you start to believe they're all secretly on the same team, and this is all just theater.

Over the Moon

Joe Biden announced a "moonshot" initiative to end cancer.  That's a nice idea, I suppose, but if he doesn't do something to make those new treatments affordable it's going to be fucking useless.

We already have people dying of preventable diseases in this country because they can't afford the treatments.  Let's take care of those folks first.

1966

"The trouble with government as it is is that it doesn't represent the people, it controls them.  All they seem to want to do-- the people who run this country-- is keep themselves in power and stop us knowing what's going on…  I'm not saying politicians are all terrible men.  It's just the system of government that I don't like.  It'll be hard to change."  ~John Lennon to magazine Disc Weekly in 1966, as quoted by Jon Weiner in Come Together: John Lennon In His Time ©1984

Don't Be Afraid, Ever

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, 'Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, 'Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.' And we… kill those people. 'Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok… But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."  ~Bill Hicks (source)

The Jugular

 Excerpted from John Lydon's autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

That's the trouble with working-class people throughout the world. They always try to spur their hatred onto what they see as being lower down the scale, rather than going for the fucking jugular of the upper- and middle-class bastards who are keeping them down in the first place.

Agenda

 Now that Republicans have pushed Black voters to the back of the bus and reduced the status of women to mere fetus incubators, I look for them to force gays back into the closet.

Wonderfully Chaotic

 John Lydon on politics, excerpted from his his autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

Around the time of the punks, socialism wasn't working in England. The Labour party were unimpressive and tedious. The Conservatives, the same. It fluctuated from one party to another, four years of this, four years of that, and you wouldn't notice any change. Young people-- in fact, most people-- just walked clean away from politics as if it were a waste of time. A cloud of apathy had truly set in. Of course, that's exactly the environment the Conservatives want. That's when they can strut their stuff using prejudice, hate, family values, all the nonissues of political life. Grim.

—•—

I'm not a revolutionary, a socialist, or any of that. That's not what I'm about at all. An absolute sense of individuality is my politics. All political groups that I'm aware of on this planet seem to strive to suppress individuality. They need block voting numbers. They need units. It doesn't matter if it's left or right, sometimes the tactics are the same. The things these people strive for is mass uniformity. The feminist movement became oppressive very quickly. Gay liberation is not after equal rights at all. It's to be accepted as this one great lump. If a homosexual inside that movement dares stray away from what they term as the norm, then they victimize that person. It's replacing the same old system with a different clothing. I hate all these groupings, any kind of gathering like that. It destroys personality and individuality. Maybe a roomful of people having very different ideas is chaotic, but it's wonderfully chaotic, highly entertaining, and very educational. That's how you learn things-- not by everybody following the same doctrine. I don't suppose my kind of world could really exist at all because there are so many sheep out there that need leaders. Let them bleat among the flock, that's not for me. I'd rather be the lone sheep out there fending off the wolves. It's much better. When you grow up in a working-class environment, you're supposed to stay inside and follow the rules and regulations of that little system. I won't have any of that. It's all wrong, equally bad.

An Escape from Personal Responsibility

In this excerpt from Scoundrel Time ©1976 by Lillian Hellman, the author discusses the difference between a "radical" and an "ideologue":

The popular image of the radical is of the wild and irresponsible "bomb thrower."  But most radicals I have met were extraordinarily civil.  They oppose the general degradation, not with a programmatic "solution," but with a personal code that makes pride possible in a shameful social order.  They do not wish to be implicated in responsibility for society's crimes, which means that they must take a special responsibility for their own acts.

Ideology is, by contrast, an escape from personal responsibility.  Someone like Whittaker Chambers wanted to be told what to do, wanted to be History's slave.  Ideologues want to be certified by others as respectable-- if not by the Committee or the Party, then by the ADA.  They want their hates to be dictated by the national program.  The radical thinks of virtuous people, while the ideologue thinks of orthodoxy.  The radical hates vicious and harmful people, while the ideologue hates heretical ideas, no matter how "nice" the possessors of those ideas may be.  The radical tries to uphold a private kind of honor in a rotten world-- like (Dashiell)Hammett's "private eyes," serving society without respecting it, seeing men and not just abstract Crime in the victims of their hunt.

 Her book is about the McCarthy era, but (sadly) there are many parallels to our own.

The Winner

The United States just passed a massive spending bill to boost the tech industry (source).

I thought the beauty of Capitalism was that the Free Market would take care of these things.  I thought that a centralized economy was a bad thing.  I must have it confused with something else.

I wonder who will reap the rewards of this investment:  the taxpayers or the stock holders?

"I believe that this legislation will enable the United States to out-innovate, out-produce, and out-compete the world in the industries of the future."  ~Chuck Schumer

"We are in a competition to win the 21st century, and the starting gun has gone off."  ~Joe Biden

Oh, let's just sit this one out. 

What I want is for everybody who's sick to be able to see a doctor, for everyone who works to be able to afford a home, for everybody who's hungry to have a sandwich.

I don't want to compete anymore.  The cost of winning is too high.

Competition

"We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21^st Century."  ~Joe Biden (source)

No we're not.  There is no "competition."  That's stupid.

We have enough already.  Let's take care of the sick and elderly, house the homeless, feed the hungry, educate the young.

Somebody else can "win," whatever that means.

Amateur Hour

"Yes, of course, I'm voting for Trump. I don't want a politician running this world anymore." ~John Lydon (source)

I think politics is the only profession on earth that people believe could be better performed by an amateur.

You would never go to a doctor who advertised that he has no idea what he's doing, but Americans regularly elect public officials with those proud credentials.

With predictable results.

Or All Four

"However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.” ~~Gloria Steinem (1980)

I was a stranger, and

Matthew 25: 34-46:

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

 

I wonder what Jesus would think of America's border policy?

I guess there's no way to know.

The King James Bible is in the public domain, and may be downloaded freely from Project Gutenberg, HERE.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions…

Excerpted from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989:

Acquiring an education has many aspects, of which school is only one, and the present approach is, I believe, the wrong one. Without claiming to have all the answers, I can only express my feeling that our methods of instruction do much to hamper a child in learning. Our approach is pedestrian. We teach a child to creep when he should be running; education becomes a task rather than an excitement. Yet each of us can remember one or two teachers who made learning an adventure, which it surely is.

Personally, I believe children should be taught to see, to observe, and to subject what they have seen to analysis, and this in the earliest grades. Very young children will often learn a difficult subject easily unless someone tells them it is "hard." To me it also seems obvious that a child should be taught some methods of reasoning, methods of scientific investigation. Children have an innate feeling for logic and, given the opportunity, would learn quickly.

Such instruction would be unthinkable in any country not a democracy, and if carried out in a democracy it might clear the air of a lot of loose thinking, loose public speaking, and the kind of questionable statements that fill the air during political and other campaigns. The first generation of parents who had such children would have a difficult time but would find their own thinking undergoing drastic change.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different. Many of the political ideas that have disturbed the world in the past fifty years could not exist in such an atmosphere.

An Incomplete Education

"Unfortunately, in most of our schools the history of Europe and North America is taught as if it were the history of the world. The rest of the world is referred to only when Europeans or Americans were invading or trading. There has recently been a small change for the better but not nearly enough."  ~from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989

The way I was taught about Europe and the way I was taught about Africa and Asia were very different.

I know that Europe consists of many different cultures in a rather small area, and that they haven't always gotten along well with each other.  I know that each culture eats different foods, wears different clothes, attends different churches, sings different songs, dances different dances, tells different stories.

But when it comes to the much larger continents of Africa and Asia, I was taught as if each were sort of a homogeneous lump, a great big mass of people who all looked, acted, and thought exactly alike.

That's a rather uninteresting, not to mention dehumanizing, way to look at the world, and I have to think it has contributed to the current xenophobia that is currently dominating American politics.

The Things That Make Us Human

"This is the result of social collapse, a lack of education, the loss of values in our homes and in our institutions. In recent years this country has focused only on politics. We have forgotten about the things that make us human." ~Jorge Liscano

He was quoted in a BBC video about grave robbing in Venezuela (link), but it was a glimpse into the future of my own country.