The Great American About Face, Part Four: Foolin’ the People About History … Reagan’s Great Ruse and The Face of the Enemy, Ours

Foolin’ the People About History: Reagan’s Great Ruse and The Face of the Enemy, Ours

Foolin’ the People About History

Obvious “Truths”:

• Reagan “saved” America.
• Reagan saved Americans from an oppressive tax burden.
• Reagan brought down the Iron Curtain, the Soviets, Berlin Wall.
  
• In America we were far better off than the Soviets were because… We are the richest country in the world.
  • wealthier.
  • don’t have to work as hard.
  • can take better care of our children.
• In America we only get better.

So these days you have the attitude, “A dollar laid is a dollar played”; people’s suffering is irrelevant to the game.

Reagan’s Great Ruse

We have seen a lot of change over the last five decades. And many new thoughts have become truisms that are actually not true. In the real world they’re nonsensical.

The Eighties Changed Everything…The Great Swindle.

Unfortunately they abound because of the cultural change initiated by Ronald Reagan that lowered the standard of living for everyone except for the rich who were the beneficiaries of that switch. It was the greatest shift of money upward, to the higher classes, in history, at that time. Bush in the last decade outdid him though.

The Republicans pulled off this transfer of wealth under the banner of capitalism. The huge tax cuts for the seriously rich, which was how this relocation of money was accomplished, began with Reagan. When it was proposed during the 1980 presidential race Bush the Elder called it “voodoo economics.” This was before he was invited on the ticket with Reagan.

Voodoo economics gradually brought the highest marginal rate of taxes down below thirty percent from the seventy percent it had been when Reagan took office. This should be compared with the ninety-some percent it was under Democratic and Republican presidents—Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy—in the 1940s through 1963. Reaganomics took corporate tax rates down to forty percent from the fifty percent that it had been previous to that beginning in the Forties.

Keep in mind that these were times—Forties through Sixties—when America’s economy boomed, turning the US into the wealthiest country in the world. Remember also that the last time, previous to Reagan, that marginal tax rates were below forty percent was in the Twenties, prior to the Great Depression. Not coincidentally at that same time, preceding the Depression, corporate tax rates were also at their lowest and were down in the teens. History records how well those low corporate and private marginal rates worked out. This did not stop the Reaganites from opting to repeat the previous debacle.

The Face of the Enemy, Ours

Overall, this bonanza for the rich–along with union-busting and other anti-worker practices by Reagan–had the effect of gradually lowering the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans. The result could not have been more ironic. These pro-capitalist, fervid anti-communist Republicans like Reagan and his supporters began the process that would make us mirror images of Soviet Russia in several hugely important ways.

At one time, “Women don’t have to work”; at another, “Women are free to work.”

Reaganomics brought in the two-salary family. This had been one of those major propaganda points for the anti-communists in the Fifties: We were horrified finding out that behind the Iron Curtain both parents had to have jobs to support their family. It was thrown out as one of the ways we were superior in our capitalist way of life—American wives and mothers did not have to work and were able to spend their time instead raising the children.

The anti-communist Reaganites also brought in institutional child care, for now this was needed because both parents were working. Someone had to take care of the children, and they would begin that at earlier and earlier ages.

At one time, “Strangers take care of their kids”; at another, “Child care teaches social skills and enhances multicultural awareness.”

Again, extramural child care was one of those elements of Soviet life that in the Fifties was pointed out to us disdainfully and which we were grateful not to be subject to. It would be thought inhuman, if not barbaric, for children to be cared for by strangers, while the mother was working. There was something dangerous, if not lascivious, insinuated to us by propagandists, about pre-school children not being with their mothers, not receiving her protection and love during that vulnerable and needy time, but being instead “in the hands of strangers”…(god forbid!)

But after Reagan this dreaded feature of Soviet culture became the norm in American culture as well.

So Reagan’s economic policies pushed Americans into a lower standard of living—fooling them in all kinds of ways that this was not the case—which was evident in major changes in American culture which mirrored that of the Soviets such as the virtual requirement of two-salary families and along with that the necessity of child care outside the family at earlier and earlier years. But these Soviet-like changes did not also bring with them Communist benefits of job security, free child and medical care, guaranteed lifelong support, and so on.

Continue with Foolin’ the People About America. Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago? Part One: Peaking in the Sixties

Return to Cool Hand Gipper (The Great Hustle) and What the 1% Would Still Have of Us: Context of The American Awakening

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The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three – an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=gjhxqmkbdn
“The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’ Part 3″

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Continue with Foolin’ the People About America. Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago? Part One: Peaking in the Sixties

Return to Cool Hand Gipper (The Great Hustle) and What the 1% Would Still Have of Us: Context of The American Awakening

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To Win at All Costs – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours: Only the Game Remains, Part 3

Only the Game Remains, Part Three: To Win at Any Cost – How They Convince That Their Problems Are Ours

Anyway, the game is to claim that the pain of those with wealth is really the American people’s pain, so as to make it seem a large number of people would be helped. That’s one of their lies that gets by; this is how they seek to “share the pain”…”spread their burden.” It is a banking problem, in this instance, something that has had disastrous effects on the economy and on people’s lives, but it would be better handled by society if the problem of the people involved would be addressed, not the problems—money lost, investments gone under—of the filthy rich.

The upshot is that over and over we hear these big lies of how “the American people”…one of those huge buzz words… “the American people are going to be hurt.” Or, it became, “the working people of this country,” or in the example of the coal barons, above, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs. In light of what has been said, I hope it is clear what b.s. that is.

How They Try to Convince That Their Problems Are Ours

We see the threat; we see the extortion; we see the crime and its magnitude, and we see the lie that gives life to it all. Let us look more closely at the manner of the making of this spectacular ruse.

First…some of this has been said, but watch how it unfolds…you’re starting out with a group that is a minute segment of the population as a whole. But they maintain they are identical with or equivalent to society as a whole, making it that it is not the magnitude of their money but of their numbers which raises their voice above all, which is not true of course. I was talking earlier about how they would do that in making up the tax codes. Recall, they would say, “Well, society as a whole will suffer if you don’t…”

So they would always package any benefit to them as being not for them, really, at all but for a great number of people. And if they could pull that off, if they could make that magical equivalency then it was like they had a home run. They would say the working people of this country would be affected, that a huge group of coal miners would see massive layoffs, for example.

Then here is how they make that number bigger: These people, in this example the coal barons, not to be underestimated, would assert that because of their layoffs naturally there would be more of these layoffs by other coal companies. And then, they’d say, these layoffs would affect all the shopkeepers, retail merchants and so on who service the impacted regions; which in turn…gotta keep making it bigger and bigger, more and more and more people…which in turn would affect all the industries making the products that won’t be sold because of the layoffs; and of course a pull back in demand for products means fewer workers needed to make what is needed, thus an increase of unemployment in all other sectors would ensue; which unemployed workers on a grander scale would have them unable to buy from their local merchants; which equals the losses to the manufacturers in an ever more expanding array of products and industries; requiring they let people go; thus even more, ever accelerating rates of layoffs and widening unemployment; well , those laid off would not be buying the products in their local shops; which leads to…well armageddon the way they would have it.

So it just gets bigger and bigger; it goes around and around and around.

To Win at All Costs

But They Will Say Anything to Win

Just a hint though, this is one of those seemingly rational analyses that although seeming to make sense is not grounded in the real world; it is speculative and made up. It’s roots are solely in the dark hearts and motivations of those attempting to push through their argument, to give it added weight, to basically win at any cost.

That’s a lot of what the difference is. It is that some people will wager with any amount of harm to others; they will say anything, will make up anything. They don’t have to have any facts; they don’t have to know if that’s the way it works. As McCain said, “I don’t know much about economics.” This is the guy who was popular among the corporate crowd of the country, the same group making that simplistic argument above.

What’s Truth Got to Do With It?

So basically their game involves winning at any cost to others, being willing to assert anything, with no thought that truth should even come into a bargaining situation. I mean, really, the attitude is that, what the hell does truth have to do with it? It’s like, we can make a good argument; we can convince people; we can persuade people; we can fool enough people into thinking it’s true…and that’s all that matters. [Footnote 1]

So you see they’re getting kind of cocky; they don’t even think they have to have truth…any actual facts or evidence backing up their arguments. Then you have your whole attitude of, “What the hell, why is anybody bothering to bring any truth to this?”

So they don’t bother even to come with any evidence to be laid out on the table; it becomes the most elegant spectacle in sophistry imaginable.

Continue with Compassion’s Downright Laughable in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real: Only the Game Remains, Part 4

Return to Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted: Only the Game Remains, Part 2

Footnotes

1. For a humorous aside on this attitude of the truth not mattering when it comes to the game, check out this “Auto Salesman Tells All on Sillymickel” below.

This is another takeoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness” — a much longer audio clip (http://bit.ly/autoclass).

Auto Salesman has the clips from “Anatomy” titled “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como does The Doors” (http://bit.ly/ComoDoors) and “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” (http://bit.ly/snorter).

There is a spinoff, as well, at http://bit.ly/ComoDoors2, titled “AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig.”

This one, just below, is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego:

“Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel” – comedy monologue, video by SillyMickel Adzema

Category: comedy, environment, politics, psychology, Tea Party, satire

What follows is the full text of the video.

About SillyMickel (me), Auto Salesman (my “evil twin”) says:

“Ok. Enough about that. I’m gonna get back to being this erudite mother-fucker, wherever he is. I guess I got to bring him out.

“I try to keep him in that jar, but he keeps going on about

‘It’s just a laundry room.’

“Aaah, shut up.

“I try to keep him in there. I cover it with grass. Which I give him breathing holes; I don’t know what he’s complaining….

“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like,

‘Why, George W. Bush, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was like a government job, and it was all for the purpose of doing this and that, and that it killed thousands of people….

‘And not only that, but the scientists are saying that we’ve only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.’

“And I say, “You call them reasons? ….

“You call THEM reasons?” I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocketbook one bit! Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care? I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to affect them!

“Now, as far as, you know, the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care? See?

“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, you know, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop BOTHERIN’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because, you know, it’s like, NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it MAT-ter!?….”

“Besides, everybody’s so fucking stupid, they think God’s gonna come down and save them anyway, because, you know, they all think they’re so special and everything. And so do I, you know. But not him, he says… He’s kinda wierd because he kinda thinks… that…you know… He’s moved by God, but he doesn’t expect God to come down and save him! I don’t understand it.

“He expects…. He wants God to save everybody. And he wants to help. Well, we don’t think like that around here! Do we?

“Naaa. That’s just…we ain’t…that’s just a little bit too goddamn complex for our thinking processes. I mean, it’s like, ‘Am I gonna die?’… you know… ‘Am I gonna be able to eat?’

“And if it’s anything beyond that, what does it matter?

“I think I understand. Yeah. I understand… I don’t know why that erudite puke doesn’t understand it. You know? Maybe I’ll go and tell. Maybe I will, behind his back, you know. This recording here…maybe I’ll send it to them. Just so that they know…that I understand.

“That he’s got a part of himself that’s sane, you know. Keeps him on track, you know? He’s got a part…

“But then maybe they’d like to hear some of my other stuff, too, you know? Like ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’ and my class consciousness stuff, you know…Mr. Boehner and all that. Maybe they would like that because maybe they would understand that I’m like them, you know? It’s just that, you know, that erudite guy, you know…is the one that they don’t like. Think I should? Yea, I know that.

“Because, you know? They should at least know that there’s part of him that’s like that….

“Oh, he’s…. He wants to come out now. He wants to come out.

“What, you don’t like me? Ain’t I better lookin? Ain’t I better lookin than him?

“No!?

“Well, you’re an insultin’ little prick, aren’t you? Well, you’re snortin’ and you’re insultin’…snortin’…insultin’

“Man! Ok, alright, alright, alright!

“What’s your name? Katie? Anyway?

“It would be Katie, I figured it. Boy, man, that Katie, she’s a bad aaaassss! I seen her on TV, she’s a BAD ASS!

“Anyway. I see, underneath all that sweetness….

“Ok! Alright, I’ll go, I’ll go!

“Ya don’t have to PUSH!

The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,”Part Two – an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema

Continue with Compassion’s Downright Laughable in The Game – But Unlike Monopoly These Results Are Real: Only the Game Remains, Part 4

Return to Extortion by the Filthy Rich–Dire Long Term Consequences of Leaving This Crime Unprosecuted: Only the Game Remains, Part 2

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The Corporate Feast: When you’re feeling pissed on, they’d like you thinking it’s really money raining down.

The Corporate Feast: Part Two, Reality Transplant, The Media

The Corporate Feast

So I saw over time this slow, steady stream of pundits and journalists adopting Republican mantra as obvious facts. And that was very sad. Like I was saying before about the special interests…Democrats are accused of having special interests of their own. It is often heard that unions are a special interest, that education is a special interest.

“Persons R Us. Corporations R Not.”

And even though Democrats would say, but, you know, doesn’t everybody get the benefit from education? I never heard the pundits or the moderator say, “Well, that’s true, and, Mr. Republican, what do you have to say to that? What do you mean, ‘special interest’? You’re promoting the coal companies. Are the coal companies benefiting everybody? By your trying to get them profits, trying to create tax breaks for them, is that going to benefit the people…in any way?”

When you’re feeling pissed on, they’d like you thinking it’s really money coming down.

I’ll get to that later, but obviously, you can try to make a case that somehow money to corporations will benefit ordinary people, but it’s easier and more honest to show how it is actually at their expense. So the payoffs to the corporate hogs are hardly indirect contributions to the common weal.

Shall we review recent events and remember the gluttonous corporate profits, with their CEOs sitting down to enjoy hundred million dollar banquets? Bonuses, paychecks, jets and yachts to feast on. Even the stockholders only receive crumbs from that table.

CEO with fifty cookies to Tea Party bloke with one: “That union guy wants some of your cookie.”

And with all their girth, getting hundred-million-dollar “at-a-boys,” you see them giving money away? With all these people having problems, and having foreclosures and everything, do you see them giving money away? I mean…no.

So anyway, the pundits and journalists are seen adopting the Republican mantra as obvious facts and as unnecessary to ponder or question as if…well, probably they couldn’t help it after a while of continual, coordinated, and irritating repetition, I don’t know…so not “as if,” it is clear they rolled over.

Disposable Truth, Reality Transplants

It was as if these pundits hearing so many gop lies—tax and spend Democrats and such—had undergone a reality transplant. Somehow they disposed of their knowing that it was the Republicans who tripled, nearly quadrupled the National Debt under Reagan-Bush.

GeorgeOrwell-land – Fun New Capitalist Theme Park!

The truth that it was Bush the W who doubled the Debt mysteriously ended up in the trash.

Smoke and lies around tax and spend

We’re in such bad economic shape now because of these Republican spendthrifts. Yet there would be the pundits repeating, even after Reagan-Bush and the recession they caused, “it’s the tax-and-spend Democrats.” America’s “thinkers” would forget that Clinton had balanced the budget for the first time in decades during his terms. They would not remember that those supposed “tax and spend” Democrats left to the Republicans who stole back the presidency in 2000 a surplus, which they promptly handed over to the rich.

I recall how during the Nineties, tax and fiscal policy was so carefully managed by Clinton’s administration. It was touch-and-go maneuvering out of the fiscal ditch; few people thought they could do it. How could anyone, let alone Democrats, balance a budge let alone reverse the huge National Debt at that time? But with Robert Reich at the wheel they did.

So what happened? Just as soon as the Republicans enter the White House, they issue a tax cut for the rich. The surplus was no more. Wow! And, still, pundits didn’t saying anything. People didn’t say anything.

Disposable Truths

How do you explain this barrage of historical malfeasance? How do you explain this lack of reaction to obvious wrongness, unfairness? It’s supposed to be a country of, by, and for the people. And most folks still think it is, even despite all the evidence of their eyes.

Maybe Americans cannot learn from, even remember, recent history because their perceptions and memories are not validated around them. If on the media their feelings are not confirmed, folks are going to doubt themselves; they’re going to be confused.

Are they so immersed in Republican culture?

Why commentators would be so easily forgetful and then complicit is the question.

Continue with Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget

Return to Dandified Little Pups: The Media, Status, and the Great Suck UP

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The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Two
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue with Disposable Truth: What They’ve Succeeded in Getting Us to Forget

Return to Dandified Little Pups: The Media, Status, and the Great Suck UP

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“To…catapult the propaganda” – G.W. Bush: Talking Points and Chanted Misinformation

Talking Points = “Obvious Truths”: “To…catapult the propaganda” – G.W. Bush

“To..catapult the propaganda” – G.W. Bush.

C’mon, c’mon, a little bit of rationality, folks! But however inconsistent with common sense these insinuations and outright assertions from the media, when you have something that’s repeated over and over again, mantram-like…man! Especially if you’re in a confused state, or a stressed state…it’s gonna be the only thing you can think of when you’re coming up with opinions.

These untruths are so firmly woven into the fabric of the Matrix–you’ll see there are others you’ll recognize–that when hearing them you’ll probably say, “Oh, yeah, that’s true.”

That’s what they’ve accomplished. And these nonsensicals are so perfectly knitted into the blanket of that matrix that they’re both mesmerizing and invisible, therefore unchallenged, even by the pundits. They are even, by rational argument, unchallenge-able.

Talking Points = “Obvious Truths”

Now, what do I mean by that…”unchallenge-able”? Republicans at a point in my lifetime included in their coordinated daily attacks on clarity a kind of chanting in coordinated fashion. By that I mean they were repeating the same, as they call them now, talking points.

“You got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the [un']truth to sink in” – G.W. Bush.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but remember, if you did tune in for any of Bush’s debates, when he was running for president either time. He’d be asked a question.

And he’d never give an answer to the question. It would be used like a jumping off point to say what he really wanted to say. It had the intended effect of distracting the viewers from any clear thought on the issue or subject.

It also freed up that time to be used, once viewers were led off track, for the seeding of those now assailable minds. Specifically, Bush was able to use the time allotted for answering questions instead to pound home the talking points Rich-publicans were trying to turn into some new (untrue) “obvious truths” (of course also to reinforce the old ones).

Palin: I’m not going to let the media set me up to answering your questions, I’m going to brainwash you instead!

Oh by the way we had a really good example of that with the Republican vice-presidential candidate last time. I don’t know how many of you have seen it, but Sarah Palin, in the vice-presidential debate, she was so… incredible…in a way…in her brazenness. She’s up there alongside Biden who’s answering questions. And at her turn, she’s saying (paraphrasing) “I’m not going to let you media folk set me up here, so I’m going to talk to the people directly.”

And that’s how it went the whole hour, hour and a half, whatever it was. Whatever the question was, she’d totally ignore it and recite a monologue instead. Well, basically she’s repeating again and again her favorite, most lucrative mantra, her most delicious untruths.

Attacks on our reason…i.e., Republicans to public – “You’re a dumb shit, I’m not going to answer your questions!”

But what if you really wanted to know something? She wouldn’t answer you. So it was also like a one-way conversation.

Here we have politicians, who are always telling us what the truth is, but who will not answer our questions so that we can add our own thinking to the matter. We are prevented from coming to our own conclusions, so also making our own decisions.

Well that’s really an attack on our reason, isn’t it? I mean we can’t ask questions, but you can just tell us what the truth is? And that’s basically what was going on.

Chanted Misinformation

So it is sort of like a coordinated chanting. It doesn’t matter what the issue or topic is, from the gop side you just keep hearing the same phrases about it—phrases intended to replace reason.

It doesn’t either matter which Republican is talking or what TV show they are on, they are repeating the same phrases. Like Sarah Palin, they are using any question, as in a television interview, as a launch point into a rehearsed nicely knit together, truth-sounding, package of untruths. You see this one Republican saying something here, say, then there’s another Republican over there, and if you compare you notice she or he is repeating basically the same thing almost in the exact same words.

Postmodern Mesmerism

And there’s a certain power in something that’s said over and over again in the exact same words. We know this. We’ve seen that power conspicuously in recent times. We can hear Hitler, in Nazi Germany, repeating the same thing over and over again…and using this rhetorical device in targeting Jews, getting people all riled up and such. On recordings from this era we hear their…”Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” There’s a certain kind of comfort in not having to think, all you have to do is chant. And you can rely on these chants because everybody’s saying them, so they have the power, of like, wow, they must be true, because, well, everybody’s saying them, everybody around you. Well that’s a sad state of affairs.

This is your brain. Now, this is your brain on deception…

So what does this do, this omnipresent repetition of phrases in response to questions? This chanting of untruths instead of having rational discourse, when people are hearing this year after year and even decade after decade, what does it do?

Well, it adds to the smokescreen of confusion and misinformation that was effectively castrating and making Americans easily manipulated to whatever end the Republicans wanted. I mean after all you’re not getting reasoned answers, you’re just getting slogans, and that leaves you confused, especially if it’s combined with a lot of misinformation which challenges the facts on everything, when everything is turned backward and they’re lying about everything.

I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how flagrant that intentional deception was over Bush’s eight years. And isn’t that gonna make you confused? I remember a time when the facts were not so much in dispute so there wasn’t such a huge divide between the Democrats and the Republicans about what the issues were. What was debated could then be what you do about those commonly acknowledged problems.

Continue with Equal Time For Idiots: For “Fair” Reporting, Mix Equal Parts Truth and Lies…. (It’ll be fun seeing if the public can figure it out!)

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence

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The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Two
- an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Two,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dhvsqlbnjl
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2. by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue with Equal Time For Idiots: For “Fair” Reporting, Mix Equal Parts Truth and Lies…. (It’ll be fun seeing if the public can figure it out!)

Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Ten: Erosion of Reason, Self-Confidence

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Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate – Creating an America That Is Not: Creating an American Life, Pt 2

Creating an American Life, Part Two: Creating an America That Is Not – Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate

Obama’s rise to the presidency was startling, shocking even, because it was a unique phenomenon for this time.

Creating an America That Is Not

But look what it took! Look at what had to happen before a Democrat, Obama, and the first African-American ever, could win the presidency. It only came about after a long time of national suffering, disgrace, war, loss of life, incompetence, cronyism, scandal, atrocity, erosion of rights, squandering of money, tragedy, and more. Bush was in the presidency for a full eight years; he actually got to steal a second election.

The Blue Meanies – Stolen Election

It is clear that Bush’s first term was not won fairly. Even putting aside the intimidation of black voters in Florida and similar unfair and illegal practices perpetrated by Republicans, we still have the fact that Bush was given the presidency by a decision of the Supreme Court. Our history records how vote counting was stopped before the outcome could be determined; the Supreme Court decided on a winner, Bush; and subsequently the vote tally came out that Gore had actually won the presidency! These are simply the facts, the things not in dispute.

The Rule Itself—Money Changes Everything.

The facts of Bush’s second election are less well known; in fact they are more assiduously covered up. Still, in the vote tally against John Kerry it should not have even been close…but for more obscure reasons.

There is plenty of documented public evidence that the electronic voting machines were fixed, making the outcome fraudulent. The machines were owned by Diebold Corporation, a firm solidly in the Republican camp, the head of which promised the Republicans, before the election, that he was going to get Bush elected. I mean, seriously. Isn’t that pretty much an admission that the voting machines were going to be fixed?

And in fact this is what they discovered to have taken place.

Now, is this not the kind of thing that in the past would have brought people out into the streets?

Anyway, it was confirmed, to some extent even prior to the election, that even a person walking by with an iPhone or something similar could hack into these electronic voting machines and change the votes. That is, if they had the correct access information. And the only ones who had that and therefore could decide the vote tally were the Diebold Corporation in league with the Republicans. Is it any wonder Bush won?

The Battleground for America

“Only people know just how to change the world.” – J. Lennon

So the two things of relevance in this example are that in previous times this would have brought people out into the streets, would have caused people to rise up in outrage against authority when it was found out.

The Duty, and Failure, of the Press

Which brings out the second relevant point: The public’s power could be stirred only by these facts coming out and becoming widely known. This information did come out; entire popular books were written describing how and that it was done. It came out in the broadcast media as well.

It is unlikely that you know that, however. That can only be because it wasn’t told enough in the media, that it was downplayed in the media, covered up, or the media directed your attention away from it. And that is the problem I’m getting at.

Changing America by Changing its People

But you see there’s another thing that happened. Even with a responsible media you have to have a citizenry that is open to this kind of information and able and willing to process it and draw conclusions from it. That is what I will be addressing now.

Continue with Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies: Creating a (Not So) American Life, Pt 3

Return to “Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America: Creating an American Life, Pt 1“

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The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click below to launch the audio player here.

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rzznhtzjsk&as=1
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”: Part One. by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue with Your Mind Made Fertile for the Planting of Lies: Creating a (Not So) American Life, Pt 3

Return to “Power vs. Passion, Money vs. Authenticity – Opposing Ways of Changing America: Creating an American Life, Pt 1“

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Where There Is Hope…Love Demands We Give Our All: Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call, Part 7 of 7

More at Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call: Love Demands We Give Our All…Where We Find Hope in All This

Go to Post That Precedes This: Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call: What Planetmates Say…Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?

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Derailing Armageddon, Birthing the Earth – Real, not blindly delusional, action is required

Apocalypse No! Chapter Thirteen:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

The question posed at the end of the last chapter was whether we had opened the door to an unimaginable armageddon or were experiencing the birth pangs of a massive consciousness transformation and subsequent Earth rebirth. Are we going to self-destruct, bringing death to the entire planet along with us, or will we become good citizens of this planet and our species continue on?

What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring?

Most folks would think there would be only one answer to that question desired by virtually all humans. But in previous chapters, especially Chapter Five: Death Wish – Thanatos Walking, I showed how, and why, that common-sense notion would, amazingly, be wrong: We saw how there is a huge percentage of our human Earth citizens, and a part of all of us, that wants to “throw in the towel.” This has always been true of humans, but it is of critical importance only now.

But I will assume anyone reading this will at least consciously be wanting our vital question to be answered in the affirmative. You know as well as I that the folks on the other side of this question are doing vastly different things right now than us and are nowhere to be found around here.

How Do We “Like” Life?

So the next thing to be addressed is how we might change our fortunes and live. Since continuing on is not just of matter of deciding it—voting “like” on it or checking its box—as we saw in Chapter Five: Death Wish, how can we get around this part of ourselves and our population that wants to do us all in? We need to know how to derail our perpetual cycles of war and violence. We need know how to quit bringing pollution and suffering on us. We have to know how we can stop our secret desire to take comfort in failure, how to “unlike” self-sabotage on our inner “profile.”

How do we “unlike” fascism?

I have written a great deal on this question, including an entire book in 2011 on the way we act out this masochistic tendency politically and culturally by taking comfort in totalitarianism and embracing fascism. [Footnote 1]

For our purposes presently I will focus on the element of it all that is critical to answering our question. So we first need to look into the place from which emanates our dilemma. I showed that this bugaboo is our Will to Death.

Our Coming Into This World Makes Us Want to Leave It

Now we need to get more specific on this negative inclination of ours. As we have seen this Will to Death arises from human’s unique-among-all-species primal pain rooted in our singular way of coming into the world, our unique human birth.

We need look deeper

We need to look deeper into the elements of that part of ourselves that would have us take us all down. We need inquire into that tendency of ours to choose pollution over health, tyranny over freedom, war over peace, enslavement over autonomy, violence over pacifism, oppression over liberty, misery over happiness. We must derail the cycles of war and violence. We must know how to “like” happiness.

We need know where exactly to focus our efforts to be successful

To do so, we must separate the skeins of this inner entanglement and shed light into this darkness within. We need to know specifically, precisely where to place the lever of effort we will apply to truly move the world, to derail it from its current acceleration into oblivion.

So we look now into the elements of that perinatal unconscious manifesting currently as a will to die on the grandest scale imaginable. [continued after audio links]

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

“Part 1; What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=pffbztrfkv
Image of Apocalypse or New Dawn, Ch. 8: Derailing the Cycles of War.and Violence, Pt.1: What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring? by SillyMickel Adzema

“Part 2; Can You Handle Happiness (And the Pain That Comes With It)?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=syglfhsvld
Image of Apocalypse, or New Dawn?: Chapter Eight: “Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence, Part 2: Can You Handle Happiness? (And the Pain That Comes With It?)” by SillyMickel Adzema

Cycles of War, Cycles of Birth

We find there are two researchers who are particularly relevant to our understanding of the elements of the perinatal unconscious in a way as to avert collective, worldwide disaster. These are Stanislav Grof and Lloyd DeMause. [Footnote 2]

Men Would Rather Be “Manly” Than…Alive…

DeMause writes,

[T]he group-fantasy shared prior to wars expresses the nation’s deep feeling that the increase in pleasure brought about by the prosperity and progress that usually precede wars “pollutes” the national blood-stream with sinful excess, making men “soft” and feminine”—a frightful condition that can only be cleansed by a blood-shedding purification. [Footnote 2]

Men are more terrified of appearing “feminine” than of losing their lives. Why we invite war.

DeMause is saying we go forever into war because after a while peace makes men feel guilty, “sinful.” Men have uncomfortable, even shameful…homophobic…feelings of being “soft” or “feminine” when their lives are good. So men choose the “purifying,” masculinizing ritual of war to fight off these feelings. Nothing distracts one from looking inward better than a “good, old-fashioned” life-or-death struggle, and war is the most all-encompassing of them.

Men are more terrified of appearing “soft” than having the boot of totalitarianism on their neck. Why we allow fascism.

What DeMause says about bringing war upon us can be said also about allowing fascism, inviting totalitarianism. For whether we are fighting enemies of another nation or struggling to survive against oppression at home, we are involved in a daily struggle. Secret to us, we feel better being engaged in a dramatic battle, though it brings us suffering and misery.

We simply can’t hack peace for very long. We feel guilty, for some reason, lolling on the beach. You ever notice how at the end of your vacation time, you are anxious for it to be over and to get back to work? That feeling—that one where we feel…guilty?…uncomfortable…tense?…unfulfilled?…(you tell me)—that’s it. That’s the one I’m talking about.

It happens the same way collectively after we have experienced a “vacation” of national peace—for example, in the Nineties when we were prosperous and mostly peaceful under Clinton. At the end of it, with Bush, we ended up getting the misery and struggle many in America were driven to want, though no one would ever admit that.

A quick aside. The fact that the majority of Americans actually didn’t vote for Bush and so tried to choose happiness over struggle is a source of hope for us in all this. That’s a hint of what’s coming.

But for now, let us get back to this opening provided us. We can make better use of DeMause’s insight using Stanislav Grof’s delineation of this birth unconscious of ours.

Grof explains we are moved by four specific kinds of drives emanating from our earliest experiences. These specific tendencies in us relate to four different times in the birth process which involve four radically different kinds of experiences.

Grof uses the term, basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), to refer to these four aspects of our inner urges. I will describe them here and refer to them along with DeMause’s cycles of social-historical violence and war to pull apart the roots of our dilemma. [Footnote 3]

Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing, BPM I

The first of Grof’s aspects of our unconscious he terms Basic Perinatal Matrix I, BPM I for short.

Prosperity and progress equal feeling “soft” and “feminine”

Grof’s BPM I is sometimes described as “oceanic bliss” and involves the experiences and feelings related to the relatively undisturbed prenatal period. On the social, macrocosmic level, it is the period described in the quote by DeMause above in which there is a period of “prosperity and progress” and feelings of being “soft” and “feminine.”

The strong connection between individual experience (personal psychology) and collective realities (social-historical events and elements) is patent here since in BPM I experience the individual is still in the mother’s womb and to some extent shares her identity, which is of course feminine. Being unborn and not having gone through the “toughening” experiences of birth and later trauma, which predominantly create one’s defenses, the individual is also “soft,” i.e., undefended.

“No Pain, No Gain,” Hell, Satan, and Poisonous Placenta; BPM II

“No-exit” claustrophobia

To further review Grof’s schema and its relation to DeMause’s cycles of war, I want to remind you that BPM II is related on the individual level to the time near the end of pregnancy when the fetus is no longer rocking blissfully on the waves of oceanic bliss but is trapped in an ever more confining womb. As the fetus grows in size, the suffering becomes greater; no doubt this is the source of the common-sense belief that growing has to involve suffering, for example, “No pain, no gain.” At any rate, the feelings are those of claustrophobia and “no exit.”

There is heavy non-agitated depression here, since there appears to be no hope, no change in the situation that would indicate a way out of the suffering. Indeed, this period continues practically right up to the time of birth, ending only when the cervix becomes dilated and, experientially speaking, there appears suddenly to be a “light at the end of the tunnel” and therefore hope.

Where the hell we get the idea of hell.

However, up until that time there are feelings of being totally unempowered, completely in the hands of an entity—the womb—that imposes a horrifying reality that appears to be unending and eternal. Herein we have the psychological roots of notions of hell and Satan. Feelings associated with this state include despair, victimization, blame, and guilt.

“You’ll wallow in your shit, and you’ll think you’re happy.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

As birth comes nearer, “fetal malnutrition” increases, since the neonate’s increasing size and weight press down on and constrict the blood vessels that carry blood to and from the placenta, when the mother is standing. The decreased blood supply means a reduction of life-giving oxygen as well as the buildup of toxins that would otherwise be taken away by a normal blood flow. So feelings of suffocation as well as skin irritation and other feelings of wallowing in waste matter—deemed poisonous placenta by DeMause—increase. [Footnote 4]

“You’re really in a laundry room.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

As I have said previously, DeMause has found that these feelings exist to an extraordinary degree in a society and its leaders prior to its engaging in a war. Similarly, they precede, and obviously can be held to be accountable for, individual acts of violence—including everything from murder and rape to unfortunately all-too-common and ordinary spousal and child abuse in the household, and of course everything in between.

Bloody War, Bloody Birth — BPM III

BPM III is birth. Its social analogue is war or violent assault. Feelings that accompany this state on both the individual and societal level include rage and intense aggressiveness, all-encompassing struggle, and sexual excess.

Nothing’s Ever Good Enough, BPM IV

BPM IV relates to the time of actually coming out of the womb and the post-natal period. On the societal level it is the ending of a war.

“Busting out all over”

Feelings of expansiveness, release, exultation, coming finally out into the light and/or being “on top” of things, and victory are feelings associated with this matrix, whether in the individual birth or the collective war cycle.

As I said the societal analogue to BPM IV, or actually being born, is a war’s end. It is no coincidence that in triumph or peace, the two-finger peace symbol is used. What better way to signal we have come from constriction into openness, specifically through the vise of a mother’s cervix, out from between two legs. As John Lennon so aptly put it, using the peace sign frequently, “War is over (if we want it).”

Mission accomplished…not!

Interestingly, just as in recent times harsh modern obstetrical practices and the removal of the baby from the mother can leave lifetime feelings of success not bringing with it the expected rewards and thus a post-accomplishment sort of depression, so also the ending of successful wars sometimes also leaves a society with a sort of letdown. For example, the euphoria following George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War—which catapulted his approval ratings into the ninety percent range in 1991—was followed, only a year later, by the increasing agony of a recession and Bush’s defeat at the polls.

Cycles of Birth, Cycles of War

All of this is to say that in society, as in the womb, a period of uninterrupted and relatively undisturbed feelings of growth leads to feelings of depression—being too “soft” and “feminine,” but also “too fat” in the womb and, therefore, extremely constricted and compressed.

Why women fear becoming fat and men fear appearing “feminine”

Another way of saying this: feelings of expansion are followed by a fear of entrapment. And I agree wholeheartedly with DeMause in saying that it happens this way in a nation’s cycle of feelings because it happened that way to us prior to and during our births. We have these patterns of feelings as collective groups of individuals because our first experience of expansion was followed by extreme depression, guilt, despair, and then struggle and something bloodily akin to war—our actual births.

What Can Be Done?

So knowing this, how can we use it? In previous chapters, I explained how and why we see the dynamics of this perinatal unconscious, not coincidentally right now, on the ascendance, just at the time when it is crucial we deal with it to survive. I called this an emerging perinatal unconscious, and I went into detail about why it is happening now, what it means, and how we should take advantage of the opportunity it brings that could aid us in our current dilemma.

For now, I need only remind that is imperative we face these unconscious forces instead of turning away from and thereby insuring our continued ignorance of them and helpless acting out of them.

So, how do we consciously participate in these drives, not merely be driven by them?

Lloyd DeMause, in his article, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence,” printed in the spring 1996 issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, called for kinder and gentler birthing and child-caring practices to mitigate the ferocity of these forces within humans and help us avoid an otherwise inevitable planetary disaster. He was restating what other pre- and perinatal psychologists…I am one, by the way…including Thomas Verny and Stanislav Grof assert. [Footnote 2]

However, I believe we need to go further than that. I, along with Grof, call for a larger awareness of and efforts in the direction of healing these perinatal elements in the consciousness and unconscious of those already alive right now. For unless we act to heal the people currently inhabiting this planet, we might not leave a planet that babies can be born into!…let alone people to conceive and give birth to them. Healing the perinatal traumas can be accomplished through, at this point, thoroughly tested and effective techniques of experiential regression and emotional release.

But it is impossible for everyone to take advantage of these techniques, especially in the short time we have to make the changes. But something short of that ideal may be sufficient to stave off otherwise inevitable doom.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Finding the Weakest Spot

Of course only time will tell what will be the result of this emerging perinatal unconscious for our species.

Real, not blindly delusional, action is required.

But to get an idea of what we might hope for, given a readiness to actually do something about this, I offer a perspective. This understanding requires we remember some critical aspects of the cartography of the psyche described above. Looking into them we might begin to see where are the openings allowing for realistic action to be taken to bring about true, not just blindly delusional, change for our species.

We can no longer afford otherwise.

For our purposes here, the most important part of the cycle is BPM I. Societies, according to DeMause, go through these cycles of war and peace and have been doing so for as long as we know. But we can no longer afford these wars, as World War I and World War II have shown—with each one being an increase in our ability to destroy and to commit atrocities. We cannot afford to have a World War III as that most likely would end life on our planet.

Indeed, as I’ve been pointing out, we cannot even afford the less extreme forms of acting out of perinatal trauma that we have been doing in our poisoning of the earth and air, global overpopulation, and the ongoing regional wars to give just a few of many examples I could have used. These things, along with many other current quite insane tendencies of ours, have the capacity to end our species and possibly all life on this planet.

Feeling Good Is Not Bad

So the cycle of societal perinatal acting out must be stopped. And the most obvious place to derail the insidious cycle is at the point of societal prosperity and progress. Feeling soft, undefended, and feminine are, rationally speaking, not things to be alarmed about.

Quite to the contrary, it is rational that prosperity should make people feel good. It is rational that feeling soft should be a source of contentment, sensitivity, and intimacy with others. It makes sense that men should have no shame about feeling feminine because that only means that they have access to sensitive and nurturing feelings that are a source of joy, “color,” and fulfillment in life.

Changing the Patterns of Millennia

But how do we do this? How do we convince people that feeling good is not bad? For these unconscious forces, these cycles of violence, have been pulling our strings for at least tens of thousands of years. How can we change such an engrained pattern?

Chasing the Mirages of the Future

Well, again, we get our leads from the experiences of individuals undergoing experiential psychotherapy.

“It’s never enough.”

For individuals also, if they are to heal themselves, have to learn how to appreciate success and to stop sabotaging themselves in the myriad of ways they do. Individuals act out their mini-cycles of “war” in their struggles to achieve. And people are driven to struggle to achieve because they cannot be pleased with what they have.

Relating back to DeMause’s societal schema, people cannot simply enjoy their “prosperity.” People cannot stop to smell the roses occasionally. We cannot count our blessings and feel contented with what we have. Nor can we enjoy the natural pleasure of being alive in the moment.

“Wrong…It IS enough.”

No, instead what characterizes we humans—for the most part because of our having birth trauma—is a persistent drive to always have more than we do. We find that every accomplishment or success is short lived, with inexplicable depression following it. For each new attainment does not bring the expected (unconscious) rewards and leads us almost immediately to a new struggle, a new accomplishment to be sought.

Humans are driven to chasing mirages of better times somewhere off in the future, and we fail to live in the present. We feel unsatisfied with what we have and are continually deluded that some new possession, accomplishment, or love “conquest” will bring with it the missing happiness.

Becoming Self-Actualizing Instead of Self-Sabotaging

When people are aware of the way they unconsciously sabotage their happiness, they sometimes seek help. And if they seek help in the experiential psychotherapies, they are enabled to work through their birth trauma so that they are no longer driven out of the moment, with its pleasure and pain, into an imagined but never attainable pleasureful and happy future.

Learning that it is enough

So people derail their cycles of drivenness and their tendencies to sabotage their successes by learning to enjoy their “prosperity,” even if it is the simple pleasure of being alive. And when they act to add to that pleasantness, they do so, not out of drivenness, but out of feelings of flow and the simple joys of acting and actualizing one’s tendencies, talents, and desires. They become self-actualizing instead of self-sabotaging.

Can You Handle Happiness?…
And the Pain That Comes With It?

OK, knowing this, one might ask if I am suggesting that to save our species everyone needs to get into experiential therapy. While that would be nice, it is not practical.

But I believe it is not necessary either. There is an element of that societal period of prosperity that can be used and focused on in order to make the societal change of pattern, the societal derailing of the tendency to self-sabotage through war-making.

Getting By, With a Little Help From Our Nature

And that element is this: During times of prosperity, when one is less engaged in a struggle to survive, we find that one’s body will naturally try to heal itself of unresolved and somatically imprinted trauma by bringing into consciousness the repressed traumatic memories needing resolution.

Hierarchy of healing

This occurs in a manner similar to that of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Basically, one’s needs to “grow emotionally”…i.e., clear away the unresolved trauma…can only come to the fore when one’s physical survival needs are relatively taken care of. And arise they unerringly do, given any opportunity to do so.

“Don’t just do something, STAND there!”

However, when these traumatic memories come up seeking resolution, they, also unerringly, bring with them the associated feelings of depression, unease, and pain. But because these feelings are anything but pleasant, to their detriment most people seek to avoid these feelings through addictions and other forms of “acting-out” behavior. So addictions and acting-out behavior emerge after periods of relative stability precisely because that stability allows unresolved feelings an opening for emergence and a possibility of resolution and healing.

Allowing Our Society to Be Honestly, Blatantly “Sick”

So there you have it; that is the crux. The period of societal prosperity can be maintained and added to if that society refuses to run away from the negative feelings that come up with success. As I have said, one needs to get “sicker” in order to get really well.

“Stand in the place where you are…just stand.”

Societally, we need to allow the social, formerly repressed, “sicknesses,” negativities, and the pain that comes with them to arise and be socially worked out, to be hashed out, rather than to escape them by resorting to scapegoating enemies and waging war against them.

Are We Doing This?

But can societies do this? Are they doing this? [Footnote 5]

Apparently not

It does not seem so at the moment. For we have extreme acting out going on from Tea Party type elements. The homophobia that characterizes them is an indicator of the degree to which they are fearful of that feeling of being “soft” and “feminine,” I mentioned.

But then again…

However there is a pattern in change that things can not really change until the negative slide has “hit bottom.” These negative forces cannot be gone beyond until they have wasted themselves in desperate acts. At this time also, positive forces are strengthening in the wings, burnishing their skills, tempering their character and nobility, fully capable when the time comes to take over. There are so many examples of this in social and individual histories, but not to get bogged down, I will mention one powerful one—Nelson Mandela. You can take it from there.

The more common thing to mention about change is that prior to a major paradigm shift, the forces on the decline always wage a fierce, desperate battle…a bloody retreat, a burning of the fields, near suicidal and totally reckless forays.

We see people do this, too, just before they are about to change. We see people who self-destruct being the ones whose last desperate battle before awareness can dawn being something that takes their life and perhaps others with them.

We currently can point to Gaddafi, Assad, and other tyrants. We can observe reckless tea-baggers willing, as in the debt ceiling clash, to bring down the country for ideals that, however rationalized and spun, are at their roots as simple and crude as jealousy—of those smarter and more capable; hatred—of minorities, the poor, the “dirty,” the “slobs,” the “lazy”…basically all the scapegoats society allows them to vent the rage of their inner fears and hurt on; and homophobia—that fear of being “soft,” feminine, unmasculine, and being willing to kill or be killed rather than to let oneself be seen that way.

Before continuing, one big misconception around that last point needs clearing up: homophobia is at base not fear/hatred of homosexuals, it is terror/hatred of the “feminine” and “softness” inside of the man himself who is homophobic. And this is the result of tens of thousands of years of “civilization,” still continuing, in which men are threatened with disapproval, ostracism, ridicule, attack, or worse for not repressing their softer sides down to the level of the norm of their group. Boys learn they must constrict their potentials and diminish themselves to that which coincides with—and does not threaten—the older males in their group or face severe punishment. Boys learn the consequences for not becoming less than they could be are severe, often from their own fathers.

And by the way, something similar goes on with young girls and the reduction of their potentials. We see a blatant example of this in the practice of cliterectomy—also called female genital mutilation—in some cultures. In this practice the older women—mother and aunts usually—are responsible for this brutal and extremely painful and bloody attack. It tells little girls they will have no pleasure more than that which was allowed the older women, themselves, in that patriarchal world. So girls must diminish themselves in order to not be hated and ostracized by the women of the group, who, already having been diminished, would be jealous of someone being allowed to have what they have not. This is an exact mirror image of the process that goes on in the diminution of the personalities—the potentials—of young boys.

Now to continue: So seeing so much of this pathos, hate, and bitter fear and anger is hopeful for us to be near the end of the cycle. Certainly it could get worse. But I personally don’t see how we could go much further on this path to oblivion without going past the point of no return. Perhaps we are not meant to succeed. Perhaps we are doomed. But I know in my own life, and that is the only true basis anyone can have for knowing how things really work, that, without fail, every seeming “loss of ground” was a prelude to an even bigger “advance.” As Jung said, we need to take two steps backward to make a big leap forward. That is the way individuals are. And societies and populations are just collections of individuals. So we can hold on to that, for one thing.

So Let Us See – A Scenery of Healing?

With these considerations in mind, the next chapter will evaluate our current social-cultural scenery for our prospects. In The (Sometimes Messy) Scenery of Healing—we will look for any indications that this standing firm in the face of the rising up of the repressed social Shadow—allowing the pain of it and facing it foursquare, hashing it out—is to be found in the current social arena.

If we can find this being done, we may allow ourselves at least the hope for a change in consciousness radical enough to save us from extinction. On the contrary, if we find little or no evidence for this kind of auspicious, fruitful healing activity, we might as well consider ourselves doomed.

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Fourteen:
The Sometimes Messy Scenery of Healing

Footnotes

1. The book mentioned was posted online in two places in August, 2011: Culture War and Culture War, Class War. [return to text]

2. Lloyd deMause, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence.” The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 2. Reprinted with permission on the Primal Spirit site.

Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. [return to text]

3. I explain this in more detail in Chapter Seven: We Ain’t Born Typical under the heading “Elements of Birth Experience.”

4. “You’ll wallow in the shit and you’ll think you’re happy” and “You’re really in a laundry room” from, and with appreciation to, Kurt Cobain. These are lyrics in his song, “Sad.” The video and lyrics are reproduced again here for your convenience:

Nirvana – “Sad” (also “Sappy” and “Verse Chorus Verse”)

“Sad” lyrics

And if you save yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
And you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh
And if you cut yourself
You will think you’re happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
Then you’ll make him happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh (x2)
And if you fool yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you will seem happy
You’ll wallow in your shit
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room (x3)
Conclusion came to you, oh
Alternate lyrics:
And if you kill yourself
You will make him happy

5. “Stand in the place where you are…just stand” from and with appreciation to R.E.M. While it seems no one understood the group’s huge initial release, “Stand,” it is quite meaningful in the current context. A video and lyrics are included here for your consideration:

R.E.M. – “Stand”

“Stand” lyrics

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t before
If you are confused check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
[repeat 1st verse]
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Season is calling
[repeat 1st verse]
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
So Stand (stand)
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand (stand)
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t
[repeat 1st verse]
Stand in the place where you are (Now face North)
Stand in the place where you are (Now face West)
Your feet are going to be on the ground (Stand in the place where you are)
Your head is there to move you around, so stand.

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Copyright © 1999, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

“Part 1; What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=pffbztrfkv
Image of Apocalypse or New Dawn, Ch. 8: Derailing the Cycles of War.and Violence, Pt.1: What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring? by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

“Part 2; Can You Handle Happiness (And the Pain That Comes With It)?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=syglfhsvld
Image of Apocalypse, or New Dawn?: Chapter Eight: “Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence, Part 2: Can You Handle Happiness? (And the Pain That Comes With It?)” by SillyMickel Adzema

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Fourteen:
The Sometimes Messy Scenery of Healing

Invite you to follow me on Twitter:
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Ecocide – How Dare We Be Species Suicide-Bombers?

Eight Billion Neros Fiddling

It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign

A Trillion-Alarm Fire—You Don’t Stop at the Grocery on Your Way Home!

I compare what is happening right now to cause planetary death in the relatively near future to a trillion-alarm fire with everyone looking the other way. I say you need to respond to this with the urgency of being in a world war, marshaling all available national and world resources to bear on it, and not with the complacency of a boy-scout litter pick up campaign.

When you get a call at work that your house is on fire, you rush home worrying about whether your family is alive or dead, what, if anything, remains of your precious keepsakes, and so on. And you don’t, this time, stop on the way home to have a short visit with your mother at the nursing home, grab a few things at the grocery store, or even fill up your tank at the gas station! YOU GO STRAIGHT HOME AND TRY TO SAVE YOUR FAMILY AND HOME! [Footnote 1]

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“Apocalypse Emergency: The Apocalypse Will Kill Your Child, How Can You Turn Your Head?”
- audio presentation by SillyMickel Adzema

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rmcffzyvrk
Image of Apocalypse Emergency: Apocalypse? Or, New Dawn? by SillyMickel Adzema

You REALLY might want to listen to the audio above. It is a loose reading of this page, more entertaining than simply reading the text, is more conversational, contains extra information, and is framed by the feelings of the author/ audio presenter, so is altogether more accessible than the text alone, and I think an easier and more fun way to take in this upcoming chapter.

Click for audiocast by clicking player above or the link to the audio site below:

Apocalypse Emergency. The Apocalypse Will Kill Your Child, How Can You Turn Your Head?
- audio presentation by SillyMickel Adzema

---

Oil Spills and Reactor Blowups

“Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!”

I can’t believe the nonchalance around the huge environmental catastrophes that have gone on in just the last year alone—specifically, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Fukushima Japan nuclear disaster. When the BP disaster was ongoing and gushing devastating amounts of oil into the Gulf, Donna Brazille, frustrated with the Obama Administration’s response to the Spill, fumed aloud, “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!

But these hugely unprecedented environmental catastrophes, daily spreading the damage to our planet, are just two canaries in a coal mine.

We are just beginning to understand the immensity of the damage to our planet the Fukushima disaster did. We will probably not be told the degree of radiation exposure from it we are receiving until long after people have been dying in droves from it.

The BP oil spill of 2010 is, similarly, presenting ongoing planetary damage, which, like the Japan nuclear disaster, is, as I speak, not being reported. At this moment, in fact, dolphin carcasses in the hundreds are washing up on Gulf beaches, birds are dying and some are simply dropping dead out of the sky, and we know for sure of at least one dead zone caused by the BP oil spill—a dead zone being an area in the ocean where nothing can live for lack of oxygen—which is a hundred miles long and twelve miles wide. I have heard reports of other dead zones cropping up in the Gulf, and it has been said they are growing in size with time. Beyond these we have to wonder how many more there are, yet unknown, and how great is the ongoing damage.

But none of these dire events are being mentioned much in the media. We hear the reports, but then the media directs our attention to something else. When Fukushima was being actively monitored by the media not long ago, I heard reported on CNN some very apocalyptic developments occurring there. Immediately afterward, CNN directed our attention to some in-depth reporting on a snake that had gotten loose in New York City. Now that snake made me sooo scared, I don’t know why!? *sarcasm*

So we cover our eyes to what is going on. *sigh*

We dismiss these events assuming that someone higher up than us is surely attending to the problem (dream on!). Though we would never admit it, we take comfort in thinking that people more in the know and influential—people with more status, degrees, power—are on the front line and will certainly make better decisions than we ever could. So doing, we blind ourselves to the fact that these people in charge are blinded and made stupid by their greed and self-interest. They see dimly, if at all, through that screen at the dire prospects they are juggling with. With such tunnel vision, they are hardly capable of seeing the interests of humanity, let alone acting on them. Furthermore, they console themselves with the thought that someone else higher up—or not, often just someone other than them—is “certainly” taking care of “the big things.”

Ultimately, people are passing the buck ALL the way up…to God. Seriously, this theological cul-de-sac is the ultimate, most reliable, place of retreat for the theistic as well as most of the non-theistic, if people were to be honest about their thoughts. But this is the most comforting of cop-outs and the greatest excuse to carry on acting recklessly out of all-too-trivial motivations of unhinged greed and blind self-interest.

What is worse is these things are only the tiny beginnings of much more that is bound to happen. If we do not listen up, and wake up, we’ll be just as unprepared and helpless when the even more dire and apocalyptic events unfold. This is not a time to curl up under the covers.

OR, Have you heard the new version of the 12 days of Christmas? It ends with “8 billion Nero’s fiddling.” But no one lives long enough to finish it… ever.

Scientists are saying we will see a fifty percent die-off rate, extinction, of species within the next twenty to fifty years. That is to say, within that time half the species we see now—well actually about five years ago—will be gone forever. [Footnote 2]

To think that we will be around after that, even to watch video games of the wildlife that once was, is the same as a doctor saying to someone: “Sorry, within twenty to fifty years, half of the organs in your body will be gone. They’ll die and ‘fall’ away, and you’ll be DISABLED” (! hardly just “disabled” tho).

OK, now you tell me how we’re going to be alive to even see what happens after that kind of extinction?! Does no one realize how much death that means? Does no one see any interconnections between us and planetmates? The world will come to an end if bankers don’t get money, they tell us. And if they did away with roads, or trucks…it’s Mad Max time, right? Well, how about when the bees didn’t show up? One species out of a scientifically estimated five-hundred million species and our economy was going ape shit! What happens with two-hundred-fifty MILLION species gone forever?! [continued after video]

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Tom Waits – “Earth Died Screaming”

Tom Waits sings, “The Earth died screaming, while I was dreaming… dreaming of you….” [Footnote 3]

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Ecocide

Global, Universal Death/Extinction Isn’t Just Death, Suicide; It Is MURDER, Of a Kind So Evil, Nazis Look Like Mother Theresas by Comparison

Concerning extinction of species—ourselves and other species—which is going on, an idea was put forth to me that we are assuming death is evil. This person intended, considering the context, for this to be taken spiritually, philosophically.

Re: The psychology of Extinction: Murder of untold billions through greed, laziness, egotism..well, I say, EVIL!

My reply was: You make the point that needs to be considered as it sits deep down in the hidden center of this particular wordpool. It’s a mind-bender and mind-stretcher when you stray down your road for sure. But after having been down it a fair number of times, both on my own as well as with companions, I find one tangible, unshakable thing, only, to still and focus my vision and guide my stance, actions, and position with surety. It is this:

I, for one, am not assuming death is an evil. I do not believe death is evil at all, quite the contrary. That is a spiritual perspective. And that is a perspective about death in its essence.

It is a vision from a spiritual stance—rooted in science, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism—as well as from a traditional religious view, where it is held that one’s life in the body is only a try-out for a better, “real” life in “heaven.” [Footnote 4]

However, you are mistaking, as analogy, the beautiful precise utility of a finely honed and balanced knife—metaphorically speaking—with what is really important and what is so hard to look at or fathom or even let into one’s thoughts: That is, the horrific, ghastly, unbelievably bloody and messy, grotesque, garish…infinitely hellacious and mind-drippingly insane scene that is right in front of all of us: that of the angelic young girl and her vulnerable innocent and kind-hearted mother, their bodies slashed, cut up, stabbed, gouged, even chopped and minced, and strewn widely and randomly in this ungodly lake of blood framed within this just recently homey, comforting surround of simple comfortable living room furniture and accouterments, which now, however, are awash and stained and forever nightmarish as they record in blood, guts, and other of that ilk, but of which we do not want even to know, the violence, wild aggression, horrible pain, fear, terror, and trauma of the event—the murder… the murder that was so precisely perfect in its nightmarishness as it was aided in its perfect horror by such a beautifully crafted, finely honed, exquisitely and marvelously sharp, perfectly balanced and joyous to feel, hold, and use KNIFE.

What I am saying is, OK death is beautiful, in essence. And going back to God is, my belief, the highest accomplishment and culmination of a life lived well. But we are not talking about my death or your death. We are talking about you and I deciding, by refusing to fight back the apocalypse—which could be taken up merely by changing some of our greedy, wasteful, egoistic ways—the death of untold trillions of other living conscious beings, indeed, of conscious things that we are not evolved enough to even be aware of. We are deciding that THEIR death, because of our actions…well, that’s not so evil, eh?

Well, that’s easy for US to say. But how about them? Don’t you think they might be a tad upset that we would be deciding this FOR THEM…(Jonestown-style)?

So, you bring up the point that needs to be addressed before we can really commit ourselves to the fight and the struggle to change that is being required of us. But I offer that I have never found anyone able to shake or even threaten the principle I have found to stand on: God’s creation, which includes death, in Her (His) time and in the way He (She) would have for each of us, is beauteous perfection. But, MURDER…that is, MY deciding…or ANYONE (but God) deciding for another that death is good, well… well… Is not that what Hitler did? What the Nazis did?

Death—not evil—may be beautiful.

Murder of untold multi-billion-trillions through greed, laziness, egotism, hubris, and extreme lack of empathy and feeling for the feelings/consciousness of those others…. well, I say,

EVIL!!!

Evil beyond all imagining. Evil beyond anything ever conceived or acted ever before in the uncountable billions of years of existence of this planet.

EVIL! Even the killing of the planet—its systems so perfectly balanced, so far beyond our understanding—of a nature that is beyond our comprehension, which, for all we know, is akin to a higher consciousness, a deva, a god, goddess.

Yes, EVIL to murder. Incredibly evil to bring to an end such things so far above and beyond our understanding that we cannot even comprehend the magnitude of that evil.

Now, that is my conclusion. I deem that murder on a scale so huge as to be inconceivable, of numbers of beings so great we have no way of knowing the hideous magnitude of the crime, not to mention eight billion alone of our own species, and laying to waste the dreams, efforts, and results of multibijillions of past lives on this planet of all species IS EVIL!

That is something I do not want to ever think I helped to happen…. Indeed it is EVIL so huge that I think I would not feel right, ever again, in the consciousness forever after this life and after my death, if I did not expend every ounce of my energy while I still can/could to try to prevent, to try to stop, to work against, to struggle to keep it from happening.

I think that consciousness cannot be destroyed—so death is not “evil.” But as we stand on the precipice of this planet murder and hugest crime of all time as far as we know before us and with us, as a species, being the cause of it… Well, I can only say the worst thing that I can imagine is having an eternity of consciousness knowing that I could have been part of the solution, but I trivialized it, I used a convenient spiritual belief/teaching/awareness to rationalize it so that I could continue asleep and unaware of the horror I participated in as I chose, through being afraid to look at the immense suffering involved, to blind myself with distractions—the perfect knife, the death that is not evil. And so instead of an eternity of peace knowing that I stood against the greatest evil ever known and fought as hard as I could, although we failed… instead it could be an eternity of regret and loathing not being able to be unaware that I was a part of the horror, the monster, participated in the killing, and helped others to also, by participating in the feel-good cover-up, the blinding of eyes, the zombification of brains. As the deepest darkness ever known gradually but unmistakably arose on the horizon and came toward us, increasing in speed, becoming more fiercesome, detailed, clear, unmistakable, unavoidable, and ever harder to be blind to, ever clearer in its brutality and the suffering, and unimaginable pain in its aftermath. And so I would spend an eternity knowing, not being able to not know that I WAS it, that I became it, helped it…that I was, er, “part of the problem”… and I didn’t have to be.

And for everyone else I would ask: Care to choose what you’d like to have sitting around in that imperishable unending forever consciousness we’re “blessed” with?

Species-Suicide Bombers

The End of the World

A correspondent of mine emailed me to recommend a book by John Leslie titled, The End of the World.

More people living now than the grand total of humans who have ever lived!

She said the book makes a disturbingly solid case for our extinction, saying that we are among the last generations of humans. Part of this reasoning involves a complex mathematical determination of our trajectory, which includes the interesting calculation that there are twice as many humans alive, right now, THAN THE GRAND TOTAL OF HUMANS THAT HAVE EVER LIVED. That last is a provocative finding, to say the least.

However, his whole premise got me to thinking. Of course, what I know confirms his conclusions in spades, but I couldn’t help feeling irked by his all-too-familiar perspective. For, to me, it is not just about our species. It is not just about our extinction. It is not just suicide, but murder. My correspondent, “Open Intelligence,” has used the term, “ecocide,” to make this kind of point.

Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how DARE we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us

Recently, I checked on the actual number of species that currently are on our planet, and the number was estimated at five-hundred million SPECIES. I think the whole problem IS that we only see “life” in terms of “our” life—our species. Indeed, some people think in terms of life being only for those of their religion, nation, social group, tribe, family, or even just oneself—all of which aid the murder of those who are “not life.”

So, Leslie is apparently thinking along the lines of many others who are not seeing the tragedy we are perpetrating to those other than our species, which is a milder form of the bigotry and prejudice we hold for one human against another type of human. I think that is a shame. [Footnote 5]

But then we cannot seem to even wake people up to saving themselves or their children, so how can we get them to empathize with the trillions upon trillions of other lives and the multi-hundred-millions of other life forms we share this planet with?

I guess that is my problem with his approach: It comes from my feeling that –Ok, we are committing suicide, but maybe we fucking deserve it. But how DARE we “blow up”—like a species suicide bomber—without a second thought for their pain or their lives—which we are only too dumb, and ego- species-centric, bigoted to see, let alone empathize with—as simple “collateral damage,” innumerable multi-bijilliion-trillions of innocent souls/ life forms and hundreds of millions of other entire species of them with us. That is murder of the highest degree, and an evil that this planet has never imagined before this time.

But, again, I see the point of talking to people where they are coming from as a starting point, as Leslie is doing. But shouldn’t we try to raise as much awareness as possible of, to me, the much greater evil that we are committing, for those who can hear it? I say, if we want to kill ourselves off, fine. But how dare we sink to becoming the biggest mass murderers of all time, by a multi-multi-trillionfold? We are currently making the Nazis look like Mother Theresas by comparison. Can you say, “Gulf Oil Spill dead zones,” just for starters!

Apocalypse Emergency

Suicidal Apes and Our Future as Mars

If you care about your children, you’ll “man up,” “woman up,” “cowboy up,” whatever…anything but cover up…and face the horror, become the noble humans we are capable of being, and join with others to pull off the most heroic actions of all time…

Or else we’ll be deemed throughout the Universe as “suicidal ape,” and our portrait will be no different from Mars.

The better angels of our beings urge us to pay attention to what is being said in the audio clip and writing below.

Consider the Topic and then that By the Ending I Was Feeling Euphoric,
Having Just Stared Deeply Into the Most Horrible Likely Future Conceivable.

MEANING:

Either you really should be checking this out…
Or I Should Be Getting Checked Out… but seriously folks…

Now you’d THINK this would be a morose piece. I am the author and I fully expected this to be a wake-up call that only the brave or the Goths would listen to. But honestly, I have to confess that the writing that came out of me and that I then expanded upon further in the reading over of it afterward was beautiful and led to a conclusion that inspired me (that’s not supposed to happen!) and left me feeling calmer than I have been for a long time.

What’s in the Audio

Ok, Ok, so you want to know what’s in here, especially the audio? I’m tempted to say “grab bag” and split, figuring to let Higher Power decide who gets to hear this. Sure this is in me; but there is more here in this audio than I, well at least thought, was in me.

No, I’ll give you the poop: It’s about a frightening global predicament that everyone seems to be aware of, but which few people are giving the attention and seriousness it deserves. I liken it to a thousand-alarm fire going off right now, with everyone looking away. I talk about why people would do that, why the media would be inclined to shy away. Basically it’s understandable because we simply have no way of comprehending the magnitude of what is happening and how fast, since no living thing on this planet in its multibillion year history has had to face what we are. [Footnote 6]

I found compassion, not blame.

I use spiritual fantasy and real world analogies to help us get a handle on what we’re facing. In jumping into these “waters,” I expected to be emotionally beat up. But instead I came to many understandings, and found I saw the positions of many who aren’t helping right now somewhat through their eyes, and found compassion, not blame.

Now that I think of it, I am having the realization that the reason for my serene, compassionate, and loving feelings while doing this parallels why I felt there was hope in the end.

I realize that facing dire challenges—and this being the most dire of all—brings out the best in Humans. It always has. Though this has been put off so long we might not do anything substantive till it’s too late, I realize that a political change away from the George W. Bush debacle in Washington may be having unknown but positive ripple effects around the world. In essence, it is only now that either Americans or those around the world can feel they can apply themselves to tackling this biggest of all challenges, for the previous US administration was disheartening and disillusioning to people of the globe who cared about the crisis, and of course to us in America, who felt that any efforts we could make would be quickly outswamped by the massive anti-environmental policies (sneakily disguised in environmentally positive sounding labels).

Not that everything has changed and corporations are back on their heels in their attempts at thwarting our wills to life, still, when Bush was US president, it was hopeless. It is very disheartening when your own government seems to consider your life completely expendable when it comes to short term gains for the Bushie’s—the corporate and “filthy rich” FOB’s.

The ending lifted me.

As for the ending which lifted me up in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time on this matter, I can only say that my long term study of humans—as a depth psychotherapist and as a student of other cultures across all time periods, that is, anthropology—informed my conclusions, shaped them, and took me to visions of possible futures that I did not expect, but seem, if not as likely, then at least as worthy of the human spirit as we deserve.

And for all we’ve done it seems we have called down upon ourselves to be tested and to be found either worthy, or deserving of the grave we’re digging.

I’ve said too much. The piece is complete in itself, and if you dare, you may find yourself strangely invigorated. At least I hope you get some, if not a lot, of the benefits and positive attitude adjustment that I received.

“We’re all in this together.”

I left the piece feeling so much love and unity with all humans and living things, for I knew that at no other time in the history of the world was the truth of the saying “we’re all in this together” more patently true.

“Apocalypse Emergency” is the preface to my book, Apocalypse—No! which is being revised and uploaded here at the present time. [Footnote 7]

Apocalypse—No!

Apocalypse—No! goes back and forth between the horrors that are possible and, well, let us say, this unique situation with the potential so strong to bring Humans to raise themselves up and be led by their better angels more than any other time. What it will mean could be exciting and triumphant beyond belief as humans come out of their puerile adolescent phase and become united and shaped for millennia by this great struggle. We could also die trying our mightiest, which has a nobility to it.

Currently we are looking like the stupidest beings ever to dream the dream of thingness and duality.

It’ll be scary and interesting, and you’ll be helped if you have a strong faith in a Higher Power.

Beyond that, it will be the biggest adventure that that the entire globe ever faced together, and the outcome could be just about anything.

Reversing Babel

But don’t get the popcorn, you won’t be sitting for this one; no one will. Indeed, if we succeed, we will look back at such terms as “couch potato” and wonder at the lost, unfulfilled lives they describe, which will seem a strange thing in a future that will require all of us to come together in a way that we haven’t seen since before—metaphorically speaking of course—The Tower of Babel.

So success could be wondrous beyond all belief; at the same time the odds will be against us, and even certain segments of humanity will want to monkey wrench our positive efforts.

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two:
Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call

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“Apocalypse Emergency: The Apocalypse Will Kill Your Child, How Can You Turn Your Head?” – audio presentation by SillyMickel Adzema

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rmcffzyvrk
Image of Apocalypse Emergency: Apocalypse? Or, New Dawn? by SillyMickel Adzema

You REALLY might want to listen to the audio above. It is a loose reading of this page, more entertaining than simply reading the text, is more conversational, contains extra information, and is framed by the feelings of the author/ audio presenter, so is altogether more accessible than the text alone, and I think an easier and more fun way to take in this upcoming chapter.

Click for audiocast by clicking player above or the link to the audio site below:

Apocalypse Emergency. The Apocalypse Will Kill Your Child, How Can You Turn Your Head?
- audio presentation by SillyMickel Adzema

---

Footnotes

1. What follows, from May of 2010, is an example of the attitude of dealing with global apocalyptic events as if, like in this case, they are of similar importance to a plane going down. My point, of course, is that we should be dealing with them will all the urgency of a “trillion-alarm fire” happening. For each of these are disasters contributing to an ongoing catastrophic ecocidal process, the tip of which, only, we see in the Fukushima reactor blowups and the Gulf Oil Spill:

Matthews: “four-alarm fire” in Gulf! Landrieu smirks. Matthews: There are ways to suck up oil…it is a US emergency not just a BP business problem

May 25, 2010. Today, Chris Matthews likened the Gulf Oil Spill to a four-alarm fire. While Senator Mary Landrieu smirked, Matthews said, “I don’t know what the legality of this is, but the President of the United States has got this challenge, not just BP. BP has got a business challenge; we have a national challenge. North America that we inherited and would like to pass on to our future generations is in big trouble.”

Earlier, in answer to a question by Matthews as to whether there’s “anybody in the world that can come and collect petroleum…that’s out there in the Gulf right now…anybody that can collect it?” Landrieu responded saying, “Well, first of all, Chris, just let me say this: If Delta Airlines…plane goes down, I don’t think we necessarily call all the airlines to come in and help in this very specific way. Now, I will tell you, that all the oil companies have been helping since day one, informally….”

Are you as concerned as I am hearing that kind of cavalier attitude about human life?

2. While the severity/seriousness of our predicament is considerably watered-down and glossed over for the sake of consumption in the following report, it is instructive nevertheless. It shows the extent to which our precarious situation is known—and even communicated among the educated—albeit in a manner as to not threaten or scare the audience (into action to stop it!):

Has Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2011)—With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, from frogs and fish to tigers, some scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that occurred only five times before during the past 540 million years.

Each of these ‘Big Five’ saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct.

For more: ScienceDaily:

3. Lyrics for “Earth Died Screaming” by Tom Waits:

Rudy’s on the midway

And Jacob’s in the hole

The monkey’s on the ladder

The devil shovels coal

With crows as big as airplanes

The lion has three heads

And someone will eat the skin that he sheds

And the earth died screaming

The earth died screaming

While I lay dreaming of you

Well hell doesn’t want you

And heaven is full

Bring me some water

Put it in this skull

I walk between the raindrops

Wait in Bug House Square

And the army ants

They leave nothin’ but the bones

And the earth died screaming

While I lay dreaming of you

There was thunder

There was lightning

Then the stars went out

And the moon fell from the sky

It rained mackerel

It rained trout

And the great day of wrath has come

And here’s mud in your big red eye

The poker’s in the fire

And the locusts take the sky

And the earth died screaming

While I lay dreaming of you

4. Not long ago I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room and watching CNN reporting on the Fukushima reactor developments. I heard this sort of “religious” viewpoint from a stranger. We agreed on the magnitude and severity of this Fukushima event and that of the Gulf Spill, among others. We agreed even on the cause of such events and the way we are being misinformed on them—partly as patronizing misdirection, partly as cover-up. But where we disagreed was on whether it was important or not to do anything about them. As he put it, in his superior but cynical tone, “What can you do? We can’t do anything about it, besides it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s not THIS that is important…but only after death,” pointing heavenward at that. (*sigh*)

5. On the subject of not being able to handle such a huge concept as mass extinction, my correspondent phrased it this way:

The pyschology of tragedy—Extinction? I’m afraid haven’t got time for it.

Mar 20, 2010 2:18pm by Open Intelligence. “The economy works by making people selfish. Mass extinction is merely collateral damage.”

The link shared—to an article by Simon Barnes writing for The Sunday Times, of London, on March 20, 2010—reads:

Species are going extinct because humans can’t see it happening, and therefore we can’t believe it is happening. It is as simple as that.

Believing that the elephant will no longer be around is like believing that one day the sun will rise in the west and the stars will fall as rain.

We can only really get a handle on the short-term. A generation at most. Long-term planning means the next year or two. Our minds can’t cope with anything longer. That’s why we choose to govern ourselves by means of a comfortable timescale. Four years, five years: that’s Politician’s Time.

Extinction is a happening thing, as I have pointed out more than once before. But it is happening in slow motion: you don’t see a monkey turn into a man, and you don’t see an animal go extinct. It’s just that one day you notice that they haven’t been about for a few years. The current rate of extinction is one species an hour,

Which brings us to the disaster of Cites….

Read more “Extinction? I’m afraid we haven’t got time for it” at http://thetim.es/fJOE7L [return to text]

6. The idea that there was no other time where any human lived knowing of the very real possibility of ending our species in its lifetime was criticized as follows:

No other time has been like this, but there have been plenty of times in the history of the human species where we have been met with the ability to and possibility of our ending—from when we were a few dozen leaving the mythological savanna of Eden to the discovery of the forging of Bronze to the hypothetical Event that led to the Dark Ages, the Apocalypse has been Nigh. It ain’t happened yet.

I responded: I have no idea of what time in our evolution that, other than modern times, our species even knew that it was a limited species on a limited globe and had any idea that its actions could wipe out what it thought of as itself as a species when we did not conceive of ourselves as a limited species in any of those time you speak of. We, with our science and technology are able to know of those times and ourselves. But hell, only in the last five hundred years did we find out we lived on a globe or lived in a solar system! Before that how could anyone in any culture know where either their ability to roam ended or their species no longer existed!

So you miss the point, which is, “no other time” did humans live “KNOWING” that THEY could bring, not only themselves, their families, or their cultures to an end but THEIR ENTIRE “SPECIES,” to an end “in”…their “lifetime” (not to mention the other estimated 500 million species). From “No other time was like this. We live knowing of the very real possibility of ending our species in our lifetime.”

7. The unrevised version of is titled Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? Some of it was published in 1999 in the book, Apocalypse, or New Age?

A “webmap” of some of my online works on this topic is at Re the book: “Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth” – a webmap, “owner’s manual” ..Something wonderful is going to happen [return to text]

Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two:
Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call

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Dictatorship: America – History Suppressed Will Repeat

Culture War, Part Twelve: American Dictator

Totalitarianism in the U.S.

Nations Need Therapy Too!

To avoid our next dictatorship

This chapter addresses why America still MUST have a thorough truth commission of the Bush-Cheney crimes: For how can we avoid repeating history if it is hidden from us? [continued after video and audio links below]

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“8 YEARS”

He Said, “I Am the Decider.” How Could We Know the Idiot King Meant “Dictator”?

This is an artistic rendition of feelings swirling around myself and my fellow Americans, living for eight long years under what a number of scholars have officially determined was—as meeting all the criteria necessary to categorize and as characterized by all the elements by which one defines it—the “dictatorship” of so-called President George W. Bush, from the years 2001 through 2009.

Music in “8 Years” – “Dear Mr. President” – written & performed by Pink, (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)
“In the Arms of the Angels” – written and performed by Sarah McLachlan (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)

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Totalitarianism in the US: Nations Need Therapy Too!

This is a reading of my original commentary on “8 Years” (above). I titled it, “To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?” It contains the jist of what is written here. To hear my reading of this post, click on the link above to the audio site or the one below to the audio player here. 

 
Image of To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?

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TRUTH – Commentary on the Video “8 Years”

It is just as important for a society to uncover its repressed truth in order to heal as it is for a person.

And just as on the individual level, if we continue to deny and refuse to let our truth rise up to heal us we are driven to continually re-enact it over and over despite our best efforts not to, so also on the level of the nation or society, if these truths are not faced by our country…God help us.

For just as Hitler wasn’t the last fascist totalitarian dictator…look to the regimes currently in North Korea, China, and woefully too many nations in Africa and the Middle East; we had the Soviet Union, Cambodia…George W. Bush won’t be the first and only dictator America will ever have…. He will just be the first….

A Warning

I first wrote this during Obama’s first year in office. I am sad to say it proved prophetic, as ever since the election of 2010…and I argue it is because Obama failed to address the issues I talk about below…we have seen increasing totalitarian-style fanaticism by Republicans and the unfortunate codification of Bush’s totalitarian inroads…denial of habeas corpus, torture, extraordinary rendition, repression of freedom of speech as in the reactions to wikileaks, especially the torture and incarceration without trial of Bradley Manning, and more…by President Obama.  [continued after video]

 

 

So in this part you may better understand why current developments have come about, though they could have been prevented if there had been enough gumption, as well as what still is needed—sooner or later—or else we are in for ever more, and greater and expanding, tragedies in terms of the loss of democracy and liberty. So what follow is a warning as well.

A Prophecy

I had written that in pondering this commentary I began to realize some important and overlooked truths concerning one of the issues our government is facing currently. As Obama, Pelosi, Leahy, the Republicans, and all the media struggle over the issue of having a truth commission to look into possible illegalities committed by Bush-Cheney, I was flooded with one of those, truly, obvious truths, the common sense kind, that gets lost in the complexities of personalities and politics.  [continued after video]

For just as on the individual level, as in therapy, hidden TRUTH must be uncovered, faced, dealt with, and ONLY THEN put behind oneself; so also must society uncover its hidden truths or it will be sick. And by sick, I mean the same thing that Santayana meant when he said “A society that does not remember its history is doomed to repeat it.”

So far, nothing big there. Then it hit me: But if history is not known, how can one help but repeat it? In the current situation, if we DO NOT look into what was done by Bush-Cheney during the 8 years in which, as the videos here and numerous scholars have determined, America had its first dictatorship, then we will not have a TRUE history of what happened. And if our history is not true, then it is fantasy, speculation, or propaganda.

In that situation, which is our current one, unless we have that truth commission, we “are doomed to repeat it.” Repeat what? DICTATORSHIP. And the even sadder thing is that when we fail to learn from our past experience, whether as individuals or societies or nations, when it repeats, it repeats in a bigger form, carrying more impact, force, devastation … more dire consequences.

We have numerous historical examples of this pattern in recent history alone–on both sides. When Germany, South Africa, and Japan faced and dealt with the horribles of their recent past…after WWII for Germany and Japan; after the end of apartheid for South Africa…they went forward and prospered tremendously, even phenomenally.

 

Dire Consequences if a Society’s History is not Accurate

If one’s history is not true, it is not helpful…worse, it leaves a society vulnerable to danger.

Everyone quotes Santayana on history repeating. How then can no one seem to make the connection that your history has to be TRUE HISTORY not a web of lies hiding deep and festering wrongs. So it is just as important for nations and societies to uncover its repressed truth, in order to heal, as it is for the Individual.  [continued after video]

And just as on the individual level, if our nation — specifically right now our government — continues to deny, refuses to let our truth rise up to heal us, or simply, as Obama has so far done, look the other way on the grounds that there are more important things to deal with, well then as a nation — just as individuals, we are driven to continually re-enact our biggest mistakes over and over despite our best efforts not to — so also on the level of the nation or society, we will fix a problem only to see it rise up again during the next election cycle.

In fact, it is exactly that lack of facing the truth that has led to the current global economic implosion, started here in the U.S. Reaganomics caused that; we are finally admitting on our talk shows. Yet we had twelve years of Reaganomics from 1981 through 1992. And during that time, we saw how effective it was: It not only almost quadrupled the national debt during the twelve years of Reagan and Bush, Sr., it not only severely unbalanced the budget, but it caused a recession so important that it led to Clinton winning the Presidency on the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

 

Despite the fact the Clinton reversed that downswing dramatically by REVERSING Reaganomics; and despite the fact that his policies helped create one of the most prosperous decades in recent history, even leaving a surplus for the next administration, not a peep was heard about the disastrous experiment Reaganomics turned out to be.

Apparently our country was not about to call Reagan wrong at that time. Too many idiots felt that somehow we had to treat him like a nice Grandad and not say anything unseemly, regardless of how the rest of the country would fare. I fear there were more insidious reasons than that for not broadcasting what we had learned, at such a cost.

 

And it was just that lack of truth-telling of the obvious, so as not to smear Reagan, though his economics was a horrible failure and it had been proven to be so, that allowed Bush to come in and go about doing Reagan’s mistake, only doing it several powers greater and doing it sooner. Bush came in and gave the budget surplus to the wealthy, without a peep from any in the media or any outrage on the part of Americans, most of whom had suffered through the recession only a decade earlier.

But the average American would not know economics like the experts, the media, and the government. So it was tragic to refuse to point out that Bush’s ideas had already been tried by Reagan and his father with horrible consequences. Everyone kept quiet and suppressed the knowledge of their own experience.

What happened? We “were doomed to repeat it.” Only karma seems to have a played a part because we are not just repeating it. We are being punished severely with one of the worst economic downturns in America’s history. And it seems to me we deserve it because obviously the lesser medicine did not teach Americans and their media and leaders a damn thing. But with this one: Oh, well, NOW, we are hearing that trickle-down Reaganomics started it all. So if we are too stupid to learn from a mistake, that mistake will come back bigger and bigger until we wake up and realize that the path we are on is not working.

 

Now this is very important, why?

Because scholars have determined that in studying the actions of Bush-Cheney, America, for the first time in its history, went into a dictatorship, meaning that their policies, which involved tossing out the Constitution, and pillar-by-pillar removing the foundations of our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy, including even the right to have a vote that will be counted, or more specifically, will be counted in favor of the person you voted for, not counted toward the opponent. Consider that the ones with expertise in poring over all the documents and data have determined that we had a smokescreen of democracy and freedom talk, but that actually we were living in a dictatorship.

There are scholars galore putting out books delineating the ways in which our Executive Branch acted as literal traitors, and worse, to America, and list the grounds upon which Bush and Cheney would be tried for murder, for starters, if they were anyone else in America.

If these truths are not faced by our country, God help us. For just as voodoo economics returned, with results many, many times worse than the first time; well, what can we imagine would happen if we don’t face the truth about the dictatorship of George W. Bush, the loss of rights and freedom and honest elections?

For one thing, consider how easily this dictator rose to power. Our supposed democracy didn’t stop him, like it is assumed democracy will. If we don’t take in that lesson, not only are we doomed to repeat these horrible eight years, but we are leaving a door wide open for the next one. And if you think you have to have concentration camps in order to see dictatorship, well, gee, just guess what you are going to get under the next American dictator.

And this will surely happen for it is simple common sense that anyone would understand if it were related to something in their commercial life. You don’t see farmers feeding the wrong kind of grain to their livestock more than one time, do you? Can you even imagine it? Then why would we think that we can ignore finding out what happened and fixing it in order to keep something worse than it from happening in the future when it comes to politics?

 

Is it that we think that as Americans we are immune from something so horrible? Then are we a nation of Pollyannas? In our complacency we have witnessed so many Katrinas, Iraqs, Vietnams, Bush-Cheneys, being rated at the bottom in health care among developed nations, having one of the shortest life expectancies among developed nations, having one of the worst educational systems, and having one of the lowest standards of livings among developed nations. How many of these kinds of events is it going to take before people stop engaging in magical thinking, believing the things that pandering Republicans will tell them to hide these facts, instead of taking their truth from the experiences of their own lives?

I hope all Americans and our representatives will resist the tendency to run away from the unpleasant past and instead find ways, and there are plenty of easy ways, to turn and face the darkness behind us, so that we will not be forced to walk through an even blacker and more horrible darkness before us.

 

How Did I Do?

As you can see from the commentary above, which I wrote in 2009, I was predicting what is currently front-page news. For us to have hope, we must always hold to the idea that, given insight, there is always time to change our ways, to alter our course and thereby to correct where we have been wrong. This may or may not true. Still, I implore you to believe that our efforts to rectify matters are not futile, else we will insure that they are.

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Thirteen:
The Resurgence of "Obvious Truths" –
The New Improved Fascism!

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“8 YEARS”

He Said, “I Am the Decider”; How Could We Know the Idiot King Meant “Dictator”

This is an artistic rendition of feelings swirling around myself and my fellow Americans, living for eight long years under what a number of scholars have officially determined was—as meeting all the criteria necessary to categorize and as characterized by all the elements by which one defines it—the “dictatorship” of so-called President George W. Bush, from the years 2001 through 2009.

Music in “8 Years” – “Dear Mr. President” – written & performed by Pink, (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)
“In the Arms of the Angels” – written and performed by Sarah McLachlan (purchase mp3) (purchase CD)

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Totalitarianism in the US: Nations Need Therapy Too!

This is a reading of my original commentary on “8 Years” (above). I titled it, “To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?” It contains the jist of what is written here. To hear my reading of this post, click on the link above to the audio site or the one below to the audio player here.

Image of To Avoid Our Next Dictatorship: Why America MUST have a Thorough Truth Commission of the Bush-Cheney Crimes, for How Can We Avoid Repeating History if It Is Hidden From Us?

 

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Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Thirteen:
The Resurgence of "Obvious Truths" –
The New Improved Fascism!

Invite you to follow me on Twitter:

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Republicans – Blue Meanies Naked and Looking Foolish

Oh, Those Prankish Republicans

This follows from “Obvious Truths,” for those who are interested. This is called “Naked Republicans, Blue Meanies Fleeing or Foolish.” May 8, 2009…so maybe some of you seeing the news lately will know what I am talking about as what is going on currently is merely a continuation of what was started then, as I explain.

To start, this follows from how George W. Bush and Hank Paulson managed to get away scot free with their last-minute cleaning out of America’s cupboards—taking even the silver—and leaving America, and the world, closer to an actual doomsday within a generation or two at the most…leaving us closer to the end of all time than ever before….

Yea, I know… that made me feel real good too *sarcasm* … Happy thoughts…  [Continued below audio]

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Naked Republicans: Blue Meanies Looking Foolish -
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this chapter. For the author’s reading of “Naked Republicans,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

 
Image of Naked Republicans Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish by SillyMickel Adzema

 

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Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish

Ironically, however, by knee-capping all efforts we were put on a worse financial footing even than the already horrible financial footing caused by the war and the eight-years of massive Republican tax giveaways to the Filthy Rich that was already going on and was going to be left to Obama and America to take care of. So what they did with TARP at the very end of Bush’s reign took a very bad situation and turned it into the emergency that we’re experiencing…. Yea, that cheered me up to.

Ironically, however these Republicans-that-got-away by kneecapping all future efforts to steady ourselves made sure we would never forget them either. For the last-minute clean-out was an overreach of the most red-handed, leaving us far worse off than the already horrible financial footing they had left America on, which was the result of a long war and another eight years of massive Republican tax cuts to the filthy rich…following from the twelve years of the same during Reagan-Bush….

So much for Republicans being deficit hawks

So the Republican facade had come down as surely as the Berlin Wall had. However, leave it to Republicans to never let the facts get in the way of saying whatever lies they can dream up to support their benefactors, showing in this way their true servitude to those outside interests. Unfortunately for them, after their embarrassing rejection in 2008 these Republicans were not even allowed the dignity that the Communist hard-liners had when they were so openly shown to be wrong and were allowed to disappear from public life.

They looked all the more ridiculous when they attempted some kind of reverse outrage at Obama for having been put in the position that, actually, their policies over the eight year’s of their governance with Bush put them.

But don’t cry for them. Because Republicans are extremely wanting when it comes to self-consciousness. It is impossible to imagine they they ever look at the “man in the mirror.” They are so other- and outside-oriented (towards money). Naturally it follows they are horrible at soul-searching or even looking inside to their conscience.

To keep this squarely on hard realities and not overreach, I am going against my gut and laying out that huge assumption—that they even have a conscience. Certainly, John Dean of Watergate fame was not facetious when he wrote about “conservatives without a conscience.” So that is the context of this new era.

No. Republicans have ridiculed the inner life, any inner life, for many decades. They have been notoriously ripping into the prospect. Somehow they have convinced too many Americans—with their juvenile and effective substitute for reason—that is, ridicule, mocking, and shaming—that if you have compassion for others you are a “bleeding heart.” They have advanced a perspective that if you shed a tear during a presidential campaign, for example, you are weak, unstable.

 

If you attempt to raise yourself  above feeling and seek the Presidency as someone who would NOT put himself above the law (See how great the opposite idea has worked out during the eight years of the W…that is, we had someone who did put himself above the law)…. If you would attempt to show that you would follow the law no matter what your personal feelings and you would give a legal answer to a personal question about your wife…for those who aren’t as old as me, I’m talking about Dukakis…well, then you are a zombie and have no feelings.

Somehow Republicans had convinced Americans it is better to be irrational and murderous for the sake of one’s family and to shred the Constitution and act dictatorially as a president than to aspire to deal with one’s feelings personally and abide by the same laws as everyone else so that Americans could still have the sense that there is still some democracy left in this country. Like I said, this was Dukakis’s approach in the first campaign we saw of a Bush for president. And somehow America decided it wanted a tough-guy, Bush, rather have than a rational person, Dukakis. That is strange.

Anyway, my point is that the Republicans disability in the region of the heart, has left them completely vulnerable to making total fools out of themselves.  The polls are showing they are not believed anymore. But that is not the whole truth, which is most Americans just do not think them credible when, after eight years of robbing Americans blind and creating the biggest and most punishing economic debacle in almost a century, it would be discovered the only progress or benefit of all that was to create a brand new class status in America. It was widely seen that Rich-publicans major accomplishment under Bush was the rising up of an entire new level of moneyed power which is above the very, very rich and which is so far removed from normal Americans the cable documentaries to report on it have struggled with any kind of normal sounding name for this class. Lacking even an acceptable euphemism the reporting  on this very very very very very very very very rich was forced into the obvious, calling this new class the “filthy rich.” That was the actual name of a documentary, “The Filthy Rich.” So don’t blame me folks, I didn’t make up the term.

So immediately after the end of Bush’s term and after the Bush-Paulson-”filthy rich” caper that cleaned out the Treasury and nearly eliminated Obama’s hopes for economic justice once he became President, they looked ridiculous when they turned right (around) and proclaimed as foolhardy, unworkable, and unnecessary Obama’s attempts to save the economy by funneling money to the actual people who do create wealth in America. These ordinary folks actually create the wealth in that they work for a living, not suck off others’ wealth. They actually pay taxes back to the government when they work…again in contrast to those other people we are talking about. And they actually create jobs because, not being “filthy rich,” they have not had the lives of ease of Bush’s Republicans and his “filthy rich” constituency. So when they get some money, however little it is, they maximize it; they do not feel like they have the privilege to blow it.

I mentioned Bush’s “filthy rich” constituency for certainly his administration was not a government run for the benefit of any but that new aspiring American royalty, those faceless people inhabiting that tiny slice of status above all the rest of us yet controlling  more than sixty percent of all America’s wealth.

The Republicans began embarrassing themselves within a few weeks of the outcome of the 2008 election by completely reversing their rhetoric soooo quickly. They had no trouble doing this because they are not ones taking to anything smacking of any namby-pamby “psychobabble” so they do not have a clue, and therefore no shame, about the way they are being perceived. This blind-sightedness is their way of covering up, to themselves as well as others, not only the fact that they are disabled in not having a heart but also the fact they have not the faintest glimmer of what an inner realization, understanding of one self, or even an insight is.  

So they could not help but expose themselves and their personal inadequacies before the majority of Americans who have had enough classes in the school of hard knocks as to have had to learn a few things about themselves and to have become at least a little savvy about human motivations and the hidden agendas of others. Because of their confrontations with the hard realities of life, ordinary folks are able to see through at least the most obvious of the dishonest ploys or self-serving lies of the people around who might occasionally resort to that.  So they were able to see these “emperors” sans clothing and their respect for Republicans turned toward pity. Therein we have our context.

Specifically we have these Rich-publicans…at this point now shortly into Obama’s term and after having blown all that money at their turn…squealing about big spending Democrats! Keep in mind this was only weeks from the ending of their dominance of government which had them, instead, opt for…well, not free spending…like they say “free spending Democrats”…but blatant and free stealing , with the obvious consequence of breaking the bank—the Treasury—in their all-consuming greed.

So, Boehner and Cantor, as Republican minority leader and Republican whip, went squealing and setting the squealing chorus going and keeping it high-pitched and ongoing about the very results of their own actions just previous, which added to the transparency of the shame they were displaying to … the world!  For, tragic but funny enough…and they so deserving of being laughed at…what we all saw was a small bunch of squealers who were obviously knowing of their guilt over the years and the suffering , immense, over the years they caused. They could not help but be keenly aware of the way they had enriched themselves and their circles of cohorts (the “filthies”). So rather than…. Christ, their behavior was the kind of thing you are able to see through at least by the time you make it into junior high! They opted to flaunt their shame and hypocrisy…”you lie”–Joe Wilson…rather than stand idly by. Undoubtedly they knew if they respectfully retreated at all, it would leave the center of the circle open to be filled with nonguilty voices. And these voices they knew would circle in increasingly on them and their despicable actions in the not too long ago.  So, terrified their silence would leave them naked and exposed to the truth…culpable, perhaps criminal…they opted for tactics of the most, let us say…well, unsavvy and unslick are two words that would apply and would be kinder than they deserve.  It didn’t take Shakespeare to see through their juvenile, laughable fakery and lies, which they then were stuck with and trapped inside of. And this caused them only to increase their proclamations to higher and higher levels of—hilarity for the rest of us—inane, embarrassing  and telltale inanity for them.  [continued after video]

True Deceivers

It didn’t take a Freud to see this tactic. In the common way of thinking of this Republican ploy–not the psychological way…like Freud–people say the best defense is a good offense. Others might say they made spectacles of themselves caught up in the shame and fear of being caught in their criminality if it were ever to come out what they had done under Bush. So, overburdened this way with anxiety, they could not then think with any rationality, nor even come up with any smooth or artful cover-ups. 

But America is not as averse to understanding other humans as these Republicans wish they would be. For a long time they could get away with their habitual lying, and they forgot that things had changed. Remember how McCain was brought down by his lying during the campaign against Obama in much harsher fashion than any of his predecessors?  He wasn’t a bigger bald-faced liar. No, he was just as big. But he ran in an era that had seen a rapid increase in technology, including the sort that allowed the production of ever cheaper and smaller little cameras without film, with immediate recall and which also recorded video, all from a tiny box. 

So, McCain, being like most Republicans out of touch with the waves on which the normal folks must surf or at least move, also made a laughingstock out of himself…remember this? He time and again and on stages small as well as grand (Meet the Press, for example) adamantly denied ever saying exact wording that, sure enough, the moderator would produce in video showing him, plain as day and exactly, saying and meaning.  So it was really rough going for all Republicans whose political skills all ran in the direction of their ability to lie and deceive while hiding their true agenda.

No, technology hasn’t been kind to liars.

And they had been so successful over the last few decades, half century that in the last fifty-eight years prior to Obama’s win, Democrats had held the Presidency for only sixteen of them. Indeed until Clinton managed to prevail for eight years, it had been a measly eight years out of forty-two. 

So, many Republicans had become reliant on deception. Hell, perhaps they became Republicans for that reason: They could apparently seek office with even the sleaziest, most criminal, or most selfish of reasons, but they would be surrounded by a sea of true deceivers–liars who made sport, game, and a perfection about that that.

Just ask them. As even McCain was accused by Bush in South Carolina of fathering a black child and came to the obvious conclusion that at least Bush was a big liar and deceiver and so on. Unfortunately that did not stop McCain from doing the same kinds of things. That’s the tragedy there. But that’s Republicans for you. I can’t understand them.

So, that’s the history, the thrust, and the wind behind them, as decade after decade, they turned truth on its head and got away with it.  Indeed, they were able to make American heroes out of the best in that art—Reagan the penultimate example. And in doing so they aided their cause of confusing Americans about truth. America’s mind became seriously muddled through Republicans getting away with blatantly and self-servingly turning white into black. Just add a little anti-abortion or a little evangelical sounding talk and they were able to come across to some as as white as the proverbial driven snow.

But things change.  I mentioned the technology as helping this along.  But how can anyone forget eight solid years of Bush-lies.  More than the lies:  How could anyone forget all the suffering caused by those lies!  No, people were getting harder and harder to lie to.

But when, being a Republican, that is the only tool, the only political skill, the only reason you are even a politician in the first place… well, though they might know that there has been a change in people’s abilities to see through them, still, skunks can not change their stripes, but funnier still is the stench they can’t cover up. 

Imagine that, and you’ve got an idea of how they appeared, how funny, how stupid, how much appearing to be the obvious fools, liars, self-interested, uncaring of the public interest, the Constitution, or anything that they they’d ever espoused, and which for most Democrats would be their actual reason for being in office…as it should be for all politicians in our democracy.

So, let’s take a little gander back at the fun of, no, not yester-year, actually not so long ago.… And would you believe it?!  I don’t believe they are going to allow themselves to realize how foolish they are appearing.  Look, if ya got no clothes, you may have an inkling at times that people are laughing at your foolish, saggy hide, but, well, YA GOT NO CLOTHES!!

So, a little fun, and, then, too, for the record:

I won’t go into the stupid things that Boehner and Cantor and the other bewildered fools said and that were laid out one after the other, the pundits almost chuckling at the spectacle as they, well, being reporters, they HAD to report on this idiotic behavior.

Basically, these Republicans are obviously the guys who blew all that money there at the beginning of their control. And even at the end, just a month or so earlier, they had wrangled the largest single payout in American history by extortive means. And then there you see them saying Democrats are spending too much money…. And, for what are they spending? The Dems are criticized for wanting to put money into the hands of people who might actually make jobs and could really use it…. Wow.

And but for all but them this is obvious and unseemly. Shameful. But don’t feel too sorry for them. Like I said, they have no capacity for insight. They may even shed a tear on occasion, giving you the impression they have a heart; but, no, not at all, none at all, absolutely NO insight into themselves. Let’s see…. Put this another way…NO self-awareness. 

For them it is, “Hell, where’s the time for that psycho blather when there are endless high wire games of swindle, intrigue, and self-interest to attend to!” And all of it with the added wrinkle of it having to be totally lied about. They are become consummate pretenders, precision actors. And of what would seem to be the hardest acting to pull off. Oh, lots of people could pull it off for a moment, a spell. A scene, let us say. But they have to pull off for a lifetime (!) that they are…check this out…that they are the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they really are. 

They have to boldly pretend in defiance of every single nerve and thought that comprises them and is obsessing every second how to get a personal advantage out of every, every little thing. Against that they have to appear they are “serving” the interests of the nation. Or, caught in that lie, well, it’s their “constituents” they are serving…

Though, think about it now, just who exactly lives in a district whose constituents want you to enrich yourself? Or who has constituents who are ALL, or even predominantly, so wealthy it enriches them as well? What kind of constituent could there be who would want for you to have power or advantage of whatever secret sort that is the object of your game or who would want you to work to benefit those “filthy rich” folks I was talking about earlier which…and this is match, point, game, no question!…which boon for them is achieved completely at their expense!

What kind of people would want that? What constituent would like seeing the already-haves having more at the expense of their having to accept lower wages, lower standards of living…having to worry about their not being able to afford health care and having to live the rest of their life with the knowledge that but for that unneeded manna on the filthy rich their child would be alive? Or who would want knowing that a war that cost them a child, and much else, was made up to distract and enrich certain corporations and not for your protection or benefit at all?

What kind of constituents are like that? Who has constituents who are like that?

Or, just simply, who lives in a district where your actions increase virtually all of the struggles of their lives so that you might slavishly carry out the wishes of the hidden puppeteers who have paid for your seat, bought your election for you, and so on, and who you wish to get ever closer to, in the thought  that sucking up enough you too can suck yourself, too, right up and through and into the tiny sliver class of the filthy rich?

So, that ploy, you know, goes like,

I have to screw all you Americans because the people in my district basically aren’t like real people and so the increased burden added to life’s struggle by my actions, well…

and here’s when the “heckuva job, brownie” really comes splattering back out from the fan

…because WE are AMERICANS, who’ve NEVER SHIRKED OUR RESPONSIBILITIES, BUCKLED UNDER A BURDEN, RUN AWAY FROM A FIGHT.  No, WE are AMERICANS!

And the smell of that bodily waste…well that’s a stench that even that skunk would run from.

I mean, say I’m in that district that person is talking about. Or the person who is representing that district is running for president and is showing me what the years with him leading our country are going to be like. Like I’m going to go…ok, because of course he’s right and I and all the rest of us in the district are the most blitheringly idiotic humans ever spawned…so we’re going,

Wow, yea. You’ve just made me feel so proud, you’re wonderful.  This being an American is so great, how fortunate that I am one.  Why, now I see, when you’re an American, you get to have stren…no, kind of like powers, Superman like powers. 

Yea, that’s the ticket.  ’s gonna be so fucking great having McCain as President, what a life I’ll live!  I’ll go to war but will kill multitudes and never get a scratch!  And, well, who gives a shit if this guy does everything the exact opposite of what would help improve the economy and make jobs. 

Damn, that don’t matter.  I’m like Superman!  I could probably work ten jobs; as he said, y’know, “we never shirk,  we never run away from a fight,  we will shoulder all responsibilities ,and never buckle under a burden.” So since I’m superman, as he’s pointed out,  that’s not going to be a problem for me, I could probably work ten jobs.

But if there weren’t any jobs, I wouldn’t even starve.  Thank God I’m a freaking American, how weak those sappy European weaklings who…heh!…have to eat to survive. 

Ha!  This is going to be absolutely such fun with McCain as president:  I’m going to Fight! I’m going to bear heavy burdens, I’m going to have responsibilities that never let up.  I’m not going to make much money…them “filthy rich” sorts, well they’re the ones that care about that.  Whereas me, because of this incredibly wise and pandering McCain (or Bush, Dole, Romney, Bauchman, Pierce… go ahead, any Republican name will work perfectly), I’m gonna get to have superpowers. 

Oh, how dumb, I just realized how dumb that sounded,.. Sorry, my bad, I’ll get this right… No, of course I’m not gonna GET superpowers, just because of this politician, however good, kind, wise, and caring of me.  Of course not.  He can’t GIVE me any such thing. 

But, I’m so alive and happy and grateful because, well, of course you see, it’s so obvious, HE’s opened my eyes to the fact that, well I’m an AMERICAN  AND THAT MEANS THIS INCREDIBLE GIFT, Gol Dang, thank you, Lord, and forgive me for not noticing the obvious: 

That I ALWAYS had these super powers.  How wonderful to be awake.  I’ll try my best to forget how stupid I was to have not realized it myself…ever…my whole life long.

OK, enough of that.  No, things are changing.  I don’t really know how these self-serving phonies, these pretenders, these highest wire liars, perfecting, ever more precisely, their deceptive skills, can continue the mass fooling of people they need to do.

So, there they are, wind no longer at their back but, like salmon, only knowing one thing one direction. And the only thing they know, stumbling and mucking their way forward, are those invisible strings pulling the same way, pushing them now into the wind! No matter how the winds have changed, they cannot change course. For they never got to set it in the first place. 

And so, in tandem they march, no matter how foolish they appear stumbling into the head winds, and falling down in their words–their words no longer seeming so artful as they go on and on about having to save the American workers and the middle class as they hand over, so fast it lookin like a holdup, to rich thick bankers the hugest sums ever dispensed by Congress. And this most quickly. And this outflow not to end cancer, achieve world peace, give solar energy to everybody in America. But, no. Rather this effusion into the hands of a jet-owning billionaire who is later going to brag how his bank is not going to give any of that money to people needing loans, homes, autos. No, they are going to store it away as it will increase their corporation’s profitability. And when the quarterly earnings come out, hell, they’re going to look great, their stock will go up… .more money, more money… and in the meantime, they’re going to triple the interest rates of those who already have loans with them…more money, more money, more money, feel like dancin…more money…like singin.

Well, believe me, they did that. It happened to me and virtually everyone I knew.

Well anyway these naked squeaky voiced Republicans…it’s a  blessing that they have no self-perception really…idiotically crumbled before that gang of the “filthy rich.” And, like I said it was a damn good thing for them they have no shame either when these bankers did not even cover up or hide…well not much anyway…the fact that they made out like bandits and they had no intention of having that money be anything but for feathering their nest.  Indeed, it was all the more suspicious since such a huge calamity was predicted if the money wasn’t forked over. I mean,  the Democrats were told it was going to be a “worldwide economic breakdown.” So then when the bulk of the money was not used to help the situation at all, and…well…we’re still all here….  Wow, it really looks like it was quite the con job, I’m afraid to say.  

And so these stumbling over their feet and their tongues Republicans…well, Obama is in office and a few weeks go by and now what?

What’s this?  They’re claiming that they’re standing straighter now. How’s that? Well, to a person, no one of them voted for the stimulus. Keep in mind that money was to go toward serving the entire economy, even the world economy. And both would of course serve to reverse the suffering and eventually go in the direction of easing the burden of all. Well almost all. After all the filthy rich bunch…well, it don’t help them.  You have money going into the hands of ordinary folks and well, that’s not money that they can steal from the government now is it.

So, there you see these Rich-publicans, talking as if they’re not absolutely exposed and naked in everything they say to you and me and the cab driver, butcher, computer nerd, and all the rest of the kind of people you actually see walking about in this world and in its cities. By the way, as for their “people,” where the hell do these faceless “filthy rich” live, anyway? Do they walk? Fly? Are they in fact alien beings? Superior ones, maybe? Well at least then it would have SOME kind of sense to it. 

But no, they are so pathetically proud, the Republicans, that they stuck together to “do a Hoover” and to screw over ordinary Americans. Do they really think we really believe them when they burden us, when they take the rug out from beneath us when we think we might be getting ahead, and so on? And then they call us Americans who can bear any burden, shoulder any blah, blah, blah, fight this, carry that, blah, blah, blah.

Ok? Now, there was that stimulus package and there was all the Republicans in the house, not one of them voted for it. And they’re saying they’re all helping us all out. Well, sometimes it’s funny…sometimes it’s just sad. but they made fools out of themselves, that’s one thing.

I mean were there EVER any people so pathetically lacking in self-esteem that such claptrap about where they were born actually made them grateful to the politician, who just added another, well not brick to their load, let’s say more like he just busted their truck with the load and now they are going to have to start all over again.

Ok, so now let’s say I’m one of those “constituents.”  I’m thinking…

“Thanks a lot, bastard, you think I got it easy?  You jerk!  Who the hell you think you are down there in Louisiana, Mr. freaking Governor who don’t need no additional unemployment money.  No, idiot!  You GOT a job! 

It’s me that can’t find work and that’s worried about my kids getting sick and, well, now the almost certainty, by the way because of your stupid-assed spiteful action to turn down my money for me.  Now, I ‘m gonna lose my house, worry about my kids staying healthy.

But you’ve done what?  You’ve stood up to Obama (the guy who was gonna give me money?)  You’ve said we don’t need no stinkin’ money and made yourself a spectacle on the national stage and, you think (here’s that lying again).  You screwed us over and then you’re thinking you can tell us that we were better than that or something of other of a slick confusing fog of insanity.

And you think that this will give you a leg towards the Presidency.  You screw me over and then tell me I’m a better person than you? that’s… eyaaaah!

Well, Mr. Jerk-off turning down my money for me like it’s my pride your fighting for, do you really think we are still that stupid, still that happy to be burdened and crushed for your aspirations, which obviously don’t include, you’ve made that damn clear, doing anything for any person, any “constituent, any citizen, no, not anyone”

And it’s clear that our burdens are so meaningless to you that you will heap misery on us to do, now what was that again?  You “stood up” to Obama?  What the fuck, are you in grade school? 

Do you think I give a shit who’s staring who down?  I’m trying to live a life; a life that you have just put a cloud of unhappiness and worry over that will not go away for many many years. Thanks a lot! In fact I may never own a home again.

Thanks for the radical change in my life that I wasn’t expecting.  But I won’t go on about things that cause your eyes to glaze over.  Just let me ask you this Mister, wise-potato?  You “stood up” to the guy who’s gonna give me money, and hold out his hand to me?  Ok, Mr. more principles-than-brains, what’s your next big plan?  

Oh, I see, you’re gonna stand up to, uh, Santa Claus.  Oh, yeah, I hear it all right.  Out on the National stage; spoutin out as if you’re talkin our mind; shit, you ain’t even one of us.  But I hear you:”

“Nope, Mr. Matthews, you see we’re Louisianans?  Not beggars.  We don’t need Christmas.  We can take care of ourselves.”

I hear you saying…

 ”Let you folks out there have Christmas.  I mean, if you’re so weak.  So you’ve had it your whole life and now you’re kind of like addicted to it.

“Well OK.  I’m not going to talk down any on those who are obviously so weak and needy.  But, you see, Mr. Matthews… Mr. Matthews, well let me put it this way, you ever come down to Louisiana?  Ever?  To visit us, anything?  You have? 

“So you’ve met with some of our citizens, have you?  You have.  Well, then you know what a strong-willed,  strong-spirited, and PROUD people we are down here, don’t you?  You agree. Thought so. 

“So you see that’s why.  I knew you would agree because it’s so obviously true about the folks that live down here, I didn’t see how you’d miss it. 

“So that’s OK, let Santa go somewhere else where he’s , you know, where they’re the folks that need to have a handout and can’t get by the year without having a good time.  No, my constituents are strong-willed, and they wouldn’t have me letting any squirrely funny-suited guy out here prancin around and lookin foolish.  Well, not us.  We’re not foolish.  We’re PROUD.”

Continue on this site with

Culture War, Part Twelve: American Dictatorship

 

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Naked Republicans: Blue Meanies Looking Foolish -
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. For the author’s reading of “Blue Meanies,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

 
Image of Naked Republicans Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish by SillyMickel Adzema

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Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Twelve: American Dictatorship

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Continue on this site with
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-Six
American Dictatorship

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