Jharrin4's Blog

We all know the saying: dog is man’s best friend. And women’s too, though they seem slightly more feline-oriented in choosing a house pet.

That’s a positive expression, man’s best friend (and women’s, too, whether or not they own a kitty ). And it rings true.

But which brooding philosopher opined hell is other people? Roger that, too, except we are all someone else’s hell at one time or another (but of course). People come, people go. Oh, do they. Someone in particular comes along and you mutually agree to open a relational door, be it platonic, emotional, intellectual, romantic/physical (let’s skip the drunken/stoner flighty one-night stands and escort options ok?). This newfound connection, possibly, improbably, might be initialized in person, spontaneously, in the public sphere, and not mediated by Match.com or eHarmony or any cyber profiling, not even two lonely web surfers by chance eyeballing one another in a lingering glance up from a lap-top screen at some coffee shop; call me old school/fashioned. Social media do connect people. Sure. Dating sites are like playing a slot machine: sometimes, but not very often, JACKPOT!

Aside from dating apps. consider the Facebook addicts and their alleged 1,793  “friends,” those Instagram-ers, Twitter-ers, Pinterest-ers and the rest typically relying on such cyber mingling to see the world and along the way possibly making a real connection. Really? Pinch yourself. Reality check. Sure you’re not simply Linked-in? Never know, maybe you’re actually in the Matrix, where the computer code that’s being transmitted by cable connection into your brain as you obliviously bathe in goopy dystopia, convinces you that believing is seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, hearing. Over there, that yummy looking babe or dude. Mmm. Take the red pill or the blue? Free your mind. Disconnect.  Go down that reality-show of a relational rabbit hole.

Love is everywhere and nowhere, from here or there or even outer space (just ask Jenny Hayden about her Starman).

And speaking of pills, if you are carrying a lot of reality-based relational baggage, be it of your own making, or it was gifted to you by one of those other people, there’s likely a prescription drug with your name on it, or a non-prescription, street vendor pharmacist who can take your mind off that ache, that sad, sappy melancholy, the festering mind-funk resulting from thinking you had something real (as in, kismet!) with someone real; except time can steal all swoons, sadly. Can’t be on the ascent forever. Level off and work hard to maintain. Or crash and burn. It happens, no? Regardless, all relations must–and shall–pass, little by little, whittled away by relentless turns of the calendar, relational corrosion often eroding the eros: drip. drip, drip…; or it’s gone in a shocking flash, the blink of an eye, the malevolent magician jerking away the velvet curtain to reveal the cold emptiness behind which once there was warmth, substance, that very special someone…who…once…mattered…

But we forge ahead, lugging our variable baggage every step of the way. Some disguise the psychic load well, but everyone has some. Best be stoic. Be strong. Persevere. Be relentless. Be Ahab! Or maybe not. A bit too obsessive. However, fishing for that right find starts with throwing in that fine line. Then be on guard. Feel a nibble? Reel in, slowly. Be open to what surfaces; a keeper? Catch and release is always an option. It’s a vast ocean of opportunity.

It is not meditation that brings you to those waters.

Temptation. Sensation. Leave that love boat and trek that sunny beach and beyond. Find a meadow full of fragrant wild flowers. Get lost in the lush forest. Listen to the quiet,  calm, tranquil landscapes of nature. So solitarily very relaxing. For awhile, at least. Then…

If only someone with which to share it. You’re not a lone wolf. Back on the road to join the rest of the pack. Proceed with caution. Humanity awaits. Jack or Jenny Hayden awaits, there on the side of the road, needing to hitch a ride to nirvana. Reduce speed. Curved road ahead. Slippery when wet. Watch for falling rocks.

Grab the binoculars. Scan the skies. Love is down, around, left, right, or up. Take flight. Soar. Search. Glide. Time to descend. Getting some chop. Brace. Be careful, as upon landing, open that psychic overhead cautiously as emotional baggage may have shifted during your flighty mental fugue.

Paging Hayden…gate 35B…

Dog: best friend.  So did you get that furry friendo? The frisky one somehow programmed to wag that tail and lick your face and not give a crap about your baggage. If that’s not love, then what is? Humanoid’s best friend. Sure, it might dump on the floor while your out waiting for Kismet, looking for Jenny or Johnny, fishing or star-gazing, but it won’t bite the hand that feeds. Just walk that dog. Your pooch can be a real conversation starter out there in the urban jungle or the verdant suburban forest preserve. Go fetch! And not just that stick you just flung. Bring back some real bounty. Who knows? Your Fido might find his or her Rover. And while the doggies both duly sniff one another’s fannies, maybe you, its Master who picks up the poop as part of the price that must be paid while otherwise breaking the conversational ice with pooch-owner-the-other,  might just make your own connection.

Hell is other people? In that case, your caring canine might be enough to ride out your days feeling loved and wanted. But only if you are wired as a Lone Wolf. Wolves of any ilk don’t play go fetch. They know there’s no point to it…

Woof. Woof.

Memorial Day, 2015. Speeches. Parades. Visits to military and civilian cemeteries . Or simple personal remembrances, in one’s home, or strolling alone in a park, warming a bar stool, still trying to sort it out, the how and the why.

I’ve been to Arlington National cemetery. I’ve watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown. Very somber. Regardless of where a member of our military killed in the line of duty eternally rests, these fallen are of equal status, if not equal rank. They gave their life to the United States of America as members of its military.

Depending on what military deployment into which each was sent to meet his or her ultimate fate, there is–in my mind, at least–the question of not just how they died, but most importantly where. And the “where” is something treated ceremonially as a virtual irrelevance. The praise for their service and sacrifice is expected, but the solemn observances preclude much of any specific deployment context. WWI. WWII. Korea. Vietnam. Gulf I. Gulf II. Afghanistan. Oh, there’s a lot of other deployments, historically, but who’s alive to remember much of what they were all about? Were they all that necessary in defending the American Way of Life?

If there’s a living veteran of WWI, he’d be somewhere in the 115 year-old range. Maybe there’s plenty of children of such veterans, and they’d be deep into their 80’s and 90’s, I suspect. A good friend of mine lost her WWII veteran father 18 months ago when he was 95. She is now 58. Do the math. Another twenty years and the oldest WWII vet will be lucky to be alive at 110 or so. Then the historians can chase their ghosts. The U.S. WWI fallen are currently pretty much a dusty abstraction of global warfare. It was fought. The USA saved its Democracy! If it was ever in jeopardy in the first place. We read about that “war to end all wars” and it’s reason for being fought, and somehow it never makes much sense–to me, anyway. Especially the U.S. participating in it for its second-half, as it were. Arch Duke Ferdinand is assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in 1914. The U.S. enters the fray in 1917. There are theories. Millions and millions and millions dead. 116,000 of them our soldiers. Want to read one scorching anti-war novel about WWI? Try Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

It was not the war to end all wars, obviously.

WWII. Now, that’s a no-brainer as to why the U.S. fought in it. Pear Harbor shocked us out of our “stay neutral” mind-set. The reality of the Axis powers intentions to invade and conquer, and not simply in Pacific/Asian or European spheres, became more dramatic and disturbing as that war went on. It started in 1939, and after Pearl, the Yanks were all-in by early 1942. This was, unequivocably, a war in which the ominous expression, “to the victors goes the spoils” was just waiting for an outcome.

And the Allies prevailed. Over 400,000 American casualties and somewhere in the range of 60,000,000 dead  combatants altogether.

World War Two. Somehow, on this and any other Memorial Days, we Americans must realize that if the Allies had lost to Germany and Japan, our way of life would not be the same in its aftermath. What? Hitler and Hirohito were going to provide their version of a Marshall Plan for the U.S. of A? I think not. It’s hard to imagine what a twisted new world order was awaiting humankind if our side didn’t get that Ultimate Weapon first, or that the Allied armies (especially the Red Army)  didn’t crush the Third Reich in order to finally push Japan into the Hiroshima showdown. One Nagasaki nuking a few days after Hiroshima’s mushroom shaped holocaust failed to bring Japan to its knees and victory for the Allied Armies was assured.

Nothing since comes close to what was at stake for the U.S. and the world-at-large.

So, while we salute all of the fallen , in all of the wars in which Memorial Day seeks to honor, this son of a WWII vet, and Vietnam era veteran himself, always finds something disingenuous about what I feel is the exploitation of one-size fits-all patriotic bombast about certain of the unfortunate casualties of post-WWII deployments. After all, I served (drafted) as part of the several million men who were in uniform during 10 years of the Vietnam conflict. My fellow Vietnam era vets now have the dubious distinction of being part of a deployment in which our military and political leaders decided to finally declare defeat! and simply bring the surviving troops home. To the victor went the spoils? Hardly. Remind me again, why did we deploy to Vietnam? What, exactly was on the line? The Pentagon’s pride? The military contractor’s bottom-line? Other than for those American service personnel who fought and died, or were seriously wounded, there was virtually no blowback to our national security or way of life. That’s not theory, either.

Gulf I and II? Iraq? Ten years and we declare what? Futility, and bail out. Now we have ISIS as a result of the vacuum left there. 13 years and counting in Afghanistan. Why are we still there? It’s a drone war now, in many ways, so I guess we’re there and not there all at once. Isn’t it time to cut and run as in Iraq? Oh, right. “Either we fight them there or we fight them here.” That was the Bush II rallying cry. Be afraid, be very afraid!

Naturally, we have fallen and wounded heroes from all wars. They answered a call to duty, but not since the Second World War should that call to action ever have been made. If only our military and political “leaders” would stop victimizing those who volunteer to serve by sending some of them to premature graves for deployments that inherently have no truly profound military/national security downside, as in our way of life somehow being threatened. Yes, it’s a fearful world full of terror threats, so bulk up our borders, and have our warriors on alert within our borders. Stop sending them into no-win strategies in far-flung regions looking for a threat that, over the past 25 years, has resulted in not much to celebrate, other than in those ceremonies honoring the inevitable casualties of war.

We regret all of their their passing on this and future Memorial Days. Sadly, it’s difficult to understand why, since 1945, so many were where they needn’t ever have been at all.

Michael Brown, Furguson, Missouri. Freddy Gray, Baltimore, Maryland. Small town and big city police, the men and women in blue. To serve and protect. Right. Even when there are riots, as in Baltimore yesterday. Who knows about today?

Mr.Brown and Mr.Gray are the seeming current catalysts for the increasing tensions between the African-American communities far and wide and the police, be they in Mayberry or major city, U.S.A. Now Baltimore, unfortunately, endures the dire consequences of “captured on video” and anecdotal testimony strongly suggesting the U.S. hasn’t gained much ground in the last 50 years since the civil rights movement, circa Martin Luther King and his non-violent resistance urgings. Maybe we’ve done away with Jim Crow and the “separate but equal” formalizing of racist governance, but here we are in 2015, with African-Americans in place as President, U.S. Attorney General, and most ironically, Mayor and Police Chief of Baltimore, bringing to mind the old snarky expression, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” as far as race relations go.

Given that it was 24 years ago when videotape evidence of L.A. police persistently beating senseless a defenseless Rodney King after a motor stop and car chase, with the ensuing acquittal of all the involved officers charged with assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. What followed that verdict? Riots in streets. All breathlessly reported and documented as news helicopters gave the public a bird’s-eye view of one African-American community expressing its disapproval and disappointment with the so-called “justice system”.

King, who died in 2012 at age 47, famously said, Can’t we all just get along?”

Apparently not, as far as the “we” being black and having an encounter with the men and women in blue. “Driving while black” has been bourne as a derisive expression of the ease of justification with which, at times, an African-American is pulled over when behind the wheel.

Fast forward from King and that version of hand-held video technology to today and the ubiquitous possession of smart phones and you get footage of fifty year-old Walter Scott (African-American) being shot several times in the back as he runs from a police officer. Scott died. You can Google the entire list of armed Blues on unarmed Blacks and realize that these incidents have happened often and over a long period of time. How many acquittals for those police brought to court. How few even ever get charged? Again, just check the records on this matter.

Are all police racist? I am certain that’s not the case. Then again, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and a brush fire can spread fast when combustible material (as in circumstances) are present.  Sure, there are solid police personnel who take their job seriously and by the book. Then again, too many men and women may become police for the worst of reasons, far beyond the idea of “to serve and protect,” possibly resulting in a gun and a badge  corrupting one’s moral compass. If that’s the case, though, then why do police departments appear to justify the accusation of  a “blue wall of silence”?

Smoke and fire? Back to Baltimore. Peaceful protest? Maybe for a while, but not always for those who live in the ghettos;  then a spark, followed by a brush fire, followed by the mob mentality and a toxic purging of anger and angst kicks-in. Watts 1964. Detroit 1967. Most major U.S. cities saw rioting, burning and looting in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Of course it’s tragic, and one would expect the mob to realize they are not doing themselves any favors. But that historical record of racism and bigotry that clings to our national past…and present. Hard to ignore it.

King, Martin Luther, 1968. King, Rodney, 1991. The more things change… Certainly there’s blame on both sides of our racial barriers. But this is a country founded by white men who owned black slaves.

Lincoln, Abe. Abolition. And complete “freedom” from the antecedents of slavery and racial divisions still persist as a work-in progress 150 years later

I have to admit that I am grateful to fate that I was born in the United States, even with all its current political warts and creepy creep to the right of Right, and that I was born white. And male. White privilege. It’s the subtext of our country’s national narrative. Check the records. But it’s no guarantee for all such as me. If so, my skin’s color didn’t stop my government from drafting my lily white ass into the military during the Vietnam conflict. A phony proxy war that I thought made no sense, but I raised my right hand, swore allegiance to Uncle Sam. I was very lucky. Here I am–still, 45 years later. Others not so. Tens of thousands of blacks, browns, whites never got out alive. Was it a racist war? Better Dead than Red, remember? But red only in ideology:  Mohammed Ali, expressing his courage and defiance ( the man had cajones ) at the time, said in refusing his draft induction for Vietnam, that he, a black man, wanted no part in fighting brown people in a white man’s war. Touche!

So, here we are. Freddie Gray, Micheal Brown and all the others, suffering a fatal encounter with the badge-wearing Blues,  and many of the incidents caught on video. No Blues behind bars. Freddy in the ground. Result: Baltimore burning, smoldering.

From MLK to Freddy Gray. They had dreams, for sure, not including to be gunned down or battered to death by police, or shot for their convictions. Dreams. Sure. We all dream of…

Hughes, Langston: what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore–and then run?…maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Rahm wins! Chuy says “we tried”. Right. Too bad more of those who had the most to gain or lose by either voting or not voting would have tried harder to get off their butts and cast a ballot for Chuy. Whom am I referring to? Certainly not the Loop area high-rise condo/apartment dwellers or Lincoln Park yuppies and Old Money corporatist types vested in the wink-and-nod pinky-ring wearers who are always welcome into that 5th floor office at City Hall

No, I mean those denizens of the West and South sides of Chicago. You know, where the crime rates are so high, and kids dream of making it to puberty, not getting whacked going to or from school, or sitting on their stoops, or even in bed in their own homes. Where there are “food deserts,” but plenty of liquor stores and “pay day” shark-loan franchises. Those neighborhoods where most of those 50 public schools were closed.

If just another 6% of those folks in the mean streets of inner-city Chi-raq, those “people of color” would have voted for the minority dude, Chuy, then Mr.Mustache wins by a nose.

But they didn’t. How any working stiff African-American or Latino could vote for  The Pompous Patrician known as Rahm is beyond comprehension. I know Mr.Mayor managed to get some of the South and West side ministers and flunky ward heelers to become snake-oil shills for his raddled campaign, but why would any of their constituents not realize that thinking about themselves, instead of listening to the sell-outs with similar skin color, was very important to their lives? For chrissakes, over thirty years ago the underclass of Chicago banded together to help get Harold Washington elected Mayor.

As I said before, a Chuy win would have repercussions  both in Chicago and across the country. It was a major story when Rahm was held to 45% of the vote in the primary. How much bigger an actually victory? What happened to the 55% who didn’t like Rahm in February? Well 45% came back, but what of that other 10% They got converted? They believed the prevarications and downright fabrications in Rahm’s ads? They were too busy deconstructing how Wisconsin blew the title game on Monday night?

It was Chuy’s and those 55% who voted to force a runoff’s election to lose. And lose it they did. Sure, maybe Mr.Garcia wasn’t the best candidate, but why not get rid of the corporatist and try Chuy’s brand of “reform”. If he were to fall flat, find and support another fresh face in four years. Get up and get moving. Once every four years? Too demanding?

Paint brush ballot? Nah. More like finger painting for the slacker set. Just dabbling. Idling away a little time. Nothing much else to do. La de dah de dah.

Hmm. Now stand back a few feet and admire the crappy results. But please, 55%-ers, do not complain. About any damn thing. And watch out for those gang-bangers, and don’t hold your breath waiting for Rahm to reopen the schools or those mental health clinics in your hoods. DePaul needs that basketball court. Marriott needs another Marriott.

Oh, never mind. Nothing to see here…

Hey, citizen voters! Ready to make your voice heard? Sure, tomorrow it’s just a mid-mid-term type of election, for the most part. Small potato offices compared to what is headed our way in November 2016, when a few trillion–ok, just a couple BILLION–dollars will be spent on big-ass (on steroids!) potato-type offices in play.

But the future is now.

By this time Wednesday, the “spin” will have been spun on the results of the voting booth drop-ins far and wide. There will be some results that might resonate as far as indicating whether our country tilts further to the obscene, oligarchic Right, or at worst maintains the Quo of the Status, or possibly–just maybe, some how, some way, permits a ray of democratic sunshine to break through those increasingly menacing, roiling neo-con clouds brooding as in an El Greco painting.

C’mon, We the People!  How about more of, say, an Edward Hopper sky? Nighthawks at the Finer Diner? Pensive but more promising…

I hesitate to hope for a Norman Rockwell skyline. I’d get diabetes by looking at that type of paint brush ballot vista for very long. Baseball and Ma’s apple pie; dad and his briefcase full of bliss; white picket fences. Rosy-cheeked cherubs, playing with Rover or Fido or Checkers. Wait, wasn’t that the 1950s America?

No, the future is now, as I said.

The future, as in tomorrow’s vote. In my neck of the woods, a diverse semi-suburb called Oak Park (maybe something along the lines of a Leroy Neiman canvas–colorful, playful, full of whimsy but respectful of the subject at hand) grafted to a stretch of the western boundaries of  Chicago, the ballots bespeak school board, library board, park district board, commission-level stuff. Sure, that all matters. But if things get El Greco-ish here, I can vote again–with my feet, as it were–and move out. There’s always Berwyn, just south of here, Svengooli’s ( not familiar with him?; Google him and get hip) kind of town (Berrrrwyn?!). Well, it’s better than anywhere in Indiana…

How about that “spin” I mentioned earlier? Nothing in Oak Park or Berwyn will resonate too far afield, but that City on the Make just east of either of those burgs, Chicago? Now, that place has potential to really rock the vote/boat, to spin crazily and stir up an electoral gust worthy of Chicago’s other moniker “the windy city”. And by that I mean Chuy Garcia possibly beating Rahm Emmanuel for Mayor.

Why? Rahm has a massive campaign war chest. Gold, silver, baubles, bangles and bright shining beads! He’s the corporatist with the pinky-ring crowd, the sultans of swat, the clout meisters. Loves those folks, give a rat’s ass about the South and West side.

Chuy? He has a 1970s porn mustache, some loose change in his lint-lined pockets, decent inner-city street cred, and best all, the last name of Garcia, which makes him the guy who is NOT Emmanuel. Rahm , the 1%=er.  Chuy came out of nowhere to force a run-off election in February, in spite of being outspent 15-1 or so. Now, if he can get the fairly sizeable combo of Hispanic and African-American votes, and a scoop or two of plain, white vanilla types in the hipster precincts who seek “anyone but Rahm,” then Mr.Garcia might just win. That would resonate nationally.

Do I think it will happen? Likely not. Money does talk as bullshit walks and having spent most of my life around Cook County, machine politics, I have that El Greco feeling. I had it when Barack ran for President. I voted for Nader because…

…I’m mostly a Green Party/Independent voter. If I lived in the Chicago, Chuy Garcia , a Democrat, would have my vote. His victory could provide a jolt up the keesters for those other 1%=ers who buy elections and/or steal them and/or suppress the vote. That kick in the ass is needed. And if Chuy falls flat over his four-year term, the voters simply have to remember it’s they who call the shots,not the Brinks truck crowd, and come next election find someone even better, mustache or no mustache, deep pockets or loose change or whatever, but someone who might paint an even more appealing political landscape, one with a realistic, common-man touch, and an unmistakable sense of wonder at the edges.

In the 2000 Presidential election, Ralph Nader received almost 3 million votes. In 2004 he pulled in about 500,000 votes and over 700,000 in 2008, his last run for that office. In 2000 and 2004 Ralph was a Green Party candidate. He was an independent in 2008, getting more than 600,000 more votes than that election’s Green candidate. In 2012, the Green candidate got about 500,000 votes. I figure if Ralph was running as an independent in that election the Green candidate might have wound up with maybe 100,000. I voted for Nader every time he ran for President. Sure, it was a protest vote, regardless of his party affiliation. Voting Green is pretty much always a protest vote. But with fewer such “protests” being registered as time goes by.

Apparently, the Green Party needs to clone Ralph, and have his clone be 30 years younger than the original, who is now in his early 80s. That or find someone of his ilk to get some political mojo flowing again. His 2000 totals are still impressive, given he had the mainstream press either ignore or attack his candidacy. When Nader’s candidacy started getting some real buzz, though buried in back of most newspapers or mentioned in passing by TV news, the insular corporate media actually had to focus their attacks on Ralph with laser precision. After all, when he spoke in auditoriums, the place tended to be full. Fear factor! Hell, there’s a documentary about Ralph entitled An Unreasonable Man, circa 2006 (the title was, of course, intentionally ironic).

That was then.

Some people still blame Ralph for Al Gore not becoming President, but those folks are just plain idiots. George Bush fell a half-million votes short of Gore’s total, and what critical thinking person doesn’t understand by now that 2000 was a stolen election by way of that “hanging chad” nonsense in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court literally inserting Bush as President. Al couldn’t carry either his home state of Tennessee or Bill Clinton’s state of Arkansas, either of which would have given Al enough electoral votes to make Florida irrelevant.

Speaking of irrelevant, let’s get back to that Green Party. I admire and applaud their efforts, but finding Green candidates on ballots is more and more of a challenge (where I vote, the 2014 mid-term ballot didn’t include a single Green for even the most microscopic area office). The Greens have been pushed aside by redistricting and other Power Politics, true. As though Ralph was still captain of their ship. Who steers the ship now? Whatever means by which the Greens are funded, the System seemingly has reduced their profile quite a bit from Nader’s virtual 3 million votes 15 years ago. Green candidates for ultra local offices up to President, having once been a noticeable political alternative, now barely register a blip on any but a Green Party member’s radar.

Sad but true. Seriously, Nader was the Green Party. But now, it’s Nader Radio and not much else. He certainly still supports Greens, but he’s still shut out of any political discourse that the public-at-large might hear. You, know: if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it…?

Now, unlike 2000, social media and all things Internet give everyone a voice (like mine, even!). But there’s so much babble bouncing around it’s hard to make sense of much of it. Tripe. Trash. Empty calories  by the cyber ton. Amidst this digital deluge, I get emails from the local Greens, certainly worth glancing over. Recently one caught me off-guard, carping about Illinois state senator Don Harmon–a democrat–and the Sierra Club for not doing more regarding the politics of nuclear energy.

Fair enough. But for a political party that is spiraling downward election after election, referring pejoratively to Harmon and Sierra Club as “the usual suspects” stuck me as not seeing that forest for those trees. You know, the forest where no one is around to hear the sound of the thud when things get knocked down. Would the Greens prefer there be a republican in Harmon’s seat? The email inferred Harmon had been bought by the nuclear lobby. No evidence presented. Would Illinois be better off without Harmon, who has been given high ratings by some  independent watchdog groups. He’s not perfect, though. Who the hell is? And do the Greens really think Sierra Club does not work to protect the environment, promote “green” policies, wind and solar energy, among other uses of its political heft? Is Sierra too big to trust? Is that it? Again, would the environment be better off without a Sierra Club?

Perhaps the political thrashing the Greens have had to endure for so long has turned them a bit cantankerous. Remember, more sugar, less vinegar attracts…well…whatever.

Sierra Club. Wind turbines. Clean energy. Like the old-fashioned windmill.  Maybe I’ll be accused of tilting at windmills with my future protest votes. But I’ll vote Green in 2016.

If I can find one on a ballot.

Hey, ladies. Here’s to International Women’s Day. If your love interest hasn’t given you flowers, candy, a card and hard, long kisses, then read him/her/whoever/whatever the IWD riot act. With Hillary Clinton’s coronation as the U.S. of A’s first woman President all but a done deal, assert yourselves. Forget the powder puffs and petticoats. Cancel your subscriptions to Cosmo and Better Homes. Kick ass. Take names. Suffer no fucking fools!  Channel your inner Hillary the Hawk. Get brassy and blunt (if you aren’t already).

Like Hillary.

Email-gate won’t bring her down. No republican ass-clown can blow a hole in her ascending power-politic, hot air balloon. It should be a real treat having another Clinton in the White House, while the GOP turns itself into a goddam pretzel trying to impeach her for those private emails, or Benghazi-gate, or a just a snarky tone of voice. It’ll be the Second Coming of Chicago’s Jane Byrne, taking the reigns from the the good ol’ boys, minus the bait and switch reformer bull jive. In order to become one of the guys.

Hillary is not a reformer. I’d prefer Elizabeth Warren myself. Smart. Compassionate. Not marinated in corporate cutter. Concerned about real people. Thus, she has no chance.

On the upside is that after Barack Obama, our land of generational immigrants, here to breathe free and work 80 hours a week to buy another iPhone, will have had an African-American male, and finally a female running the show. The pasty-faced white guys with the fat wallets will be thrilled, I’m sure. Relax, dudes. She’s one of you!

Then, who knows? Maybe by 2024 an Asian-American,  or some descendent of Sitting Bull will be occupying the Oval Office. Bull? Hey, imagine the campaign slogans!

Have those flowers and candy arrived yet? XXOO.

Just when I was disgustingly admitting that I had resigned myself to our country’s descent into a permanent oligarchy, with elections marinated in money and the public’s sheepish complicity in the matter, some momentary sunshine has peeked through the ominous clouds that shroud my political psyche. This bit of light came in the form of the Chicago mayoral election of February 24th, when the current corporatist Mayor Emmanuel, armed with a campaign war chest of more than 30 million dollars, was unable to garner more than 50% of the vote, forcing a run-off in April.

His four main opponents could have pooled all their campaign dollars and maybe come up with a few million bucks to buy some air time, so thus the prediction was that Rahm Emmanuel, who had been flooding the airwaves with self-congratulating ads for months, would easily swat away his pauper-like opponents and continue with business as usual: school closings, union-busting, social program budgets slashed, to name a few of his “achievements”.

Never mind that the mayor’s ads were revisionist in their distorting of this record, if not flat-out fictions; the public (far and wide) has been shown to not exactly think on their feet when it comes to making electoral choices. By now, it’s a common occurrence to have voter’s elect candidates who immediately strive to make their constituent’s financial lives harder while cow towing to the so-called 1%-ers. Ever heard of the book What’s the Matter with Kansas? It documents this phenomenon of voting against one’s best interest by succumbing to fear appeals and one-issue fervor. Hmm. What’s the matter with the mostly minority people of Chicago? Thirty years ago they got Harold Washington (an African-American) elected, beating not one, but two Machine Democrats in Jane Byrne and Rich Daley. Daley!

I was assuming that wasn’t going to happen again based on Rahm’s seeming underfunded, late-to-the party, competition, that money would talk as bullshit walks, and he’d casually cruise back up to the 5th floor of City Hall.

Not so fast!

Someone pinch me! Chuy Garcia and his 1.5 million dollar campaign drew 35% of the vote, and the other outsiders collected about another 20% of the vote. Thus the run-off. As a result I feel–for the first time in a long, long time–that the public may be shaking off its political stupor and seeing reality for what it is. Sure, it’s a drop in the national bucket as far as progressive positives go, but if Mr. Garcia can win outright in that run-off, it could embolden others to show up and vote for their interests rather than have big money lull them into the sleep of indifference or the curse of non-critical thinking.

Maybe it’s just a momentary blip on the right-wing radar screen of the Koch Brothers, Citizens United, Tea Party predatory capitalist control freaks. They’ll send out their expensive media war weapons to drown out any dissent, no doubt. But Chicago could be the clarion call that can be heard above the prevaricating bombast we’ve been exposed to for decades.

At least for Tuesday night, there was a genuine We the People moment.

The public needs to listen. Then they can make sure they’ll be heard.

For the time being, that sliver of sunshine will have to do, as springtime, rebirth and regeneration draws near…

My blog of a couple of years ago admonished an administrator with the Chicago Public Schools system regarding a decision to ban a graphic novel–Persepolis– as part of classroom reading assignments. At that time the “spin” put on the matter by CPS officials sought to isolate the incident by alluding to an unnamed “higher up” in that system who supposedly acted unilaterally. That was then. This is now: thanks to the Freedom of Information Act unearthing various emails and communiques between several paper-pushing central office administrators, the absurd bit of metaphorical book burning was, evidently, a team effort, with the decision agreed upon by a few layers of lame-brained bureaucrats, including the one who represents the Big Kahuna of the CPS system, Barbara Byrd Bennett. The cover up is thus revealed. Of course, Bennett still has her job, maybe even with a raise in salary .

Can you say Peter Principle?

Now, however, with the recently exposed full story of their zealous fight to ban a book that none of them had apparently read at the time, Bird-brained Babs and her bureaucratic cronies will have to go into defensive spin mode again. Alas, this updated tale of some smelly fish in a really big pond of public education will probably not generate renewed outrage. It is, after all, fish two years old.

Cover your nose. In this case, the newly revealed truth, like old fish, sure does stink.

Allow me to reflect on the latest Hollywood recreation of our country’s military campaigns in the post-911 world. By now, there have been more than a few films that take “actual events” of either the Afghan or Iraq deployments of our soldiers and thus commercialize such historical events. About a year ago, Lone Survivor was on its way to making $125 million at the box office. The movie, starring Mark Wahlberg, dramatized the real war ordeal of four Seals who were sent to “take out a high value, Afghan, target”. The assignment became a classic case of a military cluster fuck (or FUBAR or SNAFU, t0 invoke other service-related snarky jargon). Only one survivor of the original unit of 14 Seals lived to attest to the cruel reality of the well-known adage “war is hell”.

Having watched the movie, I gave props to its apparent ethos of what all soldiers in combat situation embrace, no matter how a mission unfolds: you’re never out of the fight and you cover one another’s back. To the bitter, deadly, end, if need be. Of course, the potential for courage and sacrifice cannot be overtly measured in any of us, whether the fight is in military battle or some civilian, personal struggle involving family, friends or a random encounter with fickle fate on one street or another. War, however, is seemingly the ultimate crucible that can elicit incredibly heroic and selfless sacrifice, the kind that is awarded with metals and formal, ceremonial praise from Generals to the Commander-in-Chief.

As it should be.

Now, a year after Lone Survivor comes American Sniper, with Bradley Cooper portraying another actual U.S. soldier, this time in Iraq. This dramatization of real events involves the sniper who amassed the highest kill count of enemy combatants over four tours in the Iraq conflict. The theme is exactly the same as the Afghan-based tale regarding how much one man, somehow, some way, through grit and guts and determination becomes the stuff of legend.

Interestingly, American Sniper is quite the commercial force, having made over $300 million and counting in box office receipts. Apparently, enough time has passed so that both Afghanistan and Iraq military deployments have now become sublimated in the public’s consciousness. In my estimation, there’s little widespread acceptance or rejection of these military incursions at this point. Each exists as virtual “white noise” in the cacophony of day-to-day life. Let’s face it, most American families have no skin in the game. That is, the vast majority of the American public isn’t directly related to anyone fighting and dying in Afghanistan or once again, in Iraq. It’s those volunteers doing the bidding of the Pentagon.. Know any of them?

My guess is the popularity of these aforementioned war movies derives from the  “based on unbelievable actual events” preface that makes for people wanting to know: what happened? Why? How? Who?  I suppose,  whether a real case study or penned from the imagination of a screenwriter, it’s essentially an “action” movie, full of human drama. Action flicks often sell tickets. And war movies, from any generation, are pretty much about the action.

I grew up with war movies, mostly ones having to do with the Second World War. My father and uncle served during that global game changer of a conflict, though as a 10-year-old or so I had no idea how much the cinematic, dramatized bravery, sacrifice, the “never quit…cover your buddies’ backs” was essential to victory in the fight against fighting Germany and Japan. What I know now that I didn’t know then was that it truly, desperately, was a war to save the world from real evil forces determined to dominate, subjugate and impose their will on the rest of mankind. Millions upon millions of men and women served during the U.S.’s efforts in that war. Tens of millions would die, world-wide. Any war since involving American troops completely pales in comparison as far as fighting to save a way of life.

Shortly after high school I was drafted into the military, Vietnam-era. I was not sent over (I was in the medical corps, and two scheduled deployments were rescinded. Fate?). Regardless, I felt a strong bond with those who served alongside me in the States, and great respect for those who had been in combat . Working as a surgery tech, I saw the human carnage close-up, under bright surgical lamps as doctors tried to patch the wounded back together.  It was surreal, in a way, however, as I never, not for a second, felt the invasion of Vietnam had the slightest comparative gravity and urgency of World War Two. This “war” in Southeast Asia, always had a trumped up feeling about it. Why would the United States have to fight a country barely the size of California? Really? Vietnam was a serious threat to U.S. security, to the American way of life? What was I missing? And please don’t say my “patriotism”!

In hindsight, ever since that non-voluntary service to save the world from godless Vietnamese Communism, I’ve felt I can assess a real national threat from cynical political, manipulative posturing in using our armed forces. Vietnam was fought, I think it’s safe to say by now, for reasons having virtually nothing to do with our national security. Just check the aftermath: the U.S. bailed out of Vietnam after 10 years and losing nearly 59,000 troops, leaving North Vietnam the de facto “victors”.  Somehow, “to the victor goes the spoils” never manifested itself, as North Vietnam got South Vietnam but gained no control whatsoever over life in the U.S. of A. It thus begs the question: why was it fought in the first place? Should there not be something to lose that motivates fighting to win?

It’s great that generation after generation of young Americans are ready to step up and and answer a call to duty. But it’s an all volunteer military now, and the real combat experiences these volunteers have endured, while as admirable any of those in the Second World War, seemingly need not ever to have been fought in the first place. Apparently, there was never a valid reason for putting any of these soldiers in harm’s way. Again, what was the actual threat? Their sacrifices, while worth praising, of course, weren’t necessary, not really. Unless having more cinematic action narratives and military ceremonies can be said to represent their call to duty.

Unfortunately unlike the video game that uses Call of Duty as its title, our real-life soldiers aren’t computer programs. They are human beings who actually do get blown up, shot apart and often die. When that happens, their sacrifice should connote truly protecting our country from mortal dangers, not as pawns on a political chessboard, or as part of a bait-and-switch propaganda gambit; military casualties deserve a greater legacy than box office totals gained from exploiting their suffering, or video game kill-zone fantasies, or an excuse for sporting event “feel good”  military fly-overs.