Jharrin4's Blog

In an alarming and laughably inane bit of knee-jerk, 21st century political correctness and being out-of-touch with reality, a higher-up in Chicago Public Schools administration last week issued a edict to ban the teaching/reading of Majane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis in high school classrooms. Persepolis is Satrapi’s story of her having grown up in Iran during the time of the Iranian Revolution in the late 70s. It is regarded as an important novel, written with a keen sense of perspective on the profound impact the Revolution had on Majane and the subject people of her country. For any reader, Satrapi’s story is profoundly educational in its ability to at once give insight and commentary on an important part of 20th century world history, and to implicitly implicate any and all extremist regimes.The Revolution resulted in a dramatic change in the lives of the Iranian people, given the new, control-freak fundamentalist restraints on personal freedoms by way of strict religious doctrine. That it is told from the first-hand experiences of a young girl–with wit, style and  remarkable clarity–makes it especially potent empowerment to young readers, particularly the young women who populate high school classrooms, in Chicago and countrywide.

When made aware of the ban on her book, Satrapi expressed shock and dismay, saying that she didn’t meet any previous resistence to the book being included on high school reading lists “even in Texas” (!). The irony that the U.S. is supposedly the largest democracy in the world wasn’t lost on Majane, either. And so why would an administrator in CPS suddenly want to deny the reading/teaching of this important piece of literature? Apparently, in reaction to a couple of isolated complaints about the depiction of a whipping that takes place in the graphic novel–it’s torture!–this administrator, evidently unable to see the world anywhere near as cleary Majane Satrapi, even when Majane was but a very young girl, thought it better to appease the hyper-sensitivities voiced by a nearly non-existant protest “group” than to advance the appreciation of think-for-yourself embracing of personal freedoms voiced in Persepolis.

Fortunately, the real thinkers among faculty and students rose up in opposition, quickly establishing a legitimate and highly visible and vocal protest group armed with righteousness and logical reasoning. The administrator, seemingly able to make important decisions based only on the quantity, rather than the quality of dissenting opinions, reversed course and relented. To save some face, this lame brained but no dount well-paid paper-pusher wants it still withheld from 7th graders until an official assessment of the book’s suitability for such delicate, innocent minds. Why expose them to a depiction of torture? After all, it ‘s not as though they likely encounter any fictional or real accounts of violence, injustice, subjucation, oppression, torture or the like in the mass media!

We’ll see where this rediculous case of making a mountain out a molehill and massively missing the point ends. I hope with the administrator being demoted, or better yet fired. This person has no business being in the business of real education.           

Here’s one more entry relating to a few of my other gun control issue posts: since the Colorado shooting at the cineplex, yesterday another crazed gunman killed six members of a Sikh mosque in Wisconsin. Then, today, the Arizona shooter who killed several people and wounded many others, including congresswoman Gabby Giffords (who has since resigned her seat owing to her head injury) was in court, where he plea-bargained to a life-without-parole sentence. So, in a little over two weeks, there has been two shoot-em-ups by deranged men, totaling 18 dead and dozens wounded, plus a sentencing of another mass killer from about 18 months ago in Tucson. Certainly, there’s been other incidents here and there. Murder/suicides of entire families.  A disgruntled worker goes home, gets his gun(s) and offers a ballistic rebuttal to a perceived affront. We’ve become somewhat crazed shooter fatigued by these tragic occasions. They are always reported solemnly by the talking hairdos of the mass media, but how much more slap-in-the-face, visceral shock and revulsion can be mustered up anymore, unless one is personally connected to  one of the victims? Or, the incident has occurred nearby to one’s home, creating a geographic too-close- for-comfort, chill-down-the-spine factor. Otherwise, these news reports are likely met with a default level of sympathetic angst, possibly using up less emotional currency than the loss of a family dog or cat: Oh, dear. How terribly sad…

We are a nation immersed in an NRA/2nd Amendment “right to bear arms”, socio-political-economic stew. Many find the dish to their liking, ever fewer, though, have no appetite for it. As I safely assumed after the Wisconsin shootings, neither President Obama or Mitt Romney will even address the issue of gun control reforms, including outlawing the possession of assault weapons (which once were banned, but the K-Street, NRA lobbyists again got their way). That’s what a stranglehold the gun lobby has on our wimpy, wussy, spineless “leaders” in elected office. And if our elected officials are spineless, then the press is gutless, since no one even seems inclined to push hard questions about the gun issue. The body counts mount, but the 800 pound, pistol-packing gorilla in the room isn’t acknowledged. 

These horror stories will always be breathless, headline news , but the die is cast on what is permissible discourse regarding what’s on the surface and what lies beneath.  Now, it’s always the same reporting template: some guy was apparently really angry. He bought some weapons. He showed up…….breaking news!  But how the mentally unstable killer got the arsenal is not part of the story much at all anymore. Guns are apparently going to remain as easy as ever to obtain, even for the ticking time bombs who commit the atrocities. But that’s not to be discussed, evidently.  If even our president can’t muster a line or two of lip service in deference to the mere idea that assault weapons need to be banned, then the stories no longer possess any real political energy. It’s simply a matter of crime & punishment, plus armchair psychoanalysis left to play out. If the killer doesn’t blow his brains out at the scene or the police don’t empty a clip into him (and is it not always men who do this?) then the story becomes will he explain his motivation? Regardless, even dead the narrative will shift to what could have motivated him? Why didn’t anyone see this coming?  What triggered the violence?

Trigger? Right. That’s what fires the weapon…

So, just hope you don’t get in the way of the next dramatic, violent expression of exasperation popping up in a mall or restaurant or theater or public building. Oh, but wait! I forgot. If we all could be packing heat (and we’re heading in that direction) then when the shooter reveals himself (hopefully without using a smoke screen, a Kevlar vest and a gas mask) we could finally have some real justice, and “gun control” will be an expression a few election cycles from now that will never be uttered again as part of a anti-gun argument. If it is invoked by someone, he’d be immediately labelled a fringe radical, anti-2nd Amendment type, someone who’s thinking is outside the mainstream, someone who perceives the world as out of whack and he as right as rain. Just the type that likely harbors hatreds, resentments and becomes ultimately unhinged and ready to act out. Then, news flash!….he was angry, he was armed heavily…he showed up….and…

Well, unfortunately, “concealed & Crazy” and “Wounded Madhouse” blog entries are quite relevent owing to the ghastly shooting rampage in a movie theater this past weekend. Another notch on the wall of history that counts as an act of evil. Also, an assault weapon, among other guns, was used, rekindling the debate on banning such weapons. 12 dead. As I said in an earlier posting, evil can’t really be quantified, though the body counts speak of orders of magnitude. For those that feel numbers do count, literally, well then the 20th century produced three mass murderers on steroids in Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Everyone else is a piker by comparison. But evil is evil, writ large or small in scope. As far as James Holmes goes, he hasn’t revealed his motivation for manning a Kevlar vest and packing the firepower (and gas canisters) that turned a superhero fantasy into a super shitty reality. Stay tuned.

As for the logic behind making it legal (James broke no laws, apparently, until he started shooting) to own an assault weapon, well, I’m unable to find any. Why would anyone need an assault weapon who isn’t police/military, etc? Who needs an ammo clip that holds 300 rounds? Is someone going hunting for an entire clan of grizzlies? But don’t hold your breath waiting for congress to reform our gun laws. The NRA owns congress. Nothing will change. Money talks. Remember, this is the country that, even after Ronald Reagan was shot in a failed assassination attempt in 1981, refused to promote harsher restrictions on the manufacture and sales of even cheap handguns. Now, the NRA true believers, as well as more and more non-NRA member citizens demand the right to not only own a gun, but to carry one around in public. The “logic” goes that when that thug whips out a pistol, the superhero citizen will cap the mofo, right? Well, in the James Holmes scenario, our pistol-packing freelance fearless guardian of the public would have needed to be attending the Batman movie with his/her own gas mask, too. Absent his/her own Kevlar vest, and with assault weapon fire spraying around, good luck, Citizen Avenger.  Or even if half the crowd in that packed auditorium was packing heat, what odds would they have had of finding Holmes amid the fog bomb curtain and shooting at that target? Odds are it would have just increased the body count.

So, evil, which operates 24/7 is hard to repress given its seeming inherent character trait of mankind . And we are a gun crazy, contemporary culture that is convinced that the more guns there are, the safer we are. Sure. Is Holmes crazy? The fact that he picked an ultra violent movie like Batman, and waited for one of its loud shoot-em-up scenes to start before he commenced firing would strongly point to a rather rational mind, not one that is no longer the true possession of its owner. He bought the guns & ammo legally (now that’s crazy). It doesn’t matter if he’s looney tunes or just a cold-blooded young man who’s really, really pissed off. The fact that, whatever his mind-set, he had legal access to an arsenal points to a reality that too often plays out as a nightmare on innocent people who pay the price for such irresponsible legislation.

There will always be evil acts to recoil from, to ponder and process. There but for the grace of… Regrettably, we live in a country with a shoot-em up mentality. “We”re gonna smoke ’em out!” said George Bush. Someone, at this very moment, is likely buying another arsenal. Gotta play it safe. Can’t run low on ammo while defending that 2nd Amendment from misguided pacifists…

Former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has a book out that addresses our country’s current and worsening political dysfunction. In it, he refers to republicans as rebloodicans and democrats as democrips, a play on the names of the notorious Crips & Bloods street gangs. Clever enough.  Jesse equates the rebloodicans with the red states (blood, get it?) and the democrips with the blue states. He denigrates both parties, and feels we need to get the corrupting influence of money out of the process and attract better candidates. Jesse’s vitriol is no different from mine, or that of people like Senator Sanders from Vermont, Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower and others.  Part of the problem is also that the corporate media purposefully ignores the dissenting voices. But we’re out here, in the secondary media, blogosphere, etc. 

The public needs to get educated, regardless. It’s not Jesse or Ralph  or Jim or Bernie who can really change anything, though. They can sound the charge, but who’s listening? And we do need change, real change. Both parties seem to have lost their way; the GOP is now essentially a radical Right, elitist group that fanatically supports the now infamous “one percent” and its wealth at the expense of the other 99%.  They are inflexible and in many way, a sociopathic political force. The democrats, once an actual party of the people has become wimpy, wussy, ineffectual and worst of all, complicit in pro-corporate, anti middle-class public policies. They talk the talk but hardly ever walk the walk anymore.

And as obvious as this collusive political construct is–to anyone who wants to prick up their ears and open their eyes–the public keeps putting the power into the same hands, those being those crips and bloods, as it were. Hard to blame the voters when the choice is always an apparent evil of two lessors. Now, in the 2012 election, we’re left with the absolutely draconian prospect of turning over the White House and Congress to the Radical Right, or rewarding President Obama the “capitulator-in-cheif,” and the lap dogs of his party for failing to carry through on virtually all of that change you can believe in stuff invoked over and over in the 2008 campaign. His lack of follow-through turned off so many of his 2008 supporters that the Tea Party wack-a-doodles got elected in numbers in the 2010 mid-term voting, exacerbating our current toxic atmosphere in D.C.

Some choice for 2012. It’s about as phony as the choreographed wrestling matches that Jesse once excelled at, but not the least entertaining. The “heroes” and “villains” of the WWE got paid win or lose, and knew it was a rigged system.  Elections these days, aren’t much different.  Thus,  Jesse “The Body” Ventura and one-time breath-of-fresh-air elected official, has to hold his nose and pen a screed against the scam and sham of present-day politics. 

The public needs to wrestle its country back from a government full of bad actors who try to play off one another as “hero” and “villain” as the mainstream media laps it up without challenging anyone to support their reasoning with any sound evidence. There’s no room for reality in this programming,  just as in WWE, WWF, etc..  Jesse knows the drill. 

You’ve heard the expression, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.  The fix may be in with our lame two-party patty-cake, money talks and corruption walks system. Fix, however, is exactly what need to do to it.  Jesse and those other dissenters have noticed the machinery going bonkers, but until the public see the same, the tie-and-jacket Crips and Bloods will maintain their turf and prosper.

The other day, a Chicago tribune columnist wrote a very personal piece about the death of her family’s dog. By the end of the column, Scout, the dog, had been given its due respect as a 14 year, integral part of the family that had adopted her. The writer’s words evoked   poignancy, introspection, reverence and reflective gratitude regarding Scout. Also, the writer noted how Scout’s death sounded a bell toll of larger, symbolic meaning, particularly for her two daughters, whose early childhoods and even young adulthood were shared with Scout as they all grew older. Pets typically do not outlive their keepers. One can be cold-blooded about that likelihood or mourn such passing as this columnist did, and quite eloquently at that.

I don’t have a pet, and not since my increasingly distant childhood have I had one around me. My reaction to the column was empathic, nonetheless, as life is inherently inclusive of loss, of family members, friends or even a pet. But my emotional response was triggered, I’m pretty sure, not from any specific remembrance of personal loss, but rather because the piece was so well written and concisely expressed. I admired the style as well as its elegiac content. At the same time, I couldn’t help think that the writer’s skillful rendering of how a pet’s dying could so effect a family likely would not tug at too many heart-strings in certain other parts of the Chicago area. For instance, the South and West Sides and their mini war zones where random shootings have racked up dozens of deaths–mostly of young people–at a rate that is alarming and absurd. Grade school kids are picked off just standing innocently on a front porch, or by a bullet zinging through a window, carrying cruel fate with it as it finds a baby’s crib. It’s hard to imagine how families in these neighborhoods could feel that a dog’s death could  symbolize a portentous passage from one phase of life to another, whether or not they had a dog. If they did own a dog, it too would exist in a not-so-safe and secure world, and if the family pooch gets picked off while peeing in the back yard, the parents are likely to thank the fickle finger of fate for sparing their offspring, who will live to see at least another day. In the mean streets of gun-infested neighborhoods, it’s all dog-eat-dog in world where life is cheap and often very short. In these violence-prone areas, a dog’s death is just a another cold-blooded fact of life. Tough luck, Rover. Life sucks, you know? then you take a .32 in the chest.

Not to diminish Scout’s demise, but her page two tale of passing seems such a luxury in comparison to the plight of the families whose lives are shattered in senseless, random gun play week after week after week. One family gets to live the American Dream–a nuclear family, as the columnist put it–in apparent peace and security, so much so that when its dog dies (of old age) its “obituary” gets a prominent place in a major daily newspaper. It had a wholesome existence, from the sound of things, along with the rest of the solid middle-class clan.

The folks in the urban kill zones, on the other hand, are “when it bleeds it leads” fodder for the local newscasts (before moving on to weather and sports) and an implied, if never overtly stated, indictment against law enforcement, public policy and the apparent institutionalized marginalization of the underclass, all of which contribute to the mindless violence. Scout’s keepers, far removed from such socio-economic cause/effects, fussed and fawned over her for longer than many of the dead minority children were even alive! The reality gap between Scout’s life and the quality of it up to its death and those of the inner-city kids who can’t count on making it through junior high alive is about as wide as the Grand Canyon. Depending on one’s perspective, that Canyon gap can be seen as an awe-inspiring wonder of nature, or simply a large opening on the earth’s surface filling with despair.

A few more things: First, a post-script on the modern military combat veteran. In the age of endless deployments & re-deployments, statistics document the highest suicide rate among them than ever before. Post dramatic stress disorder. Well, done, Pentagon, Bush, Obama.

Who’s your personal hero? Most admired, whatever…Mine is Ralph Nader. He posts his commentaries, analysis on his website, and I wish I were half as insightful, articulate and spot-on as he is. He’s the person I most wish I could meet some day. Ralph can deploy a laser beam of logically irrefutable barbs and broadsides that scares the mainstream politicos and media mavens shitless.  I know this because he gets systematically marginalized, if not completely ignored, when he attempts formal foray into the modus operandi of modern American socio-economic policies of all ilk, including a recent posting where he excoriates the New York Yankees for polluting their broadcasts with commercial “sponsorships” of every aspect of the game’s action as it unfolds. Maybe the Yankees will bar him from attending their games now.  It wouldn’t the first time Ralph will be persona non grata if they did, though. I think it was the 2004 presidential election debate when organizers had him not only excluded from being a participant (he was on the ballot in most states) but wouldn’t even allow him to be in the audience! Mr.Nader is in his late 70s and I hope he stays healthy and engaged for many, many more years. He’s a neglected national hero (a legendary consumer safety advocate) whose character dwarfs that of those who fear him. Ralph knows it, and so do they. He’s got a sense of humor, too, having hosted Saturday Night Live once, maybe twice.

Random: why do urban-area squirrels attempt to cross busy roads when the side they depart from appears as woodsy and safe as the one to which they are headed? Are these squirrels having an affair across the road? The road kill seems inevitable if they attempt it more than a couple of times. But if it’s in the name of squirrel love then they, like humans, are creatures of folly.

In less than two weeks, daylight starts getting shorter. After the 21st of June the sun will start setting earlier, on a relentless decline until six months later when the days again start getting longer. It always comes as a sort of head-scratcher, knowing that, even on a 93 degree day in late June, that it’s unavoidably all downhill til late December. Then again, on some frigid day in late December, when a Chicagoan’s lips are turning blue, he or she can take cold comfort in knowing that, inexorably, it’s all back uphill heading to the third week of the following June. It’s just a state of mind…and a matter of layers of clothing.

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 There’s so much digital information to sift through our senses these days: bits and bytes of self-indulgent bombast, frivolity, foolishness, not to mention banality. iPhones, iPads, androids, tablets, kindles. We have the whole world in our hands. Movies, TV, streaming video, podcasts, twitters, text, and social media offer a lot of instant gratification choices; and like fast-food, most of it is empty calorie consumption, in this case, of commercial pop culture trash.  It’s an extensive menu of digitally digestible distractions! More and more information, data, content, programming every day, and there’s no shortage of consumers. Who cares if it’s a short attention span form of gratification? Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs, or even some corkscrew turns and a few inverted loops, a bump & grind, a journey that requires endurance, faith, and some luck that, we hope more often than not, is of the fortunate kind. We try to make our personal slice of life as pleasurable as  possible, or at least palatable and manageable.  It’s a full-time job, this mortal coil, this veil of tears. Lots of stress. Praise the lord and pass the Xanex, or the Wild Turkey 101. Or immerse yourself in the phantasmagoria of digitalia.  Like the boob tube, it has a hypnotic effect on its users. And, somewhere in its endless inventory of opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior may lie what we’re looking for. Which is?  Well? We’re looking for, uh, maybe the next cat video or singing sensation. We’re drawn to an electronic screen of one size or another like moths to a flame. But, as we sit in front of computer screens, flat-screens, laptops, or handhelds, and do so quite extensively at times, are we learning anything of real value? Does mass/social media, and all its content offer us any penetrating insights, piercing observations, or maybe an immortal truth or two? Does it reveal the different drummer that can lead the way to such revelations, to whatever the hell motivates such addictive consumption? Is there any actual substance to all that style?  Highly subjective, I suppose. One man’s ceiling is another lady’s floor…

Regardless, based on my student’s seeming attention deficits due to the digital moth-glow, lots of folk need to unplug. Decompress. Sit in the park and contemplate nature.  In doing so, we can connect with ourselves and the tangible, physical world of reality. We can clear our heads from the grip of pervasive electronic messaging, advertising, distractions. What a notion! Connect with reality. Get real, baby!  Stop and smell a real rose,in the very real world,  listen and think about what is happening behind the surface glitter and flash of all the digital razzle dazzle. Well, to do so requires reading, listening, thinking, prompted by one source or another, print or electronic. You can still have your indulgences, but it would be worth your while to forego the digital fast empty calories for some real nutritious food-for-thought. You’ve been distracted for long enough, and may be in peril. Whether you realize it or not, the future is at stake, and you need to be fully awake. Do some heavy lifting long enough to become an informed consumer.  Oh, I know you don’t have that kind of gumption, but you’ll wish you did if the worst-case-scenario becomes business-as-usual. There’s an important election in November. Do you plan to vote? Plan on making your voice heard?  The voting booth holds enormous power. The fewer people who vote means that a smaller and smaller share of the electorate get to decide your political fate.

What kind of future do you prefer? Well in previous blogs I have written (ranted?) about things such as the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, the neo-con types in congress, or occupying governor’s mansions, and certainly the corporate media that serves all these nefarious entities quite well. Too much to process? Just me rabble-rousing? Exaggeration? Agitation? Sour grapes? Whatever, but don’t you want to check it out for yourself?  I do pay close attention and this is what I see: a public that has become lazy and stupid when it comes to making important choices, especially ones that emanate from a voting booth. One man, one vote. We the People. Constitutional protections. With liberty and justice for all, blah blah. Yeah, right? In theory anyway; but I’ve lived long enough to witness journalistic principles abandoned to the dictates of military adventure in two needless Persian Gulf invasions, a post 911 national policy of fear mongering & intrusiveness, and two documented, corrupted presidential elections.  Money, power,  divide and conquer politics are destroying our democracy. Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, money is free speech and corporations are “people”! Super Pacs can assert monetary power to literally buy an election.  Airways get flooded with ad hominem vitriol disguised as discourse.  The radical Right has gotten a foothold in government and their agenda is disingenuous and vile in its objectives. We’re becoming a plutocracy. Since the 2010 mid-term elections, the middle and lower classes have been exploited and scapecoated, even teachers,police and firefighters!   

However, the Occupy movement and it’s 99-1 mantra is trying to fight back.  Maybe it’s 98-2, or at best 97-3, but the vast majority of Americans are working class mopes, not financially independent. And in spite of the recent Wall St. malfeasance that cost many families their future, many of the working class appear to be asleep at the wheel, and headed for a cliff: recent polls (scientific number crunching, mind you) indicate how clueless many people are about what’s going on in the political arena. 

What’s your idea of a rosy future?  Want all unions dissolved? Want your job shipped overseas? Want your public school system to be privatized? Want Social Security and Medicare privatized? Want environmental regulations gutted? Want corporations to set policy on just about every aspect of life? Want your taxes to go up while the mega-rich have theirs go down? Want the government to control a woman’s reproductive right? Want social programs eliminated? No safety nets?

Well, then vote republican!

But if republican economic power politics serves, at best, only about 2-3% of the electorate, what is there to worry about? Well, “lazy & stupid” is alive and well. If not, then how can the polls show Romney in a virtual tie with Obama? Not that Obama has lived up to his “change” mantra. But he isn’t going to rubber-stamp the blatant corporatocracy agenda of the neo-cons. Who are these “average” folk who, though average income types, support a slash and burn monetary policy that wants to provide for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? It must be that lazy & stupid clan. That gullible, short-sighted, easily manipulated clan.: Is the fact that a woman can get a legal abortion driving them nuts? Vote republican. Is the possibility of two men or two women marrying one another drive them bat-shit? Vote republican. Do those signs in the stores written in Spanish make them resentful? Vote republican.  Does medical science’s desire to use embryonic stem cells for disease-curing research equal abortion and make them want to man their NRA approved assault weapons? Well, they can support the republicans, and when they die of liver cancer, feel satisfied that they protected that embryonic cell with their own lives. Lazy & stupid. They can support policies that will almost certainly make their quality of life worse in the years to come.  But they vote their  conscience, and their financial and physical health be damned, and that goes for the environment, too!  And when the plutocrats have control of it all, we’ll all really going to need an escape from reality when that different drummer leads us in a race to the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Your ever-more monopolistic telecommunications company will have you paying non-negotiable, exorbitant rates that’ll make you nostolgic for what you’re being gouged for today; but given the depths to which you’ll have descended, the reception figures to be really bad as you surf the Net for an explanation…for some truth….

Cinco de Mayo. May 5th. No, it’s not Mexican independence day. The 5th of May marks the Mexican defeat of French troops at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Let’s celebrate, amigos.  What were the French doing in Mexico then? Well, they were there to collect a debt. Does it make any difference why they were there, really?  Did the French learn anything by their defeat? Seems not, since theywere defeated by Vietnamese forces in the 1950s. Call it history’s business-as-usual. There’s plenty of misadventures in the history books.  War and peace. Heaven and hell.  A fight to the finish. Love and hate. To the victor goes the spoils, blah blah.   Can’t we all just bloody well get along? Don’t hold your breath.  Racial, ethnic and religious factors spark a lot of conflict. You don’t need a history book, just turn on a newscast. It’s a wounded madhouse!  It’s enough to drive one to drink…

…and disturb one’s sleep.

Reality can be hard to swallow. So, how do we cope?  You need to change the mental scenery, and one strategy or another can help. Maybe a few brews cut it for some, but for others…the booze or even a hit of MaryJane can’t cut through the muck that seemingly darkens the human soul and triggers so much external and internal conflict.  Need a distraction? Need something that’ll really knock you into a new state of mind? Not alcohol, not cigarettes, not your teenage son’s pot, or even those prescription drugs you’ve been abusing. You need to blot it all out! Well, there’s a market for such a need…

…cue the drug cartels, especially those Mexican cartels. They supply the real mind-benders that’ll alter whatever reality is causing one some angst. Angst? These illicit business honchos really have a lot of people jittery. Cue the cops. Authorities on both sides of the Mexican border are busy trying to win another battle of historic proportions, the War on Drugs;  the news continues to report (and show)  corpses, many headless or otherwise dismembered. The dead are usually members of a rival cartel. Turf wars. To better serve their customers, and control the market, a few heads have to roll, ok?  Hey, it’s a business model.  Remember the immortal words of Gordon Gecko: greed is good. Why share the market when you can dominate it? Ask Apple or Wal-Mart about that concept. So, what do the cartels supply their consumers with?:  blow, snow, skag, flake, nose candy, blue heaven, poppers, snappers, ludes, horse or shrooms, among street names for heroin, cocaine, meth and beyond, each of a potential lethal endgame.

And the obvious dangers of such consumption never seem to hurt the cartel operation’s bottom line. Business never seems to slack off.   There’s always someone needing that fix, from the people of privilege to the the denizens of Desolation Row.  Angst is a pervasive part of having a heartbeat, apparently, for many of all income and class designations.

In pursuit of happiness… 

… so give me a valium, a vicodin or two, a line to snort, a needle and a spoon, that’ll be my retort, a reply to my disappointment, a soothing psychic ointment, relief that can’t come too soon.  Give me librium or give me meth!  Give me a new vision, a glittering temple of the mind, a psychedelic shrine, a serene scene for the soul. Beam me up, send me along, make me whole, make me strong; our nada who art in nada…nada be thy name…

Or suck it up, you weak kneed wusses and just have a Corona with a lime, and recall Puebla, back in time…and nevermind…nevermind.

May 1, 2012. May Day. A celebration of labor, workers, unions, brotherhood. If the old Soviet Union were still chugging along on its creaky ideological tracks, there’d be a  May Day parade in Moscow, and then on May 9th, a “victory day” procession, with lots of imposing weaponry rolling down a street fronting a balcony from which fossilized Soviet leadership would gaze down and nod (barely) in approval.  This display of supposed Soviet military might was essentially an in your face jab at its Cold War rival, the U.S. of A.  But alas, no more Soviet Union. Back to being Mother Russia–for better or worse, and that’s depending on who one talks to who occupies the present Russia but clearly remembers its past as well. The Cold War is over. R.I.P. The U.S. has now replaced communism with terrorism for a new boogeyman, with 911 setting the table for some creepy, fear-mongering extremist views of how to make the USA safe from the likes of Osama bin Laden. I say “the likes” of OBL, since a year ago on May 1, 2011, American military forces found him and killed him (a tip of the hat to Navy Seal Team Six). However, we’re still, apparently, terribly afraid of his “organization” since we continue to spend billions of dollars and lose many military and civilian lives in Afghanistan in order to…uh…in order to…well fuck if I can figure why U.S. troops are still over there. At least the Cold War made sense in terms of the then Superpower status of the USA & the Soviet Union & the nuclear arms race that fueled foreign, military & diplomatic policy for the two countries. The USSR was a real threat,( as was the U.S. to the Kremlin) and the 1962 Cuban missile Crisis proved it. Khrushchev blinked first, and the rest of the world wiped the sweat off its brow. Our recent and ongoing military actions, on the other hand, lack clarity and distinct purpose. The U.S. is fighting a “war” against terrorism, but that amorphous enemy wears no uniform and is hard to locate.  Afghanistan now, and the absurd waste of life & money incurred by George Bush’s Iraq invasion (based on prevarication, deception & cynicism)  seem to serve little rational purpose in our post-911 world. Not that Iraq or Afghanistan were/are actual wars but military occupations. Regardless, the lies, deception & cynical motives remain even now with President Obama in charge. He won’t simply bring the troops home, although the majority of Americans want him to do just that. Obama may be a Harvard grad but he displays an inept knowledge of 20th century military history. The Red Army tried to muscle its will  & wrath on the Afghans through most of the 1980s, and finally bailed out after realizing its no-win reality.  Obama could even recall our own military failure in Vietnam as a history lesson, but noooo!  The more things change….the more they stay insane.

The Soviet Union, for numerous reasons, collapsed after 70 years of  “communist utopia” that was, of course utopian of, for & by the privileged few at the expense of everyone else living in a dystopia. But it did collapse without the U.S. having to set foot on Russian soil or put U.S. troops at risk. Now, we invade other countries that cannot possibly pose a serious threat to our way of life (just as we did with Viet Nam) while making U.S.citizens adhere to the fear-mongering precepts laid out by the Homeland Security Act & other draconian, constitution-bashing policies (who needs the 1st & 4th Amendments? we suspect everyone of being a possible terrorist equally). This post-911 strategy suggests, strongly, the late Osama bin Laden is still way ahead on points in this new “us vs.them” paradigm of the new millennium. He may be as dead as the Soviet Union, but every time a 5 year-old or a 85 year-old gets body searched at the airport, and more security cameras keep watch on average, unsuspecting  citizens, and warrantless wiretaps and over-reaching police powers are granted, his visage haunts and taunts Americans who are constantly being told to stay afraid, stay very afraid.

George Orwell & bin Laden might be somewhere in the next realm, each snickering sardonically over what has come to pass. Orwell’s Big Brother concerned a frightful future for England, not the United States, but his writings resonate bitterly with so much surveillance legislation having been passed by congress, the latest, pending a vote is called  CISPA . This nefarious piece of congressional tinkering would let the government snoop us via our cyberspace data. What right to privacy? Not in the War on Terror! Bin Laden sought to punish the U.S. for its perceived hypocritical arrogance toward foreign governments that it supports when convenient, then exploits as needed, such as bin Laden himself when he was fighting against the Soviet army in Afghanistan and getting subsidized financially in his effort, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq when he was fighting againt Iran and also supported in that effort by U.S. aid. George and Osama may not be friendos in the cosmos, but they do have a rather bitterly ironic common ground between themselves in light of what recent history has documented on this 2012 May Day.  Come another dozen May Days, I shutter to see where our current path may take the U.S. There’s a lot to be afraid of, for certain, but as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with Islamic extremists anymore. I’d take the Cold War over this insidious fascism infesting American politics any day. Those who are willing to give up some freedom for security, deserve neither, as that saying goes.  The USA/USSR tensions ended well…for the US.  Now, there seems to never be an end in sight as far as current American military and domestic anti-terrorist actions go. Next stop, North Korea or Iran. May Day. Brotherhood. Labor. Let’s have a parade…