IT'S WORTH A TRY

Check out The Brad Blog for more info. What the hell ...

Brief blog note: I'll return to regular posting -- or whatever passes for such a thing -- one of these days. It's just too fucking hot right now.

GROOVING WITH KRISHNAMURTI

Frequently overwhelmed by the unbearable pressures of living in this Neo-Con controlled asylum of the damned, I’ll sometimes reach desperately for some sort of intellectual anesthetic -- that is, other than of the distilled and/or brewed varieties -- a literary diversion, if you will. Anything that re-balances my sensiblities, something that’s both inspiring and perspective-building. Well, this week I dug up a 30-year-old paperback of writings by J. Krishnamurti, entitled Commentaries on Living. With a title like that, it must have something to say. Just what that is, I haven’t yet figured out completely … anyway, here's a brief sample:

Have you noticed, in newspapers and magazines, the amount of space given to politics, to the sayings of politicians and their activities? Of course, other news is given, but political news predominates; the economic and political life has become all-important. The outward circumstances -- comfort, money, position and power --seem to dominate and shape our existence. The external show -- the title, the garb, the salute, the flag -- has become increasingly significant, and the total process of life has been forgotten or deliberately set aside. It is so much easier to throw oneself into social and political activity than to understand life as a whole; to be associated with any organized thought, with political or religious activity, offers a respectable escape from the pettiness and drudgery of everyday life. With a small heart you can talk of big things and of the popular leaders; you can hide your shallowness with the easy phrases of world affairs; your restless mind can happily and with popular encouragement settle down to propagate the ideology of a new or of an old religion.

Politics is the reconciliation of effects; and as most of us are concerned with effects, the external has assumed dominant significance. By manipulating effects we hope to bring about order and peace; but, unfortunately, it is not as simple as all that. Life is a total process, the inner as well as the outer; the outer definitely affects the inner, but the inner invariably overcomes the outer. What you are, you bring about outwardly. The outer and the inner cannot be separated and kept in watertight compartments, for they are constantly interacting upon each other; but the inner craving, the hidden pursuits and motives, are always more powerful. Life is not dependent upon political or economic activity; life is not a mere outward show, any more than a tree is the leaf or the branch. Life is a total process whose beauty is to be discovered only in its integration. This integration does not take place on the superficial level of political and economic reconciliations; it is to be found beyond causes and effects.

Because we play with causes and effects and never go beyond them, except verbally, our lives are empty, without much significance. It is for this reason that we have become slaves to political excitement and to religious sentimentalism. There is hope only in the integration of the several processes of which we are made up. This integration does not come into being through any ideology, or through following any particular authority, religious or political; it comes into being only through extensive and deep awareness. This awareness must go into the deeper layers of consciousness and not be content with surface responses.

-- J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living

BRIEF DISPATCH FROM HEE-HAW NATION

What's that song they used to sing on "Hee-Haw"? Doom, despair, and agony on me ... or something to that effect. I can't seem to flush that tune out of my head these days, which isn't much of a surprise. Whenever I glance at a newspaper headline or unwittingly catch a snippet of "news" on TV or the radio, or am otherwise reminded of the cesspool of desperation and loathing the Bushoids are rapidly transforming this country into, saturated images of Grampa and Buck Owens and Minnie Pearl and BR-549 play merry hell with my shredded sensibilities. And, of course, that famous song lays over everything, like the stench of corruption on a room full of Republicans.

OK, after a few moments of Internet research, my memory has been "refreshed" -- it goes something like this:

Doom, despair, and agony on me/ Deep dark depression, excessive misery/ If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all/ Doom, despair, and agony on me

Not exactly high art, but it certainly captures the barest essence of the times -- not to mention the no-man's-land of gloom inside my withered skull.

Christ, I need a drink.

EMPTY PAGES

Bullshit overload has, once again, left me wallowing in a wordless void -- it's too much, too much. The despair is palpable, and has left me ... well, an empty page, of sorts.

To make matters even more depressing, take a look at these two articles at Guerrilla News Network:

USA Out-Flanked in Eurasia Energy Politics?

Energy Geopolitics 2006

Read 'em and weep -- I don't know how much more of this crap I can take.

THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE BLOODTHIRSTY

How’s this for an utterly black & white, no-compromise, in-your-face statement of breathtaking simplicity: anyone who volunteers to bear arms for the government of the United States of America -- especially, especially, since the catastrophic results of the 2000 “election” -- is, without question, a sickeningly stupid goddamned motherfucking blood-swilling asshole ...

Now that I have your full, unvarnished attention, let me just add that I’m absolutely and completely serious here.

I realize how appallingly offensive these words are, within the debased epoch we find ourselves -- this obscene era of widespread mental illness, where violent militarism is hoisted up onto some unassailable pedestal of respectability. We’re not supposed to criticize the war machine, or the over-worked morons and blood-crazed killers who keep it rolling; we are supposed to slap cheap Chinese-made yellow ribbons on the ass-end of our SUV’s and incessantly regurgitate meaningless, platitudinous bullshit about how we must unreservedly “support our troops,” no matter how many Einsatzgruppen-style atrocities they commit against unarmed civilians. We’re required to believe that the stress and tension of combat, and the calamitous effects of multiple deployments on the psyches of individual Marines and Army grunts, offers up a framework of “understanding” as to why such vicious crimes as the Haditha massacre (and countless others) occur. Our uniformed minions perpetrate mass murder and are slavishly enshrined as “heroes” who, unfortunately, make “mistakes” in the heat of “battle.”

Well, you’ll have to pardon the hell out of me for the severity of my skepticism, but there is no justification -- none, under any circumstance -- for executing unarmed men, women, and children. Children, for fuck’s sake. Only soulless, degenerate Nazis would bother to construct rationalizations and spew apologetics for the gunning down of pregnant women, six-month-old babies, and old people in wheelchairs. But the troops are under monumental stress, they say; some are enduring their second and third tours in Iraq, we’re constantly being reminded; Bush lied us into this war, so the ultimate responsibility is his, the pundits tell us; the Marines in Haditha were understandably reacting to the death of one of their comrades is another common talking point; war is war, and so on and so forth. All of these angles and perspectives are absolutely true enough, as far as they go, but are altogether irrelevant when it comes to ... pointing a machine-gun at a poor woman and her children, and pulling the trigger.

Beyond the fact that these obscenities have taken place -- and continue to occur on a regular basis -- I guess what sickens me the most is that the perpetrators are all volunteers. They’re not conscripts, forcibly compelled to be the hatchet-men for the Neo-Con apparatus of destruction, but free agents willingly participating in this madness. Nobody held a gun to their heads, or jumped out of a helicopter and slaughtered their families in cold blood, to force them to enlist. No extraordinary methods of coercion were required to get these bastards in uniform, other than offering them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of murdering unarmed Arab civilians with impunity. If these guys really wanted to “serve their country,” or to score money for college, or were motivated by any of the myriad of other reasons why normal people join the military, such impulses can be indulged without the necessity of becoming a bloodthirsty killer. In fact, most modern military occupations are highly technical in nature, and well removed from the desperate exigencies of killing and dying, to greater or lesser degrees. These bastards could have signed up to be, say, Air Force medical technicians, or Navy computer programmers, or who the hell knows what else. But no -- they purposely chose to be rifle-toting ground-pounders, allowing themselves to be thrust into an untenable situation of extreme magnitude ... so they could point their M-16’s at old people, and blast the heads off of women and children. They’re fundamentally no different than suicide bombers or German SS troopers, or any other such example of human scum. If they had even a tiny amount of native intelligence, or at least a modicum of common sense, they would’ve been able to discern what the advent of the Republican/Neo-Con dictatorship had in store, for them and the rest of us. They should have refused to actively participate in this evil scheme of domination and destruction, but they deliberately made the decision to be the praetorian enforcers for the would-be worldwide corporatist empire. So fuck them -- just as is the case with their vile and loathsome Masters, they deserve neither our respect or support.

So, to all those veterans out there (and, just to be clear, I happen to be a veteran myself): if you’re offended by anything you’ve read here, well, that’s just too bad. I simply won’t be an apologist for mass murder -- particularly when it’s committed in “my” name by uniformed ignoramuses under the official sanction of an illegal regime of neo-fascist motherfuckers in DC. If you need torturous justifications for the deliberate slaughter of Iraqi (or Afghan, or Iranian, etc.) civilians, I have no doubt that there are plenty of far-right mush-brained blogs and web sites out there, all ready and eager to stroke your delusions and massage your stupidity. Don’t expect to receive that sort of treatment here.

A QUICK AND DISGUSTING UPDATE: As if all this horrible bullshit wasn't bad enough, check out these photos at Raw Story, and prepare to puke yourself senseless ...

LOST FOR WORDS

American Cemetery and Memorial, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg -- May 1987
(photo by yours truly)

WORDS OF REALISM FROM SIMONE WEIL

Whether the mask is labelled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus -- the bureacracy, the police, the military ... No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

-- Simone Weil (quoted by Howard Zinn in Declarations of Independence)

I REALLY WISH I KNEW WHAT THE HELL I WAS TALKING ABOUT

It seems to have reached the point where I can’t keep the mad parade of Bushworld corruption straight in my briny, messed-up brain-pan anymore -- not without some sort of scorecard or a fucking road map. Who’s really screwing who; what’s the real story, and what are the calculated diversions and misdirections that prevent us from understanding it; where does the truth reside, and just what the hell is the truth, anyway ...? It’s quite an impressive mass of confusion and bewilderment, a well-orchestrated campaign of controlled chaos, a cynical and hugely manipulative circle-jerk of thievery and deception that the amoral corporatists and barely-closeted Nazis in the current regime have foisted upon us. What’s the blueprint for survival in this milieu of maniacal, money-grubbing malfeasance? I don’t even know where to begin, what with my head being tied up by a clabbered and contorted assemblage of labyrinthine flapdoodle, mystifying minutia, and an anarchy of perplexing and stupefying misinformation. I am, for all practical purposes, mentally immobilized and intellectually unable to blaze a trail out of the Neo-Con darkness in which we’re slowly being asphyxiated. A common problem for most people nowadays, I should think.

Honestly, the accelerating nature of the present state of things has seriously outstripped my capacity for reason. If I really wished to understand what’s going on -- and I do, obviously -- on what am I supposed to focus my ever-shrinking attention span? Every member of the “progressive” community, whether they be bloggers or democratic activists or just loud-mouthed opinion-mongers, all seem to know the precise answer to such an impossible question. To some (and I include myself in this camp), the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Bush and his obscene horde of con-artists and blood-swillers is of the highest priority; others are of the opinion that installing a Democratically-controlled Congress next November is the magic panacea for all our various national ills; certain quarters seem to believe that we should get our bowels in a righteous uproar over NSA spying, or the Iraq war; or perhaps the non-issue of immigration, or election fraud, or even gay marriage or the looming aggression against Iran. Every blithering mouth-breather has their own pet issue, and each of these issues holds a certain degree of importance in its own right. However, the multiplicity of critical issues obscures the fact that the fundamental questions (whatever they may be), which need to be confronted first, can’t be addressed at all so long as we’re all acting like a clutch of pinheaded reactionaries. The latest outrage crashes over our heads, and well-meaning groups and individuals immediately froth and fume and spew out fiery blasts of indignation and anger -- but it rarely touches on the root causes of why the outrages occur in the first place, thereby setting the stage for the next outrage. And the one after that, and so on.

Oh hell, this isn’t anything we don’t already know. I’m certainly no paragon of ... well, anything really. I indulge in the same instinctive, adrenalin-fueled, fury-soaked reactionary behavior I so rudely poke others in the gonads over -- as in my previous post, where I was (and remain) practically catatonic in disgusted outrage over those Iraq photos at After Downing Street, or in the queasy panic I’m struggling to contain at the prospect of an Air Force general, the very same bald-headed bottom-feeding fuck who cobbled together the illegal NSA spy program, being installed in the top position at the Central Intelligence Agency. I guess the point is that, as vital as these individual issues are -- as well as the myriad of others clamoring for attention -- obsessive fixation on any one of them in particular is a hollow exercise in self-defeating futility. All of these actions and questions, these low-lifes suddenly thrust into prominence, these criminal acts of larceny and destruction and mass death, are merely manifestations of far more deep and fundamental phenomena: they’re only means to a nefarious end, in simplest terms. You can expose and attack and dissect and eviscerate and ridicule and (occasionally) force to a halt any one of these manifestations, which tends to puff-up one’s ego with a lot of uselessly hot air, but it doesn’t really change anything. The cancerous zombie of the Neo-Con Death Machine will continue its disastrous, lurching rampage over what’s left of the prone and pliant American body politic, regardless of how many tiny bits and pieces of its diseased and foully bloated carcass the righteous and well-meaning manage to knock off, here and there. We need to kill the damn thing, not just annoy or inconvenience it.

Yeah well, blah blah blah. I wish I knew what the hell I was talking about.

THIS IS WHAT IRAQI FREEDOM LOOKS LIKE

If you have a cast-iron stomach to go along with your sense of utter, seething outrage, then visit After Downing Street for a whole slew of sickening images just like this. Are there any serious doubts left about the necessity of removing the Bush bastards from office?

GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL, SORT OF

Afternoon in the brewpub:

The three televisions are all tuned to the standard corporate/professional sports baloney; the barfly chatter is insipid and largely indistinct, serving admirably in its usual role of empty-calorie background filler and intellectual rot-gut; on the other hand, the beer is good and cold, but not quite as cold as the hatchet-faced bartender -- a common sorrow in this particular establishment. Anyway, the joint is inexplicably crammed to the rafters with boneheaded know-nothings enjoying themselves far too much, their over-taxed sweat glands pumping out a cloyingly obscene fog of synthetic sophistication and blankly trivial glibness ... The atmosphere of mental gut-gas is so thick and enervating, it's enough to put you off your righteous outrage at the general state of things, here at the bottom of the cosmic toilet bowl. Do these drunk fools not see the dangerous knife-edge along which the Busheviks are forcing us all to convulsively dance? Or is it that they don't care? I seriously wonder why I bother to patronize this hell hole.

Soaking up the cheap and superficial vibe so common to these plastic, quasi-suburban watering holes can certainly debilitate your capacity for critical discernment -- which is probably why they're so popular. I myself must admit to a sometimes overwhelming desire to just TURN OFF the rusty, rat-shit-choked faucet of experience that, especially over the past 5+ years of the Bush disaster, only seems to spew out the noisome, disease-ridden sewage of political corruption and socio-economic dissolution with which we've become all too familiar. You can chug only so much of this poisonous dreck before permanent damage sets in -- mental, physical, or both; hence the absolute need for a psychic pit-stop, a temporary refuge where one's human sensibilities can at least partially recover from the relentless battering they take on a daily basis. In that regard, I suppose that explains why I still spend such an inordinate amount of time in this ridiculous alcohol emporium.

So, it's all a question of escape, which is a legitimate activity within the wider project of maintaining some sort of equilibrium inside modern life's rubber-walled nut house. How this escape is affected is about as diverse and variable as humanity in general; in my case, as is usual with most people who have little initiative and no imagination, it happens to involve periodic forays into the foamy wasteland of beer and bars. It's not something I'm especially proud of, but there it is. Anyhow, whatever methodology or gimmickry one employs to cope with the desperate exigencies of reality -- to briefly escape from them, in other words -- serious problems are bound to arise when the overall perspective gets flipped on its ear. When escaping becomes merely an end in itself, without conscious reference to whatever it is you may be trying to escape from ... Well, one of the things you wind up with is this bizarre spectacle of brewpub suburbanites loudly convincing themselves that the women's kickboxing match, currently being displayed in all its absurd glory on the behind-the-bar plasma TV, is of far more import than the cost of the fuel they burned in their SUV's to get to the bar in the first place. Or the banalities of office politics colliding with the most recent controversy on American Idol, naturally preventing any intellectual energy being pointlessly expended over obscure esoterica like NSA spying or CIA torture gulags.

Oh well, you get the picture. It doesn't require trite generalizations from an idiot such as myself to get the idea across that, yes indeed, we live in a sick and deluded nation full of dog-wagging tails ... in a manner of speaking. The only thing that's truly significant is that, perhaps paradoxically, the more I seek to get away from it all, by plowing my way through as many unhealthy brewpub vices as possible, the more I actually obsess over all those things that I'm purportedly trying to escape from. So, yet again, I have to question the utility of such a self-defeating activity.

If only there was another Impeachment Forum to attend -- I could definitely use another large dose of hope. At the very least, it would be more entertaining than kickboxing ...

AND NOW, A FEW WORDS FROM DANTE

Dante quote of the day, #1:

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.


Dante quote of the day, #2:

The secret to getting things done is to act.


I couldn't have said it better myself. No, really.

WHERE THE HELL IS THE HOPE?

How’s everybody’s supply of hope holding up these days? You know -- hope that this country can alter the disastrous trajectory it’s currently flying along, before it’s too late; hope that our Frankenstein’s monster president and his venomous crew of thieves, despoilers, and mass murderers will eventually have real justice served upon them, harshly and mercilessly; hope for a future ... any sort of future, really. Always an especially rare commodity at the best of times, in these later days it seems that “hope” and I have become almost (but not quite) as estranged as, say, a drunk is from self-control or a Republican office-holder is from the truth. In other words, our paths seldom cross, particularly since the advent of the George W. Bush reign of terror. Entangled in the poisonous web of loathing and despair so artlessly spun out of the slavering Neo-Con imagination -- the fundamental animative engine of the so-called “administration” -- and bamboozled and distracted by all the soulless sycophants, shameless schlockmeisters, and supercilious stenographers in corporate media ... hell, I hardly know what the word “hope” is even supposed to mean anymore.

Anyway, there I was, as is usually the case, sitting immobile at one of those ubiquitous east Sacramento intersections -- if you’ve ever spent any amount of time in a place like this, you know exactly what I’m talking about ... a gargantuan expanse of asphalt and concrete, garishly ringed all around by gas stations, religious fanatics with flapping cardboard signs that read HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!, ugly cookie-cutter corporate-chain restaurants, homeless beggars, and at least one automobile dealership. All the plastic detritus and sad polluted waste-water of American consumerism, strained through the clogged cheesecloth of the fossil-fuel industry. Notwithstanding the inflated price of gasoline, this particular intersection was also gridlocked with obligatory, early rush-hour traffic, esthetically completing the appalling awfulness of the whole scene. While sitting there helplessly, wistfully watching large gobs of figurative dollar signs rise inexorably from the teeming forest of exhaust pipes surrounding me, I was bitterly chewing on some obnoxiously unanswerable questions which were hurled in my face a couple hours prior: after casually mentioning that I’d attended the Impeachment Forum organized by the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party last weekend, a co-worker exclaimed What the fuck’s the point? They’d just replace Bush with somebody worse. Besides, he’ll never be forcibly removed from office, so why waste your time with this impeachment nonsense? Just as my frantic monkey-brain was preparing to offer up a well-honed, after-the-fact rhetorical demolition of such ridiculous, hopeless, pathologically discouraging and blindly stupid commentary, a shiny and insanely enormous Escalade rolled up next to me, subwoofers set to maximum annoyance volume, license plates and side-view mirrors vibrating like the outer extremities of a coke fiend checking into rehab -- whereby my always tenuous acquaintance with the more positive and optimistic aspects of human experience quickly dissipated in a sick cloud of noisy, stinking absurdity. My thought-train jumped its tracks, and I barely made it home without throwing up on myself.

So here we come to the rub, the crux, the essential point, or whatever the hell you want to call it -- that is, insofar as I have a point, which is not altogether certain. Anyhow, the question is: what’s the secret to maintaining a sense of hope? You fully expect wingnuts and freepers, know-nothing ditto-heads and fools in SUV’s to go out of their way to pollute your punch-bowl of optimism. That’s just what they do, what with their strange allegiance to -- and identification with -- the symbology of power and domination, aggravated by (or perhaps stemming from) an inexplicably violent opposition to diversity of opinion and the inalienable right of people to think for themselves. Except for those in positions of dubious “authority,” to whom we really have no choice but to pay some attention, it’s generally best to deal with sub-humans of this ilk by ignoring them as much as possible. No, the real destroyers of hope are not the mental weaklings on the right; rather, they’re the great mass of the uninformed and uninterested in the middle, the complacently depoliticized majority, the self-righteously aloof who’ve so deeply integrated the practice of detached cynicism into their day-to-day lives, they can’t even see how cynical they are. Indeed, they actively deny that they’re cynical at all, such as the aforementioned co-worker who, despite having absolutely no love lost for the Bush Crime Family and its evil policies, derides me for being stupid enough to participate in a forum dedicated to the removal of Bush and his army of thugs. The what’s the point? attitude of an otherwise reasonably intelligent and compassionate person -- the casual dismissiveness of it all -- does more to puncture my already flaccid balloon of hopeful optimism than anything some empty-headed right-wing freak could do or say. So, confused and flabbergasted as I am, I’ll ask the question again: How do you remain positive and full of hope, under such circumstances?

Ah well, perhaps the true source of hope lies where my humble and comprehensively disinformed opinion has always relegated it -- in the sudsy dregs at the bottom of every beer glass. Maybe so, but if any of you out there have any other thoughts or suggestions concerning this matter, I’m all ears.

IMPEACHMENT TALK

Just the briefest of brief updates, to let everybody know that the Impeachment Forum this past Saturday night was, well ... I thought I'd link a few summaries of the event, since these people are a hell of a lot smarter than I am and can actually write. Anyway, here they are:

Bob Fertik, of Democrats.com

omega minimo at Democratic Underground

Joye Swan, of the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Phil Burk at ImpeachBush.tv

Frankly, I don't think all that highly of bloggers that camouflage their lack of ability and/or lack of imagination by posing as pathetic "link" services to "real" blogs, but to tell you the truth, I'm just too flippin' tired to suss out my own impressions of the impeachment forum, at least at this particular moment. I'll be delving back into my own incomprehensible brand of mindless gibberish soon, rest assured.Till then, you must peruse what these good people have to say ...

THOUGHTS ON GASOLINE

It sure seems that every human being has at least one opinion on every conceivable subject ... No kidding, say the legions of fashionably jaded bloggers out there, with the smarmy know-it-all smirk that’s practically obligatory in this business. Fair enough -- I’ve never in my life made any claim whatsoever to originality, pithy witticism, or wide-ranging and/or in-depth knowledge about anything in particular, and that’s especially true as far as this blog stuff is concerned. All I’m doing here is mournfully, hopelessly opining into the virtual ether, same as everybody else. And my “opine” at the moment just happens to be: it sure seems that every human being has at least one opinion on every conceivable subject ...

Among many other matters, the price of gasoline has been on the vituperative tip of many a blogger’s tongue lately. From the liberal-minded, computer-addicted troglodytes who don’t get enough sun or fresh air; to the radical wing-nut freepers who, nightly, kneel in rapturous self-debasement before their plastic Karl Rove party dolls -- everybody out in the ’sphere seems to be chucking in their two cents and opinionating non-stop about the oil companies and the deadly product they peddle. Under the circumstances, there’s little to lose by joining in the general gnashing of teeth over $3 gasoline and rapacious corporate profiteering. Being a resident of Sacramento, the capital of California, makes me somewhat of a reluctant pseudo-expert on these kinds of subjects.

Making a more-than-handsome profit off the behavior of others is an old American tradition, especially when it comes to so-called “lifestyle choices” at the core of this nation’s social-cultural apparatus. In the United States, the “choice” of over-reliance on automobiles, and the crude-oil-based fuels that power them, is a perfect case in point -- particularly so here in the state of California, what with its 25 million cars and trucks (which combine for nearly 300 billion “vehicle miles” traveled annually, according to the state Air Resources Board). With such an appallingly comprehensive stranglehold on the transportation infrastructure, which applies generally across the country as a whole, it would be utterly astonishing if the oil barons didn’t do everything possible to squeeze every last dollar out of all of us. They’re doing only what they know how to do, within the narrow, predatory capitalist scheme of things, to the complete exclusion of anything else: that is, maximize profits, while having no concern at all for the consequences to the wider society. Like I said, this is a fundamental corporate attitude that’s about as all-American as anything. To believe that oil companies would act any differently, perhaps showing at least a modicum of fairness or responsibility towards the citizenry they so ruthlessly exploit for their own advantage, is absurd in the extreme.

So, if the corporate sector -- as represented, in this case, by multinational oil companies -- aided and abetted by the politicians and public institutions they own and manipulate, is hell-bent on raping the earth and milking us poor dumb chumps until there’s literally nothing left, what’s the answer then? If the mystical chimera of profit is allowed to trump all other concerns, both in the human realm and the natural world, what’s the proper response? Plainly, the answer lies in not participating, in not playing the role of passive complicity in a system of ravenous exploitation. In this case, it’s the willful acceptance of a consumerist model of existence -- a dead-end, nowhere mode of living if there ever was one. Specifically, why don’t we just opt out of the fossil-fuel based automobile culture altogether? It’s our panting eagerness to play along with this dangerous fiction, this brutal disaster of an energy source that’s only going to destroy us in the long run, that is itself the foundation of all the violence and destruction being meted out by our so-called political “leaders” upon huge portions of the earth and its sorry inhabitants. Who gives a shit if gasoline costs three dollars a gallon, or ten, or fifty cents? Stop consuming it, for crying out loud; stop providing the ownership class an incentive to continue their mindless rampage of greed -- join the struggle to establish a new, sustainable paradigm of human existence. The alternative is, well, pretty ugly and foul. And terminal.

Yeah, I know, it all sounds so trite, and far more easily said and done. But what hope is there, if we simply succumb to the despair and lurch and stagger onward, in our fog of denial, headlong toward the precipice of oblivion? Not much, actually. The only serious question then, at this very late moment, is: have we already waited too long to save ourselves? My pickled sensibilities very nearly can’t face the answer to that.

In any event, later this evening I’m planning to attend the impeachment forum being presented by the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, which is being moderated by Mike Malloy. Perhaps we’ll uncover a new, untapped vein of energized optimism somewhere in the proceedings -- we can only hope.

A TALE OF TWO DICTATORS, AND OTHER ASSORTED ATROCITIES

Oh, what a ridiculous grab-bag of BS from which to choose this week. Whether it be the continuing personnel bloodletting inside the debased precincts of the White House, Rice's questionable shenanigans with AIPAC, "wild speculations" over the dead certainty of a US attack on Iran, the price of gasoline, or the bile-churning idea that Chimp-in-Chief Bush actually set foot in the state of California -- all just minor, individual symptoms of a much wider and extensive socio-political illness besetting this poor dumb country of ours -- well hell, what's a lazy, complaining, pissed-off fool with no life supposed to do, when presented with such an overflowing cornucopia of repulsive stupidity? It's all just too damn much to chew on, I swear.

Actually, no thinking person could possibly give two hummingbird farts about Quacker Scott McClellan; the fact that Condaleeza Rice passes on secrets to functionaries of a foreign government -- that's old news with the Leaker-in-Chief regime of an unelected drunk who just happens to be one heckuva Decider; as far as the astronomical rise in gas prices is concerned, it's rather plain that it's merely one of the subsidiary corporate benefits of all the deranged war-on-Iran talk, if not one of its immediate and deliberate goals; and even George Bush's befouling visit to California means nothing in the wider scheme of things, since he's generally regarded here as a paper-thin buffoon with a head packed with wet cement and a mouth full of hog snot. But even so, when forced to endure the never-ending stomach-churning kaleidoscope of thievery and corruption, the maelstrom of minutiae in a world that's out of control, every now and then something stands out a bit from the ordinary run of despair-riddled puke and dreck that's constantly being extruded upon our conscious minds.

For me, the one thing of distinctive character from this past week has to be the curious visit of the Chinese "president" with his equally questionable American counterpart. Having paid only scant attention to this absurd spectacle, I nevertheless can't shake the feeling that what we were reluctantly witnessing was a 21st-century version of the expedient (and, ultimately, catastrophic) Nazi-Soviet rapprochement that took place during the summer of 1939. Now, as we remember from our study of history, Hitler was, at that time, desperately determined to prevent the Soviets from joining the Allied side against him, a development which would've derailed his long-planned invasion of Poland; by offering Stalin something that the British and French would not -- that is, to divide Poland between them and to further delineate each other's spheres of influence throughout the rest of eastern Europe -- Hitler got what he needed the most: Russia's benevolent neutrality and, indeed, active participation in the destruction of Poland. The fact that the Germans eventually turned on the Soviet Union, as any moron could've predicted they would do, is of no real consequence. Political expediency is what mattered, and Stalin's cynical collusion with his arch-enemy allowed Hitler to lay the bases for further, and much more far-flung, acts of aggression and conquest -- not the least of which, against the Soviet Union itself. So, Hitler was given the green light to start the war for which he had such an insane hankering, and we all know what happened subsequently.

After watching bits and pieces of the recent Bush-Hu vaudeville routine, the main questions that come to mind are: Which one of these bastards is playing the role of Hitler, and which one is Stalin? What secret deals are being hatched out of the ponderous, but sickly fertile, political machinery of both China and the United States? What sovereign entity finds itself on the super-power auction-block now? Whose access to natural resources and lebensraum is currently at issue? Yeah, I realize that the business of concocting historical analogies is, at best, fraught with difficulties and is hardly an exact science. Or a science at all, for that matter. However, it's tough to argue with the fact that here you have two monstrous, despotically-inclined empires -- the US and China -- clearly on an historic collision course with each other. Like the Russians and Nazi Germans, they'll continue to play nice publicly, so long as there's some perceived advantage in doing so, and even conspire together when circumstances warrant. But, in the long run, a confrontation is more than inevitable -- historical logic practically requires it. It's happened many times in the past, and considering how easily human energies and intellects are bent and twisted toward the nefarious needs of the powerful, it'll happen again. Guaranteed.

I realize that this is nothing more than a hopeless, useless, and utterly bleak scenario of doom -- if you don't like it, if you're what the Rude Pundit so wonderfully describes as a "wad of fuck," or if you're just an empty-headed optimist who's too deluded and distracted to sniff out the truth ... well, that's not really my problem.

By the way, the Rude Pundit is a real blog, not the phony "wad of fuck" you see here.

NUCLEAR WAR ON IRAN ... ? UH...

I don’t mind admitting that my imagination can’t really encompass the idea of the Bushniks unleashing a nuclear holocaust on Iran. Not that I’m suddenly unable to believe the absolute worst of our cross-eyed microcephalic baboon of a President and his associated goon-squad -- the course of events over the past 5+ years proves, rather conclusively, that this rabid power-crazed gang of bloodthirsty thugs doesn’t shrink away from pretty much any course of action that could be seen to further their bleak agenda. But actually initiating nuclear warfare? Even as I despise this “administration” of Neo-Nazis with every fiber of my being, I have a very difficult time believing they would really go that far.

The fact is, the Bush regime simply doesn’t need to use nuclear weapons in its single-minded campaign to impose its malevolent will on the world, and naturally, to physically control the earth’s oil reserves. The threat to do so is sufficient to its purposes, and it dovetails nicely with their basic methodology of sowing constant doubt, confusion, and undifferentiated fear in the minds of both their intended victims and their domestic opponents. Of course, given the nature of the psychotic felons in charge, and the monumentally retrograde qualities of the PNAC/Neo-Con agenda they so devotedly serve, nobody can predict, with any reasonable amount of certainty, what’s really going on within their pox-riddled skulls; Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al -- Beelzebub’s ball-washers, every last one of them -- very well may be angling to satisfy their jones for destruction and mass death by raining nuclear fire down upon the Iranian population. Clearly, the impulse to kill and destroy is deeply ingrained in the pickled minds of these sick old men, but there’s no logical or practical reason -- or even a military reason -- why nuclear-tipped “bunker busters” (or whatever the hell they’re called) must be employed to help satisfy their amorphous armageddonist proclivities, at least as far as Iran is concerned. When one considers the size and lethality of the “conventional” arsenal at the Chimp-in-Chief’s incomprehensible disposal, nukes are, at best, superfluous and thoroughly unpredictable -- a pandora’s box that, in my opinion, the greed-freaks and blood-swillers aren’t actually prepared to open. At least not yet.

With all due respect to Seymour Hersh -- perhaps the last real journalist left standing in this sorry excuse for a “democratic republic” -- I’d suspect that the information he recently gleaned from undisclosed Pentagon insiders, concerning the Bush regime’s (purported) nuclear fetish within its (absolutely certain) intention to launch criminal aggression against Iran, could likely be part of yet another sophisticated psychological misdirection ploy, hatched out of the fertile imaginations of such paragons of virtue like Karl Rove or Dick “Trigger-Happy” Cheney. Surely aware of Hersh’s almost other-worldly credibility and scrupulous adherence to the tenets of old-school journalistic integrity, I think it’s entirely possible that they planted these high-ranking informants with their grim tales of nuclear woe, to bend the Iran “discussion” away from such uncomfortable notions as the legality or morality or the economic & political ramifications of a US attack (any type of attack), toward the uselessly technical question of how such an attack may or may not be effected. By injecting the “nuculer” idea into the proceedings, it makes any other possible course of military action -- short of atomic warfare -- somehow seem reasonable in comparison. Let me hasten to point out that this is not some insinuating, back-door condemnation of Seymour Hersh, who, as I said, is the only authentic journalist of any consequence left in the fetid cesspool that is American media. My point is, it’s Hersh’s rather unassailable standing that would make him a perfect -- if unwitting -- dupe, for the liars and killers in the so-called “administration”, in these circumstances.

Well, maybe I’m just terminally paranoid, but that’s what living in Bush’s rubber-walled schizophrenic pressure-cooker will do to you. I admit that I, in all likelihood, may be totally misunderstanding and underestimating the significance of Hersh’s latest bombshell (pardon the pun); on the other hand, there’s no doubt whatsoever that, given their over-preponderance of “conventional” military power and an over-heated willingness to transform their degenerate fantasies into reality, the Neo-Cons don’t necessarily need to use nuclear weapons on Iran. But anything is possible with these miscreant bottom-feeders, so you can’t rule out anything. The war has already begun anyway, so I guess this has all been just more wasted wind on yet another foregone conclusion.

Sigh.

A ZOMBIFIED RICTUS OF APPALLED INCREDULITY

Have you ever had your cognitive abilities completely shut themselves off without warning? Have you ever experienced the sublime discomfort of watching what little capacity for reason and logic you might have had -- in always rather limited amounts, even at the best of times -- suddenly disappear? Have you ever been so inundated by the turd-choked, disease-bubbled, untreated sewage that masquerades as the phenomenal world, your psyche has no choice but to declare bankruptcy and head out on an impromptu vacation? Not surprisingly, this week I find myself in just this sort of condition, a kind of zombified rictus of appalled incredulity, precipitated by too damn much corrupted reality compressed into much too short a period of time.

Actually, those who know me could probably make a fairly convincing case that I'm in a condition similar to this all the time, but whatever.

This past week started out ambiguously enough. It's difficult to argue that Hot Tub Tom DeLay's decision to split Congress isn't good news, of a sort. But honestly, what difference does it make? True, DeLay has been, quite possibly, the most vile and loathsome degenerate ever to befoul the US House of Representatives (at least in recent years), which is no small distinction in an institution not particularly notable for upright behavior and moral and ethical rectitude. The problem is, evil little pufftoads like the Bug Man don't actually need to be official members of Congress to work their merry totalitarian mischief on the dumb, deluded masses; he'll still be spreading his Neo-Con miasma everywhere he can, for whatever corporate-shill lobbying firm that waves enough cash beneath his pesticide-scarred nostrils. So yeah, DeLay gives up his House seat, which very well may be taken by the Democrats come November, and this would be -- and is -- a positive development for the inhabitants of Texas' 22nd Congressional District. But for the rest of the country ...? Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment Karl Rove, as well as his Gestapo enforcers at the RNC, evidently aren't especially concerned about losing DeLay's seat. In fact, it's obviously just another calculated political move to help shore up the teetering, wobbling, over-reaching, Nazi-wannabe Republican dictatorship. By inducing their (arguably) most overtly corrupt member to quit, it allows them to bleat incessantly about their "values" and their thoroughly bogus dedication to such quaint notions as constitutional law and responsible governance. In tandem with their continuous procession of divisive and cynically exploitative wedge issues, not to mention the never-ending search for new "enemies" to drop bombs on, this is pretty much their MO for maintaining their deathgrip on the levers of power. DeLay, as an individual in Congress, doesn't matter -- he'll be able to inflict his ill-will just as nefariously from the posh confines of K Street, and make a few bucks in the process.

OK. So this business with DeLay breaks early in the week, and while it isn't really as important as some on the liberal-democratic end of the spectrum seem to believe, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and take it at face value nevertheless. After all, here in year six of the Age of Bush, upbeat occurrences -- not to mention "victories" -- are ridiculously few and far between, to say the least. However, the thin veneer of perspective surrounding the felonious activities of the Bug Man is easily peeled away, and placed in an appropriately wider context, when even a little bit of light is flashed on the much more comprehensive criminality of the Bush regime as whole.

This is where my meager store of rationality starts to evaporate, in trying to keep track of the rapid-fire onslaught of scandal and corruption that's just exploding out of this regime: whether it be the fact that Bush, the Great Un-Elected Shithead himself, turns out to be responsible for the Plame leak; new revelations of DHS appointees being child molesters, sexual predators, manifestly incompetent self-enriching assholes, liars, and outright thieves -- often, all of the above simultaneously; or when details emerge of continued war-planning that targets the adversary du jour, Iran, plans which include the impeccably pithy logic of threatening to use nuclear weapons to forestall Iran's use of nuclear weapons ... which they don't even have (just a few examples of fun and frivolity from the past week alone). Well, for fucking crying out loud, how are you supposed to maintain some sense of balance, an intellect-fueled, even-keeled equanimity, in the face of such non-stop awfulness? Little wonder, then, that a quasi-catatonic state seems so appealing -- after an entire week of Repug horror, stalking around and feeling like a stiff-limbed blood-drenched brain-chewing zombie not only appears to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but is also inevitable and completely predictable. What else is left, when your sensibilities have been pounded into pudding by these bastards?

Thank God for beer, which is about all I can add at this point.

THIS WEEK'S SPECIAL -- ANOTHER RED HERRING

Come on, already. Don't you people understand what this "immigration" business is really all about? Jesus, you all can't be so thick-headed and dull-witted that you don't see Rove's and the RNC's scaly fingerprints all over this thing. Oh, wait -- what am I saying? Naturally, I plum forgot that the vast mass of public-sphere ruminants out there actually does seem to enjoy gulping down the frothy wastewater so conscientiously supplied by our ruling-class opinion-makers; they naively throw back their credulous heads, shamelessly exposing their quivering gullets, and in pours the toxic stew of lies, half-truths, empty nonsense, and misinformation, gleefully compounded in the bullshit factories of the powerful and their whorish minions. Yes, that's a given, all in all. Even so ... even faced with the hard reality of a mostly oblivious and depoliticized population of distracted mendicants, amoral technocrat enablers, terminally-indebted consumerist boneheads, and mass-produced status quo junkies, it's still almost impossible to believe that so many people are so easily controlled and manipulated by evil putzes like Karl Rove. This scumbag destroyer of representative government trots out yet another red herring wedge issue -- this time concerning so-called "illegal" immigrants in the US -- and, like clockwork, everyone who's paying attention starts foaming at the mouth, in a tizzy of righteous lather. Exactly as Rove & company intend for them to do.

Regardless of what anybody might personally think about "illegals," it's an absurdity of insultingly epic proportions to believe that Republican ideologues have real practical concerns about such a huge pool of surplus labor. We're supposed to believe, indeed, that Our Great Leaders would go to such ridiculous lengths as proposing legislation to virtually outlaw a certain class of people -- deport them, lock them away in Halliburton-approved concentration camps, who knows what -- when this particular class of people serves so admirably as both an effective tool of labor discipline and a wellspring of immense profitability. So, the point is this: Republican crime bosses, along with their corporate-fascisti underwriters, are pathologically motivated by a depth of greed and avarice almost beyond comprehension; as such, they would never -- ever -- do anything to truly limit the numbers of desperate, dirt-poor wage slaves in this country, whether they be "illegal" foreigners or native-born. The complete devotion to globalization, on the part of the power apparatus, ensures and absolutely requires the creation of a permanent underclass -- no matter what its origin. Apart from threats to re-locate the few remaining well-paying jobs in the United States to, say, that worker's paradise otherwise known as the People's Republic of China, how else do you imagine the ownership class intends to consolidate and expand its already extravagantly domineering position in this society? They're certainly prepared to do just about anything, except voluntarily jettisoning the premier advantages offered by massive swarms of the hungry and destitute -- "illegal" or otherwise.

So what's the point, then, of this week's artificially contrived, Repug-inspired, red herring controversy? Well, what was the point behind the Dubai ports thing? The furor over gay marriage? The exploitation of Terri Schiavo? The "war on Christmas"? Or the million other politically-motivated far-Right circle-jerks constantly crashing over our well-bruised brain pans? Remember -- everything these people do, everything they say, everything they debase, corrupt, or co-opt, must conform to the ideological-political needs of the moment. The short-term need presently, with Rove's Bush-puppet sinking to new levels of lame-duck irrelevance, is to position vulnerable Republican incumbents more advantageously come the November mid-terms. Rove and the Neo-Con machine have to give their candidates easy, pre-fabbed straw-men-type issues with which to bludgeon their base into submission, as well as to confuse and distract their opposition; with polls suggesting a Democratic resurgence, they desperately need as much campaign-related hot air as they can get. The most recent source of such propagandistic gut-gas was the UAE ports sale, while today's immigrant-bashing serves the same nefarious purpose. Who the fuck knows what the next phony controversy might be, but since maintaining the Republican deathgrip on Congress is of paramount importance, it's sure to be hoot and a half.

Anyhow, while Rove and the rest of the Neo-Con Gestapo would love nothing more than to haul off as many brown-skinned people as possible -- barbecuing them as quickly and as profitably as the best minds of American Free Enterprise can concoct -- it's far more critical for them at this point, still in the nascent stages of the march toward an unassailable corporate dictatorship, to be slightly more crafty and politically practical. That's why we're being subjected to a seemingly never-ending parade of red herring wedge issues, one after another like Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. Rest assured, though, that once they succeed in permanently satisfying their erection-inducing dream of an overt Nazi-Republican state, complete with KZ's and Negroponte-trained death squads, then they'll have enough leisure time to implement their "final solution" for all who disagree with them. Perhaps that would be less likely to occur if more people would send Rove's endless series of Red Herring Surprises back to Lucifer's burning cockroach-infested greasy-spoon kitchen from whence they came.

Oh well, hope springs eternal ... and all that happy horseshit.

AM I AWAKE?

You know there’s something seriously wrong when you’re sitting in a midtown Sacramento brewpub -- just minding your own business -- attempting unsuccessfully to unknot your central nervous system after yet another trying day of being alive, and you happen to notice that there’s kickboxing playing on the television behind the bar. It should be pointed out that life is enough of a vicious scam, an overwhelming farce, and an existential gross-out already, even without the superfluous spectacle of two hyperactive spasmos beating the crap out of each other with their feet. Kickboxing? You must be kidding. Am I asleep right now, or what?

Well, if I’m not sound asleep and completely at the mercy of the venomous, pus-filled monsters at the core of my unconscious mind, I might as well be. Kickboxing -- for fuck’s sake.

So anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m awake, which is unfortunate really. Not being asleep and dreaming that our fearless “leaders” are relentlessly goading us all toward a bleak, Orwellian, post-industrial Neo-Con version of 21st century corporatist bondage must mean that it’s actually happening -- as difficult as it is to believe sometimes. It sort of goes without saying that our lives would be immeasurably eased, and the future considerably less uncertain and threatening, if the very existence of the so-called Bush “administration” was nothing more than the foul after-taste of an insubstantial nightmare induced by, say, over-exhaustion and/or over-medication; if wanton acts of criminal aggression, international torture gulags, Diebold-compromised elections, the systematically engineered impoverishment of uncountable billions of people, and the inexorable, mechanized rape and plunder and obliteration of what’s left of the real world were all simply, well, a jumbled psychological slide-show flickering across the frayed margins of humankind’s battered and beleaguered subconscious …

Yeah, if only. So much for rhetorical wishful thinking, I suppose. We’re really awake -- most of us; we’re sinking fast, and there’s not a fucking thing we can do about it. That is, nothing beyond staring at nonsensical kickboxing contests and pontificating in a blog that nobody ever reads.

Holy shit.

SACRAMENTO & CONSPICUOUS INDIFFERENCE

Three years to the day after the "official" launch of Our Great Leader's criminal misadventure in Iraq, and what are all the suburban Sacramento knuckle-draggers doing to commemorate this felonious act of aggression? Well, as far as I can see (which is, admittedly, not really very far), the car-crazed gridlock freaks and the TV-mesmerized mouth-breathers and the smiling lip-smacking swillers of tasteless pop-culture horse piss --just about everybody you meet, in other words -- are all, apparently without exception, studiously ignoring the war as they always have. The invasion/occupation of Iraq is not permitted to intrude itself too far into the always shallow and polluted Sacramento Valley consciousness stream; in fact, indifference and smug disdain for nearly everything above and beyond, say, American Idol or professional sports are practically badges of honor around these parts. So it isn't particularly surprising that the US taxpayer-funded, NeoCon-led destruction of a hapless oil-rich country hardly excites the tiniest ripple of interest among the great majority of Sacramento's zombified inhabitants. As long as there's gasoline to burn, credit cards to wield, and college basketball to stare at on the television, the poor dumb chumps in this sad town clearly have other priorities.

(As an aside, you would think that people so thoroughly immersed in a self-destructive fossil-fuel addiction would at least give passing notice to the immoral acts committed in its name, acts that do nothing but feed their addiction -- like the war in Iraq ... but I guess ironies aren't what they used to be)

Anyway, I keep telling myself that this infected asshole of a city can't be unique in this regard, in how it so passionately embraces the dubious concepts of ignorance and denial -- and not simply as they apply to the Iraq disaster and international affairs in general. This place isn't an aberration; unfortunately, we here in California's capital rather prosaically exemplify just about everything that's wrong with American society as a whole. We're the logical end-result of the long-term corporate-right campaign to confuse the idea of citizenship with consumerism, where active participation in public life is transmogrified into a stiff-limbed rictus of distracted passivity. This Northern California community is, like it or not, quintessential 21st-century America, in all its despair-riddled ugliness and stupidity.

So we find ourselves three years into the debacle in Iraq, with the catastrophe in Iran waiting in the wings. We're disintegrating domestically but everybody pretends not to notice; we're overdue for a karmic haymaker right to the chops, but nobody gives a shit. We slaughter uncounted thousands of innocents in Iraq and elsewhere, and it's of no concern whatsoever to most people ...

It would drive me to drink, if I didn't drink already.

A RATHER RELUCTANT AND SHAME-FACED UPDATE: Alright, alright. Turns out there was a Sacramento version of all the Iraq war protests this past weekend. Apparently it was taking place at the precise moment I was hoovering my way through yet another completely gratuitous pitcher of beer at one of my favorite watering holes, and for my hypocritical savaging of this town's nitwit population -- at least those who were letting themselves be heard, downtown at 16th & Broadway -- I humbly apologize. I'm a souse, so what do you expect?