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[headline]
The Day the American News Media Finally Lost
the Last Shreds of its Objectivity and Respectability.


Whatever semblance of objectivity
that had been remaining in the news media
has disappeared since 9-11-2001.



9-13-1

Patriotism

I don't want to live in this world any more. But I still want to live,
and where else can I live, but here? Suddenly, everyone is a patriot.
It makes me sick, all the foul-weather citizens running around here,
especially those who want to kill Arabs, acting like New Yorkers in
The Summer of Sam. I am, almost, more respectful of real patriots,
the ones who live it all year long. It never happened to me, loyalty
to a broad-based cause. If I am to be loyal, it has to be to something
near, like a woman, or a job--and I don't believe in job-loyalty any
more. I am saddened, angry, for the dead, but not as Americans, as
people, citizens of the Earth. Patriots are the same the world over.


9-14-1

The Final Purge


Original Note
In order to get this online in a timely fashion (my ordinary work process is not timely; generally, I don't believe in timeliness) I posted this piece without much of the referenced ("prophetic") material. I'll add it later, as I find the motivation to review the sources. [This note is no longer appropriate, except that I still haven't researched the sources--and maybe I never will, my interest in the subject matter having waned again.]

A. The Preliminaries


I suppose that it's "sensible," or practical, or expedient, in the same manner that it was during WWII or the Gulf War, to pursue the course that is being supported by just about everyone, government, military, and civilian alike. But I have reservations. The pols and the media are whipping the populace into a frenzy of blind patriotism. I guess that we have no choice but to go and get (and kill) Osama bin Laden, but we don't have to be jubilant about it (which we will be, when we are successful, to the point of forgetting why we did it in the first place, thus permitting the problem to continue via escalation. We say we won't do this this time, but we say that every time.) If we do this thing, we should be absolutely cold and calculating about it, to the point of stoicism. I know this is wishful thinking, but what can I do about it, except write? (I know the American people. We're just like all other people the world over, even though we want to think we're not. When we kill or capture bin Laden, we'll be dancing in the streets like Palestinians. And we'll never realize our mutual identity.) After the act, we should be humble and self-effacing in the face of the greater task ahead, armed with an eternal resolution to insist that the world be the way we want it to be. But we won't be. We'll go back to being affluent Americans, disconcerned with the world events we have driven far away. I saw a BBC newscast where an American ex-patriot playwright, Bonnie Greer, made the oft-stated contention that Americans don't know what's going on in the rest of the world. This is a misperception. Many, maybe even most, Americans in fact do understand very well what's going on in the world. The problem is that, generally, we just don't care. [Homer Simpson once said, "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand." And who is more American than Homer Simpson?] We've lived for so long in an isolated part of the world that we have been afforded this luxury. Well, no more.
Ludi, a young friend of mine, uses Jay Leno's questioning of the people in the street as an example of how ignorant Americans are. This is another form of misperception. These presentations are edited for their comic effect. How many people who have the correct answers to his simple questions does Jay Leno have to ask in order to find the airheads who do not? And most of the questions he asks are about our own country. These people don't even know what's going on in the United States, let alone in the world. This type of citizen exists in every country, not just in America. [How many people in the rural extremes of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia know what goes on in The United States, or even in France or Britain? Or how many ignorant French or British citizens know nothing of the U.S.? The world, despite postmodern times, is still very much a planet of isolated factions.] The rest of us are fairly hip to the world and its evil ways.
As for the proposal that we will perhaps have to put up with surrendering some of our basic "rights" (ala the Bill of Rights) in favor of a government mechanism that is far more intrusive, I am surprised to find that I am not so hostile to that idea per se. It has always bothered me that criminals can get away with their crimes by appealing to their "rights" as citizens. Hard evidence is found in their possession that cannot be used in trials because it was obtained illegally. Very simply put, this is wrong. The laws, I know, are designed to prevent the policing forces from abusing innocent people, and when that abuse occurs, the offending parties should be seriously prosecuted. But when they do get it right and find a criminal, even when they've gathered the evidence illegally, we shouldn't be required to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If a person is in possession of things that he should not be in possession of, he should be prosecutable, despite how the evidence was obtained. If, in the criminal's turn, he wants to charge or sue the arresting officers or forces for illegal activities, fine. Let him do it. But let's not simply negate his criminal offense. If he's guilty, he's guilty, and he should suffer for it. Illegal behavior on the part of law enforcement officers is not reduced by allowing criminals to go free on technicalities. This is a specious, or at best an insignificant argument. If we want officers to behave properly, we will prosecute them for behaving improperly; and we do not do this, for the most part. Law enforcement organizations attempt to stonewall every effort to make them accountable for their sins, and "good-minded" citizens support them in this effort. If officers behave badly, prosecute them, don't make excuses for them. Neither criminals nor law enforcement officers should be excused for their wrong-doing.
It's not what government agents do so much as how they do it. If they approach me respectfully and assert themselves in a proper and civilized manner, being a law-abiding citizen, I am more than happy to cooperate with them. Since I abandoned the drug culture fifteen or so years ago, I have nothing to hide. I'm proud of my life now. [Actually, I've always been proud of it, but now I'm far less paranoid.] I'm proud of who I am and I am happy to reveal the details of my life, if people will only ask. They can come into my home and look around all they want. But they, anyone, had better ask me nicely. I will not be abused. Abuse doesn't lie in what is done, but in the way in which it is done. And while our "rights" are a fine ideal, it is occasionally, maybe even often, necessary to invade personal privacy in order to assure the greater social good. If an invasion of my privacy is a compromise I must make in order to get the bad guys, I don't mind. What I do mind, however, is asshole cops and agents who push people around, threatening and intimidating them, adopting the attitude that they are somehow more important, thinking they are supermen with super-rights who have a mandate to stampede over more ordinary people. And lest you think this attitude and behavior is the exception among law enforcement officers and officials (especially DAs, with whom I have much personal experience), think again. Cops, agents, et al. may vary in their outward manifestation of this attitude, but generally, they maintain it. Cops tend to be more ego-oriented, more aggressive, more full of self-importance. It comes with the territory. It takes a certain kind of individual to become a police officer. Thus, they need to be trained far more thoroughly than they now are in applied psychology and "customer" relations. Since they seem to want to consider their jobs more important than those most of the rest of us hold (and maybe they are), then they should be held to a far higher standard of social relationship than the rest of us are. When you come to my home and invade my privacy, you better be nice about it, or else...I will write bad things about you. (That's the extend of my social influence these days.) Our constitutional rights exist to shield us from this tendency toward abuse by representatives of authority. If they are to be curtailed, they must be replaced by better guarantees that abuse will not occur and a more consistent ability to seek redress of grievances when they do.


B. The Christian Argument

War. Good Gawd, y'all.
What is it good for?
Absolutely Nothing.
--Edwin Starr, "War"

Let's not get caught up in the blind patriotic hysteria. (I know this is falling mostly on deaf ears.) Every time there's one of these unnatural disasters, everyone wants blood. [Rushing out to donate blood is a symbol of our willingness to comply with those who would drain our blood away. (I don't mean this literally, ala the terrorists; I mean it metaphorically, ala the feds.)] Everyone, it seems, but me. Our God (i.e., The Bible) says "Thou shalt not kill." It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill, except when people threaten your life and security." But we assume that it's okay to disobey this commandment in certain cases. And even if this assumption is valid in Old Testament theology (ala "an eye for an eye"), it is certainly negated in that of the New Testament when Jesus says to love thy enemies and turn the other cheek and when he presents us with the example of dying passively for a cause that we know to be right, in the hope and assurance that our example will provide an impetus to move the world culture one step closer toward a more advanced existence. When we undertake to act on an agenda to kill fellow humans, for whatever reason, we demonstrate that we are not true Christians, or at the least, that we are very bad ones. And fundamentalists, it seems (once again), are the worst. [Jerry Falwell blames the gays and lesbians for the terrorist attacks. I had to laugh at that one, it's so sad.]
Most people reject this premise of extreme non-violence as unworkable, even as they admire the courage and effectiveness of people like the great Mahatma Gandhi. [It takes pacifist extremism to counter its violent counterpart; violence is always extremism, no matter who is perpetrating it.] What they are telling themselves in this case is that they could never be as courageous as Ghandi was. Yet, they think they are being courageous when they stand in a line and pass buckets of debris from hand to hand for twenty-four hours at a time, aiding in the search for survivors, or spouting "courageous" slogans and maintaining that if America goes after bin Laden, they will be one of the first to volunteer, or even by simply bearing up under the stress of having to live in a "war-zone," having perhaps lost loved ones, or being inconvenienced by the closing of stores, businesses, stock markets, and air transportation. Grow up. This isn't courage. It's a pathetic attempt to try to see yourselves as something other than the helpless victims that you are. Not that I don't empathize. I cry for you all, several times a day. (I cry for myself, really, out of a sense of my own victimization. I empathize. I find within myself your pain.) But the solution to our common pain is not to create more pain, because when you do, the people in whom you create pain will seek to ease the pain you created by creating more pain in you, and the escalation will intensify. If you really want to solve the problem, you will not seek revenge, but real solutions, which can only come through defensive, not offensive, measures. A stalwart, almost paranoid protection--combined with an equally stalwart, insistent communicative agenda, brings results, eventually. It has been proven, many times over, as in this great American democratic experiment thus far, or as in how China is beginning to succumb to the expectant insistence of the capitalist West, or as in how Russia has had to relent and abandon its own revolution, which it based on a desire to be like America, but instead of setting up the experiment from a reactive rebellious communion, they set about to conquer their segment of the world and dominate it into submission and "unity," which is exactly what the Islamic fanatics are trying to do now, but on a worldwide scale. It's true that the Islamic fanatic problem is far more complicated and widespread than either the Russian or Chinese problems. So, maybe it'll take two hundred instead of one hundred years to bring this force into the modern age. But it can be resisted and eventually deteriorated. Meanwhile, people will die. But people will die anyway. If it were merely a matter of them dying instead of us, okay. (Not really, but as a practical matter.) But it's not. It's a matter of both of us dying, and escalation besides, until... The Final World War. (It will come, in any case. And after it has passed, we'll understand the value of having been trained in patience and insistent forbearance.)
But Americans don't (want to) live like that. [I've been living like this, paranoid and excessively defensive, all my life, so it's no big deal to me. It's nothing more than a verification of my world-view. This is the kind of world we have been living in, obviously most of us blindly, given the "proactive" consensual proposal of the American people to go and get bin Laden and his cadre and supporters, and then to go and get everyone else who has been having the audacity to think that we are nothing more than the benign world leaders that we say we are.] Americans want "practical," not "spiritual" solutions.
I started out by stating that I supposed that it is the "sensible," or practical, or expedient solution to the problem to begin a war on terrorism. Undoubtedly, this is what we will do. Those of us (most of us, apparently) who want to attack the "enemy" want to take the easy way out, because we are used to an easy life. Meanwhile, the fanatics take the harder way. Who will win, in the long run? We would rather take the easy way than the right way. We would rather kill than not. We would rather disobey our basic spiritual precepts than live insecurely, trusting in our "God." Our theologians create great rationalizations to justify this course of action. But there is ultimately no justification for violence. Non-violence is the right way. Our genuine spiritual leaders should be telling us this. (Hey. It's just occurring to me: how come we haven't heard from the Pope? Cat got his tongue?) [Several days after writing this, I see the Pope on television, finally. He sits hunched over in front of a microphone looking as if he's barely conscious, and as he spouts the typical inanities we have been hearing from every politician, he is actually drooling. Now there's a spiritual leader we can all admire.] We believe in non-violence, generally, or we say we do, but we put it on hold when times get tough. Non-violence is a difficult choice in the present, but in the long run, it's far more effective. There is a power available to us that is far more effective than war. But no one wants to be as strong as is required to bring that power under our control. We want to use it in a less efficient, watered-down, stereotyped way, which is how we always want to act, as, for example, when we evoke our ineffectual attempts at "prayer," which we pay lip-service to, but which we never seem to manage to take seriously enough that we will make it work. When we're desperate and don't know what to do, we pray, pretending to the point of belief that "God" can hear us. And in those few occasional cases when coincidence seems to indicate that our prayers have been "answered," we call it a "miracle." If there is a miracle, it is not that a god answers your prayers, but that humans possess a psychology that is capable of creating reality out of belief, via expectation and a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that it works despite our delusions of a "higher power." If there is a higher power, it is the potential inherent in our own collective mind.
Real, effective, prayer is a psychology we provoke, to accomplish the results we would otherwise not achieve. When we are truly desperate, with absolutely no recourse but to pray real prayers, then we will spiritually evolve to the point where we can effect a change through nothing more than the insistent communal will of people desiring peace through peaceful means. Unfortunately it is going to take the passage of the most horrific war in the history of mankind, far more horrific than any we have seen, for this circumstance to evolve.


C. The Scientific Argument


It's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm wearing Milk Bone Underwear.
--George Wendt, "Cheers"

We are nothing more than complex, highly sophisticated animals evolved to the point of awareness of what we are doing, but little more, struggling to survive by killing our enemies before they kill us.


D. The Apocalyptic Argument


"There's nothing you could have done. It was God's will."
"I never much agreed with God's will."
--from Man in the Wilderness

This is all a lot of hype and smoke and paranoia, which the media is playing right into. I wouldn't even be surprised if it later became revealed that the intelligence community knew of the attacks ahead of time, but allowed them to occur in order to get support for their agenda. That's how jaded I've become. In any case, it has certainly been taken advantage of after the fact. Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, which is rolling downhill toward an inevitable and irreversible catastrophe. We are being herded into a blind patriotism of war and retribution. [One nice side effect, though: it sure is great to watch the news without all those damned commercials. I almost feel like I'm watching the BBC, except for the inanity of the American news people.]
All the people who have thus far been considered conspiracy theorists and end-of-the-world freaks are beginning to look like prophets. The "sane" people of the world will continue to run blindly headlong into the irreversible nature of coming events, continuing to disregard the warnings. Oh, well. It has to happen sometime, so that the change may come. For about twenty years now, I have been half-seriously following the "hints" from "prophecy" sources concerning the "end-time." Every time I've tried to point out to friends this thread of human thought, I have been dismissed as a doomsayer and a weirdo, even when I only want to consider it as a cultural phenomenon. No "sane" person wants to hear this stuff. It's almost as if everyone's in denial. (By their refusal to listen, they give the matter credence.) But now the arguments and interpretations are looking more and more rational. First, there are the usual better-known images, such as "wormwood" and the charismatic leader in the blue turban [yet to be revealed. Saddam? I don't know. He doesn't seem very charismatic to me, but things change. (Imagine Bush in a blue turban.) (A French Canadian newcaster on the CBC pronounces Bush "Boosh." President Mouth.)] Then there are the intermediate, transitional elements, such as natural disasters, "wars and rumors of wars," etc. But finally, there is the analysis of the global powers at work: The Great Bear of the North (Russia), The Army of the East (China), The ten-headed beast (NATO--or is it a federation of extremist Islamic countries yet to be fully formed? The trouble with prophecies is that they must be interpreted.), et al. People don't want to see how the now loosely formed confederation of Islamic fanatics, when attacked, will lead these global forces into thermonuclear war. First, we will strike one stronghold, probably Afghanistan, with moderate success. Then emboldened, we will strike "closer to home," probably in Iraq, since we have a foothold there already. Or maybe Syria. Here we may meet with some surprises, like chemical and/or biological warfare, [add Bible refs] but we may experience further moderate successes, which will only serve to encourage us further, maybe enough to chance a stab at the Palestinians. And then, look out. We will drive militant Islam into a corner. Already, warmongers are talking about using tactical nuclear weapons. And this is from "sane" people, not the typical "crazies." The world is going nuts. A global battlefield is developing, centered on the Mid-East.
The enemy, characterized as the epitome of evil (The Beast), at this future point, when the islamic militants are forced together into an army, must be defeated. There will be no choice. There may already be no choice. As much as I want to urge caution and forbearance, we may already be too far along. Nuclear war, even if only one side has the devices, may be inevitable. And where else will it occur but in "Palestine?" The Valley of Jezreel, or close enough to it to be, for all intents and purposes identifiable as the prophecy come true. Armageddon. And Bush and his warmongers will have begun it all. Make no mistake. This is not going to happen all at once. All of the "smart" people in Washington and elsewhere are saying that it is going to be a protracted war. And the worse it gets, the greater the promise becomes that it will soon end, the more it will lead to further escalation, each stage of which will bring further devastation, until large areas of the world begin to look like those descriptions in The Book of Revelations and Nostradamus. [list refs.]

People are coming together, forming the beginnings of a communion motivated by a desire to rid the world of the threat of violence. We hold candlelight vigils. Britons and Canadians go so far as to sing the "Star Spangled Banner." Many peoples around the world hold religious services during which they feel a sincere (as opposed to a token) empathy with our plight, and thus with our "cause." People who have been traditionally antagonistic toward America cry for us (and for themselves) in their streets and in their churches. This connection that is forming is the fatal flaw. Being so communally motivated worldwide to end the "evil" [it probably is true evil, as traditionally defined] once and for all, the good citizens of earth will act under a common banner to precipitate the confrontation that has so long been avoided. This motive will concretize the dichotomy, which will provoke the final war to resolve the impasse, so that the communion may become a permanent condition. [No less a despot than Saddam himself warns America not to attack, in words which seem almost like a plea, devoid of his usual aggressive, hostile attitude. He, if no one else, seems to see the pending nightmare. And he's in a position to know. Maybe he is, after all, the anti-Christ, waiting reluctantly, as was Jesus himself, to take his destined place in the global theater.] In other words, our desire to be a free and peaceful people will usher in the (Biblical) Millennium. But before this can happen, the planet must be purged of its evil intents. Unfortunately, to dislodge and eradicate the vested interests of the "bad guys" (i.e., they who would overthrow the world in order to establish a "newer" world order, one based upon the supremacy of the male, a throwback world society, where barbarians like apes rule a planet enmeshed in a pseudo-spiritual patriarchal establishment), there must be the greatest era of bloodshed and devastation ever experienced in the history of the human race.
Can we prevent this? Maybe. But not forever.
Can we, as I have previously thought, enable the victory over evil to occur over a much longer period of time so as to "water-down" its murderous effects? Maybe. But not by going after the "terrorists" so directly all at once. Through forbearance and patient "prayer" (which will be required in any case, in order to align our minds, to attune them to the global will, to spark the communal recognition in each of us, that we are one organism spread across the surface of a planet) we could achieve the same result in a more peaceful way. But will we? Probably not. As a species, we don't seem to have the capacity to "metaphorize" the prophecies into a gradual mutative experience. (Most of the most rational among us, the intellectuals and scientists, don't even believe in the prophecies or in prophecy in general. Very few of us believe that an intelligent species can endow certain of its individuals with true foresight, let alone an ability to predict the future--and it's no wonder, considering the number of charlatans we see every day on television.) Even at the "highest" level, we still tend to be more oriented toward action than patient persistence. We don't really want to be spiritual (although we think we do), because we don't know what that means. At best, most of us think it means turning inward and finding the common ground of humanity and/or nature within ourselves, but it means exactly the opposite. It means embarking on an outward journey, allowing a part of our consciousness to literally leave the body, giving up our precious ego-experience in favor of the shared perception of a meta-personality. Most of us haven't the least comprehension of what that means. But we begin to see inklings of it in our communal efforts of gathering together to empathetically feel each other's pain. It's going to take a lot more of this kind of feeling, a lot more pain of the most excruciating kind in order to free us from the prisons of our ego-selves. And the pain is going to be felt directly by a very large number of us (two-thirds of the world population), in the form of war, [list refs] and deprivation of the most extreme kind, and indirectly by the lesser number of us (one-third), via a super-empathy that is so profound that we will feel it as if we are a part of the larger segment of the devastated population. It is the extreme, unprecedented stress of this super-empathy that will mutate our physiologies into a form whereby we may consciously permanently connect into the SuperSoul of which we are all now a profoundly unconscious part. [Or, explaining it in "scientific" terms, the people who survive the devastation will be those who are conducive (via their genetic inheritance) to "psychic connection," thus enabling a foreknowledge or "intuition" of events to be avoided. (Their developing communion is the "Church in the wilderness.")]
But, lest (a few of) you (who are reading this) are horrified by the apparent impending immediacy of these ideas I have presented here, there are two consolations:
1) The worst of these events (according to the Biblical prophecies, that is) cannot occur until sacrifices are restored in the Temple of Solomon. [ref] Watch for this event. It is a definitive signal whose occurrence will require that control of the temple be wrested from the Palestinians. [If this prophecy is not accurate or does not apply to this modern time, then we have every reason to be optimistic re the outcome, that the U.S.-led global coalition can weed-out and defeat without an eternal cost the antediluvian forces of the earth.] Thereafter, we will have either three and a half or seven years of extreme tribulation (depending upon the interpretation of some very vague and confusing time lines--or the period of time may be metaphoric) before the final battle and the resolution of the conflict by the arrival of the Messiah (Jewish interpretation), and/or the second coming of Christ (Christian interpretation), and/or the further evolution and metamorphosis of the human species (my "scientific" interpretation.) Jane Roberts (as Seth) places this date at 2057. [add ref.] So, you see, we have a lot of time. (Maybe.) Unfortunately, we have a lot of pain to feel before then, a lot of war, a lot of distant (for Americans) death [I have no doubt that our leadership, despite the cost to personal freedom, will protect our sub-continent from the brunt of the devastation. We (Americans) are experts at projecting our tribulations onto less "developed" areas far away, as, for example, when we have been able to live affluently at the expense of Third World economies.], and an increasing frequency of catastrophe made to feel all the more immediately terrible by a timely media prone to dwell upon the older news even after the newer stuff happens, in order to fill up their unscheduled program space.
2) What occurs afterwards (if you are not dead) is a period of peace such as the world has never seen, where the "lion lies down with the lamb," where [this is my own conclusion, informed mostly by intuitive induction from the writings of Teilhard de Chardin] we are all so intricately intuitively connected that we could never enable or allow such atrocities as are now occurring to gain even the smallest foothold on our planet, where every thought tending toward violent, terroristic deviance is recognized in the indivdual as it occurs and is attenuated before it can prolifigate, where over-reaction against individuals for their "difference," their deviance of thought which is not crucial to the well-being of others, is tolerated by the same mechanism that would repress crucial thought, where those incorrigibles who persist despite correction will be eliminated, where all physical processes are under the complete control of our connected meta-brain, the earth's evolving mind and soul. Amen.

notes

If Islamic fanatics are wrong, then the IRA is wrong. We, many of us, seem to want to be sympathetic toward the IRA, either being of Irish Catholic descent or being strong-minded American individuals who see ourselves in the gun-toting Irish rebels fighting the English establishment, the Redcoats. Neither group (the IRA or Islamic fanatics) is wrong in theory. Both are absolutely wrong in method.
Friends ask me what purpose the fanatics could have, what they hope to accomplish. They say they can't seem to comprehend the futility of the terrorist cause. What could they gain by killing our citizens and disrupting our economy? The answer is simple, really. It's an age-old motive: Islam is, for the most part, Third World. Even when Muslims are a part of the mainstream world culture, they seem destined to play a secondary role. They, like everyone else, want dominance. It's a motive of evolution. It's programmed into our genes. We instinctually challenge the top dog. They want to see the collapse of the West, so that their system of religious belief may supplant ours as the dominant one, even the only one, on earth. Why is no one in the mainstream media pointing out this agenda? Does no one see it? Are we destined as a society to remain so superficial as to think that terrorists are the simple revengeful American-haters that they are portrayed to be?
§
The media interview people looking for lost loved ones, intentionally asking leading questions designed to bring them to tears, so that they may present an agenda of (manipulated) pathos to the viewer.
§
I don't fly anywhere any more, because of safety issues unrelated to terrorism. The airline industry has been far too greedy, too concerned with the bottom line to attend to the safety of its passengers. This is now borne out by the lack of security, which allowed this catastrophe. [Logan Airport has been in violation of government mandates for years. So have many other airports and airlines. And those who have complied only do it to the letter of the law, and not in the spirit of safety issues. If it can be done more cheaply, it is done, despite the potential lack of safety. This has been known for a long time (and not only in the airline industry.) Corporations, more out of a sense of greed than of mere need to cut costs to compete, cut back on the quality of employees and (unseen) services.] Now, I have an additional reason not to fly. And I have an additional reason for staying home altogether. People think I'm crazy. Maybe I don't look quite so crazy now.


9-15-1

As I re-read the extensive entry above (9-14), I feel that it does not transmit the obvious (to me) sense of inevitability and the affect of the experience of the insight that provoked it. I have not captured the revelation correctly or with as much sense of the obvious that the original experience contained. Partly, this may be due to a poor execution of my art. Partly, it may be due to the fact that I have a large body of implicit "fact" that I have not stated, facts which work subliminally in me, but to which readers will be oblivious (unless they will have had a background/experience similar to mine.) And partly, probably most importantly, it may be that I cannot seem to spark the "insight" within myself that so profoundly overwhelms me when I listen to certain speakers who use the medium of television to convey between the lines their (and others, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious) comprehension of the bigger picture. It becomes so obvious to me what is going to happen that, even when I lose the immediacy of the revelation, I maintain the most profound belief. This experience is so unlike any other "revelation" I have had, even those most spiritual ones I encounter in meditation that deal directly with the anti-ego essence that I am. These others I forget easily when I am in "rational" state of mind. This one remains, as a "logical" argument, but one that is so complex as to defy immediate translation. I feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind sitting on the swing set in the back yard in the middle of the night looking up at the sky and shouting "What is it?" except that I know what it is and so want to scream "How can I say it correctly so that everyone else knows it too?" Artistic expression is the only medium I know. I am not a speaker who inspires people directly via an intuitive (psychic/communal) contact. I have had some small success with this mode in the past, but it is too ephemeral for me, too subject to my passing mood, too difficult to call to the foreground when I would best apply it, too dependent on my physiology, I guess, on my blood sugar level, or on whatever physio-psychological mechanism is determining my momentary state of being. This is why I write, to relate my experiences and develop the "arguments" over time, when it is convenient to the processes that rule my physiology. So, I will continue this thread in future entries, as I am inspired, and I will publish the vision piecemeal, which is what I do anyway usually with everything I write. The only difference here is that this subject wants to be rendered more "logically," more as a treatise than as a loose postmodern collection, and I have never wanted to work that hard. I had enough of that kind of crap in college and in my working life. I should write it out in verse, like in the Bible, or in quatrains like Nostradamus, but that is even more obtuse. I can understand why it is that those authors wrote this kind of stuff like that. It is not exactly logical material. It lends itself better to a more poetic form. [Sometimes, I doubt the "logic," when I see the logic of the opposite point of view (that this is all just more of the same old human foible (which it is, in any case), that everything will go along as it has always gone along (which it will, because the transition into end-times will be so gradual as to go unnoticed by everyone except those who are tuned in), but the "logic" is renewable each time the revelation comes again. Otherwise, there is this vacillating doubt: end-times/ordinary life. But the balance tips in favor of end-times each time the human race goes a little bit crazier.] [Or, maybe I am the crazy one, after all. But if I am, there are a lot of others along on the trip with me.]


9-17-1

Daily Prayer
God, please, let us get through one more day
without somebody blowing something up.
People I talk to seem to (want to) have no idea what we're getting ourselves into. And most of the people on television, even the hawks and the diplomats, can't see the bigger picture. And the few who do seem to indicate that they see it, seem to think it's inevitable, and so they support a strong response as the best possible defense, hoping the eventual outcome will be in our favor. The problem here is: who is "our." Are we among those who will resist the insanity? Or are we are part of the great whore Babylon. (Isn't it ironic that "Babylon," in its most modern interpretation, refers to capitalism, and not to the forces that oppose it?)



The Muslim backlash against the Pakistani government could provide a venue for the Afghani (and other) militant fanatics to expand the war throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the global coalition gains control of that area, they drive those fanatics into Iran, and the Islamic militants are further unified. Then, the coalition moves into Iran (with the aid of its puppet government), and the same thing happens, further unifying the militants and escalating the war. As they become more unified, they increasingly acquire more sophisticated weaponry and become more and more resistant and dangerous. The next country in line is Iraq. Here, they join with Saddam, and the coalition is now faced with fighting a country for the first time. Saddam will be harder to beat this time, having geared up his arsenal and, now, having the support of the strengthened militants, who may come also from other countries (Saudi Arabia, et al.), driven out by the concerted effort of the coalition with local governments. The "defeat" of Iraq drives the combined forces into Jordan, then Lebanon, and final they are caught in a vice, in Israel, where the final global confrontation occurs.
Dislodging the dissidents and displacing them, forcing them from country to country will only serve to further motivate and unify them until they become a formidable army. Meanwhile, a lot of loose cannons will be dispersed throughout the world, carrying on the escalating terrorist tradition. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons will proliferate. We will defeat the army at Armageddon, but to defeat the isolated cells will require the connection of individual minds into the planetary organism, which can only be brought about by the desperation of the tribulation, which will be created by the devastation of the war and the activity of the cells.



Events such as those of last week cause me to start thinking about my teenage years when I was out in the woods at every opportunity surviving off the land. I hate it when I begin to think that that kind of mindset and even activity may become necessary again. It's a natural state of mind for a teenager, but it's a phase we pass through on our way to aduthood. I've grown accustomed to my minimal affluence now. I don't want to have to consider that I might have to go back into a survival mode. I'm getting too old to be playing the paranoid game.


9-18-1

When you live with no passion at all,
other people's passions come into glaring relief.
 
Bill Pullman, The Zero Effect
Do I believe we should attack Afghanistan, et al.? I wouldn't do it. If it were up to me alone, I'd wait. I find justice in waiting. Everything comes to him who waits. I believe in waiting, and in establishing an impenetrable defense. But for me, it's not so much a matter of belief as it is an acceptance of what is. People are going to do what they are going to do. When confronted with the groundswell of opinion, I defer. Do what you have to do, as a country full of foul-weather patriots. (I have far more respect for the postman who lives across the street who flies his flag on his fifty foot flag pole every day of the year than I have for those people who run out to buy flags when they think patriotism is warranted. But patriotism, in general, is mindlessness. It's the herd instinct. It's surrendering your individuality for a modicum of (false) security. I have been so immured in insecurity all of my life that I've adapted to it. I don't need the herd mentality to make me feel safe. I've never felt safe within large groups of people. I feel safe when I am left alone. So, if you want to attack and kill people, go ahead, but don't ask me to join you. I'll be right here, hunkering down, where I am as safe as I can be, from terrorists and from you. But know this: you think you know what you are getting into, but, in fact, you have no idea. This is not what you think it is. There is no precedent. Believe me, you are better off sitting at home and reading your Bible. Generally, I am not a proponent of religion, especially in times of war. But, in this case, the religious symbolism holds practical and revelatory answers. You should know what's going on before you act. But you'll act anyway, precipitously. And when you are suffering and dying, don't come crying to me. I don't want to hear your miserable whining. The only fear I want to hear is that of those who fear the loss of ego, because this is the loss I am most expert at. If you fear to lose you ego, come to me and I will try to help. Otherwise, stay away from me. You're poisoned and poisonous with your ego-driven murderous intent.



"The best defense is a good offense."
 
Condoleezza Rice

[I didn't know she was the one who said that,
but it must be true.
It's within quote marks on the television.]
The best defense is a not good offense. An offense is not a defense at all. This is the kind of twisted thinking that gets people, and nations, into trouble. True self-defense is not going out beyond yourself to seek out your enemy. Going out has always been a risky business. You provoke others when you go out. An outgoing nature is only relatively safe when you undertake the effort with a peaceful mind and heart. When you go out to attack others, you provoke them and their allies, those of a similar mind-set, into action, when otherwise they might remain benign. This is exactly the case re the Afghanis and Pakistanis (and the Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Saudis, and especially, the Palestinians.) Wait, for the way to become clear, and meanwhile, do not provoke. If you feel you've been mistreated, dishonored, violated... provoked, wait. Waiting is always the answer, especially when you are attacked.


9-27-1

A lot of the time, I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am not an atheist, nor an agnostic. I believe in God, of some sort or another. Its nature, of course, is yet, if ever, to be discovered, but its effect I cannot doubt, because I can't see how it's possible for life to generate itself.
However, if there were an afterlife--or if there is one--people who die in the service of their destructive beliefs, having killed people as terrorists, for example, are in for a big surprise. Imagine them awakening to the cosmos bodiless only to realize they've been competely wrong. Imagine the turmoil in their souls, the terrible pain caused by the damage they've done. There is no need to postulate a further hell. How can we hope to dispense that kind of justice here on earth? We shouldn't even be trying, except that we are weak and want to appease our vengeful natures.


9-30-1
Afghanistan bananastand.
 
The Hot Rock

The world doesn't exist. There are no Afghanis.
Shit accumulates and must be purged.
Isn't that some kind of a scientific theory?
Entropy maybe? Or some esoteric corollary of it?
The main difference between Jerry Falwell and the Islamic militants is:
Jerry Falwell doesn't bomb buildings.
Freedom is insured by informed decisions guaranteed by an objective press.
Blind patriotism is the death of democracy.
A war prosecuted in secret invites abuse.


10-9-1

My name it is nothing. My age it means less.
And the country I come from is called the Midwest.
I was taught and brought up there the laws to abide.
And that the land that I live in has God on it's side.
--Bob Dylan, "With God On Our Side."

Can't we all just get along?
--Rodney King
Yesterday, I went over to my brother's house to try to help him out with his computer problems. Some of the (most critical) files (like Windows Explorer, My Computer, etc., etc.), were not opening, presenting the error message: "Explorer has performed an illegal page fault at module (unknown)..." I did everything I knew (which isn't very much, but it's more than my brother knows) to try to fix the problem. It seemed like there was a missing or corrupted file that the non-functioning programs needed access to. My brother, my nephew, and I began to go through all the files (gotten to from winfile.exe, the old program manager file from Windows 3.1), deciding which ones we should back up to a CD-RW in preparation for reinstalling windows. While we did this, my nephews began to negatively interact (a common pattern among them), and I began to feel the "stress" of the situation as I tried to concentrate while their loud voices echoed in one ear and my brother's voice echoed back in the other as he shouted at them to settled down. This behavior continued off and on until my brother began to blame my nephew for having screwed up the computer by downloading iMesh, or some other file, and in the process deleting something essential. In addition to the stress of the situation, my brother was working against a deadline: he had to go and get a shower and take his oldest kid to hockey practice. I've been through this many times before, in both work and social situations, centered amid conflict and stress, trying not to explode myself as the noise, demands, and general negative vibes proliferated. I knew exactly what my brother felt when he exploded. I felt the same way. But I did not explode. I've learned, over the years, how to avoid this reaction, by keeping myself removed from such situations most of the time so that when I do happen to encounter them, I am well-rested and capable of dealing with them in a sane manner, cortisol reserves being optimized so that chronic stress has been avoided. But if I had to live among stressed-out crowds of people like my brother's family...look out.
We never solved the computer problem, and so I said I'd return to help them finish backing up their files after my brother bought some more CD-RWs. But as soon as I got home, I got a phone call from my nephew, who reported that when he started up the computer again, he got the error message that windows could not start because windows.exe needed to be reinstalled. I told him to shut the computer down and put a note on it that warned everyone not to start it. We suspected a virus all along, but this made me suspect it even more. The problem seemed to have been spreading until it finally got to the main windows file.
This is all just more of the psychic weather I reported on last week. As I think about my experiences out in the "real" world, with the concept of a virus echoing in my head, I can't help but to draw the comparison: psychic weather is like a virus spreading: someone is nasty, the nastiness affects someone else, and on and on, until the entire local area, and maybe even the entire world has caught the bug. I have installed a firewall into my psychic system, isolation, in order to prevent infection, but the nasty virus of stress and intolerance always seems to find a way through it, given enough time. Even when I remain home alone, it will creep in, even when the television is not on. It broadcasts itself via some unknown psychic process. I feel "out-of-sorts" at best when others beyond me are themselves out-of-sorts, even when I am completely out-of-touch. I will verify this later, as, for example, when the WTC and the Pentagon got hit with the hi-jacked planes. I missed the initial reports, having been up all night and gone to bed at eight in the morning. I awoke about eleven feeling very bad, but I forced myself back to sleep. At four in the afternoon, I awoke again and lay in bed, not wanting to get up, feeling completely different from the previous night when I had been working productively along at the best rate I had been working at all year. It wasn't until six o'clock, still feeling extremely uncentered, that I turned on the tv and learned of the terrorism. It is only now, a month later, that I am beginning to get back to my old self (if that is ever possible, in any case.)
Everyone suffers to some degree when anyone does any negative thing. This particular incident has caused suffering around the world. All of the minor incidents of local stress are small offshoots of the greater force. I'm not saying that local incidents are caused by the terrorist event, at least not directly. Minor incidents would have occurred in any case. What I'm saying is that all events, local and planetary, are caused by the same psychic weather. Terrorists bomb buildings, etc., for the same reason that my brother overreacts and yells at kids and thus becomes a part of the problem when he thinks he's trying to control it. George Bush (et al. Don't make the mistake of thinking that it's young Georgie who is orchestrating the American reaction; he's just the front man), in prosecuting a "war against terrorism," is acting from this same negative motive. He may think he is executing a controlling influence on world events, but he is merely reacting, not to the terrorism of 9/11, but to the same set of circumstances that prompted the terrorist action in the first place. Everyone, to whatever personal degree, is caught up in the psychism of the times. You can hedge against it, you can buffer yourself, but it will affect you, in one way or another, even when you are hidden away in the deep woods incommunicado [there is no such state of existence, really; it's an illusion of the individual personality, which is another fiction] and have no literal idea of what is happening in the big bad world beyond you.
Let's face the facts. Despite the best efforts of the most sane and diplomatic minds, the people of the earth simply cannot get along. Even within a given population, such as in America, we don't get along. We create, now, a pretense of unity--but how? By focusing our distrust, inherent tendency toward hatred, and our desire for revenge against those who have done us wrong, outward, beyond our borders. We are destined as a species to conflict. It's the nature of the evolved and programmed beast of human nature. (This is the same beast of Bible infamy. If you're expecting a great Satan icon to come rising out of a literal bottomless pit, expect again. The beast exists within us all. The bottomless pit is our collective psyche.) There will be two great armies that will, increasingly over the years, clash. Both of them (as can be seen already) will contend that they possess the truth, that God is on their side, that they are right and their opponents are wrong, the representatives of evil on earth. But, when it comes right down to it, as we will soon see, both sides are evil. No matter how you read the Book of Revelations, you cannot apply the symbolism of the beast to one side or the other without ignoring a part of the symbolism. Neither the Jewish/Christian alliance (allied with previous "rogue" nations like Russia, et al.--Communist Russia was not considered rogue only because they conquered the Soviet Union and became a superpower. Dominant powers are not, by definition, rogue, even though their behavior may indicate it) nor the Islamic militants (who have far more tacit support in the Islamic world than the "West"--which more accurately should be named the "North/West"--knows, or will admit to) can claim to represent the truth. Both sides are the beast. There is no righteous army. The forces of evil will clash, again and again, bringing devastation to our planet, until the true righteousness, the disenfranchised remaining "powerless" populace, the Church in the Wilderness [Lest The Church in the Wilderness should be misinterpreted, it is not the fundamentalist Christians, no matter what they seem to think. They seem to want to believe that they are going to support America's war while they hide away in the hills of North Carolina, or on the barren farms of Michigan and Wisconsin, or in the mountains of Wyoming and Idaho, or in the deep south where everyone takes them (correctly) for ignorant peasants and when the time is ripe, they will emerge to take control of the world. The wilderness is not a place in America, or anywhere in the world. The wilderness exists within the human collective mind], after being persecuted for years by the war and the powers who desire to continue to prosecute the war despite the "will" of the ordinary people, finally rise up and, in an act of true will, empowered by a force within turned outward onto the world, a psychic force of genuine interconnection, of true communion, is evolved and unites itself into a effective deterrent, restraining and punishing via turning back the violence on itself, until every violent impulse is checked, psychically, each and every time one will threaten to pop up. The losers of this "holy war" (both sides claim the concept, although the "world alliance" is much more subtle and symbolic about the claim) will be the combatants, of both sides. Nothing that is thought will then remain unknown. The lion will lie down with the lamb. The beast will be cast back into the pit, and there will be war no more. All this will happen, just because we cannot get along. Who'd have thought that a black man and petty criminal from California would ever have become a postmodern prophet.
And what of those who should be leading us in this search for true peace and prosperity? His "holiness" the Pope, Jesus' representative on earth, has only yesterday stated that the war against terrorism is a "just war." So much for the peaceful and non-violent resistance of evil that Jesus preached. Violence now has Vatican support. As it has done so many times in the past, the Roman Catholic Church has come out on the side of evil, while it thinks it is siding with righteous good. (Righteousness is always, at best, a suspected "virtue.") I'm glad I'm not a Roman Catholic any more. I would have to be ashamed of my religion.
addendum: newsflash: Rush Limbaugh is going deaf. A friend of mine says that this is proof that there is justice in the world. But I say no. Rush maintains that he will somehow continue on in broadcasting by finding a way to "listen"--as if he ever really did before. I maintain that he is going deaf as the result of a psychopathology of which deafness is merely a psychosomatic symptom. If there were true justice, he would have gone dumb. (I mean physically. He couldn't get any psychologically dumber.)


10-9-1

"We're behind them, whatever they decide."
--David Azman (sp?), Fox News
It's no wonder people get themselves into trouble, following the herd. The herd instinct can be a protective device in times of trouble, but it can also be a dangerous practice, when we group too closely together and become subject to the whims of nature, society, or an unscrupulous Alpha male. What we need is fewer sheep in this world (and fewer wolves too.) I understand the problem. I find myself frequently having to check my desire to want to just blow the shit out of everyone and be done with the whole "problem" of human nature, the aggression and the suffering. I empathize with those "true" Americans who would follow the president and the generals into hell. (They're going to find out soon enough that that is exactly what they're doing.) I know their motivation. I feel it myself. I just don't happen to believe that it's the correct course of action to give in to my emotions. Reason must prevail, but a rational war is an equally poor choice.


10-12-1

Everybody's shouting "Which side are you on?"
--Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"

Hurt people hurt people.
--Michael Pritchard

At lunch Dave, one of the guys in the New York office, ordered Chinese food and a few of us ate it in the kitchen. Among us was the front desk secretary. She didn't know much about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but with such crazy things happening in her city, she thought it was time to find out. So Dave gave her a brief and fairly accurate history of the founding of Israel. It's something that's difficult to finesse; especially the part about Palestinians being kicked off their land for the crime of not being Jewish. "I'm sorry, but that's just racism!" exclaimed the secretary, who happens to be African American. She continued, "Now, I feel bad for the people missing in that building, but I can understand why those people are so mad. I'd be mad too!" She's right, of course. Things are always portrayed as simple in the media, but in the case of the Middle East, we're dealing with a lot of people who are justifiably pissed off about all sorts of things. Mix their rage with ample funding and religious zeal, and the mix is as dangerous as an atomic bomb.
--Gus' journal, 9-13-01
It's true what Chris Matthews says, that we don't want to hear the truth about the Palestinian situation. I agree with him. But I don't ever hear on TV or read anywhere (of course, I haven't gone out of my way to find this info; my point is, it's not in the mainstream media) about exactly what that situation is. I am predisposed to taking a fair stance on the Palestinian question, but I just don't know the Palestinian point of view, really. (It can't be as simple as I think it is.) Obviously, they are being repressed and disenfranchised, but by whom? Many cases of disenfranchisement are self-induced, via a poor self-image and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is this the case here? Or are Israel and/or America really to blame? Once I have the information I need to make an informed decision on this issue, then next, I have to get beyond this one fact: Arabs, in general, do not recognize Israel's right to exist. They want it to go away completely, in the same way that they do not want other consequences of the world wars to have come into being: the situations in Jordan, Iraq/Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. As I see it (and I admit that, being not so well-informed, I could be wrong), it doesn't matter what the rest of the world does, if Israel does not go away, if it does not cease to exist, most Arabs will not be satisfied; there is no solution that will make them happy. Given this situation, how can we (America) even hope to do the right thing re the Arabs? It's a lose/win situation in even negotiating with them. I would love to see the Palestinians treated fairly, but unless they abandon their history-long sibling rivalry with Israel, it's a non-negotiable situation. Someone prove me wrong. I so much want to be a liberal on this issue.
e-mail me


10-14-01

Helping people is never more rewarding
than when it's in your own self interest.
--Greg German
"Ally McBeal"

If mommy is a commie then ya gotta turn her in.
--Michael Brown
"The John Birch Society"
The balance is tipping. More and more it's looking like the administration in conjunction with reactionary political elements are using the terrorist attack of 9-11 to orchestrate a consolidation of governmental control over the previously free-reigning aspects of American culture. Under the guise of a necessity to give "law enforcement" the power it needs to catch terrorists, our rights are secretly being subverted.
Bush talks down to us in his periodic national broadcasts. Terms like "evildoers" punctuate the speeches he delivers in his droning patronizing tone of voice. His delivery reminds me of the official pronouncements in George Orwell's 1984. There is nothing the current regime would like better than to be able to go about their business without meeting any resistance, social as well as political. In this, they seem to be succeeding.
Anyone who expresses a divergent view is shouted down. It used to be that we (of less popular persuasions) had to face being suspected as communists, "nigger-lovers," "health food nuts" (how tame that one seems now), and so forth. Now, we are not only terrorist-lovers, but we are suspected of being terrorists ourselves. People see us engaging in our less than conventional activities and turn us in to the authorities.
How dare we act differently than the rest of the true-blooded Americans who insist that everyone tow the party line and think and behave exactly as they do? I'm waiting for the day when every household will be required to fly the flag outside. Already they're trying to make school kids start saying the Pledge of Allegiance again. What's next? Loyalty Oaths? Haven't we been through this before? Do we have to reinvent the wheel each century?
I'm fearful that I will end up saying or writing the wrong thing, discover that it has been recorded, find myself arrested, tried, fined, and made to publicly repent, and spend the next three years of my life in rehabilitation in a camp designed to make good little compliant Americans out of former dissidents. Everyone is running around waving flags and looking for terrorists to blame. It's no longer any fun being an American.


10-14-01

Nobody loves no one.
--Chris Issacs
"Wicked Games"
Don't want to work, at all.
Don't want to do anything.
Watching the news, day and night, hoping for a change.
Same old thing, slowly evolving.
Garrick Utley does a piece: a month's worth of the news we missed, a series of capsule events not reported, the war having superceded them.
I'd thought, several weeks ago, that it would be no problem at all to include a short three or four minute segment at the end of the news that would in a token manner show us some "Other News." As it is, they (CNN, Fox, CNBC; I don't know what the network stations are doing since I don't watch them) tuck some of the more "significant" "reports" in their news ticker at the bottom of the screen. This is hardly "the news," although at least a few of the items are new.
They (the media, the pols) keep saying they want us to "go about our business" to prove that we have not been "terrorized," yet they themselves act as if we are. In fact, judging by the images the media present, we have been, and still are, thoroughly terrorized. It's the media and the government who're promoting terrorism as much as it is the terrorists. They keep it in our minds, which is what they want--the administration, in order to further its extreme right wing agenda, and the media, in order to further their corporate one.
I am a victim of this derivative of terror.
I am a second or third derivative.
The country, even the world, has become a calculus of terror analysis.
We think we are hunting down and rooting out sources of terror, but...
Islamic fundamentalists have already succeeded in their goal.
They have captured the attention of the world.

We have been changed. Everybody says it.
I don't want to be changed. I want my old life back.
At least, I want my Internet service.
If Juno doesn't get its head out of its ass pretty soon, I'm going to have to take drastic steps: I'm going to have to pay a whole lot more for a reliable service. We're going into the third week now. I've become Internet dependent. I can't work without it. Cable news just doesn't do it for me any more.
I changed from network to cable news because, then, the content (i.e., mostly, a broadened point of view, especially when the right and left wing affiliates began to compete) was better. Now, I'm not so sure. I think I'll go back to network news to see if they've caught up. [I doubt it. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw, and their lessers are cookie cutter imagoes, and the people behind the news, the editors and producers, are even more assimilated into the corporate monoculture.] I'll have to tape them though. I don't want to go back to having to program my life around 6:30 to 7:30 news events. But I'd rather get my news from the Internet, from Wired or the BBC or some "fifth wheel" sites that may not be that accurate, but provide alternatives that allow the lines you read between to be spread a little farther out. It used to be that, to some small degree, Fox and CNN enabled a reader-between-the-lines to close in on the "truth" by perceiving and considering each opposing political agenda, but any more that distinction has disappeared. Now, the split is world "democracy" (i.e., of the corporate type) v. Islamic fundamentalism (of the militant type), as if these were not reverses of the same old black and white image, with no room in between for shades of gray, let alone colorings. ("You're either for us or against us.") Well, guess what. I'm neither. I never was a very good for-or-against type of person. Subtlety escapes these new regimes. You become your enemy. We (Americans) are very quickly taking on the traits of the Islamic fundamentalist militants. We are two sides of the same coin, a positive and a negative of the same image, the yin and the yang of a world motif. Even the French are showing signs of signing on. Vive la difference? Refusiez la uniformité.


10-16-01

I have two minds. One is intuitively theoretical; the other is practical and hard core. The former is liberal and libertarian (to the degree that those two generalities do not conflict); the latter is conservative and authoritarian. This is all but a schizoid split. Both minds operate in an either/or fashion. Sometimes I am of one mind; sometimes I am of another. Never am I both simultaneously, although I may at times rapidly switch back and forth between the two.
I try to remain in my theoretical frame of mind as much as possible. I consider it of higher sensibility, an advanced state of being. But sometimes, a perceived necessity for expediency prompts me to think and act in a practical manner. There is no subject matter that better exemplifies this dual nature of my mind than the terrorist attack of 9-11.
Violence breeds violence, despite the perception of justice that may be evoked when retaliation is achieved. To respond violently to violence, however expedient and "just" the action, is to invite a future negative reaction. Genuine spiritual advancement requires that violence be avoided. However, given our present state of spiritual development, sometimes it is just not practical, when confronted with a violent action, to run away and hide or turn the other cheek. At these times, I regress to a former state of mind, one that dictates that I evoke the tough mental state I learned to appreciate as a young adult. I realize now I may have missed my calling. I could have been a great warrior (except that, when I was young, I disrespected authority so much as to make myself completely non-amenable to taking orders.) I have learned to live on practically nothing, to adopt such a stoic attitude that I need very little to survive. I can stonewall any situation. I can be as determined a force as ever existed. (This is not braggadocio; I consider this behavior a fault.)
When I get tired of thinking, when I become fed up with a resisting attitude, I will entertain fantasies (obviously based upon my many years of watching bad movies and tv) of blowing up all of that which stands in my way, physically and psychologically. So I understand America's current course of military action (as well as the actions of psychopaths who shot up fast food restaurants--it's the same motive, really), and a part of my mind even agrees with it, despite the fact that I consider it a wrong-headed strategy. I keep myself in check with the other side of my mind. It would be impossible for me to act out violently, because I am always checkmated beforehand. America has often also been like this. But where are the ultra-liberals now? We're all going off the deep end together.


10-16-01

I know that the end-time prophecies are true by the way the world is acting right now. It's going crazy. This is not a rational world where people of diplomacy and science shape the course of human events. This is not the world that built the great buildings and infrastructures of modern times. This is not the proactive world of business and government. This is a collection of reactive, desperate diplomats trying to hold a fragile world alliance together in the face of annihilation. This is not the reason of our forefathers forging a new democracy on a new continent. This is the conclusion of the Renaissance. This is the stuff of prophecy. This is the insanity of the tribulation. We are in it now. So we might as well reactively forge on ahead. There is no going back.


10-17-01

Everything I've treasured about living in this country is being stripped away, the feeling of relative safety (which is almost a necessity for me, given my paranoid nature; on the other hand, it's almost nice to feel like everyone else for a change), my rights under the constitution and law (which I admit are theoretical and ephemeral, but just the thought that someone will be able to confiscate my possessions if I overstate my opposition to the established forces is enough to scare the hell out of me, even if it isn't very likely to happen), my freedom and independence (which never really existed, but it's been a nice fiction and I would hate to see my sense of it diminished........[trail off into infinity]...


10-17-01


The news is getting even less professional. A month ago, I wouldn't have thought that could have happened. The practice of news anchors interviewing reporters as if they are newsworthy principles in the subject they are reporting on is particularly disturbing to me.


10-18-01

Put convicted terrorists in jail for life without the possibility of parole and rehabilitate (brainwash) them, not for the purpose of returning them to society as productive citizens, but so that they might more profoundly suffer from their sense of shame and guilt as they come to realize, rehabilitated, how terribly wrong they had been. (But don't give them any access to any kind of salvation theology that forgives them their sins. If they want that kind of redemption, they'll have to come to it on their own.)


10-19-01

10-18-01: Christiane Amanpour interviews Defense Sec. Rumsfeld from Islamabad, Pakistan. (Rumsfeld is in Washington.) Why? Why is she doing this interview? Because she is an expert on the issues? There are plenty of "experts" in the capitol who could have done the interview in person. Because she has a unique POV as a result of her situation? Maybe. Because she is a respected and charismatic journalist? Probably. This is the point: this is an encounter. This is showbiz. She is as much a draw, if not more, than Rumsfeld. This is as much entertainment as news. It's more about the ratings than the news.


10-19-01
Evil cannot be conquered in the world.
It can only be resisted within yourself.
--from the Kung Fu TV series
There is no such thing as a "holy war," except in the context that one is doing continual battle within oneself. They who take that extra step, proposing to do battle with others, whether in the name of God or of some other supposedly worthy goal, are the unholy. This category is filled with many types of people, warriors on both sides of any conflict, proselytizers of religion, priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, et al., who believe that they battle evil in society (as opposed to within themselves). When we strive to do more than work to save (in both the personal and spiritual senses of the word) ourselves, we endanger the world by acting out the unconscious agendas that we fail to deal with, projecting them onto our "enemies" so that we might not see that the fault, always, lies within.


10-19-1

Okay. So the Palestinians, seeing a window of opportunity, assassinate a cabinet minister and step up their terroristic intimidation. They figuring the U.S. will restrain Israel from counterattacking while it fights its war in Afghanistan, like it did during the Gulf War. And the U.S. does just as expected. But Israel disregards its "request." But imagine Bush on the phone discussing the Palestinian intensification with the Israeli leader, who says "We can't let them get away with it," and Bush agrees. So Bush says, "Okay. I'll publicly tell you not to do it, and you defy me and go ahead and do it anyway. Then it'll seem like a rift may be growing between us and I might be starting to favor the Arabs." Hey, it could happen. It's what I would have done if I were the president.


10-31-01

What Are We Supposed To Believe?

"I wanna see blood and gore and guts
and veins in ma teeth. I wanna kill.
I wanna kill. I wanna eat dead,
burnt bodies. I wanna kill."
--Arlo Guthrie            
"Alice's Restaurant"
I used to be liberal on this subject, but you know what? I'm sick of the bullshit. (This may be a passing phase.) I'm sick of people whining about how they can't understand why the Arabs (and others) hate us. Who gives a shit?
If they hate me, I'm going to hate the fact that they hate me. I'm going to hate right back. (Isn't that the way we're supposed to be these days?) Fuck 'em. I'll give them a reason for hating me. Hate me for hating them.
This is what enemies are for---hating. This is why they are enemies. I've said I don't believe in the bombing of Afghanistan. I don't, but... I can't see any difference between killers who are "right" and killers who are "wrong."
Killers are killers. Justice is justice. Vengeance is... mine, saith the Lord. Americans, when they "defend" themselves, become their enemies. (Bombing is offense, not defense.) Okay. So what? Seal off the borders.
A woman said to me yesterday that she believed we should do something about the terrorists, but maybe we're going too far with the bombing. I asked her if we've killed five thousand people yet. Oh, yeah.
When we kill five thousand or so people, whether they are terrorists or innocents (the people in the WTC buildings were innocents), then we will be even. Then we will have gotten "justice" (because we're killing Muslims.)
(You can throw in a few Christians and Jews to balance Muslims who were killed in the 9-11 attack.) How distorted can our thinking get? Well... pretty distorted apparently. We're all the same, pretending we are different. Anon.


11-5-1

Just Like Everyone Else.

The world and its people (myself included) are fucked up. We are cruel toward one another, beyond the point of killing each other. I have never been opposed to killing anyone. I mean, I've never had the occasion to do it myself, but I believe I could do it if I had to. I've never felt an aversion to death (except, that is, to my own.) I've never felt loathe to face any person's death. Others' deaths are irrelevant to me. I've never been squeamish about dead bodies (except that they could contain disease that might infect me.) And, in most cases, I could care less about others' feelings, whether they feel threatened or afraid to die. But my temperament under ordinary circumstances prevents me from acting out in a killing direction, so that I've come to believe (in an unconscious appraisal of my own state of existence, a la Bem) that the way the state of the world should be is that everyone should leave everyone else alone to live their own lives, especially when they want to be let alone. Those people who do not do this, whether they are just sticking their noses into other people's business, or whether they are running around killing people (the difference between these two forms of behavior is only a matter of degree), are fucked up. And, therefore, since these kinds of people predominate in the world, the world itself is fucked up. (Animals too do not leave each other alone. Humans are an animal species. Thus, the world would not be any better without humans. Maybe without life...)
Yeah. I could kill most of the people in the world without a second thought---but I wouldn't want to see (most of them) suffer; they'd have to be quick deaths. (I guess I am not so uncaring, after all.) Or I could run around sticking my nose into people's businesses, but then, I'd be just like everyone else. And who wants that, really? That is something I really loathe. Imagine being just like George Bush. Ugh. [I hate that idea too much. Maybe I repress an identity I don't want to admit to.]


11-9-1

Complaining about the Complainers

I turn on the tube. What do I see?
A whole lot of people crying don't blame me.
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else,
spend all their time feeling sorry for themselves.
Victim of this. Victim of that.
Your momma's too thin and your daddy's too fat.
Get over it. Get over it.
All this whining and crying and pitching a fit.
Get over it. Get over it.
...

You drag it around like a ball and chain.
You wallow in the guilt. You wallow in the pain.
You wear it like a flag. You wear it like a crown.
Got your mind in the gutter bringing everybody down.
You bitch about the present and blame it on the past.
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.
Get over it. Get over it.
All the bitching and moaning and pitching a fit.
Get over it. Get over it.
Get over it. Get over it.
It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit.
Get over it. Get over it.

--Don Henley, "Get Over It."
The one single common problem with WTC survivors and relatives of survivors not getting their promised "compensation," and with the anthrax scare, and with the terrorist attacks, and with the war in general, is that American citizens expect their government to be competent, and their government has never been competent. The mistakes and oversights the government has made, whether it be the FBI, CIA, or INS's poor surveillance and lack of action, or the slow measured, propagandistic response of elected officials, or...whom or whatever, is typical. Americans' expectation of competence and protection from its government is an idle whim. At best, during the worst of times, the government has been marginally effective. Even during WWII there were as many governmental problems as there were solutions. People "glamorize" that period, but it was a bad time, filled with incompetence on everybody's part. People have got to stop expecting competence from their government (because it's not going to happen) and start relying more on their own solutions to their problems. The government is an impersonal machine in which bureaucrats are programmed to be cold and callous cogs. Besides, nobody likes a fucking whiner. Yet every time there's some kind of disaster, or even a minor incident, they come crawling out of the woodwork, looking for compensation or for nothing more than an opportunity to complain. Shut the fuck up. Either deal with the problems yourself or put up with them. It'll save us all a lot of grief.


11-11-1

Take Responsibility

Treason is a charge invented by the winners
as an excuse for hanging the losers.
Benjamin Franklin
Are the Hezbollah terrorists or resistance fighters? How about the IRA? Or the Basques? Suppose, during WWI, Russian natives invaded Alaska and killed a lot of citizens in sneak attacks. Would we have considered them terrorists? Of course. Why? Because they invaded our country and attacked us. But suppose they thought that an illegal deal had been made when Russia sold Seward the territory? Then what?
Or, more recently, what about patriots in Free France during WWII crossing the "border" into occupied France to fight the Germans? Were they terrorists because they crossed into another country? Of course not. Why? Because the country had been invaded and taken over by non-citizens. But what about Britain in Ireland? How long does a past violation have to stand before it becomes legitimate? Does it ever?
Was it wrong to have formed the state of Israel, dispossessing Palestinians in the process? Did we right millennia-long injustice, or did we just create a new set of injustices, perpetuating a problem that will not, in any case, go away? [Of course, it was not so much to right a long-past wrong that the state of Israel was created. It was more to try to make up for what the Nazis did. So blame it on the Nazis.]
Some pundits claim that there is a fine line between terrorists and resistance fighters, a line that is defined by each individual situation. (In other words, whoever has the biggest guns defines the situation.) We should be looking less at the definition of terror and more at the definition of right and wrong. And in this sense, we should ask ourselves "Where does killing fit in?" Is it okay to kill? Anyone?
"Self defense," the people scream, when they mean, "Get them back for what they did." Self-defense is itself a vaguely defined concept. But it shouldn't be. You defend yourself by standing your ground and resisting an attack or occupation. Going out after the enemy is an offensive act. "The best defense is a good offense." Yeah, well, it's easy to rationalize hostility. Go ahead, kill, if it makes you happy.
But stop trying to justify your warmongery. If you like it, say you like it and leave it at that. The Hezbollah like to fight. So do the Basque "terrorists" and the IRA. If they didn't, they'd find other ways of settling their grievances. Are they all terrorists or resistance fighters? The question is irrelevant. They're killers. Justify that to the children of the people they kill. Ask the children of Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld maintains that the Taliban are responsible for the deaths of their people via American bombs. The Taliban are responsible for a lot of evil, but those responsible for the deaths by bombing are those who actually drop the bombs. We have all kinds of ways to absolve ourselves from the consequences of our actions. Bombardiers claim they are just following orders. So do Captains and Colonels.

It has to stop somewhere; otherwise we destroy the earth.
Truman said, "The buck stops here."
But he didn't mean at the presidency.
He meant with him.
(He could have blamed God.
Or the American people.)
Stop passing it.
You may be a killer.
At least have the guts to admit it.


12-12-1

A Mini-Pattern

The Northern Alliance releases a news item: they've taken this or that Taliban stronghold or defeated these or those troops; the Pentagon says they can't confirm the news; one or two days later, we're told that the news turns out to be true. So, either the Pentagon is completely out of it, or the pattern reveals the "secrecy" with which the Pentagon is conducting its operations; in other words, the Pentagon doesn't want Americans (or anyone) to know the truth before preparations can be made to spin it to their benefit. They're afraid (as are most U.S. government officials) of Americans knowing the truth too early. They're afraid of uncontrolled pubic opinion. They want to manage it as efficiently as possible. They want to be our Protector, but instead they become our Big Brother, because they're incapable of seeing the difference.


12-13-1

India has pledged to crush terrorism after an unprecedented suicide attack on parliament that put the country in a state of high alert.
--CNNQuickNews
Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. Israel. India. Who's next? Pretty soon every country in the world with "terrorist" problems will be using the U.S. example to attempt to eradicate their dissidents via counter-terrorist violence. The world is going to become a seething cauldron of mini-battles. Talk about being a "bad example." The apocalypse is at hand.


12-14-1

The bin Laden tape was released yesterday. It contained nothing we didn't already know, or at least expect. But as I was watching it, I had the oddest sensation that I'd seen this sort of thing before. Then it hit me: it was the Shaykh punctuating bin Laden's stream of words with comments like "Allah be praised." It had an uncanny similarity to Pat Robertson doing the same thing as guests "witness" to him on his show. Extremism is the same the world over.


12-25-1

Guiliani is named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. Once again, a news organization chooses blind patriotism and public opinion over objective reality. The honor, according to their guidelines, is supposed to be conferred on the person who has most influenced the world, whether positively or negatively. (Personally, if it were my award, I'd make it a positive-only designation.) Pundits are going to great lengths to rationalize the exclusion of bin Laden, saying things like he's a small man with little influence. Yeah. Right. It seems these days that most news people and organizations wouldn't know objective reality if it snuck up behind them and bit them on their modems.


1-7-2

"When I see people ostentatiously displaying the flag, it disturbs me a little bit. I'm not into flag-waving."
"Aren't you a patriot?"
I'm a patriot of the United States to the degree that it doesn't interfere with my being a patriot of the human race. When patriots ask me to choose their country's citizens over citizens of the world, I have to question their intelligence--and their spirituality. If history has taught us anything, it's that we are all equals, not only in America, but all over the world. If we want to adhere to a philosophy of "my country first," then the logical conclusion is that we should believe in States Rights over Federalism--which a lot of "true" patriots do. And then, the next step down is that we believe in family over state, and the self over family. The ultimate conflict is one between self and God. When we choose a ground in between the two, we choose to do battle with the human race. To God, all humans are equal. We need to recognize God's children over the rights of states and nations.


1-17-2

America is the last chance of the civilized world to get it right--until space becomes a valid prospect. We're blowing it, here on Earth, although America still presents the possibility of hope. But in order to see progress, we have to overcome the Taliban-like rule that people like Ashcroft would impose upon us. (It's ironic how we become our enemies.) The ACLU is beginning to fight back, defending people like the Islamic-American girl who was forced to remove her headscarf in public. It's a token suit, but at least it's something. The struggle is ongoing. Freedom is never free. The problem is that it's the right-wing hawks and bureaucrats who use that concept to justify restriction of freedom. But at least we can still sue for redress of grievances (except for health insurance claims). Little by little they take it away. Littler by littler, we resist. I hate to think that a colony on Mars is the answer. (But it's not the ultimate answer any more than America was for the Pilgrims. Sooner or later, the bureaucrats and conservatives will move in and take over. Don't forget. The Pilgrims may have come here to escape religious intolerance, but it didn't take them long to establish an intolerance of their own.)


1-19-2

A warrior prays for peace, but trains for war.
 
from an ad for
"Combat Missions"
a USA TV series
But the warrior prays in vain, because training creates a mindset (especially military training, because it does it intentionally), resulting in expectations that leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. A warrior mentality, sooner or later, causes war, when the young warriors grow older and become entrenched in the organizations that stand to profit from bellicose activity, the industries, and especially the military machine and its hierarchy, which will become cut-back if the public, which becomes increasingly pacifist when it does not know war for long periods of time, wants to see their taxes put to better uses than preparing for combat that might never come.


1-20-2

The best thing we can do individually to take a stand against terrorism is to refuse to be terrified. Terrorism is not terrorism if it doesn't terrify.
The best thing we can do to avoid terrorism is to turn off the tv.
The next best thing we can do is to stay out of airports, government buildings, etc. These kinds of places are the breeding grounds of terror. The government wants you to believe that it is keeping you safe, but it's not. It's exposing you to danger, by its very nature. (Besides, it's a good idea to stay out of places like that anyway. It doesn't do any good to encourage them by letting them think you patronize their establishments. But if you really want to be safe, go and live in a commune in the hills. It's really much safer in those kinds of places.)


1-25-2
We're living in a world that's blowing itself to hell as fast as everybody can arrange it. In a situation like that all a man can do is shut his eyes and let nothing touch him and look out for himself.
 
Sean Penn, The Thin Red Line
This is my real philosophy. I can live as Zen-like a life as I want. I really try to. I can try to be like Witt in The Tin Red Line. But when it comes right down to it, I am far more like the Sean Penn character.


2-3-2

The forces of 1984 are tightening their grip.
(What took them so long?)
I just saw the film 1984 again last night (for the fifth or sixth time).
What a perfect masterpiece--the film and the book it's based on.
Man, did Huxley ever have an agile, prescient mind, or what?
It's been true for a long time now, but it gets truer every day.
Like, at the airports. Got explosive material on your shoes?
Do you look like an Arab? Speak with a foreign accent?
Did you look sideways at a gate attendant or a screener?
Are you wearing a veil? (Particularly bad if you're male.)
I admit that my personal solution to the 1984 dilemma is not for everyone, but I'm happy with it: I'm just staying out of airports. Or nuclear (nucular, Bush calls them) power plants. Or government office buildings. (A good place to stay out of anyway, even if there weren't any terrorism.) Or wherever terrorists are likely to attack. Actually, for me, terrorists aren't the problem, they're just another symptom of it. I haven't flown in years, not since I concluded that air safety wasn't what it used to be--not since about the time that Reagan busted the air traffic controllers' union. Now, added to that safety threat is the humiliation of having to put up with (more) government intrusion into my privacy. Nope. No thanx. I'll just stay away. I've stayed away from threatening situations all my life, whenever possible. There's no reason to change my ways now.


2-12-2

The USA calls Iran (et al.) part of an "axis of evil."
Iran calls the USA "The Great Satan."
Both countries, and a lot more besides, are evil materialized.
The Beast is that nature within all of us, within human nature, that rises up in response to the call of its own kind to show its ugliness to the world.
When we do not love one another, but allow ourselves to hate instead, it is The Beast who answers back when it hears its distant mating call.
The Beast is not the USA, or Iran, or Iraq, or bin Laden, or Saddam, or Arafat, or whatever country or person anyone wants to characterize as such.
The Beast is war, repression, intimidation, murder, mayhem, terror, killing, and death, whoever happens to do these things, for whatever reason.
The Beast fights with itself, and victimizes innocent individuals and populations in the process. We're all a part of The Great Satan, more or less.
The best asset that The Beast has is its ability to cause us to deny its existence within ourselves and within our own countries, so that we may go on blaming others for that which we ourselves are doing. Thus, Iranians see their evil nature in us and we see our evil nature in them, and conditions of denial and hate escalate in the world, and The Beast rises up to fight itself.


2-3-2

Scientists at the World Economic Forum predicted on Friday a grim future replete with unprecedented biological threats, global warming and the possible takeover of humans by robots. "Extreme pessimism seems to me to be the only rational stance," said Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, at a session devoted to the future threats and opportunities presented by scientific advances. He said he was especially concerned about the development of new biological weapons.
 
(CNN Quick News)
Yep. That about says it all. No need to elaborate any further.


2-21-2

There is no such thing as a holy war.
All who propose war are unholy.


no more to follow
altho i will probably intersperse additions


the logical thread from this point is
faux banner


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