Okay, so I'm not as organized as I used to be. Yep, my cup runeth over, but old guys can get away with some complaints. They bring a damp towel and place it on your forehead and say things like - there, there, just relax.
So, I slipped in a quickie run of words about my constant consumption of the news. One really has to work to get all of the news these days.
My generation has failed you all. Nirvana did not arrive. The age of Aquarius was all wet. Don't tell anyone I said that. Do you want my collection of old protest signs? How about a puff on a weak-assed doobie?
In the ancient Pagan religions, the seasons were celebrated; Autumn was noted when the leaves of the tree dried, shriveled and fell to the ground, dead, zonked. Spring time recognized the rebirth of nature and from that many believe in reincarnation, party time. Somehow, when cousin Elmer died he shriveled up, smelled bad and was never seen again. The idea that leaves and people are not the same didn’t occur to many until the middle-ages.
I just finished watching the Roosevelt series on PBS and watched FDR shrivel up much like a leaf. Too bad he didn’t come back, we need him.
Although I have known this from a study of the Great Depression, the language of the conservative elements of American politics is the same as it was in opposition to Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and their policies. The problems they faced were similar too. Does this mean America hasn’t grown-up? Progressed? Learned anything from history? It doesn’t seem it. And I am waiting for one of these Roosevelts to rise from the dead-leaf syndrome and knock some heads.
Okay, so I’m an old guy and I act like an old guy. Reminiscing about the golden days of yesteryear when Truman minced no words and Teddy Roosevelt filed anti-trust lawsuits against certain corporations in an effort to resolve the wealth gap, and Franklin who would gamble that one program or another might work. Risk taking; who is willing to do that now? In contemporary politics we are defined as the “buzzword” generation. Criticism from the right-wing is ancient and has been the conservative mind-set for well over a hundred years. It is a joke told so often that it is simply assigned a number, shout the number out and everyone chuckles. Does any Conservative actually know what “Socialist” means? Or Socialism? Or Communism? Or big government? Marxism? Let’s get serious here; does any Tea Party member know what racism is? Bigotry? Homophobe? Or voter fraud?
One doctor told me my eyesight will fade to nothing, another said my hearing is going away (to where I have no idea), it is difficult to walk for any distance, like when I carried my protest sign back in the day. I couldn’t see why McGovern didn’t get elected after I had worked so hard for him. I could see and hear the old Black Panthers in Oakland and wondered why the white Berkeley cops were so afraid of a black man with a gun. (I never met an Oakland cop). Berkeley cops, or many of them, were John Birchers. I understood fascism, I wondered why the Birchers didn’t. I saw the Hells Angels form and they were a friendly bunch, at least they were back then. It seemed to me the age of the 50s and 60s was when sub-cultures began to form, a symptom of a sick society. Yes, the 60s. a time when the gun became the tool that eliminated progressive ideas. The three greatest Liberal leaders of my time were shot and killed within a five year span. I saw this, I heard it and the memory of it will not go away. Memory, a physiologic punishment, I remember more than most people.
So, the John Birch Society shriveled up and died in Autumn, but it was reborn as the Koch Brothers. We thought fascism shriveled up and died and again it was reborn in the form of the Koch Brothers. (Doesn’t anyone realize that a partnership between government and Corporate interests is the Mussolini type of fascism?) The wealth gap died in 1945 but it came back as the Military Industrial Complex. Big money in war. So let’s have continuous warfare. Unions were an equalizer by 1950 but today we see that it died a slow death beginning with Reaganism. We are back to one year before Teddy Roosevelt. Will Progressivism be reborn?
My military time was back in the vacuum tube generation assigned to the Army Security Agency, an agency that doesn’t exist any longer, the last of the brown class-A uniform Army. We had never heard of a transistor or a solid state circuit board. Once I was assigned to decode Sputnik. It said, “Beep, beep . . . . “ I was good. It was Eisenhower that sent me off to shoot at people. Since then it has been continuous war for the U.S.. Who is in charge of this nation? What in hell were we doing in Iraq? We created an imbalance of power in the middle-east, we left a vacuum there and every mother and her brother thinks they can grab Iraq as if it were on sale in a bridal shop. A Conservatives war. And now ISIS.
Let’s piss off the World. Oh, we already did that. Well then, let’s print some more money and be prosperous again? Nixon did that, didn’t work. Now what? Yes, now what? Get out there and solve a problem. Pick one from the menu:
1. A bird that fouls its own nest is an ill bird. Industrial pollution.
2. Continuous warfare will bring down this nation. Sue for peace.
3. Equality for women, minorities and immigrants and my Auggie my pooch.
4. Put cops back on the beat, on foot.
5. End fatal enforcement and police aggression.
6. Implement a reasonable gun control law(s).
7. Bring fair taxation for corporate interests.
8. Consider government investment for education through four years of college.
9. Drop outstanding student loans.
10. Adopt a single payer healthcare system.
11. Resolve the homeless circumstance.
12. Full care and feeding for children beginning with birth, ending at eighteen.
13. Create government sponsored job programs.
14. No more businesses that use out-of-country tactics to avoid taxes.
15. End the role of the US as the World’s policeman.
No, we can’t shoot all of the lawyers. We might revise farm subsidies. Keep an eye on North Korea and China, the World is much larger than the middle-east. Lastly, stop over-throwing foreign governments, we mess it up every time. Go to Mars. Plant trees. George W. Bush made me ill when I watched him speak. Cheney made me angry, I wanted to bend his glasses to match his smirk. What the hell is the matter with us, electing people like that? Do you realize what the crash of September 2008 has done to this nation?
Grumble, growl and mumble. Will someone bring me a beer?
Kootie J