Trumpery trudges on in the White House, leaving muddy tracks wherever he slithers. He just pardoned the notorious Sheriff Joe in Arizona, which should seal his doom with Hispanic voters and he carries the already precarious GOP right along with him. Paul Ryan and other GOP notables are getting their wind and actually speaking out against him this time. He just kicked our judicial system in the teeth.
Sen. Jeff Flake will take him on and capture much of the Evangelical and decent human being vote, which has been uneasy with the golden boy for quite a while. Steve Bannon will use his tenure with Trump to inform and incite a wave of critical commentary and build his own base among the white nationalists. Many of them will adjust their opinions of Trump to fit the Breitbart persuasions. Trump will find Bannon to be a beast unleashed, much more articulate than him and able to express philosophical opinions beyond ‘awesome’ and ‘incredible’ and ‘sad.’
A dose of undiscovered reality to many — Anarchists are NOT extreme Liberals. Liberals such as Bernie Sanders want a large, service-oriented government that takes care of people, helps facilitate health care, shelter, food and basic human needs. Anarchists want no government at all. They are closer to Republicans who want a very limited government that does the bidding of big business. The pro-government forces were the most visible and violent in Charlottesville — a desired fascist, white nationalist government that oppresses dark-skinned people.
They hail their admiration for Nazis who have killed vast numbers of Jews, Europeans in occupied states and American soldiers. They responded to the murder of a soldier in Italy by killing everyone in the village and wiping it from the earth. So screw the Nazis; their flag should be banned and they should be classified as anti-government racist insurgents. They should have a lifetime ban on all firearms. Given that so many blame the dark races for savagery, it is worthwhile to note that no race has ever topped the ever-white, arrogant ass Nazis, and their flag is illegal in Germany, and should be here.
Maybe the Trumpery will bring out our best as Americans— defiance for decency, truth and honor over hateful hubris -- a wake-up call to get away from our home entertainment centers and give a shit about people and the fate of the world, do something with our minds, our talents and energies.
It's been less than 8 months and Trump has been digging his grave every day. When the hole is deep and dark enough, his orange ass goes into it. We will be proud of ourselves commensurate with our efforts and .... Pence has no chance of ever being elected president out of this wreckage. He has his backwoods evangelicalism against him, and now his service as lapdog to the Orange Crush.
Trump stirred up hatreds in his campaign, divided people against one another. He demonized Mexican immigrants and threw up red fear flags all across the border, stirred high fears against all immigrants, condemned the national news media, insulted the federal judiciary and all of our intelligence agencies, and now has alienated most every one in his lightly-adopted party. The construction of Hillary Hatred was an integral part of it all — and it worked. He is the President. He rode his acrimonies right into the White House.
Does this tell us that too many Americans harbor too many contempts and let it override either intellectual or common sense? Trump is easily seen to be unqualified for the Presidency in every possible way. Are people totally blinded by their dissatisfactions and biases, so that reality can’t be grasped? Can they not disdain elementary school level name-calling and air-headed bluster in favor of critical thinking? Can these people learn more now while undergoing the self-destruction of our executive branch with the kind of attitude and arrogance that they have appreciated?
The origins and timeline history of ‘Hillary Hatred’ is the stuff for psychological research. Many don’t like the way she presents herself. The magnetic Bernie Sanders had a much more dynamic message than her middle of the road homily pablum and when he went down, amid calls of DNC deceit, the fire went out in the campaign. She couldn’t abandon the desired big money contributions of the corporate elite to support some of Sanders’ anti-capitalism views.
So even someone like Trump could squeeze through since the voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio fell for enough of the ‘jobs’ Kool-aid to give him their states with only a fraction of a margin. Hillary was too busy rolling her eyes and taking some kind of ‘high road’ that kept her out of the Rust Belt.
Regret must be raging high across the midwest about this time. The American Manufacturers Association just came out squarely against Trump's agenda, and that's the guy some voters thought could get their jobs back. Trump actually supports cheap foreign labor and continues to use it for his own goods.
What else is happening in this volatile world?
The old Confederacy, now a Republican fortress of votes, is in the news once more. Trump defends their monuments; others want to get rid of them. In this constant swirl of recent debate has come the charge to me that the Democratic Party has been just as responsible for racism in the country as the Republicans. True. There once was the “solid south” of Democratic votes. It helped Franklin D. Roosevelt to four Presidential terms for his “New Deal” programs.
The Democratic Party atoned for its sins beginning with Harry Truman, who saw black war heroes being lynched in the South. First came anti-lynching legislation, leading the Dixiecrats to leave and split the Democratic presidential vote. So they thought GOP Dewey would win but Harry won anyway.
As they embraced civil and human rights, the confederate Dixie deserted them and the GOP was ready to aid, abet and capture the white-controlled South when President Johnson moved through on civil and human rights legislation. It was the so-called ‘southern strategy’ of the Republicans to capture the white backlash and take the South.
So the politics was then split asunder in the South -- vote nationally for the GOP, given its opposition to the civil rights movement, but vote locally for the customary Democratic courthouse gangs, most all of whom supported the segregated white power structure that overthrew the civil war reconstruction, with considerable help from the Ku Klux Klan. The gangs would do everything possible to discourage black voters; liberal and black activists from the north came down to stimulate and support black voting. Three of them from Antioch University were murdered by law enforcement and klansmen in Neshoba County, MS, and it became the movie, Mississippi Burning.
County and state officials were still racist for the most part across the old confederacy but many areas were destined to be fully integrated as blacks got voting rights to support their superior numbers in some counties to take power. The South today is still essentially white vs. black in elections. Whites and blacks generally don’t vote for the other. Of course, the rank-and-file Republicans would be the last people in the world to admit their view that whites are better than blacks and don’t deserve any kind of special consideration from the federal government. That doesn’t sound good.
Did the South have the right to secede from the union? Wasn’t that an unsettled question at the time? These states joined voluntarily; could they not resign?
I think that ….. the war was indeed over the right to secede from the union — and also the attack of a federal fort. You can't do either, it turns out.
Cotton was absolutely gold in the new world textile industry. Economic conflicts are perennial between the producer of commodities like cotton and soybeans and the process of turning them into marketable products. Who makes how much money off it? Cotton is basically worthless unless machinery, time and manpower turn it into a product. Soybeans must be converted to oil and meal. But such economic differences shouldn't shatter a democratic union.
There is a powerful truth though — people are not property. Slavery is one of vilest things ever to exist on the planet, and the Southerners practiced it fully. The collective value for black flesh in Dixie was greater than the value of its crops and there was a lot of managed ‘breeding' to produce even more flesh and blood property. So Lincoln and some honorable abolitionists did the right thing by humanity after the war started, while also wiping out the monetary value of the flesh. No slavery; then slaves become worthless, and are strongly encouraged to build the underground railroad and fight for the same freedoms as other human beings.
If rebels, on the other hand, wanted to fight for their antebellum, agrarian, way of life and not be part of the U.S., then they had a right to rebel, just as Americans did when we overthrew British rule. But they lost, the union was preserved, thank goodness, and slavery is gone. Who really cares what kind of memorials and monuments are out there, they are history. We should relegate our animosities to history as well.
We shouldn't scapegoat these Confederate generals for our racism today. They fought for the right to secede from the union and that isn't evil. If you lived in Virginia and loved it, you might fight for Virginia against the makeshift union that had been assembled, and the yankee money merchants who were pulling as many dollars out of the cotton economy as possible.
The northern states fought essentially to preserve the union for the many Americans who wanted to be in it. One historian said it was a limited commitment given the north’s industrial wealth, and they fought the war ‘with one hand tied behind their back.’ Meantime the South was ravaged by the Union Army.
Much of the racial violence in the U.S. has happened since the Confederacy disbanded so let's don't blame them for it. Let's blame ignorant, malicious bigots living post-war and today. Many of them also live in the north and west.
Maybe these statues represent racism in the 21st century to some people. But often their friends and neighbors are more representative of racism and should be of greater concern.
Maybe they want to focus on symbols with which to do battle, and not confront the actual perpetrators of what the symbols represent. You can’t do much to fight racism and hatred by taking down statues of historical figures.
On to a spiritual topic …
Polytheists are doomed? A friend said he thought so … Interesting question .... if all you've known in life, ancient times, is a Poly God culture, worshipping a number of Gods, does this mean you're not saved into eternity by the real one God?
I say righteous lives are saved. Even if you heard about another religion in your time that disdained all of your Gods and substituted one of their own, and you still clung to your own culture and lived a good life within those beliefs and didn't accept the demise of your Gods, aren't you still saved to the Eternal Ascension Plan? Of course, says I. We can't condemn all of those people who came before one-God Christianity. God knows us every one, respects our intentions and our efforts and deems us worthy of ascension based on his eternal law, and this has existed since the time that humans first drew breath here, long before the experiment of man-driven religion was begun.
We are indwelt with our own God-given Spirit and not beholden to any evolutionary idea. If you don’t know better than to worship the sun and moon and rain and earth, and try to live in peace, that’s well enough. Humans should certainly have a deep appreciation for the elements that give us life.
And on the drug war front ….
Here comes the corporate cannabis takeover. They want their marijuana cake and they want to eat it too. As usual, they want it all.
Here is this business entrepreneur in Florida who sings the praises of CBD oil, which is extracted from the cannabis plant and which he can legally produce and sell for big profits. It’s legal in all states, by design. He dismisses THC in the whole plant, which remains illegal and he can't sell, as a desultory, lethargy inducing side effect.
NOT TRUE. His pants should be blazing. This "High' is an integral part of the overall healing process. The whole plant is what it should be, natural, and it produces the nice mix of energized and enhanced Being-ness. Feeling great is part of it. It shouldn't be parsed in the usual way so that Big Pharma can pick it apart and sell pieces that fatten their proprietary pocketbooks and can't hold a candle to the original.
They seem damned and determined to reverse course from their prohibition to their profits, like cheese-smelling rats, to make millions off what they once oppressed, and all the while keeping a part of the plant illegal. This is a direct frontal attack on all of those champions of the weed for these many years by boxing them out and prosecuting them for violations of their new wave of control mechanisms.
In other words … Big Pharma is now demonizing the euphoric high from THC as a deleterious side effect rather than an integral part of the process. They want to sell their perfectly legal CBD and make a fortune while demonizing whole plant users and keeping their law enforcement system in place to persecute growers and users. The whole plant is, of course, better and altogether works best for the mood management healing process.
Big Pharma always wants to avoid medicinal herbs, synthesizing some of their active chemistry and parsing it to fit their agendas, making synthetics and breaking any necessary connection to the actual plant — to nature itself. There is no money in people growing their own herbs, especially that amazing one, so they have to separate them from "real" allopathic medicine -- consisting mostly of scalpels, and pharmaceuticals that often just treat symptoms and produce harmful side effects that you would never see in the natural plant.
A recent critic wanted to equate this medicinal herb use with a lock of morality. So weird. I replied:
My gosh, smoking this herb has nothing to do with morality or lack thereof. It's a healthy habit which replaces stress and anxiety with a pleasant energizing high than opens your mind and imagination to new perspectives. And don't we ever need them in a world that has been replete with genocides and plagues for thousands of years now. Chill out and be cool, and no longer be a harnessed mule. And beware of the worst drug of all -- alcohol -- which researchers say creates a problem for 1 in every 8 Americans. Plus the traffic accident tragedies, addiction suffering, and domestic violence that the alcoholics wallow in. A National Disgrace. Cannabis has been smoked for at least 13,000 years and will never approach that status. No OD’s in all of history and prehistory. In fact, it probably keeps a lot of people away from alcohol, providing an outstanding public service that is yet unrecognized. Be cool everybody.
Flying chips …. fantasy news …
• Apparently chips hit the purveyors of the national voter information effort — to capture, control and suppress the electorate as needed out of the Trump White House. Haven’t heard from it given lots of state opposition, and expect to hear little more.
• Given its condition, should we now at least call it the Beige House. A comedian once explained his neurosis and related it to childhood trauma. “Every other kid had a red sled. Mine was … beige. That’s when I first noticed the pains.’ Seems like neurotics make the best stand-up comics, or maybe they’re just posing … uneasily. George Burns once said that dying is easy, stand-up is hard.
• Capitalists have reportedly developed a powdered water product, but their scientists can’t determine what to mix it with. Someone at the last creative session suggested they might enclose a full water balloon inside each product. It would be beige in color so that it didn’t immediately stand out from the drab powder. Consumers would be advised in a warning label to Burst Before Using.
• Trumpsters may now have decided that draining the swamp includes the notorious coal industry pimp from Kentucky who looks uncannily like a large saggy faced turtle. No one has a deeper swamp residency than moss-back McConnell but Trump berates him for not ramming through a health care bill that qualifies as an attempted national disgrace. No one is sure yet who sent a 2-ton snapping turtle to McConnell’s estate in White Castle, KY. It had to be lowered onto the property from a cargo plane by crane, and was last seen eating Mrs. McConnell’s snapdragons. (Not really)
• Scientists at MIT in the field of Artificial Intelligence have requested a residency at the White House and access to various personalities who are evidence of the phenomena. In a press release, President Brainerd noted that this unusual convergence of aberrant personalities could prove a gold mine to researchers studying the development of partisan light-mindedness and its frequently deleterious wafting into a vacuity of defensive blankness and profiteering based on anti-intellectual models.
Insiders confide that the request will likely be refused, but with a counter-offer of residency in a Trump Tower at the usual exorbitant rental rates. Space has just been freed on the 10th floor in New York while Russian money launderers pull up their stakes and try to get away before Manafort spills all of the farts in their beans.
Enjoy life everyone ….. feedback welcome BTW. But if you’re ANGRY, don’t respond. Anger is not a proper response for anything at all. These are just my opinions. If you want to fight something, consider some of these self-serving forces I’m bitching about.
FIRE AX Issue 2 …. late September 2017
FIRE AX 2 - later in September 2017
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