OMG It Happened

If you have read this blog with any consistency over the past decade you are pretty much aware of my opinions on politics and politicians. It is rare for me to approve of and support any of them. The one exception to that has always been Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. I have always tried not to be an “I love Bernie” gusher about it and a Democratic Socialist flag waver. No one is perfect, but it is true that Bernie speaks the language of the most disenfranchised of Americans who have few voices that speak for them with any consistency. It has taken a lot to bring me to the point where I must speak out with a different tune, but…today is the day. 

I saw Bernie make a speech today regarding “Solar Power for All”. I was with him for the first few minutes, and then he began talking about the cost of going solar, and my own Virgo jumped out from behind Leo and Pisces and had to abandon ship from the Bernie bandwagon. As much as it pains me to go here, it must be done. For the good of the struggling homeowners in America and the good of the average struggling citizen who couldn’t take on another debt if they had to, begging to differ with Bernie today is totally unavoidable.

Before I get into the specifics of my dissent here, let me tell you how I see the situation regarding climate change. I never have been and never will be a climate change denier. I realize that there is much to be done in this country to try to undo all the damage that humans have done that brought us to the dire situation that we are now in.  Virtually all of us are guilty in one way or another when it comes to not being responsible citizens in taking care of our world, but the biggest slackers in this country when it comes to chronic and repeat offenders of destroying the planet are corporations. These are the ones who pollute the water, squander resources, produce products that are not recyclable or biodegradable, manufacture gigantic gas guzzling automobiles, and feel completely unaccountable regarding a change in behavior that might turn many of our problems around. Climate change fault is always thrown back at the average citizen to be dealt with while corporate capitalists pay a bit of lip service to fixing the problems. With all that said, I will now get to the issue that I have with Bernie’s plan to achieve solar power for all.

As far as installing solar panels on our homes, that would be a good thing if it were possible, but it isn’t. Why it isn’t has to do with two things. The first is the cost of doing it. He said that it would cost between 10 and 20 thousand dollars. Most of us couldn’t cough up 10 percent of that now. We can barely keep a roof over our heads and pay for food and other necessities if at all. He said that there would be grants and loans to cover the cost. I think few of us would qualify for a grant, even a partial one. Getting a loan which would add another burden to our cash strapped existence would only make things worse for us, and the piece de resistance of the entire plan was to tell us that it would save us from $50 - $100 per month on our electric bills. HA!  My electric bill is around $300 per month! And I don’t even have electric heat! That isn’t a drop in the bucket when you consider that I would be saddled with another bill to pay for the loan that solar panel installation would cost. The payment would most likely be much more than the savings on my electric bill. It cannot be done, Bernie. No way in heaven or hell. I agree that we are darn near beyond being able to combat the effects of climate change, but this proposed solution is not a solution for the majority of Americans now. The skyrocketing cost of just basic living has made putting anything else on our financial plate a complete impossibility. Even if the government gave us another Covid relief check of $1,200 per person it would not cover it, even for a family of ten!

I, like most people, cannot proffer a blanket solution for the climate change crisis, but if I had to come up with something to help the situation, I would strongly suggest two things. First, stop manufacturing products with single use plastics. Second, stop manufacturing large vehicles and stop buying them. Many families where I live have three or more trucks and SUV’s. Yes, some people will throw tantrums about it but they will throw even bigger tantrums when they cannot buy gasoline for them and find that they cannot tolerate the unbearable summer heat and the desperately cold winters to come. The first step in changing a bad situation must be calling a halt to the behavior that put you there in the first place and these two issues are monumentally guilt-ridden activities. There are drawbacks to going solar in our homes that tend to be glossed over much of the time and one of the biggest is the availability of sunlight on a daily basis. This could be an extreme problem in some parts of the US during the winter months. Heaven help us, Bernie, dependency upon solar energy is very risky when you could find yourself without power during severe weather. Solar energy sounds like a god send on the face of it, but truly what would help right now is to require responsible behavior from those who have acted completely irresponsible for a very long time. When the citizens of this country find themselves in a position that affords them some financial breathing room you might find us deciding that we are able to convert to solar energy on our own, but right now, there is no way. Those who have been the worst offenders in creating climate change are always putting the guilt and burden for fixing the problem on the average citizens, and everyone who loves the corporate fascists is complicit in pointing the finger and passing the buck, although it isn’t a literal buck because they aren’t about to give us any more money to live on.

I still love you, Bernie, and appreciate and admire your efforts for the people, but the ability to just keep ourselves alive is the highest-level priority that exists now. Without that, we could have solar panels installed to high heaven, but it would not matter if we are homeless and starving or dead.

When The Dark Covers the Light

I live in one of the states in America where the solar eclipse was visible today. I decided against watching it by going outside. Many people would probably believe that decision to be ludicrous, but not participating in the event with eclipse glasses or a homemade viewer was not difficult. Following a spiritual path in life will many times put you at odds with how most people view the right or the wrong of a thing. I am used to this. It is easier to manage once you get over the habit of telling others the how and the why your life rolls the way it does and expecting them to give you affirmation.

The phenomenon itself was fascinating to witness as the light became obliterated here. I just stayed inside looking out the window.  At first it was much like a coming storm getting increasingly dark very quickly, but it actually didn’t last long. I can see why people in ancient times were terrified of events like this. I felt sad when the light began to come back. You don’t really have much time to reflect upon the uniqueness of it before it is lost. This could be said about many of life’s experiences that are now gone.

The days leading up to the eclipse found me thinking seriously about things that I have seen and heard which seemed to have a relevance and connection to what was coming. The first thing that came to my mind was a scene in the 1950s film, The Ten Commandments where the people in Egypt had to stay in their homes with their doors and windows shut as God sent a punishment onto the people as a result of their refusal to free the Hebrew slaves there. The firstborn child of every household was going to die unless the entire family stayed at home and painted lamb’s blood over their front door. It was called the Passover, and centuries later, people of the Jewish faith still honor the event as proof of God’s power and proof of his love for those who believe in a higher intelligence. The people who remained in their homes on that night, following God’s instruction, did not receive a letter in the mail or a phone call or a text message warning them to do this. It was something that they just had to know was necessary. When spirit talks, you’d better be listening. That is just how it works. You either heed it or you don’t. You ignore that subtle voice at your own risk. Families were huddled in their homes hearing the screams of the people outside as some were struck dead where they stood, and others had to endure the horror of seeing those that they loved die in front of them. It sounds very much like the stories that we hear coming from Palestine. The Hebrew slaves who didn’t pay attention and believe the message lost loved ones that night as did many Egyptian families. It was similar to the peril that you would be in if you tried to view the eclipse without eye protection. Only a fool would do it. But what would you call the people who knowingly produced and sold eclipse glasses that were substandard and would not protect your eyes? Call them frauds, call them criminals, and call them capitalists.

I also found myself thinking about the Klaus Nomi song, Total Eclipse, prior to today. Klaus paints a dreadful scenario for the people of Earth in that song. It sounds like the eclipse of the Sun is a punishment for us because of the “big shots” in the world who are too full of their own wonderfulness to care about anything other than themselves. Sounds like we all will turn into “French fries” even if we aren’t guilty of the offending behavior. It must be that we are complicit and guilty for not making the “big shots” stop. We are pretty fortunate that it is just a song and not a true prophesy because we don’t seem to have any intention of enforcing a cease-and-desist order on any of the people who are causing nine kinds of hell on this planet right now. The eclipse didn’t kill us today, but selfish, authoritarian, and elitist behavior is. It just isn’t doing it as fast.

It would have been extremely easy for me to ignore the subtle “feeling” that I had today regarding watching the eclipse. It is akin to other subtle feelings and intuitive information that I receive all of the time. It isn’t always as pointed and plain as being told not to leave the house today because a tree will fall on you or a tractor-trailer will run over you. You can ignore it. You want to do something and outwardly you see no reason not to. But spirit does not impress upon you for no reason. You cannot always see that reason immediately but 99% of the time you will come to understand that there was one. The ability to delay gratification and endure some deprivations has saved me from many troubles and catastrophes in life. Sometimes the saving graces were small but more than a few of them have saved my life. I didn’t see today’s eclipse firsthand because of a still, small voice that speaks to me every day of my life, but it was no sacrifice, really. If things had turned out like in Klaus’s song it would not have made a hill of beans difference. I would be dead regardless. But if it was like the Passover, well…I would still be here because I am not the firstborn child in my family but I sure as hell would have lost loved ones if I chose to ignore the warning. I cannot say for sure that I would have been specifically warned that the world was going to end during the eclipse if that was to be our fate. Anything that is finite like that normally comes months or even years prior to the event and is usually told metaphorically. You just have to retain and interpret the information as you go along. And as you go along, you develop the ability to make peace with it.

Someone reminded me recently about the 1962 film Day Of The Triffids where there were meteor showers all over the world and everyone wanted to watch them but those who did were struck blind and eaten by mutated plants if they happened upon one. I have seen all kinds of bizarre predictions online about how the eclipse was going to affect us. Some were pretty near as farfetched as this movie is, but situations that we are experiencing right now on this planet are so horrific that it seems too terrible to be believed. They aren’t easy to ignore and dismiss now. People are being affected by them in ways that we would never have imagined were possible 20 or 30 years ago. There were people panhandling in the parking lot of the grocery store where I shop yesterday. There was a man near the store standing in the middle of the street trying to stop drivers to ask them for money. Not long ago, there was a man playing a violin in the street wearing a sign that said he needed money to buy insulin for his child with diabetes. These are not things that I have ever seen in this town before. To say that the world is going to end now is not too difficult to believe. An eclipse may not be the catalyst for that but war, starvation, a lack of health care, and unemployment are catalysts for ending lives. Thousands of them every single day. Sometimes, you have to give up something to get something. All you really have to give up is greed, selfishness, and the belief that you are always right. It isn’t a subtle voice that incites hatred and violence. It is a dark and thunderous one. And it is fast making the light disappear.

"All it takes is faith and trust." Peter Pan Thinking

I recently read an article on The Nation where the author talks about putting a wealth cap of ten million dollars on the rich. No one could accumulate personal wealth beyond that limit. Any excess wealth would be taxed to fund infrastructure and social programs. I take issue with the idea of social programs because that sounds like we would keep many people in poverty. Social programs are not necessary if everyone has a basic living wage and income. So, I am all for setting a limit on wealth accumulation, but I wonder and worry about what governments would do with the new windfalls of money.

There is legislation in California which proposes to take control of the utility companies and have them assess the level of income for every household in the state and base everyone’s electric charges on how much money they have. Supposedly, the poor will pay less for their electricity and the wealthier people will have added charges on their bills to address wealth inequality. I take great exception to this idea. A basic need of the people should not be turned into a tiered system where some pay more than others. Programs like these invariably lead to a better quality of service for some and shoddy service for others. While it may sound (on the surface) like a great way to get the rich to pay their fair share in the world this is not the way to accomplish that.

The United Kingdom has been experiencing a dire poverty situation within a large proportion of the populace. Scholars there are comparing it with how bad things were in Victorian England. Many people are now suffering from diseases that were pretty common back then such as scurvy and rickets. These diseases are all curable if people have a balanced diet but far too many people now cannot afford to eat properly. They call it “food insecurity” but that is just a prettier way to say that they are starving. How much money would go to eliminating the insecurity of living so many people are experiencing if the ten million dollar wealth cap were to become law in every country? That we have gotten to this point in human evolution where starvation even occurs makes me think that there are so few people on the planet who even give a damn about it that those in power aren’t likely to fix a problem that they don’t even believe exists. It took a lot of ignorance and inattention to get us to this place. When they have billions more dollars in their coffers will they take any notice of the misery and poverty that needs to be addressed or will they decide that what the planet really needs is more of what we have already done to make us look like the envy of the world? The White House has been around for a very long time. How about building a bigger, better, and more palatial one? What good does wealth do us if we can’t show off to everyone? Without a change in the mentality of the people who control the resources in the world you will not see any of our problems eliminated. They will not address anything that is not already a part of their thought processes or part of their experience. What would make them suddenly want to bother with it now?

Unlike the other two situations that I have written about here I did not see that there has been a solution to starvation proffered by the UK government or concerned citizen groups. It is not a problem that is unique to the UK but this is the first time that I have heard anyone liken the problem to a dreadful and deadly time in history. I am sure that hunger and starvation exists in every country on the planet in one form or another but it is an issue that isn’t likely to go away easily because elitism exists in every other country as well. The royal palaces and residences will continue to have lavish meals several times a day as will the houses of government, the well to do, and restaurants without giving a second thought to how much their privilege costs the rest of the world. No matter where you look you will find that societies unchecked operate like this because they believe that they deserve more than others do. We can only change this by not believing and supporting their perceived right to it.

What would be done with all of the new money that governments suddenly had at their disposal if the above proposed solutions to inequality were implemented? Would it be turned into a national healthcare system in America? Would it be used to provide a basic income for everyone in an amount equal to a living wage in the US or the UK or any other country that is seeing a surge in poverty levels? What is a living wage in America? Depending on where you live here it has jumped up to more than one hundred thousand dollars per year. Bear in mind that no one would actually have that much in actual pay after deductions. Would it provide free college or free childcare or affordable housing? Some countries already do but that hasn’t solved the wealth inequality issues that have skyrocketed. Would anyone think to put a cap on how much people will be charged for basic necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, etc.? If they don’t, expect that people would fall right back into poverty in a short period of time even with more equitable wages and income. Without a cap on the ability to raise prices for everything through the roof there is no way that any of these new situations would be sustainable. So, how should the new economic system be set up to prevent a new corruption of society? If you don’t like the new system, can you fight it within the judicial system? If you can, the courts could be bombarded to high heaven for years and maybe even decades. Does the President have the power and authority to say, “This is how it is, people. This is what we are doing so everyone has a fair share and governments can no longer be bought.” Do we have a President who will say enough is enough as far as inequality goes? Have we ever had one like that? Does such a person exist in the world? Is this what is supposed to happen when the second coming of Christ arrives? Is there really going to be one? If it doesn’t happen pretty quickly a great many people will not live to see it. There are people saying that Jesus was too “woke” and Christians need a new leader. If he comes back tomorrow will anybody even pay attention to him if he doesn’t show up with some serious miracles and destroy everything that has corrupted the world? I think not. A great majority of the people would deny that he was Jesus even as he performed a few thousand miracles right in front of them.

So, until the Universe sends us a supreme deity to strike down inequality here, we are totally dependent upon a supreme human someone or someone’s to get the job done. I keep looking and listening for them. While there are many people with good ideas and helpful knowledge in the here and now which could make a tremendous difference in the way things are done it is troubling to know that they are scattered among the masses and not in solidarity in numbers large enough to fix a broken world. The author of the article in The Nation regarding the wealth cap cited two millionaires who believe that they should be taxed more to address wealth inequality, but I suspect that the majority of millionaires and billionaires out there never give a second thought as to how their actions put the entire world in peril and at risk. Actor Jim Carrey once said in an interview that many people give him flack for making and having so much money. His own family fell upon severe hard times when he was a teenager and had to live in a tent on a relative’s property. He obviously has never forgotten where he came from but one has to wonder if he has ever questioned the system that put his family in that situation? In the interview, he wondered aloud what people think that he should do when people in the film industry offer him millions of dollars to be in their films. ‘Should I tell them that I don’t want it?’ he said. Yes, Jim, that would be a good start. Or at least tell them you don’t need it. Because no one needs more than ten million dollars to live well. But it sure does take more than the majority of the people have. They are definitely not living well. And far too many are not going to live to see things get better. If this bothers you, speak out about it and we will pray that your words catch fire with the ones who can change that. Many people know that change must come but we really do need to speak louder and in unison and have some serious, definitive answers on how to make things better. Actions speak a lot louder than faith and trust in existing systems. We had faith that we would never see times like these again but there was no one that we could trust to make sure that it didn’t happen.

And without pixie dust, it ain't gonna fly.

Happy New Year to Me

2024 has started off with a bang in my house. Severe influenza of the debilitating kind is here and is proving to be quite comfortable in its new home and surroundings. It is the unwanted guest who refuses to leave even when you bombard it with the best remedies available, stop all activities that might hinder wellness: purify and humidify the air quality in your home and try very hard not to spread infection to the people who are kind enough to help and support you through the crisis. I’d rather be sewing. I need to alter the length of several pairs of slacks and pajamas that were received as Christmas gifts for family members, recover toss pillows with tee shirts that fit no one but have great graphics on them which will be quite decorative somewhere in the house afterwards but right now they are just piled up on and around my sewing desk with the humidifier and a great many other projects that are not going to get done until I recover. I do try to drag myself out of bed and be as productive as I can when I have a rare burst of energy. Writing this essay is only occurring because of one of those bursts, but mostly I am trying to distract myself from dwelling on the fact that I feel like total hell and will likely feel that way for another week or so by binge watching episodes of Once Upon A Time and any video that I can find with Yanis Varoufakis on YouTube and crying as he reminds me of the likelihood of utter hopelessness of 2024 being a better year for people. I am usually better at playing the “glad game” than this even in the face of dreadful circumstances in the world which seem to never end, but like the illness that I am battling which mutates constantly requiring me to change remedies to address the new symptoms, Yanis reminds me that capitalism and politics never take a break and neither can we in the fight to somehow survive their unwelcome visitations of misery which they never stop throwing upon us with no more thought or regard for the devastation that they are causing than the mindless and thoughtless virus that is attacking me right now.

With the arrival of each new year, I normally get a sense of what is likely to manifest in the world in the next 12 months, but this year feels like a blank slate to me as to how we may fare. There is a scene in the 1934 Three Stooges short called Men in Black where they are doctors visiting a mental patient in the hospital. The patient is a well-spoken and educated fellow who has gone off his rocker.  When they enter his room, he is pacing the floor, speaking like a great orator. One has to wonder what kind of intellectual study he emerged from to wind up like this.

Even Moe can’t help but question his own sanity when he sees the green canary. If we haven’t already seen the “green canary” ourselves by now I don’t think that it is too far off from our fate if we cannot or will not grab the “rats” coming out of the “buttonholes” of human experience pretty soon. They do just keep coming and we are a massively overwhelmed society who has no real knowledge or previous experience as to how to handle it. So, little is being done about it.

I understand that there is a massive rat problem in New York City. No one seems to know how to eliminate a real rat infestation there anymore than people know how to eliminate everything that is destroying humanity in the form of social and economic “rats.” Will 2024 bring with it a new intelligence that can save us from the disease that vermin bring with it? Will we continue to go “off our rockers” under the weight the destruction that we have heaped upon ourselves? That truly is the momentous question. As Moe said, “you (we) ain’t well yet”, and not likely to get well quickly any more than I am going to wake up tomorrow morning symptom free.

As much I appreciate Yanis Varoufakis and others like him in calling out the problems that we are and have been facing for many years, what I would really like to see is a cure for them. As I deal with a newly morphed symptom in my illness every single day, multiple times a day, it requires a great deal of research and a nonstop proactive determination toward wellness on my part or I will just remain miserable and sick for God knows how long. I know that the buck stops with me as to whether or not I get over this. I hope that those who are in a position to bring about wellness to a sick society understand that they will determine the outcome for us with either action or inaction. God help us if they continue the way that they have been up until now. If we are ever going to be well, the remedies for what ails us need to start coming in fast or the debilitated society that we are has no hope for recovery.

The New Face of Public School

Where Learning is Optional

I am sure that everyone in America has learned to be deeply afraid and concerned about the safety of anyone connected to the public school system here since we heard about the six year old who shot his teacher in the state of Virginia. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to have been in that classroom when the shooting took place. I do not blame any teacher for deciding to change careers now with the extreme violence that has been happening in public schools for some time now, but to tell you the truth, I remember a time when many children were very afraid of their teachers, and I personally found myself on the wrong side of their wrath more than once. I was never a child who deliberately broke the rules but there were times when I forgot some of them in elementary school. Being a child, that is just going to happen sometimes and it wasn’t always the case that I was hit and ridiculed and humiliated for making a mistake, but weighed in the balance that sort of reaction was more common than a reminder not to do it again. I was a frequent visitor to the principal’s office in middle school for wearing skirts that were shorter than 2 inches above the knee. (They actually took a ruler and measured.) During those visits we had a principal who was particularly mean spirited and after several incidents of being screamed at and threatened I stopped going there when I was told to and just walked out the back door of the school. At that point I didn’t care what happened if I got caught. I just didn’t want to be in the same room with the principal. He was mean, snotty, and verbally vicious. Oddly enough, I never got in trouble for leaving by the back door. To this day I can’t figure out why they never called my parents. Maybe they didn’t notice that I was gone. Interesting. They sure noticed a lot of other things that had no real importance. Anyway, I certainly remember many terrible teachers and the emotional and physical repercussions of making a minor mistake during my school years. When I finally got out of school, I had nightmares well into adulthood about having to go back to school again. Those dreams could have been a forewarning regarding the behavior of future employers because I have had supervisors who behaved the same way in jobs I have had. The realization upon awakening in the morning that it wasn’t true was a tremendous relief to me. How public schools and teachers have evolved in to what they are like now is amazing to me. I feel badly for the children as well as the teachers who are afraid to go near the kids but I feel very conflicted and confused about how the situation got this way. Public schools appear to be war zones now and I am damn grateful that there are no school aged children in my family. I couldn’t sleep nights if there were for fear of sending them to school in the morning and maybe never seeing them again.

I don’t think that there is any hope for the way things are in the foreseeable future. I don’t think that there are any rules you can change or laws that you can pass that will turn things around now. People are hell bent and determined now to make someone pay for their fear and unhappiness. This is the case in nearly every facet of life in America. Everyone talks about it but little is being done about it. The reason that little is being done about it is because there is no profit in fixing it. Find a way to make money from correcting the imbalance and you will see things get done. As far as unruly children are concerned there have been a few attempts to change behavior patterns with military like reform schools. These schools are “for profit” by the way. The thinking behind it is to “whip these kids into shape” but I cannot see that they have improved anything. A teacher in Florida once told me that every child in his class was either in jail or going to jail. That was more than a decade ago. I wonder what the situation there is like now? Those children are adults now, at least those who survived their childhood are. Troubled people produce troubled children so the cycle of crime and violence can only multiply.

Can we change people? No, we cannot, but we can promote a different way of thinking to help them make a change themselves. We aren’t doing that, though. Here we teach profit and promotion of the self. People learn more from movies, music, YouTube, and social media than they will ever learn from school and they can pick and choose from these things what they think will give them an advantage over others. Gaining ascendancy over your peers is the highest goal that most people set for themselves now and we have taught them that because in today’s world few give a damn about anything other than being better and better off than everyone else. Don’t expect any better behavior than this as long as all we see around us is how badly we have been cheated and mistreated by people in power. It is good to know the truth about what is going on in our world but that knowledge needs to be followed by information and hard work toward stopping it. That isn’t happening. Telling us the unvarnished truth in too many cases is only told to incite anger about it. Well, it worked. We are damned angry. But the social and political structure here is not set up in a way that we can change it without relying on the very perpetrators of the injustice to fix it. They aren’t going to. The crimes that they commit against humanity serve them too well.

People tend to believe that those who are in power would not be in their position if they were not qualified to be there. That is so far from the truth as to be laughable now. There is a saying that “scum rises to the top”. But what can we do about it? Nothing. This is what people are now. They are inhuman and childish and narcissistic because anyone who has the funding and the resources to be elected into public office now is already adept at kissing up and grandstanding to get what they want or they wouldn’t get very far politically. You don’t get Socialism and human rights advocates out of people who can be bought. So, is there any hope for us? I would say that there isn’t unless we draw the Tower card again like we did in 2016. That year ushered in an administration that took us to the gates of Hell and to the brink of collapse. That was change of the worst possible kind. In 2024 we need to be praying that the Tower will blast us back to a place where we can pick up from the rubble and start again armed with what we now know and how we had better never forget the lessons that we have learned from the school of hard knocks that we should have earned a degree in by now. Not everyone will have learned enough to get a diploma but those of us who have faced our own reckoning and paid dearly for the lessons we have learned need to stand up and blaze a new trail. If we cannot or will not do that, our future will remain on its current path and the body count will be staggering.

Halloween 2023 in a Horror Movie World

I love Halloween. It was much simpler when I was a child than it is now. It makes me dreadfully sad to think about how today’s children cannot experience it the way it used to be. There was a time when one of the coolest things you could do after dressing up and getting a bag full of candy was to stay up late and watch scary movies on television with family and friends.

In the early days of television there was The Vampira Show. This was before my time but I learned about her from the movie Ed Wood.  If you lived in the mid-south region of America in the 1960s you could watch Fantastic Features, with the Monster of Ceremonies, Sivad, a very fun vampire with a southern accent. In other parts of the country there was Creature Feature, with Dr. Paul Bearer, and probably many other scary cool guys who hosted classic horror movies on television. By the 1980s there was Elvira’s Movie Macabre. If this kind of thing still exists, I have not seen it, but even the fake ones like Count Floyd were fun to watch.  The cable networks, Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics used to have horror movie marathons during the entire month of October but now many people cannot afford to have cable tv. You would have to look very hard now to find something that isn’t real life horror in a world with terrible wars, people carrying handguns into grocery stores, and human predators who are everywhere with no empathy for anyone, including children.

You can still wear a costume and put on makeup today but you can’t even rent monster movie videos anymore. The makeup now is on par with what SFX artists do for film and television. I’m sure that even Stan Winston would be impressed with what is available to us. My daughter can do wonders with makeup and she is totally self-taught. She has re-created fantastic characters such as the Frankenstein monster and frighteningly real zombies that would scare the hell out of you if you saw them on any night that wasn’t Halloween, but the real monsters now are very much like Wednesday Addams spoke of in the 1990’s film, The Addams Family. They are “homicidal maniacs” who don’t wear a costume because “they look just like everybody else”. They are your coworkers. They are the kids that your children go to school with. They are the kooks who show up at the dollar store in boxer shorts and a tee shirt carrying pepper spray looking for a victim, and they are out there every single day. They make you afraid to participate in life outside of your door and even inside your house when home invasions are rapidly rising everywhere. I haven’t felt comfortable giving out candy on Halloween for years because opening your front door to strangers now is much too risky.

Halloween was taken away from children decades ago by adults. The costume section of any store today has a huge selection of adult costumes and maybe ⅓ of it is for children. The cost of candy has skyrocketed and even though most people would only give out candy that is wrapped, by the 1980’s local hospitals would X-ray your children’s candy for free because by then you couldn’t be sure that it was safe.

This year many people are unable to participate in the holiday because they simply cannot afford to. To be honest, I remember people taking their children out on Halloween when I was a child just so they could get free food. It was junk food for sure, but at least it was something to eat. Many small-town schools back then didn’t have cafeterias and I knew of many children who got an hour for lunch to go home and eat but they lived too far away to get there and back to school within an hour so they stayed at the school playground with nothing to do and nothing to eat during lunch hour. I was too young to think about how tragic this was at the time but I wondered why it was this way. Even now, I hear people complain about schools giving free breakfast and lunch to children. Why would anyone believe that it is ok to deny people something to eat? The dollar menu at fast food restaurants disappeared years ago. SNAP benefits have been cut for people in need and many people still complain that the program even exists. People in war ravaged countries are being denied basic human necessities right now, and though many people are loudly protesting about it there is little being done to change it.

Should we stop celebrating Halloween altogether for safety reasons, or reasons of poverty? Corporate fascists would be more horrified at losing revenue if you do not buy their candy and costumes and home decor than they would be at seeing a zombie apocalypse. I believe that we should continue to celebrate All Hallows Eve but give the day back to the children. We should be able to make it safe for them as well but I fear that we won’t because we have become so selfish and greedy and too many people have never grown up. I don’t know how so many people manage to give their children cell phones when I can barely afford them and internet service but I see children and teens glued to their phones and chattering away incessantly everywhere I go. For some kids this is all their life is. If an adult takes their phone for whatever reason some of them lose their minds and react violently. I recently saw a news story where two underage siblings stole their mother’s car and ran away when she took their phones as punishment for some kind of misbehavior. They managed to get 100s of miles away before they were found.

We have created a world that is more terrifying than any monster movie that I have ever seen. Giant mutated bugs, vampires, hostile aliens, zombies, and ghosts are scary fun to watch, but killer viruses, serial killers, disgruntled employees, spurned suitors, jealous lovers and ex-lovers, citizens with AR-15s and AK-47s are killing us faster than Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger put together and nowhere near as predictably as the fictional monsters. To live in a safer world will require so much more work on everyone’s part than many people are willing to do. If you happened to see a real ghost or noticed demonic behavior in the people you know you would get up off your backside and find a ghost hunter or a priest lightning fast, but we allow war and violence every single day from people with political power and authority. As long as we worship these kinds of people in societies and fear that they are better than us there isn’t much hope for waking up from the “nightmare” on our streets. Doesn’t this scare you? It should. Human monsters are running amuck all over the planet and it isn’t likely that you will wake up on November 1st with a sigh of relief. It isn’t fiction any more. It is a reality that we literally gave our blessing to because we didn’t see the signs of our own demise coming as a result of our preference for ignorance. There will be no happy ending here for far too many, but some will believe that they are immune. Why do we allow that?

Tired of Halloween and “kiddie spook stories”? Look around. The horror is real and in your town. You cannot turn it off or leave the theater. We fear information that tells us how things really are and how we became the way we are. Vaping is viewed as more dangerous than a gun. Being honest with ourselves about our history is something that cannot be allowed. There are people who want to ban Halloween but the annihilation of entire cultures is acceptable. Think it over this coming Tuesday night and ask yourself why we are willing to take all of the fun out of life for our children and are willing to replace it with untruths and virtual reality.

“What kind of sick mind operates like that?!” - Dolores Fuller from the movie Ed Wood

Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted to Money

I have come to the conclusion after several decades of watching humanity and democracy get flushed down the toilet that the only way to stop the flood that has gone in to the sewer system is to take away the money. The people who have amassed great fortunes are using it to insulate themselves from having to bear any responsibility for how badly their actions are crushing anything that stands in the way of their accumulating more, and those of us who stand below them are finding out that we have little or no power to stop them because they intend to destroy us if we try. If their true power is money then it is a fact that their money has to be taken away from them. If someone is beating people to death with a hammer you would take the hammer away from them. It isn’t quite as likely that you would take their gun away from them if that was the weapon that they were using, not in America anyway, but that is another story, and taking away the weapon of money, if that is what they are wielding will be even more difficult but very necessary. The only people that I see with enough power to do that is our government. Since our government is unwilling to do it, we can only sit and watch as the destruction worsens if we don’t get up and find another way.

There is a scene in the Disney film Candleshoe where the children who live at the Candleshoe estate are trying to sell eggs at a village market to make enough money to keep from losing their home. The character, Casey, is doing her best American-style sales pitch to entice customers into buying. Another character, Cluny, begins trying her hand at selling with the intent of outdoing Casey by making outlandish claims about how the eggs will cure a multitude of health issues. She is told by the eldest boy that she cannot make claims like that, to which she responds, “Who cares as long as we sell more eggs!” Sounds like a true capitalist to me. Who cares as long as we make more money? So tell me, who does care that deadly fires, floods, poverty, hunger, crime, homelessness, gun violence, and lack of healthcare is killing thousands of people every day? You might hear some lip service about it from government representatives but it is a fact that they aren’t doing a damn thing to stop it. Who cares as long as we sell eggs?

Whether you live or die now depends on whether or not you can pay someone else for the privilege. I would really like to meet the person who decided that this was a good idea. Even more so I would like to meet the citizenry who decided that this was a good idea and never once sat down and wondered if it wasn’t a ridiculous thing to support. Once actual slavery was abolished in this country we were duped into accepting a modified form of it which looked better for us on the surface. Physical brutality was removed from the equation but fear was attached to employment then that our ability to make a living could be taken away from us at any time based on a whim. This system still exists more than 150 years later except in the case of unionized jobs. Servitude and wage slavery is a bargain that people struck with the aggressive and elitist thinking people who sold us the idea that they would take care of the problems that many of us feel inadequate at doing in exchange for it. Too many people have been willing to accept this rather than give up their perceived freedom from having to make the tough decisions that are required of a society that sees to the welfare of all. It was actually almost inevitable that those who were willing to put forth some creativity and muscle to make this an easier world to live in might get big headed and believe that “because of their highly superior brain” they should rule the world. We let them adopt that mentality and rarely, if ever, stood in the way of that kind of thinking.

In Astrology it is understood that some signs in the zodiac tend to be leader types while others make better organizers and so on. We aren’t meant to assume that any particular sign is superior to any other. What we actually need to assume is that it takes all kinds of people to create a civilization that is balanced. It is a belief in the superiority of a few that creates a tiered system of entitlement in most every aspect of life but especially in the workplace. That point of view is the main culprit in what has given us this warped way of living. More and more people are realizing how badly out of control that system is now but it has gone on so long and is so ingrained in our belief system that it will take a great deal of force and determination to wrestle the hammer away from those who wield it. In the legend of the Nordic God, Thor,  (if you believe the Marvel Studio’s version of it in the movie Thor) he loses his hammer, the symbol of his power, through arrogance, immaturity, and irresponsibility. Those who wield the economic hammer here are hundreds of years overdue for losing theirs. They have misused and abused their authority with respect to their responsibility to the people who have stepped aside to let them do what they are assumed to do best which is contribute their knowledge and abilities to the welfare and benefit of all. It is a very commendable thing to have had the foresight and resources to start a business to manufacture the necessities of life but it is only that.  The actual production is done by others, and to believe that as a CEO you deserve 300 times as much salary for having and implementing the idea is preposterous when you cannot produce 300 times the amount of work product that your employees do by yourself.

A great many people have finally gotten it through their heads that this is the major cause of why we have so much inequality in this world but they are at a loss as to how to stop it. People who have unionized jobs are attempting to right this wrong now but the vast majority of the people are not so lucky as to have a unionized job. It will take a government that actually sees and understands the needs of its people to change this. Without that, it will take brute force from the people to ever eliminate poverty. Will the people do it? Many decades ago, Governor Jerry Brown, of California was running for President and a national magazine put out a headline for a story about it saying, “Jerry Brown wants to give power to the people. But do the people want it?”. I guess that they didn’t because he did not win. We will have to collectively decide that we do want the power to live without poverty and stop the multitude of problems that have been created by greed and rampant inequality. Getting people to understand that this cannot be achieved without taking responsibility for how they have been complicit in supporting a system that allows corporate greed to remain and flourish has to be a top priority.  We will not be able to eliminate inequality in the workplace or anywhere else as long as we keep inequality in our individual belief systems. As long as we use money to buy ourselves a hierarchy in every facet of life as we do now, the ones who have the most money will see to it that we are never able to achieve it. The money is a drug that we are addicted to. Instead of taking it out of the equation we keep believing that we just need to have more to keep up with the higher level addicts who never believe that they have enough. They have already shown us that we will just have to deal with withdrawal because they are not about to share more of their drug. If we do not keep the buck from stopping at their house we will have to show them non-participation in their drug deals. We can do the work but we have to prove to them that they will not receive 300 times the income for what they do versus what we do for them. When there is no money there is no more leverage. Will they all shut down their businesses in protest? If they do, they will starve like the rest of us, or the people with the actual work skills will get up and do it differently and invite others to come with them if they want to live. Yes, it has come to that.