The Lazy Lazoon

In the 1960s there was a British television series called Fireball XL5 that had a cast of marionettes and is great fun to watch. It is science fiction set in outer space and has many never before heard of alien races that the Fireball crew come in contact with. Some are friendly and some are hostile but there is one race of beings called the Lazoon that are so incredibly docile and unobtrusive that they are darn near extinct from not having the capacity to defend themselves in any way.  One particular Lazoon, named Zoonie, lives with one of the Fireball crew named Venus who is their medical officer. She allows Zoonie free reign in her house and never loses her temper with him even if he messes up situations frequently because he understands next to nothing about their culture and mannerisms. The best he can manage of their language is to say “welcome home” and “full power” and a few other simple phrases. He does require supervision even though he tends to sleep a great deal of the time. He is quite a unique character and would likely be exasperating for some people to tolerate, but he isn’t for Dr. Venus. She understands and trusts him like no one else. I wonder how many of us in real life would be so accommodating?

I was in a Walmart store recently and heard an employee talking to another customer as they and I were at the self-checkouts. She said, “The energy here is really bad. Nobody that works here wants to work here.” It isn’t hard to feel empathy for what she said. The store is always crowded. There are always aggressive people in there. Many people are tired and frustrated about everything from the hot weather, the prices on just about everything having increased since your last visit to the store, the screaming and crying children who are possibly more troubled about having to be there than the adults are, the customers who are oblivious to the fact that they are blocking the aisles with their shopping carts, and the fact that there are sometimes five or more of them in their entourage who are congregating at the end of an aisle talking about their grievances in life and making it very difficult to quickly do your shopping and get the hell out of the store that you don’t want to be in either.

“Times is hard.” Mrs. Lovett sang about in the musical Sweeney Todd. They are very hard and not getting any easier. I could name off about 50 reasons for why that is so, but in this post, I will confine my ranting to just one of them; why people seemingly don’t want to work. I say, seemingly because I don’t believe that this assessment is truly accurate. They have futility confused with laziness.

In a capitalist society it is understood that you will have to do some kind of work or you will die in the gutter pretty quickly. There has never been a time in history when that wasn’t so. In the 20th century there were some people who realized that not everyone was capable of managing a full time job and some accommodations were made to help them sustain life with government assistance. That was truly a blessing. For the rest of us who understood that it was up to us to make it on our own we at least carried into that endeavor a mindset that whatever kind of employment that was available to us would have within it at least an adequate amount of compensation for our labor. I don’t know if that mindset was truly possible for everyone but I am sure that it seemed reasonable to assume that it would be true. There can be no reasonable assumption of that now. In fact, far too many jobs in this country will not pay you enough to even cover housing alone. I cringe every time I hear that there are cities here in America that have rental houses and apartments where the rent is 5 thousand dollars a month and up. Who the hell can pay that much when there is a minimum wage of less that $8.00 an hour in this country? You might get extremely lucky in this world and find yourself a job that pays $50k per year but that will not be the amount that you will actually receive in take-home pay. What you will actually have after taxes and insurance premiums are deducted will be about $32k per year. Divide that by 12 months and you have approximately $2,666.00 per month in actual money. It is ludicrous to think that anyone on the planet can manage to live on that amount when rent can be more than three times that per month. What is even more ludicrous is to think that an employer will give you a salary of 50k per year for any of just about 75% percent of the jobs that are available in this country. You can tell me that people just don’t want to work anymore but the fact is that they know that it isn’t going to do them a hill of beans good to work when receiving a living wage for the work is on the impossible list for far too many of us. They will tell you that you are a lazy slob for not wanting to accept a substandard compensation for your labor but they won’t tell you how you can manage to live in a world that “wants 11 dollar bills and you only got 10” ( from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues).

 

And now that we have established that the vast majority of Americans are well and truly screwed when it comes to even approaching the ability to adequately sustain themselves here we need to understand that this isn’t our only problem. Many of us also do not have healthcare coverage. Many of us also cannot afford a car. Many of us cannot afford to pay for childcare. And we also do not have free television service which prior to the 1970s most people had if they could afford at least a second hand tv and had access to an outdoor antenna. Watching television used to be one of the most prized pastimes for overtired and overworked people to come home to in the evening. You may think that not being able to watch television has little importance in this world but without a way to tune out how difficult life can be sometimes you cannot reset and recharge the energy that a constant barrage of the bad news and frustration that life hands you every single day takes out of you. There weren’t very many channels to watch back then but there was a multitude of very good and very entertaining shows that the whole family could watch together. You can still watch many of those shows on YouTube today. There were no parental warnings shown before the programs started that told you that there was content in them that was unsuitable for children. Such a world used to exist?!? You bet it did! Ask your grandparents.

One thing that is definitely not free in today’s world is the ability to communicate. You are more than screwed if you don’t have a computer or a smartphone and internet service and WiFi. None of those things are cheap. Multiply the cost of them by the number of people in your family and deduct that from the actual salary that you are getting. You might be able to just break even if you live in a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. No utility bills, no car, and…never mind. Oscar probably can’t manage either.

I would really like to see a world where everyone including beings like Zoonie had good homes and people like Venus to see to it that they can live a decent and worthwhile life regardless of their circumstances. That really isn’t too much to ask for from humanity. I never heard anyone tell Venus in Fireball XL5 that she was stupid for taking care of Zoonie. His life mattered as much as anyone’s. We have a cat that we named Zoonie. He is one of a litter of four boys and we love him dearly. One of his brothers is a bit of an efficiency and organization fanatic. He rearranges things in their room all the time but he never gets scrappy with the others if they happen to nudge him out of the way at mealtimes. In cat culture he may be the best at “keeping house” and “keeping the peace” but that does not lessen the contribution that Zoonie and his other two brothers give to their and our lives. Capitalism shouldn’t be a mandatory way of life. Everyone has something good and needed in this world to give. Whether it is Zoonie the Lazoon or Zoonie the cat or any one of us that exist, do not judge them by their strengths and weaknesses and then discount them as useless because they don’t possess the skills to keep someone else wealthy. Like Venus, know that they matter for the mere fact that they are here. And get rid of the word lazy. Every life deserves the best that we can give.  No one has the right to take us for everything that we have or covet a world where we are continuously forced on to the endangered species list for their continued gain.

Just for fun, here is an episode of Fireball XL5.

     

 

Caring for everyone is possible. We just need to strive for making selfishness impossible by setting a better example.

“This means giving up no freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly.”                          

                    -from the film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

And Who Will Save Greece?

A few months ago, I wrote on this blog about Inishbiggle Island off the coast of Ireland and how the Irish government refuses to help the few remaining residents there who are struggling and not winning the battle to save their home. I asked why the people who speak every day about how only Socialism can save the planet now are not stepping up to save a place that could survive if they would turn their attention away from talking about what needs to be done and actually doing it. Inishbiggle is a small place, but it is not without some resources to try to jumpstart itself again. I have to assume that the reason no one will help them try to start again is because the only people who could help are Capitalists and they are unwilling to lift a finger without an assurance that they would make large profits for themselves in the doing. I look around here in America and in other countries such as Greece and I see and hear about how they are also teetering on the brink of collapse, with thousands of their citizens leaving the countries by the day. Are we not long for the end of our perceived paradise homes as well? It seems as though no one who could change things has any desire to do so as they have pretty much tapped out all of their sources that could produce more wealth for them, so they seem content to sit on their assets in their arrogance and look for new opportunities to acquire profit by seeking to steal it from their people and other countries instead of picking up the pieces of their collapsing houses and refurbishing what is already there. But that is not the capitalist way of doing things.

Journalist David Brooks of the New York Times said (reluctantly and halfheartedly) last year that society made a great error in assuming that manufacturing was no longer the way to a brighter future for Americans. He, and far too many others, projected that what we really needed here was more intellectuals and technology experts to create a great and prosperous future for ourselves. As a result, everyone was encouraged to go to college and pursue “thinking” careers instead of manufacturing and industrial ones. After several decades of doing just that we find ourselves in deep financial insecurity across the board when we realize that we have lost too many of the very things that built this country. There are not enough skilled people to maintain our infrastructure and keep and maintain a thriving middle class. Nobody wants to do these “crap jobs” as they are called anymore. Supposedly, the only people who are willing to work in agriculture, construction, and other “crap jobs” are immigrants, and we don’t want them here. If we ever allowed them to better themselves, they would also want to escape from low wage and dead-end jobs and go to college to become thinkers and talkers, too. We were pushed into believing that maintaining a balanced society was for someone else to do. It worked. We believed it. And now we have thousands of people here who are overburdened with college debt and an inability to find a job that pays them enough to give them a decent standard of living or they cannot find a job at all. It is helpful that David Brooks came to realize that our elitist thinking helped to create the terrible situation that we find ourselves in now, but if he proffered a real solution for how we can get ourselves out of this situation I did not see it.

Before I began writing this essay I went back and revisited a post that I wrote in 2015 called “An Open Letter To Greece." I am sure that if there were any politicians or economists who happened to see this post they were probably thinking “Who the hell is this woman, and how could she be so crazy as to believe that any of this is possible in the real world?”  It is now 10 years later and I honestly do not believe that anything I suggested in that letter was any more ridiculous than what I have been seeing out of politicians and the ruling classes over the past decade when you consider that the actions that they actually took to address their problems did not do a hill of beans good as they still have the same problems that are now coupled with more debt and the loss of thousands of their citizens who are leaving the country in droves. Believe me, America has been no better at fixing their problems either, but several wrongs do not make a right anywhere, and the people are so much worse off now that I don’t even know if handing them a farm in the Australian Outback for $1.00 would make a difference today.

In the aftermath of WW2 most of Europe was nearly destroyed. How to build back up from that had to look like a most daunting task. Germany had to take a hard look at itself and own up to how badly their actions had devastated so much. They actually did take a hard look. The Nuremberg Trials were proof of that. A great many people were held accountable for their actions. It is my understanding that they also did not try to whitewash what they did like many other countries have done. Their schools taught later generations the truth of what happened and Germany was rebuilt and rethought as to how they would not make the same mistakes again. That absolutely may not be the way things are there now, but back in the 20th century there was an admirable effort on their part to do better and live in peace. And it appeared that the rest of the world supported their efforts.

So, when I hear now that Greece cannot (or will not) take the necessary steps to backtrack and assess what has kept them on the edge of a cliff for far too long, I cannot help but wonder why they, and yes, everyone else who is pretty much in the same sinking boat, still refuse to look back and then look ahead to how a dose of Socialism might redirect them into a situation with a future. In case they haven’t noticed, there really is no capitalist solution to what they now have. Without elevating the standard of living for the people who do the actual work in this world you will never not be in crisis. At the risk of being called a racist for daring to bring up the film Gone With The Wind, when it depicted a time of slavery and absurd thinking on the part of the American South, I cannot think of a better example of where we are now as a society. After the Civil War ended and the entire South was decimated, Scarlett O’Hara went home to try to pick up the pieces of the family plantation and their lost way of life and she is asked by one of the house servants “Who gonna milk that cow, Miss Scarlett? We is house workers.” Here is the truth of a people who were so preoccupied with their graciousness and grandiosity that they never counted on losing their slaves. The very people who were smart enough and skilled enough to see to it that there was food to eat and their house was clean and well maintained so they could sit around in the parlor and smoke cigars and set the rules for living that everyone else had to abide by could no longer be relied on.  Here we are again. The people who actually knew how to do important things have “run off” or been kicked aside as useless by all of the superior thinkers. How long will it be before we cannot find anyone who knows how to milk a cow, or change a tire, or anything else that requires life skills and the intelligence of how things work and how to maintain them? Not long, I would think. We already have junkyards full of over-priced cars, auto mechanics who are so overwhelmed with work that it can be two or three weeks before you can get an appointment with them to bring your car in for much needed repairs, and landfills that are specifically for non-working electronics because there is a shortage of people who know anything about how to fix them. People know how to use them, but they find that it is faster and more efficient to just discard them rather than wait for some overworked tech person to try to repair them. Not to mention the fact that many things that we rely on daily are part of a “planned obsolescence” theory that wants you to never stop needing to replace them after a short period of time so their profits never stop pouring in.

So, back to my original question, who will save Greece? You might want to look for a Jeffrey Sachs, who helped pull Poland out of their financial crisis in the 1980’s by telling them to ask for debt forgiveness from their creditors, and they actually got it. But you will have to remember that you cannot go back to your capitalist practices once you get straight or you will find yourself back where you were. For any country that finds itself teetering on the brink of collapse like Greece, and like America, and too many others, you might look around to see if you have a “Jeffrey Sachs” available there. Greece does have Yanis Varoufakis, if he still lives there. And America actually has Jeffrey, but I don’t see anyone listening to him except the progressive media and people like me. Pray that it isn’t already too late for us to find some “field hands” who actually know how to do something to set things right. Without them, forget about having any milk to drink when you mindlessly threw the baby and the cow out with the bath water.

"I don't care if you die."

-This was said to an anti-capitalist protester by a wealthy resident of Nantucket Island

This is a dreadful time for people right now.  Unfortunately, most of the troubles are not new. They have just gotten much worse. Too many people continuously blame people in need for having the need, which most of the people doing the blaming are responsible for creating. On the other end of the spectrum there are the have-nots who are angry for being have-nots and being aggressive about it to any random person that they may encounter, just because. Having worked in the American legal system in years past and in the social services system I can tell you that most of the people who came and went through the places that I worked were nearly all guilty as hell of being aggressive, hateful, smug, snotty, impatient, threatening, and condescending. Numerous times I and my co-workers and supervisors had our lives threatened for just being there and trying to help and do our jobs. I’ve had people tell me that they knew where I lived and if I didn’t give them what they wanted they would show up at my house. When I worked in the Circuit Clerk’s office, we used to get letters from incarcerated people saying that when they got out of prison, they were going to kill us, the prosecutor, and the judge who sentenced them. I saw a great deal of hostility from attorneys who just felt like being jackasses on any given day if it took longer than they wanted to bother with to process their documents. I left the legal profession after a few years without ever looking back because it was damn tiring to be in the line of fire just about every day by someone who, as they say, had a ”cob crossways." I saw citizens, lawyers, civic leaders, police officers, social elites, doctors, ministers, and children get carted off to jail and I wondered if anyone in the entire town was actually nice or law abiding when it came down to it. An attorney that I worked with and admired very much was arrested and sent to prison for embezzling child support funds. Socially prominent doctors were getting sued for malpractice on a regular basis and to see them in public you would think that they didn’t give one big damn about being accused of causing the death or injury of anyone. Most of them settled out of court with the plaintiffs, and once their cases were settled it wasn’t a shock to find myself filing legal papers against them again after a few months or a year. One of the biggest recipients of malpractice suits against him was also the head of the local Republican Party. A doctor that I had worked with many times was arrested and sent to prison for “loan lapping” along with a prominent local banker. I lived in one corrupt little town, for sure. Wealthy big shots were charged with sexual harassment, indecent exposure, and pedophilia frequently. There was lots of gossip and giggling about them behind their backs but I don’t remember anyone in their social groups reacting like it was a terrible thing and they should be punished. They didn’t care. It didn’t happen to them. Is it any wonder that there is no peace anywhere on the planet now since people have never bothered to address this kind of hell that just keeps getting worse?

I have only had health insurance coverage three times in my life. Each time it was very short lived. I had it twice for a short period of time because it was tied to employment on short lived jobs. When my husband had a heart attack, he was fired from his job for being unable to work. His employer did not give a damn about it at all except he wanted me to return the company vehicle. I had to come home from out of state (where my husband was in the hospital) and get my stepfather to drive the vehicle back for me because I did not know how to drive a standard transmission. There were no condolences sent or a final paycheck given. The only thing that saved me from financial catastrophe and emotional collapse was that we qualified for Medicaid because we had two young children. Because of that, the whole family received coverage. Medicaid was a god send. My husband was in the hospital for four months before he died. He was suffering from heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease and uncontrollable diabetes. After his heart surgery all of his major organs began to fail and I was told that a liver transplant might be his only chance. As it turned out, he didn’t have a chance at all. He was only 38 years old. As devastating as all of this was for me, one thing that helped save my sanity was the fact that Medicaid paid for all of his medical care except $255.00 for blood transfusions that he received. I couldn’t believe it. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the bill, and cried uncontrollably. I never expected them to pay the thousands of dollars that we were charged. I am still so grateful to this day that they did. I can tell you for a fact that it wouldn’t happen now. In the state where I live today, they are throwing people off the Medicaid rolls right and left by the hundreds of thousands, eliminating desperately needed care for infants, children, pregnant women, disabled people, and the elderly. They don’t give one damn if these people live or die. In their mind, it serves them right for having the audacity to be sick and poor. It breaks my heart to see this happening knowing that there used to be a semblance of decency in some places. You can thank corporate lobbyists and wealthy elitists like the man in Nantucket for this. They bought government cooperation in their quest to deny people in need in order to stay ungodly wealthy and superior. You can also blame the government for allowing themselves to be bought. Lobbying should be outlawed because too many people are willing to sell their souls for a profit. I have seen this time and time again throughout my life. Once people get a taste of affluence and a welcome into elitist circles, they more often than not feel a new entitlement to never look back upon the time when they may have had an actual heart. They continue to believe that they are still good people, it is just that somehow the people that they rose above are irrelevant now and do not deserve to do as well as they are. I cannot say that the people who have turned the insurance companies into multibillion dollar establishments ever really had a caring and generous heart, but I know that some state and federal entities used to. Now, very few of them do. These people are not really any different from the people in the corrupt little town that I used to live in. Much of the problem is that they have never really been held accountable in their own peer group and since that is the only group that keeps them in wealth and power, no one else matters. It is a narcissist’s game, and it is the only game that they want to play. So, who can stop them from being this way? A person with a gun? No. That just happened and they are appalled that they are being called on to account for their cruelty and selfish behavior. It will take a refusal to let them lobby/buy their way out of this by their peers and our government to stop their behavior. Without the rest of the elitists rediscovering their own humanity and humility and discontinuing to turn a blind eye to these tragedies we will never get beyond the situation that turns the rest of us into desperate and furious people who will at some point start a class war that can only end in the death of this nation. It has already begun. Those who can stop this are not yet willing to. Bottom line, you just have to be human enough to not take the damn money!

We are coming to the close of this year and I wonder how much money people will be spending on gifts and gadgets for Christmas that people do not need. If the insurance companies would take the money that they have collected and hoarded from all of the people whose only wish was to be well again and put it into a government fund, not the pockets of politicians, to create the single payer healthcare system that we want and desperately need we could immediately do away with a great many of the serious situations that we now find ourselves in.  Medicare for all sounds like the perfect solution for America but I actually believe that Medicaid for all would be the better choice. I have seen firsthand that what it used to be can be like a miracle without monthly premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. The companies would still have homeowner’s and automobile insurance to stay in business. Lower the 10 - 20-million-dollar CEO salaries to a reasonable amount to maintain a comfortable living. No one on the planet needs that much money to live on. Also, return the hospitals and medical practitioners back to nonprofit.

Before it becomes too late to stop a troubled citizen from taking a desperate stand on our immigration crisis there needs to be an emergency solution proffered to rebalance the system. We need to create a coalition of citizens who believe in and support immigration to step in and take responsibility for how badly we have bungled our current policies. These people really need to be willing to sponsor immigrants one person or one family at a time. This can be done legally. Every person that strongly believes in freely allowing immigrants to come to their country needs to also realize that to promote this has to mean that they will take some responsibility for the support of every immigrant; financial responsibility and integration in to communities’ responsibility. Our tax dollars designated to address the situation have been blown to hell by incompetent administrators who use the bulk of the money to pay capitalist entities to do a half-ass job and rake in much of the money for their own pockets. What we have created and allowed to happen with haphazard rules and policies so far is ruining lives and ending lives. Do not designate yourself as a sanctuary city or country without proving that you have a support system in place to manage it. Countries and societies are collapsing under the weight of what we have allowed to happen up to now. Criminal opportunists are taking advantage of the incredible chaos and getting elected to positions that they are not qualified to manage even if they really wanted to. If you support immigration, really support it by sponsoring these people who only want a better home and way of life. Your governments are not capable of solving this problem. They have proven that.

We are going to have a new government administration in January and if the current President and government officials wanted to, they could do much here at the 11th hour to set this country upon a different path. Right now, is truly our only opportunity. After January 20th you can kiss goodbye the possibility of ever righting the wrongs here because there aren’t enough people in America who understand the hell that they asked for on November 5th. Nonviolent people  in prison right now whose only crime was protesting unfair treatment and discrimination should be given clemency. Eliminate all for profit correctional facilities. Hold the money hoarders in this country accountable for their unwillingness to pay taxes, give a living wage and fewer work hours to everyone who works, and give an equivalent of the living wage to those who cannot work for whatever reason. Raise Social Security payments to that level as well. Eliminate student debt and medical debt. If you can imagine these things, you can do them. If you cannot imagine them, then peace will never be imaginable on this planet either.

While it is painfully evident that too many people do not care if you live or die or starve to death or become homeless now, there was a time when it wasn’t so fashionable to be this way. If you were always so uncaring like this it was at least not so supported by most people to brazenly show it. We really must hold each other accountable for the consequences of what we have created. So many horrific crimes against humanity go unpunished because our society doesn’t recognize them as crimes because they are being committed by the wealthy, the powerful, and the elitists. We turn a blind eye and let it continue because holding them accountable requires a different mindset toward their perceived superiority. When a “David” takes a stand to stop a ”Goliath” we need to recognize that it came to this because of our continued inaction to correct inhumanity and fascism. What ever crime you think that “David” has committed to stop these problems is a small price to pay for eliminating a terrible injustice. Put your pitchforks away because the law does recognize “justifiable homicide” when that is the only thing that will stop the mass murder of countless others. Learn to recognize what it takes to right a dreadful wrong. The solution isn’t always pretty and you cannot assume that evil always has an ugly face.  Putting people before profit is the only solution. Only “David” had the courage to stop the giant. We created that giant and looked away when he stepped on and killed thousands. Thank God that somebody felt compelled to step in and try to call a halt to the even bigger crime, but we need so many more of them.

There is no better time to right what is wrong than this moment, while we have Christmas to help us remember that caring and giving is (at least it used to be) a human tradition. Wake up on Christmas morning with a renewed sense of self-worth and esteem by being an integral part of a world that has decided to build up instead of tear down. Realize that peace will be your reward. Hatred and death does not have to be the legacy of this generation. There really can be a Merry Christmas to all and it can last well beyond the holiday season. We only need to make it so.

                                                                       🎄🕊️

Invited to Inishbiggle Island

YouTuber Bertie Brosnan posted a video a few days ago about Inishbiggle Island, off the coast of Ireland. (See Video Here) The name of the island sounds very whimsical like a place you would read about in a fairytale, but its story is anything but cute. It is an island with less than 20 inhabitants now and according to Bertie it is one without hope. He says that the Irish government has washed its hands of it and its people. How could this be happening? The whole world is ablaze with news stories and protests about the plight of thousands of immigrants who have made their way to just about every country on the planet seeking shelter and a new life. Billions of dollars have been spent on trying to help and accommodate them, and a great many people are angry to find them living in their countries. I honestly do not know how the world will be able to solve this crisis, but I am pretty confident that there are many people who would know how to save the island of Inishbiggle and it’s inhabitants if they were willing to look into their left-wing philosophies regarding how countries and governments across the globe have made an incredible mess in their world by focusing only on their own self interests. I have a few suggestions for the people who speak daily about how we need to do away with inequality and capitalism by remaking the world with socialism. My views are strictly the product of years of caring and observing people and the world. Expert minds in the fields of sociology and economics would probably be able to write the book on how to save Inishbiggle Island from a total demise. I am counting on that, if they are also believers in socialism and Marxism and communism. Here is their opportunity to start from scratch to remake a place that capitalism no longer wants and turn it into a place where cooperation and sustainability can be the model for the world to see.

When you watch the video, you will see that transportation from the island to mainland Ireland is a critical issue that has to be addressed. Where most countries have been digging their own graves for decades by their dependence on fossil fuels, I am certain that there are some very learned people out there who know a solution for how to solve the issue of being able to commute to the mainland in the most sustainable and eco-friendly way. Billionaires who own private islands have managed to power their estates and travel to and from their mansions. Can we not do the same for the socialist model city that we would be seeking to create? Someone once accused Senator Bernie Sanders of being the only millionaire socialist in the world. I don’t know if that is true but I can tell you if he is not alone in that it would be helpful if they would put some of their money where their mouth is. It usually takes a person who has experienced poverty to comprehend that it is even a problem.

The possibilities here are endless if the people who teach and promote better living without capitalism truly mean what they say. We can spend the rest of our lives trying to convince the “haves” in this world to step down from their pedestal and acknowledge the “have nots” by talking until we are blue in the face but where has all the talk and statistics gotten us since Karl Marx died? Bertie Brosnan is showing us an incredible starting point for all of our socialist ideals to manifest into a reality. There is no reason why some people who understand the dynamics of how to set up a society that can govern itself and sustain itself to the benefit of all can’t put their knowledge and skills to the test of what they are truly capable of when a place like Inishbiggle Island exists and is as available as an orphaned or abandoned child to be rescued and given the opportunity to live and thrive in a way that so many of us wish we could experience. Time on earth for humans is short, and when all of our talk and conjecture about how wonderful this life could be isn’t manifesting because our voices fall on too many deaf ears there has to be someone or someones to step up and say “we can do this” or our talk has been for nothing. Bless you Bertie Brosnan for showing a need that really can be addressed and built into the very model of what can be if we will put out less talk and more action into the things that we have been promoting and saying for more than a century. If you truly want to see a change, be that change and make it happen. Inishbiggle Island is waiting.

Abbie Would Be Proud

In the late 1960s activist Abbie Hoffman wrote a book called Steal This Book. He had a devil of a time getting anyone to publish it because of its title but once it was published it was widely popular. The book is a guide to living in a heavily capitalist society for those who are being financially strangled by it every single day. His view is that the only way to rid ourselves of capitalism is to hurt the enablers of it in the only way that they can understand. You have to take away their profit. He explains many ways for a person to live virtually if not totally without using money. Some of the lessons are doable but many are (I thought) utterly impossible, especially now. Capitalism has a much bigger bite on society today, but I am hearing more and more stories of people doing so many of the things that Abbie wrote about that I have to wonder how many people are still reading his book today. It is available at many bookseller outlets more than 50 years later.

Whenever you order something from Amazon, Ebay or Etsy, and possibly other venues you have to wonder how many of those things are actually coming from a “Homeboy Shopping Club”. I frequently watch videos on YouTube by a fellow named Cash Jordan who reports from his home in New York City about all of the crime and troubles there. Many times, he talks about the enormous problem that they have with shoplifting. There are hundreds of news stories in his videos of people brazenly walking into stores and picking up whatever the hell that they want and just walking out with it because the shoplifting laws there are extremely lax. In the last year or so I have had the feeling that many of my online orders are being fulfilled by sellers who have obtained the merch by “five finger discount”.

My feelings are very mixed on this subject. On the one hand I can’t help but draw upon my upbringing when I was taught that stealing is wrong. I still believe that it is, strictly speaking. I have had my house broken into before. My computer was stolen. Locked boxes with important papers were stolen, and my jewelry was stolen. I was in no position to replace any of it. It seems a bit two-faced to say that stealing is wrong in some situations but not in others, I suppose, but I cannot help but feel that I am being robbed all of the time now with incredibly high prices that I am paying for everything while the manufacturers and sellers of everything that I buy are making obscene profits. So, I cannot actually feel bad about how people are stealing tons of merchandise in broad daylight when it is (possibly) their ill-gotten gains that many times offer me these items at a price that I can afford. Retailers aren’t doing that and they are completely unapologetic about how outrageous their prices are.

We are encouraged to feel badly for these retailers who are closing their stores because of theft. Truly, I do feel bad for small businesses and family-owned stores. If this is their only source of income then that really is tragic. I used to have an Etsy shop where I sold custom made clothing to supplement my income and it was extremely helpful in making ends meet until I started getting customers who would say that there was something wrong with the item but would refuse to return it to get a refund. They wanted their money back but refused to send the item back which isn’t standard practice anywhere that I know of. If you want a refund at Walmart, you have to return the item. When the buyers didn’t get to “have their cake and eat it too” they would leave snotty reviews which ruins your shop’s reputation. Eventually it ceased to be a lucrative business and ceased to be fun. It is too bad, too, because the first 2 - 3 years that I had the shop there were many very good customers who bought from me. I miss them.

So, it is a tough call in today’s world to get irate with people who are “boldly going” and stealing thousands of items from high end stores or just stores with high end prices when they are (most likely) just people trying to get by in this world and make a living by “robbing the rich to help the poor”. I am the poor now that everything that I need to survive costs me double and even triple the amount that it used to. Good old Abbie Hoffman advocated stealing back when prices didn’t even approach what they are now, but it was his view that capitalists rob from the poor to enrich themselves and the only way to stop it is to destroy their bottom line, which is profit over people. I wish that Abbie was here now. I would love to hear his opinion on how much stealing is going on today. No one likes being stolen from but it is far worse for the average person just trying to live a decent life. The wealthy can absorb the hit. They can get reimbursed by their insurance company. I cannot afford insurance. They can write the loss off on their tax returns. My tax return looks like “poverty row” now. Large retailers have many other stores. I can’t even have my Etsy shop anymore. So honest to God, I and millions of others need a Robin Hood advocate in this world now. And we still need an Abbie Hoffman to speak out loudly about the injustice of the capitalist system. It needs to go.

“Kids Just Wanna Have Somethin’ To Do”

-from the song Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue by The Ramones

Believe me friends, my use of the above titled song and the quote from it are NOT an endorsement of glue sniffing in any way, shape, or form. That is not what I do. My intent is only to make a point regarding how some people do not understand how a society would not collapse and die if every citizen received a basic income from the government equal to a living wage. The argument that I hear from people regarding giving us a basic income is that “nobody would ever get up off their ass and work again.” I think that is baloney and I have said so here on this blog many times before. There is one issue that does have some validity that is that there are some who would stay at home glued to their computers and smartphones schmoozing on social media sites all day without a care in the world, but that situation is one that I will address in a forthcoming post. It will require a bit more analysis. It may be true that there are some people who couldn’t care less about the world they live in. I would never say that everyone presents their best self to the world every day of their life. It is too bad that they choose to be this way when even the slackers have something positive to contribute to their world, but you won’t see something that you refuse to look at. So yes, there would be some who wouldn’t see the benefit in making a better world for themselves or anybody else but try to set aside for the moment how some morons would be thrilled with a perceived “free ride” in the world. There is little hope for those who adopt a mentality of uselessness.  If they don’t want to understand the benefit to them and to their world by doing a job that would actually change their entire way of thinking about their own worth, we can do little about it except present an example of it in the way that we live in hopes of changing their perspective. Remove their behavior from your mindset for a few minutes. We have more important things to ponder right now.

If you are a parent, you already know that children, especially small children, love being able to help their parents with a task around the house. If you do not have children, it is a fact that you used to be one. You most likely remember wanting to be like mom and dad in that you wanted to help wash the car or work in the yard, etc. You wanted to be included. It is a very good feeling to know that you have accomplished something. You feel worth as a person, and it helps so much with your self-esteem to hear that you did a good job. This is the main point that I want to stress here. If your basic needs for living are being met with a basic income to cover them, you will still need to feel that you are needed in some way. Work provides that if it is work that you feel confident about doing. If it makes for a nicer, cleaner, and less chaotic world, all the better. I would be the first to admit that there are many jobs in this world that are not a lot of fun. Truly some of them are not as important as others but if you are an adult, you are wise enough to realize that they have worth in the larger scheme of things. I would also say that there are a lot of jobs that might fall by the wayside because their benefits are redundant, because there are hundreds of places that do the same thing such as multiple restaurants in the same town, multiple beauty salons etc. I do believe that most people are willing to delay a bit of gratification and do some of the crappy jobs to keep the world functioning in a balanced way. I think it would help if these jobs were part time. I also believe that it would be a tremendous benefit to the entire world if we stopped promoting glamour, sexuality, fame, and wealth as ideals. These things are the backbone of capitalism and advertising because it keeps people focused on striving for things that make a ton of money for them. To be effective, they must make you believe that you can be so much better than having to focus on those things that sustain and keep life going. I am counting on the fact that most adults are aware of what it takes to keep the world running in the best possible way for all of us and if they no longer have to experience the terror of being unable to live a safe and decent life or be constantly bombarded with messages of superiority, they will channel their energies into the tasks that make it possible to stay that way. Life is a gift. Food, shelter, and healthcare should be a human right, but in order to get and keep those things there must be gratitude for them and a contribution of your time and effort to maintain them. Karl Marx said it best, and though I am going to paraphrase here he basically said that we need to contribute to our society according to our ability and take from the world according to our need. A promotion of this ideal needs to be proffered starting in childhood and shown to us in a way that reflects it as our best selves truly are what gives us our best possible world to live in.

The above referenced song was written by Dee Dee Ramone in the 1970s. This was actually a part of his experience in life. A bored kid with nothing to do. Somewhere along the line he learned that he could sniff glue and it would keep him from being bored and give him something to do. I suspect that thinking like this, springs from overworked and overwhelmed parents who don’t have the time or the inclination to show an example of better pastimes than this. That happens way too much of the time. Capitalism does that. As overwrought as parents might have been at any time in history, we are now in situations globally where people are being mentally and emotionally destroyed. Our children are seeing this and also seeing that their future does not matter to us. If we don’t step away from the destructive path that we are on and try a different way of doing things there is little hope for us. Positive change is possible, and it can be done. It does start in the individual. Once you realize that the planet is falling apart and people are collapsing under the weight of a system that has far outlived its usefulness you can redirect your thinking toward propping up the people and promoting a better way. Beating them to death with capitalism is showing just how low we can sink under its dictates. If you can envision a better way you can take your vision to others and make it manifest. We can give people a reason to want to build up society instead of tear it down, but it has to start with a secure base. When people have that, it is unlikely that their first thought when they find that they have more time for themselves will be to “sniff some glue.” Keeping their better and more beneficial world will be the incentive to see that it stays that way. What would you do if you had more time for yourself? At first you might want to sleep late every day for a month. But then you are likely to get up and consider that you want to matter in this life. That is when you can begin to ask how you can matter in the shaping of your life and the shaping of your world. Manufacturing and maintenance of the world needs us to function. We ask for respect for being willing to do those jobs. With our basic needs met and the needs of the companies being met there is a level playing field for everyone and it is everyone’s best chance for understanding and equality in the workplace. What you do doesn’t have to be something that only benefits your employer in exchange for a small amount of money that they can deny you if they feel like it. This is what true freedom is. It is having a say in how you live and what you achieve. You deserve that. Others have sold you an ideal that benefits them more than it ever will you. It does not have to be that way. It is worth getting up off your backside for. And it is a good somethin' to do.

"Go Get a Job, Slob."

-from the 1970’s parody song, 50 Ways to Whip Inflation* sung by Judy Tenuta

In the 2010 Disney live action film Alice in Wonderland, the character Alice says that her father used to say that one should always try to do three impossible things before breakfast. Alice’s father has passed on by the time she becomes a teenager so we will never know if he changed his mind about that later, but as Alice still believes it, the movie can proceed with her actually trying to live by that goal, making for a more believable story. (maybe) I’d love to see if he would believe that getting a job in 2024 is possible or not. I count it as being damned impossible now for way too many people unless you can survive on gig work. Just two more impossible tasks to go and we would gain her father’s approval if we could pull it off.

On a side note, I must complain about Disney’s decision to prominently showcase Johnny Depp’s (he plays the Mad Hatter) picture on the cover of the DVD package of the above mentioned film and the later released film Alice Through The Looking Glass instead of Mia Wasikowska’s who plays Alice. There is no logical reason for this except to promote the highest money-making draw actor ahead of the actor whom the film is actually about, Alice. Pure capitalism, it is. (Yoda speak reference) & (money speak reference). It is also possible that it speaks of favoritism on the part of Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland was a Tim Burton film) who has a long standing friendship and work history with Johnny Depp, but I tend to lean on the side of pure money making reasons for it.  That usually tends to overshadow every possible reason for every possible situation. Which brings us back to the issue of why getting a living wage for a life sustaining job is on the impossible things list. And while I cannot be sure of it without doing the research, I would wager a small (because that is all that I can afford) bet that Johnny was paid a salary for his work in the films that was many times higher than Mia’s.

So, why is it so difficult to get a job now? What are the reasons for it? Some people have proffered some very good explanations for it but I tend to feel that it is like Max Von Sydow tells the young priest in The Exorcist when the younger priest tries to tell him the background of the demon possession and how many demons that he estimates there are. He says “There is only one.” It is the “because they can” reason. They can deny you anything that they like regarding employment because there is no such thing as democracy in the workplace. There never has been to my knowledge but it used to be a little easier to ignore that fact if you were able to at least squeak by financially. Since that ability is pretty much gone with the wind now you really cannot ignore it anymore. I very much admire the people who are publicly raising hell about it but it is a fact that there are few of us who are in a position where we can join in the hell raising with them without losing even more of our livelihood than we already have. The risks are too great, and since employers know this and also know that our government representatives do not give one big damn about how bad off we are with few exceptions, this is how things are going to stay. Go ahead and scream your head off about it. No one intends to exorcise this demon. So, this is the second impossible thing that we need to do before breakfast.

I keep waiting to see this idiotic mentality jump up and bite the employers in the ass. It seems only logical that if the people cannot afford to buy what these companies produce or partake of their services, they would see the connection between their business practices and the hits that this has to be making on their bottom line. Maybe they do see it, but rather than rethink how what they are doing is destroying everything they somehow always manage to work around it. Most of the reason for this has to do with the fact that the majority of them have more than one business. A mom and pop business could never survive it but those who have multiple businesses can sacrifice a few of them to strengthen those that are still doing well. They can cut corners, get rid of some employees, give their remaining employees fewer work hours, and raise their prices on everything. They owe their employees nothing. Everyone is told that they must have a job anyway. Any kind of job, whether it pays you enough money to sustain your life or not. You must work, your spouse must work, and your children must work. Here is the third impossible thing that you are up against. You are going to get awfully hungry trying to accomplish all of these tasks before you get to eat. Most of us already realize that we just are not going to get any breakfast.

So now we know why it is virtually impossible to get a job in this country. In case you missed it, it is because the employer class is not being held accountable for not providing jobs that pay a living wage equal to the amount that it actually costs now to sustain life. They create the jobs. They set the prices for their products and services. They hire and fire the employees with no accountability as to whether or not a person will live or die based on their disconnected to reality whims. The ruling class turns a blind eye to their behavior and inhumane practices and our society crumbles as a result. The employer class makes lots of money. The ruling class makes lots of money, and they made sure to set up a system that covers their financial asses for the rest of their lives no matter how bad things get.

So who was Alice’s father really talking to when he said one should try to do at least three impossible things before breakfast? It had to be those people who are secure in the knowledge that they can even afford breakfast. He must have believed that he would live forever and guarantee that his daughter would always be provided for. He was wrong. That being the case, if he actually thought that far ahead, he must have believed that Alice would find herself a wealthy husband who would always make sure that Alice had breakfast. He would have been wrong here too. In the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, Alice and her mother nearly lose their asses and all the trimmings, but thanks to the magical thinking of the writers, Alice prevails as the Captain of her own ship and her own company and indeed does do the impossible like her father told to her to. This was even more impossible than anything for a woman in that time period. And she did it all without a husband! So, I don’t know who the hell her father was really meaning that endeavor for but it surely was not for a female in the 18th century unless he already knew that their story was pure fiction. Jump ahead to now, the 21st century, and it all makes sense. Capitalism did indeed manage to do three impossible things before breakfast. They set it up so they would always have the upper hand. They set it up so they would always have money. And they set it up so no one would hold them accountable for their behavior. They managed to do this even as they are an extreme minority in the world considering that the working class in this world outnumbers them by the billions. That is a stunning achievement to have accomplished before breakfast! And to have managed to do at all!

Feeling hungry? Now all we need is for Alice’s father to have a talk with the governments of every country on this planet and tell them that they will not get to eat until they do some “possible” things like turn this situation around and make the world that they live in a place where survival is possible for everyone. They might tell you that this is impossible, but don’t believe it. There are at least 50 ways to eliminate capitalism. That this hasn’t been done before now is a ‘problem that is all inside our heads.' “The answer is easy” if you recognize that you are not the only person on the planet who matters.

*a parody of the song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon

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.

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.

Why I Hate Money

My stepfather used to say that if the government took all of the money in the world away from everyone and then redistributed it back to them equally that the rich would have it all back within five years. I have never doubted that this is exactly what would happen because without setting up an equitable for all economic system before they redistributed the money there is no way in heaven or hell that the previous “haves” wouldn’t go right back to what they were doing before the money was taken. It would take firmness on the part of every government on the planet to make sure that financial equality was maintained, and I don’t believe there are enough people in charge who would stand firm on anything that didn’t set them and their kind on a higher pedestal from the get go. So, is financial equality even possible on this planet when unbalanced class systems have always existed?

I would love to say that spiritual awareness and Astrology provide answers for the trials and tribulations that have always beset humankind - but it doesn’t. What it does provide is a guide and a road map to balanced living and higher intelligence and ideals that can keep you from falling into the traps that the corrupt and the egotistical among us set to control and deceive us as we go through life. Its focus is on individual understanding of the self and our relationship to the creator of all life. It does not set down a plan to eliminate all social injustices except at the individual level which is the only level at which one has any power that isn’t a corruption of energies. When many people are connected to the higher intelligence then you have the makings of real social change if you realize your personal potential as it was given to you at birth. Then together with others who have realized theirs you have the combined elements of real change which can only be realized in the combined efforts of those who have transcended personal ego. This is a very tall order to attain. Few will take on the task because it is a lifelong commitment to yourself and it has to exclude selfishness. This can go a long way toward living in mental and emotional peace, but it cannot stop the ravages of a society that has set up a system that is reshaping the world to exclude those of us who believe in fair and equal treatment toward each other and would not be able to live with ourselves if surviving meant that we had to steal from and cheat others to do it.  If we were all the same, we would have no real need to be here. We were given free will to either create or destroy in this life and there are reasons why few people believe that they have an obligation to care about anyone but themselves. Those reasons would fill a gigantic book. Why we didn’t start writing that book as soon as we knew how to write one might take another book to explain.

When we got here, we had already lost much of our connection to spiritual and universal truths, so we had to take some hard knocks to get to a mentally receptive place in our evolution to comprehend those truths again.  Without chaos and crisis, we would never shift our focus enough to ask “why the hell are we here?” We have come to the point in human evolution where we have a pretty good idea why things have gone so wrong in the world but there are not enough of us willing to change what went wrong and a large percentage of the population have taken the position that they would rather destroy than create now. Religion, spirituality, education, and access to information all have a potential for helping to undo the damage that we have done in our world but they are like the old saying about leading a horse to water.

What I know from being a student of Astrology and the spiritual arts is that ego is at the root of every issue that has plagued humanity since day one. How to balance one’s ego is not something that humans want to bother with, and when you don’t bother with it you never solve the problems that have forever lingered despite the fact that many of us never stop trying. The problem of inequality, the problem of misunderstanding and abusing sexuality, the problem of crime and criminality, and the problem of mental illness has never been overcome in any generation. 

Upon our arrival here the planet already had most of what we needed to survive. It had air to breathe, water to drink and bathe in, plants to eat, places to shelter from the weather, and sunlight and darkness so we would figure out that sleep was necessary. We weren’t bright enough to know that sleep was a time for reconnecting with spirit. Many people still don’t realize that. Everything else that was brought into existence was developed by us.  Money was one of those things, and like in the song Hard Headed Woman it has “been the cause of trouble ever since the world began”. Only sexuality has been the cause of more trouble. The money itself is useless. It only has power and value because we say it does. We could have chosen many other things to assign power to like oranges or tree stumps or pine cones but we chose paper and coins once we had created them. So, every problem that has manifested from its invention is totally human made. Sexuality issues were given to us by the creator but we have literally “screwed” ourselves into a multitude of life-devastating problems with it. And though it is the portal that brings us into human form we have abused the energy so much that it creates disease, mental illness, crime, and death every single day by our stupidity of it.

When the founding fathers in America said that “All men are created equal.” they were truly only thinking that white men were and they didn’t totally believe that. There are many poor white men and there always has been. It was no accident that women, the indigenous people who were already living in America, and people of color were not included in that statement. The founding fathers didn’t believe that they would ever have to share anything with them or afford them an opportunity to prosper if they didn’t feel like it. It is now close to 250 years later and those chosen people who were supposedly “created equal” see that when they did do some selective sharing with the rest of the human race it got a bit out of hand and exceeded their comfort zone, so since the 1970’s they have been working furiously to take back their “created equal” superiority and they have been doing a bang-up job of it. It was actually pretty easy to do once they got started but they didn’t really expect that people would start raising hell about it and bringing up Karl Marx’s name to make their point. Now, the elitists are getting angry and scared of a revolution that might do some redistributing of wealth, so they have stepped up their campaign to gather up the money and resources in to their greed pots, and since there is precious little government interference in their way, I fear that we have waited too long to call upon the spirit of Karl Marx to redefine the world. Too many roadblocks were set up along the path to their gathering up all of the aces to keep us from breaking their stronghold. Consider what the lack of adequate income and resources has done to us since the time when President Roosevelt set up the New Deal in the 1930s. Since FDR died there has been an extreme effort to dismantle all of the gains for people that he created, and as they say, “the s**t got more real” after the Vietnam War ended. Their efforts are paying off in spades now, and while there is possibly still hope and some efforts are being made to turn the tide, the battle for balance will not be won easily. But these things do not really explain why I hate money, do they?

I have never in my life seen a time when anything that I want to do or need to do wasn’t dependent upon giving someone money for it. Even before I was born someone was holding out their hand to my parents to pay for my arrival. As soon as I did arrive multiple hands were being held out for whatever I might have to have to stay alive. Without someone forking over some cash I would not be able to eat or sleep or stay healthy or become educated. Without paying someone, I could die from exposure to extremes in heat or cold, illness, starvation, crime, natural disasters, and the list goes on and on. Paying others for my ability to have lived will not even stop with my death. There will be people holding out their hands for money from my children when I die. Health care providers will demand it and funeral servicers will expect big bucks to dispose of what remains. Every life is a non-stop potential cash cow for the capitalists and trying to stay ahead of them without losing your mind is a never-ending struggle. This is a sad and disgusting testament to what human beings have created during their time on earth. So many resources were readily available to us on this planet when we first showed up. The Bible says that animals were here first. It is lucky for us that they weren’t standing at the entrance gate with their paws out demanding a payment from us before they would let us in. I would really hate to have to tell a T-rex or a Rhino that I didn’t have any money. (Trying to tell a debt collector that I don’t have any now is pretty awful, too. The threats and insults don’t compare with a large animal but they are disturbing to be sure when you are dealing with someone who has had understanding and compassion trained out of them.) No, instead we began slaughtering them right off because we were ignorant savages whose first thought was to take everything away from them including their very lives so we could be sustained and comfortable. (Notice any parallels between us and capitalists?). Even now, we still do it without giving it a second thought. That is, the majority of us do. There are many humans who realized that there was a better and more humane way to live. Many people provide care and protection for animals without receiving one penny for it, but there are immense rewards that they provide to us in return for their care. Loyalty, affection, devotion, companionship, and protection are just a few of them. How many humans do that without some sort of payment?

The struggle to stay alive and well in our current culture is increasingly more difficult by the day. I find myself now having to decide which is the most critical thing that I need to sustain myself every day. Will I pay the mortgage payment or the utility bills? I cannot do both. If I choose the mortgage payment and not the utility bills I can stay in my home for another month but if my electricity is cut off I could die from the extreme heat that we are experiencing this year. I will also lose my telephone and internet service. Just try to navigate in this world without those now. Should I buy food or should I buy medicines? How long can I survive without both of them? Account payments have had to be stopped which will destroy my credit rating and make it impossible for me to replace my 18 year old car. Repair bills would be impossible to pay for if it finally quits on me. But none of these issues have stopped capitalism from holding out its hand for more money than I ever imagined that I would be paying to just stay alive now. So, this is why I hate money.  If I just truly cannot keep up and finally die trying to, few if any would take much notice. It would be viewed by most as somehow being my own fault. I did not have the right job skills, or I didn’t try hard enough, or I said the wrong thing, or I did the wrong thing somewhere along the line. All these excuses are considered to be acceptable in a capitalist society for denying me a job that pays a living wage and a roof over my head. They are viewed as valid reasons for making sure that I cannot possibly get enough money to keep living because I must have done one or more of these things or I wouldn’t be experiencing this. If I, and countless others like me fall by the wayside, the true reason for it will be an inability to access enough money and resources to satisfy all of those people who are standing in front of us with their hands out. So, why would I have any love for that? Money equals inequality. It is built in to capitalism and guaranteed to ensure that poverty never ends. It is poverty specifically created to make sure that those who call the shots from the top will never have to experience it. I hate it. There has to be another way.