Rants: A Translation from Facebook

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 A couple of days ago, I posted the following on my Facebook timeline.  Several people read it and expressed their agreement, but it did not evoke the controversy that I expected. Evidently nobody read it who was willing to question its validity:

All ideological conservatives are essentially either gullible or evil. If gullible, they are also, consequentially, prone to being evil-doers. If essentially evil, and also intelligent, they may endeavor to drive whole herds of the gullible into such things as war and divisive hatred of the Other. Thus, conservatism, although it uses religion to recruit gullible mobs to be used as it suits a particular conservative agenda, is in reality antithetical to every major religion in the world. Conservatism is evil because it is founded upon selfishness and greed, both of which things are destructive to agape which is central to true religion.

 I don't know whether to be pleased or disturbed that his rather harsh estimation of contemporary American political conservatism raised no howl of protest.
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Readings: The Panopticon

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The musings of Anais Hendricks, the wonderful teenage protagonist of Jenna Fagan’s great novel, The Panopticon:

They say the devil’s best trick was to make everyone believe he didnae exist. Maybe God’s just a scientist. This is all an experiment gone wrong, every single one of us, just wonky as fuck because of some chemical cock-up that was meant to produce something less faulty.

Yes. Quite possibly so.

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Reflections: Some Hard Saying

What follows here are two pretty much unedited comments I made on a Facebook status update that asked the burning question: "Can a person be a Republican or a Democrat and Follow Jesus?"

I commented as follows (with some minor modification):

 Nobody follows Jesus. St. Francis, and a few others, made a good run at it. Somebody will say "Mother Teresa." Uh-huh. Well, mean-spirited as it was, much of what Hitchens said about her was true, unfortunately. Nobody can function in modern civilized society and follow Jesus. Jesus was an anti-establishment, subversive, drop-out, who lived only for the next world. And that is what He asked of his disciples. 

But, on second thought, I shouldn't say "nobody," because I can't know that. But if that person is out there, he is a filthy, smelly beggar, living on the street, with a heart full of sorrowful love for each and every distracted, deluded,  ego-burdened soul who hurries on by him without giving him a look.

That, my friends, is the cold, hard truth. 

 

Rodak's Writings: IN THIS PLACE ~ a Poem

There is so much to fear --

such as boils on the doorknobs

and the negative opinion

of the redheaded house finch

beaking green seed on the drive

in the golden dawn --

Or the insistent current of the murky river

which has swept so many tired

and truth-drunk swimmers toward

the effervescing salts of temporal oblivion

Inside off the pavements

having given limping nature its due

hot girls rock their roles in scanty pants

their baby doll voices clashing with their flashing asses

Interior rhyme has indentured itself

to another term of service in the cellars

of the parlors de tattoo

where stacks of chapbooks gather dust

on counters beaded with the dew of diligence --

Your inseam doesn’t cut it in such a world

I suggest that you find a flint

and strike a spark to fan a flame

to run along the cutting edge

of your rhetorical blueprint

to proof it with extreme prejudice

to add the weight of its ash

to the mass of what matters

anchoring you safely here below

the realm of the flesh-eating angels

The atheist knows in his heart

that he’s no more than a bug

in mother nature’s shaggy muff

but I’m not there yet --

Don’t talk to me of trees like men walking

when the precise re-verse is Gospel legend

Cultivate your signature flaw

as you would your favorite fetish --

Never doubt that you are hated

and be left without a reason to lie

scorned by even the lip-reading deaf

It is always time for lunch

and you still can’t afford it

if you need to ask why.

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Rants: All Scam, All the Time

I don't know about anybody else, but the result of my crashing disappointment in Obama has been that I've simply stopped following politics; I've realized that it's all scam, all the time. Politics is a television show, staged for the sole purpose of mentally/emotionally herding the bleating merinos toward the economic abattoir. Anybody who makes it to the top of any particular political ladder--congress, the senate, governorship, POTUS--has long since been bought and paid for; he is working neither to express the will, nor for the good, of the American people. The media are, needless to say, in uniform compliance, in that they treat it all as "real," even if seeming to be in strong opposition. Ergo, Rachel Maddow is as much a whore as anybody on Fox News in the final analysis.

Rage: Watered Down in Watertown

I cannot remember feeling less positive about being an American, or less hopeful about the foreseeable future of America, than I felt as I sat before my television, watching the citizens of Watertown, Massachusetts pour out into the night-time streets to stomp their feet and cheer, taking up the mindless chant of U ! S ! A !    U ! S ! A !   U ! S ! A !  as the armored vehicles carrying Kevlar-clad storm troopers withdrew from their neighborhoods.

What were they cheering about? They were cheering that an army, numbering in the thousands, clad as Black Op commandos, had finally run to ground a single, allegedly badly wounded, almost certainly scared shitless, nineteen-year-old boy; a boy who turned out not even to have been armed.

In the course of accomplishing this stupendous feat of bravery, this phalanx of commandos had gone door-to-door, forcing the citizens of Watertown to leave their already locked-down homes, hands on their heads, looking into the muzzles of military assault weapons: martial law, folks, martial law—right here in River City.

What I did not see captured on video from behind the lace curtains of any citizen’s upstairs window was any card-carrying NRA patriot, standing on his front porch wielding his weapon in defiance of this order to evacuate his castle, and singing hymns about the  snatching of his Fourth Amendment rights only from his cold, dead hand by the agents of Big Government Tyranny.

No. I did not see Courageous Defender of Liberty, Justice and the U.S. Constitution number one.

What I saw was a compliant herd of bleating merinos, standing on their hind legs in the dark, looking almost like men.

How very cheap is talk.

How easily is any ideal stepped around when the master’s voice is heard.

Time now to turn all mirrors to the wall. Time to grab your ankles and grit your teeth. It’s going to hurt; but always remember—it’s for your own good. God bless America.

Reflections: Disinformation Rampant

 

I can't understand what went down in Watertown after the Boston Marathon as anything other than a drill for the eventual imposition of martial law. I ask my self: what are they planning? I ask myself: what are we not being told? I ask myself: why were the moronic residents out in the streets chanting U! S! A! when they should have been furious about what had been done to them?