Badge of Honor

Lately, my thinking has been hard to string together into a blog post, or a philosophy, or even a set of coherent ideas.  But recently, I've run across something that helped pull together some of those thoughts.  Here is my thesis statement:

Right now, today, if you feel despair, lack of hope, discord, hatred, frustration, annoyance, or similar feelings, you are wearing a badge of honor, and you should feel joy in your pain.

Let's begin to explore that thesis with this notion.  Lots of people right now are feeling nothing.  I live among them.  I see them every day.  They have the benefit of fortune to have nice homes in an affluent suburb, to have enough to eat (and often way more than enough), to drive a nice car, to have the freedom to go where they believe they want to go and do what they believe they want to do.  They are "lucky."  And their luck has served for them as a form of emotional and spiritual anesthetic that has obliviated their notice of anything contrary.

These people go to work every day, pull their paychecks, buy their groceries, take their clothes to the dry cleaner, pay their nannies and housekeepers and landscapers, drive home in their luxury cars, park their heineys in a comfortable chair inside their comfortable homes, turn on the TV or computer, and proceed to avoid, deny, justify, or ignore everything that causes them a moment's thought or discomfort.

They believe everything that's told them by their preferred source of lies and disinformation, and parrot it diligently and angrily to anyone who might have noticed a problem in their narrative.   They're not concerned about pollution, or people starving or being genocided, or our bombing babies in Pakistan, or that we imprison more people than any totalitarian regime.  They don't think for a moment that someone arrested by cops might not be guilty, or even that a trial  is necessary--just kill them now.  If any hole appears in their logic, they angrily attack the person who points it out, calling them "conspiracy theorists," "crazies," or other colorful epithets, but never, ever do they spend the mental energy to really address the holes in their logic.

They won't ever change, because they are fat and happy, and wallowing contentedly in their little mud hole, oblivious to the fact that the truck from the rendering plant is just down the road, coming for them.  You can think of them as people who have antennae who only pick up broadcast channels on their tuners--no HBO, no Showtime, no ESPN.  They still only receive the few broadcast channels, transmitting the tragic comedy of what's going on today in the "popular consciousness."  They are the ones Jesus referred to as the dead who will bury their own dead. 

On the other hand is you, if you are one of the ones who feels as if "regular people" are stark raving mad to keep bombing each other, shooting each other, hating each other, judging each other, all while quoting a "savior" who preached about loving your neighbor.  You are one who is now watching with baited breath the outcome of trials and elections and disputes and protests and uprisings--watching and mourning each one that doesn't finally and once and for all end the pain and suffering of some people you never met, and some you did. Often, you are disappointed, as the juggernaut of an illusion that this mess of a world is  the "only" way, hurtles on down a straight track--straight toward a brick wall, despite you, anxiously leaning into the curve of change.  

Once in a while, you are buoyed by a glimpse of something different, something real, that sneaks past the life-censors, and then you may watch in horror as that something gets clobbered by the mallet of the system, like a giant game of whack-a-mole. You may have actually reached a place where you realize that your life-tuner is set to a different frequency than the one everyone else is watching, and maybe that makes you feel crazy.   And maybe you've been told that you are.   But I think that's wrong.

I think you're something else.  In the TV metaphor, I think your tuner is connected to the full cable package, and most of the programming is pretty bad, so it's not unreasonable for you to feel the way you do.   The fact that some peoples' tuners only get the broadcast doesn't mean that cable doesn't exist.  You've just got premium programming.  Now, before you call to cancel your subscription, let me explain why being tuned to the cosmic cable network is a good thing, even though it hurts

To explain, I must digress for a moment into my addict's past, which some of you have read about previously. I spent fifteen years as a drunk.  From the summer after my sophomore year in high school through the age of thirty, I'd be surprised if my blood alcohol ever reached zero.   Many times it reached close to dead.   My drunk-ness facilitated a lot of lying, a lot of self-degradation, a lot of crying jags and stupid recklessness, a very bad first marriage, a boatload of self-pity, and finally, a recovery that changed everything.  

The very first thing that you hear when you go to a twelve-step meeting is Step One.  It goes something like this:

I admit that I am powerless over my addiction--that my life has become unmanageable.

It is the proverbial "admitting that there's a problem" that even non-addicts acknowledge is the first step to recovery.  And it is.  The people who never take that step of seeing the problem continue to drink or drug, always convinced that with the proper "thought," the right amount of "will power," a rule here, or a tweak there, they can handle their life and their substance with some degree of "success."   In short, they continue to be ruled by their addiction.

Those of us who are lucky enough to have arrived there too broken, sick, or weak to keep fighting, hiding, controlling, and managing our addiction--we cowards who give up and take that first step are the ones who say, "screw it,"  fall completely apart, and then accept the help of other forces to pick up the pieces, sort through them to separate the ones that will keep us doing the same thing from the ones that might actually be useful in life, and move on.  We are the ones who had the fortune of feeling like there was nothing left to lose.  We had the benefit of feeling that the pain of doing the same thing again outweighed the pain of changing everything. 

So we began to recover.  To do that, we had to re-learn everything--from who we should have as friends, to how to deal with stress,  to how to relate to people, to how to make decisions--in a healthier way.     We had to do every single thing differently, because, as they're fond of saying in those meetings, "Your best thinking up til now is what got you here."  But as soon as we truly became willing to let go our old ideas and habits and do things differently, life began to change.   What appeared to be "falling apart" actually turned out to be "falling together."  And not a bit of it would have happened if I'd been a little less miserable, sick, and tired when I went there.  I had to be all out of fight to keep the old way, or I never would have found the new one.  Pain Equals Change.

So, as I said early on:  if you are one of those who today is suffering vicious discomfort, despair, sadness, and hopelessness, wear it as a badge of honor--you have the latest in spiritual technology.

The feeling you have is the knowledge, deep down inside, that what is happening in our society is wrong--that it must change or come to a pathetic end.  It is what I refer to as a cosmic 2x4 to the head--a whack that's supposed to wake us from our sleepwalk as anesthetized sheep and turn us instead into the folks who realize that the pain of continuing our current path outweighs the pain of changing everything.  It's the agony and anguish of that necessary falling apart.  It's the trauma and promise of falling together.  It's what will make us the ones to change the world.


Start with your own.

I'm working on mine.

When Are We Going to Say No?

No need for anything more than this:

A Start

Here is an amazing video about what's happened to the U.S. economy and lifestyle and one thing we can do to start changing it.  Post it and link to it everywhere.

Answer Me This...

Ok, so a couple of days ago, I saw this day-of-the-bombing interview with cowboy-hat-clad-hero, Carlos Arredondo. 

In the interview, Mr. Arredondo describes how he rushed in to aid victims of the bombing and applied tourniquets to the rankly amputated legs of the most famous victim of the Boston Marathon Bombing, Mr. Jeff Bauman.

He shows his Red Cross disaster team ID.  Very moving account.

So, now, can you all answer something for me?

How is it that, at a bloody scene with at least one victim who has had both legs blown off by a bomb, Carlos Arredondo can render aid, up close and personal--so close that he's able to put on tourniquets to staunch presumably arterial bleeding (because arteries are severed when your legs are blown off, and because even the most basic first aid training teaches you to never use tourniquets except for severe arterial bleeding)--and yet, in the "iconic" photo of Mr. Arredondo rushing Mr. Bauman to an ambulance in a wheelchair, as the story is told holding Mr. Bauman's artery closed with his bare hands...



 he comes away with no blood on his light-colored, long-sleeved shirt? 

Seems to be a thing or two wrong with this picture.

Funny Things Happened On Our Way from the Bombing

While the media and most of the American public has been engrossed watching looped coverage of pressure-cooker-and-BB bombs going off and the oh-so-sensitive-and-touching film of people with gross amputations of limbs, some interesting little items have been largely unnoticed.   So I thought I'd help you all notice them.

1) The President and Congress Returned Some Insider-Trading-Gained Feathers to Their Nests

From The Hill's On The Money blog:

President Obama quietly signed legislation Monday that rolled back a provision of the STOCK Act that required high-ranking federal employees to disclose their financial information online.

The White House announced Monday that the president had signed S. 716, which repealed a requirement of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act requiring the disclosure, which had previously been delayed several times by Congress.

That provision, added to the bipartisan bill aimed at halting insider trading by members of Congress, would have required roughly 28,000 senior government officials to post their financial information online, and had come under harsh criticism from federal government employee unions.

Both chambers of Congress quickly — and near silently — approved the repeal legislation at the end of last week by unanimous consent, just before heading home to their districts.

The long and short of it is that S.716 delays for another year the creation of a publicly accessible database that would disclose any insider trading by Congress or the President. 

Interestingly, just a year or so ago, this very same President and Congress made a great show of passing this legislation to begin with, in order to restore confidence in Congress.  I'm feeling really confident; how about you?  Read more here.

2)  The Warhawks in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Pledged the US' Undying Love, Affection, What Little Money We Have Left, and the Lives of our Children, to Israel In the Event They Decide to Annhililate Iran For Not Making a Nuclear Bomb

Per Yitzhak Benhorin of YNet News:

Members of the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee have adopted "Senate Resolution 65," according to which the US will support Israel in case it is compelled to take military action and actualize its right to self defense in the face of an Iranian threat.
The resolution stipules that Israel will enjoy Washington's diplomatic, economic and military aid.

More on this here.

3) The US House of Representatives Is Resurrecting the Domestic Digital Spying Act, Also Known as "CISPA" to Ensure that the Government Is Legally Entitled to Knowledge of Our Every Online Move (Hi FBI!) Without Any of Those Pesky Warrants or Legal Protections, Which No One Needs Anyway (pffft)

Having had previous attempts at big brother internet surveillance thwarted, our pals in the House are at it again.  They've defeated all amendments designed to protect people's privacy, and are ready to vote again today, while everyone's looking at the suspect/no suspect drama of the bombing.  Read about it.

4)  The Criminal Banking Cartel Known as the Federal Reserve May Have Crashed Gold Prices to Initiate Pre-Set Stop-Loss Trades and Thereby Shore Up the Value of the Obviously Failing Monopoly Money US Dollar.

According to Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary:

This is an orchestration (the smash in gold).  It’s been going on now from the beginning of April.  Brokerage houses told their individual clients the word was out that hedge funds and institutional investors were going to be dumping gold and that they should get out in advance.   Then, a couple of days ago, Goldman Sachs announced there would be further departures from gold.  So what they are trying to do is scare the individual investor out of bullion.  Clearly there is something desperate going on….

The Federal Reserve began its April Fool’s assault on gold by sending the word to brokerage houses, which quickly went out to clients, that hedge funds and other large investors were going to unload their gold positions and that clients should get out of the precious metal market prior to these sales. As this inside information was the government’s own strategy, individuals cannot be prosecuted for acting on it. By this operation, the Federal Reserve, a totally corrupt entity, was able to combine individual flight with institutional flight. Bullion prices took a big hit, and bullishness departed from the gold and silver markets. The flow of dollars into bullion, which threatened to become a torrent, was stopped.

Now, I'm not a gold bug--don't own an ounce, and I think that in the event of a financial collapse, or other catastrophe, a case of canned applesauce will be worth more than gold.  And if you're not a gold bug either, you might be asking, "why would this matter?"   Well, here's a way to look at it.  If there's a pack of man-eating wolves running toward your village, is the guy who falsely tells you they aren't there doing you a favor?

Try to understand it, a little, here.

5.  A Non-Profit, Bipartisan Commission, The Constitution Project, Released a 577-Page Report Proving that the US Government, Under Obama and GW Bush, Illegally and Systematically Tortured Prisoners, and (Based on International Standards, Treaties, Laws, and What We've Said About Other Governments) Thereby Committed War Crimes

It's long.  It's disgusting.  And I've only read part of it.  But it should be the biggest story going.  It's so far been pretty much crickets from the mainstream media except the NY Times.   It's worth at least a thorough scanning.


The lesson?  This is like a game of three-card monty.  While you're looking "over here" at the spectacle, a "plant" in the crowd is stealing your wallet (or your rights.)  Keep your eyes open.

The Boston Marathon Bombing: Rodents' Edition

Okay, I know.  I'm a nutter, a conspiracy theorist, a tin-foil mad hatter.  But once again, I've noticed some odd stuff about the latest thing to scare our pants off.   There's some stuff that just doesn't jive.  Look.

Here's a screenshot of a paused video you've all probably seen a dozen times, when a camera mounted on a runner in the marathon captures the first explosion.  This particular location is at the UK's Guardian website, but the same runner-cam video is all over the place, like at Business Insider, and others.

On this particular version, the announcer is just saying, "...with the finishing line in sight, this footage, shot by one of the Boston Marathon runners, captures the moment of the first explosion...."   You see the cloud of the explosion on the left.  When you watch the video, you'll see that the runner is about two buildings down from where the explosion occurs, and you can see all the way down to the building where the explosion happens.

In the same Guardian video, immediately after this scene, we see this, another screenshot of a different video--a stationary one this time, paused:

See the cloud of the explosion on the right?  As this video runs, the announcer is saying, "that moment again, as a steady flow of runners cross the line.  There's confusion and panic.  Ten seconds later, a second explosion...."  You don't need to trust my transcription skills.  Watch the video for yourself at the link above.

Another video, very familiar to all, shows the "moment of the explosion"  from a higher perspective, as if from a building.  You know it.  It's the one where you see the older man who falls, but later we're told he gets up and finishes the race.  Touching.  That video's here, as well as lots of other places.  And here's the still from that video:

In all three videos, we're supposed to be watching the same exact moment--the instant of the first explosion at the Marathon.  It's first from one direction, then from the other, as you can tell by the way the runners are moving.  Now, here's the rub.   In the first pic and video (the runner-cam), look to the side of the street where the explosion is occurring (the left of the frame).    We see the curb, with metal gate-like structures and spectators crowding up to them. 

In the second  and third views, look at the side where the explosion occurs (now the right of the frames).   See all the blue banners on the gates?  See all the brightly colored, very visible flags lining the side of the street?   Now wait just a cotton-pickin' minute!  How the hell did those get there?   

These are clearly two different events.  The same street at the same moment can't have plain metal gates and people AND brightly bedecked, corporate sponsored banner covered gates and dozens of international flags.  It just can't be.  So why do you suppose we're being told (from the left, right and center) that these are all footage of the "Boston Marathon Bombing?"  And if one IS genuine footage, and one is NOT, then just when did another explosion occur in a very similar looking building as a whole bunch of runners went by it? And why would someone make video of it and say it's the infamous bombing?  Why, indeed. 

I smell a number of rats.  

Heal Thyself

There's a phrase attributed to Jesus in the Bible, "physician, heal thyself."  It's usually thought to be a proverb meaning that you should take care of your own business before anyone should have confidence that you can take care of theirs.  I'm using it today literally, because it's become all too clear that people need to hear it.   Here's why.

It may surprise some of you that there is a segment of the population, not insubstantial in number, who believes that somebody is on his/her/its way to save us from all the degradation we've made for ourselves on good old planet Earth.  Some of these folks think its ETs, or extra-terrestrials, who are on the way.  Some say it's EDs (extra-dimensionals) or what one might think of as angels or spirits, who are our cavalry.  Some say it's "positive military"  or veterans who will, in one fell swoop, take out the corrupted institutions we currently live with, in a lovely coup, and hand us back a perfect world--a golden age.

Of course, religions tell us of external saviors too, whether it's the second coming of Jesus, or the conquest of Kalki the Destroyer, or the arrival of the Red and Blue Kachinas.  And there's some pretty interesting groups of folks who claim to BE the saviors-- one says it's going to foreclose on the banking system and the government and give us each a big pot of money for past abuses (yes, there is such a group, and they do say that's what they're doing).

Now, I can't say that Jesus isn't on his way, or that Kalki won't ride in on his horse and destroy everything, or even that foreclosing on the Federal Reserve wouldn't be a dandy idea.  Moreover, I'm one of those who would have no trouble accepting finding a space ship on my lawn, or an angel in my hall closet, since I think it's utterly ludicrous to think that the entire Universe (and all the other Universes we might not even know about) is all here to house just us.  But I have a feeling--just a hunch--that if any of these folks are around, it isn't to save our sorry behinds with no input by us.  That would be the cosmic equivalent of the wealthy parent who bails their kid out of jail and buys them a great lawyer to get off charges of stealing cars, and is then surprised when the kid does it again.  I'm guessing the Universe isn't quite that stupid, no matter how convenient it would be if it were.  Instead, what seems to be occurring is that the truth of the corruption, fraud and abuses of various systems is being disclosed, and we're supposed to get the message and DO something about it.

In the last year, we've seen many scandals come to light.   We've seen officials in the Catholic Church be tried and jailed for their roles in covering up sexual abuse of children.  We've seen creepy old guys get outed for being sexual predators. We've seen that the banking and financial system is rigged with rate fixing and rife with fraud on those of us regular folks who are referred to as the "Muppets" for being dumb enough to trust known thieves with our money.  We've seen people who blew the whistle on government abuses and corruption getting jailed, slandered, fired, or worse.  We've seen the political discourse devolved to the place where we're actually going to debate about whether someone who works full time doing jobs that we acknowledge must be done for society to run "deserves" to be able to raise their children slightly above the poverty line, or well below it.

We're seeing a debate over whether it's "ok" or even desirable for the big, powerful military to murder Americans who it claims are "terrorists" if it's inconvenient to capture, charge and try them in a court.  We're seeing evidence that our "foreign policy" of bombing people who may have an intention to harm us, but who haven't done so yet, is killing lots of innocent people--even babies and children--along with the supposed "bad guys."

We've seen payola scandals, campaign finance scandals, and a Supreme Court decision that basically places the stamp of approval on huge, multinational corporations being able to buy the government under the pretense that bribery through campaign donations is "free speech."  So we have the information we need.  We know what the trouble is.  And yet we sit and wait.  We keep working and paying taxes to the government who's tossing it at unwinnable wars, while its representatives get rich, somehow, to the tune of tens of times what they make in Congress, and we're not even supposed to wonder what it is they do to "earn" all that extra money.  We keep buying the cheap crap that's made Walmart the size of most small world economies.  We keep reading the news and shaking our heads and tsk-tsk-ing how terrible it all is.  And then we go back and keep putting one foot in front of the other, plodding along like a broken old nag with blinders on.  We keep waiting for the savior to arrive.

But for a long time now I've been convinced that, whatever saviors are lurking out there (and I don't presume to know which, if any, that might be), the truth is that the things wrong with our systems, our culture, and our world are merely a larger reflection of the things wrong inside us as a people.

For example, we hear that near slave labor with people locked inside compounds for 36-hour shifts is what's required for us to get our $5 t-shirt, but we say, well, yes it's terrible, but they wouldn't have any job at all if it weren't for the sweatshop, so buy away.  We see the continual unrest, thievery and corruption that it takes to keep the middle east holding the oil straw to our greedy lips, but we complain bitterly that we simply must keep using more oil than the whole rest of the world; we couldn't possibly make our cars get better mileage, ride the bus, or walk a little more.  We read the articles about pesticides killing off the bees, sickening people, and causing the security of our food system to be in doubt, but the pull of the three-dollar frozen "pizza" is just too strong and we just can't bring ourselves to say that these chemicals must be eliminated, even if in the short term it causes some problems--like a pizza that costs three and a quarter.   And we know that our defense of this "way of life" has caused millions of deaths, countless wars, and the degradation of everything we touch, but we've got our big screens and our SUVs and so we give it a big "whatever" and keep right on going.   We want everything to change, without changing anything.  

But lately as we see all the scum rising to the surface of the pond, it's becoming astonishingly clear that all the eggs we've been busily stashing away in our western cultural "baskets"--the economic and political systems that are equal parts smoke, mirrors, and BS, the idea of government "looking out" for people, the notion of "safety" being achieved through militarism,  and the delusion that the piper will wait forever to be paid--are rotten and beginning to stink.    And there's a basic truth that I learned a long time ago:  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  So here's my best advice:


You can't really expect people to treat you better than you treat them, or better than you treat yourself.

You can't really think that anything's going to change when you don't demand that it be different, and you keep rewarding the bad behavior with your vote, your loyalty, or your dollars.

You can't really figure that other people are going to make a difference if you won't.

You can't really expect people to be measured and respectful in their dialog if you aren't.

You can't really expect to have rights when you rush to give them away, for supposed "protection," every time a threat comes round the corner.

You can't really expect a ceasefire to hold if you won't even unload your gun.

You can't expect to take a grand journey if you won't even take the first step.

So, the real question shouldn't be whether it's Jesus or ETs or Kalki who's coming to save us.  The real question is when we're planning on getting off the couch to save ourselves.