Living in Stories

We live in stories created by society, family and ourselves. All us Americans know we live in the land of the free and home of the brave. The land where our first President, the original George W. chopped down a cheery tree and then fessed up to the  crime. The people who survived the Great Depression and then fought fascism in World War II, you now know them as The Greatest Generation. The winners of the cold war watched as the Soviet Union  came crashing down. You get the idea. Each family also has stories as well full of vivid larger than life characters. I have crazy Uncle Chip, the bookie, and wild eyed Uncle Mike, the drifter. Both spawn stories to carry us through the longest, coldest and darkest of nights. Then there is Grandpa LaVack who lived the Greatest Generation life to the fullest. He went through the Great Depression, was almost killed at Pearl Harbor raised four sons after the war. Earning retirements from the US Navy and the State of California, he passed away comfortably in his own bed at the age of 91. I could fill a book with family stories as I'm sure you can as well. Then, there our our personal stories. At birth, the doctors said I'd never walk. I've walked across college campuses, around in many airports. I've walked in London, England, Varna and Sophia Bulgaria, Saigon and Hanoi, Vietnam. I've taken pee stops in states all across the Union for whatever that's worth.

In each and everyone of us there are countless stories. Listen closely to the stories others tell you. They will reveal themselves in many ways. I used to listen to stories at the Employment Office everyday. One Pakistani dude told me how his ship left him stranded in New York. In time, I came to see why. He was not the nicest person I met there but interesting in a sublime sorta way. Another cat fresh off of "Contracting" in the Middle East told me of his plans to move to the Dakotas, get a CDL and drive trucks in the then booming fracking industry. The dude had his act together. Then there were the criminals. Sadly, they never stop paying for their crimes. Finding life sustaining work is almost impossible and the rest of us wonder why recidivism rates are so high. Listening to stories was one of the coolest parts of the job. Yeah, stories are cool and all- so?

What does story telling have to do with Unpeople?

A lot. There are countess people and groups who's stories are ignored. The odd ball asking for money at the exit from I-40 to ?? has a story. A few people read the sign and give a little cash. I don't because another story I hear is they are not as needy as they seem. True or not, who knows? The high, homeless guy making me and my pal nervous years ago? I did not ask his story. Nope. The people who proudly display the rebel flag in the county south of here? No one cares to ask why. American Indians still living in soul-crushing poverty seldom make the national news for anything good or bad. Looking out beyond our borders, there are countless groups looking just for acknowledgement, chocolate slaves, laborers in Saudi Arabia and ship breakers. Let's not forget the world's shanty towns and city dump dwellers. These stories are just starting to get out. Let's hope they do. Nothing like sunshine to fix things.

There is more to stories.... Soon.

       

                  

Three Options

So how do we change the game? There are a number of ways- violent, messy revolution quickly comes to mind. This is unpredictable and could make things even worse, not to mention all the dead people. So what else? Stop playing the game for awhile? Mass civil disobedience and stop voting could delegitimize the whole system. Then what? The power vacuum created fills with the worst types and then the real fun begins; ethnic cleansing, purging and mass murdering our way back to the 12th century! What is behind door number three? We improve our current system by getting money out of politics and turning the Democratic Party back into a real opposition party instead of the paid losers they are today. This is a long shot but less messy than the other two possibilities talked about here. I'm sure there are a lot of other possibilities out there but I'll focus on door # 3 for now.

Bernie Sanders. Yup, Bernie. If he gets the nomination (doubtful but we can hope), I think he could make inroads into that mostly untapped huge group of American voters, the non-voters. No, people don't skip the polls because they are lazy or don't give a damn. They skip the polls because there is no one worth voting for. Year in and year out, neither party has their interest at heart. People vote and nothing changes. Adding unlimited cash into the mix does not help. Can Bernie remain competitive without big money? Time will tell. If he wins and wins big, the Democratic leadership may finally get the message. We don't want to be in the "pretend to be opposition" party while actually favoring NAFTA like deals, drone bombing the shit out of people, easing banking regulations and massive military budgets. No, we want a party that helps rebuild our infrastructure and invests in our health and happiness.

Bernie is not perfect but he could be a big step in the right direction. Take a look where he stands on the issues and see what you think. Oh, where do we get the money? Fair tax and the bloated military budget are two good places to start.  Don't be afraid of words like "socialism." Those who talk of fear and taking us back to some golden age are seldom, if ever, friends.                

The Crime of Seperating Familes

 Family separation at the border. 

This may not be the worst crime of our government but it is high on my list. Other than simple cruelty, there is no reason for it. Simply filing for residency or political asylum is a basic legal practice that in no way warrants children being pulled apart from their parents. It is catastrophically damaging for all involved. This should have never been a policy in the first place. As of this last July it was still going on. I doubt it has stopped completely. There is no system put in place to help these families unite (another act of criminality).

How do our border guards, tasked with upholding the law, live with themselves? Some are no doubt parents and all were children. For a good job? Really? I cannot do a job that will damage my soul. Given 45's joy for pardoning war criminals, I doubt any will ever see justice. These things do not happen in a vacuum. This is long term damage that cannot be repaired. And yet there are still dumb asses out there asking why the world hates us? History will not be kind to what The United States has become.    

       But don't take my word for it. Consider the following...

See also: Genocide
                War under false pretenses
                War Crimes
                Pardoning war criminals
                Overthrow of Democratically Elected Governments for Profit
                Supporting despotic regimes for profit  

                A number of more crimes both known and unknown.

Some Good News!

So there is Chris Hedges on our decline and collapse. But there is hope. Consider this-

Steven Pinker - "Enlightenment Now..." 

The world is still getting better overall. Will we keep getting better or will we go backward?

The Democrats are NOT your friends.

Hedges- The Rot Within The American System 

Chris Hedges can explain it better than I can. Take time to listen to the interview linked above. He thinks we are past the point of being able to fix the system regardless of the political party in power. If I understand him correctly, our only hope is Hong Kong style massive protests all across the country. Shut shit down. Our recent track record on protesting is not encouraging. I hope there is another way, Bernie.  

The Democrats traded in the working class for the bankers and hedge fund types. The Republicans did the same a long time ago and have gone totally insane, trading in voters for xenophobes, religious / gun nuts and even Nazis. Remember people died for child labor laws, safer work places and fighting Nazis. The Left is now dead on arrival. Can we rebuild? It can start with Bernie. But he cannot do it alone. He needs more leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House and Senate.  

The destruction we are headed for now will make those left alive long for the last century when the dead could only be counted in millions. 

Bashing Millennials

Bashing Millennials seems to be a growing sport. I think bashing the next generations is a long time honored tradition. So it is nothing new. Is it deserved? How is such behavior helpful? Can we do better?

I'm a Gen Xer. What in the hell did we do other than become good, well behaved, consumers and watch the world burn via CNN? We did not create the current mess we find ourselves in. No, we made it worse with our demand for monster SUV's, fresh meat, High Fructose Corn Syrup and opioids. I'm sure somewhere along the way we did a few useful things. We did give the world Beavis and Butt-Head, perhaps the finest cinema ever produced. We did NOT survive the Great Depression, storm the Normandy Beaches or even fight for Civil Rights like those before us. Nah, we got into internet porn. Given our track record, we should spend a little less time bashing the next generation we are passing this shit show on to.

No the kids are not perfect, endlessly staring into the glow of an electronic screen large or small, ordering food online for delivery because going out is... well hard. And going into six figures of debit to study theater may not be the smartest thing. But they do get some stuff right.

I think they are much better Hell raisers than we ever were. Occupy managed to at least change the conversation from debit and austerity to the 1% and gross income inequality. I think rather than failing it morphed into new movements. Black Lives Matter is still going strong and depends on young people. And then there is March for Our Lives. Kids are growing tired of being shot to death just for going to school. While my generation was day dreaming of Hummers back in the day, youth now are starting stuff like Zero Hour fighting for climate justice.  There are more good things going on with Millennials. Just look around.  

So to all of us older types, maybe stop bashing and jump in and help? Oh and if you are fortunate enough to grow old, these will be the people taking care of you. Have we done enough to earn care in our old age? No. But it is not too late. We are in this together. So give the kids a little applause and guidance (if they ask for it). It seems to me they are doing a good job of leading the way.        

                

American Language of Conflict, Violence and Discord

George Carlin

My favorite comedian, George Carlin, once said, "...The words you use say a lot about you." The language that permeates out culture is full of conflict, violence and discord. I think we have always been this way but it has gone off the rails in the last few decades. One of George's bits is when we don't like something we declare war on it:
The War on drugs.
The War on poverty.
The War on obesity.
The War on AIDS.
The War on cancer.
The War on terror. 
...and on an on.
Now, we have a war on facts and a war on reality itself. This does not sound like the language of a peace loving people. Even in sports we find similar war like language.

Teams don't play each other. They go to war, battle and fight! Some of this is to  build TV ratings, sure. But it is normal language. It even shows up in golf. "Tiger and Rory dual in tie breaker!" Football is all about war as George explains here (along with a little on baseball). The language filters down to the high school level if not lower. Acts of sportsmanship are an anomaly in the age of me me me all the time.

We talk about business and economics in the same way. Competition, trade wars, know your enemy, court / legal battles, tactics and strategy. It too filters all the way down from nation-states to coworkers. My coworkers (teammates?) are also my closest competition. As an old friend told me in regards to to the workplace long ago, "...trust no one." The workplace can truly be a jungle. If you a part of a sales force, you know this. Who's on top, who's on the bottom? It all too often feels we are on our own, me versus the world. If I'm lucky, I have "job security." This seems to be getting worse with time. Don't look to politics for answers. Here the language of conflict, violence and discord knows no bounds.

It is now a daily occurrence that our reality denying president insults, lashes out, trades barbs with, dehumanizes and tears down another world leader or group. That's what we get when a so called "TV Reality Star" is allowed to become president. He lost the popular vote. But that's another story. Our two political parties who have too much in common have long ago gave up on serving the people and working together to solve actual problems. Now it is much more like a TV reality /game show than a legislative body doing the work of the people. Insults, finger pointing and entrenched gridlock keep hardly anything (except what the corporate masters want) from getting done.                  

_____________________________

These are not "bloodless" wars. Consider all the chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football and premature deaths. Now, I'm not sure anyone has died from golf yet. But I hope it gets the point across about language. Business in a capitalist system must have casualties in the form of poverty and spiraling uncertainty. In politics, language can not only lead to physical war but outright genocide as well. The words we choose to use say a lot about us, indeed.   
       

Stateless

A Quick RANT 

So 45 likes to run his mouth about people born on US soil who's parents are not citizens also not being citizens. Yet another example of his utter clueless understanding of the world the rest of us live in. We have enough problems without adding yet another class of untouchables. Hello, they are not citizens anywhere else either. So what are they to do, other than politely die at no cost to the rest of us? I know it is just an appeal to his more xenophobic base, but Jesus!    

Guilty County

I worked for 20 years in a state employment office.  We offered job search assistance, training, veterans' services and unemployment insurance. We never could shake the label "Unemployment Office. In a day, I may see those with six figure incomes (with or without advanced degrees) to others scraping by on part time minimum wage work. In my experience, no group had a tougher time than those saddled with criminal records. It was even worse for females with criminal records. The guys could still find construction laborer and other forms of low skill back breaking work. Women less so, at least in my experience.

I was pretty good at getting people to open up, sometimes too good. A young African American lady, Tonya, (not her actual name) sat down and let me know right off the bat she had a felony. I forgot what it was for or even if she told me. She knew she was in for a rough time and taught me much about life as a poor dark skinned person weighted down by a permanent criminal record. She was not at all nasty or angry, just detached. From her, I learned about police occupation; warrantless home entries, constant observation and random stops leaving people afraid and powerless. Tonya also told be about Guilty County. According to her this was the hardest county for a former offender to find work in the whole state. I saw nothing in my twenty years that would make me disbelieve her. She was far from the only person who taught me about the criminal record label.            
 
I had one Hispanic lady (We'll call her Ella-not her real name) who had a drug possession charge because her ex-husband left a small amount of cocaine in her car. Ella was a permanent resident (non citizen but here legally). Her English was so so, with no high school diploma and she was over fifty years old. She also had three high school aged children she was raising on her own. No one would hire Ella. Eventually, she got some part time work cleaning buildings for minimum wage. She had a good work ethic, was always positive, funny and trying to do the right thing. I never saw her feeling sorry for herself or blaming anyone for her situation. Ella just wanted to work and get by. Her brown skin and felon label made her untouchable here in Guilty County. Unable to support herself and children here, she moved out of state and I lost touch with her. She's resilient and will always get by but society has sentenced her to an old age filled with poverty and struggle. The punishment far out weighed the "crime."

I could write for years about the people I've met and what I learned from them. But let's not get off topic, former offenders. My cube became a confessional of sorts. I needed to know what the barriers were to help them. I talked to murders, drug dealers (unlicensed pharmaceutical reps), child molesters and God only know what else. I rarely asked what they did if they told me they had a criminal record. I would rather not know but most told me anyway. My role was to help any and all without judgement. I found the problems faced by this underclass so acute, I created another blog dedicated to former offenders- Get a Job with a Criminal Record. It is not much but something. The situation is not completely hopeless but we can do better.                             

"The New Jim Crow"

"The New Jim Crow"

Michelle Alexander

Racism is still thriving here in the US. The Klan robes have been traded in for suits and ties.    

Buy this book?

Spinning in- What are you going to do?

By any number of measures, the USA is at or very near the end of her life-cycle. Our leadership has left the reality based community. Climate change, income inequality, gun violence, technology threats such as mass surveillance and AI are nothing to worry about. Let's buy Greenland! We have leadership hell bent on solving made up problems like the video game menace and ignoring those just listed. If this is not terrifying in a society that has far far more guns than people, I don't know what the word terrifying means. I've not always felt this way.

When I was a kid, we looked to the future with wonder, possibility and amazement. 2000? 2020? Wow as a kid in the 70's! Now that we are here in 2019, what do I see? Hottest months on record, melting glaciers plus sea level rise, the ever present threat of nuclear war (no, it did not end with the cold war), a made up separation of us and them by the powers that be for the powers that be and racism is still alive and flourishing. I'm sure I could think of more and you could to. What to do? Ignore it all and hope it goes away? Hope this is all just a bad dream and we wake up? No, we have to do more.

I'll start with myself. I see almost no hope with either major political party. Yes, the Democrats may crash it all a little slower and easier but we are in for a hell ride on the way to the crash site. I see a similar result with the Republicans, only faster with even more damage. Don't look to Washington DC for answers. I have to look in the mirror. I can help people find the job / life skills they need to get by and help others. I can be a bridge between the made up us and them. I can listen and talk to others. There is only we. Be aware of of anyone who says otherwise. I can get to better know the local issues here in my community and look for positive just solutions.

Now... What can you do? What will you do?                

Three Writers

Explore Ideas

It looks like I'm getting back into the blogging world. I'd like to share with you three writers who have helped shape my thinking over the last five or ten years.

Chris Hedges does a good job of telling us what is wrong and why we are hurtling toward oblivion. The Coming Collapse is a good way to start. He has also written numerous books as well. I'm now reading America, The Farewell Tour. Grim but necessary reading. He also has many videos on YouTube as well. Be warned- not happy or uplifting reading.

Stan Goff is a former soldier turned antiwar activist who teaches us a lot about ourselves many of us would rather not know. Stability is one of the most informative posts I've ever read on line.  He has also written a number of books. Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex and Church took me on a dark tour of military life and some of the history of misogyny. If Stan writes it, know he has done a lot of homework.

John M. Greer writes beyond current sound bite culture about what climate change means for humanity, spirituality and our slow fall back to a post industrial world. There is no one apocalyptic event that casts us back into the dark ages. Rather, it is a long down hill grind. Here is his current blog, Ecosophia. I have read more of his old blog The Archdruid Report, which discusses peak oil and its aftermath.

Do I always agree with these guys? No. Still, I would recommend all three to anyone interested in life beyond yourself.