I Will Strike Back

This is a letter from that which you call your mother; a letter from Mother Earth to the human species. You may not want to recognize me, and that is fine. You can say this is a letter from one of your gods, or whomever. None of that matters to me. Make the author whomever you wish, because the message will be the same, no matter who you want to believe writes this letter to you.

Please do not misunderstand me, and let me point out something from the start: I love you. I really do love you. You have such a capacity for creating beautiful things from the gifts I give you, and to see the love of which you are capable is amazing, even for me. Like all mothers, my love for you is unconditional, for if I am your Mother Earth, then you are my children. I have sought to care for you and protect you for countless millennia, but you have taken this love and spat in my face for it.

So, humanity, my message to you, here, is plain, and should be all too evident at this point: I will strike back. If it weren’t so sad that I have to even say any of this, it would almost be funny. You call me “Mother Earth,” but if you treated your earthly mothers in the manner in which you treat me, each of you would spend the rest of your life in a prison. I can take more abuse that you can even imagine. I have taken it, and sought always to comfort and renew for you.

Think of all of the things you have done to me. When you pierce me for your precious oil, you invade and infect the very blood that runs through my veins. When you burrow deep into me for your gold, and your diamonds, you steal from my very heart. When you carve out massive quarries and take the vast mineral wealth I possess, you leave scars upon me that will never fully heal.

I am the very planet on which you live, and I have provided everything for you. All that you have comes from me; the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. In your greed, you have polluted my waters, you have cursed my food, and you now even carve away at the very forests I have given you that provide your precious air.

What will you do when there is not enough air for everyone; all seven-plus billion of you? Will you ration it to the wealthiest of you? Will you bottle it and sell it? Yes, I suppose you will. When you have killed off all of the insects I sustain that are the agents of the sustenance I provide for you, what will you do? When there are not enough bees to pollinate my plants and insure your survival, what will you do? “Ration and sell,” that’s what you’ll do. When the ice caps have melted away, what will you do? When that happens, you will die, that’s what you’ll do.

Through all you have done, I have continued to filter your damage and renew myself for you. Filter and renew, filter and renew, those are the two base functions to which you have reduced me. I am no longer able to thrive and produce new and wonderful beauty for the animals of this world to see, because you have reduced me to a commodity whose sole function is to “filter and renew.”

Through all of this, I have loved you and cared for you, but when you cross a certain line, I WILL STRIKE BACK. I will strike back at you in ways you can never imagine. I will send storms to you the likes of which you have never seen, My hurricanes will grow in size and fury, my tornadoes will grow in size and fury, my fires will grow in size and fury. My visible wrath will be of a size and a fury that should make you tremble, and would make you tremble, were you not too proud.

Remember this, though, humanity: All of these are just a prelude to the full and true expression of my wrath. When I truly strike back at you, I will do so with things you cannot even see. It will be the microscopic world I sustain that will come upon you. They will come from the darkest recesses of my biosphere: places you should never have gone, but in your foolishness, pride, and greed went anyway. These great agents of wrath are my viruses and my bacteria.

Without great destruction of property, without floods that wash away whole towns and villages, without tsunamis that can make an entire island vanish, they will quietly and effortlessly sweep aside all you have made. They will make your systems and your economies crumble. They will hit the “reset” button on your civilization.

World War III is upon you, and I will win, for in the end, know this, for this is the greatest truth you will ever know: I can survive without you, but you cannot survive without me. Through all of this, the wealthiest of you will scramble to maintain their places on their thrones, but they will fall.

When all of this happens, you will then, in the humility I hope you can experience, have the opportunity to filter and renew as I have done so often. You will have the opportunity to truly look inside yourselves and see truths that have always been there, but from which you have turned and blinded yourselves. When all of this happens, you and I will have the opportunity to once again live together. The greatest difference will be that this time our relationship must be a mutually supportive symbiosis, and not the ‘parasite — host’ relationship we have now. You have become a parasite upon me, and I am sick of it.

I am sorry, for one thing, my dear humans. When I strike back at you, those who suffer the most will be those who have dedicated their lives to caring for others. These are your doctors and nurses. They are the ambulance drivers, and the police and fire fighters. They will suffer in serving the rest of you; in doing what your gods have called them to do, because they will live and work in such close proximity to my wrath. In this I am truly sorry, but I cannot avoid it. I weep for them as they shield the mass of you from humanity’s punishment.

Next, although I cannot stop it, the mass of workers who serve others, including the wealthy. They will suffer because of their sheer numbers. They will suffer, because they will have no choice but to enter the fray of my wrath. They must eat, keep a roof over their heads, and they must feed their children. They are the working poor, and they know that they must work to survive from one paycheck to the next.

The wealthiest of you. Through your history, they have always made fortunes off of war, but they will not profit from this one. It will consume them as it will all others. Their gated communities, where the poor are not allowed, will not protect them from my assault. Their hoarding of healthcare in places like the United States, where the care of doctors is not for everyone, will not shield them. They are my true target, but to reach them I must reach everyone.

Humanity, let me remind you once again that I love you, but now I am striking back at you, and I will not stop until you have learned your lesson. My advice to you is to learn well and quickly.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

Short Posts From Another Platform

I don’t post items here as much as I think I ought to, and I think that this is because the items I post here are longer and more ‘in-depth’ analyses than items that I write elsewhere. The items I write elsewhere are really quite short. However, as short as they are, I think they are no less poignant, or valuable as social commentary. Therefore, I have decided to place some of those here. All of these are posted on either the “Rants and Raves,” or “Politics” sections of Craigslist. One of the reasons I like posting there is because the very nature of the platform forces me to be brief, and we all know that if given the opportunity, I can go on, and on! Anyway, here are two of my more recent posts:

Protests: Posted 20 April, 2020

For almost a week, now, I have watched coverage of people protesting the “Stay at Home” orders issued by governors. In one particular image, I noticed a man carrying a sign that read “If you sacrifice liberty for security, you deserve neither.” I have been familiar with that saying for a long time (that guy didn’t come up with that), and do, for the most part, agree with it.

However, there is another saying at play here that is extremely important, and tempers that saying, in 2020, with a bit of reason. This second saying is: “Your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins.” It is here, where these two sayings converge, that the protesters and those who support them from their couches and keyboards, go off the rails, and lose any semblance reasoned adulthood.

Each of these people, as well as you and me, have the right to be free in our person, our thoughts, our beliefs, and our lives. What we do not have the right to do, is to exercise these rights at the expense of the same rights in others. I understand their desire for things to be like they were. I wish as much as anybody that we could go back in time, and that this entire global pandemic would never happen, but I can’t. I can’t, you can’t, America can’t, the world can’t.

The world will never be as it was, and what the future shape of this global society will look like over the long-term is anybody’s guess. The problem, now, it that these protesters seem to think that their desire for freedom of mobility (and that’s what it is, really, a desire to be mobile again) is more important than the rights of others to live at all. This virus is a killer. It doesn’t kill everybody, but it kills at a very high rate compared to similar viruses, and epidemiologists the world over are amazed at how efficient it is at transmitting itself from one host to the next.

Therefore, I urge everyone reading this to know that your rights, liberties, and freedoms are important, but they are not all-important, and neither you, nor they, exist in a vacuum. We exist in this whole thing together, and we must all help to guard the rights of everyone, and one of those rights is to not be harmed by someone else exercising their perceived liberties.

The last point I want to make is definitely directed at the protesters and their supporters. I hope you understand, that as the people from Info Wars, and other conspiracy theory factories are telling you to get out there and protest against this made-up, deep state scare game code-named “Covid-19,” they are doing so as they hunker down in their germ free homes, studios, and bunkers. You get out there and get sick from an imaginary virus, and spread it to others, while they sit at home, safe from what they tell you isn’t real. Each of you needs to be aware of that.

Peace, and stay safe

The Signs: Posted 04 May, 2020

I saw some news coverage today of the armed, “patriot” rallies from the last couple of days. One thing in particular, has struck me about these gatherings: The Signs. To be honest, you can carry a million American flags wherever you like, but if your message is as Un-American as is that of these people, then these flags, and their value as a symbol of anything that is good, and decent, and holding any compassion for anyone, fades to nothing. All that is left is the hollow attempt of the flag-bearers to hide their hatred behind something they have no right to even touch. The only flags to which they have a right are the confederate flags that outnumber the American flags at their rallies and the swastikas they dare not pull off the wall of their ‘man caves’ at home.

In reference to signs, I saw a woman carrying a home-made sign that read: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI, JB! Arbeit Macht Frei. I don’t know what could possibly possess a person to carry such a thing, but after hours of careful consideration, I have decided that it comes down to three different possible goals on her part. Before I continue, for those who don’t know, “Arbeit Macht Frei” is German for “Work Sets You Free,” and these words adorned (for lack of a better term) the entrance to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi Germany.

So, here’s what I think this woman was trying to say:

1. She’s too absolutely stupid to know anything about those words, and how they have become synonymous with hatred and death. In her stupidity, she took four Scrabble games, threw all of the letters in a bag. then reached her hand in, grabbed some letters, and that’s what came out. She then took her Sharpie, scribbled it out on a piece of foam-core from her local Hobby Lobby, and the next thing you know, there she is on global news, proudly holding Arbeit Mach Frei above her head.

2. She knows at least something about where those words come from, and what they have come to symbolize, but is too insensitive to anyone else’s experience in this world to give a shit. She’s a neo-conservative because first, they’re all white, and second, because they seem to not give a shit about anybody but themselves, and that suits her just fine. Oh, yeah, and that wall. She loves the wall.

3. She is keenly aware of all of the horrific connotations that surround those words, and chose them carefully. She brought that sign out of the depths of the darkness of her soul for a very specific purpose; to say in a loud and clear voice for all to see and hear: “Yeah, you’re damned right! Arbeit Macht Frei, you fucking Jews!”

Unfortunately, I think it’s number 3.

“People” (again, for lack of a better term) who carry signs like this, who tote around flags of the Confederacy, and mark themselves as cowards beyond what has heretofore been the known limit of cowardice, by thinking that they are somehow intimidating the rest of us by sporting guns in public, lose a lot in this world. Two of the most important things they lose are the right to call themselves either a “patriot,” or even an American. They are something less than either.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you found those two posts rewarding.

Peace and Love to all,

Neimand

The 2020 Election Will Come Down To…

I want to keep this essay as succinct as possible, and so discussion of the various topics chosen will not be as in-depth as they would be if I were writing on only a single topic. Therefore, in keeping with the air of brevity that will surround the body of the essay, let me begin with this: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care, and people who don’t. I hate to simplify things to that extent, but it really does frame the 2020 general election in its proper context. I should, however, be just a little more specific in this, and so I shall revise that opening statement on the election to: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care for the world beyond their immediate reach, and people who don’t.

When I say ‘care,’ I mean, specifically, the difference between people who see only their basic, immediate, financial, or cultural needs and desires, and people who take a broader, more holistic look further into the future. Those who look further into this future see and act upon not only their own needs and desires, but those of the planet and all of its peoples as well.

Allow me to be specific regarding four of the issues which will direct this campaign:

Fiscal Policy and Taxation

I am not exactly certain why this is an issue I need to discuss, but it is. It is, because there is no area of American political life in which fear and untruths are used more rampantly, than taxation. Conservatives have long used the spectre of the “tax and spend democrat” to keep its party afloat. They have had to do this, because, really, they haven’t had much else to use in order to bring a sufficient number of middle-class voters to the polls to vote for them. This ploy worked for several decades, but now the truth is coming out, and the neo-conservatives who have taken control of the republican party are being shown for what they are. Their ‘philosophy,’ for lack of a better term, is not ‘tax and spend,’ it is just ‘spend.’

The results of such policies are inevitable; higher deficits, cuts to social programs designed to help those in poverty climb out and into a condition of self-sustainability in a rapidly evolving social economy, and fewer and fewer dollars available to spend on education for our children in order to insure that they are able to compete in the inter-connected global economy. This, combined with an unabated growth in military spending, can lead to only two things; economic disaster and war. Regarding war in this context, we could ask: “Why is there still war in the world, with all of the death and destruction it has caused throughout history?” The answer is simple; there is still war, because two things persist in human culture. First, there is organized religion. Second, there is always a very small segment of every society that makes very large sums of money off of war.

The difference in the 2020 election will, in this sphere of activity, come down to the difference between those who are still susceptible to the republican party’s efforts to protect the wealth of a small segment of society by raising, once again, the ghoul of ‘tax and spend,’ and those who are tired of watching the vast wealth generated by more than a hundred million American citizens and immigrants flow into the hands of a smaller and smaller cabal of the ultra-wealthy. People who, thanks to republican taxation policy, pay less in taxes than a middle-class family living pay-check to pay-check.

Environmental Policy

There is no more stark division between the two groups of voters who will come forward in the 2020 election than how people look at environmental policy. This includes not only our policies regarding how we treat our rivers, forests, and other environmentally vulnerable aspects of life on earth at the local level, but also the broader issues surrounding the deleterious effects of our species on the changing climate of the world. It is, in many respects, the same as the difference between people who voted for Barak Obama and people who voted for John McCain in 2008.

By 2008, the country had endured eight years of the Bush Administration’s attempts to remove science from governmental policy in scientific matters in favor of religious superstition. Senator Obama was very forceful in stating that he intended to return science to its rightful place in several areas of policy which George W. Bush had handed over to the lords of superstition and their “it’s in the bible” (and, for lack of a better term) bullshit. John McCain and his running mate, the crazy Sarah Palin, in opposition to science, were happy to leave these vital areas of scientific and medical research in the hands of right wing evangelical power brokers.

I have often wondered why someone would argue against doing all we can to protect this planet and its resources, and so I have posed a question to numerous people who either completely deny the scientific data on human influence on the planet’s continuous warming, or who grant that human activity may have a negligible effect upon climate change, but not enough to warrant any sort of change in energy policy and/or means by which we feed the electrical grid.

The question I pose is quite simple, and is: “Why do you think these things?” After enduring a few minutes of being berated as a tree-hugging liberal, I continue to pursue an intelligible answer. Without fail, the issue, for them, comes down to money. Specifically, they declare that various corporate interests in the fossil fuel and related industries wouldn’t be able to make money hand over fist if we start to regulate their activities, legislate real and consequential protections for this planet, and move purposefully toward a sustainable energy grid based upon clean and renewable energy sources.

INSERT: –> An open letter to the fossil fuel industry:

Dear Fossil fuel industry: Thanks! No, really, thanks. You have, over the last one hundred seventy-five years, been one of the great motor forces that have allowed innumerable, beneficial advances in humanity’s drunken stagger through history. Yes, you also powered the “German War Machine” of World War II, and continue to fuel the imperial war machine of the United States, but I’m not here to bring up the bad things you’ve done. I’m here to say “thank you” and “good bye.”

Good bye, fossil fuel industry and all of your associated lobbyists. You’ve had a good run, but your time is up. Unfortunately, you have become a nasty, belligerent relic of another time; another century. Go to sleep, go on a permanent vacation, go anywhere, but just go. You’re done, so do us all a favor and go quietly into the night. Fade away. Seriously, if you don’t, the people of this world will eventually have to shoot you in the back of your head, and no one wants to have to clean that up, especially you. So just go. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya! Bye.

That was fun, but back to our story. So, in 2020, when people go to the polls, they will vote either for a candidate who vows to protect this planet from the excesses of modern, corporate, vulture capitalism, or they will vote to allow vulture capitalism to not only eat them whole, but continue to defile and destroy our planet in the process.

Foreign Policy

First of all, I have to state a rather unsavory fact; most Americans are completely unaware of the complex nature and intricate patterns of relationships that make up the whole of US foreign policy. This “environment of nuance,” as I shall label it, has been a target of the contemporary conservative movement for more that thirty years. Their unrelenting attacks on elitists, a.k.a. people with high levels of education, experience, and expertise, who know both what they’re doing and the subjects about which they talk, have resulted in a national view that American foreign policy should be conducted in the manner that pecking orders among boys are established on an elementary school playground: through firepower.

The conservatives of yesteryear, as hawkish as they were, had an understanding of, and appreciation for, this environment of nuance. The rank and file conservatives of today do not, and this has led them to create the term “Deep State.” In the views of today’s social and racial conservatives, anyone with the education, expertise, and experience mentioned above, are operatives of the deep state.

This has led to the marginalization of complex and effective diplomacy and the intellectually elevated people who carry it out in favor of military adventurism. Generals, after all, can never be members of the deep state, they are, after all, generals. I, personally, cannot even imagine the logic behind that statement, but some, apparently, can. In order to conduct a comprehensive and effective foreign policy, your country’s diplomats must be everywhere that they can be, and the worst facet of America’s simplistic ‘diplomacy through firepower’ efforts means that our military must be everywhere.

In terms of foreign policy, the difference in the 2020 election will come down to two differing viewpoints. First, it will be between those people who care how America pursue its interests, and those who don’t. Will we pursue our interests in a diplomatic environment of nuance, or will we pursue these interests through the playground logic of diplomacy through the barrel of a gun?

Second, and most importantly, the difference in the 2020 election will also come down to those who care exactly what interests America pursues. Will we, as a nation-state pursue the interests of the wealthy and their money; embracing the saying that “The business of America is business,” or will we pursue the global interests of freedom, equality, and peace?

This second option is the interest imagined not only by the founders of this American experiment, but also, if we are to believe the conservative christians who tell us that God has a hand in what America does, of God itself. The first option, is the interest of the world’s enemy.

The Constitution

Here we have the real, core issue facing this country as we move forward. This is the heart of the matter; the “crux of the biscuit” as it were.

I maintain that the people or territories of any nation-state can be attacked from without by an almost innumerable set of forces, but their constitution can only be attacked from within. It is only by nefarious, internal means that a constitution — the legal protections, rights, liberties, and responsibilities therein bestowed upon the citizens and others who live under its umbrella — can be undermined.

The Constitution of the United States of America is under attack today as never before, and really, when you think about it, that is the saddest and most troubling political statement any person could write. It is sad and troubling, but given the manner in which the political climate of this country has evolved over the last forty years, not unexpected.

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, and I quote him more frequently than any other person who played a role in the founding of this country. Today shall be no different, for Mr. Jefferson said the following: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is natural manure” Any democracy must occasionally pass through such a painful renaissance; for time, institutional processes, and the day to day burden of knowing that it is up to each of us to keep the republic, can drain the individual of their enthusiasm for living in a democratic state.

I used to think that it would require approximately a decade of the American people being subjected to life under the jackboot of a fascist dictatorship for them to finally realize what they had and lost in this great American experiment. I was wrong. The mid-term elections of 2018 and the continuing elections of 2019 have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all it took was two years of a man like donald trump in the White House. His presence there, and the previously unseen level of corruption and outright contempt for the principles of this republic he brought to this revered office, raised the alarm within the American electorate that their republic, and all for which it should stand in the world, was in jeopardy.

So, regarding the issue of this country’s constitution, the 2020 election will come down to the difference between those understand that policy will always flow between the interests of the left and the right, and in so doing, we, as a nation, will move inexorably forward toward “a more perfect union,” and those who are prepared to discard such a sacred document in reverence for the persona of an individual who has somehow captured their spirit.

Our constitution must remain intact, and this means several things, Primarily, for my purposes here, it means that its provisions for punishment of those who abuse the power vested in them for their own personal and political gain must be enforced without deference.

Closing

I realize that this essay is written with a very broad brush, and that an ‘environment of nuance’ exists within each of the four sections above. I also realize that there are numerous aspects of this country’s future that will impact people’s voting behavior in the next presidential election that I did not discuss; immigration, and racial justice are just two of the subjects about which I could have written. I chose the four divisions above because they are some of the most contentious and important items we must consider when November 3rd, 2020 dawns.

My dear readers, this country is at a crossroads like never before, and we must watch our legislators carefully to see how they handle the solemn duty that will soon be laid before them. The evidence against this president is mounting quickly and shows no signs of diminishing its pace. If anything, I believe we can expect it to accelerate. This means that the United States Senate will almost definitely hold a trial to decide if this president shall be removed from office. We must watch to see if they make their decision based upon the evidence, or some lower teir considerations.

I wish each and every one of you peace,

Christoph Niemand

The Loss

On April 15, 2019 the world lost something it can never replace. It lost Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris. I could have written the name of this wonderful building, this symbol, in its Americanized “Notre Dame” annunciation, but I cannot do that. The remaining structure of this architectural achievement deserves its proper name, and its proper name, in the beautiful “Language of Love” is Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris; The Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris.

I think anyone with any sense of humanity can understand that the building the world lost yesterday was far more than the bricks, the massive stones that framed its towers, the wood which supported the structure for over 800 years, the statues of the faithful, of saints, of kings, and of queens that looked out upon the common folk like you and me, the gargoyles whose presence was meant to protect it and those inside from the evil of this world, the beautiful rose window which dominated its façade and itself stood as a symbol of the beauty that life can be, and its spire that reached from the roof to, as does Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, perhaps touch the very being of God and lament to Him our failings in His name. It was more. Notre Dame was always more. It shall always be more.

Not only was Notre Dame de Paris more than these things to the French people, but it was a symbol of sorts to the whole world. It symbolized the beauty that can be achieved by humanity when we seek to honor something greater than ourselves. The cathedral was not, in all of its grandeur, the largest in Europe, it was not, in all of its beauty, the most beautiful. There are buildings from the 11th to the 13th centuries that surpass this church in Paris in these statistics. I could name a few, but not here, for this piece is dedicated the Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris.

For those reading this piece who never had the opportunity to either stand in the presence of this building, or inside of it, it was small; smaller than one might imagine, given its status as a symbol of humanity’s yearning for grace. Perhaps it was the flying buttresses that projected from its exterior, maintaining the integrity of the structure with such solid delicacy that created the mirage that the interior was massive. Perhaps it is just that it was “Notre Dame.” However, as small as it may have physically been, the feeling one had when inside of it was indescribable. One was overcome by the infiniteness of the God which this building was built to honor. One was overcome by the faith of those who built this building over a span of over 100 years. Generations of people were born, lived, and died in the service of building this beautiful cathedral. Think about that for a moment; in a time and place when life expectancy was barely 50 years, if you survived childhood, multiple generations of families worked on this structure.

Notre Dame was, in many ways, the symbol of church as sanctuary. Whether you were the grotesque figure of a Quasimodo, or one with the sordid past of a Jean Valjean, all churches were a place where you could find peace, rest, and sanctuary. This tradition was capsulized by Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris like no other holy building on earth. It lived as a testament to the grace and forgiveness that God gives us all, without any petition on our part.

I know that the cathedral ‘continues to be,’ that the exterior structure still stands, and that the people of this world, artisans from every corner of the globe will come, in faith and love, to rebuild and restore the building, but it will be forever changed. It will never be the same, and this is why I use the past tense when referring to it. For as long as we have Paris, we will have a Notre Dame, but now, both Paris and this beloved cathedral will forever be changed.

This building, this achievement of beauty in pursuit of grace, is a special place to the world, but why, might you ask, am I so moved to write of the loss we have suffered. I write because there are few, if any, places in this world that are special beyond words to me. Notre Dame de Paris was this place in my life. It was the most special place I will ever know, the most special place I have ever been.

It was in this building, in a small alcove away from everything and everyone else that I sat in November of 2009. I sat on this simple wooden bench that could have been 500 years old. I sat there thinking and then began to cry. Before I knew it, I was on my knees sobbing, and there, for the first time in my life, I petitioned God of my own volition. I begged Him to keep my family safe; my parents, my daughter, my wife, my friends. I told Him I could take care of myself, and that He shouldn’t worry about me, but I asked him to use His protective powers to keep them safe from the evils of this world that I knew would come their way.

In that little alcove, nestled within that symbol of the beauty humanity can achieve, I allowed myself to feel His presence for the first time. It was a presence I suppose I always knew existed, but that I had always denied. As everyone else has been, so I, too, have been on my knees before, but there, in that place, in that building I was on my knees before God for the first time in my life. Now, however, that small alcove, to which I am certain God called me so that we could talk, is gone forever. The simple bench that might have been 500 years old is gone forever, and God will never be able to call anyone over to that alcove, as He did for me, again. I am astounded to think of the numbers of people to whom he spoke and comforted in that little alcove. I am also heart-broken that none shall now follow.

Those moments were a beautiful surrender that I hope everyone will experience in their life, for it changed mine forever. There, in Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris, is where I felt the unwavering love of God envelope me for the first time. This is why there is no place on earth that could ever be as special to me as that ‘smaller than you would think’ church in the heart of Paris. This is why I feel a profound sense of loss, for this cathedral, this global symbol of love, and beauty, and grace, and one of the most wonderful parts of my life, is now gone.

May God protect you all,

Niemand

Each Of Us Must Now Choose a Side

“These aren’t people, they’re animals.” These are the words of an American President.

I really need for each of you to allow that to sink in for a second. A person who is supposed to be the leader of this ‘nation of immigrants’ and the ‘free’ world has declared, publicly, that the poor and marginalized people who are risking their lives to try to find a better life for themselves and their families are not even human, they are animals; they are brownish…or, really, more of a sandstone, medium to dark tan. Anyway you look at it, they’re not moderately wealthy, Western Europeans. They’re from shit-hole countries, and we don’t want them.

[Aside: no sane, Western European would ever want to come here. I wonder why.]

If you have not actually listened to Mr. Trump’s comments, then you need to. The person to whom he was responding made a comment regarding MS13 gang members, but Mr. Trumps comments, after he declares these people to be animals, quickly ventured into speaking about Latin American immigrants in general with no delineation between them and the criminal element about which he began his comments. This was not accidental. This was not an oversight. This was Donald Trump revealing his inner-most thoughts about our Latin American neighbors. He has declared more than once that in his view these people who are fleeing the most horrid conditions any imperial, white citizen of the United States can imagine; people seeking asylum and safe harbor in the one country on this planet that is, by its very nature, supposed to welcome them, to be animals, something less than human and undesirable.

Please don’t mistake my meaning here. I’m not trying to minimize the brutality of drug smuggling/human trafficking cartels like MS13 and syndicates like them. However, as father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Priest who has spent almost his entire adult life working with the toughest gangs in Los Angeles states; he has never met a member of any gang who wasn’t running from something. That something is hopelessness, despair, poverty, and a host of other factors that can take any person from the loving image of God in which they are born, and transform them into the hating image of a devil sent to steal, kill, and destroy.

Every example from the life and teachings of Jesus, the Christ, was quite clear that people should not, and from a secular perspective the President of the United States CANNOT EVER, refer to people as something less than human.

Folks, this can no longer stand. This is the issue on which we MUST confront our legislators in this country. Each of them must declare whether or not they stand with Mr. Trump on this issue, or if they stand against him. However they stand, we must demand that each of them state so, publicly, on the floor of the House or Senate. They must place their cowardly asses on the record. Here, now, in light of these words spoken by the president, it is now plainly (if not painfully) clear that you can stand with Jesus, or you can stand with Trump, but you can not do both.

Jesus said it best in His sermon: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” ~Matthew 6: 24

I wrote in my last post that we have to ask ourselves if this is what we want America to be, because as long as Mr. Trump sits in the White House, this is what America is.

These words are how it begins. When you begin to characterize people as less than human, as animals, it makes it a lot easier to deport these people, to destroy the families of these people, to slaughter these people. In a sermon I gave a little over a year ago I quoted from Father Martin Niemoller, a dissident priest during the Third Reich in Germany. He said the following:

“When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent. I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent. I was not a social democrat

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out. I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent. I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

I concluded my commentary on those remarks from Father Neimoller with the following admonition: “People, we are at a crossroads in the social evolution of this country. We do not, any of us, want to have to ever say the following; ‘First they came for the immigrants…,’ because believe me, I don’t care who you are, if you don’t speak out, eventually they will come for you, and when that happens there may not be anybody left to speak out.” Christ spoke truth to power, and if we are to be his followers, then so must we.

Even more frightening is that words like those spoken by Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago are the first steps toward genocide. Words like those spoken by Donald Trump a few weeks ago are what allowed presidents and politicians of the 19th century to subject Native Americans to a systematic genocide. Words like those spoken by Mr. Trump led to the lynching of black Americans. Telling a nation that other people are less than human is what allowed people to stand silently by while almost nineteen million people, six million of them Jews, were sent to concentration camps and murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen.

Like Smoky the Bear used to say: “Only you can prevent genocide,” or something like that. The only way to make smoky smile now is to do two things: always speak truth to power, and call out politicians without allowing them to double-speak their way out of an answer.

Niemand

Dangerous Norwegians!

The following article is from “The Nation” magazine’s daily online email feed.

I didn’t receive any permission to put it here, but it’s all for educational purposes, and if some of you decide to sign up for The Nation and order the email feed and/or the print magazine, then I’m really a free-lance salesman. Enjoy!

Norwegians for DACA

If Republicans Knew the Truth About Norway, They’d Be Clamoring to Build a Second Wall

A mass of Norwegian immigrants would pose a genuine threat to Donald Trump’s America.

By Ann Jones

In the past couple of weeks, thanks to the president’s racist comments about Haiti and African countries he can’t even name—remember “Nambia”?—as well as the stamp of approval he awarded future immigrants from Norway, we’ve seen a surprising amount of commentary about that fortunate country. Let me just say: Those Norwegians he’s so eager to invite over are my ancestral people and, thanks to years I’ve spent in that country, my friends. Donald Trump should understand one thing: if he and his Republican backers really knew the truth about life in Norway, they would be clamoring to build a second “big, fat, beautiful” wall, this time right along our Eastern Seaboard.

One thing is incontestable: A mass of Norwegian immigrants (however improbable the thought) would pose a genuine threat to Donald Trump’s America. They would bring to our shores their progressive values, advanced ideas, and illustrious model of social democratic governance—and this country would never be the same!

It’s hard even to begin to imagine what a Norwegian-ization of the United States might mean. But just for a moment, try to picture how strange our country would be. After all, based on life in Norway, you would have to assume that our beloved land would lose many of its 21st-century landmarks. Gone would be its precious ghettos and slums, its boarded-up schools, hospitals, and libraries in the heartland, not to speak of its heirloom infrastructure: collapsing bridges, antique trains, clogged roads, and toxic drinking water.

To grasp what’s at stake, consider how such immigrants would have reacted to the Republican tax-“reform” bill, praised by the president as “the greatest achievement” of his first year in office (which, by his own account, is the greatest year in American history). That bill, filled with miscellaneous handouts meant to ensure the votes of individual Republican legislators, guarantees that the super-rich and their mega-corporations will get richer still in perpetuity. It is, in its own way, a glorious hymn to future heights of economic inequality (in a country already ranked the most unequal in the developed world), as it cleverly passes on to the children of the un-rich classes a national deficit inflated by an extra $1.5 trillion.

It is, of course, the nature of any tax plan to redistribute the wealth of a nation in some fashion, even though Republicans use the word “redistribution” only to assail Democrats who occasionally suggest a little something to help the poor. But redistribute those Republicans did in a masterful way, surrendering yet more of our national wealth to the tiny team of people (many of whom also happen to be their donors) who already pocket almost all of it. As the Republicans were writing the tax bill, the top 20 percent of households were already taking home 90 percent of the American pie. Now they will get more.

That’s exactly the kind of “achievement” that no Norwegian parliament would ever approve. All nine parties now in that country’s parliament, from left to right, would have joined in tearing up that Republican tax bill and replacing it with a much simpler one aimed at redistributing the nation’s wealth equitably to every last one of its citizens.

As a start, they would have tossed in the trash can the single most basic project of Trump and the Republicans: making the rich richer. Norwegians have long worked to do just the reverse, based on a well-established conviction that inequality creates elites that corrupt and destroy democracy. That’s where politics come in: devising multiple systems to regulate a capitalist economy and safeguard democracy.

Equitable paychecks may slow down the creation of Norwegian billionaires, but the country’s overall standard of living is among the world’s highest. The United States ranks much lower on international evaluations, although with its immense and still rapidly growing gap between the plutocrats and the rest of us, it’s hard to calculate a meaningful “standard.”

While those new Norwegian immigrants were at it, they would quickly move to simplify our tax system. That, of course, is exactly what Trump and the Republicans promised—you remember that “postcard” you were going to mail to the IRS—even as they made everything yet more complicated. In Norway, the government not only simplifies the tax system, but figures out, on a progressive scale, what every taxpayer owes and then sends out the bills.

Those dangerous Norwegians are peculiar enough to be grateful. They gladly pay up because taxes fund the country’s universal public welfare system, which guarantees that strikingly high standard of living to a whole society. (That phrase “whole society,” by the way, is the meaning of the word “social” in the phrase “social democracy.”) Keep in mind that all Norwegians have the right to universal public health care, universal public education through professional schools or university and beyond, care of the elderly and disabled, paid parental leave for mothers and fathers, subsidized early childhood education (from age 1), affordable housing, state of the art public transport, and a raft of other services that take the worry out of daily life. The catch is—and I can already hear the thundering footsteps of the Republican herd as it heads in panic for its top-secret bunker —if Norwegians can’t trust the government, they kick it out and elect another.

We Americans, on the other hand, have been taught not to trust any government, but rather to admire our brilliant super-rich people who own this one, and so to let them pocket our tax money and think none the less of them for their dependence on Republican handouts like the tax bill. Consider the situation this way: Norwegian Governments spoil their citizens, while President Trump and the Republicans despoil us ordinary Americans. And that just goes to show how much they trust us to take care of ourselves — so much so that they’re now planning to slash Medicaid and Medicare, leaving us ‘free’ to set forth into sickness and death on our own. And if that isn’t the good old American spirit of free enterprise, what is?

STRIKING “OIL” WITH FAIR WAGES FOR WOMEN

To explain how Norway pays for all those social programs, almost every American commentator, even when theoretically sympathetic to the Norwegians, points to the income from the country’s North Sea oil fields, discovered and developed in the 1960s. On that, however, they are mistaken.

Norway’s welfare state programs are supported not by oil revenues but by taxing the citizenry. (While some of those citizen taxpayers are paid for working, directly or indirectly, in the oil business, as of 2016 they made up only 7 percent of the Norwegian workforce.) So to understand how Norway can afford to pay for the genuine well-being of its people in such an impressive way, you need to look at those tax rolls, which very nearly doubled in the 1970s when women walked into the workplace (and politics) in a major way—and at wages close to matching those of men. In 2016, the Ministry of Finance calculated that the labor of women added to the net national wealth a value equivalent to the country’s “total petroleum wealth” created by that North Sea oil and held in the world’s largest sovereign -wealth fund, worth in 2017 more than $1 trillion.

It’s pretty scary to think of hordes of immigrants from such a country landing on our shores, considering the radical reality I’ve just described, the startling idea that you could upgrade an economy in a wholesale way just by requiring fair wages for women. Not to mention that with the taxes those women pay, you could fully fund free universal child care, the lack of which drives American women from the workplace back home, where Republicans think they belong. In the United States, none of our good-old boy leaders would dream of enacting programs so… well, unpatriarchal. Or how about another idea I’ve heard from many Norwegians: that gender equality is the key to the good life?

But about that North Sea oil money: It, too, represents a kind of thinking utterly alien to this country. Oil is something we Americans believe we understand. Spill it in Alaska, spill it in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, drill for it in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (thanks to the need to secure Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote for that tax “reform” bill), as well as up and down the coasts of the country (except for Florida, the home of Trump’s favorite golf club). We don’t mind what you do with it, as long as you keep down the costs of propelling our outsized vehicles over our outdated highways.

Norway, on the other hand, owns 67 percent of the shares in Statoil, the Norwegian oil company that controls those North Sea wells, even as it leads the world’s changeover to electric vehicles. It’s a country with a remarkable record of developing and adopting new technologies while phasing out the old, so its workforce is always employed. By law, the government spends no more (and usually less) than 4 percent of its yearly oil profits on current expenses. The other 96 percent or more, it pours into that trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. That, in turn, has been set aside for the future, for the country’s children and their children, although some Norwegians, famous for their worldwide humanitarian and peacemaking activities, now propose to give much of it away to other lands that may need it far more.

Here’s a question for future American administrations: Could they apply for some of that Norwegian money to build an East Coast wall against Norwegian immigrants or maybe to help our kids pay off that estimated $1.5 trillion in debt Trump and the Republicans just handed them in the new tax bill? Could we take advantage of those radical Norwegians without even letting them into our country? I’ll bet Trump could finagle that.

SELLING F-52S TO NORWAY

It’s likely that Norway came to Trump’s mind in that meeting with Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham (among others) as some idyllic source for future white Republicans only because, the day before, he had met with its substantial and very white prime minister, Erna Solberg. (Surprised observers of the meeting tweeted that Solberg speaks better English than the American president—as most Norwegians do.) “Erna,” as Norwegians—for whom everyone is equal and on a first-name basis—call her, is the leader of the Conservative party. She heads a coalition government in which the top three positions are held by women. That in itself might have caused Trump to keep his hands in his pockets, but apparently he wasn’t told. It’s likely he mistook “Conservative” for “Republican,” but as a matter of fact, all nine of Norway’s political parties now in parliament are well to the left not just of the Republicans but of the Democrats and, yes, even that independent “democratic socialist” from Vermont.

At the moment, only one Norwegian cabinet member, Silvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party, might be considered sufficiently neoliberal, über-Christian, and mean to fit into Trump’s regime. Perhaps that’s because her early training included a 2005 internship in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives.

In Norwegian terms, Erna often tilts dangerously to the right under the pressure of US and British neoliberal economic theorists. It has to be hard for the leader of a small country—five million people, half the population of Haiti—to resist pressure to conform to the autocratic example of a nation that styles itself the most exceptional on Earth. Erna herself is a polite, circumspect politician who, on returning from her visit to the White House, assured reporters in Oslo that President Trump was “a normal man” with “a sense of humor.” Apparently she didn’t mention Trump’s self-proclaimed political acumen, intellectual brilliance, or awesome “America First” foreign policy. Norwegians reading their morning papers could, however, fill in the blanks.

At a joint press conference with Erna, Trump proudly announced that, last November, the United States had delivered the first F-52 and F-35 fighter jets to Norway, part of a $10 billion order of American military equipment. Norwegians are, in fact, stubbornly averse to war and think of their reluctant acquisition of way too many over-priced, overdue, bug-plagued F-35s as a surcharge on NATO membership. But F-52s?

That thoroughly fictional plane, as it turns out, exists only in the video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. (Do you suppose Trump spends his executive time playing commander in chief?) Norwegians are having a good laugh, while their commentators are saying “thanks, but no thanks” to Trump’s immigration invitation. If they really mean it, then perhaps we can relax and forget about that wall along the Eastern seaboard.

On the other hand, judging by their press, an awful lot of Norwegians are even more appalled and angered than we are by Trump’s racist slurs about “shithole countries.” What’s more, just days after returning to Norway, Erna Solberg rolled out her new government, a coalition of three parties, all led by women, and a gender-equal cabinet to run ministries focused not only on defense or finance, but also on climate and the environment, eldercare and public health, research and higher education, family and equality. Erna announced that the platform of this new government would be “greener” and committed to sustaining the welfare state. And this, in Norway, is a center-right government.

You see what I mean about Norwegian ideas being totally at odds with Trump’s America. Still, Trump might play that to his advantage. If he and his Republican supporters in Congress decide to build that East Coast wall after all, they might be able to get the Norwegians to pay for it—not to keep them out, but to keep us in.

I hope this piece has been somewhat enlightening regarding this country and its place among the other nations of the world. I will soon have a new essay posted regarding our society and what would possibly result in the election of someone like donald trump to its highest political office.

Practice Peace,
Niemand

What Do We See?

My friends…

It seems that now, more than I can ever remember in my brief time on this planet, that we, as a nation, see vastly different things when we look at the same object. I believe that these differences are the product of our desires for reality, and not that which is ‘real’ outside of our own experience. This, of course, raises the question: “Does objective reality even exist, and if it does, is it relevant? Or is objective reality merely the whole collective of our individual realities?”

You can believe me when I say that objective, non-experiential reality does exist and it is quite relevant; especially when we each plow into it like a car into a brick wall. The wall, my friends, is accountability for our actions and the composition of this wall varies with the level of your personal power, wealth, and race as defined by the current set of imperial social norms.

Examples:

If you are ‘poor and powerless,’ then the wall is not only made of brick, but there will probably be long, sharp spikes mounted firmly to it and facing the direction from which you approach. You barrel toward this thing at a high rate of speed and, strangely enough, are thrown from the ’79 Mustang convertible by an ejector seat you had no idea existed mere moments before contact. You then either smash directly into the bricks, or are impaled on the spikes like an enemy of Vlad Tepič.

If you are white, then there are fewer spikes and your chances of surviving your contact with the wall increase…slightly. However, you will still be pretty messed up. If you are black or latino, there’s almost no hope of even reaching the bricks whole. The spikes are everywhere, and if you don’t hit the wall like an Olympic diver scoring a perfect 100, then it’s ‘spike city’ for you, and your rotting carcass will hang there as a warning to all who come after.

That is the ‘accountability wall’ for the poor and powerless. It may seem a grim representation of the world in which we live, but I must insist on its accuracy. I, and others who have witnessed the poor’s interactions with the state and its many bureaucratic tentacles, know this by experience. It is not something that is intellectualized, or formed in the philosophical nether-regions of our brains. We see it with our eyes, hear it with our ears, taste it on our tongues. We touch it with our hands and smell it with our noses. It is real.

But enough of that. Let us journey now to a happier, more enjoyable existence. If you are wealthy and powerful, then the accountability wall is actually a mountain of goose-down pillows. You barrel toward this thing at a high rate of speed and leap from the driver’s seat of your Jaguar convertible just before you hit the pillows screaming “Wheeeee!!!” You are then gently slowed to a halt by the pillows. If you are white, then there is little or no end to the pillows. If you are black…well…then you’re not in this paragraph, you’re in the next paragraph. (please skip the rest of this paragraph and begin the next). The wealthy white people lie there with smiles on their faces as a welcome to all who come after.

Unfortunately, even of you are a black American with lots of money, the pillows are actually bricks painted to look like a mountain of fluffy, welcoming fun. You better stay in the convertible and hope that the seat belt and the air bag save your life, because if you jump from the car, your “Wheeeee!” is going to end with your brains splattering out of your cranium in every direction onto the wall.

There are those who deny the reality of the images above. These are the cadres of the extreme political right whose political favorites now sit in the seats of power in this country. Their general reaction to the images I painted above are that I, like all ‘liberals’ as they call us, just seek to divide us with such images. This is ridiculous. You cannot blame the divisions of race and class in this country on those who point to that which already exists, but that is what they will do if they can.

I have stated before the quote of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis [1856 – 1941]: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have our wealth concentrated into the hands of the very few, but we cannot have both.” This statement stands as a charge to each of us to seek the equitable distribution of wealth to which it refers. This equity of which Justice Brandeis speaks is not the equity generally associated with Karl Marx, but the equity desired by God.

God understands that on this earth there are only limited resources available and all of us must share these. So we must ask ourselves how we want this overall distribution of wealth to look. Do we, as followers of Jesus Chris want this to look like the oligarchies of the past and present; in which wealth and power are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, and the ever growing masses of the poor are left to fight among themselves for what is left? Or do we want to see a world in which all people not only have an equitably shared access and right to the scarce resources of our Mother Earth, but also to the respect of each other, and to the right to worship the God of Love as their conscience dictates?

The former is an accurate portrait of the America we see today. The latter is a portrait of the the kingdom of heaven we hope to establish here on earth. That, after all, is the charge that Jesus gave us. When he instructed His disciples on how to pray and said to them, as part of this prayer; “Your kingdom come, and your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven…” He did not mean “Yeah, if you could take care of this and send Your kingdom here as we sit on our asses and grow fat and lazy on the wealth we can extract from the planet and each other, we would really appreciate that.”

Unfortunately, the majority of evangelical Christians in the American Empire have decided that the second statement is what Jesus really meant, and the rest of us would see this clearly if we would just read between the lines properly. I feel so stupid! How could I not see that Jesus was not really The Prince of Peace, but rather the Sultan of Mutual, Unfettered Exploitation!

However, now that I have seen the light, allow me, before I close, to give you a few examples of American Evangelical ‘Power Church’ interpretations of scripture (these are, after all, the products of extensive research):

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” does not mean that we are engage in the thoroughly exhaustive work of looking at those who claim to be our enemies and tell them aloud I/we love you, let us set aside that which separates us and be friends. It really means “Bomb the shit out of those the state determines are your enemies and shut the hell up about it.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” does not mean that we should assist all people we see in making peace not only between them and others, but within themselves as well. It really means “Are you kidding me? Okay, sure, make peace with fellow Christians, but those God-damned Muslims gotta go. This is a war for our very survival!”

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” does not mean that the desires of my life are always secondary to your will. It really means “let your will be done…so long as it isn’t too inconvenient, doesn’t cut into defense spending, and definitely doesn’t cause me any physical discomfort. Seriously.”

Folks, our world quickly approaches a crossroads and a point of decision. On one side stands Jesus; calling us to follow Him and his commands to love each other regardless of all worldly concerns. On the other side stands the red brick and white steeple church which defiles His name; calling us to obey authority, accept war, greed, hatred, judgment, self-righteousness, and to embrace all of the other evils of this world.

I suggest that you go with Jesus, and to help you, I have one piece of advice in the overwhelming bit of weirdness that this post has become. Rid yourself of your bible, your ‘religion,’ and go somewhere alone; not once, but many times. Once you’re there, have a conversation with God. Start to know Him in a secret friendship that is just between the two of you. This, my friends, is what Jesus meant for prayer to be. This, my friends, is the relationship God wants to have with each of us.

Over time, I am certain you will find that His great love is not only never-ending, but that His love for you is His greatest joy. You will also discover that His greatest sorrow is that much if not most of what humankind’s holy books contain is complete bullshit. It is bullshit that has pulled us away from Him for the sake of worldly power; nestled comfortably in the hands of the very few, most of whom are rolling down off of their mountain of fluffy, welcoming fun.

Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

No Matter Where We Go, Here We Are

It has been quite a while since my last post. Many months, in fact. Although my posts to this site are not something for which people ‘wait,’ or in which they are particularly interested, I shall still apologize for my negligence. I have not been particularly lazy, I have just been engaged in other affairs; my golf handicap is now in the single digits. Thank you. I sensed an audible “Wow, that’s pretty good” from a few of you who know what that means.

Anyway, let’s move on to the heart of the matter. My father and I don’t agree on much, politically. That is no secret. However, we have found a strange kinship in our agreement about this presidential election cycle. I believe he put it quite aptly when he said “It is as if you took every eligible voter in the United States, completely vetted each of them to determine their fitness to be president of the United States, and put them all on a list from 1 to 250,000,000, with, of course the most qualified being at the top of the list. You then took that list, turned it upside down, and the two names that now appear at the top, you took and placed them before the world as the two ‘major party’ candidates for president of the United States.”

He’s right. It’s completely pathetic. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are two of the most despicable characters ever to to emerge as figures of leadership in the history of this country.

Donald Trump…what can you say? The moment, sometime in 2015 when I heard he was running for president I said: “So what, I guess this guy thinks he is going to waltz into the White House and be CEO of the United States?” Apparently he does, and if he, by some strange precursor of the apocalypse, becomes president, then the halls of the White House will become one big locker room where the boys can get together, get his business partner, Putin, on speaker phone, and talk about grabbin’ em by the pussy all night until they’re too drunk to walk.

Unfortunately, although that may sound appetizing to the NASCAR dads whose support he has locked up, that is not the type of person we want as our head of state. It really isn’t. This is because the type of person who does such things and holds the attitudes towards women and anyone who is not a white male in general which he does belongs in a locker room, not the White House. Call him “coach” all you want, just don’t ever allow him to be called “Mr. President.”

As John Nichols in his article, “Predator and Strongman,” which appears in the latest issue of The Nation rightly noted: “Donald Trump is a son of privilege with regal aspirations, a well dressed grifter who has taken advantage of every loophole to avoid paying taxes, avoid paying contractors, avoid his responsibilities as an employer, and avoid accountability for his abuse of women.”

Fortunately, the institutions of this country and the system of checks and balances that have functioned somewhat well since the ratification of the constitution may be just strong enough to withstand a Trump presidency. Then again, they may not be, and if this is the case, then our beloved republic, this great American experiment, will not survive.

This what I fear most from a Donald Trump presidency; the destruction of the republic. Of course, I also fear the fate of minority communities in our country, but it is the fall of the republic that has me most worried. This is not to say that I am not somewhat twistedly drawn to the daily ‘white knuckled thrill ride’ that a Trump presidency would entail, but I am willing to temper this dark love of chaos bordering on absolute mayhem for the sake of the republic…you’re welcome.

Hillary Clinton…What can you say? Hillary Clinton will probably be the next president of the United States, but only because she is running against Donald Trump. Were she running against a human being, she wouldn’t stand a chance, but she landed the illiterate orange monkey boy with the quick temper and small…hands who suffers from the worst grouping of mental illnesses imaginable.

I watched a short documentary on Ms. Clinton recently and someone that knew her when she was in college told the story of when she was falling in love with Bill and explained that she was going to go back to Arkansas with him because someday he was going to be president of the United States. I sincerely believe that what she really meant was that someday he will be president of the United States…which will provide a perfect platform for me to then become president of the United States.

To want to be president of the United States is not a bad thing and it does not make you a bad person. Hillary Clinton is not a bad person in the manner that Donald Trump is a bad person. Donal Trump is just a straight up bad person. Hillary Clinton has spent her life in politics and has worked very hard for various groups of underprivileged and marginalized people. For this I applaud her. Hillary Clinton is a bad person in that she represents the final downturn in the corruption of the American political system.

Debbie Wassermann-Shultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, admitted to this corruption, confirming that the primary process had been manipulated to award the nomination to Ms. Clinton. This admission came mere days before the Democratic National Convention. She then said that she, as a self-imposed punishment, would resign her position at the DNC at the close of the convention. I am certain that she will be rewarded richly by President Clinton with a juicy executive branch appointment next January.

Hillary Clinton has been planning her ascension to the White House since she was in college and has been ramping up the organizational and financial necessities in order to do so ever since January 20, 2001; the day she, Bill, and Chelsea ended their residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and boarded Marine One for their trip out of town.

She thought she had everything she needed in 2008, but ran up against a cool, young, handsome black guy with an ass-kicking name, Barak Obama. Now, in 2016, she is it; she has the organization, the money, and she has, for some time now, had the Democratic National Committee in her pocket. Most importantly, however, she has silenced anyone within the democratic party machine who could seriously stand in her way.

Through corrupt dealing and outright intimidation by the Clinton political machine of any who seriously opposed her, she finds herself on the doorstep of history. All she needs to do is give the secret knock, and the boys club is shattered forever. Barak Obama shattered the white boys club and Hillary Clinton can finish the job. Such a statement may sound like I support Ms. Clinton, but that is only 1/4 right. I fully support what Ms. Clinton represents in this sense, but not her, and I shall cast my vote for her with the most reluctant stroke of a Sharpie you can imagine. If we voted in Oklahoma with the cards Florida used at least until 2000, I would be begging for my chads to hang!

One of the main issues that make this presidential election cycle such a disgusting affair to watch is that both candidates are most concerned with them being president. Everything else pales, or disappears completely.

Ms. Clinton did not expect Bernie Sanders’ message to resonate so strongly with the voters, and when confronted with the authentic words of an authentic progressive, what did Ms. Clinton do? She echoed his progressive credentials, claiming them as her own. She knows and we know that Hillary Clinton is not a progressive democrat, and now we also know that she will say anything to be elected president.

Donald Trump did not expect the truth about what an absolute monkey and animal unfit to be president of the United States he is to be laid bare before the electorate, and when confronted with his blatant disregard for anybody other than himself for his entire life, what did Donald Trump do? He claimed that it further proved his status as a good businessman. My question is; “In how many lawsuits must one be labeled ‘Defendant’ and how many times must one declare bankruptcy before the mystique of being a ‘good businessman’ fades away.

Through all of this one truth remains: No matter where we go, here we are. The saddest part of this truth is that no one put us here but ourselves. I always wondered where the “don’t talk politics” society would lead us, and it is here at the edge of this abyss. If Americans relished the discussion of politics and matters important to the nation and humanity as a whole in their daily lives, then I am certain that we would not be in the predicament in which we now find ourselves.

First and foremost, public policy would be the result of intellectual consideration based upon research and not the superstition based knee-jerk reaction born of fear, bigotry, and hatred it has become. Second, and perhaps more importantly, our politicians would know that they must have more on their resumé than ‘faith in God’, or “because I have a very good brain” to run for office with any chance of success.

So what can we do? I have two radical solutions.

First, we do away with the electoral college. If the people are to chose their representative in the White House, then let them do so. We have seen in recent history what the electoral college can do in declaring the will of the people null and void when they have pens in their hands.

In the presidential election of 2000 Al Gore won a majority of the popular vote among Americans. Yet, in Florida, through criminally fraudulent manipulation of the system, Jeb Bush’s Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters from blocs that generally vote democratic. Through this criminal enterprise and the refusal of the conservatives on the United States Supreme Court to protect the integrity of the system, George W. Bush was able to garner the electoral votes of Florida, putting him over the base-line limit needed to secure the presidency.

Those men and women who wrote his name and that of his vice presidential candidate Darth Cheney on their ballots defied the will of the majority of the American electorate, and completed the crime of installing a man in the White House who did not carry the day at the ballot box. The electoral college must go quickly into the landfill of history.

However, having said that, I must admit that the electoral college was put in place specifically for purposes of preventing a person like Donald Trump from occupying the White House. Mr. Trump’s economic and social welfare policies are not the question, his blatant disregard for the democratic principles of our republic are.

When you declare that you will order our armed forces and clandestine services to torture enemy combatants for any information they may possess and kill their families as retribution for what they are suspected of doing, then you need to know that the electoral college is there to prevent you from ever becoming president of this country, regardless of the tally of the vote.

I must pause for one quick side note to the conservatives. If your cause is aided when voter turnout is low, then there is something wrong with the principles for which you stand. Also, if the ‘media’ as you call them, and the vast majority of ‘intellectuals’ as you have labeled them disagree with you, then maybe, just maybe, you are wrong. Mike-Hillbilly Jackass-Huckabee wants us to believe that people who never finished high school because they couldn’t stay off of beer and meth are the smart ones, but I, personally, am not fooled.

Second, we must do away with the two-party system in favor of a proportional representation system. In order to have the courage to do this we have to face the fact that the republican and democratic parties truly represent the political views of a small and ever shrinking percentage of Americans. Soon, it will be only those tied to their machines by favors done and favors received; a small and corrupt cabal of benefactors and beneficiaries who are never invited to the really cool parties.

In a proportional representation system, the number of viable parties would grow, the percentage of the electorate actually participating in the process would grow, and those men and women in positions of official leadership would hold office with an actual mandate, instead of being the ‘lesser of two evils’ candidate. I ask you; what more could anyone want out of their electoral system?

The progressives would have their candidates see as much air time and be able to participate in debates as do the republicans and democrats of today, and the white nationalist parties would enjoy the same benefits. I don’t care how repulsive your ideas are, we should have a political system that allows them to be heard by as many people as possible. This might even put an end to the ‘don’t talk politics’ society we have created.

Whatever your feelings on the debacle of November 8, 2016, I urge you to reflect on the truly pathetic depth to which our political system has sunk in order to be confronted with the two choices we have before us. It will always be true that no matter where we go, here we are, but we have the right and the ability to decide what and where ‘here’ is. If we don’t begin to exercise that right soon, it will be gone. In fact, it is slipping away as you read this.

Practice Peace and Love to all,

Niemand

I Love Astronomy and Microbiology – Part 1: Astronomy

This overall piece contains two commentaries which I have had to split into two posts. The first is on an organization in which the greatest spectacle of the astronomical universe all around us is about to occur. The second refers to an organization that is experiencing microbiological change on a cellular level.

Both of these organizations like to portray themselves as different from the other, but are, for all intents and purposes, the same. They are the republican and democratic party ‘establishments.’ These people are in trouble, and the trouble they have is the trouble they have made for themselves in recent history.

That trouble is, basically, that the people to whom both of these organizations have promised salvation and prosperity have seen neither a dime nor a day of deliverance from them. They have both lied to the American people and they know it. That, in and of itself, is not a problem, or wouldn’t be were it not for the fact that the American Nation now sees the very weave of the wool that has covered their eyes for so long. The shroud of secrecy has been lifted and both the democrat and republican machines have been exposed for what they are; devices to maintain the status quo.

The Greatest Spectacle of the Universe: The Supernova

The republican party is just weeks away from going supernova. Like a star that has used up all of the fuel it gathered during its genesis, it is now bankrupt and existing solely on its ability to eat itself. Soon, the city of Cleveland will the be the site at which the actual event occurs: the site at which the star explodes. It will be a glorious event to behold and, I must say, one for which I have waited almost all my life and definitely all of my adult life.

The only caveat within this event is the high probability that people are going to be hurt, and that is something I do not want to see. I don’t mean ‘hurt’ in the sense that they will experience some form of emotional distress over the explosive destruction of their party. I mean that people are probably going to be physically beaten and, unfortunately, killed.

I say this because I find it difficult to believe that no Trump delegate will leave his home for Cleveland without taking a portion of his arsenal with him. When the republican establishment successfully wrests the nomination from Trump, thereby destroying any chance of making America great again, at least one of these characters is going to go off. He’s going to return to his hotel, load up, and head back to the convention determined to show these people “who they’re fucking with.” When I say “at least one of these characters,” I mean at the very least, one, but I assume it will be more.

At the time of the writing of this essay (late March, 2016), a group of satirists have placed a phony petition online to allow open carry at the convention. The petition speaks of how any ‘open carry-free zones’ are an affront to our second amendment rights. As I’m sure you can imagine, the average republican cannot discern truth from satire and more than 25,000 gun toters have signed the petition calling for Quicken Loans Arena to allow them their God-given right to carry guns everywhere. The owners of the arena will not allow this, if for no other reason than the certainty that if they did, the republican convention would end a bloodbath.

I can guarantee you that if the party was to convince the owners of the Quicken Loans Arena to allow the foaming at the mouth expression of the Second Amendment at their convention that the republicans have tried to foist upon America as a whole, then we will hear the pundits on Fox Noise in a conversation that will go something like this: “Obviously, the Trump delegates did not expect the Cruz delegates to be so well armed and organized. If they hadn’t been, the death toll among Cruz delegates would have been much higher, and the death toll among Trump delegates would have been negligible at best. As it turned out, five hundred white ‘good guys with guns’ who despise each other insured our freedom for another generation. Well, it looks like Kasich will get the nomination, since he has the most delegates left alive.”

Ah, Trump! He is sucking up the last bit of hydrogen left in the star and he loves the uneducated, doesn’t he? One of the loudest and longest sets of cheers I have heard in this entire election cycle occurred when Donald Trump was speaking to a mob of supporters and said (and I paraphrase): “We have the educated, the poorly educated…Oh, I love the poorly educated!” [begin wild, unending cheering of the poorly educated].

The star is going to go, so please allow me to explain my view of how the republicans arrived at their own ‘end of time’ and explore the reasons of how we arrived here at the doorstep of the republican party supernova. It is a tale forty years in the making.

The ultra wealthy republican party oligarchs are a “Dr. Frankenstein” of sorts — Or perhaps they are the monster and their various constituencies are the doctor — that is a proposition I will have consider further, but not now. Either way, the truth of the matter is that the republican party has quite carefully and recklessly coddled various fringe groups and has, for decades, told these groups that they would make their un-american fringe agendas part of of its traditional “money talks and bullshit walks” platform.

The primary example of this process is the ultra-fascist Christian Right. In 1979, Jerry Falwell formed an organization called “The Moral Majority” and immediately aligned his group with two other sets of organizations, thereby forming a bridge between them. These organizations were the republican party and the various loosely associated groups of the far-right wing fundamentalist Christian churches in the United States.

Since right wing fundamentalists first began to coalesce into the moral, ethical, and spiritual black hole it has become today, the republican party has courted this constituency carefully. They have promised this group over and over again that the party would incorporate their hatred for others and their defilement of the legacy of Jesus Christ into their party platform. They promised this every four years, and every four years the creationists and bible-only home-schoolers were left standing off in a corner like a wallflower at the big dance. However, unlike your average wallflower who is nice and courteous, but just a bit too shy and insecure to get out there and dance, the christian right is mean, ugly, vindictive, judgmental, and full of hatred for a world that continues, to their continuous consternation, evolve.

In the mid- to late-1990’s the christian right began to understand that as long as they remained silent partners in the republican conspiracy; never outwardly violating the democratic cornerstone of the separation of church and state beyond the confines of their own individual churches, no republican would ever ask them to the dance.

Perhaps they made overtures to the democratic party, I don’t know. One thing I do know is that if they did, the democrats laughed and said: “You’re insane!” This avenue to political power closed, they knew that they had to strike out on their own, but to do so successfully would mean that they needed partners. They couldn’t count on the vast majority of educated Christians, because most of these people despised them for what they were making of Christianity.

Enter the “NASCAR Dads.”

The NASCAR Dads are the perfect spouse of the Christian right. Neither have any need of or respect for education, history, science (beyond generating lots of horse power), art, equal rights, human rights, or anything else that marks the ascension of man toward God. They courted for a short time, discovered their innate compatibility, and were married at an ‘off the beaten path’ chapel on the outskirts of Vegas. The marriage was quickly consummated and the spawn which heralded forth from the loins of this unholy man-bitch is the tea party creature.

The tea party; the descent of mankind into a base existence consumed with gun culture. Their battle cry? “The Second Amendment is all the First Amendment I need!” The tea party; a clearinghouse for racism, bigotry, harsh judgement, and hatred of all those different than them. The tea party; a loose confederation of groups, populated with the type of people who will look into the cart of someone at the grocery store who they think might be on food stamps just to make sure they’re not buying any name-brand items like Oreos, or ‘luxury’ items like shrimp or steak.

The tea party creature, dripping with the stench of its bizarre conglomeration of ‘values’ and interests, knew that it did not posses the self-regenerating life force necessary to live as anything but a parasite, so it looked about for a host. It identified its target quickly, and lunged with all of the vindictive hatred it could muster at the republican party. It thereby attached itself and began to suck the life out of something which, strangely enough, was already devoid of any philosophical justification and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Like all parasites, the tea party creature gave something back to its host. It brought votes, hate radio, the televised growls of Fox Noise, and the church-based grass-roots organization of the far right fundamentalists. However, like all parasites, the tea party creature depended on its host for its survival, and the christian right portion of the monster found itself in almost the same position it was before. Except for one very important difference: it now had secular claws with which the tear apart the fabric of american cultural progress.

These are the new constituencies of the republican party and there are a lot more of them than there are old rich white guys. Therein lies the origin of the supernova we are about to see. The tea party creature is stealing the republican party from the old rich white guys, and there’s nothing they can do about it. The establishment oligarchs became lost in the heroin-like ecstasy of the ‘votes’ venom the tea party creature pumped into it. They welcomed the parasite into their party to try and insure enough votes to be competitive in national campaigns and, as before, lied to them over and over and over again, somehow expecting them to remain complacent lap dogs to the monied interests dogma of the republican establishment.

The tea party creature is composed of people that the republican establishment would never allow within five miles of one of their garden parties if they could manage it. These are people they will never allow into their gated-community fourth of July celebrations.

The tea party creature has become the driving force behind Dr. Frankenstein and now controls the republican party; and the creature’s man for president is Donald Trump…or Ted Cruz. To have either of these men as your party’s candidate for president is tantamount to living out the final scene of Thelma and Louise. Those two are in the car barreling toward the cliff and the republican party is the passenger in the back seat who, though he knows what is about to happen, either can’t bring himself to, or doesn’t really want to jump. The republican party has become a suicide machine.

Grab a good seat kids, because believe it or not, the republican convention is going to be “must see TV.” The whole bankrupt house of cards is about to blow up like a star devoid of the fuel it needs to continue its coherent life. it is about to let out its last gasp; giving up its life to the universe.

I only hope that it does not do so in a hail of gunfire.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

It’s Time For A Counter Counter-Revolution

The American political landscape is moving in a dangerous direction and the counter-revolution for which the republican party has hoped and dreamt for decades is now at our doorstep. It is deliverance for the racists, bigots, and war mongers of the Christian right, and the ‘white nationalists,’ ‘neo-confederates’ and war-mongers of the tea party secular right.

They are bolstered by books by people like Mike Huckabee in which he tells those living in eternal bliss that “You are really the smart ones, not these people with education, culture, and any semblance of a progressive mind-set. No. You, with your hateful God, your idiotic guns, your nasty grits, and your delicious gravy are the smart ones. You are on this pedestal because you do not seek deeper understanding; you simply accept prima facia, and when the Texas textbook commission hands your children textbooks that portray Moses as one of the elitist oligarchy of men who engineered our separation from the British crown, you will cheer and accept that too.”

In fact, it has been my experience that no counter-revolutionaries seek to understand anything other than that with which they are already familiar. They do not question, they obey. They accept the voices of FOX noise and the hatred of Rush Limbaugh without question, and this embracing of democracy-destroying ignorance, hatred, and harsh judgment of those who are different than them, they are told, is what makes every one of them great Americans.

These forces have coalesced into the modern 21st century fascism they told us could never happen here, and their vision of an America in which white men once again dictate who lives and who dies is given voice through the three-ring circus which is the entire field of republicans vying for the office of president of the United States. If we allow them, they will turn the ‘Statue of Liberty’ into the ‘Statue of Bigotry.’

The ‘Revolution,’ of course, has been going on since the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment and continues today. This is the revolution that took western European culture, from the age of faith in God by superstition, and guilt of the accused by association into the age of scientific method, innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law by a jury of one’s peers, and faith in God by adherence to His command; that we love one another.

The problem is that the revolution became bureaucratized and fell victim to the political wing of the Age of Enlightenment. The ideals of equality of and equality for all people before all people, and beside all other people in their theoretical mist are still beautiful and relevant, and I am certain that all but a small handful of people in this world possess an intrinsic understanding of the justice inherent in them, but practice can often become a contagion.

Creating a gentle rainstorm of practice out the of the theoretical mist of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” is not easy and has not been done well. This is not to say that those who have made the mistakes that have ground the revolution to a halt were possessed of malicious intent. Quite the opposite; their intentions have been pure, and they have been courageous in their continuing attempts to bring about the ascension of mankind to a higher level of relationship with each other and with God.

Unfortunately, if one is to pierce the darkness of ancient judgments and hatreds, they must have a dagger of sufficient length and sharpness, and that dagger must be the bureaucracy. If you ask me, that is a real catch-22; the primary tool necessary to bring positive change to all of humanity is the very thing that will, in the end, inhibit fulfillment of that change.

Now we have the counter-revolution before us. The white nationalists, neo-confederates, tea party activists, and pro-birth christians of the political right have emerged from the shadows of their previous status as ‘fringe’ elements to execute a coup d’état in the republican party. The kingdom of hell is at hand; all they have to do is reach out and grab it.

The self described ‘Goldwater republicans’ are a thing of the past and are no longer welcome. The new republican party is here! The new republican party wants to to know what consenting adults are doing in their bedrooms, and intend to police the gender of the participants: More than two is to be declared unsavory, but as long as there are more women than men, charges will not be filed. The new republican party wants civil rights for all…white, protestant christian males. The new republican party wants boundless economic opportunity…for the wealthy. The new republican party wants no money to be spent on programs that enhance people’s lives; including education and health care. After all, the wealthy can already afford all of the education and health care they need.

That may sound grim (and it is), but this is what your reward will be when you spend your time and money appealing to a minimally educated, culturally illiterate, and openly racist base in order to acquire votes. Those beer drinkin’, gun totin’ hill folk are eventually going to demand their payment, and payment is being demanded now. This why the republican party has drifted farther right than Hitler. The candidates are all trying to sound crazier and more full of hate than the next one in order to appeal to this freak show base.

That is the eye of the storm of the counter-revolution hurricane and I know it is difficult to understand them. I wish I had time in this short essay to delve into the psyche of this phenomenon, but I will have to reserve that for the various one-on-one conversations on this subject I am certain I will have. For my purposes here, I need to return to the revolution and the counter counter-revolution we must initiate and carry out if the American republic is to survive and all of mankind is to advance.

“The revolution will not be televised!” Chuck D shouted that in the late 1980s as the voice of Public Enemy. That may be true for a portion of the revolution, but part of the revolution must be televised.

The part of the revolution that will not be televised is that portion that happens within our hearts. It is the change within each of us that becomes dedicated to the revolution; it is God’s participation in the revolution. When we allow His portion of the revolution to take hold of us, then the revolution cannot fail and will not become petrified in a forest of antiquated systems and processes.

When we surrender and allow His gentle voice to urge us on to even and ever more and greater love and compassion for others; for the poor, the immigrant, the refugee, those who have been or are in prison, all those who are marginalized by consumerist society: in short, for all of the least of these, then the revolution lives and breathes in each of us. When we include and not exclude, we are living the revolution. As we do to them, so we do to Him.

Part of the revolution must be televised so that all can see the injustice against which we rise. We, as revolutionaries, need those who have the skill and the courage to televise the revolution. Better yet, we need those with the skill and the courage to televise the counter-revolution. Only then will the ugly truths of our world enter the eyes of those who either sit on the sidelines, or oppose us altogether. Only in this manner will the seeds of the revolution spread to those who can not yet see.

“The eyes are the window of the soul.” I don’t know who originally said that, but I believe it is the truth. Also, I know that Jesus said this: “The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light” (Matt. 6: 22). That is what televising the revolution can do; fill the body with light so that the part of the revolution which can not be televised can take root in the heart, establish and then nurture the revolution of the King.

It is time, my friends, for the counter counter-revolution: the revolution which will chip away at the crust that has immobilized the revolution and sets it once again on its path toward Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood for all people. It is a revolution that marks another step in the ascension of man to community with the living God who wants nothing more than to have community with us; to be our father and us his children. However this new revolution looks to you, we know its core values and its core messenger; Jesus, the Christ and his sermon.

Each of us know its truth, and we cannot believe the lie anymore. The lie of consumerism, racism, bigotry, wealth, and exclusion has been allowed to fester in this world because people will not debate each other peacefully. Therefore, we do not work things out like adults are supposed to do. So, if I can offer any practical advice in this essay, it is to never be afraid to talk peacefully (yet with all of the conviction your heart possesses) and in an adult manner of the revolution.

It is time. No, it is beyond time.

VIVE LA CONTRE CONTRE RÉVOLUTION!

Peace and love to all,

Niemand