As The World Burns

          

            As the planet combusts under the oppression of an unforgiving global climate crisis, 1,600 people died in Europe last week in their 104º heat wave; ice bergs continue to melt, raising ocean levels and drowning low lying islands and beaches; oceans heat and increase storm strengths, bleach coral reefs, increasing disease in plants and animals, spreading pathogens more easily and quickly in the warmer waters; old growth redwood forests are burning, and we run out of water in the drought-ridden and over-populated southwest that we need to extinguish wildfires and take care of a thirsty growing population, Republicans, and a certain Democrat or two, continue to deny there is even a climate issue. They vote against doing anything about anything.               

                    If it is not about giving tax cuts to the top 1%, gerrymandering distracts to favor themselves, or taking voting rights away from minorities, or healthcare rights away from women, the GOP is not interested in passing any legislation.

Their party (cult) has no platform, no policies.  Their only goal is to obstruct Democrats from getting helpful legislation passed in order to make Democrats look ineffectual, or worse, so they can blame Democrats for all that ails the US so they can win back Congress and the WH.  They count on voters not doing their own research.  They just continue to repeat their lying campaign rhetoric.

It is so expensive to run for office, (Thank you, SCOTUS and Citizens United decision.), politicians spend a huge proportion of their time dialing for dollars.  And they must pay back those big coal and oil donors, who are responsible in large part for the heating planet, and oh, big Pharma, too, of course, by decreasing or erasing their tax bills. It’s all pay to play in America, never mind that we are killing ourselves.

I don’t know why Republicans seem to feel that they, their children, and grandchildren are above it and will not be affected by this emergency.  It’s the theme of the movie, “Don’t Look Up.” 

A disaster looms, and yet, people, especially politicians, go about their mundane, myopic lives, chasing money and power, ignoring scientists’ warnings, as they are wont to do in disaster films.  

As we used to say, (from the old TV Chiffon Margarine commercials), “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” Or to fool with Mother Nature, in our current crisis. She always wins. And She is, apparently, fed up with the human species, which is, I’d say, the most destructive species that ever evolved.

What is the Republicans’ Plan B? Do they plan to ride Elon Musk’s rocket to Mars and stay there? And what is an even bigger mystery to me, is how do they convince people who are not worth billions to vote for them? They are voting against their own interests or really, voting for their own death sentence.

I think we can blame social media, maybe not completely, but quite a lot. It allows lies and conspiracies to travel around the globe before we can get our proverbial pants on. 

It’s not clear, but Jonathan Swift, (17th-18th century Anglo-Irish essayist, satirist, and political writer), may have started the concept of lies getting around faster than the truth, rather than Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, to whom those sentiments have often been attributed. 

Swift wrote:  “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

As the saying, (Ecclesiastes 1:9) goes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Humans have been, apparently, lying and cheating since we first evolved. The Bible says Adam and Eve even dared to lie to their all seeing/all knowing creator about the apple and blame the snake.  Not that that story is to be taken as more than a metaphor, but people still scapegoat to get out of trouble.

It’s just that with all of us around the world connected now, lies take purchase more easily and have a far greater staying power as they continue to go around and around, increasing in size and weight, as a snow ball does rolling down hill.

Social media is terrific and terrible at the same time, the worst and best of times. Personally, for instance, I don’t know how I got along before the internet (and google).  Britannica Encyclopedias took so much work and they could never be completely up to date or cover everything you wanted to know. And the dictionary and Thesaurus I carried everywhere, when I was younger, eventually fell apart. 

Now everything we need, (don’t need and/or don’t know we need,) is right at our fingertips. But, it comes with a big price, the ubiquitousness of mendacity, as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s Big Daddy used to rail.  Or as he said, “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity… You can smell it.  It smells like death.  Mendacity is a system in which men live.”

I have family (Evangelical Republicans) who still think the former guy, Trump, (TFG) is POTUS and that he is a good guy who was sent by God to save America.  Save America from democracy, it seems.

When I give them facts and links to statistics and information, I’m told it is “fake news.”  Still, with all that has happened and even with TFG out of office, they remain loyal to the cult leader.  

Yesterday, a family member, who was messaging me to join a “Boycott Biden club,” asked me, when I told her who the lying grifter TFG, is and always has been, if I only get “filtered news?”  Filtered news.  They actually think the lies and conspiracies they are fed daily are the truth. So, when told facts, info, or news, they think it’s all lies.

What a mess TFG has made of our country. Granted, mental illness and mendacity have always been with us, but never have I seen such a prevalence of both, nor seen the insane lies so proudly and publicly proclaimed. 

They really think they are spouting truth to save our country from Democrats, who, of course, are blood thirsty baby eating pedophiles, and communists.  They cannot understand that they are helping usher in autocracy and fascism.

What TFG has done, other than nearly over-throwing our democracy with violence to install himself as dictator, is made it acceptable to be a crazy conspiracist.  He taught his cult to play victim and to try to rid the country of the godless left by whatever means.  He has made being ignorant and/or brainwashed and wearing a hat to declare it, acceptable, and in those circles a badge of honor.

As Catherine Fahringer from the Freedom From Religion Foundation said, “We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn’t been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.”

They do not know what they do not know and if we tell them what they don’t know, they will, if they still could, burn us all at the stake for heresy. Well, today, they can just throw us into old growth forests.

Jocosa Puella

July 26, 2022

Things That Go Boom

     It’s July 7th.  Bombs are still exploding over LaLa Land. I was especially fond of the one that went off, what sounded and felt like, a matter of feet from my bedroom, at 12:50 this morning. 

After I got my heart started again, and climbed from the floor, back into bed, I was so grateful I don’t live in Ukraine. And then I felt even worse for the Ukrainians. Putin is an evil, monstrous terrorist. But, that is another topic.

Is giving people heart attacks in the middle of the night a sign of American patriotism?  Is that celebrating the birth of our democratic republic?  And do we still have a republic? 

The guys who are trying to get rid of all their leftover fireworks from the 4th seem to think they are still celebrating freedom. Freedom to blow up things.  And maybe they just like to hear things go boom!  Is that a guy thing? And why a late at night thing? Early this morning, that bang had more of a ring of revenge to it. But for what and against whom?

The love of things that go kaboom makes more sense to me.  They are probably the same guys who take the mufflers off their cars and race around our residential streets as though they are in a competition with other muffler-less drivers for their lives. Between those ear-splitting drag racers, the ubiquitous helicopters and sirens, it’s a wonder we aren’t all more sleep-deprived.

Probably, also, the same guys who are constantly flipping over cars in our streets.  I did read that deaths due to car accidents are on the rise. Is it that deafening (male?) speed-demon urge, or is it due to our devices we can’t seem to put down for a minute, even while driving, possibly on top of sleep-deprivation?

Those drivers and midnight firework bomb throwers are probably, also, part of the 54% (130 million) of 16-74 year olds in our country which has a below the equivalent of a 6th grade proficiency in literacy and reading, (per US Dept. of Education).  

Our country has been dumbed down to make it easier for the greedy and power hungry to get US citizens to vote against their own interests and to give them tax breaks, or no tax bill at all. I have known people who were poor, but felt one day they, too, would be wealthy, argue angrily for tax cuts for billionaires. Sucker born every minute?

Donald Trump being the consummate con man, convinced his brainwashed “suckers” that they were right to hate, bully, and even murder those who don’t look like them, have different skin tones, speak other languages, or belong to a different religion, etc.  He and his GOP henchmen convinced them that those “others” were trying to “cancel their culture.” And meanwhile, while they were distracted blaming those others, DT and GOP were stealing their money, their rights, and installing an autocracy.

This is why DT on his campaign trail told his audiences that he loved the uneducated, or was it the poorly educated? It is far easier to convince a non-critically thinking 6th grader that he needs to fear, hate, blame, and scapegoat others than it is to convince an educated and informed citizen. 

It’s also easier to use religion to make people fear and hate the other.  Go figure. Nothing says “God” like hate and fear and guns.  Go figure, too, that his “Christian” followers also put him in the same category with their Jesus, as the Second Coming. Fear and hate sell better than sex, apparently.  

DT got his cult followers to violently act out against their own country to save their country from “them.” Them, the educated?  The brown or black people? Democrats? Progressives?  Women? He got them fearing that if he was not in our White House, they would soon be forced to the back of the bus as they become the irrelevant minority. 

And in the back of the bus, their guns would be confiscated and their “power” and freedom would be robbed from them. The “Christian” SCOTUS is ending access to abortion and possibly to birth control soon, because they want more white babies born. Unwanted, poor, uneducated, easily controlled white citizens.

He and GOP have created very dangerous, heavily armed, under-educated, under-informed,  or completely lied to, mobs.  Take a look around.  Is this the America we grew up loving, celebrating, and thankful to for our freedoms? And I almost forgot to mention the 220 people shot and killed over the July 4, 2022 weekend. Thank God for the 2nd Amendment, NRA, SCOTUS, and the Republican party which protects our right to own, and carry everywhere, weapons of war on the streets of our country.

Is, as we keep being told, America on the verge of its second civil war? I’d vote to let the south and other brainwashed and/or ignorant states to secede this time. Why stop them? The blue states support the red states.  We will save a fortune and get our rights back. I think it’s time to say farewell and tell them not to let the doorknob hit ya where the good lord split ya on your way out.  And, oh, take your Christofascist form of repression with you. Thanks. 

Jacosa Puella July 7, 2022

Don't Agonize, Organize.

Been thinking what I want to say about the dangerous insanity of this current SCOTUS. What can one say? So many things, mixed with outrage, flood the mind. And, also, words become hard to form with tears flowing from your eyes and smoke billowing from your ears. I needed a few days. Crying with protestors in the streets after that ill-fated decision to overturn Roe, (after undoing NY's gun law), while I was not actually out there in the streets with them, was helpful. 

We have four justices who should not even be on the court. Let's work on impeaching them for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings as a start. Mitch McConnell, who owes his allegiance ($$$) to Leonard Leo of the Federalist society, a Catholic Opus Dei member, (I think he has placed 5-6 justices on the court, most are Opus Dei?), installed Neil Gorsuch into the seat he stole from President Obama. 

Scalia had suddenly died leaving the vacancy during Barack Obama's last year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Mitch thought, no way is this black Democratic president going to appoint three justices. So, he created his new rule: POTUS can't nominate a justice to the court within 10 months of a POTUS election. And, go figure, it worked. Dems are just too polite. To understand what a cold, rather heartless rightwing justice Gorsuch is, look up his record. And read, too, how even the other justices think he's an arrogant, patronizing know it all.

 

Then, about five minutes before the end of the reign of Donald J. Trump, (orange Caligula, as I refer to him), Mitch shoved Amy Coney Barrett into RBG's seat when RBG made the unforgivable mistake of dying before Joe Biden could take his place in our Oval Office. Because Amy's a woman and so was RBG, women will be happy, MM figured. A woman is a woman is a woman, to bastardize Gertrude Stein's poem. Of course, women knew that ACB did not smell as sweet as RBG. But, MM got away with it. Again, Dems were too polite. And meanwhile, Amy isn't even qualified to be on the court. She's the least experienced justice in 30 years, I read, (I guess the last least qualified was Thomas 30.). She never tried a case, and her opinions showed her to not care about justice or people's rights. She signed an anti-abortion ad and said she forgot about that, while avoiding abortion questions, just saying precedence is precedence. And she was literally, a "Handmaid" in her Catholic cult, People of Praise, where men make the decisions and women serve the men and God. Sounds like judge material to me.

Kavanaugh should have been left by the side of the road with a beer keg and a box of Kleenex. Lied and cried and yelled at his confirmation hearing about how much he loves beer. In that confirmation hearing, Beer Bong Kavanaugh's behavior also just screamed Supreme Court Justice material. Didn't it? It had to make you as proud as it made me. What a shocking performance. Witnesses came forward to shed light on his past sexual assaults. Christine Blasey Ford did the right thing to try to save the court and the nation. But, to no avail, and she suffered for it, even having to move out of her home due to threats. And he got onto the court. And who paid off all his very large debts remains a mystery. And another mystery to me, is why didn't Kavanaugh's wife pack up the kids and get the hell away from that snivelly little fool? 

Clarence Thomas, Uncle Tom or Peeping Thomas, as he's been referred to, had a similar problem with his past. Anita Hill was a hero back then, too, but also to no avail. It remains a white man's world, after all, due to gerrymandering and cheating and voter suppression. And few are whiter than that black man.

 

So, two sexual assaulters helped undo Roe v Wade for women who are raped, or are victims of incest, and become pregnant. Even if your doctor says you will die in childbirth, you will be forced to die in childbirth now, or be charged with murder. Stranger than fiction. Life always is. Isn't it? About 30 years after Thomas' confirmation hearing and Anita Hill's testimony, "Gin" Thomas, that lovely MAGA insurrectionist, called Anita very early one morning, demanding that she apologize for the things she'd said about her husband back then. Bit of a delayed reaction, I'd say. I figured Ginni had been tippling all night long, and got more enraged with every drink until she drunk dialed her husband's old nemesis and dumped on poor, unsuspecting Anita Hill.

 

We are losing our democracy and sliding into a theocracy. A theocracy which gives more rights to guns than to women. I still do not understand the guns and god thing or what makes "Christians" think Jesus would be into any weapon. Have they ever actually read what Jesus purportedly said? To me it is an unholy alliance from hell. 

Leonard Leo's long range plan has been to unravel our democratic republic and replace it with a theocracy. And he's been very good at it. He is well funded by Koch brothers and others and because Dems are just too polite. 

Let me amend myself. US is not becoming a theocracy. It is fast becoming a Christofascistic state. QAnon Christofascism. Women in the Jewish religion have the right to an abortion. They believe life begins at your first breath and ends at your last breath. I guess they will have to demand a religious exemption to this Christofascist ban to receive their God given right to reproductive healthcare.

The world is astounded and frightened to see what America, the democratic country they looked up to, is becoming. I think they fear for us and laugh at us by turns. I think the world is still dumbstruck by how uneducated Americans are and how many guns US has, (393.3 million guns to about 330 million citizens.), and how many mass shootings, (at least 250 so far in 2022), and how many children are murdered in their classrooms. How does any civilized nation comprehend, explain, or defend it? 

And I hope those who are applauding that now public funds have to pay for religious schools, too, and that coaches are allowed to pray on the field, enjoy when a Muslim school demands taxpayers support it, and an Islamic Imam spreads his rug out and prays to Allah to bless their games, or asks Allah to kill America, the Great Satan. Or the Church of Satan prays that their team wins. Go Satan!

What a world. I'm back where I started. What can one say about the state of the union today? Stop the world, I want off? My suggestion is that Dems stop being so freakin' polite! And that everyone of voting age, get off their asses and get out and vote in November like their country and their lives depend on it! They do! It's not too late to reverse a lot of the damage done.

 

We can stop our downfall by taking more control of Congress, ending the filibuster, and expanding SCOTUS. While we’re at it, let’s set term limits, too.  This justice for life is not working, either. The generic post Roe reversal poll I read recently, had Dems up by 10 points. We can do this! 

As the phrase, the Afro-American woman civil rights activist, Florence Rae Kennedy, coined, and many, including Gloria Steinam and Rosi Braidotti, quoted, and Occupy Wall Street movement turned into a bumper sticker, said: "Don't agonize, organize!" 

And Rosi Braidotti is right. "Violence, pain and resentment are conducive to paralysis, not to change." Don't go down with the ship, yet. Remain positive and fight like hell. Re-radicalize! VOTE!

Relationships, Ten Trillion to One

Relationships. There’s a mouthful. And a handful. How does any one of them survive? How does anyone survive them?

I think, as with life itself existing at all in the universe, the odds of a relationship making it at all are about one in ten trillion. Nonetheless, we find ourselves alive and relating to each other, for better or for worse.

Relationships are work, we always hear. Or maybe it’s ourselves we hear saying, bitching that. But often, they are more like a bloody war than just a mere job.

Why can’t we all just get along? Why do we prefer war to peace in our relationships? Why do they often seem like more of a competition than a cooperation? Wouldn’t it help people in a relationship, as well as the survival of our species itself, to cooperate with each other?

Doesn’t it make more sense, that if everyone cooperated for the greater good, things would go along far more swimmingly for all involved, on all levels? For instance, wouldn’t not capturing, torturing, or killing anyone, but instead giving the other a helping hand, thereby helping ourselves with our own hands, make for a better world?

Why, instead, does it feel that there is some goal we think we must reach, passing Go and grabbing the cash, before the other can? Why do we need to beat the other? Where are we going? Are we proving something? Dog eat dog relationships? Last guy standing is not that rotten something or other?

Everything in life is relating. Right? Everything and everyone relates to everything and everyone else. We don’t materialize out of thin air. We are born through another. We need the other.

As with the Acacia tree and the ants, life is inter-woven, inter-active, and inter-dependent for survival. Scratch my back. I’ll scratch yours. Or in the case of the ant, I’ll keep pests off your limbs for some good eats.

We would not have even evolved if plant life had not developed first. Without the oxygen plants give off as a bi-product, we wouldn’t be breathing here. Life is simply symbiotic. No one, nothing survives alone in a vacuum.

It’s the Indian myth’s web of gems, with each one reflecting the next into infinity. We are all gems and part and parcel of that web of life. We’re all in this kitchen sink together, that Mulligan Stew of existence.

So, why don’t we take better care of our essential connections to each other and to every living thing instead of acting as if some god put the other fauna and flora here to serve us?

Countries, companies, religions, gangs, races, genders, and individuals all seem bent on bringing the other down while running off with the other’s flag toward some illusionary goal line in the sand. They argue, point, criticize, correct, and condemn the other to make themselves better than.

And this happens even within loving personal relationships, not just in the competitive world of business or in a war zone or gang turf war, or in a courtroom. Or maybe we have made life all one big court case. The People vs. People trial of the ages.

Are we all just stuck in an unconscious circular rat race, playing a game of steal the flag, or chess to the death? Why, shouldn’t it be more like Alice in Wonderland’s, Caucus Race?

All the creatures run around in a circle. There is no beginning, no end. Anyone can begin wherever he is and leave off wherever he is. And in the end, everyone wins and gets a prize. Now that makes sense.

That’s life. It’s simply a circle and yet, we run around like we are going to get somewhere first and be looked up to as some great conquering hero. Is it all ego and hero worship complexes?

But, really everyone is already a hero. We have each chosen to take this death-defying journey of life. And we need each other along our routes to keep us on track and off cliffs.

So, why do we not understand that there is no such thing as winning alone? If survival is our goal, why don’t we know that that desire to be on top, produces it’s opposite effect of all those you trampled to get there, pitching rocks at you to bring you down hard?

Did this need to conquer begin with early man and its need to survive when food was short? Maybe, but all life takes life in the process of surviving. And within species, members kill their own to make sure their genes are passed on rather than the other’s. Each individual thinks it is the best combination of that gene pool ever created and that it must replicate itself over others for the future good of its species and life.

Now, I’ve read rules of engagement for relationships to work. I’ve read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I know that we should not take ourselves too seriously or accept another’s criticisms without realizing he is probably projecting his own feelings of inadequacy. I know we should reflect before we project or deflect our lousy day off on to the other, too.

I know we should respect and treat each other the way we wish to be treated. Jesus’ Golden Rule is the best and simplest ground rule for the world to co-exist. But, do we abide by the rules, especially the golden one?

Not so much really. People are constantly at war with each other. Sun Tzu’s 6th Century B.C., The Art of War is still a huge seller, and recommended to executives for business dealings. We learn to live by the rules of engagement in war.

And the divorce rate in the US, according to the Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri, is 50% of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages. According to enrichment journal (whatever that is) the divorce rate in America for first marriages is only 41%, second 60%, and third 73%.

Those third marriages are really under siege, endangered species. If at first you don’t succeed, give it up already… Huh? And marrying between the ages of 20 and 24 seems to doom it even more. Why is that worse than marrying at age 17? Too much time being free, know the difference, and thus harder to adapt to the compromise a union requires? My way or highway thinking? Longer in individual egg rather than as two broken into omelet?

And look at all the drivers yelling at each other on the road. People are ready to battle complete strangers at the drop of a hat, or the cutting off of a car in traffic.

And countries. People in mass are a mess? Mob mentality rules? A country will declare another country the enemy and then objectify the people as different from themselves, and all as one big bad seed, so they can feel justified in trying to destroy it or take its property or resources.

Hate and fear and label branding are camouflage for motives. I’m not trying to steal their oil or water. I’m trying to stop their evil ways from hurting themselves any longer, and introduce them to Democracy and Jesus. I want them to go to heaven. Yeah. Sooner than later, too, if they happen to be sitting on resources we need.

And far too often, the same thing seems to apply in a romantic relationship. Instead of cooperating in love to make their union work for the best for both parties in that omelet, it’s too often a competition. Seems we often plunder rather than embellish our significant other.

One wants to control the other. One wants to dominate. One must be right, the other wrong. Is it all just deep insecurity and/or fear of being abandoned, losing the other, being alone, again, naturally? So, instead, we drive the other to run screaming away before they wake up and decide they are better off without us, so that we are still in control?

Is it just a matter of seeing one’s own faults in the other and familiarity breeding contempt? Don’t we put people on pedestals only to then try to knock them off later? Or do we just look up to people we don’t personally know. Never a prophet in one’s own land theory.

I don’t know. But, I do know that when you bring two different, unique human egos together, all hell can break loose. It would seem that with all our same human genetic make-up, we’d be more on the same page.

And then, again, maybe we are. Maybe we are all on the same competitive, knock the other guy off the mountain to claim it as our own page.

What if we just dug beneath the surface a little deeper? If we can spill oil by digging, couldn’t we spill no man is an island consciousness and our deep connections by digging into ourselves more? Water represents the mind, after all. Dig, baby, dig. Spill love and oneness.

We want our freedom to do what we want when we want. And we want the relationship to be there as our safety net. We want sex, support, and companionship. We do need each other. We do want each other. And yet, war continues to break out all over the place all the time. Quel waste…

Maybe it’s time we take stock of our own superficial and counter-productive thinking and not only dig in, but back up a bit to get a less myopic view of what we’re doing and why. Time for Sun Tzu’s retreat and regroup plan. Not to live to fight another day. But, instead to live to love another day.

Wouldn’t that make a lovely and fine mess of the war zone we’ve created here in paradise? Love is all there is. Let’s practice it. We can get it right.