Category: politics

Today’s Theme Music

Sentimentality creeps up on me again.

As I was walking, reflecting on my dreams, and writing in my head, a voice slipped past the disparate, disorganized words. Drizzle stole in past trees and fresh, cool air invited me out of myself. Looking around, I thought, “What a wonderful world this can be.”

Not always, mind you. Yeah, we know. We’ve seen the images and we’re still reading the stories.

Of course, the voice I was hearing was Louis Armstrong singing “What A Wonderful World.” Armstrong recorded and released it in nineteen sixty-seven. I first heard it before I was a teenager, but it leaped back into public awareness with the movie, “Good Morning, Vietnam,” in nineteen eighty-seven. Serving in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, I saw it in a theater at Rhein-Main Air Base. “What A Wonderful World” was a sobering moment in the film, as the music was juxtaposed against the young military and the weapons of war. Of course, this is a flawed moment; “Good Morning, Vietnam” was set in nineteen sixty-five. “What A Wonderful World” came out two years later. It works, despite that flaw.

Life moves on. Rhein-Main Air Base closed. My unit and its mission, spying against the Soviet Union, is gone, as are the Soviets. We’ve lost Louis Armstrong and Robin Williams, but I’m part of an era where technology saves us from depending on memories alone, allowing us to more sharply and accurately revisit our past.  So, here it is again, “What A Wonderful World.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s theme song comes from last night’s activities. We attended the Rock the Resistance last night, an Indivisible fund raiser for Oregon District Two. Local talent performed. We have terrific local talent, like the Rogue Suspects, LEFT, and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. One of the songs performed was “Higher Ground.”

Written and recorded by Stevie Wonder in nineteen seventy-three, when I was still getting my eyes opened in high school, it’s an uplifting song, perfect for a fund-raiser supporting the “Resist!” movement. While dancing, singing along, and sipping a beer, I thought of the rest of the world. War in Myanmar. Flooding in Asia. Evacuations for Hurricane Irma. Eyes on Hurricane Jose. Texas and Louisiana recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Mexico recovering from an earthquake. Wars on going on everywhere, driving people from their lands into a search for safety, and wild fires burning in Canada, America’s Pacific Northwest, and California. It’s a mess, ain’t it?

It ain’t new. All these things have always been going on. War, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes have always been with us.

One hundred years ago, in nineteen seventeen, learning about other’s catastrophe and trying to help them out would have taken some time. Now, updates come by the second via digital channels, satellites, and social media, and connect us to one another.

Watching disasters and wars on my monitors and televisions while sipping coffee at home demonstrates how fast technology has outraced our thinking, culture, and politics. We’re together but isolated. We don’t need to be. Dare I say that we need a significant paradigm shift?

Yes. Technology is going to keep racing by. And look how much of it is conceived and designed in one locale, manufactured in another location, and sold and used in other places. We need each other. Meanwhile, countries are starting to man the borders to shut others out. It’s backward behavior. Fear drives many of these actions. Hatred contributes, and ignorance amplifies and sustains this backward behavior.

We’re one world. We’re one tribe. We keep spiting others, and end up spiting ourselves. Come on, people, we need to get our shit together. Time to start trying, and keep on trying, until we reach a higher ground. That’s the paradigm shift needed: we need to stop thinking in terms of nations, and think in terms of people, without regard for anything except that we’re all people.

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Today’s Theme Music

Hurricanes. Floods. Wildfires. Nuke threats. Politics. Fake news. Bad beer. Violence.

Sometimes I think that I need to just get away from it all. Stick me in a stasis chamber and call me when it’s over. If not that, let me just fly away. Sing it for me, Lenny. From nineteen ninety-eight.

 

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I Believe

A majority of them believe that whites suffer the most discrimination in America. They believe that Christians suffer the most persecution. They believe that Mexicans are rapists and killers, and Obamacare is destroying the economy and eroding freedom. They believe the mainstream press is spreading false news against Trump. Some believe that former President Obama is running a shadow government. Or it might be Hillary, who they call Killary, because they believe she has had so many people killed. They believe that Congress passed an act that awarded veterans of the CSA the same status as US war veterans. They miss the part of the amendment where it states, “For the purpose of this section,” which was about paying pensions, and nothing more. They believe Planned Parenthood was harvesting babies, and that all that Planned Parenthood does is abortions. They believe that a wall will protect them and Trump will save the country.

They are Trump supporters. All those things that they say they believe in interviews, social media posts, and through polls, have been established as false. They believe that the science that predicted the eclipse and its path is being faked when it comes to global warming. It’s part of a huge conspiracy to destroy the United States.

They believe he’s “draining the swamp”

I believe they’ll continue believing these myths and lies. They’ll believe we, the critics, are undermining the POTUS with our criticism. They’ll believe it’s treasonous, that the critics, like me, are liars and obstructionists, as he claims, even though they had no qualms about accusing President Obama of being born elsewhere or hating America. They don’t see the hypocrisy. Hypocrisy and irony often escapes them.

They’ll believe protesters must be shut up, for the good of the nation. They believe that the protesters against the current administration are poor losers. They don’t see the irony in their protests to keep the monuments to the war they lost, the war they fought to keep others enslaved. Because there, too, they have convinced themselves that the rebels who seceded from the Union were heroes defending America and the Constitution. They’ve convinced themselves, it was not about slavery.

They’ll believe that it’ll be for the greater good of the nation to build camps and imprison or restrict “trouble-makers.” They’ll be convinced that this is part of protecting free speech. They’ll believe that the prisoners are treated well, but even so, they deserve to be locked up. It’s their own fault. Why are they protesting these laws if they’ve done nothing wrong?

They’ll believe that if the press stops spreading the myth of climate-change and global-warming, we’ll no longer see the effects, because that was all made-up and exaggerated by the lying press (or Democrats, or scientists). They’ll believe it until the waters are rushing in through their doors.

And when, finally, the truth comes to them because the shit’s hitting them in the face, and they’re standing in the cratered ruins, they’ll say, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was going on in those camps. I didn’t know that all this was going on. How could we know? We trusted our leader. He was the government, and we trusted him. How could we know that he was lying?

“How could we know?”

We heard the same thing from Germans after World War II. “How could we know?”

We heard the same thing when Dubya started the war in Iraq. “How could we know?” Many of them still believe that Dubya protected America from terrorism, that the attacks of 9/11 were to be blamed on someone else, no matter when it happened. When, eventually, the results of the WMD Inspections came out, when Dubya finally came out and said, “No, Suddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11,” they said, “How could we know? He fooled us all.”

No. He did not fool us all.

That’s what I believe.

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Today’s Theme Music

Do you have daily theme music, or music that highlights an activity?

My daily theme music is often a reflection of a momentary lapse of reason, or a thought in the nick of time. Themes vary through the day, though, mirroring moods and events. Sometimes I find myself with the themes from the television series “Mission Impossible” or “Sanford and Son” in my head.

The smoke levels dropped today. The A.Q.I. remains listed as unhealthy, but it seems much clearer and more comfortable. The air temp was a comfortable seventy-six F under partly cloudy skies. That allowed me to walk in comfort.

I wrote in my head as I walked around town (actually designing the Epitomy, the starship serving as base in “Black Dust”). Bonnie Tyler’s song, “Holding Out For A Hero,” accompanied my thoughts. The song was in a movie you might have seen, “Footloose,” in nineteen eighty-four, but it’s been used for multiple campaigns. Bonnie puts a lot into singing the song, which was written by the talented Dean Pritchford.

I could use a hero this year, not just in my novels, but in life. Maybe I just place an ad: “Wanted: principled individual to save the world.”

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

“There’s something wrong with the world today.”

When Aerosmith sang that in nineteen ninety-three, I think fuckin’ A, there’s a lot wrong with the world today. I don’t think we’ve advanced much since ’93. It feels like we’re sliding down a steep hill. It’s getting steeper, and we’re picking up speed. I can’t see the bottom, and I don’t know what’s down there, and all these things scare the hell out of me. The Doomsday Clock stayed at three minutes until midnight until twenty seventeen. Now it’s been moved to two and half minutes before midnight.

2017

IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.  See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2017 time of the Doomsday Clock.

 

Don’t know why it matters to me; I’m sixty-one. How long until death? Yes, but isn’t it the quality of life until death that matters? And do I not want to think the world became better while I was in it, and maybe helped make it a little, teeny-tiny bit better?

Here’s Aerosmith, with “Livin’ On the Edge.”

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Organic Writing Fun

I’m having a ball with this organic writing business, and the part of the science fiction novel, “Incomplete States,” that I’m currently working on.

Organic writing in my use means that I have little frigging idea about where I’m going with something. Maybe expressing it, “Where it’s taking me,” is more accurate. It — the muse, the words, the characters, the novel — seems to jump into the driver’s seat, smash the gas and wrench the wheel. They don’t even yell, “Hang on.” They just take off. Sometimes they leave me behind, because they — or it — are smarter and more creative than moi.

But this time, I’m keeping up, and we’re having a ball. This far future, technologically advanced Human society is the backdrop. They travel galaxies like many of us fly around the country. Nanos maintaining health are embedded; so are various communication nets and data webs. You’re in constant contact. Death hasn’t been overcome, but there are work-arounds. People are living quality lives for over a hundred years.

The technology allows you to genetically shape and sculpture your body and features. Regardless of your ethnicity, you can like as you wish, and stay like that until you decided to die.

Because some, do, get bored by the tedium, or philosophically explore, but going for permanent death. That’s a background fade in my book.

Less children are being born. The procreative drive is evaporating. Part of this is due to a virus, but that’s another sub-plot.

The world of this section, though, has a virus that attacks technology. They don’t know the origins of the virus. I do, of course, and it is a Human development devised for war and marketing. (They’re not that different; they’re all about conquering others and gaining strategic advantages to advance an agenda and gain wealth.) The net is, everything normally done via technology can’t be done. Returning to more basic materials and methods are required.

In a sense, it’s like steampunk as the characters cope with the changes, and I, the writer, plays with the impact and shifts. This identifies one of my favorite writing aspects: exploring ideas, fleshing them out, and discovering how the characters react. It is delicious.

Now, gotta go. “It” is calling. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I find myself singing a song, and then consider when I heard it, and where I was when it was released. With this song today, I thought, oh, when did this come out? I was living in Mountain View, California, wasn’t I? But that means the late nineties.

That couldn’t be right, but I look it up, and confirm, yes, this song is twenty years old.

No way, I react. It seems so recent and fresh. But it says it on the net, on Wikipedia, so you know it’s true.

Songs, politics, and technology are my time markers. When this song came out in nineteen ninety-seven, my email account was on Hotmail. My computer was a Zenith. I’d graduated to a monster VGA monitor. My hard drive was twenty meg, and I had both three and a half inch and five and a quarter inch floppy drives, along with a R/W CD drive. I think we were running about twenty-five MHz, and Windows 3.1. Bill Clinton was the POTUS, and the economy was flying. As an aside, Must See TV, with Friends and Seinfeld, filled the top ten television shows.

The U.S.S.R. had collapsed, and the Berlin Wall had come down. There was talk about the Peace Dividend. We thought there was a glorious future ahead of us.

Twenty years. As everyone finds out, significant changes take place in twenty years.

Here is Sugar Ray, with “Fly.”

 

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Future Uncertainty

Steve Bannon faces some future uncertainty. Comments by the POTUS caused the uncertainty.

I feel for Mr. Bannon. His dire situation prompts me to confess: I, too, face an uncertain future.

I’ve been uncertain about whether to go public with my future uncertainty, but my uncertainty has been mounting. I’m so uncertain about my future, I’m not certain what I’ll have for lunch, or whether I’ll have a beer tonight. I’m also uncertain about the source of pain in my head. I’m uncertain about whether the current W.H. occupant will start a nuclear war or another American Civil War.

I know that I’m not alone in my future uncertainties. People are uncertain if they can find something to eat today or a safe place to sleep. They’re uncertain that they can survive another day of pain. Black Americans are often uncertain whether they’ll survive a traffic stop. Police officers are often uncertain what people are reaching for, and whether toy guns are real. Some Americans are uncertain about whether their drinking water is safe, or if they’ll be employed at the end of the day, tomorrow, next week, or next month. Others are uncertain about where they’ll get the funds to pay for the medications they need. More are uncertain about their symptoms, and whether these symptoms are the first signs of a disease progressing in them, aging, or a minor, or temporary, ailment. Others are uncertain about what’s going to happen on “Game of Thrones,” who will win the World Series, and if the Patriots will win the Superbowl again. Apple’s new products cause many people great uncertainty. People flying on United Airlines are uncertain about the status of their flights, and why United can deny them a seat of they bought a ticket and were issued a boarding pass.

Uncertainty isn’t exclusive to America. Many people in the world are uncertain about the impact of pollution, what America will do next, or if America’s President is insane. Others are uncertain about the effects of Brexit, what to do about multiple wars and refugees, terrorism, and climate change.

So, I feel for Mr. Bannon. His future in the White House is uncertain.

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Major Eclipse Sponsors Announcement

As rumored on the Internet for the last several days, the United States National 2017 Eclipse Steering Commitment has announced that Doritos has been selected as the official sponsor of the 2017 American Eclipse. The eclipse is now officially known as The Doritos Great American Eclipse of 2017.

In other eclipse related news, Mountain Dew is the official soft drink of the DGAE 2017. Budweiser has been selected as the official beer, and Nike is the official shoe. Rumors are circulating that Pepsi will issue a commemorative eclipse can.

Pre-eclipse entertainment venues and entertainers were also announced. Among other performers, Pink Floyd has agreed to open festivities in Depoe Bay, Oregon, with a videocast of “Eclipse” when the eclipse begins. Britney Spears will play in St. Louis, Missouri, and Shania Twain will perform at Clemson in South Carolina. Pharrell will perform a Michael Jackson song and moon-dance. Van Morrison will sing “Moon Dance,” and Bonnie Tyler is expected to perform “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

WalMart has announced a spectacular Black Monday sale in conjunction with the eclipse. Prices will be slashed in half during the totality.

The Doritos Great American Eclipse of 2017 officials remind everyone to practice safe observing during the eclipse. Officials are also urging everyone to avoid taking selfies of themselves with the sun during the eclipse.

In other eclipse news, President Trump has denounced the eclipse as fake science via Twitter, and urges all Americans to ignore the stories in Lame Stream Media about the eclipse.

That is all.

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