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"The Beautiful Uncut Hair of Graves"
“The best things in life are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties in your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
After all these long years, it still brings wonder: a loved one’s touch; a warm breeze behind the ears; a large, orange Vermont moon; pond frogs singing at night; a red-bud flurry; electric blue cilia, lawn violets, brilliant sunlight behind pale new leaves----the opening days of Spring. Why do I often think that Spring is so like dying in many ways: always individually unique in its universal passage; a passion of renewal; beautiful in its transience, and ever so “life’s plain common work?”
The Japanese have a particular word for the effects of Spring on the human heart: “aware.” There is no word quite like it in English. It always suggests to me the gestalt of that which is poignant and simultaneously joyful----the essence of transience and reaching far beyond the sum of its parts. In Japan, it is the falling cherry blossoms that are most cherished, stirring and beautiful, not the bud or transparent green leaf. It is the exquisite end of youth in its most real and truthful sense that is the beginning of wisdom. From innocence to experience and returned to the extinction of wisdom, we live lives of critical choices, not always wise ones and some of us are mightily challenged in the doing of it.
For those such as this author, it is not the falling blossoms that stir the moods of epiphany, but the gnarled old plum with its first white, tight buds that crown winter with a greater triumph than stillness and peace. It is not hope that directs our reality, but change in view of truth. Conscious people cannot avoid evil, conquer its power alone, hail victorious without community, nor assume that hope is a paradigm of survival.
Good people must listen, look, decide and act: “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” (Mark Twain) The truth behind the reality of courage is not reward or safety, but the act of choice and truth itself. This is the wisdom of caregivers, most women, mothers, nurturers, real men, the touch of artists, and the path of spiritual souls. It sounds counterintuitive, but the path to truth is not peace, but sacrifice and loss. In the grand scope of political events, it is most often tragic----in the Greek sense of participating in enormous events beyond our control, at our perilous expense by decisive choices, and finding truth in the denouement.
Spring is that particular time in the year when the inner world of the mind and the outer world share a matrix---the time for opening fully to change if we are listening, seeing, and understanding that what is real is not necessarily true.: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” (Mark Twain)
In matters of American culture and politics, we resonate with the wisdom of our poets and mentors: “Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.” (Walt Whitman)
Neither Twain nor Whitman were delicate intellects, but ones that were vigorously animated in the best traditions of the Old Republic and its guiding lights: “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on----have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear----what remains? Nature remains.” (Walt Whitman)
What Whitman meant by nature was less the pleasures of Thoreau's ’Walden Pond’ than the collective identity of America’s once untamable citizens: “There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.”
Americans are defiant. Our cultural diversity has always trumped tyranny, because we lived democracy as a verb, not an abstract adjective or noun or the jingoes slaver of scoundrels, religious bigots, faux patriots, and pathological opportunists. We have often been on the brink of tyranny before, but always overcame: “Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.” (Walt Whitman)
Will Democracy and America survive Empire? “Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” (Mark Twain). Ignorance is a powerful thing, illusions not withstanding, and the illusions of consumerism are not the same as democracy. American consumerism has become freedom’s enemy in a stupor of “consciousness of kind” that allies justice, governance, and democratic institutions with the authoritarian market allocations of self-serving corporations driven by wealth, and predatory opportunity. The result is the establishment of a privileged elite class rivaling in power and dominance of assets the royalty of 18th century Europe or the Robbers Barons of 19th century industrialism.
The shift to predatory capitalism at the expense of American nationalism has been in earnest since the Nixon years. (f.1.) :
“As the pollster Samuel Lubell had already noted before the 1952 election, ‘the inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping.’” “Perlstein keenly sees that some liberals ‘developed a distaste for the social elements they had championed, now that those elements were less reliably downtrodden and less content to be passively led by liberal elites.” (f.2)
That in a nutshell describes why the Republican Party is the enemy of our Republic and why the Democratic Congress is its enabler waiting to seize full lateral power.
Even the most astute among us, after years of researching every conceivable aspect of the Bush administration, never even dreamed of the radical transformations that were taking place on every level of our American world. While the reality played out a complex and hyper-myth of patriotism intertwined with consumer addictions to the permanent good life----that good life vanished abruptly before us as did our democracy. What remains is unspeakable power in the hands of a few.
To us, and by the standards of history, our current government run by radical Republican neo-cons and corporate Democrat enablers is simply put----fascist. Their reign of terror over this nation and the world will go down in history as infamous. We couldn’t agree more with Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who thought the conservative movement was the manifestation of a psychological disorder.
What has happened in this current climate is the complete repudiation of FDR’s ‘New Deal’ and the enlightened application of economic and social justice in a democracy for all citizens. Even more apparent is the neo-con repudiation in fact of its own historic heroes: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Selection of a mental case like John McCain to run for the presidency is even further evidence that the Republican party is dead. In its place has risen an evil to be challenged and defeated. A brilliant and insightful view into the world that has revealed to us the absolute corruption and class coup of our age is in the ‘must read’ article by Clinton Callahan in ‘Dissident Voice,’ “Beware the Psychopath, My Son.” May 12th, 2008
“I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.”
The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination.”
Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as their power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld — the overlapping criminal syndicates that lurk above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.
During the past fifty years, psychopaths have gained almost absolute control of all the branches of government. You can notice this if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task. All of the so called scandals that have come up, any one of which would have taken down an authentic administration, are just farces played out for the public, to distract them, to make them think that the democracy is still working.”
In his book Political Ponerology, Andrej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests), psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. Since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.”
If the above reminds you of Bush America---right on. The prescient Mark Twain a hundred years ago reminded us as much:
“Look at the tyranny of party----at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty----a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes----and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.” ‘The Character of Man.’
The myths of endless American consumer satisfaction are unraveling quickly, and by the pain of bread, people are slowly rising from the stupor as unplugged from feeding tubes in the Matrix:
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and conviction are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” Mark Twain
While ignorance is a powerful tool of control, knowledge is the liberator. Were it not for the Internet, the sublimation of American democracy and the destruction of its Constitution and guiding documents would have gone the way of Nazi ascendancy with barely a whisper of reproach or objection:
“We are seeing the final desperate power-grab or endgame (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men — economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops and PR specialists — in short, the whole crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared.”
“Why does the Pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out.”
Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the healthy human being — a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish — militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely and as quickly as possible.”
“If the general voting public is not aware that there exists a category of people we sometimes perceive as almost human, who look like us, who work with us, who are found in every race, every culture, speaking every language, but who are lacking conscience, how can the general public take care to block them from taking over the hierarchies? General ignorance of psychopathology may prove to be the downfall of civilization. We stand by like grazing sheep as political/corporate elites throw armies of our innocent sons and daughters against fabricated enemies as a way of generating trillions in profits, vying against each other for pathological hegemony.”
“Nearly everyone who has been part of an organization working for social change has probably seen the same dynamic play out: The good and sincere work of many can be destroyed by the actions of one person. That doesn’t bode well for bringing some sort of justice to the planet! In fact, if psychopaths dominate political hierarchies, is it any wonder that peaceful demonstrations have zero impact on the outcome of political decisions? Perhaps it is time to choose something other than massive, distant hierarchies as a way of governing ourselves?” Clinton Callahan
In the infuriating impotence of stymied change, progressive people have begun to eat their children out of fatigue, helplessness, ennui, and thwarted rage. Sometimes its absolutely stunning in reaction:
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Je m'accuse:
“I have known IOZ for my entire life, but it is clear to me that he has changed, and I must forcefully repudiate his views. Although he was there for my birth, at every birthday and holiday--a presence in my life and family for as long as I can remember--I can no longer support, nor be associated with, his divisive rhetoric. The suggestion that we are but soap bubbles on the skein of time does not reflect my belief that the collective nature of the human organism on this planet can be fundamentally altered and bettered through the judicious application of electioneering within the borders of the United States of America. IOZ's bitterness does not reflect my hope for a belief in change for a better tomorrow for the children. By pointing out that ours is a sexually backward patriarchal culture of racist exploitation that glories in state violence, IOZ shows how little he is interested in taking back America. He is no longer the man I thought I might once have somewhat known.”
OR:
“I'm finished with this election and the American political process. The only pleasure I'll be taking in the remainder of this charade is mocking, ridiculing, lampooning, castigating, vilifying, skewering and otherwise maligning the death throes of the American republic.”
OR:I have noticed a change in the nature of discussion with these previously unmet readers. Four years ago, much of it centered on the outrageousness of the Bush administration, the stomach turning criminality of the Iraq War, Cheney The Fanged Man of Wax, with a little rage at our planetary ecocide thrown into the mix.”
“Lately though, I don't hear so much outrage. In fact, the readers seem to be suffering from what someone aptly called "rage fatigue." Which is another way of saying the bastards have simply worn us out. And it's true.”
“But then, we really do not expect political truth, but rather entertainment in a system where, as Frank Zappa said, politics is merely ‘the entertainment branch of industry‘.
Joe Bageant ‘The Audacity of Depression’.
Nearly all of our blog friends have reached, as have we ----- the denouement. It is both time to retreat and time to advance. It is time to embrace Sun Tzu‘s ‘Art of Warfare’ against our own government. By all accounts, given the Bush administration‘s hubris , we will be successful. ‘Morning in America’ is a lie, but Spring is true, as true as my feeling that sacrifice, even death is inherent in Spring. It is time for revolution. It must be----if for no other justification than that which demands justice proclaims in “The Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”
In spite of the illusory circus of the presidential race and who wins: whether an aged madman; a brilliant woman, who has compromised her best ideals behind her; or the avatar of a great black man poised to orate the best of our hopes and traditions; the truth is that the reigns of power will not return to democracy.Therein lies the greater revolution as envisioned by Callahan:
“In my humble opinion, our current depression is simply the shadow cart by our national mass hallucination. Like you, I have come to be as comfortable in that shadow as in the light of what is good in this world. It's rather like walking a wooded path, partly shaded and partly sunlit. But mostly it's just walking forward on the path before us, with no illusions about where it ultimately ends.”
“If individuals simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones and prison guards refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt.”
“True change happens in the moment that a person becomes aware of psychopathy in all its chilling details. From this new awareness, the world looks different, and entirely new actions can be taken. Distinguishing between human and psychopathic qualities begins the foundation of responsibility upon which we have a real chance to create sustainable culture.”
“If individuals simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones and prison guards refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt.”
“True change happens in the moment that a person becomes aware of psychopathy in all its chilling details. From this new awareness, the world looks different, and entirely new actions can be taken. Distinguishing between human and psychopathic qualities begins the foundation of responsibility upon which we have a real chance to create sustainable culture. “
While Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Callahan, and thousands of us embrace the heart of non-violent dissent, many more of us know that democracy is hard, not abstract, and in that unfolding----blood will flow. It is time for Revolution in America. It is past time for us to define its quality and it is time to form community pockets of underground resistance:
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Mark Twain
Do not be afraid to face the truth, nor violate the corrupted conventions of law. Revolution is defiant, the essence of the American soul, it wears 300 million faces and will prevail in the end if two hundred years of democracy has any remaining value. Look to ‘The Declaration of Independence’ and know that “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” (Mark Twain)
“No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country.”
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775).
Prepare Patriots ----The Time Is Now
The Path of Right Is Before Us
(1.) “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.
(2.) New York Times “Bring Us Apart” by George Will May 11, 2008)
(3) Title by Walt Whitman