Monday, December 19, 2005

one more time

i love christmas. i miss my ma, she passed five days before christmas in 2001. i was locked in a michigan prison, in solitaire cuz i was assaulted. I begged to see my dad who drove to Jackson to see me. They wouldn't let me. My dad had to send me a telegram to tell me ma was on life support and he was going to honor her stated wishes to disconnect these measures. this is the family values i attach to the engler, bush, reagan, rumsfeld set. My Family is Valuable-yours is expendable as "acceptable losses".

PEACE ON EARTH; GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN

ckick on the title above to access article at dissident voice I earlier posted I would have more after the new year, now i feel like i must pour out more of my yearning and hope for peace and for the public to express its weariness of this war. what can possibly be the end of this except another permanent outpost like S. Korea? Because there is oil there it seems "worth it" to some observers. These do not have children in that windswept sand. enjoy the holidays

Saturday, December 17, 2005

What is Beat?

This most holy time of year. I wish I had a pocketful of money and lots of good news. We are mired axle deep in a military situation that our President calls war; yet is not war as it is taught in history when I was a kid, going to Gen. Douglas MacArthur Elementary School in Southfield, Michigan. Those textbook war where fought between armies in the European way; and surrender meant SOMETHING. VietNam and Iraq may not be equivalent in the potential rewards of conquering and having a "footprint" as the geopoliticians call it; but they are the same because they are "POLICE ACTIONS". Why anyone would send their youth to a foreign land and try to communicate to them by force our ways is a non-issue. We don't do that. NOW THERE IS A WORD THAT HAS AFFECTED MY ADULT REASONING MORE THAN ANY SINCE I LEARNED TO TALK IN MY INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD. THAT WORD IS OVERDETERMINED. I LEARNED THIS WORD FROM THE AUTHOR, M. SCOTT PECK; THE WRITER OF THE BEST SELLING SELF HELP BOOK; "THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED," PUBLISHED IN THE EIGHTIES. OVERDETERMINED is a description of subject matter that people express opinions on that are strong yet whose stated factual basis is less than empiric. Human religion is such a category. These early deaths of American youth in Mesopotamia are another overdetermined subject. Each side of the argument may argue now throughout our mortal lives; yet it is the limitation of human linguistics that prevents "finality." Our religions are based on language and the relationship one has to it. Fundamentalism is a term used in both Christian and Muslim circles or descriptions of these beliefs. This is definitive of the relationship one has to the Holy Book of the creed. I know Christian fundamentalists who decry the very thought of examining the authorship and dissection of the Holy Bible. For fundamentalists the treatment of their documents is tantamount to reverence of God. But does the reality of God depend on Scripture or is Scripture evidence of God? THESE ARE THE KIND OF THINGS DEBATED IN THE OILY DESERT THAT WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY ABANDONED TO INDIVIDUAL TASTE GENERATIONS AGO. WITHOUT THE PROSPECT OF A GUSHER THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE WORKING CLASS WOULD NOT BE BLEEDING IN THE BABYLONIAN SAND. I remember being quizzed by my Jewish Mother-in-Law about the factual basis of the Virgin Birth. I was then the 18 year old blockhead who would marry her daughter and I defendewd what I was told in Sunday school, as best I could. Since then I have learned how many religions use the construct of a virgin birth to portray divinity. As I sit here as a forty five year old man; it doesn't matter "what the facts are", Joe Friday-like; the divinity of Christ is in his message and the telling of it. Something so beyond the mundane is carried forward in these things; that balms the hurt of the bereaved and poor; I don't need an archaeological dig to "prove" to me that Christ lived or what His significance is. WHAT WE NEED TO BE ABOUT IN THIS NATION IS DECIDING IF WE ARE GOING TO LET RICH BUSINESSMEN KILL OUR OFFSPRING IN FOREIGN WARS THAT DETERMINE NOTHING OR IF WE ARE GOING TO BE A NATION RUN BY GROWN-UPS. We need to expand Congress to something verging on the 30,000 per representative that exists in the Constitution of the United States of America. We need to have elections so unpredictable you can't buy them no matter how rich you are. Democracy is our method, i.e. voting; Republican is our Constitutional Government itself; which is the election of smart people to keep watch over us. Winning elections has become the object of commerce and that will be ruin in the long run. Already our autoworkers are sacrificing all so the shareholders of China Inc. can build cars for the aggregate labor cost of $7 an hour. You can't buy a burger here for that labor cost. Our president holds fast to the "Patriot Act" and spying by the Federal Government within our borders. The funny thing is these things have gone on anyway but now they want to codify it; I say hell no; take your chances with Congress if you want to wipe yourself with the Constitution; don't use TV as a means to subvert our style of government. I will have more after the New Year. Happy Hannakah to my Jewish family. Good Kwanza to my African American friends and readers.