Where have we gone?

Hilda Solis, the Labor Secretary, just wrote a boring platitude yo the 'American Worker'...one of the 'little people', although that's not how she phrased it.  She hears us!  We need jobs!  No shit?  But I didn't see her at the meeting today when Ben Bernanke, President Obama, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers...and I am pretty sure that retarded bastard Alan '310 million tits' Simpson was there as well, decided to throw the rest of the middle class under the bus.

There is not going to be a recovery; there is going to be a second depression - and everyone in politics is busily working the population up to a violent revolution.  It is beyond me that they continue to do it.  I am sure they must know what must inevitably result by pitting religious conservative fundamentalists against everyone else by invoking phrases like 'death panels' and 'socialism' and 'killing grandma'.

I cannot imagine the President and his cabinet and advisors are so completely disconnected and inept that they allowed him to break every one of his campaign promises, cater to the Republican right and Wall Street and Big Banks and let the American middle class die.  Because we won't die.  And we won't be emasculated.  And we won't be pushed into slavery by the richest 1% in America.   Two generations of lemming have been raised and they will gladly vote for political correctness and stupidity, and do.  But the Baby Boomers won't.

I am not interested in political parties...except maybe the Coffee Party which is going nowhere, but at least wants the politicians to tone down the rhetoric.  I think political parties have served their purpose and have been irreversibly corrupted.  They need to go.  No one with personal wealth over a million dollars should be eligible to serve in any elected or appointed office.  There are already ethics rules regarding enriching yourself improperly, but they aren't enforced.  They should be  - with a rope.

There is only one solution at this point and it isn't pretty.  The individual states must take back their sovereignty and, between them, dictate what the federal government can and cannot do; not be under the thumb of 525 Congresspersons who are SUPPOSED to represent the views of the constituents of their individual states, but do not.

In fact, I think that a complete meltdown, which I believe is coming anyway, might be very cathartic.  When people have to be responsible for their own actions and neighborhoods and towns and the safety of their families, they may learn what sort of ethic and mutual aid and tolerance made this country great.  Or they may not.  We could as easily fall back five hundred years or continue as we are and suffer a global extinction event.  I believe that last possibility is the most likely since we can already see it happening.

I state for the record that I am a patriotic American.  I volunteered to serve in combat with the Marine Corps, and did. I have spent my career in public service, trying to do good.  I probably never did any good, but it was my intent and desire and I tried very hard to do the right thing.  I live in a little house which is paid for.  I grow vegetables and collect rainwater.  I don't bother anyone and I don't force my beliefs on anyone.  I never will.

But there is another side to that coin.  I am 63 years old.  I have owned a gun, personally, since I was given a .22 gallery rifle when I was five years old.  In the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, in the forties and fifties, you got a rifle when you were as tall as the rifle.  And you learned to use and clean it and that was the norm.  It wasn't a toy and no one had accidents - or, if they did (I never heard of one), it was their own fault and if they lived, they never did it again.  Every kid carried a three-bladed pocket knife as soon as he (or she) had a pocket.  Every little kid played mumbly-peg during recess at school from first grade on.  No one ever fought with knives or guns.  If you had an issue, you rolled and tumbled and kicked and bit and hit and pulled hair and when you were done, you shook hands and let it go.  Or at least you let it go and maybe shook hands the next day, but you let it go.

There weren't any parents around.  That's just what kids in the mountains did.  And the next day there were a lot of black eyes but no hard feelings.  Let me tell you why.  Because if you live in remote areas, there is no one to call.  There weren't any police. There weren't any fire trucks.  If someone sees smoke on the mountain, everyone runs to help.  If there is a flood or a disaster, everyone pulls together.  The sense of community was stronger than anything you can find today except back in those very same remote areas and, I hope, here on the most remote island in the world.

I was pulled away from that life when my parents moved to Texas.  Good for me - I got a good education in the days before the religious nuts started changing history. Bad because I have never had that sense of camaraderie again, even in the Marine corps.  If I could move back to the Ozarks today, I wouldn't be accepted because I'm an outsider.  Texas isn't a frontier anymore and Alaska is just too damn cold.  So I'm here and I'm staying.  I love Hawaii.

If you run across me sometime...an old man picking weeds out of a tomato patch...smile. I'll give you some tomatoes.  But don't mistake me for a prey item.  I can't run away anymore - old people can't run very well.  So my only option is to kill you.

Posted via email from Thus knowledge flows like water