Bush: My
Bush: Yes . . . we finally agree.
Bush: No, no, no. I'm saying we didn't invade
Bush: Uh . . .
Bush: But, don't you understand, I'm admitting I made a mistake.
Bush: But Karl told me this time I didn't have to wear a box on my back and I can keep doing exactly what I want to do if I say it's a "mistake" NOT to be doing exactly what I want to do.
There's several ways to say this.
What counts in life is not to make mistakes, but to LEARN FROM our mistakes.
Said differently, in pre and post 9/11, the neocon lobby (i.e., Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, the American Enterprise Institute, etc.) became the dog which wagged the tail of American foreign policy.
Specifically, they buried American foreign policy in quicksand Middle Eastern wars which the vast majority of Americans (and all the polls are absolute about this) are now convinced have NOTHING TO DO with our national security.
Indeed, to the contrary, the same polls show most Americans see these Bush/AEI wars as dangerously weakening our national security.
An image which comes to mind is that of a dingbat dealing with a hornets nest in the corner of a screened in porch by trying to knock it down with a broom. Duh. Result, hornets everywhere -- and 3000 plus dead Americans heroes.
Please count to 3000 slowly. It will break your heart. One wonders if the American Enterprise Institute can count to 3000.
OK, now to the moral. This neocon lobby has already trashed our country in a thousand different ways, so shame on them.
But if we allow this secretive lobby to DO IT AGAIN, then shame on us!
And of course that's exactly what they are trying to do, as the recent Kristol/Kagan paper indisputably shows, since these are the core cheerleaders of the throw-good-money-after-bad "surge" policy that Bush is muttering about.
My fellow Americans (as Lyndon Johnson used to say), this neocon lobby has had its way with American foreign policy far too long. It's not surprising that their influence of George Bush has been extreme, since evidently there's quantities of empty space in our president's skull, but the time has come to take a long, hard look at these particular neocons.
Lots of questions.
Just who are these people? And what is their agenda, i.e., their deep and long term agenda? To be fair, their policies have been tested and retested, and the jury has long since judged them to be 100% flawed. God in heaven, EVERYONE hates us now, and these Bush/AEI Wars are literally (and rapidly) bankrupting our economy.
In short, nothing but tragedy, failure, and virtual genocide has come from the advice of these men.
So, why are we still listening to them? And how to we get their hands out of the George Bush puppet?
Bottom line, this all full circles back to the REAL scene of the crime, which was when George Bush sold his soul to Paul Wolfowitz and company.
So once again, what is the deep agenda of this neocon lobby, since it is self evidently indifferent (history is history!) to the well being, economy, and honor of our now tragically wounded
Haven't you noticed how interchangeable are the twitching audiences of television's glassy-eyed evangelists and the psychopathic German hordes of Adolph Hitler's torchlight parades?
This almost exact similarity should not be ignored. Political fascism and religious fanaticism are two sides of the same coin.
So let's see if we can shine a little light into this social puke.
It all comes down to fear of life, don't you think? People utterly terrified of the existential constants and challenges of life will suck their thumbs for the nearest cult leader who has infantile answers for infantile questions.
LEMMINGS; "How do I transcend the human condition?"
FASCISM/FANATICISM: Oh that's easy? Just do this or that. Read a pamphlet.
REALITY: You don't. You just make the best of it until you go the way of all flesh. You carry on.
LEMMINGS: "But there's so much pain and confusion in life; it's just too much for me!"
FASCISM/FANATICISM: Not to worry. Look at that man on the podium (it's almost always a man) and if you obey him absolutely, you'll be "lifted up" out of this human hell.
REALITY: In the first place, it's not all pain and confusion. Cherish art, honor science, and love your family. Does this "transcend" the universal challenges of life? Of course not, but only nut cases attempt to transcend the untranscendable.
LEMMINGS: "No, no, no, this is too much. I can't live like that. I want to be a child in a world of Mommy's and Daddy's who have a hot line to God!"
FASCISM/FANATICISM: Of course you do. That's natural, and this television evangelist and/or political "authority" (Sieg Heil!) knows more about EVERYTHING than you do. So shut up and march.
REALITY: Yeah, march over the cliff. Grow up. Be an adult. Stop pretending that only you are on the shore and everyone else is in what Goethe called the "flood of fate". A little advice: it's tough to swim in the existential flood of fate when you're pretending you're on the bank.
And the beat goes on.
Cults, human lemmings, Dictatorship of the Rich fascists, righteous fanatics (of all religions, no exceptions) are what they are -- as are Bush/Republicans. But this is beginning where we are, with precisely these diaper adults. The main thing is to SEE them for what they are: the dead weight of human civilization.
So, as always, it's up to the grownups.
Just as it also always comes down to fighting the good fight and keeping the faith.
Never in the history of our country has American politics been so dominated by sexually repressed men.
Probably it has to do with that weird fascist thing where anal retentives are so obsessed with goose stepping to glory that they never find time for bounteous human sexuality.
And this isn't just being flip. There's something deadly about a government without humor or sex -- and there’s about as many laughs in the Bush White House as the back ward of a mental hospital.
Remember how the pugs went berserk about Bill Clinton's extra curricular activities? They spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars trying to impeach him for his private sex life (which should have stayed private!). Granted, the impact on his family was reprehensible, but we suddenly found ourselves in a Republican/Pharisee version of the Holy (?) Inquisition.
From almost day one of the George W. Bush years, the Dionysian take on human existence has been banished into another galaxy. Unfortunately, it hasn't been replaced with the alternative Apollonian view of the world, which at least would be nurturing of science and civilization.
Republicans, to say it straight out, simply seem to be terrified of sex. Bush's buddy Christian fundamentalists inevitably conjure up visions of Salem Witch Trials. And predictably, the recent abusive man/boy antics of Republican congressmen demonstrate that sexual repression is always neurotically acted out.
Which brings to mind another matter. A righteous hatred (or fear) of sexuality has historically been associated with a contempt for women. Patriarchal religions are always filled with warnings about the "Goddess" and "nature religions". The very word "pagan" means country dweller. Does this have anything to do with why Republicans are always raping Mother Nature?
And take this wacko Armageddon business (the Baptist Big Bang). Will someone please tell me why these people are so eager to get "blown up"? Surely it has something to do with their hatred of anything physical. Well, sexual abandon is about as "physical" as it gets, so it must be evil incarnate. Right?
Sigh!
In a way this all full circles around to Freud's notions of Eros and Thanatos (death), and there's certainly no doubt that the pugs have put all their money on Thanatos.
In fact, they can't even wait for Armageddon, so they keep starting preemptive wars as fast as they can. Hey, wars/death/Thanatos -- doesn't that beat an active sex life all over the place?
Sure, some of this is fun talk, but most of it is life and death serious, because a neurotic political/religious world view that hates and fears sex is a one way ticket to national castration.
But why even bother to talk about this when all we have to do is take a long hard look at our President and Vice President? And throw in Karl Rove while you’re at it.
See any sexual life forms?
Case closed.
Maggie never liked her name
that's for openers
but the day was fresh and promising
there was lots of sun
and her hair looked good
so she was feeling pretty jazzy
not pissy and negative
like Jimmy was always accusing her of.
Maggie paid attention to male asses
and on a scale of 1 to 10
Jimmy was a 9:
a nice male ass
with good definition
and cheeks pouching out like a male butt should
but his deck always seemed to be minus a few cards.
The problem is he never finished his sentences
as if he didn't have any periods in his brain
and always ended up muttering into his shirt or something
or something.
But Jimmy didn't see it that way
and really wasn’t trying to communicate anyway
he just wanted to convince people
he was really there
since he had some doubts about that
because no one seemed to take him seriously
at least not the way he wanted to be taken seriously
so he used his mouth horn to broadcast his "facticity".
-- he got that word from Sartre, even though he still pronounced
Sartre, Sart.
Oh well.
Ed joined Maggie and Jimmy
at a plate sized coffee table at the Hippopotamus
and suggested the shop be renamed
"A Very Large Animal"
since he kept confusing it with a rhinoceros.
It actually was an easy place to forget
with its wobbly white plastic chairs
but it did have a good location
and some delicious dark bread you could knock somebody out with
if you hit them with a loaf of it.
Ed was bony
his essence was bony
he was bone city when he walked into the room
but he was evenly constructed
had a little money
(certainly more than most of the clientele of "A Very Large Animal")
which he tried to use to his advantage when fishing for women
by talking of flying to places over the weekend
like
places like that
but no one ever knew if he actually did any those things
and really didn't give a shit
but still Ed talked his bony, money talk.
The white plastic chairs
didn't participate in the antics
of the bipedal life forms which folded themselves like "h's" over them
and when testosteroned graduate students
made theoretical pontifications
about their quantum soup entrails
to impress their (always unimpressed) dates
the chairs would have turned a deaf ear to these speeches
had they any ears to turn
but in point of fact the white plastic chairs
were neither white nor plastic
and for the cockroaches which ran amuck
when the sun was on the other side of the planet
they were more like towers in the sky
and hard to climb even for these oblong survivor machines
but sometimes possessing feasts de jour on their aromatic plateaus.
When Jimmy made eye contact with Ed
he'd snap away quickly
not wanting Ed to think he took him more seriously
than he was convinced Ed took him
even though Ed did the same
but only because Ed didn't like to make eye contact with anyone
since he was a strictly a turn-off-all-the-lights male
when it came to sex
plus Ed knew his body
albeit functional
wasn't that of the jock
he’d always dreamed of being in high school
but since he always ended up getting A's in math classes
that locked in his fate
and so eye contact for Ed was
Verboten because he was scared shitless
of what he might see looking DIRECTLY back at him
in the eyes of others
and never wanted to find out.
Eye contact anxiety was never a problem for the Hippopotamus
the building that is
with equations, names, and pictures scribbled on its inside walls
and the structure never concerned itself with Sartre or Sart
and was never seduced into depressions, passions, or even resignations
since the building was basically a box
with things inside it
like white plastic chairs and plate sized little tables
you couldn't put both food and books on
A box among boxes on a vast turning ball in deep space
scurried into and out of through rectangular holes in the wall
by bipedal life forms with names like Maggie and Jimmy and Ed
thus not the common denominator of anything
BUT a cool place to get espresso (those weird machines!)
and dark, heavy bread.
The beat goes on.
Maggie: Hey, this cheese Danish is really great today! I can't believe it. Why don't they always make it like this?
Ed: Yeah, but no one ever makes any serious money in places like this. I wonder how they get investors in the first place. It's probably their relatives.
Jimmy: Jesus Christ, Ed, who gives a rat's ass? Anyway, what's the story about this titty Mary Lou you were talking about? You know, that "dancer" you met on the plane coming back from
Ed: Well, she turned out to be married or something, so much ado about nothing.
Maggie: Why? Don't you studs (Ed loved that one) know housewives are DYING for it? Hell, getting laid is the LAST reason a woman ever gets married.
Jimmy: Boy, you got that right!
Ed: Yeah, well I think she has a kid or something.
Maggie: Duh! Why else would she be married?
It was already twilight
when Ginger breezed into the Hippopotamus after her classes
as the regulars were defending
their table's rights of possession
with demitasse residues of tepid liquid
which would play no role
in the hoped for religious experiences of the swallowers
during their yoga class around the corner.
Ginger was not bony
and her breasts stuck out like two little tents
as the strap of her shoulder bag
creased between them
no, Ginger was not bony.
The yoga teacher was well intentioned
and physically functional in those ways
practitioners of yoga are deservedly healthy
but troubled in his secret, oh so secret, heart
because even though spirituality was his thing
he had no son and he had no daughter
no little angels to bless his vulnerability
trailing clouds of glory through his days and nights
to love and protect a thousand times a thousand times over
so he was a guy with good intentions, cotton clothes
relatively good digestion and lots of paper back books
but he had no children
and something in him would
never, never stop weeping because of it.
Hippopotami too have children
whom they love with Hippopotami hearts
and they worry, protect and are loved back by them.
Occasionally they even eat tourists together
but if Jimmy could read the heart of a submerged mother Hippopotamus
while rushing to the aid of her endangered son
Jimmy would no longer be Jimmy
but he would never be able to explain to anyone else why not.
When Ginger sits down between Maggie and Ed
Maggie knows she's there in ways
exquisitely oblivious to Ed
classifying her, as he does, as the presence of sexuality
and only in tangential ways a person.
Ginger's parents know otherwise.
Ed's body also knows otherwise
since bodies know universes unknown to universities
or the hormone goosed fantasies of memory
and had the name "Ginger" been stamped on the body
now sitting between Maggie and Ed
that body would have taken it no more seriously
than today's lipstick or the variable shoulder bag.
Jimmy: (now more alert) Hey.
Ginger: My GOD, I never thought those classes would end today, and that last one, with Professor mouse face, Jesus, I thought he'd NEVER shut up about "rational functions" and their graphs with "asymptotes" or something -- at 4:00 in the afternoon!
Ed: Yeah, well you're the one who took the class as an elective. Why'd you do it?
Ginger: Don't look at me, it was my advisor. She said a math class would round out my music major. It's ok, I can do it I guess, but it's so . . . abstract. I mean, how do you math majors (looking at Ed) keep your SANITY during all that symbol, symbol, symbol business?
Jimmy: That's easy, they don't. Ed's already seeing a therapist at student health, aren't you Ed. You know, the one you'd like to eat (and then mutters something).
Maggie: Are you really Ed? Hey, that's cool. I think therapy makes a lot of sense and if I had the time and money I'd be doing too.
Ed: It's actually not expensive at student health. Five bucks a pop, two or three times a week. The problem with the one I'm seeing now is that she's, well, very attractive, and that sort of trashes my soul searching. I go there to talk about my dysfunctional childhood and always end up looking at her crotch. (Jimmy snickers)
Ginger: Oh that's disgusting. What do you men do when you AREN'T watching our crotches?
Jimmy: You don't want to know.
Bubbles of bipedal conversation
float above the plate sized tables
like demitasse flotsam and jetsam
jostled by Brownian motion
now this way
now that.
The air participates in these conversations
invisibly
as the medium of vibration
the necessary but not sufficient condition
for jokes, threats
and the talking heart of things.
In the void between the earth and the moon
there's no breathing
no significant looks
no coffee tables or sexual innuendos
but something
else.
Jimmy was cognizant of his mutterings
and knew something peculiar was going on.
He also knew it was noticed
like a tick or stutter
but hoped it was mostly ignored
like a pungent smell can fade, in time
into the forgotten basements of consciousness.
Maggie never dreamed the disorientation she caused
when she twitted him for this "eccentricity"
and received in return
muted, guarded anger
dressed up as free floating criticism
from an ambiguous friendship.
Jimmy had been the successful jock, in fact
Ed had aspired to be in fantasy
but then, abruptly
left that Spartan world
of sweat, showers, and symbolic warfare
and became, to the astonishment of his family and friends
a philosophy major
and followed this commitment
into the bookish haunts of graduate school.
But for the core confusion
which lay in the center of Jimmy's life
the tomes of Immanuel Kant were no quick fix.
Maggie and Ginger once gigglingly, and privately, summed up
Ed as a mind without a body
and Jimmy as a body without a mind
but Jimmy was far from mindless
far, far from mindless.
And the beat goes on.
The sidewalk in front of the Hippopotamus
is never confused about anything
and never accepting of anything either.
It's uninsultable, never meditates
and the dogs which piss on it
or curl up on it when it's warmed by the sun
don't see it as the personal property of the human condition.
But for the bipedal denizens of the Hippopotamus
even the very air itself and the ball of the sun
cockroaches, pencils, and the very everything of everything
are frames merely, or adaptations
to the variable, designer stories of these creatures with names.
But the sidewalk
minus its name
is no longer IN a story.
How about you?
May we drop the appellations like Catholic, Protestant, Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Christian Right, etc., and simply talk to and about Christians and Christianity.
True or False? George Bush speaks for
Demonstrably false! Check all the polls. God knows who or what he "thinks" he is speaking for, but it's certainly not us.
True of False? Millionaire television Evangelists are speaking for the whole of Christianity.
Also totally false! Outside their twitching television audiences, their impact and influence on the Christian religion is profoundly limited. The 2,000 year old "super taker" of Christianity has never been turned by fanatical cults.
Which brings to why this is an SOS to Christianity.
The carefully orchestrated illusion of the last six year (a la Karl Rove) is that Bush/Republicans are all of a piece with Christianity. Hence, many good hearted Christians voted for Bush, assuming they were voting for Christian values.
This was a triumph of Judas/Nazi propaganda, because EVERYTHING the Bush/Republican administration is doing and has done would be anathema to the loving founder of Christianity.
REPUBLICAN FACT: The
CHRISTIAN FACT: The main thing Jesus Christ preached was compassion for the poor in spirit (and pocket). We must never forget that the ONLY time in the gospels when Jesus "lost his cool" was when he whipped the money changers out of the temple. Alas, he didn't finish the job (our responsibility?) since the Earth is still crawling with money changing "temples", such as the Bush/Saudi Royal Family, Texas energy corporations whose profits increased SEVERAL HUNDRED PERCENT during these last six Bush/Saudi years, and Cheney/Halliburton's monstrous gouging in Iraq, and on and on and on. Bottom line, the vampire rich have changed from millionaires to multimillionaires and multimillionaires to billionaires, all thanks to this puppet president of
Granted, it's taken awhile, but we finally see things like they are (in spite of the Judas press), and what we see is profoundly different from the Republican propaganda picture continuously painted since the year 2000.
Naturally, on one side we have Bush/Republicans and on the other side we have Democratic progressives.
So on WHICH SIDE do the values and vision of Christianity and Jesus Christ fall?
Nothing could be simpler. Pug spinning notwithstanding, Jesus' compassion for the middle and lower classes (to use contemporary words) harmonizes perfectly with the left of center values and policies of the Democratic Party.
And please, please ignore the hypocritical dem centrists (e.g., Hillary Clinton, Joe Liebermann, and the DLC); since they are the court jesters, merely, of the vampire rich -- the "luke warm" ones Jesus said he would spit out of his mouth. No, "liberalism" and "progressivism" are the political words which are virtual synonyms of the primary teachings of Jesus Christ, i.e., compassion for the poor and contempt for the astronomically rich.
Of course, for the Republican Party it's exactly the opposite: contempt for the poor and compassion for the astronomically rich. Hence munificent tax breaks for the 1% elites and back breaks for the 99% of the rest of us.
A related and terribly important question is why weren't there any outspoken Christians in Bush's original coterie of advisors who buried American foreign policy in quicksand Middle Eastern wars in the first place? A fact that is exceedingly odd for an administration that claimed it had Jesus by the throat? Maybe we should go back and take a long hard look at exactly who made up that power structure of infinitely influential "advisors" for whom
Hopefully, 2007 will mark the year when Christians and Liberals begin to unite around such shared values as compassion for the lower and middle classes, and contempt for the Bush/Republican "money changers".
You can't be serious, you say!
Please, let's just look at this. It may sound off the wall, but the times they are a changin' and God knows (see, we can talk like that too) we need all the help we can get from our neighbors to save our dying country.
The Christian Right has the same dilemma that all so called right wing organizations have, whether it's in Israel, Palestine, or your country (or religion) of choice, namely that the frenzied extremists always presume to speak for everyone. And to be fair, many folks in the Christian Right probably think the same thing about what for them are extremists of the left.
For Christian Right extremists, television evangelists come to mind -- you know, the ones who always say GAWduh instead of God, and CHEEzuz instead of Jesus.
But what if these are just a handful of people with dishonorably obtained funds who have their own television shows? The moment of truth question should be are these successful religious/political (sexist?) businessmen the true voice of the Christian Right?
It's now fairly common knowledge that many Christians (right, left, whatever) were suckered into supporting a Middle Eastern foreign policy which has emphatically turned out to be NOT in America's national interest (policies engineered by a coterie of advisors, headed up by Paul Wolfowitz -- remember Mr. Smug?).
Former President Jimmy Carter (an openly avowed Evangelical Christian), is ethics and kindness incarnate and certainly positive proof that liberals and progressives can respect and work with people of the so called Christian Right.
The thing is, WHAT DO PROGRESSIVES HAVE IN COMMON with the Christian Right?
How about the following?
Once you subtract off the handful of multi millionaire television evangelist types, you have people, whatever may be their political persuasion, who take the teachings of Jesus Christ deeply seriously! Christianity has always had room for multiple denominations and beliefs, and surely they/we ALL agree that the
Indeed, it's possible that there's not one group of Americans who are as rejecting and suspicious of the "money changers" Jesus WHIPPED OUT OF THE TEMPLE as our grass roots Christian neighbors. Then they were called money changers; now they're called an international network of vampire elites, and they dominate ALL Middle Eastern countries (no exceptions!) just as much as they dominate American national and foreign policy.
Hence, the Christian Right probably has every bit as much moral contempt for these cold blooded, astronomically rich elites as do progressives and liberals. Said differently, the lower and middle classes of
We should never, never forget that Jesus' loving heart supremely went out to the poor in spirit and pocket. Imagine this compassionate man hanging out at a Bush/Republican country club or at a board of directors meeting of a
Self evidently, for the Bush/Republicans, MONEY (not Jesus) is God, and the Bush Family is merely a greed lusting collection of 3rd millennia Pharisees.
To borrow a turn of phrase, George W. Bush talks the Christian talk, but he doesn't walk the Christian walk.
And the Christian walk is the walk of the middle and lower classes of all countries -- which is basically the same walk as
So how ironic, that in spite of the unspeakable and hypocritical atrocities committed by George Bush in the name of Christianity (e.g., his Middle Eastern designer crusades and oil thievery), Jesus Christ is now and always has been the true and loving interface between the Religious Right and the Political Left!
So Americans, Christians, Liberals, and Conservatives, to the extent we all share the same values and are fighting the same good fight, let's come together as a nation and save our dying country from these money changing, vampire elites who are draining the blood of our Constitutional Republic,
God Bless America