Monday, October 24, 2022

Walkabout Thoughts #12

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Weather for the day… When I started out It was sunny and 58° air quality was good.

Podcast for the day is The Lincoln Project, "Mobilizing the Election Heroes with Bob Brandon"

Second podcast is the The Mary Trump podcast with Soledad O'Brien

My Instagram post for the walk & just for the heck of it someone else's post

Started the day off not feeling so great. So I’m kind of pushing myself to do this when I would really rather just stay home. But it’s either walk today or, because of visitors coming tomorrow and weather the next days, I can't walk again till maybe Wednesday.

From the podcast. They mentioned both "Vet the Vote", a veteran's organization, and
another group called, "Power the Polls". Both interesting organizations to look up online. Being a vet myself with prior service, we need to take care of our vets more than we have been. And I do not mean me. But there’s people out there in a lot worse situation than I am. For myself, so far anyway, I’m doing pretty good. But at this point there’s no guarantees. We have Republicans saying they want to end Social Security and Medicare, and the VA. Insanity. You don’t ask for people's support, who become veterans and senior citizens, and then take away the support you had promised them, just because you don’t feel good, or something. You cashed the check, pay the bill.

So apparently, the original idea was if you work, than you deserve and can pay for health insurance. Seems like there’s a problem with that. How many millions have worked hard, but didn’t receive health insurance and couldn’t afford it? Kind of an endemic situation, certainly historically. I was just thinking about that because on the Mary Trump podcast they’re talking about Rosa Parks and how she had a lot more to do with the civil rights than people know. One year her tax return shows her and her husband only made $700 that year. She wasn’t getting compensated for all her traveling and speaking, etc. The history we don’t know and should. And that many, to be honest, simply don’t care about. Why do I care? Because if you’re an American, you’re an American. And all this bullshit about harming other Americans over disagreements and beliefs and religion and government... needs to stop!

Talking on the podcast about Rosa Parks and her statue in Washington DC. It’s of her sitting down, exemplify the misconceptions of her as passive, using her most famous political statement on a bus, once. When she’s really so much more. Got me to thinking about the documentary on Sinead O’Connor I watched yesterday, "Nothing Compares". About how the Prince estate, his sister and I think siblings, refused to let the documentary use Sinead's most famous song which she covered from the Prince song. The comment from the sister in the estate was that she didn’t think Sinead deserved to use it. And that Prince's live version with the singer Rosie Gaines, is better. Well that’s her opinion in her center building she has control for fine. But I would argue that Sinead's version of the song, at least in my mind, is much better. Type the song title into YouTube and who comes up first? Sinead. I mean Prince is a genius in music and all, but the song Sinead turned out (and I assume it must also have something to do with the engineer and producer(?), I don’t really know the story on that), but when I listen to those two songs, I definitely lean closer to the Sinead version.

I’m surprised, certainly historically speaking, how many don’t know that when a road or highway was going through a potentially optimal route, if it was going through a rich white neighborhood, suddenly it was going through a poor black neighborhood. Or a minority neighborhood. I’m pretty sure this is a class issue at its root. Where, when they realized it was going to go through a rich white neighborhood, where I think the word there is "rich", it'll get shifted to a poor neighborhood. If it was between a white or minority neighborhood, it did not go through the white neighborhood. And showing an example against that, does not mean the exception proves the rule. The reality remains the same.

From the Mary Trump podcast. This is an interesting point in lexicon, spin, and misperceptions. Mary mentions how Rosa Parks was a very strong individual and she "presented well" that orientation. Immediately she corrected herself and said, "I don’t think she presented herself in any other way than who she was. But that she had a very exceptional and effective presentation of who she was. Statements like that have a lot to do with the whole gap, or disparity, between the right and left in America today, politically speaking. Especially when someone knows exactly what was meant and intended, but disingenuously parrots it out in the worst possible light. Especially when they do it mean-spirited political reasons.

I think my life may has been better since I cut out corn syrup and years before, sugar. That made me think about pancakes. Actually, I was thinking about sweets. And when go to the store I try not to buy those. How do you replace syrup for pancakes? How do you make a syrup that isn’t just sugar free, but not so concentrated in bad things it tends to be made of? I started wondering about when I was a kid, back in the 1960s. When we ate plenty of sugar and corn syrup. I hadn't known corn syrup was what made up the syrups we ate . I didn’t know when I was a kid I was eating corn syrup on pancakes. I thought it was maple syrup, because it said it was maple syrup. Sort of. But I was a kid. What did I know in how to read a label correctly? I remember saying something at the breakfast table one day when we were eating pancakes. My mom, still making more at the stove corrected me saying, "Well, that's not real maple syrup. We can't afford that. It's really expensive." It wasn't until then that I realized we had been eating maple syrup flavored syrup. On that topic, I noticed a while back that maple syrup is now thin and cheaper, when it used to be thick and more expensive.

To be clear, all through my life I have never cared about political thinking. I voice my opinion when I feel secure in knowing what I’m talking about, based on facts. As I can and do nowadays because, well, it needs to be done. But I have concerns for what’s correct and have “voted“ against myself and my group, if it was the right thing to do. Sometimes we do have to suffer to do what’s right. As I raised my kids. You should always do what's right whenever you can. There will be times you will not be able to. There will be times where you will do the right thing and it will break the law and you will be punished for it. At that time you have to be able to see that, see what you’re doing understand it, and then make your choice. To protect yourself or do what’s right? We don’t always get rewarded for doing what’s right in life. I wasn’t taught that as a kid. Many of us weren’t. I was just taught to do what is right. Don't lie. Don't be dishonest. Being silent and allowing others to believe untruths is dishonest. Spinning something that allows others to believe untruths is dishonest. Yet today it's a mainstay not just of politics, but especially so the Republlcian Party, especially under the auspices of MAGA and Donald Trump. But that's how fascism works. Too many of us as we’ve seen of late, believe they are free and clear to do and should do, whatever is best for them and their group. No matter who it hurts or how much it punishes others. And they carry that out in a righteous manor. While it is often in reality, anything but righteous or correct and true. Righteousness is far too often for ill purposes.

All that being said… Fuck Republicans, or liberals, or Antifa, or Black Lives Matter, or any of them! Fuck Republicans, MAGA, conservatives, or liberals, or communists, or socialists… All that matters is doing what is the most correct thing to do, at that time. America's supposed to be based on a meritocracy and majority rule, with considerations for minorities. It's not meant to be minority rule. Republicans need to come to terms with that,

Where did I get my life orientation? I was raised fairly strict, old country, Slovakian Catholic. On my mother side. My dad, was Irish and I think his family was protestant. I didn't realize that until some years ago. That I wasn't an Irish catholic kid.  I take my greatest orientation from my Irish side, which I find now through DNA, I am much more on the Scottish side. Whatever, it’s Gaelic. I started Isshinryu karate 1965 in fifth grade. That’s where I started picking up my Asian influences in philosophy. Before that I’d been reading science fiction by our golden age authors of sci-fi. Junior high, I was doing civil air patrol search and rescue. I joined the Air Force as law enforcement, ended up a parachute rigger. Signed up for the OSI at the end I got accepted. Then later got out instead and ended up getting a college degree in psych & writing. It was then that I realized how much psychology parallels Buddhism. I am for decades now, a non practicing Buddhist. Which is inaccurate in using that western term. I’ve read fundamentally original Buddhist dharma. The teachings of Buddha. Written down hundred years after Buddha died, just as with Jesus Christ and Christianity. Seems obvious to me that where Jesus lived and grew up, he had learned of Buddhism and other religions from traveling caravans. And so he incorporated Buddhism into his teachings. But he was unable to do that too much because he still had to fit into a people's beliefs that were Jewish. They had to be able to accept his teachings. He had to connect, to change them. His being a Jew after all. Just as America’s founding fathers had to incorporate God into their daily life and even if they were atheist had to translate to theorist about that. The belief by some now that we’re a fundamentally Christian nation, all because it’s founded by people of that culture and religion, is confused history and lacking in an understanding of psychology, sociology, and political dynamics, along with an accurate application of social studies. It was hard not to notice in psychology, toward my university degree in that discipline, in which I focused on phenomenology, just how similar it was to many Buddhist teachings. It was also interesting when I read the book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), how they seemed to understand physics, I don’t know, a thousand years ago, or two (let's just say a while back). Buddhists don’t see me as a Buddhist and I could really care. I don’t go into the mystical, beyond the scientific, even though the scientific can go into what seems like the mystical. And the mystical can inform the scientific. But my orientation was always to do right in life. And ironically enough, with the once far right wing right now, it’s no longer anymore about doing what’s right (functionally and realistically speaking, orientation or intention now has little to do with action and function), and hasn’t been for a long time and that's gotten worse and worse.

Part of how we got here today politically is by too many treating voting like either a game or an important. They rationalize to save time and effort that voting doesn’t do anything, affect anything, or do any good at all. That whole line of thinking has gotten really old and destructive.

When you, or others you see, denigrate others, remember how many of those people's ancestors in America, and elsewhere, were denigrated, brutalized, and even murdered long ago. Some even in their home countries. Or as they migrated through other countries to America. Germans were once looked down upon in America. Obviously the Irish were, and they wised up and started joining police departments. But then sadly, many of them abused others and their own. This country was founded and based upon immigrants. The isolation and stranglehold on our immigration laws, for decades now, is embarrassing and damaging to our country. But sure, feel free to believe people saying the opposite for personal fun, partisan joy, and the destruction of any or all others, as long as it’s not you, or your group.

All my life I’ve been an independent voter. I was excited about the first time I could vote, when I turned 18. Partly because of when I grew up and it was a new thing. I’ve always voted for the best candidate, regardless of party. I probably still would or will. I just can’t vote for any MAGA candidates. And the reason for that is, it would be like having an election, say for mayor. I wouldn't  vote for someone who is running to be dogcatcher, or president (pick your damage). I’m not gonna vote for the dogcatcher candidate who is running for mayor. I’m voting for the best candidate who is actually running for that position. MAGA candidates are not running to be whatever their candidacy is stated to be for. It's for another reason than to do that job actually. It's to rot the government out from the inside. It’s for a beliefs founded in not just nothing, but the opposite of something, which oddly enough, is more damaging than if it were for nothing.

For those who put up a gallows during the January 6 insurrection? How did they not see they were a throwback to the 19th century while this is the 21st? They weren’t even doing that in the 17th century, in America. Maybe around the time of the Civil War when insurrection was in play, as it was today so recently. We're based on being "civil", not civil war. Using the US Constitution to support contentions for civil war, cuts off that foundation via that very foundation

The whole idea about America, is to be non-violent and having changing government so we avoid an autocracy. Twenty years of war in Afghanistan, warped our mentality. So much of who we are being based on action movies led us to believe in the coolness of violence. When you don’t fix social problems, you end up with violent crime. When you try to fix violent crime, you get more violent crime, far too often. We've gotta be an adult and stop putting down intelligence and knowledge and support the hard work of fixing our social issues. WE can’t just make more lies and expect it to be fixed. "Band-Aids" on a broken leg does little except bring us closer to sepsis and losing the leg or our lives (or country).

When that Republican politician stormed out of an interview and said "because of you and what you did here" [to be fair she was asking a honest questions needing answers, about what a lowlife this guy was] "I will never interview with your network again and that’s your fault." I so just wanted to hear her say back to this clown, "OK, thank you very much for showing us all here today, what... I mean, who, you are. EH, hell yeah, WHAT you are.“

A free country cannot survive without a Free Press. Unless… You convince a third of the country to disbelieve that Free Press. And more a more suitable press is Your propaganda press. It worked in Russia, it’s working there now. It's worked for Trump in America. It's working here now.

Stupidly, I grew up reading really good sci-fi books and believing in a one world government, to the orientation of one day having multiple planet governments. Idealistic? Maybe. But when they talked about globalism in the 90s, I wasn’t considering what happened. Moving our manufacturing jobs to China? OK, fine. Maybe. Regarding those people whose jobs you’re taking, you've really got to make sure you take care of them. We didn’t. But then for corporations to give up their IP to China who blackmailed them for it (give up your IP or you can go back home)? I didn’t see that coming. When I heard it was going to happen, I was pretty annoyed. When I heard corporations were actually going to do it, I was angry. Well, like someone said, it gave us things like the iPhone and so on. We made some advances we may not have been able to make, certainly not as quickly. Or as cheaply. But look what happened. Look where China is now. That’s not to say globalism is a failure. That’s just saying you have got to not be stupid. And the countries involved can’t be ripping off other countries. You have to be good neighbors. Too often that didn’t happen. Just as with quitting smoking. Takes a few times to get it right. Looking at toxic capitalism as a junkie's addiction and becoming more addicted to make more a massive profits at the abuse of citizens. Yes, it’s a concern. And then when you have a government or say a Republican Party, as a party of big business, and get into bed with that. That’s a really big problem. And to be fair, I’m sure there’s some Democrats involved in all that too. But it’s not the Democratic Party platform. It is the Republican Party platform. There it is, secreted in the back of their mind and platform. Not that they’ve had a platform for a while and not the current platform makes a lot of sense either.

OK, Mary Trump is now talking about her guest doing a news piece for a sports network on the problems in prisons. Which gets me on the whole prison problem issue. The fact that you can lose your right to vote, I find disgusting. If you go to prison for espionage, fine. Or treason, fine. But I think that’s part of the problem. We don’t value American citizenship as much as we say we do. It should be nearly impossible to lose your rights in this country. Because that’s part of what we’re based on. The fact that we had to go through all this effort and bullshit to get blacks the right to vote, even when they had that right. To have to GIVE women the right to vote, even when they should’ve always had it, in being half of this country. It’s ludicrous. The fact that we’re continually discovering laws that need to be passed to protect our citizens against ourselves? It’s nuts. And against other citizens? And not just against our government, but against entire political parties? I know we were warned about political parties as dangerous, since the founding of this nation. But then why did they go and start political parties a few years after saying not to?

Well, that's it for today. Cheers! Sláinte!

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