Fear Or Respect

You've heard that,: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson.

I've said this before myself. Except, who said that, and how? Because Jefferson didn't say it.

From Montecillo.com

Earliest known appearance in print: 1914.
Earliest known appearance in print, attributed to Thomas Jefferson: 1994.
Other attributions: Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine.

Status: We have not found any evidence that Thomas Jefferson said or wrote, "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny," nor any evidence that he wrote its listed variations.

As things have been going lately, with armed citizens protesting in crowds, mobs more like it, I've rethought this consideration, this belief. I'm not talking about 2nd amendment protests, that very well may be different. But all other protests.

Fear and respect are often confused. Fear breeds contempt tas they say. Respect breeds loyalty.

Because what I'm seeing in this, is not people protesting, but bullies invoking fear and building up their own egos.

I always thought it's good for government to fear the people, but when rethinking it now, I see it differently and realize my mistake.

Poor leaders rule by fear. I've been a leader of men myself. I led with respect. Over the many teams I've run, in the military, some later with women in them, I've always had a great deal of loyalty from my teams. To an almost embarrassing degree, at times.

Respect and fear are often misconstrued with fear the easier to implement and for some, to want to utilize. Easy to use, powerful to experience, and thus the attraction. Especially by those with inflated egos. As it is quite clear, with Donald Trump to be honest, and those like him.

Small men use and are attracted to using fear. It's effective, but has its issues. Great leaders instead, use respect. I heard that once as a child and used it to my advantage and that of the teams I led. Which began in Civil Air Patrol in junior high. Even going back to martial arts in grade school

My point in all this? We do not want our government to fear us and we do not want to fear our government. What we need from them is what we do not have, their respect. We appear to be their wallet. When a government fears it's people, bad things happen. When people fear their government, oppression happens.

What we need to have once again is mutual respect for one another. That is not going to happen with this president Trump, now with his GOP, nor the GOP that was there before him.

Protest yes. Invoke fear, no. Make our point, strongly. Threaten, no. Demand, yes. But demands with weaponry, are threats.

It's our choice. Fear? Or, Respect?

Abusive Thinking Be It Conservatism or Vaping

This isn't just about conservatism but also "corporate thinking", ignorance, discare.

Conservatism has lost its way. Little doubt about that. And for those misogynists who are homomisanthropes who question my orientation as not separate from my art, political, and psychosocial leanings... I am a white male getting on in my years, heterosexual which I know because homosexuals do not concern or disturb me as I am secure in my orientation and happy for diversities, while other's concerns of purity is a rather childish view of existence in their confused eschatological sense of reality.

Diversity has proven itself time and time again to be a stronger and best effort example in evolution.

"Purity" is a short term paradigm for the most part, especially in social concerns. Hitler rose to power and was brought down as a prime and perfect example of the pollution and dysfunction of, for instance, the white supremacist's functionality, and self-inflicted inferiority. And, proof positive of the ignorance, immaturity, and self-destruction through the ridicule and destruction of others that has affected America, especially since the infection and abuse of Donald Trump as POTUS.

Abuse of women's rights merely as self-deficient bullying behaviors of one human being over another is the same as with those who choose to abuse one religion over another. When, in reality, it is the theists in general who are lacking. Certainly, too many times as regards humanity at large, as well as too often, reality, and even history.

It really takes standing apart from one's environment, one's tribe, one's xenophobia through one's ignorant geo-ethnocentricism.

To wit, it is self-abasement by one who is lacking self-esteem, who has not yet enough proven themselves to themselves, as well as to others.

And in the end, it's anti-American, in a country based on freedom, education, and self-actualization.

Open up. Brave up. Face reality. Deal with what is here and not just in your own back yard of how you understand reality and your country. There are others here, than merely you.

And they do count, too.

What is conservatism? It's a governor on reality. It's what you use when you need to but not as a life orientation, which is ridiculous.

An example. Climbing a mountain. You go at a pace and maintain it. You want to go as fast as you can as you have a vast distance to cover, as we do in life. But you slow down, become conservative when you hit a rough patch, a dangerous patch. And then when you get to the main patch you pick up speed to what is nominal and gets you the furthest the fastest and the most economical, speaking of energy and overall expenditures of resources.

But you do not go forward as fast as the slowest point, you progress, are as progressive as you can be. And if you've ever traveled with someone vastly slower than you? You choose a partner more compatible with you, who moves more surely and more quickly.

Otherwise, you are forever slow. Restrained. Retarded from your potential. Held back from a more progressive reality, a more reasonable reality.

One might argue that some systems simply work better at a certain speed. That is true. But one should also be working, striving, progressing to find better systems, to find a way for that current system to function better, faster or more efficiently. And that is simply not the orientation of America's defective form of conservatism today.

Life, is a lot to deal with. Restraining oneself is to cripple oneself. To conserve one's abilities is to never see the mountaintops you can achieve, either in sports or in life. In personal issues or in cultural issues. In spiritual issues or in religious issues. The latter of which by its nature is designed to constrain, restrain, conserve human potential out of fear.

And fear is the real issue in conservatism. Fear leads to abuse. Retarding human potential.

We need to think, to consider our path forward, but we also need to move, to achieve, to see what we can do unrestrained.

Otherwise, what's the point?

In another vein along similar disingenuous lines...

There's a lot of unanswered questions in an article on vaping ("Marijuana vape users are getting incurable "cobalt lung").. I wondered if it wasn't about the more powerful vapes, unlike the one I use. This one from Forbes makes more sense and answers some of my questions.

As always, one needs to eat, drink, smoke, vape or heat as little as possible for the desired effect.
Abuse, is abuse. Live smart. As Buddha wisely taught, "Moderation in all things". 

Use, isn't abuse, as many like to claim.

Life, is not just about fear. It's about being intelligent and always moving forward when possible. 

Notes on, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Recently I watched a color version of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Interesting. But I think I like the b/w version better.

It's funny, I'm watching this now as I write this and thinking tactically. And for the first time from a screenwriter and filmmaker's POV. When I saw this originally, at the drive-in, with my family as a kid, I was 13. The year the film came out in 1969.

It scared the hell out of me. And my family. We kids loved the scares though. But it REALLY scared the hell out of my old school, old country style Slovak Catholic mother. Another film didn't scare me that much until some years later. It was called, The Exorcist. I saw that at the Cinerama Theatre in Seattle. Amazing event night I believe I've detailed elsewhere.

Later in the 1970s, I mentioned it to her once in the living room and she froze and said (as we'd all always known) "You do not say the name of that film in my house!" We had to laugh and I said, "Mom, it was just a movie." "I know, I just don't ever want to think of that movie again."

Pretty effective movie.

I think it was the outer space connection as we were in the middle of NASA stuff daily back then and I was loving it. I was really into NASA. I had a scrapbook I collected of articles about NASA efforts I have to this day.

The thought that a virus that could come down, from outer space, from the unknown, was a palpable consideration/fear. Also if you listen to the intense parts, the sounds, music if you like, perfectly backs up the fears. Something John Carpenter picks up on years later in his films.

Here are some points I noticed while I rewatched this film:

• After the monster of previous decades in film, we see a new kind of fear. Out of the mundane comes fear. 
• These were not your parent's zombies. No voodoo, no curses, no surreality. Science. Reality. Pure and utter fear is involved. With no solutions. 
• The music perfectly underscores the action as I have said.
• At first, no one would pick up the film for destruction. The filmmakers had to go to theaters to hawk their product and it ended up in the lowest of theatres. Those associatied with exploitation films if not porn, and children's showings. So some children were dropped off by parents, thinking they had an afternoon free on Saturday, and the children were exposed to something they had no idea how to deal with or handle. As critic Roger Ebert said at the time, he saw children leaving after the film crying, having no idea what they had just seen or how to handle it. 
• There was a reflection in the government characters in being unable to explain and offer solutions to the situation that aided in the overall terror of the situation. Especially in 1969 when we were still so ignorant and yet were aware of how we know so little but are trying to stumble our way through a new and ever fear invoking reality. Along with the nuclear threats.
• There is simplicity in its terror.
• The low key realism of the TV newscasts aided the realism. Many of the low budget-ness of the film supports this.
• It's interesting to note, no one reacts to classically trained actor/protagonist Dwayne Jones (who himself didn't like challenging racial norms and being violent), in his being a black man. His being accepted as an equal and excelling over others, then the ending he receives once the audience accepts him is Brilliant. Progressive. He actually talks back to a white man, slaps a very white blond woman, and then SHOOTS a white man! And the audience cheers him for this! This procedes Shaft and all the black exploitation films about to hit the scene. 
• This was only a year past Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, about interracial marriage. A film I loved at the time because it questioned the establishment. 
• It is a year after Capt. Kirk kisses his black Coms officer Uhuru. Which disturbed many and helped break the racial barrier a little bit more. Kudos to Gene Roddenberry on that one as well as so much more. The black/white, white/black characters in another episode of Star Trek being another example. 
• By never addressing the black issues, it gave the film a lasting, before its time, endurance. 
• That all supported the realism in whatever your cultural or social differences were in a Zombie Apocalypse, in that nothing matters but survival. The ZA is a meritocracy. If it's not as we saw, you die.
• The character of Dwayne Jones' part was originally a white character and Romero wanted Dwayne to play it as originally portrayed, which in the 60s was a questionable thing to do. Dwayne was fine with that until he began to wonder if he was being exploited. He eventually came to realize, no one was thinking that way at all. 
• Blacks at the time were allowed to be smart but not aggressive. Sidney Poitier in 1967 as a cop, slapping a rich white southern man, who had just slapped him, was stunning to audiences. Then a year or so later, here comes Dwayne Jones... smart, AND aggressive. 
• The film punched many societal buttons at that time. 
• The daughter killing the mother was a big one. 
• The outer space connection at that time in 1969 was a big issue that sold this and enhanced the fears.
• The sound effects/music during some of the serious death scenes was highly effective. the music was from public domain films they found so, free. 
• Having a woman appear as an entirely nude zombie (from behind) was genius. As was a bug eating zombie who was the film's hair stylist. 
• In 1969 having a black man as a lead, and an apparently educated one, was disturbing and somewhat unique. Certainly in the horror genre. His slapping a white woman was more intense than normal. His handling a distraught white man (see this as bigoted only by proxy, very clever), was more intense than otherwise. His being the hero was unusual and in the end, therefore, once you accept him as hero, his death became devastating. The hero died. The hero was a black man. The audience felt bad for a black hero dying. It didn't just push buttons, even for nonracists because of the culture at the time, it slammed the button home. 
• Not only that, but the business, as was usual, the near mechanization, the business as usual attitude in the film, the blend of still shots, voiceovers and film footage, of dispatching and burning of people, and of the black protagonist\hero is then especially disturbing. If you did have racist elements in your personality at that point, then it's really very disturbing. In part because you don't realize it's happening because of all the rest that was going on under the surface that you didn't recognize until it was over, if even then. 
• Did you know there is a connection between Fred Rogers of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" fame, and Night of the Living Dead? There most certainly is. George Romero and friends made some films first for Fred Rogers and then decided (some being out of work at that time) that they could make a film. Something that just wasn't done at that time. 
• The term "zombie" doesn't occur in the film. Gouls, was the term bandied about a lot. 
• These gouls used tools readily. You could see them thinking, but on a very baseline. 
• The gouls were afraid of light and fire.
• They ate bugs. Harkening the world of Dracula and his guy...Renfield.
• The Romero crew rented an abandoned farmhouse about to be torn down and pretty much lived in it during the shooting with no running utilities. 
• According to Romero, they had to go to the nearby stream to wash off and drag water back in buckets for the toilet to work. 
• The reason I think that color doesn't help the film, is that the production values and acting were all rough and it worked for the overall attitude and motif. 
• Many of the famous lines from the interviews in the film were all ad-libbed. Bill Cardille was a local Pittsburg, PA Horror show host who did the interviews in the film. On his weekly show, he would promote what he was doing on the film set and that there was a horror film being filmed locally. "Pittsburghers Make Chiller for Drive-Ins". Many people showed up with chairs to watch the onset antics, especially the burning of the truck scene.
• They got a real TV helicopter and pilot and real police and ambulance to help out in scenes. They couldn't believe how helpful people and local government were to aide their efforts. To locals, it was a big movie production. Even though it was a below low budget production. Romero said the ambulance was the biggest production prop he had ever been near on a set.
• Gouls were played by friends, family, local townsfolk and clients of Romero's new production company the Latent Image.
• The film ends in a neutral fashion, with titles rolling and the protagonist, the good, black man's corpse being drug to be burned. Which is appropriate in this case to burn the dead, but he should never have been killed. Especially after all he'd been through. Not to mention the burning of a black man is historically a horrifying consideration, especially to the black community. 

Overall, this is a film that at first was panned and derided by critics. Then went to Europe and worldwide, in part because of a screw up in the titles and copyright so that it was worldwide free to show. Critics loved it in Europe. So when it returned to America, critics changed their minds. It was deemed a genre, industry-altering film then.

I got Tom to sign one of these

I think of it with fond memories. In part because of succeeding films in the franchise I loved and the addition in the next film of Tom Savini and his work in bringing even more reality to the franchise in using Gray's Anatomy book and making F/X accurate.

Tom Savini Zombcon II 2011 SeaTac Hilton

I got to meet my f/x hero Savini some years ago after following his career since Dawn of the Dead when he joined the franchise and a documentary (Scream Greats Vol. 1 - Tom Savini) I saw years ago about him. He also directed the remake of Night of the Living Dead, in 1990.

Russell Streiner in his civvies off camera behind Romero

George Romero died in 2017. I got to be in the room with him at the first Seattle Zombcon in 2011. Nice guy, he was looking old even then. He had a great sense of humor and was a very creative and nice guy. At 27, he helped start the indie film industry in this country. He gave a genre once steeped in silliness and magic and brought it into reality by way of using science fiction.

George Romero

We will miss him.

George Romero at Seattle's 2010 Zombcon 1 with Cal Miller from my first publisher at Zilyon

But he left us a catalog of some fun films that led to many others and offered the world a twist on a genre that we will never forget.

Fear of a One World Government

When I was a kid, I read a lot of science fiction. I would much prefer talking about science fiction, about writing, films and artistic pursuits. But this country is in crisis. A crisis of a more constitutional nature. There are too many fears, too much confusion, frustration, and anger.

I grew up accepting that we would have a one world government. Because once you move off the planet, the planet becomes a state unto itself. Just as astronauts have noticed from viewing the Earth from the moon. You lose the need for countries and separate tribes. You realize it is one entity, one planet. We all have to get along and work together.

I went into the military for a while, then entered college after I got out. But even before military service I had heard and read about the One World Government conspiracy and related theories. I discarded them for the most part, only after looking into them in then realizing what it was all about.

Fear.

Fear and perhaps it being the wrong time for a One World Government, but the right time always to talk about it. And to do it well, we need to talk about it decades ahead of time and set things up toward it. Things like infrastructures, laws, orientations and attitudes. And the fear of the unknown and of change. Something conservative and Republican types in this country have a fundamental problem with.

Those fearful types, those worried about being told what to do by others who were very different from them, who did not understand their local issues and considerations, and who may not even be from their own country, cause them serious grief. Not to mention how much trouble some of them have in America in being different. Not white. Not older. Not their religion. There is always something that is not of them,f or them to worry about.

For the moment we can ignore how those people were not aware of or probably couldn't really care that we, that our government was imposing those types of things upon others in other parts of the world.

No hypocrisy there, right? Sure do to others so we can have, but don't even think of doing that to us... we American!

Enter, the new electronics. The Internet. Instant Media. Twenty-four hour news cycles. A populist TV format president. And so much more.

So here's the thing. Ignore for a moment concerns about One World Government. About, the Illuminati. About, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Trumps. Putin. Saudi Arabia. Whomever or whatever. Forget for the moment, your own favorite fears related to this.

Because of instant media alone, because of our having access to the entire world through media and devices, because of the availability to other cultures, to other ways of thinking, merely because of all that, alone....

We can mostly all now see the world as one world. A single planet of similar beings, all human...beings. Beings with differences, but so very similar in so many important ways. Those of us who do not see that are either divisive politicians or those who actually are worthy of conspiracy theorist's hatred. Even though that hatred never seems to get directed to the appropriate parties.

We are a single entity floating out in space. We are one race. We are, one People. If only we could see that now. Before it's too late.

Because, that is what is important.

That is what we need to be aware of.

All the rest is just... noise. Noise to distract us by those who aren't qualified or decent enough to guide us in the first place. And yet, we elect them to.

But it is noise to distract us from... what?

It is so we do not pay too close attention to those trying to further empower or enrich themselves, or to maintain their hold on us. A hold they got through lies, cheating, obfuscation, obstruction of realities. Confidence artist type behaviors. The behaviors of political magicians.

And we let them do it, time and again. Not only do we let them, we praise them for it and ignore the few, who try to point out reality has been warped, subverted, disenfranchised.

Back in the old days it was the religious leaders, the Kings and Queens who abused us. The Gods of the planet, of our tiny universe as we then perceived it, who abused us. And we changed things. The Magna Carta. The great American Experiment. Where we dissolved the ultimate power of the one person between us and God. Where we dissolved the royal controls over the people for a constitutionally and democratic protection of our lives and our futures.

Now, it is simply the wealthy we have to fear. Those we have given power to. Those who have positioned themselves to enrich themselves through our faith and belief.

I get some of the fear. But consider this, if nothing else. When we all start monitoring and enforcing rational actions around the world in a more cohesive and effective fashion, it will decrease things like global drug dealing, wealthy illegal behaviors, politicians illegal behaviors. Global corporations, which is a vast travesty upon this world.

There is a far more scary situation. What if Coke or Pepsi or even Monster drink, or Nestle, bottled water and sold it to countries who have none, in part because of climate change (regardless who caused it as it's happening), and bottling up all the waters in a country to sell back their own natural resources to them, merely in order to make profit and pleasure the stock holders? And worse. There is a lot of this already starting up around the world, but it is frequently invisible because of individuals countries and separation of laws and responsibilities and corporations and politicians are depending upon that.

While many slept through all this because of the #realDonaldTrump travesty....this is one of our biggest concerns going forward. Corporations and natural resources. I've been saying this one for years now. Next they will bottle and sell us our own water, standing things for when there is little water. and next, can only be air.

When I started saying this in the 1980s, people laughed about the water. Look around you now. The air situation is different, it's everywhere. But wait till it's damaged and who is against clean air and the ecology? #Republicans, the party of big business but obviously not of small business. When will small Republican business owners wake up? Probably? Never. That's, a good Republican.

We have put ourselves right back in that powerless situation and have supported vast and stupid agendas.

Full disclosure... I've always been a proponent of a One World Government. But not the one so many fear. I read the greatest minds in science fiction as a child all through the 1960s. Futurists all for the most part. Smart, educated people thinking ahead and plotting out possibilities, both good and bad. Five hundred years from now they will look back and laugh about people's fears of a OWG. The 1960s wasn't the right time for it. Now may not be either. But someday it will become a necessity.

IF you fear a OWG, then you need to stop fearing it and get on board, because it's going to happen. It is just a matter of if and when it happens. IF we jump into it, your fears will be realized. IF it is done behind our backs, your fears will be realized. And those are exactly the reasons you need to accept and and begin to work for it. Because if you sit it out and do nothing but complain, then we do have something to fear. If you allow it to be built defectively, then your fears are valid.

But then too, they will have been self-fulfilled prophecies. And it will be your fault and others like you. It is easy to complain, worry, fret, cry, whine. But it is harder to learn, act, and build.

We have to ask ourselves...is that who we really want to be? Is it not after all the One World Government that we fear. Or a lack of total and invisible control over our lives by a few others, regardless their desires, as long as we can't (or won't) see it?

A One World Government, is not what you need to fear.

It is, ourselves.

Anti-Fear Mongering 101 (or 516) Chuck Lorre Style

I said last week I'd try to make my next blog lighter. After watching the Big Bang Theory the other night, Chuck Lorre's vanity card, always at the end, just felt like it needed to be shared with people. 

First of all wishing you all a more hopeful, free and compassionate

Dr. Martin Luther King Day!

So here it is, my lighter blog, at the expense of plagiarizing Chuck's brilliant and astute mind:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #516

President Roosevelt famously said, "...the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." Now, let's take a moment and ask ourselves, which presidential candidates and cable news networks are actively promoting fear? Which one of these people and corporate entities are determined to scare your pants off, in the hope that you'll either vote for them or stay tuned? Or let's approach this from a different angle. After millions of years of evolution, or six days of divine creation, it doesn't really matter which, our brains are wired to seek out danger and respond accordingly. Fight or flight or, if it's not trying to eat you, negotiate. 

It makes sense then, that presenting a threat to our survival is a time-tested way to get the brain's attention. And let's be clear about one thing; attention is the most valuable commodity in the world. Once you have someone's attention you can sell them something, or, if you're the kind of person who is frightened of self-determined people, control them - while reassuring them that your only concern is their right to be self-determined. (This is not to say that there aren't people who have ample reason to be afraid. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say you're probably not one of them.) 

So the real question to ask yourself is not who or what should you be afraid of, it's how are you doing right now. Go ahead. Ask yourself. Are you in jeopardy right now? Of course not. You're squinting at this vanity card and perhaps wondering if there's a clever joke at the end of it. (Spoiler alert: there is not.) 

This means that whatever you're afraid of, or being encouraged to be afraid of, is in your mind. It is not in your living room, or just outside your door. You're thinking it. Which is good news. That's the one thing you have control over. At any moment, you can take a break from thinking scary thoughts, or, if you're like me and have a mind run amuck, you can choose to ignore them. Even better news, once you're free of self-imposed fear, you're much less likely to seek out an old, white guy to protect you. (Well, maybe there is.)

Thank you Chuck. Love that guy!

I heard something interesting. That Obama did very well inside the establishment, as screwed up as it is. Let's face it, he could have done so much more if they hadn't just decided to block him at every tern whether he had good ideas or intentions or not, regardless.

What we have now in Hillary and Bernie is another candidate who wants to work inside the establishment to evoke change and one who doesn't. One who thinks we fundamentally need to make some changes. Rather than working from inside of a broken system, attempt finally to fix it.

Some people see Hillary as bad when it's just that she wants to work within the system, which she knows oh so well. While Bernie thinks we need not to be doing that anymore, that it's time to try something different.

Obviously it is. The discrepancy is in the belief of how possible that may turn out to be.

Some people think he can't win because of that and Hillary will because of it. The other side is terrified of him because he means change in the status quo and as we all know, conservatives are essentially allergic to that. Some so much so to the point that they will pick up guns, mostly out of fear. Because they are afraid. Fearful. Shaking in their boots. I wonder sometimes where American courage disappeared to in some groups.

They would rather continue being abused by the current system, than take any chance whatsoever to fix it, all because it means any degree in change in the status quo. You know I don't so much think they are bad people, or even that they want to keep the current status quo.

THAT ISN'T THE POINT.

They are terrified of the prospect of any change whatsoever in the status quo, that IS.

I can have compassion for people like that. And I can vote against them. Because they are wrong and need to have some grit and perspective. Some good old American, grit.

For anyone else in this situation in any other country, you too need the same for yourself I bet. Some good old Russian grit. Or French grit. Or Iranian. Or even... North Korean grit.

Just hang in there. Because wherever you are now, times they are definitely a changing. And for the better, too.

If... we all just keep at it.

The follow meme is from a friend of mine, a poet. And, it is so true. And we do see it on both sides of the political coin. 

I have to say though, it's a thorough description of many conservatives I know and most who I hear in the media. It is not however representative of most liberals and certainly not any of the ones I know personally or would even wish to associate with. It's important to hear the comments from the other side but when they comments vear sharpy into the silly, the inane or the insane, just how long are we supposed to bear their philosophical detritus?

So I'll leave you with my friend Kelley White's thoughts (click on image for expansion or it on her Facebook page). Her thoughts on, as she titled it, Cognitive Distortions in Political Discourse:

Cheers!

Should writers respect or fear all of society's feelings in their writings?

Someone on Linkedin.com recently asked a question that I responded to:

Should a writer respect the feelings of all sections of society while expressing their views? As a writer can they enjoy unfettered freedom in the light of recent developments?

My reply...and then some:

It depends on what you are writing about, or what your intention is in what you are writing about. Some writers may not want to offend anyone (which is nearly impossible these days). Or a writer may want to inflame a certain portion of a readership, or wish to inflame or move, everyone. It depends on what the intention of the piece is.

Writers now a days have to be aware of backlash from certain elements to the point even of the writer's death. But we cannot let that dissuade us from our job. I am at times very vocal in my writings about what I think the ills of the world are to the point of calling out terrorists as the misled, the demented, the childish, and as cowards even in the face of brave situations, if one calls it that while blowing yourself up or being gunned down in the process of killing their own, the innocents, women, the old and infirm and, children.

It is good to consider, even if you are not a well read writer, how do you want your writings to be viewed after you have died? Either from natural causes or through the efforts and intentions of someone who has reacted violently to you because of something you have written?

Remember it's not about confrontation, it's about dialog on your side as a writer. That means on the side of enlightenment and change it needs to be about compromise and dialog. But also, on the other side, in that of a radical mind, it needs to be about dialog, but also about compromise in an individual with a mindset where that simply may not be an option. Well? It needs to be an option.

For some of us who are not fighters as I once was, though now I prefer to be more a lover, they or we can "fight" through our words for what is good and right in the world as we see it. Everyone should be welcome to speak their mind, as that helps to temper beliefs. But one must listen as well as speak.

Sometimes I publish things that are intentionally inflammatory in order to get people to see the error of their ways in beliefs and actions. If someone reads something I wrote on my blog and finds me a distasteful human being, but what they have read changes their mind to a better way of being, if they they then hate me for my efforts but go out in the world and do more good than they had been, what care is it of mine if I have offended them?

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom, said:

"We shouldn't tolerate the intolerance." 

As writers and authors we produce art and words strung together in such a way as to evoke emotion. Is it only to be for entertainment? Or should we have an underlying and important message to convey to support or change things for the better? Further, should we at times overtly try to change people's minds away from their beliefs to what we understand to be the better good?

How does one do that?

By keying into someone's beliefs and gently changing their attitudes? Or at times by jarring them into reality and out of their delusions? There have been times when writers have spoken out and been killed for their efforts. Through their death change has been evoked, change greater than they could ever have achieved through their words while they lived. That is not a good thing for them, but it's something.

What should be your own legacy as a writer? To make a buck and no one ever knows of you or after you die your writings die with you? Or to change even one person to go out to do more, or better, or at least stop doing ill of others? Because for every one who stops doing ill, others see that and may follow suit or temper their choices.

Certainly it is your choice. I have made mine.

This all brings to mind... terrorism.

After 9/11, from that next day to December 31, 2013 there were on American soil, the following number of deaths:
Terrorism: 41
Firearms in 2011 alone: 32,351
Car/Truck Accidents in 2011 alone: 33,783

So "keep calm and carry on."

Terrorists in America  have blatantly failed. Overall worldwide, these are disaffected young Arab Muslim men. Muslims are not our enemies, religion is, if you want to entertain that kind of logic. But even then it is a disaffected and propagandized mindset by a minuscule hard core, radicalized group who propel and recruit through their pathetic agenda.

These people are lost in the modern world and not unlike those American conspiracy theorists who fear a "New World Order" when one is only going to happen regardless since we live on a planet together with limited resources. It is much in the same mental virus that involves fear and hatred of others who they do not understand or refuse to join with.

They are our failures in America.

Mostly these terrorists are poor individuals, poor in livelihood or poor in moral logic focusing only on what makes them feel good with no concern for either those they consider their enemies or their own people they claim to be fighting for and where those they claim to be fighting for en masse, have claimed that these terrorists are not fighting for them.

Be concerned in a relative and reasonable way.

Do not fear those who are of broken ideologies, mind, spirit, logic, reason, or religion. Consider that the late Saudi King Abdullah has been putting change into place in his seminal Islamic country for years that has been quietly bringing about change.

There are now more women in that country in universities than men. That alone is amazing and in years to come it will change the face of Saudi Arabia and their version of Islam, which is a part and heart of the over all world of Islam.

Change is coming. But it takes time. We need to help get Islam and those mentally deranged versions of Islam past this sad point in its history and on into the future.

Those backward types who find terrorism as a positive force of change will eventually fade away with time and proper action and be seen in hindsight as a cancer in the state of Islam during this period. Bringing all Arabs and Muslims into modern times mentally and economically is what they need, not the ill will of the entire world.

It will take time, but they are on the way out and this age of attempted terror is their death knell.

#Terrorism

'Merka (that's America) and Its Followers

My love of America was questioned the other day because of my attitude and comments in general. So this is a comment to all those who see (or would see) me that way.

This is a comment to the political nut cases out there and all their supporters like Fox News and the Republican party for the most part. Also, the ones who aren't nuts but rich, who abuse us all and their positions in America, or for the purposes of this argument, 'Merka, using the back hills slang version that has so come to symbolize all of those types.

Look, I'm pro America. Pro, "real" America, not the modern, saccharine version pushed on us by questionable types of late.

I spent my time in the military, did my Service with its generous awards, ending in a Good Conduct Medal. I got my official Government Certificate for serving during the Cold War. I got a degree in Psychology from a University. I've had cross-cultural college classes, had those classes with people from the Middle East, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere.

I've met interesting people from around the world and, I did not kill them, going against the American way of late.

Yet, I hesitate to say I'm a patriot anymore because that has come to have an odd meaning, one that leaves a strange taste in one's mouth. If, you're a traditional patriot, that is. Of late, Patriot has come to mean racism, hate, idiocy, dunderheadedness, right wing nutcase-aphilia, fat beer belly hick with a gun theisms... and things like that.

I'm not any of those things so where does that leave me. In the Chinese Communist Revolution, I would have been dragged from my home and shot as an intellectual. I'm proud of that, actually. Because I have a brain and I use well, the mind contained therein. I use logic. Real logic, not the political kind of crap that is so rampant now a days and not just in America. Because we have infected the world. We infected the world with a good infection and now along with that, we have infected it with a kind of moronic sensibility, emboldened with our making friends with low characters, supporting the wrong people for economic gains and for corporate greediness.

I love the concept behind America, what we are supposed to be, supposed to stand for, not what some are pushing now a days as, 'Merka, which has come to mean I really don't know what, other than selfishness, greed, isolationism, uncharitability, uncompassionate, right winginess, conservativism (to the point of banal idiocy), superficiality, hyper confused Christianity, and so on and on.

I've always said that I'd fight and die for your right to free speech, even for you to say stupid crap like how you hate people; to say stupid shite like we hear online ad nauseam in the news, on a more than daily basis and instantly, in many cases.

Sure, in this country, it's your right to speak your mind. But why? Why have such a tiny mind from which to pull such banalities? Having a right doesn't mean you have to use it to say such nonsense.

That being said, from a psychological POV we do to vent, to get it all out, to allow those with disparate point of views to point out to us, who they are, what their beliefs are, and basically, as we've seen over and over, just who the crazies are.

It's healthy, it's the human condition.

Maybe if we just vent enough we will blow out our frustrations and fears because that's what all this is.: Fear and Frustration. The realization that you are not and never will be one of the Nouveau riche. That ideal has failed, the American dream of becoming rich like the rich, has died; mostly because the not rich have voted to give power to those who abuse their position; the legislators who have been bought by the corporations who take from us and then convince the have nots, to call themselves, "the Takers", rather than the backbone of this nation who are mostly, the middleclass; a class of people the rich have abused for far too long for their own selfish benefits. And the worm may be turning on their cadaverous bodies.

The more you talk, the more we know you are there, know who you are, what you think and how you work. You are insidious, the new American cancer that we can't cut out and have to instead take a long time to rehabilitate. You'll only be happy when you are rich. Right? But guess what, that ain't gonna happen. Interesting conundrum, right? You, are our bruised loop of insanity.

See, it would help everyone if you would just stop, read a damn book (one that makes some sense), and join us in being Americans. The traditional American, the one the original dream was all about, the one people around the world appreciate and wish to achieve. See the dream only was ever that you can better your position, not to become rich. That was an idea that was sold to us but those who were rich and wanted to blind us from cutting their taxes, giving more of ourselves, receiving less money so they could have more and more, and more.

But then one day? All your venting of your bitching and abuse, your hate and misdirected anger, will actually do us more good than you; once it's properly directed at the right people, and that ain't us, those who you are misguidedly directing it at now.

So think about it. We know you. You are limited in your spotlight now because as we've been notified long ago (and do you even know by whom? Do you? You don''t, do you? By Marshall McLuhan.), that one day everyone will get their fifteen minutes of fame. Now is your time. Soon it will be ours again and that will last much longer than the embarrassing, short term insanity that you have been exhibiting. Catharsis isn't that useful when it is used to a childish degree.

It's useful when it's used to be productive and directed consciously to things that are right and true. To shine a light on what has been hidden for so long, but really isn't a secret anymore. But those deceivers hidden in the shadows for so long have now turned the light back upon those who shined the light on them, blinding the wronged people now from seeing the right people and their insidious actions.

You have marked yourselves, in public, on camera, online, and in permanency. The more you vent, the more powerful you become, but only in the short term; because in the long term, the more powerless you will become. The pendulum will swing back to us again, to sanity, and then you will evaporate and turn into good people out of necessity, except for those few who will scurry into the dark like the cockroaches you are.

And so again and in closing, thanks. Thanks so much for pointing out you and yours to us. Because it won't be long now that I will no longer be embarrassed to call myself a Patriot once again. After you shut up. After you join us in reclamation of our new, "Old" Patriotic American ideals.

Oh and, thank you for your service....

Avoid Being a Conservative. Or a Liberal?

This is what I find so annoying about the Conservative mind set. They don't think it through.

Definition of Conservative: "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change."

You do realize what being conservative indicates? Fear.

Conservatives need to realize how destructive that attitude can be. To retain the status quo requires you to have to change.

The only thing that never changes, is change. To remain as you are, changes you; and the status quo you desire, as counter intuitive as it is, changes you.

That is in great part, the problem with our county these past years. A culpable misunderstanding of what people believe.

But to be too liberal, is also bad.

The issue really is a lack of information, ACCURATE information, and consideration.
Issues, require thought. And accurate information.

What I've been seeing is people adhering to fear, a lack of having or seeking, accurate information, and a desire for things to remain the same. Which in itself is dysfunctional and destructive.

Embrace change, but embrace sculpting that change. Because embracing status quo, which is what Conservatives are all about, is killing us.

The problem is that considering change, considering helping change is fear evoking (there's that fear again, be brave). Considering change means that you have to take responsibility and know something other than going to work each day, watching sitcoms at night, or reading books that aren't good for you anyway.

Once you accept that change is necessary, in fact, it's unavoidable,  then you have to consider what to change and conservatives don't want that responsibility. Because it's so easy to be wrong and God knows they don't want that. What's so funny about that is that in the end, they are typically wrong anyway. So why not be wrong while evoking positive changes?

Why not? Because then they'd be considered "Liberals" and God knows they can't have that label.

But I don't consider myself a Liberal, or a Conservative. If anything, an "Intellectual", because I use my intellect, what little I may have, to make decisions. Therefore I take in the most accurate information possible to me, supported by various and different and disparate sources. Sources that don't always agree with one another. Then I make a decision, act on it, and accept the responsibility for being, sometimes, wrong.

But that's why we have a democracy. Because the more informed a citizenry that we have, the more the chances of our making more right than wrong decisions.

So, don't be afraid to make changes. Just get informed first. And don't select only the information you want to believe in, but the information that is the most accurate, as supported by multiple and disparate sources. And then, act.

GOP - The Grievous Old People Party

Let me ask you something. Who are we most becoming like, moving toward? Or if you don't like that one, who is becoming much more like us, moving that direction, anyway?

Outside of ourselves, who do we owe the most money to?

Who do the fear-mongering politicians and pundits say we most want not to be like? Or that we should fear? No, not Russia.

Who was the most repressive, conservative presidential candidate in the 2012 election going to stick it to if he had been elected president?

In all these questions the answer may very well be, China.

Are we becoming like China? Is China becoming like us?

It seems that way.

Do we want Big Brother telling us what to do? Do we really want to limit our options, let a political party keep us from having the freedom to choose, in a so called free nation state? Do we want our government telling our women how to act? Do we need one gender making medical and societal decisions for the other gender?

Where do they get off thinking that is okay? Even after getting pounded in the election, they still think they should not pay any attention to women or minorities. Is that smart?

In the 1950s when McCarthyism was running rampant, the fear was about the Soviets and those were who we became most like. Fear, repression, rooting out your neighbor who just might be a commie, turning people in, blacklisting very talented people regardless of their true predilections. If someone is not outright calling for active destruction of the government, what is the problem with free speech?

I'll tell you, lately free speech is letting loose some mad dogs who want to return to a policy of control of the citizenry. The GOP is a party who says they want smaller government yet they are trying to control more of the citizenry, just with more government. They seem to want their cake and eat it too. Wouldn't you say? Smaller government, government out of our businesses, out of our bank's business, but not out of our citizens personal lives, it would seem.

Do we really need a government like that?

It would also seem the GOP wants to control our country by using "God". Their God certainly, the Christian God, of course. "Let God decide", they seem to be saying, what businesses need to be controlled. And in using God's demands... in the Bible, that religious tome of a single overarching religious community, let people be ruled by how they (the "righteous"?) interpret "God's Word".

Do we really want a political party setting the laws of the land according to one religious community's dogma? Do we really want to turn America into China? Only a religious China? Consider how the God Communism has ruled China for so long. They are a "Godless Nation" it's been said; but are they? Are they really? It's been said that America worships the God Money. Maybe. But we really need to not be worshiping anyone and certainly not, money.

The one conundrum here is that China has a law requiring one child per family so that they nearly require abortions, where the GOP is doing just the opposite as they seem to fear abortion and require children.

Abortion isn't a great thing certainly, but when it can cost a woman her life in suicide and fatal attempts to perform one on her on, that is when medical procedures need to be available. Which, wasn't that the original reason for Roe vs. Wade in the first place? To save women's lives who were getting back alley abortions, then bleeding out, or getting fatal infections.

The GOP wants to return to those days and with their restrictions already it is happening now. Women are taking drugs to abort pregnancies and they are hemorrhaging and dying. And that, is on the heads of the GOP and the ProLifers who are really being so pro fetus that they have become, and they refuse to think about it or to really consider the actualy consequences of their demands, AntiWoman.

The Grand Old Party has turned itself into the Sad Old Party. It's a terrible thing to ruin a fine tradition in the name of perceived righteousness. Especially when you're wrong. Religious bigotry and repression are the worst of all traditions. Just cast a glance a short distance back through time to the middle ages where religions slaughtered people for the most mundane of human conditions, all because of the demands made by a supposed (perhaps non existent?) entity described as written down in an ancient book, updated over centuries by the various and prejudiced hands of... men.

If you are a Republican, fight to bring your party back to the light. It's your party. Is this who you are?

9/11 Was Not Just A Terrorist Attack - The Return of America the Great

9/11 was not just a terrorist attack. At very least, its effects were much more far reaching.

9/11 was an injection of poison that no one seemed to notice. That was the damage that was done, not just the lives lost. America was poisoned with a shot injected into the largest city of this once great country by those deluded with hate, by those who grew to hate us in part from our own actions over the past hundred years of our paying no attention whatsoever to what our actions were doing to those then third world nations of the world. We were injected with a poison that spread out rapidly, reaching across our country, and then spreading out to the world.

In modern pop culture terms it was like we were bit by a zombie and then we bit others conveying the poison to the world. The infection spread partly from fear of terrorism, but also from our own words and actions. America is rather new to the need to protect our homelands from terrorism and sadly, we reacted to it like children.

Fear is contagious and we helped to spread it. This was what FDR meant when he said, "Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself."

After 9/11 we were turned into a Zombie country. We were infectious, WE then were dangerous. We went to war against the nearest country that fit our need to kill; someone, anyone We did what was right before we were attacked. We should have cleaned up in Iraq in the 80s, not in 2003. We rightly went into Afghanistan in 2002 and attacked our attackers, Al Qaeda and their associates the Taliban. We nearly devastated them and the Taliban. But then we let Bin Laden escape to Pakistan. Why? Because, we weren't through satiating our revenge. You can blame the Bush Administration, they were the head of the pimple at that time that was America.

What other country has two million people in thousands of prisons and jails in its own country? Who had secret prisons around the world? In Romania, in Poland, in Guantanamo? That poison we were injected with on 9/11 made us go crazy. Our own past with nonsense like our "War on Drugs", a war on many of our own citizenry, gave us a mindset that allowed us to be led into a "War on Terror". So we went into the longest war in our history in Afghanistan, a "war" that spread against a rag tag global group of terrorists and wannabees. We found a way to allow ourselves to torture prisoners, to terrorize individuals in a confined setting. We used things like "extraordinary rendition" to kidnap and torture and when that became too difficult to do, we found other countries who had brutal natures and we allowed them to do those things in our name.

The Bush Administration kept these things going for many of those years. Those secret prisons were shut down in 2006 and in 2009 it became official policy that we do not do that anymore, under a different administration. For years the flag draped coffins at Dover were banned to be photographed when America's children, killed in war, were brought home to their final resting place. The worst thing we can ever do, is to force ourselves away from facing that we are indeed at war. When at war you need it to be painfully obvious. Let that be a lesson to us.

Labeling so many things as "war" allowed us to think as you do in a war. In war we do things that are not normally allowed. Murder, is legal and not even called, "murder". The "Fog of War" includes killing the lame, women, old people, and children. It allows us to kill our own citizens, something that should never happen without due process and judicial interference. And we did that. We killed an American citizen with a missile in another country by first labeling him as traitor. His father even went to court to sue the country to keep it from happening, asking instead that he captured, to bring his son back, give him a trial as he was guaranteed by having been through all his life, a great thing, an American citizen. But in killing him we devalued what we are as Americans.

One of the great things about our Country, about being an American citizen, is the protection of our own country and in having due process, not presidential dictate leading to capital punishment. After we killed that American, we then killed his sixteen year old son, shortly thereafter and in the same manner, using a bomb delivered on the end of a missile.

Is this who we are now?

Is that America? Does that sound like America to you? Is this, what our once "Great Nation" is about now? All this because we were afraid? Because of Fear? When we are afraid does that give us the right to throw our long standing ethical principles, right out the window?

President Obama, as soon as he took office on January 22, 2009, put a stop to our torturing people around the world, on principle. Some people complain a lot about Pres. Obama and what he has done since coming into office. They have various considerations on how we should be rebuilding our economy, treating our citizens, and fighting (or even being in) a war. But the one thing the Obama Administration has been and is doing, is helping our country to heal itself after ten years of our longest war ever (other than our "War" on drugs and the American citizen).

Healing is difficult, it can be painful, but it is necessary.

Look, having a "War" on things is dangerous. That attitude alone is dangerous and we need to stop doing it. Legalizing Marijuana strangely enough, is one way to help end that mindset of having a "war" on something because it means an end to extraordinary actions against something that some only some people don't like. When it leads our own country into rationalizing actions against our own citizens, then we really have gone astray. Whether it is arresting someone in our own country for possessing even small amounts of Cannabis, or in blowing an American up in another country for terrorism and being a traitor, we need to make up our minds who we are and what we are allowed to do, in any circumstance.

As it helped lead us into our, out of context, "War on Terrorism", something that sounds good, feels good but counter-intuitively isn't good, it also led us into something else. Things like the "Tea Party", extremism in our country, the Republican Right taking over to the detriment of our country and even the GOP, their own party. But as things go these types of things tend to be cyclical and the pendulum can only swing so far to one extreme or the other before it either swings back, or simply breaks the mechanism. And we have been far too close to that for far too long now.

Being an American means something. It should mean something, anyway. It should mean something extraordinary and these last ten years and more we have diluted what it means to be an American. We need to stop that. We need to get back on the path and we need to heal. Not only ourselves within our own country, but also in how others view our country and its citizens. We need to get back to the business of being "Great" and not saying it. It's not just about our military power or our economy. It's also about our principles, our existence, our being a leader in doing things around the world, and within our own country. We need to decide what is "right" and stick to it.

Sometimes being that kind of a country is difficult, it can be painful. Lives can be lost over it. But we have in the past been the kind of country that can "take it on the chin" and continue on, even through difficult times, and continue doing what is right.

Which kind of country do you want us to be?

During these past ten years we have at times been, in contemporary parlance a, "chicken shit" country. Literally, we have been scared of our own shadows. Remember the colored, "Shades of Danger" alerts that we stopped using in 2011? As it turned out, we only needed them for feeling all fuzzy safe. The Bush administration had pushed us into an old fashioned Texas style retribution and we all know that revenge destroys both the deserving and the undeserving. It can also make one into the other.

But now we are painfully trying to leave that juvenile opiate of war and the mindset of retribution behind. Shouldn't we now finally go back to being the kind of country we were once again? Shouldn't we allow this healing process that the Obama Administration is trying to help us with, happen? To return to being once again that great nation that we once were?

We have evolved during this process. We are a different country now than we were in 2000. We have entered the 21st Century as a country at war and we need to stop that and become a country that is on the forefront of delivering peace. Of advocating Peace. If we want to be at war then we need to be at war against those who are fighting a war against us. But it is not toward our own citizens. It is not toward those who use recreational drugs. It is not toward terrorists. Terrorists require police actions, intelligence operations, not full scale war actions. Going to war in Iraq when any "war action" was really in Afghanistan, was simply ludicrous.

War against terrorism is a concept that may very will never end. Those wannabees who wish to be terrorists can simply do so. But do they deserve a war? Maybe so, but do WE deserve it? No. Surely we can handle them with smaller, less devastating actions that will not destroy those innocents nearby them as "collateral damage" and create new terrorists in their wake because of our killing their relatives and loved ones, as inadvertently as it may be.

Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's General Counsel, the head Lawyer for the Defense Department, went out this past week for the Obama Administration to say just this. He spoke at Oxford University in Britain and said that wars against something like terrorism can go on forever and we need to find an end to it. He said that we are fighting against a new kind of thing and that at some point we need to call an end to the "war" actions.

"How will this conflict end. It is an unconventional conflict against an unconventional enemy, and will not end in conventional terms." - Jeh Johnson

At some point he said, this will have to be turned over to police and intelligence agencies, and the sooner the better.

America is finally coming back into its own. We are striving to return to being the once great nation we had been and perhaps in the end, we will become an even greater nation than before.

A lot of what I'm talking about here falls under a single word: Honor. War gives a wink and a nod to acting in dishonorable ways, and that has to stop. We have to acknowledge our past actions but then we have to move on to heal from them.

But we have to allow it to happen, we have to let it happen, and we have to support those who are trying to do this hard work. We have to want it and embrace the change as well as a embrace a different, more mature way of being and looking at things. We have to be brave, to persevere through adversity and no matter what, we have to not allow those fear mongers who have spoken out for so long and have led us astray, to influence us, ever again.

In the end, we have to be Honorable. We have to face it, to admit it, that we were not at some points in these past ten years. And then we have to move on to build ourselves a better way of being, under any situation.

This, is America.

Make that mean something once again. Allow America to again come into its own and to remain so from here forward, no matter what.