Dear Mr. Obama:
As EDUCATION is the LAST of your "Big Three" Priorities, I "suppose" I'll have to wait AT LEAST ANOTHER MILLION YEARS on THAT PARTICULAR SCORE! But there are also issues, or rather instances, of HEALTH CARE as well, described in the segment below, which might not take you quite as long, even though you'll still be FAR-TOO-LATE to do anything for certain others I've had to PERHAPS EVEN quite NEEDLESSLY lose, as no member, for instance, of Congress does, at least not, again, due to any "STRICTLY PROFESSIONAL" LACK OF CONCERN! Moreover, while you're going on about sub-prime loans and the like, for so-called home owners, I've not encountered even a single syllable, let-alone action, on behalf of those who HAVE NO CHOICE but to RENT, while being TREATED like GARBAGE in the process, if they're fortunate enough to have a place AT ALL, by the BIGGEST, SINGLEMOST BLOODSUCKING "BILL COLLECTOR" of them all!
Of course, it's NOT for ME that I seek any of these things, even where what your kind call "Education" is concerned. As for me, personally, the life I've never had, in YOUR WORLD, the same one so many others have EVEN BROKEN THEIR OWN "LAWS," in SO MANY WAYS, when no less NECESSARY than POSSIBLE AT ALL, to SYSTEMATICALLY DENY ME, from "virtually" the very day I wish, like the Prophet Jeremiah, I'd NEVER BEEN BORN, is just as "virtually" OVER! Next only to the FIRST MISTAKE, mentioned immediately above, was that of EVER HAVING ATTENDED ANY OF YOUR "SCHOOLS!" I'd been FORCED to spend ALL MY LIFE in those ZOOS, being, among other things, DAILY, YEARLY TORMENTED AND BRUTALIZED BY "PEERS," AND SADISTICALLY CALLED EVERY DIRTY, FILTHY, DEHUMANIZING NAME IN THE BOOK, UNTIL I AUTONOMICALLY, UNHEALABLY DESPISED EVEN MYSELF, AT LEAST AS MUCH AS ANYBODY ELSE DID!
I'd STUDIED HARD, ALL MY LIFE, only to have discovered that, given the COST, to ME ALONE, INTERNALLY, TOO, coupled with the LACK of any REAL PURPOSE for all the STRENUOUS EFFORT, I'm DREADFULLY SORRY I ever even learned how to READ! As the Apostle Paul had said, on at least one biblically-recorded occasion, I would also like to MAKE CLEAR that, HERE, PARTICULARLY, it is NOT, in ANY way, the Lord speaking, but ONLY ME: I DESPISE THE VERY LIFE I WAS GIVEN, THANKS TO THE KIND OF TYPICALLY "HUMAN" GARBAGE I'VE HAD TO ENDURE, FROM DAY ONE, TO THE UNBEARABLY ABSURD SPOILING OF MY SOUL; WHILE EVERYTHING I'D EVER BEEN ORIGINALLY SO VERY GLADLY, ON MY PART, TAUGHT, BUT ONLY IN THEORY, TO VALUE, HAS BEEN, THEREBY, ON BEHALF OF OTHERS, INCALCULABLY MORE DESECRATED--THAN IF NOBODY HAD EVER UTTERED A SINGLE MANIPULATIVELY, EVEN SELF-MYSTIFYINGLY AS WELL AS MASS-HYSTERICALLY DISINGENUOUS SYLLABLE IN "FAVOR" OF SUCH REAL VALUES AT ALL (Revelation 3:15-17)!
I can only continue PRAYING, in the process, while thanking God I have ONLY ONE REAL JUDGE, despite so many of the others, that, even though I'm AGONIZINGLY AND DESPAIRINGLY UNABLE to FEEL any other way, God alone will STRENGTHEN me, minus anybody else's "HELP!," to "at least" HANG ON TO MY OWN HUMANITY, NEVERTHELESS, for as long as He ORDAINS I must go on "LIVING" in this "GLORIFIED" GARBAGE HEAP OF A "CULTURE," where "virtually" ALL quite FREELY, IMMORALLY, CULPABLY CHOOSE, FROM THE VERY TOP, TO THE VERY BOTTOM, TO GIVE A DAMN ONLY ABOUT THEIR OWN "ASS-ETS," their own PETTY, MEANINGLESS "PLEASURES," their "PERSONALLY," SELFISHLY ATOMIZED "LIVES," THEIR STUPID "CAREERS," AND OTHER EXPLOITATIVELY, VICTIMIZINGLY VANITY-STRICKEN "AMBITIONS!"
And, at least for now, if not INFINITELY LONGER, here's one final word to the TYPICALLY, AMERICANLY "WISE," who are just as INCOMPETENTLY ANXIOUS to PROLONG this MADNESS, at least for themselves, as I am to see it ENDED, at least for me: Take a tip from, say, Pat Buchanan, YOU PRESUMPTUOUSLY SELF-RIGHTEOUS PIPSQUEAK--AND STOP POKING YOUR HYPOCRITICALLY DEMONIZING "BIG STICK" AT A RUSSIAN BEAR who has AT LEAST AS MUCH ACTUAL RIGHT, TO ITS OWN "FRONT YARD," AS YOUR SIDE HAS ALWAYS, INSUFFERABLY CLAIMED TO HAVE, TO YOUR OWN "BACK YARD!" Moreover, the Soviet Union was, not only Hitler's REAL VICTOR, at such an INCALCULABLY EXPENSIVE COST TO ITSELF; but it was also your ONLY REAL HEDGE, against a "Holy" Roman Empire which the NEXT HITLER, or, "pardon" me, "Anti" Hitler, shall IMMINENTLY SUCCEED, THIS ONE FINAL TIME, AT RESURRECTING--OVER THE ASHES OF AMERICA--ONCE THE LATTER'S "INADVERTENT" ASSISTANCE, IN PRECISELY THIS RESPECT, IS NO LONGER REQUIRED--SAVE FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONVENIENTLY HAVING SOMEBODY TO BLAME--AT LEAST AS RIGHTFULLY AS ANYTHING ELSE!
In the Spirit of Elijah,
Richard O'Donnell
P.S. Check out Walker, Texas Ranger, where Chuck Norris almost had a little boy of twelve talked out of suicide, until he accidentally rather than deliberately fell to his death! THAT was ME--"DORKISH" GLASSES AND ALL!--SAVE FOR THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT IS I WHO ENVY HIM (Isaiah 57:1-2)!
My Personal Portrait: A Literary Medley, Part IV (End--at least for now)
Favorite Foods: All kinds have much that is uniquely stimulating to offer, but the Italians, if I had to choose, are the real masters. Yet, in contrast with the gluttonous epidemic of equally fat-headed obesity which Americanly surrounds me, I therefore have little if any difficulty by now controlling the mere quantity of calories daily ingested; just as, for that matter, I also strive to keep the intake qualitatively "Kosher." As for God's dietary restrictions, under the Old Covenant, there may be a very strong basis for the currently prevailing argument that they had been suspended, under the New Covenant (Acts, Chapter Ten); although, for all that, it doesn't appear anybody is thus prepared to add, say, roast vulture, or fillet-of-rat, to the menu. I was even going to say they're anything but cannibals, but the P-I-G is, quite symbolically and revealingly indeed, their most outstandingly noteworthy exception here; even to the extent that they flagrantly and vulgarly spurn the very Spirit of even what most "Christians" insist God DID mean, when He instructed the Apostle Peter to no longer regard any man as being "unclean," just because he's not physically a Jew per se, or, of course, more "spiritually," a typically perennial "Christian!" There is no Biblical Injunction, rather than quite EMPHATICALLY the very OPPOSITE (I Corinthians, Chapter Nine), about "proselytizing" by ridiculing the traditions of others, forcefully shaving off beards, and flushing Korans down the toilet bowl, let-alone cynically, sadistically, self-righteously torturing and sodomizing them!
Moreover, as for these "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians," and their fanatically self-righteous injunctions against meat, the only real argument they have to back them up, at least hygenically if not ecologically speaking, or in the sense that virtually every vegetarian, for that matter, as well as meat-eater, could "at least" benefit from a more "Wattsian" attitude toward the Spirit if not his "expanded letter" of Holy Communion (in reaction to an entire "religious" tradition Van Gogh likewise accurately characterized as being DEADER THAN THE DEADEST DOORNAIL!), is the extent to which the meat is all raised with such carelessly, insensitively, irreverently ungrateful cruelty, and correspondingly polluted, along with just about every strictly vegetarian dish of processed chemicals, shortening, refined sugar and salt, and so-forth, which they would more easily insist upon cramming down even their own "Deep Throats!" In fact, speaking of chemically as well as biologically contaminated meats, that just may be the real reason Serling's Kanamits haven't yet landed, and never will!--Although, had Hitler won the war, as someone ten times the man of anyone currently to be found, even from among the most compunctionlessly evil, per se, of every would-be imitator, as well as by even the highest possible standards of measurement, as coming from his "loftiest" of "moral critics," for that matter; then, who knows, but that we might have indeed had just such a visit, long before now, but from right out of the remake of that episode, instead, in The New Twilight Zone! But fret "not," for Hitler had been merely Europe's NEXT-TO-LAST "hope," after-all! Moreover, judging by the rudely vulgar contempt and mockery I've experienced from all of the many "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" with whom I've attempted to communicate over the years, just because I'm a "religious fundamentalist" of ANY kind, even regardless of the many misgivings I share with the "Left" about such people; they've done a virtually impossible job of convincing me they have any more "respect" for Islam than their "Christianly" Fundamentalist opponents have shown, or than either side does any real understanding--of terms such as RESPECT! It's almost comical to listen to these "Leftists" whining about the "bigotry" of the "Right," but particularly of their Mainstream, Corporate-Controlled Media, who've actually only given them as good as either have ever given me!
Where "The Truth,The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth, So Help Me, God," is concerned, I'd have hope of greater success, than with any "Liberally Democratic Humanitarian" I've ever had to endure, which would still be virtually none at all, trying, let us say, to communicate with Jack Webb (Dan Aykroyd), in the place of Tom Hanks, about even the ingredients in his hot dog, let-alone the kind of con game Christopher Plummer and Elizabeth Ashley ACTUALLY have going. But, then, even though a professing "Christian" such as Jack Webb is still as hypocritically true as ever, on the whole, to the very fabric of Roman Catholicism his kind claim to themselves to have "modernly overcome," as the "Protestant Fundamentalists" they are; what shall end up, and soon, going down as bitterly hard, even as Divine Blowback in the very direction of the Muslim enemies God shall be permitting to pay them back first (I Peter 4:17-19), is the extent to which Islam as well, involving all its sects, too, is simply part-and-parcel of the same prototypically Roman Catholic disease! Moreover, if anybody ends up physically martyring anybody else here, as thoroughly as they've already raped and assaulted the very conscience, it shall be the Roman Catholic Church putting my kind to death, contrary to all the "hatred" and "bigotry" of which I've been viciously accused, just because I disagree with my accusers as much as they quite self-contradictorily do with me; that is, if Islam doesn't get around to doing the job first, even despite the fact that I've never "blasphemed" that religion, in exactly the way I'd done with Roman Catholicism, by "daring" to convert away from it, in defiance of its equally falsifying claim of "Divine Ownership" even over those who had simply been unwittingly and unknowingly born into it, as if that weren't inherently one of if not the singlemost mindlessly, behavioristically unexamined of "reasons" for remaining a member of any "religion," or believing anything whatsoever, as disgracefully and pathetically opposed to being the most universally popular!
Yet, one does have to give Islam the greater credit that, contrary to Roman Catholicism, which commits the cheapest shot of all, by hiding, even and especially from itself, behind the very Cross of Christ, Islam doesn't even have to hide at all, from behind the teachings of its Supreme Prophet, Mohammed, just as it's much-too-tragically understandable as to why Osama bin Laden would consider it a sinful negligence of his religious duty to Mohammed, rather than Christ, not to kill as many of particularly the same typically, professingly "Christian" infidels as possible! The real test of his level of discernment, in spirit, however, and one in which I would not be very hopefully enthusiastic about participating voluntarily, would entail my looking him squarely in the eyes, to see whether he can detect even the slightest of all eternally decisive differences between me and most of them! But the battle between Israel and the Palestinians, between the West and Radical Islam, is as fundamentally, inextricably about Christ versus Mohammed, and, indeed, about Christ versus the Jews, as well as about the Jews versus Mohammed, as it is about anything more naturally, pragmatically quantifiable, or about the not so practical antagonisms of a psychologically prejudicial nature as such. Of course, by identifying one side with "Christ," I am not thereby "Sanctifying" that side in any unwarrantedly flattering sense, as though it alone were above the strictly or decisively carnal instincts and incentives serving to impel those who fail to acknowledge the correct Ultimate Authority even by Name alone. Either way, though, the real, risen Christ, and He alone (John 3:13) (Acts 4:12), is an equally and uniquely real issue here, in Himself, as well as in terms of the manner in which He's so traditionally and disgracefully misrepresented (Matthew 15:3); just as the side which represents Him in Name, but "ironically" excluding only the "Holy" Roman Empire Itself, as distinct from the Birthright Nations (or at least a small-to-be-remaining and equally symbolic remnant, through whom Christ shall be upholding His Name, and His Honor, rather than theirs), shall be correspondingly victorious, but only subsequent to the severest Divine Chastisement the entire world has ever yet experienced, or shall ever again have to endure (Matthew 24:21-22).
Again, these major, intensifying, and "humanly" insoluble tensions are as basically and inextricably about Who Christ Is, and about who He actually selected to symbolically represent Him to the world, as about anything more "independently soluble," just as the concept of a Fundamentalist Christian Gospel is actually, upon careful examination, the Main Fulcrum of all division between the Right and Left, domestically, in America; between most, who, of all denominations, falsify, doctrinally as well as morally, the very same Gospel in which they claim to believe, and those who, therefore, if not for only this reason, or even decisively, in some, or perhaps even most such cases, vehemently reject the very idea of any such "Gospel!" Moreover, both sides, of this domestically American cleavage, shall be dealt a fatal blow (Matthew 7), by the supposed "Apostolic Line of Peter," while the Islamic Shiite counterpart of the latter "Christian" prototype shall finally be battling it out with the latter, to the near destruction of both, over the issue of Christ verses Mohammed, even to the disillusionment of those who currently expect Christ to be EXACTLY the KIND of MERE Mediator between the West and the "Twelfth Imam" they have in mind when He arrives.
My Heroes: Nietzsche (as Zarathustra, holding up a lantern, in the middle of the day, to the Last Man, the one who One-Dimensionally boasts that he's finally discovered "Happiness," announcing that God Is Dead! And here's a hint as to who murdered Him--you!--If you can even begin to grasp the Supreme Magnitude of what you've done, and so "Christianly Confess," as well as just as blasphemously deny, to no endurable end! By the way, a One-Dimensional Sort is precisely the kind who no less typically has to ask, or just as erroneously fancy he doesn't!), Schopenhauer (whom Nietzsche had made the most Tragically Noble career out of trying to prove wrong, while having failed no less profoundly, meaningfully, than anything else! Moreover, while even Marx was inevitably just about nothing but a reaction to Hegel's most lyingly sanctimonious promises, save for his "deeply regretful" guarantee of war as the only "moral arbiter" between nation-states, it was actually Schopenhauer, along with Kierkegaard, who most profoundly recognized Hegel for the piously superficial fraud he really was!--Which would have to include John Stuart Mill as well, even if it must be admitted, at least, that James Mill, along with Jeremy Bentham, were much more sincerely as well as realistically prepared to deliver upon their promises! Perhaps, as Fritz Weaver raved to Burgess Meredith, in Serling's "The Obsolete Man," they'd failed, with John Stuart, to the extent they did, not by having gone "too far," but, rather, "not far enough!"), Sartre (who said it all so very dryly, but with a phenomenological conciseness nobody could ever have made more nauseatingly, penetratingly clear!), Van Gogh (a more perfect example, on this list, that the first aren't necessarily as last as the last shall be first; at least to the extent that the very last, here, is the only one of whom I can be apodictically certain, coupled with the likelihood that this particular first is undoubtedly among the very last, already! Thus, I'll try to balance it out a little better, just in case of an oversight; by permitting General Tanz, from The Night of the Generals, to tag along, at least as a real first-class connoisseur of this particular artist's soul! Besides, my Lulu loved him no less rarely, and he thus alone couldn't have been all bad; although it's unfortunate that the extent to which he'd still like to take you all down, even from his grave, doesn't quite serve to render him all good, either!),
Lieutenant Christian Diestl (Brando, in The Young Lions; which is easily perhaps the singlemost superlatively masterful performance of all, even for him; thanks, also, to one of the best scripts he's ever had, coupled with an equally superlative, if not in every case exactly laudable, supporting cast. In the end, he was right on the borderline, to say the least, of having been no less avoidably and criminally than, in either case, callously and unconscionably murdered; by a gutlessly, shallowly impulsive playboy, who was not nearly any more worthy of Barbara Rush, either, than even Montgomery Clift, standing right next to him, therefore turned out to have been, after having almost so impressively made it the entire distance, of Hope Lange. In fact, right up to that point, it was myself I'd been encountering in him, particularly during his most sensitively painful endeavors at both love and war! Brando likewise had a much more admirably substantial friend, in Parley Baer, and even a superior officer, in Maximilian Schell, whose boots no typically, insipidly American counterpart is even the least bit fit to lick, least of all amidst all that slickly biased propaganda in the film to the effect that, not only are the proverbial "bad apples" the exception rather than the rule, but that they are always quite conscientiously, expeditiously discovered and weeded-out eventually! Incidentally, I never got my twenty bucks back, either!), Col. von Luger (Hannes Messemer, from The Great Escape, a real gentleman, and perhaps far-too-much of one, next to typically, impudently, presumptuously, self-righteously vulgar plebeians such as Steve McQueen, and, to a "lesser" extent, Richard Attenborough, and even James Donald! But, again, hot-shot McQueen takes the cake, even to the point of having no less impudently than stupidly determined to coarsely ram his way right down the middle, while finally raising his one free hand in a gesture of surrender the very point of which depended upon more good faith from his captors than he'd self-contradictorily presupposed, while displaying even greater faith in them than ever by pushing it to the very limits of their endurance he possibly could, to the point where I could just about not have blamed them had they decided to gun him down, even as a SPY, right on the spot! David McCallum had a much more intelligently well-calculated chance, just as he died the noblest death of all! One can only lament, in the process, that it had been anything greater than the kind of wasted self-sacrifice which only a "Monday Morning Quarterback" can retrospectively verify! Also, Robert Graf, as Werner, "The Ferret," wasn't nearly as "naively" far off, in his comment to James Garner, about the continuing War of 1812, as most "think!"), Stephen Richard Rojack (Stuart Whitman, in William Conrad's grimly symbolic production of Norman Mailer's An American Dream, and a portrayal with which I very deeply, personally identify!), James Dean (and even Bobby Darin), Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, The Swimmer, Jane Eyre, John W. Burns ("Jack, " for short. I'll have to hand it, here, to Walter Matthau as well, in one of his more admirably moving performances, even than The Laughing Policeman; but contrary to the much more believably, much-too-believably, perhaps even normatively "law-enforcing" spirit of a psycho such as George Kennedy!), Howard Roark (played by Gary Cooper, in Miss Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Of course, the gross imbalances in this script are compensated for by the equally gross imbalances of still another Gary Cooper script, entitled Good Sam! Also, Howard Roark's professional inflexibility is really given a dent, by the examples of, say, Richard Brooks, who did indeed improve upon the original Sinclair Lewis version of Elmer Gantry, even by splicing in Babbitt, and by Robert Rossen, who made an even better job of Jack London's The Sea-Wolf, as well as by Bruno Frank, who improved upon Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, even with an Americanized ending which is uncharacteristically superb, nevertheless, in contrast with, say, Philip Dunne's more commonly, "optimistically" Americanized butchering of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Yet, Mr. Dunne is still an excellent script writer, as evidenced, for instance, with Demetrius and the Gladiators; ironically enough, despite, again, the same fault abovementioned, as well as the albeit just as meaningfully, dynamically, thus redeemably creative liberties he takes with history in general here--big time! Unfortunately, however, Ms Rand's own screenplay is quite flawlessly unimprovable enough, even with its artistically symbolic exaggerations, to where I can hardly include the reason for Roark's trial, at the end, as being among the same quality of grotesquely unacceptable realism as the actual verdict, for real, would rather have been; just in case anyone has the misimpression, at this point, that I regard those who'd insisted upon "modifying" his work with the same high regard mentioned in the examples immediately above, either motivationally or otherwise!), Marshal Will Kane (played, again, by Gary Cooper, in High Noon), Ira Hayes (played by Tony Curtis, in The Outsider; and, also, Private James B. Sorenson, his "belatedly" hard-earned friend, as played by James Franciscus), Mr. Allison (Robert Mitchum, alongside the equally talented Miss Deborah Kerr, as Sister Angela, in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison! Sir Laurence Olivier is reported to have declared, when asked, that Peter Finch and Mickey Rooney were, in his judgment, the world's greatest artists! I'm certainly no Olivier, but I totally concur; save for the single oversight of his having excluded only Robert Mitchum, just as I wish Olivier were here to concur in return! Robert Mitchum is one of the greatest performing artists of all time, and there is only one question I have, for those who were so maliciously determined to compromise, not only him, but the integrity of the very craft they gather annually to honor: What were they smoking? If nothing, then they should consider trying something--just about anything!--When the only way left for them to go is--Up!), Papillon (played by Steve McQueen; just as one can only hope Papillon had finally learned a very hard-earned lesson, about the kinds of "nuns" who also had domination over my mind and spirit, almost as early as Cardinal Richelieu had so "perceptively" advocated, and even "guaranteed" would produce the most everlastingly inextinguishable results!), the immortal James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces (It required me many years to reconcile myself with the ending, once again, full-circle, nearly as well as Father Jerry Connelly went down as he was exiting that tavern!--Or, to paraphrase Gwyllim Griffiths, played by David McCallum, from an episode of The Outer Limits entitled The Sixth Finger, in a more "naturalistically linear" vein, I'm evolving beyond any desire at all to, as he said, "see this whole town utterly destroyed," so that "an example might be made!" In fact, I might still be as devout-a-Roman Catholic, today, as I had been as a boy, had I known even a single real priest of similar stature, or that of Karl Malden, as Father Devlin, in The Great Impostor, or Spencer Tracy's Father Edward J. Flanagan, in Boys Town! Thank God such was not Fated to have been the case!--Matthew 24:24!--Although it wouldn't surprise me at all "if" there existed many Father Connellys, at least somewhere out there!--Revelation 2:19!--And I'm praying just as fervently for them as he had been for Rocky!--James 5:17-20!),
Gramp Fry (Pat O'Brien, in The Boy With Green Hair! If anybody was ever the real salt of the earth, here he is!), Janos Szabo (Peter Lorre, in The Face Behind the Mask, along with Lieutenant James O'Hara, played by Don Beddoe!), James Allen (Paul Muni, in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang; a "perfect" example of the so-called "Justice" System, even its "concern" with truly getting at the bottom of a "crime" such as his! If anything, a fair outcome, in any particular proceeding, is perhaps no less of an accident than even the exception, overall! Here's still another film gone senselessly to waste, for the most part!--Matthew 7:6!), Caryl Chessman (Alan Alda, in Kill Me If You Can! Check out the so-called "trials," and attitudes, he'd received!), Barbara Graham (another Circus Maximus Farce, predominated by typically murderous cattle, but particularly a skunk played by Peter Breck, and the way he railroaded Susan Hayward, in I Want to Live), Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino, in And Justice for All), Robin Hood (There's only one of him, so very unmistakably it would almost be an insult to him even to have to mention him by name!), Zorro (Tyrone Power, of course), Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster, along with a young lady for whom he'd "bought" a drink, after she'd uttered just a few of the truest words ever spoken; namely, "That's the trouble with this stinking world, nobody loves nobody!" It was also the way she'd said it, along with the profoundly subtle resonance to be detected in Gantry's initial response!), George Leach (John Garfield), Humphrey Van Weyden (Alexander Knox), and Dr. Louis J. Prescott (Gene Lockhart), in The Sea-Wolf, Tribune Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), the Lady Diana (Jean Simmons), and Demetrius (Victor Mature), in The Robe, as well as Glycon (William Marshall), in Demetrius and the Gladiators, and, frankly, even Centurion Paulus (Jeff Morrow, again, from part one, who's worth at least any hundred "Christians" I'm no less sorry I ever had to know!), Judy Graham Bayne (Mary Webster, from Eighteen and Anxious; who, to be sure, brings very glaringly to mind something Alan Watts said, in "Experiencing the Illusion of the Self," namely, that "You must present 'papers,' to 'prove' that you exist, that you were born in such-and-such a place; the physical presence of you does not entitle you to--compassion!"), Willie (Anne Baxter, in Carnival Story), Vic Pardo, and, of course, Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien, from White Heat. He played the ROLE of a SKUNK here, or, as Cagney had said, a "coppa," but, in his case, rarely, and, of course, only quite fictionally, as well as, thus, just as propagandistically, but for otherwise the very best of reasons, and by, again, otherwise, the very best of men, and, maybe, though not probably, no merely typical "actor" either. Mr. O'Brien was in top form here, in that particular sense, or "Persona," if nothing better as well; which, by the way, is at least a bit, again, just a bit, more than I can honestly or intelligently say for the kind of man he played, as Dan Taggart, in A Cry In the Night. For that matter, I can "just about" have "at least" no choice, while praying for mercy in the process, as I "paradoxically?" place Arthur "Cody" Jarrett right up there next to him, in White Heat, that is!--Or, more accurately, ALMOST!), Beckett? (Richard Burton, who was wrong, by the way, as should be just as "secularly" as scripturally obvious by now, with the countless cover-ups finally, and more modernly, democratically coming "unglued!" He was wrong, that is, about "clerical" lawbreakers being rightfully immune to anything but the "Justice" of "The Church!" It is particularly the real Church of God which had at least initially acknowledged the Divinely-Ordained "habit" of throwing such grossly, even criminally uncivil offenders to the very wolves, even in the "secularly official" sheep's clothing, they deserve!--I Corinthians 5!--Matthew 18:15-20!--Romans 13!--I Peter 2!--Plenty of whom were and ARE worse than King Henry II, played, of course, by Peter O'Toole!--Although take one guess as to whom She'll be blaming for having so scandalously "corrupted" her priests, just as the fact that only the prototype of all "modernly secular democracies" had been "free enough," finally, to bring it into the open, from out of its perennial closet, will help serve to make the disease appear more "Post-Enlightenmently" caused and therefore isolatable; even to the point of "suggesting" that perhaps the worst excesses of the Inquisition, Papally Ordained to "contain" it, had still been at least quite "understandable," but, in either case, NOT NEARLY EXCESSIVE ENOUGH!), Carmine Bonavia (James Belushi, in The Palermo Connection), Destry (Audie Murphy, whose remake I preferred to Jimmy Stewart's original, in every conceivable sense), The President (Eddie Albert, in Dreamscape. Contrary to "most," or rather ALL, actual candidates, for whatever offices, let-alone the "winners," this man had a true sense of the solemn responsibility of his job, rather than treating it as nothing but the kind of game which carries no personal consequences to himself, regardless of how unconscionably he destroys the lives of millions of others, and even an entire "civilization!" Where even what the Roman Catholic calls "Perfect Contrition" is concerned, he was truly, fictionally out of this world!), Forrest Gump? (In fact, it's not Rambo, or even John Wayne, who compares, in terms of sheer sinister effectiveness, to the innocent Forrest Gump, the mindlessly obedient paragon of genuinely, hawkishly Establishment rectitude, with a total indifference, or rather quite "patriotically satisfactory knowledge," of the wretchedly victimizing cause for which he was fighting, even with "Jesus" to "Sanctify" the very conflict itself!--Although, as illustrated, also, in the case of Sergeant Alvin York, played by Gary Cooper, there appears to be no single, unequivocally correct answer, Romans 12:18, Luke 22:35-38, applicable to all; lest, for instance, one of the favorite Centurions of Jesus is likewise automatically damned, on the basis of his profession alone! Either way, though, Jesus deliberately and even more clearly left no basis, any more than does the First Amendment alone, for self-righteously castigating even the absolutely unconditional pascifist in His Name, let-alone the conditionally Conscientious Objector; just as, for that matter, I would have come to exactly the opposite conclusion, even about WWI, although it's, at best, extremely difficult to believe those in charge would have been nearly as "understanding" as they'd been portrayed in the case of York!), P.L.O. Orville C. King (Myron McCormick, from No Time for Sergeants. He makes the third of my favorite N.C.O.s, along with Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason, from Soldier In the Rain. Even Warren Oates, in Stripes, was a bit too "realistic" to come in any better than a distant second at best, even though I almost adore the way Bill Murray finally gave such a somewhat better than the typical scoundrel of his kind a more thoughtfully dignified run for his money, as well as, at least in this case, vice-versa!), Lawrence Jameson (David Niven, in A Bedtime Story), The Gunslinger (Yul Brynner, in Westworld, still another at least as Magnificently Poetic Encore!), Andy Crocker (Lee Majors, in The Ballad of Andy Crocker), Dr. Jim Kiler (Robert Culp, in a T.V. Movie, of 1973, entitled Outrage), Abe Cross (Johnny Cash, in A Gunfight. Like Abe, I--JUST KNOW--and THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS!), Big Sam (Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Defiant Ones; along with, for that matter, Sheriff Max Muller, played by Theodore Bikel, a real tribute, here, even to his, unfortunately, entirely fictional profession!), Private Peter Moss and Finch (James Edwards and Lloyd Bridges, respectively, in Home of the Brave; where, even despite the terrible Spirit of Gravity they had to overcome, and I don't mean from the war per se, at least not the one against the Japanese, if not all-the-more because of the magnitude of such, I'll have to designate this film as among the most "Charming and Delightful" to be found, regardless of the danger of being as grossly and typically misunderstood as I'd inevitably be, on the basis of such "Charming and Delightful" language, even by those who know the film, but in entirely the opposite sense from those who don't!), Emiliano Zapata (Brando, in Viva Zapata; who, unlike even a lady as charmingly, delightfully refined as Senator Clinton, in the appearance of stature she so handsomely projects, "at least" had the selflessly, conscientiously "unambitious" sense as well as decency, even to quite "irresponsibly," according to the "thinking" of her own dismally-prevailing kind, "catch himself," and walk away, rather than circling even his first name, let-alone that of an entire country, in exactly the way his own had previously been circled, by President Dias. Neither did he "conveniently" rationalize that another would have simply taken over, and done the same thing, but rather heeded the advice of Jesus, to let someone else do it, instead, if that's the way it has to be, Matthew 18:7. I also say a prayer for mercy, as well as gratitude, and admiration, on behalf of his brother, Eufemio Zapata, played by Anthony Quinn), Henry Jasper "Hank" Whirling (Victor Mature, in The Big Circus), Richard Knight, Jr. (Tim Donnelly, in Parts: The Clonus Horror),
Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith, from Serling's "The Obsolete Man"), Marilyn Cuberle (Collin Wilcox, from Serling's "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You"), Gart Williams (James Daly, from Serling's "A Stop at Willoughby"), Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn, from Serling's "A Thing About Machines"), John Holt (Joseph Schildkraut, from Serling's "The Trade-Ins," along with a poker rival, played by the "improbable" Theodore Marcuse, who so admirably, movingly came through, by letting him walk away even!), Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn, from Serling's "One for the Angels"), Al Denton (Dan Duryea, from Serling's "Mr. Denton on Doomsday"), Martin Sloan (Gig Young, from Serling's "Walking Distance"), James A. Corry (Jack Warden, in Serling's "The Lonely"), Lt. William Terrance Decker, in Serling's "The Last Flight"), Joey Crown (Jack Klugman, in Serling's "A Passage for Trumpet," just as his performance was equally and no less meaningfully superlative, as Max Phillips, in Serling's "In Praise of Pip"), Serling's "Five Characters In Search of an Exit," James B.W. Bevis (Orson Bean, in Serling's "Mr. Bevis." Moreover, this one really does have plenty of Zen, particularly with Henry Jones involved!--But, as Alan Watts would also have added, not altogether too much of it! Henry Jones was truly a living embodiment, here, along with Alan Watts, of what the latter used to characterize as "The Element of Irreducible Rascality," or "Innocently Impish Mischievousness," the very kind the former was somewhat more "boorishly" trying to "cure" in Mr. Bevis!), Leah Maitland (Gail Kobe, to Don Gordon, the title character, in Serling's "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross," when she said to him, as few women in her position would have, particularly but by no means exclusively or even predominantly with so much money at stake, "You don't care about me! You don't care about anybody! The man I marry is going to have to have compassion; otherwise, I won't be able to love him!" Perhaps her father, played by Vaughn Taylor, would have been able to stop Montgomery Clift on time, too, in The Young Lions; had he been more decisively prejudiced in favor of men, rather than merely against Jews! Yet, even as it was, he almost succeeded--even for free! Yet, for all that, I can likewise empathize with the very sentiment which resulted in the self-inflicted broken hand of Mr. Ross himself!), Charles Whitley (Ernest Truex, in Serling's "Kick the Can" And, "incidentally," most Americans only "grow," if possible, correspondingly more insipidly, rancidly, pettily, and viciously self-centered with age, due primarily and decisively to a chronically and systematically encouraged laziness of "mind," leading to, again, if possible, increasing levels of atrophy! Fortunately, however, Ernest Truex provides still another relatively rare exception to this rule, as Mr. Pedott, in Serling's "What You Need."), Booth Templeton (Brian Aherne, in Serling's "The Trouble With Templeton," a particularly handsome performance indeed!), Reverend Jamison (Royal Dano, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Day of Reckoning"), Tip Corey (Sammy Davis, Jr., from a Rifleman episode entitled "Two Ounces of Tin"), Willard Prescott (Gerald Mohr, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Squeeze Play." While he cannot exactly be called a hero, he did prove to have been quite enough of a man to appreciate that there are rules, even in a war he was otherwise determined to unscrupulously exacerbate, but only to a point, merely for the sake of winning!), Ma Boyle (Dee J. Thompson, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Woman From Hog Ridge." Again, not exactly a hero, at least not until the very end, where she finally came through, in a manner which most revealingly served to help decisively redeem even an otherwise abominably unpardonable past.), Jeremiah (Booth Colman, from a Rifleman episode entitled "The High Country." Now, there was a man as well as a judge! In fact, next to the pathetically corrupt, politically opportunistic, cynically and brazenly blaspheming stiffs, in their systematically endemic desecration of the essence of everything so uniquely sacred, who pose as "professional judges" today, from the "Municipal" to the "Supreme," even Judge Roy Bean would be a vastly if "harrowingly" refreshing improvement!), Count Alfredo di Montova (Cesare Danova, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Duel of Honor." American westerns are generally good at depicting the TYPICALLY RACIST-AMERICAN, INSIPIDLY, EVEN "EDUCATEDLY" ILLITERATE CLOD for what he STILL is, but this one's right at the top here! In fact, most of them are nothing but a bunch of VULGARLY DIRTY-MOUTHED PLEBEIANS, even next to Cesare Danova, as Baranca, in still another Rifleman episode by the same name!), George Collins (Carleton Carpenter, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Coward." How can anybody honestly assess my alleged "arrogance," with such an empathetically and humiliatingly raw-to-the-bone admission here?--One about as comparable to my good friend, Brock Peters, in The Incident!), Abel MacDonald (George Mathews, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Angry Man." He's not exactly the greatest of heroes, but it can happen; just as, for that matter, McCain had an extremely difficult decision to make, one which most people undoubtedly bungle--either way!), John Jupiter (Peter Whitney, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Male Order Groom."), Walt Hake (Patrick McVey, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Hawk"), Colly Vane (Robert Culp, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Hero"), Heller Chase (Gigi Perreau, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Heller"), Lt. Paul Rolfe (Harry Carey, Jr., in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Deserter"), Stevan Griswald (Arnold Moss, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Schoolmaster"), Mark C. (Brad Weston, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Silent Knife"), Dev Farnum (Dennis Hopper, in a Bonanza episode entitled "The Dark Past." Again, not exactly the greatest of heroes, but it can happen. In fact, it's quite a serious problem in the world today, violently polarizing opinions about God, both pro and con, just as tragically and dangerously--either way!), Thomas Bowers (William Marshall, in a Bonanza episode entitled "Enter Thomas Bowers." There are so many of these episodes I've forgotten about as many as I remember. This one fell into the latter category, even before I'd seen it again, today, and decided to belatedly include it, but while still remaining "somewhat" resolved to arbitrarily resist any further temptation to include them all!), Alan Fielding (Laurence Naismith, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Last Second of a Big Dream"), John Mallory (Laurence Naismith, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Shattered Silence"), Marshall Matt Peters (R.G. Armstrong, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "All the Scared Rabbits," just as he'd made an unusually deep impression, even despite as well as precisely because of all the crudely rough edges, in "Corner of Hell!"), Martin Rowland (Leslie Nielsen, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Glass Tightrope," just as I know very intimately how he'd felt, in "Tiger Left, Tiger Right," too!), Dr. John Kimble (Richard Kimble's father, played by Robert Keith, in the episode entitled "Home Is the Hunted," just as he moved me no less deeply to tears in Serling's "The Masks!" Yet, there's something I have against even a man as fine and noble as he, which correspondingly applies to an equally fine specimen of humanity, such as Adam Trask, played by Raymond Massey, in East of Eden! It's a problem stretching all the way back to Jacob, and his brother, Easu, as well as his son, Joseph; just as even his own father, and mother, had been rivals, over the same problem; and, for that matter, even the descendants of Isaac and Jacob, verses those of Ishmael, are ready to destroy this entire planet over essentially the same kind of issue! Indeed, the first murderer, Cain, really started the ball rolling, over precisely the same kind of problem!), Fatso (played by Jack Weston, in an episode of The Fugitive by the same name; just as, for that matter, he also had a murderer, like Cain, for a brother!), Max Bodin (played by George Voskovec, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Bloodline"), Gus Priamos (played by Gilbert Roland, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Somebody to Remember"), Lester and Naomi Kelly (John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Ill Wind"), Sam Reed (John Fiedler, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The End Game"), Sheriff Dalton (played by Percy Rodriguez, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Passage to Helena"), Annie Johnson (played by Hope Lange, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Last Oasis!" I'll even have to include Deputy Steele, played by Mark Richman, but only thanks to this nobly inspiring figure of a lady, in virtually every part she played, but particularly alongside Elvis, too!), Paul Beaumont (David Janssen, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Terror at High Point." Jamie, played by Buck Taylor, here, was quite a hero, too!--In fact, for me, one of the most moving heroes of them all! I'd known him at least a couple of times in school, as well as far-too-many James Bests, against whom we'd both had to incessantly contend! Moreover, a special tribute should also be extended here to Ruth Harmon, played by Elizabeth Allen, for her own tenderly supporting role!), Gus Hendrick (Jack Klugman, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Everybody Gets Hit In the Mouth Sometime." It was a dead ringer for my Mary, in virtually every sense, including her brats, as played here by Geraldine Brooks, who helped drive Gus so fatally over the edge!), Tad (Dee Pollack, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Devil's Carnival." When this episode first appeared, I was truly watching myself, at about the same age, and about as painfully as would have turned me into so much more of an Eden Saunders, also earlier played by Pollack, in a Bonanza episode entitled "My Son, My Son," had I not also been blessed with at least as solidly moral-an-upbringing, nevertheless, as Eden had rather quite tragically let go to waste. Neither can I blame such a rare advantage, as described by Sam Waterston, as Nick Carraway, at the beginning of The Great Gatsby, for even the terribly non-extra-legal extent to which Robert Drivas, as Roger Roland, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Sharp Edge of Chivalry," also hits so painfully close to home!), Euliss Dewey (Robert Duvall, in The Apostle), Damien (Yaphet Kotto, in a Big Valley episode entitled "The Buffalo Man"), Keno Nash (Albert Salmi, in a Big Valley episode entitled "Under a Dark Star"), Tom Lightfoot (Joe Don Baker, in a Big Valley episode entitled "Lightfoot"), Andro (Martin Landau, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Man Who Was Never Born"), Dr. Marshall (George Macready, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Production and Decay of Strange Particles"), Major Roger Brothers (Harry Guardino, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Human Factor"), Jim Darcy (Dewey Martin, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Premonition"), Harold J. Finley (Donald Pleasence, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Man With the Power," just as I could only dream of having had even a single teacher of his stature, who just as rarely, empathetically relates to him, the way I do, in Serling's "The Changing of the Guard!" Similarly, Sally Kellerman, as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, in Star Trek's "Where No Man Has Gone Before," is about as "believably" admirable as, say, the "improbability" of transforming even an Alexander, played by Michael Dunn, in Star Trek's "Plato's Stepchildren," into a Dr. Miguelito Loveless!),
Archbishop Oscar Romero (If anybody makes an ungrateful Roman Catholic Church look any better, even than does this great martyr; it's most Protestant Fundamentalists, as the insipidly watered-down Roman Catholics they are; the cheapest counterfeits, of the Master Counterfeiter Herself, and getting even more worthlessly, banally divisive all the time! Raul Julia did an excellent job, too!), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (His most intimate admirers may, symbolically enough, after-all, not like George "Kingfish" Stevens, nearly as much as I still do. Yet, therefore, what the devil could they possibly have, on the other hand, to be ashamed of, with relation to Sapphire and Mama, who were no less indignantly disgruntled against him? I wouldn't be surprised, either, if they hate Amos, even more than they do Andy, or that lawyer, A.J. Calhoun, another Mystic Knight of the Sea! It was among the greatest of all such shows ever conceived, and those who are so ashamed of it, particularly for the "reason" they have, ought, rather, to be ashamed of that; at least as much as I would be feeling ashamed of them, and of the entirely wrong way they insist upon denying their Roots, were I in the position of Kunta Kinte; which, in my own way, one for which even most whites, today, have only to be "thanked" as well, I am! After-all, to be "ashamed" of these "worthlessly, lazily freeloading" characters, and the great artists who animated them, is correspondingly, if only "inadvertently," to "honor" the kind of typically, tastelessly, vulgarly insipid "mentality" which had only "type-casted" them into their currently, relentlessly enduring positions of such racistically undeserved scorn! Perhaps Kingfish didn't exactly have The Life of Riley, as with William Bendix, which might serve to provide an argument for racial discrimination. Yet, Riley did help finish the job, even for Sapphire and Mama, when it came to even more "amusingly," even "innocently," thus "innocuously" helping set up both genders, as well as the traditional family structure, for a more devastating fall, instead, to this very day. Indeed, after so many years of having had it deliberately, demeaningly ground into me, at schools, it would be unendurably abrasive to have a wife eternally calling me by my last name, let-alone my first, minus even a title! It's a wonder this bungling caricature was "taken seriously" at all, even by Babs and Junior! Besides, what's really the big deal about George Jefferson, anyway? He might be "movin' on up," but in a way which only obscures even the real letter, let-alone the Spirit, of what Dr. King Meant! Indeed, he even starts to sound like about the same kind of bore who deserves Archie Bunker no less in return, over the grave of a much better show which fought the war for equality in quite a different way, by eliminating any hint of race! Was that a dishonest act of Denial, on a par with the total Cop-Out of those who insist upon ignoring even the Tragically and Disgracefully Neglected value of this? In the case of Amos 'N Andy, I don't subscribe to such a view at all! If George Jefferson wasn't in a state of any kind of Denial, then Amos 'N Andy wasn't a more Purely Artistic effort at the kind of Real Transcendence he Raves of having finally attained!), John Lennon (who was tragically consumed no less by the unusually glaring extent of his own lucidity, than by the total lack of it as well!), Cesar Chavez (albeit as a most inadvertent waste, along with Dr. King, in the service of others who probably aren't nearly as worth the effort, perhaps even on the whole, and not merely in the most tokenly, exceptionally "successful" forms!), President Hugo Chavez (since anybody with the moxie to defy what America really stands for, on the whole, from beneath its camouflage of the most superlatively sacred and thus even more cynically, unconscionably blasphemed rhetoric, can't be "all bad," at least not for now, and then only, at that, as a most expendably useful instrument, like unto virtually all politicians!), Dr. Richard Kimble, The Fugitive (Harrison Ford, too; although I can only wish, and nothing retrospectively more, that the original medic, from Korea, could have finally had to offer the most equally, meaningfully real kind of "Taps for a Dead War," by standing up to John Wayne, even more at the end, than at the very beginning, of The Green Berets, as impressively as he did, against Albert Salmi, in "Angels Travel on Lonely Roads," when, in the words of Kimble himself, to the latter, there were only "you, me, the sister, and the trees," minus any other systematically, twistedly, overwhelmingly intimidating distractions, to witness "the longest walk you just might find you've ever taken!"), Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Columbo, Cordell Walker (and Gordon Cahill, played by Rod Taylor), Billy Jack, Lucas McCain, The Barkleys, Superman (especially the originals, but even more especially when he was struggling just to walk again, in the most heroic battle of all!), The A-Team, Marshal Matt Dillon, and Kitty (a real bear of a lady, especially while runnung a poker game!), Herman Munster, Gomez Addams (Raul Julia, too, who very originally as well as successfully holds his own, even in the shadow of such a uniquely and superlatively difficult act to follow, in John Astin), The Doberman Gang, and too many more to explicitly cite; but, first of all, the King of Kings Himself!--Despite the fact that I wrestle with Him most often and fiercely of all!!! Dennis the Menace could also have made this list, too, in the wrong way! Thank God, as well as both our morally free wills (at least I hope it hadn't been primarily and decisively nothing but fear, in his case), that, despite our identical, and not so free, psychological predispositions, neither of us actually succeeded! Indeed, how many critical Signs all continue to miss, regardless of how clearly, "coincidentally" unaccidental they are, as in a perfectly showcased example such as this! It's even quite unthinkable to overlook Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison and Crispin Glover) here, along with, say, Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi), in Twisted Brain (also called Horror High), or even Tim Ochopee (Chris Robinson), in Stanley! Indeed, Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), in Fade to Black, should save me plenty of otherwise tediously essential explication here, too!--Just as I thank God, to this very day, that I'd Feared Him sufficiently to resist the temptation to take up the Cross, in exactly the manner Farley Granger did, as Martin Lynn, in Edge of Doom; with a Roman Catholic Church whose parishes are conveniently, separately "broke," when need be, and, "maybe," even a bit more irritatedly, vindictively, against America, for real, now that even Her "underlyingly," perennially Scarlett Colors are being exposed, in a way which is forcing Her to pay out millions in legally punitive damages! Even Martin's boss, at the flower shop, for whom he'd made deliveries, might have been a bit more "nice" than usual about it, but I've worked for enough of his kind as well to know much better! Consider, also, the grimly-portrayed character of Warren Stacey (Gene Davis), from Charles Bronson's Ten to Midnight, and the way he was treated on the job in particular; especially by a couple of typically air-headed bimbos, who'd also become his first two victims (number one of whom hadn't even a morally proprietary argument behind which to conveniently hide, while coming off in such a brutally, insultingly self-righteous way!), even though the scathingly dehumanizing treatment he'd received prior to that had been so liberally forthcoming precisely to the extent that they'd falsely assumed he'd NOT been capable of such drastically terminalizing responses! Their kind are usually as lucky in this respect as they are, again, the most characteristically regular offenders.
My Hobbies: I engage in a great deal of Reading and Writing, but as something much more than a "hobby!" In fact, I really should footnote this particular remark, as I'd heard it first, and most unforgettably, long, long ago, from someone at the very opposite end of my spectrum; that is, from Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi), a most avid fan of Poe, in The Raven! But, then, as, again, for the most extremely polar opposites, even he's a great favorite of mine, compared to just about anybody more insipidly in-between; for much the same reason even a real balance, as opposed to the usual counterfeits, is itself as extremely rare as anything else so meaningfully dynamic. Actually, it is I who meet this morbidly-obsessed lover of Poe half-way, at about the same spot one finds Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff) in the very last scene. The only difference is that Karloff had arrived more from Lugosi's end, while I was growing up more artificially, brutally sequestered in the position of the "good" Captain Kirk, after a transporter malfunction had separated him from his other, "evil" half! How can such "evil" be coherently accommodated in any meaningfully-constructive way, then, in the midst of what is nevertheless just as accurately postulated to be an Eternally Irreconcilable Conflict between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil? Look at it, for example, somewhat like this: The cynical side of me is something which ultimately has to go, as surely as it alone would be totally detrimental, even now; just as there shall eventually be no more objective than subjective-a-basis, even such a legitimately-indispensable need, for it. Yet, meanwhile, it is vital in helping to keep me balanced, in a state of psychic equilibrium; particularly or rather exclusively in its most genuinely humanistic form, which I distinguish from the usual breed of cynicism--all by itself.
My own condition had continued for far-too-many years as such, until the violently repressed and thus even more uncontrollably created as well as irritated "Mr. Hyde," to cite a more classically exquisite as well as accurately "undivided" analogy, finally had to emerge! Moreover, the catalyst, which helped trigger this crucially pivotal, permanently transfiguring catharsis, at the age of fourteen, and, then, even more scathingly, at age twenty-two, but which had been slowly building up, for the two years prior to the first, thanks also to so many hypnotically moving encores of "Black Magic" from Buddy Love, could at least have been worthy enough to involve one with even a trace of what Dr. Vollin had encountered in his lost Lenore!--Just as neither of them, I'm equally ashamed to have to admit, had been the least bit fit to lick the feet of Stella Perdie, either! Thankfully, however, "Dr. Jekyll" had never let go, either; just as, in the case of Captain Kirk as well, he was the one who succeeded at making the two live together! As for Spencer Tracy? I apologize to John Barrymore, and also to Fredric March; despite particularly the latter's being such an incredibly superb artist himself, especially in his role as a dead-ringer for William Jennings Bryan! But there's only one Dr. Jekyll, and, for that matter, only one Buddy Love! Moreover, here's still another expression of my good faith, in trying not to even appear I'm attempting to include everybody; for, if the fact that Spencer Tracy and Jerry Lewis are not to be found at the very top of this page, even now, along with Vollin and Bateman, doesn't indicate the kind of "blind spots" no truly informed connoisseur should be able to miss, then nothing by nature possibly ever could!
And, yes, there's also evidence I hadn't actually forgotten at least two of them, either. Just go to Idols of the Theater for confirmation of that. And, in an even further display of the same good faith, I'll also reveal that some of my very favorites are still only to be found there; just as at least a couple of others are only to be found in the twenty letters, thus far, which serve as an amplifying appendix to those thirty movie critiques, even as those critiques serve as an amplifying appendix to the current profile page. And that's still not the end of the story, as there are others yet who are not at all to be found, even there; although I'll try my best to include as many more as possible, even from years of work already long completed, but which I have no army of scribes to assist me in typing onto the computer. But, then, again, if nobody can figure out, even by then, just about who they would necessarily have to be; then there's nothing more I can do for them, than the master of Barabbas (Anthony Quinn) and his Christian friend was able to do for the latter, before Jack Palance had finished the bungled job of still two additional "traitors and fools." Can I only hope anyone is even capable of recognizing exactly Whom I had even most conspicuously left until last, above, among my list of heroes (Matthew 19:30)?--But only prior to the very one I'm so delighted didn't actually make that list, after-all, as much as part of both of us really would have liked!
However, there's something in particular, which I shall probably never include anywhere, at least not in any more detail than I'm currently offering; precisely because none of it is anybody else's business, for the same reason most would therefore be tasteless enough to feel the most maliciously "curious" here! But, then, the shame of what I've already admitted above, is reduced to scarcely more than a most cheaply inconsequential form of embarrassment, next to what I haven't yet revealed, and can scarcely bear to reflect upon, even to this very day; despite its being such a structurally vital piece of the above, particularly with relation to its own equally and also very prophetically symbolic kind of timing. I was eighteen years old, a freshman at Compton J.C., when I first encountered the real Lenore, but at least four years too late to have done either of us any good; regardless of how gently and sensitively she'd tried to persuade me to stay, rather than attempting to commit her memory to the flames; as precisely the same kind of person even Keenan Wynn, as writer Gregory West, had nevertheless succeeded at retrieving, in a much more timely and constructive fashion, at the end of Serling's "A World of His Own." That was also four years before the Lord had healed my desperately wounded soul, in a very special and miraculously unmistakable way, but only so that it might be even more woundingly, benumbingly shattered, once again, by still another; as well as in a manner which helped to destroy my Lulu, nineteen years later, at the tragically untimely age of thirty-five. In this connection, I still sometimes take out my own personal copy of Serling's original episode, entitled "Spur of the Moment," about young Anne Henderson (Diana Hyland); who, contrary to my Lulu, rather eventually lived on, at least long enough to regret having spurned the advice of her own "Heavenly Father," too! Yes, there was another, to whom she would have been more ideally well-suited, had my Left-Hand man (who is not The Walrus here, rather than his alternate) only been nearly as ready as he'd so enthusiastically believed (even despite the extent to which she'd initially been far-too-ready for him, albeit like trying to mix the "water and oil" of Sartre verses Lenin, which were about as problematically yet decisively separated, however, in this case, when he'd begun taunting a prospectively Roman Catholic mother-in-law whose "Church" at least "might as well" have taught Marx everything he'd known!); just as Rita, who would have been more ideally well-suited to my Right-hand man (who is Ratso Rizzo, as well as his alternate), likewise had the sense to recognize how unbearably alike as well as different they also shouldn't have been! Mary, in-between, could have been more ideally well-suited, but only as a fading shadow, even of the selfsame foibles which likewise served to render the only "Opposite Number" at my own point of "Optimal Resonance" just as unideally well-suited to still another of equally questionable integrity. But, then, I was so much of a psychological corpse, once again, by then, myself, that the only possible answer would have been as hopeless as Godfrey Cambridge had been so rudely informed, in an episode of Night Gallery, when he heard the final reply, "Sorry, one miracle to a customer." That's why the INTERNAL IMPACT of the FINAL BLOW, the one which confirmed all my worst suspicions about her, those I had been most trustingly disinclined to believe, had come as such a RUDELY ABRUPT SURPRISE to me, even though I had been Divinely Warned about IT from DAY ONE; as the STRUCTURALLY SYMBOLIC REPEAT of an INITIAL BLOW, the INTERNAL DEVASTATION of which I had been DREADFULLY ANTICIPATING from DAY ONE as well (Romans 9:9-13), but with a much more FRESHLY WOUNDABLE incentive for Denial, rather than merely one I'd falsely believed I could much more easily withstand during the second round, as coming no less symbolically from what had SYNONYMOUSLY or SYNTHESIZINGLY been a STRUCTURAL REPEAT of the one who'd unsuccessfully chosen me prior to the INITIAL BLOW! Yet, as Zorro said, before having swiftly finished the job, "I needed that scratch," even that FINAL BLOW, "to awaken me!"--Although this analogy should also be balanced with still another, one which applied with ALMOST equal force, when, during the first bout, Apollo Creed failed to stop clowning around with Rocky Balboa quite on-time! But, then, it was an entirely different kind of excessive self-confidence with which Apollo had to contend in the second bout, in a total reversal of my own respective forms of excessive self-confidence. Matthew 7:24-29, in conjunction with Proverbs 11:29, applies in a very real sense with equal force to those who had perpetually and successfully chosen me, albeit in the most Tragically Ironic ways which were Symbolically Fated to be; along with the vulgarly ill manners in which my own daring initiative had been spurned at every single turn, and as unnaturally, suspiciously, "as though" I'd awakened all the Devils of Hell!
Moreover, her full name might just as well have been Lulu Baines, from right out of Elmer Gantry; even though the one who so callously, cynically delighted, along with all her other, equally "Christian" friends, at helping hurl both of us over the very Edge, had scarcely been, in quality, anything remotely worthy of the name of even a "bible broad" such as Sister Sharon Falconer, either! However, just as any analogy is invariably imperfect in some respects, and even no less appropriately in its contrasts as well as similarities; it's the most "obvious" and "fascinating" one, here, which never at all applied to Lulu, save to the vulgarly beastial sensibilities of so many whom she'd continually had to spurn! Indeed, even the most "educated" and "sophisticated" of such scum were no more impressive, from beneath all the grease paint, than Slim Pickens, in One-Eyed Jacks! Moreover, for an image of Lulu herself, just turn to Pina Pellicer (actually, a "hybrid," between her, and that first lovely senorita Brando had been "courting," or rather conning, back down in Mexico), from the same film! Even more accurately yet, as I pointed out, long ago, in the opening pages of Philosophical Letters, Volume One, a real composite of this "cross" is possible as well; to the extent that, just as this Spiritual Bullfighter had come so painstakingly far, at more gracefully learning to woo the flesh into submission, in preparation for the most hopefully, climactically clean and skillful kill as well, she was correspondingly a dead-ringer for My Lady, both physically and otherwise. That's her! More accurately, though, Lulu had been so much more easily as well as fiercely provokable, that, unlike Pina, she would not have given Brando nearly the time to beat her to the punch, in calling Lon the "garbage pail" he was, right to his face, along with plenty of saliva, just for openers. Yet, Lulu made up for it, by having applied the same description to John Wayne, the "Duke," the very "Flower" of American "Aristocrisy!" I can't quite recall from whom I'd first acquired the expression, at least in the more blisteringly unforgettable manner, but I am much more certain Lulu hadn't gotten it from Brando. Legend of the Lost was truly among his finest performances, for basically the same reason she once had even more difficulty seeing it through. She almost made it, until Sophia Loren finally turned, along with Rossano Brazzi. All the painfully tragic dynamics combined, which resulted in her having died a slow, agonizing death, three years to the very day (8-30-'90), while despising me as much as she loved me the entire time; are much too complex to adequately reflect upon here, as instructively edifying to my purposes as they nevertheless very indispensably would be, including another "Sister Sharon Falconer" of hers, who also instinctively despised my image in the same cripplingly-bloodcurdling way as most who've ever laid eyes upon me, even as the most momentarily fleeting strangers, who were just as characteristically, beastially, and presumptuously inconsequential in precisely this sense, too! But "Sister Sharon Falconer I" really does take the cake in this sense, while "Sister Sharon Falconer II" even bore such a physically uncanny resemblance to Diana Sands, in A Raisin in the Sun, that only SOCKETS were present for "EYES!" As for the "tenderest" of all "genuinely Christian" impulses to be found in such creatures, the kind in which they so disingenuously need to believe, themselves, I'm also reminded of, again, the "warmpth" of Diana Sands, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Dossier on a Diplomat," where, and HOW, as well as the REAL REASON WHY, from beneath every "conveniently" self-mystifying excuse, she says to Kimble, "It's not that I fail to sympathize with your plight; I'm simply unable to accommodate it." Moreover, I cringe, with the same intensity of disgust they do, upon contemplating how many-too-many would be gloating, right now, upon encountering what they'd conveniently, viciously misinterpret to constitute a simple confession, here; particularly in light of what I could likewise add, concerning the violently unbearable conflict which continues to beset my own tormentingly guilt-ridden soul, and the challenge I must face to resist the hopelessly unhealable conclusion that these people, in all the "cleanliness" of their souls, are so numerously as well as unaccidentally reflective of how the Lord Himself actually feels! Correspondingly, how frightfully incessant is my own most fervently uncontrollable wish that the Lord had left me back in the mud pits of Egypt, since I apparently had to come into existence at all! But, then, there is much work to be done, including many more biographical details, as covered in still other places; along with the manner in which they very symbolically serve to reflect, microcosmically, when seen in relationship, like pieces to a puzzle, the major historical contours of the Beast With Seven Heads and Ten Horns, and Its Image; which is, itself, just the skeleton of the kind of elaborate patterning I mean, as well as a demonic counterfeit of the kind of Divinely Dispensational Patterning which absorbs it. The most detailed documents thus far along these lines have yet to be electronically transcribed onto Gather.
At the very least, minus the Duty I have to continue, I would that the end had come, for me, so much sooner, even, if possible, in her very place; as the kind of favor to both of us which only she would have failed to consider one to her, although not based in the least upon any question as to the genuinely selfless extent of my own particular motives. But, in fact, there was still another, who had encountered me, again, from long ago, virtually at the very foot of Lulu's grave; although she had arrived too late, and much less worthily than still another, at the age of eighteen, contrary to that of her much more vulgarly common equals, when I was twenty-two!--But, for all that, not quite late enough to have rendered her incapable of inflicting a much greater amount of damage than I'd been careless enough to assume had any longer been possible. Since her equally well-timed departure, after nine senselessly wasted years, again, to virtually the very day (9-9-'99, in fact), I've been caring, once again, for Lulu's own equally, symbolically well-timed replacement, in an almost equally painful repeat, for the past seven years now. I'm making reference, in this latter respect, to still another structurally significant, even prophetically pivotal benchmark, in a long and, retrospectively, no less ever-revealingly unbroken succession of the same, as to about the exact amount of time America itself has left to continue no less senselessly, ungratefully, presumptuously, and victimizingly squandering! Even the simple, basic need of human companionship is not sufficient to satisfy the "Eternally-Encased-In-Stone" Requirements of H.U.D., were one literally writhing from the kind of strain only an animal or a god can endure indefinitely; but, then, still other prerequisites, to Rita's having been officially allowed to stay, and which are far more "Crucially Humanitarian" in nature, even for H.U.D., along with a nation whose numerously professing atheists likewise gloat that, as Watts quotes them, "There is no God, and Jesus Christ is His Only Begotten Son," had been cynically, flagrantly, mean-spiritedly, even lyingly and thievingly discarded, by the management, two full years subsequent to their having been formally satisfied and acknowledged, just because the management correctly assumed it could sneeringly, contemptuously, whimsically, arbitrarily do whatever the hell it wanted, against those who have nobody to defend them, and get totally, unaccountably (but not "officially," of course!) away with it! The Manager at that time (currently ex-manager, and I'd still like to know why, particularly given the "timing!") had finally threatened me with eviction, if I refused to sign a paper, stating I no longer needed Rita anymore! How sorry I am, now, that I'd yielded to such an illegally unwarranted form of outright intimidation and extortion! You see, at least one of the more primarily and decisively determinative factors here is that they all simply hate Gypsies! Moreover, that "social worker" who had been sent out, to "get to the bottom of it," would be undeservedly fortunate even to be receiving welfare checks--but rather in name as well! Not only must we both scrape, at the current time, to afford the $1100 per month rent she has to pay, but the same spitefully malicious gossip is again occurring, coupled with every pettily disingenuous excuse to force her onto the street, from where she'll be improbably fortunate even to be able to borrow more credit, which, again, can be so easily, unfairly, whimsically destroyed, thanks to the property owners who control as well as ARE the rich, "legislative" parasites in Sacramento, for still another, similar rat-trap! Moreover, right now, the same 'Protective Services" Agency which had been sent out, three years before, to my apartment, to allegedly "investigate" as to whether she was "abusing me," is now "advising" me, as it "investigates" her situation, where she's currently residing, sick, and helpless, minus any but the assistance I have to offer, as well as the same which her mother, on her death bed, had me promise to provide, to leave her virtually for dead! And this doesn't even cover the numerous other stories, involving both our current places of residence, which I'd love an opportunity to air in a Real Court of Law, as diametrically opposed to the currently and cynically, mystifyingly misnamed ones! In fact, as Rita's lungs continue to fill with water, her extremities swell even larger, and her heart correspondingly weakens, even with the "help" and "concern" of "doctors," or, "legally glorified" drug pushers who care about nothing but cynically bilking the State, in a manner which only very disgracefully and tragically confirms the extent to which it wouldn't even have mattered, had Lulu not been swindled out of every penny of her medical insurance by LAUSD, after almost ten years of consistently dedicated service; I'm thereby reminded of the terrible meaning, at the end of Five Came Back, and Back from eternity, when the drums finally stopped beating!
Fall, 2001: Even here at home, your "Courts of Justice" are NOTHING BUT A DISGRACE! My little friend, Rita, and her sick, seventy-five year-old mother, were just tossed into the street, again, by a landlord who simply doesn't like Gypsies; although, while discriminating in this sense, he concealingly boasts that he doesn't need any legal reason to evict. And, just as he has no sound reason to evict, such as lack of payment of rent, damage to or uncleanliness of the property, or deliberate and excessive disturbance to neighbors; he obviously requires nothing more than a VICIOUSLY AND BIGOTEDLY MEAN-SPIRITED WHIM, as his "justification" to hopelessly demolish their CREDIT in the process! Yes, there was one problem in particular which a neighbor or two had more understandably expressed, but I'm loathe even to identify it, not only because it could have been resolved much more expeditiously to all parties concerned, but also due to the actual "reasons" which really only served to reduce this one to the level of nothing but a conveniently, rancorously mean-spirited excuse, even one with which most of you would undoubtedly concur, but which can only be proven via a competent sense of SMELL!! Not only did he perhaps greatly diminish their chances, if not totally ruin their ability, even to find another apartment, due to this blemish he left upon their record; but, in a deliberately sarcastic act of adding further insult to this injury, he went out of his way to insist that they not use him as a reference; not, of course, out of any, if necessary, "piously-stated concern" for a prospective manager to come, but simply in order to be SADISTICALLY AND MEAN-SPIRITEDLY DESTRUCTIVE OF THE LIVES OF OTHERS, while REJOICING IN WHATEVER INIQUITY THEY CAN HELP CREATE! When I attempted to explain certain of these "legal" inconsistencies, just outside the so-called "Court of Justice," in Downey-Flake, Ca., to the "lawyer" representing the landlord; he SNAPPED BACK AT ME, like such a DIRTY, FILTHY ANIMAL, with his SARCASTICALLY BRUTAL SNEER that I "take it up in Sacramento," that I should have GONE RIGHT FOR HIS THROAT; even DESPITE the fact that he RIGHTLY knew I was TOO MUCH of a MAN to be ABLE to SMACK a TYPICALLY, EFFEMINATELY "Male" FAIRY like HIM right across the face, without finding MYSELF immediately in SHACKLES--as ONLY EVEN a MILITANTLY LESBIAN FEMALE probably wouldn't be in my place! The TYPICAL "Judge" in this case, not long thereafter, had even been BRUTALLY CYNICAL enough to REDUCE the additional three weeks, in which to vacate, offered them previously by the "lawyer" for the landlord, to EIGHT MISERABLE DAYS; in total disregard, not only, again, for the very offer of the lawyer, and the lack of any morally viable reason to evict them; but, also, for the SEVERE PHYSICAL INFIRMITIES of both, their LACK OF TRANSPORTATION, and even, again, the very REASON they had no CREDIBLY alternative retreat but the VAGRANCY of the GUTTER! TO HELL WITH YOUR SO-CALLED "LEGAL SYSTEM," AND PARTICULARLY ALL THE "CHRISTIANS," OR RATHER MERE AMERICANS, "IF" NOT THEREBY OUTRIGHT TRAITORS, EVEN BY THE LATTER DEFINITION (SAVE FOR THE MERE FACT THAT SUCH SCUM ACTUALLY ARE IN THE GOD-ALMIGHTY MAJORITY, AS INDISTINGUISHABLE IN THIS SENSE FROM THE AT LEAST MORE "HONESTLY" PROFESSING NON-CHRISTIANS), WHO WORSHIP IT IN THE VERY NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF!
Spring, 2002: Rita's mother died, just a few months after the abovementioned eviction; from complications, by the way, involving pneumonia; in causative connection with another property owner who'd spent two months SNEERING that she and her mother could just get out, if they didn't like the fact that the central heating failed to work. There could even be something technically illegal, in connection with all this; or, at least, there certainly ought to be; assuming such would matter, de facto, either way! By now, she has managed to purchase a motor home; but the city ordinances, against her having any place to park it, are as senselessly and cruelly arbitrary, "at least" in any genuinely moral let-alone reasonably pragmatic frame of reference, as the average landlord is bloodlessly mechanical--in the ATTITUDE he displays, as well as via the requirements he imposes. Indeed, so many spaces have been sitting empty for more than long enough to warrant the additional observation that these trailer park landlords are as much poor businesspeople, in the most selfishly and exploitatively "pragmatic" sense, as they are idealistically hollow to the marrow, considering the amount of money they've already lost. Likewise, the average motel manager (almost exclusively foreign) ought to be taken out and flogged, again, if only for his ATTITUDE! Instead, the LICE, and THEIR "COURTS," HEARTILY CONGRATULATE the way she's being CURRENTLY HARASSED and THREATENED--out of parking even in her sister's driveway! Bellflower, Ca., in particular, should more appropriately be re-named HELLFLOWER!--Along with "just about" every adjacent city!
Rita was before employed by the state, to provide home care for her mother, who had herself been an SSI recipient. That was SSI's excuse for having refused Rita her fair share of benefits, as one who is, again, sick, with, among other things, a very bad heart condition, which renders her almost totally incapacitated. Again, the CHEAPLY MECHANICAL EXCUSE was that she had been "employed," and, "therefore," quite "necessarily" in good health. Never-mind the number of doctors who had submitted letters testifying as to her condition. And, of course, never-mind the fact that there had been nobody else to care for her mother, save perhaps in the kinds of "nursing homes" which numerous evidence serves to indicate are, among other things, too mortally dangerous, potentially, even to be called "human" KENNELS. Not unrelatedly, my own father and maternal grandmother are by now likewise merely two more no-longer-living testimonies, in support of the kinds of suspicions, based on evidence, which specifically apply in their cases as well! Moreover, it's not only a problem of being able to "prove" anything illegally amiss on the part of these "homes," but also of getting anybody in judicial authority to CARE, at least minus the money as well as time and energy to be able to afford it. Now, Rita, in the absence of her mother, has, just as had eventually been the case with my Lulu (when she became very ill, and could no longer work "part-time," after a ten-year period, for LAUSD), no income at all; and, even still, no medical insurance, either. All she receives is General Relief, in conjunction with whatever spare money her sister might be able to help supply, at least in the form of a temporary place to stay. Rita was even "legally" CHEATED out of her mother's life insurance, based on the CHEAP TECHNICALITY, thanks to a BUREAUCRATIC ERROR, if nothing more viciously collusive of the insurance company itself (a Texas-based operation), that her deceased sister constituted the only officially-designated beneficiary. When I first encountered Rita, eight years ago, she was in a very serious state of shock, which still persists to a very considerable extent, and was almost totally unable to get out of bed, after just having seen her closest sister, prior to the one above, carried out dead, in a transparent plastic bag. In general, she'd carried on where Lulu had been determined to cut it off, by having to see all her loved ones taken away first, rather than virtually none of them. And there are many structurally, symbolically prophetic signposts built into the fabric of this particular phase of my journey, which I'll not take the even more excessively necessary space to specifically outline here.
Summer, 2003: I thank God, as well as every Civil Rights MARCHER on the STREETS, that Rita has finally begun receiving her Social Security. I also thank Him for the way her mother's life insurance company has finally come through with the money, just as I am grateful for whatever reasons, if only quite undoubtedly other and lesser than the strictest INDIVIDUALLY, FREELY MOTIVATED elements of Idealistically Moral Sincerity as such, it turned out that the company had been guilty of no more, at least in the sense which only pragmatically-intended results matter at all, than the kind of MECHANICALLY, THOUGHTLESSLY INCONSIDERATE NEGLIGENCE which helped cause the therefore not even nevertheless very interimly, mind-relievingly anticipated restitution to arrive almost two years late. It certainly does not require much plausibly digestible speculation to conclude what would have been the result, even after over twenty years of consistently prompt payments, by Rita, of the premiums, had she required even a small fraction of that amount of time to make the very last payment! Now, what makes this morally evil double-standard "Eternally Just," to MOST PEOPLE, is simply the fact that, in "Eternally Just" America, it ALREADY "OFFICIALLY" EXISTS, at least in ways which are CONVENIENTLY, RHETORICALLY RATIONALIZED, in all their "Morally" as well as "Legallly" unfolding "Consistency." At least finally having the money helps provide a most urgently needed element of relief for her, even though the THOUGHTLESS BEASTS who so CALLOUSLY and UNNECESSARILY succeeded at MALICIOUSLY DESTROYING HER CREDIT, with unwarranted eviction notices the damage of which she cannot even contest in "court," have all the best reason, from their own TYPICALLY MEAN-SPIRITED PERSPECTIVE, to CONTINUE GLOATING that she is STILL UNABLE TO RENT EVEN A CARDBOARD TENT IN WHICH TO RESIDE! Just like the relatives who finally stole her trailer, and the brother-in-law (a DEAD RINGER for the old Peter Clemenza, played by Richard Castellano, in The Godfather!) who is STILL LAUGHING about how he GOT AWAY with PHYSICALLY ASSAULTING HER, AND STEALING HER PURSE, WITH A GREAT DEAL OF DESPERATELY-NEEDED MONEY IN IT, ABOUT WHICH THE POLICE "CAN" DO NOTHING, ANY MORE THAN THEY'LL THEREFORE AT LEAST "LOOK THE OTHER WAY," AND LET SOMEBODY WHO CAN, YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF IDOLATROUSLY, MODERNLY, TECHNOCRATICALLY, HEDONISTICALLY ALIENATED AMERICAN APES--TO THE CORE! After having faithfully cared for her mother, all alone, for so many years {and, in the end, having spent more than half-a-month at her bedside, in the hospital, all alone, practically every minute}; it was as though Life Itself had been WAITING, ANXIOUSLY, CRUELLY, VINDICTIVELY, to ASSAULTINGLY THROW EVERYBODY, AT ONCE, PARTICULARLY THOSE SHE FALSELY THOUGHT SHE HAD, AS WELL AS NEEDED THE MOST INTIMATELY, SUPPORTIVELY--THAT IS TO SAY, EVERYBODY SATAN HIMSELF HAD POSSESSED--IN SPIRIT AND ATTITUDE--RIGHT INTO HER FACE! The PLAIN AND SIMPLE MEANNESS OF SPIRIT, IN MOST PEOPLE, IS MORE THAN ENOUGH TO LITERALLY STAGGER AT LEAST THE MOST SENSITIVELY, UNUSUALLY, AND THUS EVEN MORE VULNERABLY, UNHEALABLY WOUNDABLE OF IMAGINATIONS! And, to the extent that Scripture describes this as a GAUGE of THE PROXIMITY of THE VERY END (II Timothy 3:1-5) (Matthew 24:9-14), we are undoubtedly ABOUT AT LEAST TWO MILLENNIA CLOSER THAN WE WERE--EVEN A MERE THIRTY YEARS AGO!
Other Interests: My world has been solitarily meditative for the past twenty-nine years. I've been despised and vilified in churches, particularly my own congregation, from where I'd been slandered and backbitten into exile (Isaiah 66:5), within a two-year period, and for the past thirty-five years now. The same thing happened at my university alma mater, until I'd finally received my Master of Arts, in 1978, from CSULB, which had also issued me my B.A. They were delighted to have me gone, but not nearly as much so as I am, to be rid of them! More precisely, however, there is still much unfinished business, but only from my perspective, and in accordance with my own painfully-cultivated conviction that virtually everybody can be wrong! Even more specifically, I've been longing, for almost the past thirty years, to drag certain of them into a real court of law; that is, if such an animal actually does exist, in the first place, anywhere but out of this world!
However, I must commend Gather, here, unlike even those spitefully malicious censors at Amazon, IMDb, and many other, even more "Liberally, Progressively Humanitarian" web sites, for welcoming even me as respectfully and honorably as they at least hitherto have, despite even the fact that their motives are still fundamentally and predictably profit-oriented enough to compel me to wonder why! This is even more unavoidably true, now that I've already been so rudely though hardly very surprisingly introduced, via the comments, of the average patron, in reaction to a couple of my articles, to the extent of what typically, ungratefully, ignorantly vulgar plebeians they are, with their correspondingly and endlessly petty preoccupations! Were I only capable of sending them pictures, they'd derive an even more rancorously murderous "thrill" out of having to see how "beautiful" the world outside their "rose-colored glasses" actually is! But, then, on the other hand, most and virtually all of them undoubtedly share at least one ex-First Lady's cynically, mockingly, contemptuously-expressed disdain for anything which threatens to disturb her "Beautiful Mind!" The couple of positive responses I've received are, unfortunately, neither nearly as numerous, nor as passionately if at all felt, as those which only continue to delight, minus even a single rebuke of them in my defense, at mindlessly and unconscionably discouraging my every effort!
Political Affiliation: Actually, I'm Off the Wheel of Becoming here (Malachi 4:5-6), just as I can already hear so many of you vicious animals sneering it now, even in your old-age adolescence, and a senility which never seems to show, but only because it could never become any worse than it had always been! You're sneering in the only possible way your kind were ever actually capable of "winning" an argument, particularly with nothing but even the wrong kind of ammunition to augment every falsehood at your disposal! In fact, the very nature of your tendency to utilize even words as nothing but the most venomously murderous weapons, like unto just about any good lawyer, judge, or politician from among you, only serves to demonstrate what kind of henhouse excrement you actually are, particularly by way of your own definition of the phrase, given the need you even more internally than otherwise have for not deciding to bypass them altogether, in favor of real sticks and stones! What you're ready to sneer, by now, is that I'm simply "Off the Wall," even though the actual fact is that not to be Off the Wheel is, by now, itself to be necessarily Off the Wall; and it doesn't much matter which one of them, either, particularly in that squares such as yourselves fail even to roll very smoothly or gracefully at all in the first place! And, of course, let's not forget your next, even "cleverer" corollary to that already most virulently petulant punch-line; namely, as Martin Riggs had it thrown back into his face, in Lethal Weapon II, "Who's the Dickhead, now!" But you're all about to find out, about as painfully and rudely as Arjen "Aryan" Rudd finally did, speaking of the "last laugh" itself, the only one that really counts, that your "Diplomatic Immunity" has just been revoked! Even if you more realistically succeed at taking me out as well, you'll get no further than Job 13:15, while bumping headlong into Matthew 10:28, just to complement 18:6-10! Of course, being, myself, like Aristotle, neither an animal nor a god, I'm anything but so naively, presumptuously, complacently smug as to fail to be quite acutely as well as chronically, incessantly alarmed at the possibilities, even probabilities, if not virtual certainties, as to my own personal fate, in the meantime; even short of what could be expected, but nothing more than hypothetically, beyond the perimeters of I Corinthians 10:13! Indeed, as Will Penny (Charlton Heston) once put it, there's no good way to go! That is, there's no good way to experience something which was never ideally meant to be!--Or, is it actually nothing but a most senselessly fanciful "Fluke," as Watts calls it, that man has such a deeply, universally-rooted aversion to physical death? Either way, even the newly-anticipated "messiah," Obama, for that matter, just could be another trick of the Ruling Establishment, which is perhaps calculating that no cheating, as Stalin would have said, not in terms of who casts the votes, so much as who counts them, may even be needed, to insure that a black candidate loses, if not rather a woman, instead of the most viably Democratic candidate, who is perhaps just as unaccidentally or rather conveniently in only third place. Besides, they may also be reasoning that, even if a bit of electronic and other forms of fraud may be required, the Race Card, or the Gender Card, would serve, at least "implicitly," as a most plausibly believable cover, in helping to spontaneously subvert at least enough genuinely warranted suspicion, if nothing more. Indeed, how many Democrats, who would vote for a woman, would not vote for a black, and vice-versa? And how many of those voters, either way, shall perhaps therefore go to--whom?--McCain? It's a real three-ring circus, for the mob's entertainment and distraction, a glorified personality contest, and a most pathetically misleading, mass-hysterical masquerade, embodying the illusion that any "real change" is possible! Even more fundamentally decisive here than their preference, if possible, for a Republican winner, is the dirty little "secret" that it just doesn't make any real difference, after-all, who wins! Just take, for openers, the word of a real expert on what he called THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, that is, Ned Beatty, from Paddy Chayefsky's Network, for he certainly appears to be quite thoroughly "In the Loop!" Moreover, speaking of "change," most would do better at least to wish, if not hope, that things could just stay as bad as they even quite currently are!
Religious Affiliation: I am Non-Denominational, and Non-Non-Denominational, just by way of including the most pompously, presumptuously belated category of all! Moreover, if there's anything even more ignorantly, shallowly, viciously insufferable than the Classical Morbidity of a "Christian Church" which had long been turned into nothing but a tomb, it's the contemporarily "Born Again," Disney-Outlandish "Joy" of those who "pity," at "best," or rather contemptuously scorn, who "prayerfully" as well as "sermonizingly" look down their "spiritually elitist" little snouts at anybody who's not merely as "happily," mindlessly, one-dimensionally narcotized as they no less laughably than blood-curdlingly Swear to God they alone are not! While they "piously" pose to themselves as "passionate lovers of Justice" who remain "magnanimously cheerful," nevertheless, because they have "that much faith" that "God will deliver," they slanderously deride anybody who actually does feel the pain of the current injustice, conveniently, shallowly accusing such an individual of "faithlessness." These worms will psychologically project onto him the image of nothing, as well, but the only kind of childishly spoiled-rotten "temper tantrum," for instance, to which they are alone able to relate, in the form of anything "less" than their, again, usually "cheerful" frame of reference!--Jeremiah 6:10-16; 8:5-13!--Amos 5:18-27; 6:3-8! Not only would they murder Jesus, over and over again, if they could; but they also very much can, and do, particularly with their own proverbial "kindness!" Barabbas (Anthony Quinn) described most of them very accurately, as the "stinking fish" they are, just as George Burns correctly observed that most of them ought to be out selling shoes! Their "Liberally, 'Secularly' Progressive Humanitarian" rivals have thrown out the clean baby with the dirty bathwater, just as these "Christianly Conservative" idolaters of Empire are the dirty bathwater! One can "almost" hear them so "piously" sneering, again, at me, right now, as if they were anybody to talk, let-alone judge anything or anybody: "Who do you think you are, Jesus?" Well, "perhaps" the Lord will INSIST they ask Him that themselves--VERBATIM! Absolute perfection may still be a long way off for me, but I suppose I should be grateful they at least quite conveniently hold those alone whom they instinctively despise most to the very highest of standards! They don't really want to strive, as slowly and painstakingly as it takes; but they are, as Nietzsche mocked, no less determined to make it so "gracefully" all the way, in one gigantic leap, regardless of what it takes even to so "lamentably" enjoy moving anything more "depressingly" because meaningfully "negative" entirely out of the way!
Also, if they're the ones who really turn out, in the end, to have "Known Him," all-along, then I also say, along with them--definitely--count me out! However, for people who love to contemptuously kick someone, particularly while they're the very ones holding him down; just because he dares so glaringly bear his soul, but in a way they're all too "strong" to handle, even after they'd encouraged him in the name of the Lord to trustingly, vulnerably, "laughably" open his heart to them (I know what Rachel Brown meant, from Inherit the Wind!); I've been long-prepared to gamble on even the biggest "long-shot," that they're the ones who'll finally be feeling the boot!--For, frankly, I don't believe they have the stomach to make it past Job 42:7-8; just as I'd be about as hard-pressed to try receiving them any more graciously, perhaps even for the very same reason I'll never have to be faced with any such option! Of course, it's not very easy to know where duty demands that one stop kicking, even against their will; thus avoiding, in the process, any careless presumption upon the very Soverignty of God, or at least of what they call His "Permissive" Will; especially when it's lasted so relentlessly, mercilessly long and hard, in the mouths of the most characteristically problematic kinds of liars, those who "conveniently" deceive even and especially themselves! "Deep" down inside (or, at least even it is much too "deep" for them!), they know they're mediocre, at best, in what they love to call "Character," as well as petty, vicious, insensitive, self-centered, cowardly in a totally disingenuous way which deserves even their own "subliminal" self-contempt; indeed, the entire array of typically, "Christianly" unsavory qualities they conveniently projected onto me, in a Systematically Ritualistic Murder, a Slanderous Character Assassination, I contend, precisely to the extent that they "at least" instinctively though not, of course, "consciously" knew those qualities were not true of me (Isaiah 5:20-21; 66:5). Yet, they "appeared" very "conveniently" true of me, while the assaults, of those whose Fear one can accurately measure, by how glaringly they wear their "Faith" upon their sleeves, and, of course, the actual Hate, of those so emotionally, "sentimentally" narcotized on what they call to themselves "Love," relentlessly continued against the "gutlessly depressing faithlessness" of my Anguish, and the reflection my own emotionally crippled as well as already long "religiously" raped and wounded conscience had been, in the struggle for life, of the kind of spiritual and moral impoverishment in which they "unwittingly" glory. While they're busy seeking after "Rewards," all I'm interested in are a few plain and honest answers--regardless of what they stubbornly, self-righteously, complacently decide such a Final Confrontation shall just as extremely require! Yes, I realize It will undoubtedly be necessary to have Jesus Himself right there, in a way even they can finally understand, before I'll ever be able to see anything even remotely resembling an honest answer, just as violently being forced out of as well as into any of them, and minus anything which quite "conveniently" can't be "proven!" Their kind love to quote verses such as John 10:10, as if they understood even what it meant, let-alone how it fails to apply to them, as those who should rather have passages such as Revelation 3:14-22, James 4:9-12, and Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:1-8 rubbed in their faces, about as crudely as attempting to "house-train" the kinds of dogs whose parents apparently never bothered teaching them how to wipe their filthy little snout-noses, either!--Although most of them were already "Bible Scholars" by the age of seventeen or eighteen, as those who'd at least learned even to paraphrasingly parrot the language so very well!
Rock Hudson, as Dr. Anton Drager, in The Spiral Road, very glaringly serves to illustrate the years of self-conflict with which their kind have cynically, unconscionably left me to struggle! And it doesn't get any easier at all! I'd long ago been of the prevailing impression that it takes guts not to run away from a fight, even as I nevertheless obediently did the opposite; but I have come to discover, since then, that the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and must continue to do, is patiently wait for Him to finally settle the matter, rather than taking things entirely into my own hands!--And I still despise my very life for it, but for an entirely different reason now (Jeremiah 15:10-21). Even if it proves to have been based on nothing more than the passionately Sicilian blood in my veins, it's a question of Honor which I find almost impossible to suppress; particularly in that I am also well-aware of how truly "funny" they "think" it is, to this very day, as I long to see just one of them, from among the "men," of course, who at least has what it takes to meet me alone somewhere, so that, as Glenn Ford said, as Jason Sweet, to Pernell Roberts, as Chocktaw Neal, in The Sheepman, it's "just him and me!"--That's right!--Just him, and a "no-good, stinkin', yellow-bellied sheepherder" such as I! But, then, one has to give even Johnny Bledsoe, alias Col. Stephen Bedford (Leslie Nielsen), from the same film, much greater credit, than any of these "Fundamentalist Christian" Worms, at least for having been "Chivalrously Sporting" enough to openly sneer to Jason that, "I know you'll never shoot me in the back, but I have the advantage that you can't depend upon that from me!" But, of course, before you can even be capable of giving someone such "fair warning," you first require even the brains, let-alone the guts, to inwardly, self-consciously realize you're actually no kind of "Christian" at all, even of the "Liberally Progressive Humanitarian" or "Buddhafied Jesus" if not outright hard-core "Dialectical Materialist" variety! Such normatively, perennially, "Christianly," degenerately self-righteous buffoons embody what Nietzsche astutely diagnosed as a Resentment "mentality," an instinctively, disingenuously, cowardly, impotently exhausted unwillingness to deal even with Actuality in any adequately theological way, let-alone all the "Sacred Ideality" to which they "alternatively" and glandularly flee; as those who thereby strive, so very "Faithfully," to "prove wrong" everything Marx as well as Nietzsche ever said about what basically provides the "substance" of their no less Biblically-identified incentive; put one way, of what R.D. Laing called their "violence masquerading as love," and an unbearably self-frustrated obsession, not only with a characteristically demonic kind of instrumental control, but also a more intrinsically sadistic victimization which they conveniently "sanctify" to themselves as something "morally mandatory." Five-Hundred years ago, their kind were the ones burning "heretics" at the stake, after having brutally crushed all their bones; but, of course, "not," as in the case of any explicitly, paganly "self-respecting" Roman, with a self-consciously unapologetic love of witnessing a "fine kill," rather than, again, in the most "lamentably, selflessly unavoidable" sense! Perhaps even the mob, and what Jesus called the most evil generation until that time, had been anciently turned against Him at the very end; but "at least" they loved the one He'd called the very first, and thus last, the greatest of all men, John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11); whereas, today, there is not a single "Christian Church," of any "denomination," which would hesitate to violently eject him, as nothing but the kind of "madman" only modern "men" could possibly be, again, and again, and AGAIN, the very least fit to judge!
Employers: I've never been welcomed anywhere. As for the supposed Civil Rights I've "enjoyed," on more menial jobs than I can count; I have a moderately book-length description of them, which any real lawyer, if any, ought to be extremely interested in, just for openers, reading--very carefully! A careful viewing of You Only Live Once, with Henry Fonda, would be very instructively edifying in this respect, too, as evidence that even being an ex-felon, like John Wisdom as well, is hardly any guarantee of fairer treatment! Check out Frank Whaley, in Swimming With Sharks, too! Yes, I could recount plenty of stories, even as a means of illustrating the average employer's lack of any moral or civic sense of responsibility, in helping a younger generation of "glorified" wage-slaves, whose parents assist in paying the bills (or, rather, "indirectly, " and, of course, "unofficially," "unnoticeably," even with the most "plausible deniability," to pay the salaries), to learn and be able to rely upon there being any real values in the work place, in being sincere and honorable, trying to do the right thing, and being more fairly, rationally reciprocated with a sense of gratitude, rather than the usual contempt for some "lower" species of animal, if, for no other reason (and no other reason is characteristically required, any more than it's often to be found in either case), just because he's "lower." Moreover, I'm not even referring to the money any longer--JUST THE ATTITUDE!
Judging from the ways they've treated, and, yes, I'll say it insistently, especially their most faithfully-trustworthy employees, even with money, just because they know they can be as easily, expendably replaced in an instant as they are even quite sadistically fun to torment even more, all the way out the door; it's nothing less than a circumstantially unrecognized, let-alone undeserved, but over-abundantly and thus even more presumptuously, ungratefully squandered Gift from Heaven alone, minus any of the honestly diligent effort they should be applying to assist it, that they're even able to stay open for business at all! And, again, while there are too many of these stories to write an entire book about here, I'll mention one characteristic example, the month I'd worked as a box boy, at the Food Giant Market in Compton, at the age of seventeen.
One clerk, a student teacher at my high school, but whom I'd never met on campus (although the maliciously murderous gossip had apparently reached his ears as well?), harassed and mocked me, every single day, right up until the day it was finally time for me to join the Retail Clerks Union. "As if" waiting for me to pay my dues, the manager called me over to him, right on cue, to tell me I was fired--minus any explanation!--And Costello (that was the creep's name) had been standing right beside him, grinning speechlessly at me with the same attitude of Claggart (Robert Ryan), while he was lying through his teeth to Captain Veer about Budd, right to Budd's face! That is literally the uninterrupted story of my life in the midst of the TYPICAL Anglo-American SCUM!--And I haven't forgotten the Union still owes me my thirty dollars back, forty years later!
The first job I ever had, next only to doing the gardening at home once a week, was a paper route, with the Herald American, which I'd started when I was twelve, in Norwalk, and continued, when, two years later, we'd moved to Compton. About a year after that, Colonel Smith, the owner of the paper, had told all the boys to come to the main office, also in Compton, to have our photos taken. None of us had been informed as to why, the answer to which had only been forthcoming after I'd been told, by more viciously sadistic mockers on campus than I could count, or even personally knew as "well" as they "knew" me, that my picture had been selected to show, between films, on all the movie theater screens in town. Not only was I uninformed, let-alone never asked for permission, but not a penny of rightful compensation, even in salary, let-alone damages, was ever offered!
The next job I'd ever had was one which did require a work permit, unavailable prior to one's sixteenth birthday. I'd been hired at a cafeteria called the Holland House, also in Compton. My sordid reputation on campus had apparently followed me there as well, since I was tormented and cursed at, every single day, for the roughly three months I'd lasted there, the longest amount of time I'd ever been permitted to remain on any regular job, save for the couple of years I'd driven a truck for my father. Of course, I hadn't even known these particular student-workers, although they'd "known" me, while typically, sadistically, mean-spiritedly relishing all the hell they were capable of administering, minus a single rebuke from the manager. Even that, however, had not been enough to satisfy them, as they simply wanted me gone!
Even one of the few "friends" I'd ever had managed to snag a job there, at my recommendation, only to become at least a more "passive" part of the problem, one who could easily afford to derive the amusement he did from my plight, while also feeding off my resultantly discernible sense of self-degradation and worthlessness! One day, just about a week before I'd finally had to leave, a black kid was hired, the first one on the job there since I had arrived. Somebody told him I'd called him a you-know-what behind his back, which was nothing but a dirty, maliciously-motivated lie! Yet, it resulted in a physical brawl after work one night, when he'd assaulted me in the parking lot, with the many eager spectators who'd helped engineer it ravenously hovering about the central arena! Take one guess, if you need even that many, as to who had alone been forced to bear all the blame! In Lonely Are the Brave, with Kirk Douglas, one sees a similarly and characteristically all-too-real kind of tragic irony, when a one-armed man (Bill Raisch, that same creep from The Fugitive) picks a fight with Douglas, for no justifiable reason at all, with every degenerate Mexican in the place enjoying it, and finally participating, on the side of the one-armed man. When the cops came crashing in, they instinctively made a beeline for Douglas, at the bottom of that great big pile of "human" garbage, and arrested him alone--knowing he hadn't done anything to cause it!
I'd had to deal with the same kinds of typical punks a few years later, at a summer camp job as a counselor with the Roman Catholic Divine Word Seminary, in Riverside, California. That job, after about six weeks, ended in much the same way, but minus only any of the physical violence, when I was finally discharged, on the "basis" of the most viciously slanderous gossip, from out of the same mouths which had been receiving "Holy Communion" every morning. In fact, the very "priest" who'd just as sadistically participated in their infamy was the same one administering those "holy" wafers every day. The particular fellow scoundrels at issue here had been part of a little "football club," presided over by him, and dedicated to making life as difficult as possible for every "nerd" on the job. I'd had a couple of good friends there, who could see what was happening, including a "Brother," by the name of Ray, and also Bob Flynn, a delightfully perfect image, even in spirit, of Bob Cratchit (Gene Lockhart), from A Christmas Carol. They could see how maliciously, spitefully I was being railroaded out of there, on the "charge" that I showed "favoritism" by playing chess with one of the boys in my group, Jeff Gompert, during after-hours. But they had been totally helpless to do anything, and even a bit surprised, if not at the level of viciously backbiting slander per se, then "at least" at the final result. Even the black priest who'd been serving as acting Director that year was able to smell a rat, but he hadn't the integrity to stand up to the regular Director, who was also that same damn "priest" just mentioned above. In his feeling of guilt, he finally offered me another job, as a substitute counselor, which I'd refused.
As already mentioned, I had even been fired from McDonald's, in Artesia, back in 1968, after about a month, along with all the rest of the crew, including Greg, whom I'd first met there, prior to our hitchhiking trek across America. While I could only have guessed as to why, there had been no more than a single identifiable "reason," in my case; namely, that, during a lie detector test, given to all of us, about a week prior to our dismissals, I had lied in my answer to only one question, that of whether or not I'd obediently thrown all the cooked, leftover food in the garbage before closing. I can only additionally assume the manager had thought there was money missing, which wouldn't have surprised me in the least, either, had it actually been true. This was probably what resulted in the lie detector tests, as I don't believe the manager had decided to blame any of us for the only other inadvertent folly involved, which was that we'd mistakenly interpreted our orders to mean that even the private "rent-a-cops" from a construction site across the street were likewise to be given all the food they wanted--for free. This was indeed a "charming" place of business, even for customers. One morning, in this particular role, I'd ordered some coffee, and then dozed off for a few minutes in the driver's seat of my car; after which I'd been abruptly awakened by a couple of cops, who demanded that I exit the car, while they proceeded to tear out all the seats, minus any explanation but to SHUT UP! After about ten minutes, they'd left me alone, and gone into the building, undoubtedly for still more of that free food they'd also been loading up to bring home to their families. After that, I'd also entered the building again, to ask the manager whether he'd called them. At that point, one of the cops started screaming, "almost" to the top of his lungs, that I had better get out of there--or be hauled away to a--PADDED CELL!
About the only truly decent job I'd ever had was in Pompano Beach, Florida, back in the Spring of 1970. What made it decent wasn't the kind of work involved, just as it had nothing to do with the pay. Rather, what served to make it so unusually, even uniquely, and just as surprisingly refreshing, was the fact that I'd actually been treated like a human being there, by Bill, the Stock Supervisor, and also by Bob Crutchfield, the Store Manager. Again, it had been somewhat unsettling to be regarded, for a change, as any kind of human being at all, even before having had to earn the privilege in any way. Unfortunately, however, I'd not been hired alone, but rather along with Ratso Rizzo and The Walrus, who'd ended up being deservedly fired for, among other things, engineering unauthorized midnight raids upon the cafeteria kitchen. Mr. Crutchfield even assumed the pose of something resembling a psychological counselor, during our final day in his office, while attempting to get to the bottom of the issue. The verdict he'd reached, and rather decently at that, as one who genuinely cared about being fair-minded to the hilt, with an attitude of sincerity I'll never forget, was that Ratso Rizzo and The Walrus had to go, but that I would be permitted to stay on if I chose. How sorry I am tempted to feel, to this very day, that I'd decided to stick with my "friends." But, then, Florida had never been my home, either, and my original intention was never to settle there permanently, something only a long-term concept of Fate prevents me from, again, regretting--to this very day (John 4:44)!
1999: While I could relate many more such tales about myself, I also have much to tell you about the Civil Rights which are being daily and viciously violated in the workplace alone, against my brother, James, despite all his pleas for PEACEFULLY LEGAL REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES! While the PREDOMINANCE of MEXICANS, along with their "leader," Martin, with whom he's forced to work, at OFRA, are harassing him constantly, JUST BECAUSE he's a "filthy Anglo," I live for nothing but to see the day your kind, who COULDN'T CARE LESS, JUST BECAUSE IT'S NOT HAPPENING TO YOU, as alleged "paragons of The Law," are handed the final bill, for all the WORKPLACE SHOOTINGS which are regularly occurring as well! Again, I'm PLEADING WITH YOU TO CARE, even as the words CHOKE IN MY THROAT, about as much as I'd rather be able to SHOVE THEM NO LESS MERCILESSLY DOWN YOURS! Indeed, what would you REALLY have my brother do, while he's being TAUNTED and even THREATENED daily, with the prospect of having SODOMY inflicted involuntarily upon him; not necessarily by homosexuals as such, but rather as the very means being utilized to HUMILIATE HIM AS A MAN, by making him play the part of the woman! You can SAY anything you want, about the kind of "animal" who decides he's finally had enough, and needs to SMASH THEM ALL TO PIECES, just in the name of HIS DIGNITY ALONE! Yet, if you are truly prepared to blame him instead of them, in the context of such a possible eventuality; PARTICULARLY as you CONTINUE REFUSING to ACT UPON this problem, in the very way you INSIST only you have the RIGHT to do; then YOU ALSO ought to be LEGALLY EXECUTED, BY NOW, right alongside his tormenters, who LIKEWISE DESERVE TO BE KILLED! Considering the additionally relevant damage, to his marriage as well as previous means of livelihood, Robert Duvall, quite RELATEDLY, had the RIGHT idea, in The Apostle, when he wielded that BASEBALL BAT--for which ANY REAL COURT in this land would have CONGRATULATED him!--Rather than sentencing him to a chain gang! In my brother's case, the numerous HORROR STORIES, involving also how my mother, and the Roman Catholic Priest of their parish, had VEHEMENTLY BLESSED every CYNICALLY ABOMINABLE DESECRATION of God's laws, just for the SHEER HELL of it, are recounted, in much more dismally astonishing detail, in Philosophical Letters, Volume III.
But, then, if Biblical tales about, for instance, God "whimsically" striking people dead, for the most "implausibly petty" of reasons, have you typically, "sophisticatedly secular moderns" busting a gut with laughter, particularly at the thought that anybody could ever take them seriously; then let's not overlook perhaps an even greater kind of objection, on your part, to the "primitively bloodthirsty savagery" of those offenses which were formally punishable by death under Mosaic Law. My brother's "ex" wife was raised by a father who heartily encouraged her to become the arrogantly, unconscionably vile beast she is, while bragging about the kind of "bitch battle" in which she enthusiastically "lives" to engage. Moreover, these are Roman Catholics, who still fancy, in the process, with the reinforcement of every "priest" they know, as well as virtually every other typically depraved "parishoner" in their midst, that they are "genuinely devout," just by participating mechanically in all the "proper rituals," as the most "gracefully-unmerited" substitute for any kind of actual virtue, or the least bit of intention to thereby help cultivate any! "Perhaps" the fact that her father, J. C. (who, according to my brother, not only bragged, in private, about his extramarital "conquests," but also snuck booze out of the bottles his wife had told him not to hit so alcoholically hard, and then blamed it quite successfully on my brother!), is on a Knights of Columbus committee, which officially welcomes the Pope, whenever he arrives in town, also has something to do with it, in addition to the real possibility that even the "priest" at the "parish" is one of her "customers!" Some of her favorite and most often-grilled-in expressions to my brother had been, for instance, to the effect that "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine," as well as "It's my way or the highway!" Just before she'd been "recruited" by the Norwalk Mexican Mafia, in conjunction with numerous comrades in the Norwalk Sheriff Station, to become one of their "bag whores," she'd cynically convinced my brother to get a vasectomy for her, while her only real intent had been to disable his capacity to have any more children, as she prepared to remove even the two they already had from his midst. About the only thing which had held their "marriage" together, for over fifteen years, was the extremely good sex this beastial nymphomaniac derived from my brother, and which she still didn't want to lose, particularly given also the fact that she considered even him her own personal property. Lulu equally despised this LOATHSOMELY VILE CREATURE, so much, and so understandably, that she just couldn't resist the BRAZENLY PRESUMPTUOUS AUDACITY of BARGING IN, QUITE UNINVITED, to Lulu's wake, just to "as much as" GLOATINGLY SPIT ON HER DEAD BODY! Not a week later, and just to MEAN-SPIRITEDLY GRIND IN ALL THE ANGUISH SHE COULD, she SNEERED CONTEMPTUOUSLY AT ME, "Ya killed her, Rich; the truth hurts!" How fervently I long to see the day when SHE'S the one FORCED TO FACE--THE TRUTH!
By the time she'd finally grown too "indignant" to any longer bear the "compromise" of sneaking her boyfriend in through the back window, while my brother was out working, as if she'd had anything to hide, or be ashamed of, and thus decided to waltz him in, right through the front door; it had also become plain enough to her that she'd wanted to retain them both, and thus had the brazenly unmitigated audacity to invite my brother to stay for a "threesome," which he refused! Physically, their "romance" might have been a "smashing success," but it definitely failed to blossom, or rather metamorphize, quite as improbably, fancifully, even ludicrously as that between Louis and Betty, in Revenge of the Nerds III, where the former "inordinances," particularly from the first segment, are more refreshingly and meaningfully if not quite as "stimulatingly" absent. His recently broken leg had been in a cast at that time, but this was no deterrent to her calling the police, and having him forcefully ejected, simply on the basis of her whim! There was even some kind of "hearing," or whatever they called it, in one of your American self-so-called "Courts," but it's still a most cynically-unstated "mystery," even after more than ten excruciating years, as to "exactly" why my brother had been barred, at the entrance, from the very "Court" where his fate, and that of his family, was being so one-sidedly, disingenuously, and secretly decided! That's the "strength" of such pure, unmitigated evil, as it dares do things, right in plain sight, which few would be the least bit capable of believing, even then, rather than bringing into question the credibility of anybody who could proceed to "exaggeratingly" make such a report! It was close to midnight when this happened, and he had no place to go but my residence, two houses down, where he'd stayed, thereafter, for about the next five years! The houses belonged to my mother, who hates my brother, a reminder to her of her husband; perhaps even more than she does me, as I continue reminding her of her father; but not nearly as much as she hates herself, as one of the strongest, and most "consciously," hysterically un-self-recognized incentives for the many things she's no less harmfully done, from beneath every "conveniently" well-rationalized excuse, whenever she even bothered with that much! Again, she hates herself, with a "Cinderella Complex" brutally raped into her as a child, by a rather large group of wickedly maternal aunts, all but one of whom are still "alive," well into their nineties! And, of course, she's been trying to "overcome," or rather deny, this condition, ever since! It's all in her manuscript, which she'd solicited my services to type for her, several years ago. This is a "Cinderella Complex" she's self-contemptuously passing on to me, in every way she "inadvertently" can; for, after-all, what am I, if not something as symbolically contemptible to her as her first-born son, and the one who's paid most obediently, sincerely, as well as dearly, for every single one of her hitherto stubbornly, arrogantly, hysterically unrepentant follies, as the very "Cinderfella" whose terrible debt to whom she'll never admit, and thus alone stand any chance of being the least bit able, let-alone honorably willing, to clear; something, for that matter, which, in an Italian Court of Law, she would have no choice, technically speaking, but to do! My brother's "wife" clearly recognized this fact, and gloated, with the most viciously, sadistically, mockingly savage kind of blood-lust, at the sheer stupidity and gullibility to be found in a situation upon which she could so easily and opportunistically as well as vindictively proceed to capitalize! Not only were those two scoundrels heartily congratulated, by their parish "priest," as well as by the "po-lice," and my mother, in addition to their two children; but they just had to mockingly, tauntingly rub it in, every time they saw my brother pulling up the driveway, as he needed to pass "their" house, in order to get to mine, all the way in the back!
I'll again briefly reiterate, just in case you failed to register what should be, to anyone, the nature of the UNSPEAKABLE HORROR just mentioned, the BRAZENLY HYPOCRITICAL AUDACITY, the kind of SWINISHLY VULGAR DEPRAVITY which provokes me almost beyond any inwardly containable endurance, precisely to the extent that there's no doubt as to the kind of evil involved here! That UNSCRUPULOUSLY, MONSTROUSLY EGOTISTICAL BROAD, who called herself my brother's wife, had been CYNICALLY, MOCKINGLY, BELITTLINGLY LAUGHING at the ways they'd been able to pull my brother's life right out from under him, and even his livelihood (many sordid details of which are still lacking here, along with about as many tediously voluminous tales about my "wonderful public servants," at the Norwalk Sheriff Station, including the time they came charging in, threw me to the ground, face down, and put a cocked gun to the back of my neck!); knowing that, by every legal as well as moral standard of decency, they were totally guilty, beyond even the slightest "mitigating circumstances," but with nobody in the world to care at all, lest it be to jump with glee, at the triumph of such unrighteousness, which far-too-many JUST PLAIN SPITEFULLY, MEAN-SPIRITEDLY did! At the same time, they were just as CYNICALLY, MOCKINGLY, GLOATINGLY, DEMONICALLY SNEERING at my mother, but only behind her back, of course, for being the fool she is; led astray, by her own vindictively evil heart, to the betraying of her own flesh and blood, precisely to the extent that it was not guilty, not deserving at all of such; while playing into the very hands of those who do hate even her, who contemptuously call her as stupid as my father repeatedly, and understandably, even desperately did, many times, but rather to her face, and, of course, to none of the most constructively well-intentioned avail. They were laughing, not only at my brother, and my mother, but at me, as the very one they knew could see what was going on, but the one they could also see to be just as helpless to do anything about it, that is, short only of YOU-SHOULD-KNOW-WHAT, and the very one whose consequently brutal distress they SADISTICALLY, BLOOD-CURDLINGLY SAVORED! They knew how wickedly as well as gullibly impervious my mother was, to any attempt, by me, to pleadingly reason with her, while they enjoyed seeing the ways she INSULTINGLY, DISMISSIVELY treated me, right in front of them. In fact, my brother had been RIGHT ON THE EDGE, more than once, of BLOWING THEM BOTH AWAY, even while feeling GUILTY for having REFRAINED, thus permitting such a MONSTROUSLY CYNICAL ACT to go unpunished, and THUS AUTOMATICALLY CONGRATULATED, to the inevitable detriment of society as a whole, too! One of the most mischievously falsifying evils ever so "modernly" and "sensibly" perpetrated, in the perverted name of "individual liberty," is that MUTUAL CONSENT constitutes the ONLY ACCEPTABLE CRITERION, save when a partner in matrimony even quite whimsically, capriciously, and cynically chooses to violate the same Solemnly Legal Oath her spouse would rather prefer to keep! The simple "solution," of this vile creature calling herself even "human," let-alone any kind of "wife," or "family," is to designate anybody who takes things such as God, and Duty, the LEAST BIT seriously, nothing but a "religious fanatic!"
The HARROWINGLY INCONGRUOUS PERPLEXITY is that, like Mary, my mother also has a heart, along with a genuineness, almost as unmistakably real as the RED HOUR GLASSES hidden not-so-carefully or avoidably underneath! I still reflect with dismay upon the times my mother had contemptuously mocked the poor, and cursed me to my face, as well as over the phone, on many, many occasions, whenever I tried to remind her about what she used to claim as one of her favorite stories of Jesus, involving Lazarus and the rich man. She likes to do, for people, only what they don't legitimately need to have done for them, but while automatically blaming them for all the rest, in the most characteristically, "morally" and "patriotically" or rather Spartanly and Cretianly American fashion. When I asked her, on as many occasions, even the same ones, how the devil she, or her daughter-in-law, as well as the latter's father, not to mention the parish priest, at St. John of God, in Norwalk, and even the sheriff of that city-wide EPIDEMIC of MAGGOTS hiding in the woodwork, also behind the most "professionally and responsibly respectable" poses, could have mindlessly condoned such brazenly, hypocritically, cynically unconscionable breaches even of Roman Catholic Law, the only verbal "answer" I ever received was--SHUT UP, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR OF THE MATTER! Yet, they all go on as though nothing happened, to this very day--as though they were all good, respectable Roman Catholics, every one! When they give no verbal responses to the many charges I've presented repeatedly over the past twenty years alone, what characteristically follows, instead, is that disgustingly dismissive shaking of the head, slowly, methodically, as though pitying a madman, out of whose mouth everything uttered must be, therefore alone, by nature quite incredibly and ridiculously perverse, or, at best, sincerely though psychotically delusional. During a more acutely vulnerable interval, well-timed to coincide with the shock treatments administered by Mary, my mother had taken the opportunity to sneer, right into my face, how DISGUSTING I was, and how I reminded her of the selfsame father she'd prayed to God in vain she'd never end up bringing into this world herself!
And this war is still ever-raging, between all of them and me, between all of them and my brother, whom his so-called wife, and her Mexican Mafia friends, had mistakenly anticipated would end up physically dead as well, long, long ago, as dead as they've by now very successfully helped to make him, in "just about" every other, more "figuratively inconsequential" respect! The only place he's had to live, over the past couple of years, is in my mother's house, which I gag on the thought of even trying to refer to as a real "home" at all! His daughter eventually pleaded to move in as well, along with her daughter, and yet another, with whom she'd become illicitly pregnant, subsequent to having made theirs her new address. She is just as BRAZENLY CONTEMPTUOUS as her mother had VICIOUSLY BRED her to be about OBLIGATIONS to ANY KIND of MORAL STANDARDS, and no less DEFIANTLY, SPITEFULLY ignored all my brother's warnings, as coming from one she'd also been taught to regard as nothing better than a joke, about doing any such thing. Ever since that little bitch moved in, she started doing everything possible to drive the already strong wedge between my mother and brother as unendurably far as she could, probably under her mother's own vindictively collusive guidance, until he finally had to leave, thus helping pave the way for her mother to fill the vacuum as well. Even while capitalizing on her father's hospitality, and cleaning him out of his last cent, she ranted and raved, like a spoiled, snot-nosed, vulgarly ungrateful child, about how she hated having to live there. I asked her, one evening, and as sensitively, understandingly as I possibly could, why she refused to find it in herself to thank God for what she did have, and even inquired as to why she couldn't move in with her mother, instead, since she liked her so much more. Her response was to go into a physically violent rage, while even ordering me to leave the house, particularly after I'd so "audaciously dared" describe her, in the process, as such an internally unsavory duplicate of her mother, Herodias! Again, why doesn't she move in with her mother? Perhaps, among other things, of a cynically, contemptuously opportunistic nature, the latter is merely very personally, jealously, rather than "morally" afraid the former will end up hitting the sack with her boyfriend, probably again, in violation of still another Biblical Injunction (Leviticus 20:14); which the latter would otherwise quite definitely relish the chance to help violate, strictly for its own sake, if nothing else as well!--Or, don't ANY of YOU really believe these Mosaically-Well-Tailored Lines in the Sand actually do come from God, rather than being merely as humanly, psychologically arbitrary in origin as any other conceivably possible standards which by nature would hold NO CATEGORICALLY-BINDING weight at all, and, thus, NO WEIGHT--AT ALL--that ANYBODY is MORALLY BOUND to ACCEPT! And this is what you typically, "sophisticatedly secular moderns" call "progress," and such a "superlatively civilized advance" over the "primitively savage" Law of Moses, a Law under which such vile creatures would have been STONED TO DEATH, LONG, LONG AGO! Indeed, one of the more dismally apparent reasons God even allows this kind of "Modern Advancement" to systematically run its course, is to demonstrate, the HARD way, why such things had been CAPITAL OFFENSES in the first place, and, by the way, STILL ARE!
Colleges: I attended Cerritos J.C. and CSUDH/CSULB, if one can honestly as well as accurately call them anything but zoos of viciously, backbitingly, slanderingly petty discrimination! Indeed, if possible, which it's virtually not, the so-called "students" were even worse than the "professors!"--Although being among the latter category is about all that's necessary, to find oneself welcome, to tell his story, at KPFK ("clandestinely" owned and operated by Emmanuel Goldstein himself! The bastards "think" they own Alan Watts, too, even though their friends at the "university" hold him in nothing but the vilest "academic" disdain; along with, no less symbolically, contemptibly, the great Paul Robeson!--Just as the "Conservatively Fundamentalist" Jesus Freaks no less presumptuously fancy they alone own the Risen Christ, with each side totally acknowledging the other's "exclusive rights" here, not to mention, again, a "university," in the "middle," which hates the Risen Lord as much as do those "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" on the "Left!"), rather than just as rancorously scorned, by those who, despite all their fancy rhetoric, have nothing but contempt for the concept of any of my "Civil Rights," let-alone the defense of real education itself! There might have been close to enough good "lecturers," per se, in all three institutions combined; but certainly not nearly as many, even among them, who were morally worth a damn; even to count on one set of toes, let-alone to have saved the original Sodom and Gomorrah! Not-at-all-accidentally, either, the abject "contradiction" never disturbed any of these "tenured professors" in the least, that they were being permitted to "function" at all, in the midst of the very "Fascist-Lite" State against which so many of them characteristically and incessantly rave!--Just as they're all still as hypocritically, venomously delighted as ever, to have done everything they could to help insure that Revelation 13:16-17 applies in a very special way to me! So much for the alleged purpose of their precious "tenure," as diametrically opposed to the actual one! "Mommie Dearest" certainly has no "reasonably plausible" doubt as to where to place virtually all the blame for these strictly professional "failures," either, particularly given the share of the bill which these "honestly hard-working" so-called "professors," of, among other things, "Ethics!," have left her to help bear! The State, too, should be very "intrigued" to know how thoroughly, formally classified I've had to remain, at Its expense, too, as one defined by an array of mental defectives in the form of nothing but a psychiatric shipwreck, despite my many years of effort at self-improvement, and the overcoming of strictly emotional handicaps for which I'd rather been slandered, gossipped about, out of the vile mouths of the greater bulk of so-called "students" and "peers" as well, discouraged, and kicked down, by just about every officially, callously, maliciously "official" decision!
One of the philosophy so-called "instructors," at Cerritos, another pettily mediocre herd animal who "thinks" he's such a top-notch "scholar," as well as "Somebody's Gift" (He wouldn't say God's, despite his close physical as well as "spiritual" or just as arrogantly self-exalting resemblance to someone who did; and God would be grateful, as the Ethical Being He also Is, at least for that much!) to this entire Insult-To-The-World of a "community," as Henry Drummond put it, from Inherit the Wind, had the knowingly lying gall to tell my mother I wasn't fit to teach (after having written such a "nice" letter of recommendation, for my "unconfidential" file, and perhaps even for the other, more blatently Unconstitutional one as well; albeit with the hypocritically "tactful" reminder about how honestly, unpretentiously, thus "problematically" lacking I am, in "tact!"!--As well as contrary to a hard and honestly earned California Community College Instructor Credential for life I'd been issued, albeit one which has never been used in over twenty years, no thanks to his kind of recklessly unconscionable, viciously mean-spirited, yet "legally unprovable," slander; as if anybody gave a damn, anyway, least of all those who are purportedly being officially paid and empowered to do so!), just because of what amounts to the fact that even a, at that time, so very "well-groomed" poodle such as I had not kissed his fat ass sufficiently; and yet the truth is that I deserved so much better than the typically repulsive dislikes of his kind, whose viciously self-serving egos (that is, again, their pompously, viciously fat asses!) have been just as cynically pampered, at public expense, for so very long they really "think" they rightfully own the place, rather than simply owning it per se, in a way they have neither the brains nor the guts to be able to explicitly call it, even and especially to themselves! Still another, at CSULB, a Hungarian immigrant who shared his department's disdain for anything Marx had to say, just because he said it, about as much as the many Jews among them should also be shut down, for their fascistically, mindlessly rancorous contempt of anything "Heideggerian" as well; was one who appeared to have delighted at the problem I had, like Billy Budd, speaking in front of an audience about which I likewise had the same feeling Christ did, every time snakes and vipers such as the Pharisees tried to trip Him in His speech. In addition to the cynical mean-spiritedness which instinctively impelled him more intrinsically, this particular scoundrel wanted to "prove" to himself I wasn't nearly as competent, even gifted, as he'd already seen far-too-much indication that I was. And it wasn't simply in-between even his attempts, along with various others of his "class" and "breeding," to "pick-up" on Lulu (while, according to her, "complimenting" the subject of my Masters Thesis, just to "suck up" to her; but which he ordinarily, ignorantly bad-mouthed, along with just about all the others!), that he'd turned out to be one of the most maliciously, slanderingly vile gossips of the bunch, telling others I should forget philosophy, and go back to driving a truck or something! The "chairman" of that philosophy department was an insultingly dirty-mouthed slob who struck me as having been more likely a covert C.I.A. plant, and who apparently failed to have even a Bachelor's Degree, just as he used to brag that he simply "didn't feel like" conducting any class (I'd been enrolled in two of his courses, Kant and Epistemology, during the same semester, as a senior), which occurred about half the time; and, of course, all one needed do was attend, during the other half, to see why even he had enough brains to recognize what a waste it was! And, yes, there's plenty more I have to say, about him, as well as various others, which really needs to be aired in a genuine Court of Law!
Indeed, as for anyone, and "virtually" everyone, who "seriously" doubts that most, and "virtually" all, of those "students" had been "positively" delighted, rather than "too terrified," even in their "indignance," to complain, along with their actual "reason" why? Well, in an even more tragically ironic twist upon what Kate (as magnificently portrayed by Miss Jo Van Fleet) had told her son, Cal, at one point, in East of Eden, these typically "good, decent, respectable" taxpayers perhaps, therefore alone, actually do belong in the equally typical "college" or "university!" However, that Hungarian clown, mentioned immediately above, did manage to provoke even a couple of others; who nevertheless candidly though "discreetly" informed me, in response to my own "call-to-arms," that they were not about to jeopardize their own "future careers," by making any "waves!" It was in that particular "seminar" that I'd even begun "flowing" fairly well, one evening, at the podium; due to which the "professor," in his utter disdain against what I was saying, and even defending quite "too" compellingly, rudely interrupted me, repeatedly, with "admonitions" to the effect that I should refrain from attempting to "monopolize" the class with my "prejudices!" We had to listen to his incoherently rambling and mumbling monologues most of the semester, and yet he displayed the brazenly disingenuous gall to accuse me, instead, of his very crime, for having so utilized the very small segment of time he'd compulsorily assigned to me in the first place! As for that other scoundrel, mentioned immediately above, there was one "student," in particular, who'd finally exited his class with an "A," while therefore laughing, cynically, hysterically, and no less truthfully, that he'd known absolutely nothing about Kant! One afternoon, Lulu and I were having lunch, in the university's "executive" Chart Room (since re-named the Vista Grande Room), when I noticed the time, and said I had to hurry to this particular class. Just as we were getting up to leave, guess who came waltzing in, as one who was really "out to lunch" himself! I passed by his table, and said, "Obviously, there's no class today, either." He just smirked cynically, even "light-heartedly" (he was a very "cheerful" fellow!) at me, "as if" to sneer, "And just what do you think you're going to do about it?" I'd gotten a "C-Plus" on my written final exam, minus a single comment, too. But he assured me, shortly thereafter, about the lack of any need for concern, as my final grade had "averaged out" to a "B!" I'd once attempted to get another of their "Tenured Doctors," to take a look at some of the papers I'd written for him, with accompanying "C" grades, and yet no comments. He simply sneered back that he wouldn't want any other "professor" grading his grading, in-between his equally, contemptuously vile sneering about my "presumptuous" attempts to get any answers from philosophy, rather than merely questions. They are "qualified" to "evaluate" students, but their unscrupulously self-serving "Code of Silence" is something totally "Sanctified," in ways I could illustrate with numerous other sordid tales!
Dr. Robert Eisenman does give a rather good lecture on the whole, although I had never been enrolled in any of his courses. However, I did hear him during a radio interview, wherein he was particularly and unwarrantedly brutal to the Apostle Paul, accusing him of having been something "roughly" equivalent to an "Anti-Semitic Hate-Monger!" In the process, of course, Dr. Eisenman conveniently neglects to refer his audience to Romans, Chapter Eleven, which is much more conclusively in rebuttal of his argument than any of the passages he cites in favor of it. But, then, does not even my brother, Nietzsche, accuse Paul of exactly the same thing, "at least" in the sense of his having allegedly been nothing but a fraudulently opportunistic hate-monger? Well, in addition to the fact that I don't agree, even with my closest brothers, about everything, the way only the most typically petty swine would insist upon, even and especially among "brothers," the fact still remains, just to give all concerned a "clue" here, that Eisenman, along with those so typically like him, is--NO FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE! Indeed, he even quite contemptuously, mockingly sneers at the credibility of his own observation that the reference to the "Bondwoman" in Galatians is an analogy in illustrating the transition from the Old Covenant of Law to the New Covenant of Grace. Moreover, even the very story of the "Bondwoman" itself is not something as anti-Arab as he so cynically, disrespectfully rants, while simultaneously dishing out all that "wholesome sentimentality" about "love!" Perhaps he need only look within, but I can personally testify that, if it's actually not there to be found, or even if it is, and he can see it, then he's truly most exceptional from among his colleagues at CSULB, amidst whom particularly the mockingly contemptuous scorn he'd displayed with reference to the miracles of the Bible would be a most characteristicaly, swinishly welcomed attitude! He sarcastically equates these Biblical stories with the ancient Hindu myths, as if the Bible made no mention of the fact that its claims are not the only ones, or "as if" there is no inherently coherent hint of an indication that it's a question, not of the competing claims necessarily cancelling out one-another, but rather of which one, if either, is true; just as, again, Dr. Eisenman sneers about all these things "as if" there were no religious sensibilities to more gracefully avoid offending, even as gleefully as he continues to do, particularly in that their hosts are brutally, cynically denied any of the "Equal Opportunity," within a supposedly "academically neutral sanctuary," which a sound understanding of the doctrine of Separation of Church and State would provide, contrary to the prevailingly incoherent misunderstanding of that selfsame doctrine. I am also of the "mockably contemptible" persuasion that the "Lost Ten Tribes" are not a subject he should be tackling with his usual levels of cockiness, either! Moreover, he had his names backwards, as Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, who became ruler over Jerusalem, while Jeroboam migrated as ruler to Samaria. But, then, even the INGENIOUSLY fallible Alan Watts was known to have said a thing or two as backwards as he didn't really mean them, just to give Dr. Eisenman every sporting "benefit of the doubt" structurally possible here.
Even more, I appreciate his questioning about the prophets having been murdered, an issue which I had also long-considered, in exactly the terms he'd conveyed. Yet, what did Jesus actually say? "Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar" (Matthew 23:34-35). As for the plural? There were many unnamed prophets in the Old Testament, incalculably more than those who are being so outstandingly showcased! Yet, despite even the magnitude of what Dr. Eisenman, along with a few other of his colleagues from whom I've personally had to learn, therefore even more FAT-HEADEDLY than ever have to offer, I'm just about sorry I couldn't have felt, let-alone seen and heard, his face being slapped silly, if not totally punched out, first class, just, if nothing else, for the way he'd sarcastically, insultingly, mockingly, and, thus, again, all-too-typically, like unto virtually all of his parasitically armchair colleagues, responded, to one of the questions of that condescendingly, scornfully unbelieving bimbo who hosts Radio Alchymy, when she'd asked if he'd believed the Ten Commandments had actually been given by God to Moses, by sneering, "of course not!," even as if, to him, every believer on earth lacked his "absolutely," presumptuously, arrogantly "Omniscient" handle on "The Truth!" That particular instance of swinishly vulgar chicanery on his part is comparable to the contemptibly bloodcurdling manner in which he'd ended with his own highmindedly, unwarrantedly self-sanctifying disclaimer against anyone who would come at him with "hate" of any kind, in response to his supposed gestures of "Infinite Compassion," as I know precisely what that means, coming from his kind, as well as from most professing "Christians," too! In fact, I'd derived my first encounter with such a typically "professional" posture, at CSULB, from Dr. Leonard Fels, at the Philosophy Department, while enrolled in one of his classes, during my first semester there. That vulgarly, bigotedly mean-spirited little Jewish dwarf, despite even deeper, more serious deformities than his merely physical ones, had initially been very courteous on the surface, until I began conducting myself in the classroom as more of an advocate than antagonist of Biblical Christianity; at which point, his hostility, not only against Christ, but, by his own admission, against (the very idea of) God Himself, had come transparently gushing forth, accompanied even by fits of rage as well as mocking. He'd been permitted to take the initial initiative of bad-mouthing the Gospel all he chose, and yet his responses to mine had once taken on the form of the following, delivered at the very peak of his thankfully somewhat feeble lung capacity: I'm not going to discuss religion! Suddenly, it was "religion," per se, which had become taboo, in a course on the same subject, no doubt, and not merely any view toward it other than that of his own. I was fortunate to have exited his course with a "B!" But, believe it or not (and I hardly can at all!), I actually couldn't help but to like him, just as he really couldn't help but to have liked me, too, regardless of how thoroughly he tried to blind even and especially himself to the fact. During a subsequent Sabbatical on my part, thanks to his "inspiration" and "encouragement" as well, I'd gotten the impulse to visit him, only to hear from Dr. Ringer that he had died the day before--another omen from the Lord delivered--not a day too late!
I've really acquired a much richer education over the years via the cinema, than in any of their "schools!" For instance, even Dean Jagger, as Justus, in The Robe, must be mentioned; as I've finally learned, in full, just why he had been so "impractically," and "senselessly," even "wastefully" correct, after-all, in his rigid intolerance against stealing, and his equally fanatical definition of the term itself! One "instructor" of philosophy, in particular, who'd lyingly called himself "my friend," will know what I mean here, based on a confession I'd once much too carelessly as well as unassumingly made to him, concerning the very shirt on my back; although he'd never yield an inch to me, even to this very day, and regardless of how much he'd undoubtedly believe me, even now; since, after-all, he needs it to use against me, most suspiciously beyond any sense of appropriate proportion even he would otherwise recognize and honor, for actual "reasons" which are totally unmentionable, and even quite "unthinkable," to a liar, a thief, and even a murderer of his typically "professional" level of "moral rectitude" and "personal integrity!" But the truth is that I could never even begin to hate thievery, nearly enough, as long as I'm able to take as little as a piece of bubble gum; regardless of how desperately I'd otherwise have to choke upon the dryness in my mouth, minus even a single penny to my name! After having been raised this way, and lived by it from my heart, I eventually began to compromise, in bitterness and disillusionment; by reasoning, along with Marx, that it is essentially impossible to steal, at least from a thief, and particularly if it is done precisely because he is a thief, rather than with absolutely no kind of sincerely, thoughtfully scrupulous concern for the difference. Just as the Biblical Scriptures ordinarily leave one somewhat "hanging" as to exactly WHAT constitutes stealing, it's not my loathing of stealing as such which had diminished, rather than having actually intensified; but, instead, again, my definition as to WHAT constitutes stealing, particularly from among so many forms which are not "officially" or "legally" CALLED stealing! Moreover, Robert Wagner, in It Takes a Thief, was so charmingly debonair, at about the same time of my own "transition," as to have helped me feel even more "inspired." I once even bought into today's popularly "self-evident" tripe, particularly with relation to the attitude, about how "regretfully unavoidable," if nothing else, such as "Glamorously Desirable," such "Systematically Underhanded Intrigue" supposedly is, ever-increasingly thanks to the "Equally Necessary Evil" of its own Destructively Self-Preservative Influence, at least as decisively as anything else; that is, until I really decided, as it were, to "Get Smart," an objective which shall indeed very soon be quite terminally applying to "Lovable Maxwell," too, but, of course, not in the only one of the two semantically possible ways available here which it actually could as well as should have, namely, from the inside out! Nietzsche likewise posed a potential danger, with questions such as, "Is not all life--stealing and killing?" Thank God I knew as well, even then, as did Jimmy Stewart, in Hitchcock's Rope, about how not to handle such nevertheless urgently neglected and "strictly academic" issues!
By now, forty years later, my definition of stealing no longer serves to exclude even the most "nobly understandable" criteria (Matthew 5:38-42). And, ironically enough, the very catalyst I have to thank for this Much Greater Light is much the same one which had originally "inspired" me to compromise at all; namely, the vast extent to which I have been ripped off myself over the years, at actual gunpoint as well, and in my own home, as well as elsewhere. One has to know how it feels from that end, to the point where either the hatred of everything it embodies is incurably burned in, or else, as usual, one is just as painfully driven in the exact opposite direction, of stealing whatever he can, from the entire world if possible, and if only because he can! In my case, the above had been merely so much of, again, a catalyst, that it's not even a mere empathetic concern for creating no further victims, deserving or especially otherwise, which primarily and decisively impels me by now, but rather a sense of personal Honor and Dignity much greater than what I'd believed it necessary to compromise for the purpose of defending. In this particular vein, I'll also offer the confession that I'm still not totally reconciled to the idea of paying back any of what pettily little I've managed to steal BACK over the years, at least not with a satisfactorily clear sense of conscience, or correspondingly any more real purpose than there would be to continuing to steal BACK even more. Moreover, some would accuse me, even now, of having left a couple of minor debts on the books, which collection agencies are continually trying to intimidate me into paying. Yet, I've never had any chance to state my case, even in one of their so-called "Courts of Law," as to why I simply don't calculate that I owe them anything, and why it is that, while I was negotiating in good faith the entire time, they simply were not. If they want to serve me a summons, I'll not hesitate to cross the entire continent, from west to east, again, if necessary, but, this time, strictly on business, in order to appear, and state my case, while even internally abiding by even the most questionably motivated as well as calculated verdict formally rendered. But, until then, I don't acknowledge in any legitimate way being called the kind of thief in their mailings which they have yet to prove, or rather demonstrate that they simply cannot!
High Schools: Dominguez, Compton, CA, another worthless zoo!--Although, to be more strenuously accurate, about the memories which hardly predominate or overshadow; there were a couple of good people around, including many more teachers who at least tried their sincerest best, given the severest kinds of handicaps, within as well as, of course, from without! In this connection, I find it more befitting to mention the only other college, not covered above, here, rather than there, so as to help keep it the less soiled, by way of association. More specifically, Compton, J.C., the first one I'd attended, had embodied the only serious attempt, from among the four, on behalf of anyone worth remembering let-alone mentioning, even despite its share of a rather more degeneratively "conservative" instead of "liberal" breed of just as dangerously pseudo-authoritarian representatives, as in the subsequent examples, to run anything closely resembling a real institution of higher learning! It's truly a sick joke to behold today's endlessly tedious spectacle, of holding only the feet of elementary, intermediate, and high school teachers so culpably on the fire--instead!--Rather than giving them the greater credit--instead! Even the one high school teacher of mine who'd finally given up trying to take any of the "students" seriously, in his electric shop class, was the only one who really seemed to make the most sense, therefore as well as nevertheless, or to have been the most genuine, in attitude as well; in addition, of course, to having thereby been a magnet, attracting all the worst elements, who were therefore, tragically, ironically enough, likewise the most transparently, unpretentiously "refreshing!"
The "instructors" of physical "education" were truly the rotten apples in the lot, sadistically as well as tyrannically mean-spirited to the core! There were also plenty of glaring indications to the effect that they'd been "covertly" planted, as part of a conspiracy involving much more than "merely physical concerns!" Indeed, they made scarcely any attempt to conceal their intention of "functioning" as the campus "Thought-Police," as methodically as they operated in conjunction with the worst bullies around, and a form of "incorrigibility" they found incalculably more usefully malleable than rationally and morally threatening; if only by "looking the other way," unless someone they were attempting to "enlighten" or "toughen-up" dared consider offering any kind of "resistance." I was regularly harassed and intimidated for presuming to speak up, and sent to the vice-principal's office on more than one occasion, due to the alleged charge that my virtual butch hair-cuts, which they'd ordered me to get, were still "too long," since the hair could be pulled all the way down to the middle of the forehead! There was, for instance, another kid, whom they called "wolfman," because he could take hold of his straight, black hair, at the very back of his head, and pull it over the top, all the way down to the bottom of his throat. But nobody ever bothered him, for much the same reason he had such a violently nasty disposition someone should perhaps have literally killed him, in case he ever were to have whimsically and spontaneously carried out at least one of his numerous threats to murder somebody else--myself included--and, in one case, even an English teacher, for having given him the "F" he well-deserved! On the whole, about the only thing worse, or perhaps even better, at that, would have been Mickey Rooney, at Platinum High School, or Glenn Ford, right in the very "heart" of The Blackboard Jungle Itself!
Moreover, what even that particular bastard mentioned above, along with far-too-many others like him, never had even the brains to understand, and have probably never learned yet, even to this day, is how unworthily fortunate they'd been that I Was a MORAL Teenage Werewolf, who OTHERWISE would have taken out plenty of them instead, rather than letting such a Spartanly Ravenous Animal continue tearing me up inside, to nearly the extent it still is! Like Brando said, at one point, to Ben Johnson, in One-Eyed Jacks, they came much closer to THE VERY EDGE than even I can bear to contemplate! But, then, of course, that same abovementioned bastard, first of all, but far from last, will sadistically, brutally, swinishly, vulgarly, mockingly, belittlingly, dehumanizingly sneer, back, again, until, by the age of sixty, even the most cynically hearty Laughter of the Gods is barely sufficient to override the virtually indistinguishable alacrity of demons, that I'm just a "pussy," after-all; even though they were the very ones who boasted, at that more spontaneously, transparently, "pre-Christianly" young and "tender" age, that they were the very ones who had no kind of theistic religion or idealistically-rooted morality behind which to hide, and correspondingly far less even of the possibly bogus pretense of any kind of excuse from real strength, for the fact that I'm still alive, even as much as they would have loved to murder me altogether, but slowly, tantalizingly, while savoring every "pussy-like" cry of physical anguish as well!--Which they undoubtedly would have done, even and especially as the kinds of real cowards they are, had I given them even a fraction of the very good reason to feel that way, even in strictly carnal terms, that they'd enjoyed giving me, especially in the kinds of spiritual terms I may soon be able to laugh about just as heartily, but at their kind of long-overdue expense, for a change! Even the professing "Christians" among them are of the same instinctively, degenerately rotten persuasion, from behind the sort of "Sid-Sawyer-like" whining as well as sneering which forces me to have to wonder which, if either type, I find the more disgusting! Even as they psychologically rape and torture you into becoming "good," they're instinctively, self-righteously ridiculing you to scorn for having been "weak" and "stupid" enough to succumb, just because they can't really face the fact that you are alone the one among them who is really decent by choice, even without having had to be beaten down so brutally, savagely in the process that even you, yourself, can barely if at all discern the difference after a point! Nietzsche really understood why the herd would instinctively, resentfully lust to devour anybody it knows to tower more innocently as well as magnanimously above it, but while also being vulgarly, swinishly, "freely and equally" thrust into its ravenously vindictive clutches!
Clubs & Organizations: None! In fact, as John Lennon says, I Found Out!--That the so-called "Liberals" are just as decadently, insipidly, rudely (like the way only swine would treat even still other swine!), selfishly, opportunistically disingenuous as the "Conservatives," to the point where they both very desperately need as well as deserve one-another! As Alan Watts says, "Tweedledum and Tweedledee A-G-R-E-E-D to have a battle!" Moreover, it's an evil entity, composed of pure energy, from Star Trek's "Day of the Dove," which is drawing its strength from the intensity of this fiercely mutual antagonism; just as Satan's the one who'll really be doing all the laughing then, too, like the "Wolf In the Fold" (John Fiedler) you'll really have on your hands by that imminently-upcoming time, in his own craftily-disguised mastery of the Principle of "Non-Duality," when the Final Threshold is reached, and the Polar "Flip-Flop" between what is "Explicit" and "Implicit" occurs; yielding the other side of the shortly-upcoming "Black Hole" of a "Perfect Storm," the "Eye of the Hurricane," in a very briefly "hopeful" interval of Suspension, or balancing of the opposing forces of its own unmixable Water and Oil, or Iron and Clay; until the correspondingly and just as superlatively implicit violence and agitation required to sustain it shortly yields the next, and next to last, of this trilogy of historically-unprecedented overturnings, just prior to the only comprehensively, genuinely cycle-breaking Transfiguration to occur. In the meantime, it must be "nice," for the "Left," in particular, to embrace such a "Universal Love," but merely as the kind of option, or "pleasure," rather than duty, on behalf of the "Inherently Undeviatable Tao," in either case, which hesitates not to take all the "liberties" it pleases; just as the "Christian Conservatives," at the other end, are plain liars, too, for the most part, especially to themselves, after the manner of Matthew 7:15-29, systematically "sanctifying" their wickedness under a cloak of "righteousness!" Even that Tantric-flavored bone Watts tossed to most of them, about letting the ego express itself so unhibitedly, self-indulgently, as a means of "neutralizing" it, via the "Law of Reversed Effort," only has any real, honestly as well as therapeutically constructive value, for one much more correspondingly and artificially beset with a systematically raped and wounded, an excessively "Yangian" authenticity of conscience (I John 3:20-21), the like of which these "Bodhisattvas" rather quite instinctively love to help cause, and then to mockingly, belittlingly destroy, particularly in its own eyes. How much more ascetically "honest," though less "convenient," in its austerity, it would be, for them to pursue a nevertheless more selfishly, dualistically "Hinayanan" version of "Enlightenment!" But, then, on the other hand, Gracchus (Charles Laughton), First Senator of the Mob, from Spartacus, did say, to his equally well-fed companion, Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), that it was his corpulence which made him so very "reasonable, pleasant, and pragmatic," while "the nastiest of tyrants are invariably thin!" While I do "appreciate" at least this much of their personal "Non-Support," if these characters ever do need me for anything (with minus even the welfare of society hanging in the balance, as while they continue mockingly, contemptuously sneering at me), and even if I don't fail to need anything from them in return (at least not for myself alone); then my answer shall be fairly similar to the one William Holden had for his fellow prisoners, at the end of Stalag 17: If we ever run into one-another again, just join me in looking the other way! Of course, just as both sides actually do despise one such as I, infinitely more than they claim to themselves to hate one-another, even to the point where they would at least delight at "uniting" no less "expediently" than they otherwise, ordinarily do at remaining "divided," in their more intrinsically-rooted agreement against me; one of their characteristically, disingenuously muddle-headed criticisms has to do with what they disdainfully, self-righteously call my "attitude," in a total reversal of the actual cause and effect here! While both sides venomously scorn my "attitude," just because it is genuine (although, of course, they don't call that the reason to themselves), they shall just as enthusiastically embrace my counterfeit (John 5:43), whose only "Technique," deontologically as well as teleologically, is to self-servingly, victimizingly play both ends against the middle; but, during this next, and shortly as well as briefly upcoming interval, as the historically and philosophically unique epitome, or prototype, as well as Anti-Type, of everything just as "synthesizingly" albeit counterfeitingly "Anti-Nazi" to the hilt. Even more, considering the ways he's already bad-mouthing both sides, as well as the explicitly Nazi "flip side" of his own "centrally synthesizing" and "qualitatively transfiguring" coin, many-too-many would do well to remind him, if possible, about the classically paradigmal folly of a "Metron," in Star Trek's "Arena," who hadn't been nearly as old as he'd thought, let-alone correspondingly "above" all those whose conflicting views he so undiscriminatingly, self-righteously, "objectively" condemned!
So much for the "Easternly Metaphysical Monism" of Watts, as merely very "amorally," licentiously relished by every "intellectually sophisticated" Yuppie on the "Left," but which Watts couldn't have meant "literally," anyway, as one who no less "Non-Dogmatically" advocated no "Doctrine," as distinct from having simply utilized a "Technique," or "Method," of "Intellectual Judo," which inherently eludes, or counters, all such "categorization," all coceptual grasping, clinging, and double-mindedness. If it applies "literally" to anything, it's to "The-Many-In-The-One and The-One-In-The-Many," but as an "all-inclusiveness" which can itself be dialectically offset, but with the "Yang" rather than the "Yin" just as exclusively, divisively, irreconcilably overshadowing, by what shall be quite essentially counter-expressed here as the concept that God does not necessarily or inherently embody even the evil as He does the good, but only controls the compossible unfolding of the former, as such is woven into the overall fabric of His universally teleological patterning, in a manner structurally, prophetically programmed to lead to its ultimately inevitable neutralization. Thus, to be genuinely "all-inclusive," the concept of "Non-Duality" as a "Doctrine" or "Dogma" would have to treat this as the "Yangian Pole" of its own most essentially paradoxical embodiment, as "counterbalanced" by the "Yin" of the "Essential Unity" of these "Opposites," even though the "Yangian" element just as Dualistically, just as concretely as abstractly excludes it; indeed, as separatingly, and permanently so, as with the many mortally-resurrected human individuals who shall be judged, and thrown into the Lake of Fire, along with the Devil and his angels, for whom it has been prepared (Matthew 25:41-46); or, at least, such a possibility can be thought, and not just as an analogically transcriptual reference to one's being internally blind to his own fundamentally inherent embodiment of the Godhead, but rather as a real possibility, an Existential Alternative, in the unfolding of Actuality Itself, which must be either true or false, but not both, and not neither. So, there, again, the "Doctrine" or "Dogma" of "Non-Duality" only succeeds, by its inherent nature, at dialectically eluding any attempt to formally classify it. Even more, Watts is intellectually well-disciplined enough to have realized that "Non-Dualism," while it cannot be, by definition, any kind of Divisively-Offsetting "Doctrine" or "Dogma," nevertheless cannot avoid being one, either, in its structurally futile determination to embodyingly "transcend" all Essential Opposites. Watts admits that his "Ecological Awareness" doctrine, as opposed to a "Ceramically Monarchical" construction, is what more plausibly appears to "fit the facts," even though what is being so much more "sophisticatedly outgrown" here cannot be, strictly speaking, proven any more false, in the process, than would thereby be required. His argument for the "contradiction" between a political democracy, combined with a religiously hierarchical theocracy, is not decisively accurate, however; save to the merely accidental albeit no less tragically unavoidable extent to which some typically, even disingenuously imperfect being, with a formal mandate to hand down the most crucially and judicially-binding decisions for all, is the only thing practically though certainly not theoretically standing in the way, short of Revelation 2:27, of a System which formally defines itself as being governed by Laws rather than the "men" who must inevitably interpret even the most otherwise legitimate-in-themselves of them. A "contradiction" which cannot work, when "The wrong 'men' use the right means in the wrong way," is, still, the only thing which has any hope at all of working, as there is by nature no freedom without the Law. Quite relatedly, that one about the Moral Law being real yet relative (and, of course, "purely operational" in origin and nature, as nothing but an alleged means to an end!) is at least as laughably inconsequential, to so many who purport to take it "seriously," as it shall not appear to them exactly so "funny," as in the presence of some Big, Fat, Jolly Buddha, when they inevitably awaken from their "Bliss," and have to confront the real reason they'd felt so "gratifyingly relieved" at the "rationally air-tight assurance" that there would be no Individual Moral Judgment to be endured at the very end, or even an element of "Reincarnation" any more "literally unequivocal" or "personally threatening" than an "analogically," Buddhistically "distilled" concept of "lighting of one candle with another!" Also, that argument of Watts, about thinking of the "chicken and egg" as being "one process," quite cleverly and accurately but disingenuously evades the no less clearly self-evident fact that either the one or the other had to have come first, certainly barring any kind of possibility that no beginning to such a process had been involved; although I'll correspondingly remain as rationally and compellingly self-subdued as Watts, in permitting nothing more "apodictically certain" than the term "plausible" to uphold my own theologically-rooted belief, or Nietzscheanly epistemological "hunch," that the "Time Barrier" is inherently unbreakable. In fact, the Bible declares the chicken to have come first!--Genesis 1:20-25. Indeed, Watts stretches the point even more obtusely, by "Non-Dualistically" hypothesizing an Everlasting Hell which is really of necessity very "Blissfully" or "Paradoxically" Tormenting; as if even Hegel had needed or necessitated Marx on the basis of anything save his own broken promises, albeit much more "inalterably" than God shall continue having any further use for Satan! It's rather the One who keeps all His promises (Titus 1:2) (Hebrews 6:18) that both sides should be fearing, lest they inevitably discover, the hard way, what it means that "Every inside has to have an outside," even if both happen to be on the same side, but as the tail end of the coin!--Revelation 20:10-15.
But, then, again, Watts similarly tries to prove that to say human nature is inherently evil is as hopelessly futile as trying to make this very belief the exception, but it only serves to demonstrate (in addition to the numerously erroneous or evil claims of evil) that something good likewise exists in a man to recognize this actual evil as such, just as those who deny its existence are thereby only demonstrating that they remain, however wilfully though subconsciously, so self-blindingly trapped in its clutches. But Watts didn't stop there, for he even had the savvy to take on Immanuel Kant, in the most superlatively skillful way, by "logically demonstrating," a-priori, that the First Postulate of Pure Practical Reason, namely, individually moral freedom of the will, is inherently incoherent; since there is no way any morally rational being could ever responsibly and thus freely choose the totally unthinkable illogic of absolute evil, unless God, who can by necessary definition not be at all responsible for any such thing, has nevertheless quite culpably created it with a deficiency; one which was either in place already, or else which was, for some senselessly impossible reason (like unto deliberately shooting oneself in the foot, even though one is not a masochist), knowingly chosen by the sinner himself. Granted, then, that Paradox cannot be avoided in any direction, any more than can the Law of the Excluded Middle. Yet, to put something as Uniquely and Sacredly Axiomatic as the Moral Law on trial is to tread the very Razor's Edge of all Existentially Legitimate Paradox, rather than self-contradiction; just as to insist, on the other hand, that "Non-Duality" is what actually, objectively succeeds at "swallowing up" such a "hopelessly dualistic self-contradiction," constitutes the kind of primally, self-evidently rooted, even quite blasphemously criminal absurdity which only serves most decisively to reveal a biased inconsistency against the notion of any real, individually judicial obligation to the Moral Law itself; which, by way of its inherently-rooted nature, is not being sufficiently understood in the eyes of anyone who assumes it even can let-alone need be "justified" or "established" on the basis of anything else, least of all even a Critique of Pure Reason which finds ITS very completion only in the Critique of Pure Practical Reason. In fact, the Second Critique not only completes the First Critique, but also stands supreme as its very basis; in the sense of establishing the only apodictically necessary foundation for the universality even of physical law, as the very medium through which the moral will objectively expresses itself. Establishing such a universality via the process of "Pure Reason" alone was really the basic motivation of Kant's artificially-makeshift philosophy of science, as he was sleepwalking out of his formerly self-described "dogmatic slumber." Perhaps at least one explanation for the fact that these "Avatars" have such a problem about the Absolute Moral Law is its Judicially Inherent Demand that the most Crucially Essential Distinctions be emphasized, rather than the kind of "Oneness With Everything" which makes everyone answerable, and yet no one, in terms of its strictly scientific relativity; but especially when God finally Awakens again from His Sleep, along with the Dream He's having that He's all the rest of us, just to escape the "Primally-Rooted Boredom" of His Solitarily Awake Intervals, "between" Kalpas, as the Only Person there inherently is at bottom, this certainly being a "Doctrine" it is inherently impossible in the strictest technical sense either to logically, objectively "prove" or "disprove!" However, these same "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" actually have no problem at all about "Distinctions," when it comes to expressing their own inherent inability to "deviate from the Tao" in the form of abdications of the most Sacredly Moral Responsibilities, but as mere "options" to them which nevertheless fail to be so "Freely" and "Gracefully" animated by "Love," regardless if not precisely, cynically because of the importance of the need they may perceive someone else to have of them, but not vice-versa, or how incredibly undemanding certain ways of meaningfully fulfilling it would undoubtedly be, if their precious egos could only endure the thought of being "gullibly-enough perceived," and thus cynically, mockingly "used." Never-mind, either, their strictly rhetorical, or, "at least," quite strictly, rhetorically employed, their "purely scientific" and thus "purely religious" concept of a "distinction," or is it rather a "separation?," between a "distinction" and a "separation!" Moreover, what about the Paradox, the very Razor's Edge of all Essentially-Rooted Paradox, that of Free Will versus Determinism? After-all, if God determines all events, then where is there any room for freedom? As a problem, this time, not about the Inherently Insoluble Dilemma of how an immorally free and responsible as well as irresponsible will is possible per se, but rather more secondarily about the problem of how such a morally free will, postulating it to be possible, is reconcilable with the element of absolute teleological but not noumenally as distinct from phenomenally deontological determinism; this is not nearly the kind of hopelessly enigmatic dilemma commonly and superficially assumed, just as the reason why can be stated in one fundamentally and simply quantifiable sense; namely, that God can have His way, of its own free choice, even with the most incorrigibly rebellious will, in that He has so many ways of maneuvering such a will to want to make the choices He wants it to make, although it does not at all make these choices with any idea of pleasing Him in mind, that, whenever He instead does use force, it is because, for whatever always by nature very purposeful if not always so easily-discernible reasons, He chooses to do so. Did God harden Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 9:12) (Romans 9:17)? Check out how, for instance, in The Ten Commandments, God used Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) to harden Pharaoh's heart, maneuvering him to want to do, but for his own rebellious reasons as well as hers, what God wanted him to do. Indeed, Moses (Charlton Heston) even said to her, in answer to her boast that Pharaoh was putty in her hands, that "perhaps you are the lovely dust through which God shall work His purpose." In no way does this interfere at all, particularly not with the freely-chosen and basically moral predisposition of the individual. Pharaoh's basic moral will was not touched at all, just as even the very carnally rebellious choices he'd made were in no way coerced, to a neutralizing of his capacity to freely choose one way or the other. If most people are at least quite "unwittingly" putty in Satan's hands, then just imagine what they are with relation to God's capacity to maneuver them accordingly, even in their most rebelliously free will. To be sure, Satan himself is "unwittingly" the same kind of putty in God's hands, as God has teleologically though not deontologically "hard-wired" even what he will want to do, as well as the very prophetically-unfolding design of things, whereby whatever Satan chooses to do, but for his own reasons, to thwart God's plan, automatically assists God in rather fulfilling His rather than Satan's plans. God allows no compossible expression of evil for which He has no use, which also explains why it is so carelessly presumptuous of anyone else to pass judgment upon the right even of such evil to exist per se (Matthew 5:45), which is quite a different thing from one's duty of legitimately dealing with its existence in all the Biblically confrontational ways structurally, circumstantially available, nevertheless. Benny Hinn once recently and indignantly thundered that God had nothing to do with the Virginia Tech slayings. I disagree. God certainly didn't do or cause the shooter to want to go on his rampage, but He permitted it for some very urgently discernible reasons; which, in this case particularly, all are being thereby challenged to self-examiningly comprehend, but in a way "moral indignation" is so "passionately" utilized with the deliberate purpose of being able to avoid! The point is, not to forsake all truly legitimate indignation, but rather not to indulge it to such a characteristically, self-righteously, myopically disingenuous end.
And, after-all, had Watts been "literally" engaged with the self-contradiction, which he'd therefore taken the time and analytical precision to explicitly refute, that the entirety of reality is fundamentally, divisively, thus Dualistically "Monistic," he would have been able to say, also, that "The East includes the West, while the West excludes the East," but only while understanding, most centrally and symbolically, the death and resurrection of Christ, even assuming its historically-rooted actuality, as essentially nothing more than the analogical transcript of experience it nevertheless also so impeccably and centrally is, of the extent to which one must die to himself in order to be internally born again, thus recognizing the "Eternally Unchanging Truth" that one was always and inherently by nature so very "Timelessly, Unconditionally There," as "The-Which-Than-Which-There-Is-No-Whicher," and correspondingly to the exclusion of any notion that Christ was actually the Only Begotten Son of God, who had to die in order to atone for the actual sins of everybody else, but only to the individually everlasting redemption of those who invite Him in, when they hear Him knocking, and are thus alone His (Romans 8:9). To cite a more "arbitrarily a-posteriori" illustration of how Biblical Truth is only compromised by such a "synthesis," there is the Islamic "inclusion" of Christ, but as just another of the prophets, and not even the highest one at that; just as Watts "transfigures" Christ, by analogy the sun, the very Source of light and heat, but in a more "essentially a-priori" or "Non-Dualistically" one-sided way, into nothing but still another expression of the Buddha, analogizable in terms of the moon, which only reflects the same. Yet, the Law of the Excluded Middle remains, as the principle of "The-Many-In-The-One and The-One-In-The-Many," or "Non-Duality," automatically denotes a bias toward unity, as the more fundamental, in its "all-inclusive transcendence" of the principles of both unity and diversity, and a "Tao" from which nothing can by nature ever deviate in any real and absolutely judicial sense; in contrast with the Western view that the Law not only can be violated, but that all, save Christ Himself, are essential violations of it, doomed to individually everlasting extinction insofar as they remain under the Law, to be broken by it, or by this "Tao" from which nothing can possibly by nature deviate, rather than under Grace (Romans 2:5-16). In the Western religious view, Satan is a Real Existence, who must be actively resisted (James 4:7), head-on. Yet, the more "Westernly" and characteristically it deviates from the Golden Mean (Matthew 7:12-14), the more it forgets, in the process, exactly Who is nevertheless in absolute control, along with the imperative of knowing how to let Him fight the battle, with just the right balancing of the Law of Reversed Effort; as when, for instance, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock succeeded, in "The Empath," at neutralizing an imprisoning force field which drew its strength from their very attempts to resist it. Or, to cite still another analogy, one must actively guide the pen, but while permitting it to do the writing. What Watts had also been pleased to call the "heuristic" method actually does cut both ways, although Watts was not characteristically one to "let the cat" so "Westernly" slip "out of the bag," rather than rhetorically dodging every attempt to theoretically "pin him down," least of all with the abject contradiction of crystallizing conceptually into place, and even into stone, the "Doctrine" that all "Doctrine" is inherently false, by its very nature; just as Nietzsche's "Will to Power," for that matter, cannot be "Doctrinally" or Dogmatically crystallized without totally negating itself, if only after the manner of Schopenhauer, or via the more "Positively Counterbalancing" (or, more accurately with relation to Nietzsche's meaning, the term would be an even higher "Transfiguration" of the Will to Power, an Inner Strength which Unrancorously, Unconditionally says "Yes" to Life, to What Is, while becoming Stronger rather than Perishing from every "Misfortune," thus turning even it to one's own advantage!) form of Nietzsche's own "Eternal Recurrence," but certainly in that one cannot coherently declare the "Will to Power" to be "Metaphysically True-In-Itself," but only as still another means of enhancing the "Will to Power" as such; just as, for that matter, Marx cannot make the absolutely, unconditionally, baldly dogmatic assertion that, for instance, "all 'truth' or 'belief' is economically-conditioned," without such a statement quite self-contradictorily applying to itself as well. Technically stated, while it can be, and, perhaps even for the most part, is true, that beliefs are "economically conditioned," even to the extent that numerous Truths-In-Themselves are adapted in the process, but not at all because they are such; that's still quite a different thing from declaring, but beyond the very perimeters of legitimate science Marx claimed to himself to have insisted upon, that all truth, and thus all belief, is inherently conditioned economically, at least at the most basically foundational level. To the extent that Nietzsche meant the "Will to Power" in a "literally dogmatic" way, it was certainly in that such constitutes perhaps the singlemost self-evidently "working hypothesis" of all, next to that of Marx; although Marx would say Nietzsche's "hypothesis" is just a manifestation of his, and Nietzsche would say the opposite, with an equally Archemedean Profoundness, but in a more "Non-Dogmatic" way than Marx. This also helps serve to account, not just for Nietzsche's disdain of Schopenhauer's "Will to Live," and what he so "nihilistically" thought, on a formally metaphysical level, even and especially of it; but, more specifically, of what Nietzsche derided as Schopenhauer's "Dogmatism" of the "Will to Live." Nietzsche, like Watts, was essentially a "Non-Dogmatic" philosopher by temperament; just as Watts, for that matter, was too well-disciplined not to have realized that even the "trick" of successfully "washing away blood with blood," by "folding up" the "ladder" of the "concept" that concepts inherently fail to apply in any "literal" way to Reality, and "leaving it behind," technically leaves us riddled only in the most Hopelessly Insoluble Paradox, as to whether anything "Dualistically Exclusive" is nevertheless necessarily being descriptively applied to Reality. And, while there is, again, nothing by nature more inherently "unprovable" or "undisprovable" than what would amount, for Watts, to the "Doctrine" that we are all "God" having a "Grandly Primordial Dream," the kind of Paradox upon which its argument Inherently depends cannot be legitimately or logically denied any possibly legitimate applicability to the Duality of a Western theology in which God is not the universe, and yet is All-In-All. Indeed, one of the most candidly "parenthetical" admissions of Watts, completely out of step with his entire "Method," and even a self-tormentingly egotistical temperament which ended up almost as destructively dissolving even his most ingeniously constructive techniques for giving its unbearably festering presence the slip; was that, rather than baldly denying the "Real Existence" of the "Individually Finite Ego," he was simply countering a naturally "explicit" over-emphasis upon its existence with a correspondingly exaggerated emphasis upon its "Non-Existence," in order to achieve, in his words, the very kind of "Balance" nobody will listen to you if you attempt to advocate as much openly and theoretically. Indeed, I've served, for much-too-long by now, as one of the most glaring proofs of that! Watts even says, in another place, that "the ego doesn't exist." Then, in the next sentence, he states that if, however, "you try to get rid of your ego with your ego, it will take you--to the end of time." How, then, in the most "literal" sense, can something which doesn't exist get rid of something which doesn't exist with something which doesn't exist? Equally "boring," to most self-canonizing "Avatars" of a characteristically "Liberally, Democratically Progressive" persuasion, would be my own candidly "implausible" admission as to exactly whose Nightmare this really is, from right out of Serling's "Shadow Play!"
Other Accreditations: II Corinthians 5:20 and Ephesians 6:20 serve as much more adequate credentials than any of the others listed above, at least to anyone who can judge the works, even if they have an otherwise more understandable difficulty taking my word for it. I've striven to render the work as intriguingly captivating as possible, as something to be even quite intrinsically savourable, in the most artistically literary as well as essentially philosophical respects; but, even more importantly, and under the Lord's own much more selflessly ever-guiding Hand, as nothing more than a most potentially expendable means, nevertheless, assuming anything short of Ezekiel 33:28-33 is capable of commanding anybody's even most potentially preventable attention! Of course, it's still a literary portrait in progress, although I'm not certain about whether to employ the analogy of a medley, short of finding a more syntactically, gracefully flowing manner of combining the two. At any rate, when the remainder of the title is finally added, you can consider such to be a sign that this page is just about finished as well, at least with relation to my own more wastefully limited purposes here! Only a few minor touch-ups yet remain, while the amendments are almost non-existently negligible.
I also regret having no more impressive kinds of miracles to offer, but not exactly for your sakes, or at least not in the sense I would more genuinely prefer to be capable of indulging, even then. It's just that I'm well aware of the only kinds of miracles most of you would ever alone respect, if you could simply see, and thus perhaps alone even believe, even in any of them. However, the one you're currently beholding is about the only kind which the Lord truly considers the most valuably and ideally edifying, although letting it pass you by will certainly help to trigger something even more glaringly, undeniably persuasive, but not in exactly any way you're very likely to appreciate very much, either! It's not certain I'll ever come up with a totally satisfactory title page here. About the only thing I can just about guarantee, however, is that, when it is finished into place, or has rather only run out of time for such, you'll have no difficulty conclusively discerning as much, either way. Just pray, perhaps, and even if I just about can't, that there does turn out to be enough more time to complete it, but don't count on it alone proving nearly as necessary as even it may be potentially capable--at evolving--into Infinity! Yet, that might figure to be even your best bet, if it comes down to a question of which way the end itself is actually to arrive; but I just may surprise you with a real long-shot instead, even more than He would be the very One thereby surprising me in the process, albeit more delightedly, even if Satan is the one who gets first crack at dazzling you with all those miracles (Revelation 13), until the Sixth Seal finally opens (Revelation 6:12-17)!! God is, after-all, even the Master Semanticist of all time, with even-you-should-know-who being only a very distant second; but always to a most meaningfully-constructive purpose, regardless of how frustratingly capricious He's usually so good at appearing, and maybe not just appearing at that!
Moreover, it appears I may not be the main emissary, as at least one of The Inheritors of such a marvelous gift; for the same reason I could still use some assistance, even at covering the expenses; let-alone linking up with certain others on the same mission, before Adam Ballard (Robert Duvall) finally decides it's time to close in first; which shouldn't be very difficult for him, particularly as I've been doing anything but trying to hide, let-alone anything I should feel needs to be hidden. Nevertheless, the character with whom I most deeply relate is Sergeant James Conover (Ivan Dixon), as he's solitarily praying for guidance in his little chapel, and struggling with his severest misgivings, which he otherwise finds himself totally helpless to indulge! I could only wish the fact that I haven't been hauled away by Ballard yet, even though I have already been approached, is as much of a good sign, in itself, as I'd like to believe. They cuffed me, and subjected me to a psychiatric ward, for three days of "evaluation," as a possible "terrorist," back in March, 2000, and then released me. In fact, I'd been internally and "inexplicably" overcome, just two months prior to that episode, by an urge to pray about exactly such a possibility, and the answer I'd received was that what would occur would be precisely what had occurred. Even more, I'll give Ballard a chance to really prove me wrong, as the answers to my prayers, ever since, have exclusively been to the effect that no such forcible constraint would ever be imposed upon me again, unless the time of my own extremely imminent demise has arrived! But then, perhaps there's no basically good side to him, after-all, as the actual explanation for this delay; any more than there exists a real Lieutenant Minns (Steve Ihnat) to pivotally link together as many of us as there may be, while contributing to the cause with his own uniquely essential kind of talent. Again, while I do know Ballard is out there somewhere, keeping a close eye on me; the absence of Minns himself is not necessarily a bad sign, given the kind of timing which may yet prove to be involved; for, after-all, he was the very last of the four, in that particular episode of The Outer Limits, to have received his magic bullet in the head.
Moreover, as for these "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians," and their fanatically self-righteous injunctions against meat, the only real argument they have to back them up, at least hygenically if not ecologically speaking, or in the sense that virtually every vegetarian, for that matter, as well as meat-eater, could "at least" benefit from a more "Wattsian" attitude toward the Spirit if not his "expanded letter" of Holy Communion (in reaction to an entire "religious" tradition Van Gogh likewise accurately characterized as being DEADER THAN THE DEADEST DOORNAIL!), is the extent to which the meat is all raised with such carelessly, insensitively, irreverently ungrateful cruelty, and correspondingly polluted, along with just about every strictly vegetarian dish of processed chemicals, shortening, refined sugar and salt, and so-forth, which they would more easily insist upon cramming down even their own "Deep Throats!" In fact, speaking of chemically as well as biologically contaminated meats, that just may be the real reason Serling's Kanamits haven't yet landed, and never will!--Although, had Hitler won the war, as someone ten times the man of anyone currently to be found, even from among the most compunctionlessly evil, per se, of every would-be imitator, as well as by even the highest possible standards of measurement, as coming from his "loftiest" of "moral critics," for that matter; then, who knows, but that we might have indeed had just such a visit, long before now, but from right out of the remake of that episode, instead, in The New Twilight Zone! But fret "not," for Hitler had been merely Europe's NEXT-TO-LAST "hope," after-all! Moreover, judging by the rudely vulgar contempt and mockery I've experienced from all of the many "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" with whom I've attempted to communicate over the years, just because I'm a "religious fundamentalist" of ANY kind, even regardless of the many misgivings I share with the "Left" about such people; they've done a virtually impossible job of convincing me they have any more "respect" for Islam than their "Christianly" Fundamentalist opponents have shown, or than either side does any real understanding--of terms such as RESPECT! It's almost comical to listen to these "Leftists" whining about the "bigotry" of the "Right," but particularly of their Mainstream, Corporate-Controlled Media, who've actually only given them as good as either have ever given me!
Where "The Truth,The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth, So Help Me, God," is concerned, I'd have hope of greater success, than with any "Liberally Democratic Humanitarian" I've ever had to endure, which would still be virtually none at all, trying, let us say, to communicate with Jack Webb (Dan Aykroyd), in the place of Tom Hanks, about even the ingredients in his hot dog, let-alone the kind of con game Christopher Plummer and Elizabeth Ashley ACTUALLY have going. But, then, even though a professing "Christian" such as Jack Webb is still as hypocritically true as ever, on the whole, to the very fabric of Roman Catholicism his kind claim to themselves to have "modernly overcome," as the "Protestant Fundamentalists" they are; what shall end up, and soon, going down as bitterly hard, even as Divine Blowback in the very direction of the Muslim enemies God shall be permitting to pay them back first (I Peter 4:17-19), is the extent to which Islam as well, involving all its sects, too, is simply part-and-parcel of the same prototypically Roman Catholic disease! Moreover, if anybody ends up physically martyring anybody else here, as thoroughly as they've already raped and assaulted the very conscience, it shall be the Roman Catholic Church putting my kind to death, contrary to all the "hatred" and "bigotry" of which I've been viciously accused, just because I disagree with my accusers as much as they quite self-contradictorily do with me; that is, if Islam doesn't get around to doing the job first, even despite the fact that I've never "blasphemed" that religion, in exactly the way I'd done with Roman Catholicism, by "daring" to convert away from it, in defiance of its equally falsifying claim of "Divine Ownership" even over those who had simply been unwittingly and unknowingly born into it, as if that weren't inherently one of if not the singlemost mindlessly, behavioristically unexamined of "reasons" for remaining a member of any "religion," or believing anything whatsoever, as disgracefully and pathetically opposed to being the most universally popular!
Yet, one does have to give Islam the greater credit that, contrary to Roman Catholicism, which commits the cheapest shot of all, by hiding, even and especially from itself, behind the very Cross of Christ, Islam doesn't even have to hide at all, from behind the teachings of its Supreme Prophet, Mohammed, just as it's much-too-tragically understandable as to why Osama bin Laden would consider it a sinful negligence of his religious duty to Mohammed, rather than Christ, not to kill as many of particularly the same typically, professingly "Christian" infidels as possible! The real test of his level of discernment, in spirit, however, and one in which I would not be very hopefully enthusiastic about participating voluntarily, would entail my looking him squarely in the eyes, to see whether he can detect even the slightest of all eternally decisive differences between me and most of them! But the battle between Israel and the Palestinians, between the West and Radical Islam, is as fundamentally, inextricably about Christ versus Mohammed, and, indeed, about Christ versus the Jews, as well as about the Jews versus Mohammed, as it is about anything more naturally, pragmatically quantifiable, or about the not so practical antagonisms of a psychologically prejudicial nature as such. Of course, by identifying one side with "Christ," I am not thereby "Sanctifying" that side in any unwarrantedly flattering sense, as though it alone were above the strictly or decisively carnal instincts and incentives serving to impel those who fail to acknowledge the correct Ultimate Authority even by Name alone. Either way, though, the real, risen Christ, and He alone (John 3:13) (Acts 4:12), is an equally and uniquely real issue here, in Himself, as well as in terms of the manner in which He's so traditionally and disgracefully misrepresented (Matthew 15:3); just as the side which represents Him in Name, but "ironically" excluding only the "Holy" Roman Empire Itself, as distinct from the Birthright Nations (or at least a small-to-be-remaining and equally symbolic remnant, through whom Christ shall be upholding His Name, and His Honor, rather than theirs), shall be correspondingly victorious, but only subsequent to the severest Divine Chastisement the entire world has ever yet experienced, or shall ever again have to endure (Matthew 24:21-22).
Again, these major, intensifying, and "humanly" insoluble tensions are as basically and inextricably about Who Christ Is, and about who He actually selected to symbolically represent Him to the world, as about anything more "independently soluble," just as the concept of a Fundamentalist Christian Gospel is actually, upon careful examination, the Main Fulcrum of all division between the Right and Left, domestically, in America; between most, who, of all denominations, falsify, doctrinally as well as morally, the very same Gospel in which they claim to believe, and those who, therefore, if not for only this reason, or even decisively, in some, or perhaps even most such cases, vehemently reject the very idea of any such "Gospel!" Moreover, both sides, of this domestically American cleavage, shall be dealt a fatal blow (Matthew 7), by the supposed "Apostolic Line of Peter," while the Islamic Shiite counterpart of the latter "Christian" prototype shall finally be battling it out with the latter, to the near destruction of both, over the issue of Christ verses Mohammed, even to the disillusionment of those who currently expect Christ to be EXACTLY the KIND of MERE Mediator between the West and the "Twelfth Imam" they have in mind when He arrives.
My Heroes: Nietzsche (as Zarathustra, holding up a lantern, in the middle of the day, to the Last Man, the one who One-Dimensionally boasts that he's finally discovered "Happiness," announcing that God Is Dead! And here's a hint as to who murdered Him--you!--If you can even begin to grasp the Supreme Magnitude of what you've done, and so "Christianly Confess," as well as just as blasphemously deny, to no endurable end! By the way, a One-Dimensional Sort is precisely the kind who no less typically has to ask, or just as erroneously fancy he doesn't!), Schopenhauer (whom Nietzsche had made the most Tragically Noble career out of trying to prove wrong, while having failed no less profoundly, meaningfully, than anything else! Moreover, while even Marx was inevitably just about nothing but a reaction to Hegel's most lyingly sanctimonious promises, save for his "deeply regretful" guarantee of war as the only "moral arbiter" between nation-states, it was actually Schopenhauer, along with Kierkegaard, who most profoundly recognized Hegel for the piously superficial fraud he really was!--Which would have to include John Stuart Mill as well, even if it must be admitted, at least, that James Mill, along with Jeremy Bentham, were much more sincerely as well as realistically prepared to deliver upon their promises! Perhaps, as Fritz Weaver raved to Burgess Meredith, in Serling's "The Obsolete Man," they'd failed, with John Stuart, to the extent they did, not by having gone "too far," but, rather, "not far enough!"), Sartre (who said it all so very dryly, but with a phenomenological conciseness nobody could ever have made more nauseatingly, penetratingly clear!), Van Gogh (a more perfect example, on this list, that the first aren't necessarily as last as the last shall be first; at least to the extent that the very last, here, is the only one of whom I can be apodictically certain, coupled with the likelihood that this particular first is undoubtedly among the very last, already! Thus, I'll try to balance it out a little better, just in case of an oversight; by permitting General Tanz, from The Night of the Generals, to tag along, at least as a real first-class connoisseur of this particular artist's soul! Besides, my Lulu loved him no less rarely, and he thus alone couldn't have been all bad; although it's unfortunate that the extent to which he'd still like to take you all down, even from his grave, doesn't quite serve to render him all good, either!),
Lieutenant Christian Diestl (Brando, in The Young Lions; which is easily perhaps the singlemost superlatively masterful performance of all, even for him; thanks, also, to one of the best scripts he's ever had, coupled with an equally superlative, if not in every case exactly laudable, supporting cast. In the end, he was right on the borderline, to say the least, of having been no less avoidably and criminally than, in either case, callously and unconscionably murdered; by a gutlessly, shallowly impulsive playboy, who was not nearly any more worthy of Barbara Rush, either, than even Montgomery Clift, standing right next to him, therefore turned out to have been, after having almost so impressively made it the entire distance, of Hope Lange. In fact, right up to that point, it was myself I'd been encountering in him, particularly during his most sensitively painful endeavors at both love and war! Brando likewise had a much more admirably substantial friend, in Parley Baer, and even a superior officer, in Maximilian Schell, whose boots no typically, insipidly American counterpart is even the least bit fit to lick, least of all amidst all that slickly biased propaganda in the film to the effect that, not only are the proverbial "bad apples" the exception rather than the rule, but that they are always quite conscientiously, expeditiously discovered and weeded-out eventually! Incidentally, I never got my twenty bucks back, either!), Col. von Luger (Hannes Messemer, from The Great Escape, a real gentleman, and perhaps far-too-much of one, next to typically, impudently, presumptuously, self-righteously vulgar plebeians such as Steve McQueen, and, to a "lesser" extent, Richard Attenborough, and even James Donald! But, again, hot-shot McQueen takes the cake, even to the point of having no less impudently than stupidly determined to coarsely ram his way right down the middle, while finally raising his one free hand in a gesture of surrender the very point of which depended upon more good faith from his captors than he'd self-contradictorily presupposed, while displaying even greater faith in them than ever by pushing it to the very limits of their endurance he possibly could, to the point where I could just about not have blamed them had they decided to gun him down, even as a SPY, right on the spot! David McCallum had a much more intelligently well-calculated chance, just as he died the noblest death of all! One can only lament, in the process, that it had been anything greater than the kind of wasted self-sacrifice which only a "Monday Morning Quarterback" can retrospectively verify! Also, Robert Graf, as Werner, "The Ferret," wasn't nearly as "naively" far off, in his comment to James Garner, about the continuing War of 1812, as most "think!"), Stephen Richard Rojack (Stuart Whitman, in William Conrad's grimly symbolic production of Norman Mailer's An American Dream, and a portrayal with which I very deeply, personally identify!), James Dean (and even Bobby Darin), Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, The Swimmer, Jane Eyre, John W. Burns ("Jack, " for short. I'll have to hand it, here, to Walter Matthau as well, in one of his more admirably moving performances, even than The Laughing Policeman; but contrary to the much more believably, much-too-believably, perhaps even normatively "law-enforcing" spirit of a psycho such as George Kennedy!), Howard Roark (played by Gary Cooper, in Miss Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Of course, the gross imbalances in this script are compensated for by the equally gross imbalances of still another Gary Cooper script, entitled Good Sam! Also, Howard Roark's professional inflexibility is really given a dent, by the examples of, say, Richard Brooks, who did indeed improve upon the original Sinclair Lewis version of Elmer Gantry, even by splicing in Babbitt, and by Robert Rossen, who made an even better job of Jack London's The Sea-Wolf, as well as by Bruno Frank, who improved upon Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, even with an Americanized ending which is uncharacteristically superb, nevertheless, in contrast with, say, Philip Dunne's more commonly, "optimistically" Americanized butchering of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Yet, Mr. Dunne is still an excellent script writer, as evidenced, for instance, with Demetrius and the Gladiators; ironically enough, despite, again, the same fault abovementioned, as well as the albeit just as meaningfully, dynamically, thus redeemably creative liberties he takes with history in general here--big time! Unfortunately, however, Ms Rand's own screenplay is quite flawlessly unimprovable enough, even with its artistically symbolic exaggerations, to where I can hardly include the reason for Roark's trial, at the end, as being among the same quality of grotesquely unacceptable realism as the actual verdict, for real, would rather have been; just in case anyone has the misimpression, at this point, that I regard those who'd insisted upon "modifying" his work with the same high regard mentioned in the examples immediately above, either motivationally or otherwise!), Marshal Will Kane (played, again, by Gary Cooper, in High Noon), Ira Hayes (played by Tony Curtis, in The Outsider; and, also, Private James B. Sorenson, his "belatedly" hard-earned friend, as played by James Franciscus), Mr. Allison (Robert Mitchum, alongside the equally talented Miss Deborah Kerr, as Sister Angela, in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison! Sir Laurence Olivier is reported to have declared, when asked, that Peter Finch and Mickey Rooney were, in his judgment, the world's greatest artists! I'm certainly no Olivier, but I totally concur; save for the single oversight of his having excluded only Robert Mitchum, just as I wish Olivier were here to concur in return! Robert Mitchum is one of the greatest performing artists of all time, and there is only one question I have, for those who were so maliciously determined to compromise, not only him, but the integrity of the very craft they gather annually to honor: What were they smoking? If nothing, then they should consider trying something--just about anything!--When the only way left for them to go is--Up!), Papillon (played by Steve McQueen; just as one can only hope Papillon had finally learned a very hard-earned lesson, about the kinds of "nuns" who also had domination over my mind and spirit, almost as early as Cardinal Richelieu had so "perceptively" advocated, and even "guaranteed" would produce the most everlastingly inextinguishable results!), the immortal James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces (It required me many years to reconcile myself with the ending, once again, full-circle, nearly as well as Father Jerry Connelly went down as he was exiting that tavern!--Or, to paraphrase Gwyllim Griffiths, played by David McCallum, from an episode of The Outer Limits entitled The Sixth Finger, in a more "naturalistically linear" vein, I'm evolving beyond any desire at all to, as he said, "see this whole town utterly destroyed," so that "an example might be made!" In fact, I might still be as devout-a-Roman Catholic, today, as I had been as a boy, had I known even a single real priest of similar stature, or that of Karl Malden, as Father Devlin, in The Great Impostor, or Spencer Tracy's Father Edward J. Flanagan, in Boys Town! Thank God such was not Fated to have been the case!--Matthew 24:24!--Although it wouldn't surprise me at all "if" there existed many Father Connellys, at least somewhere out there!--Revelation 2:19!--And I'm praying just as fervently for them as he had been for Rocky!--James 5:17-20!),
Gramp Fry (Pat O'Brien, in The Boy With Green Hair! If anybody was ever the real salt of the earth, here he is!), Janos Szabo (Peter Lorre, in The Face Behind the Mask, along with Lieutenant James O'Hara, played by Don Beddoe!), James Allen (Paul Muni, in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang; a "perfect" example of the so-called "Justice" System, even its "concern" with truly getting at the bottom of a "crime" such as his! If anything, a fair outcome, in any particular proceeding, is perhaps no less of an accident than even the exception, overall! Here's still another film gone senselessly to waste, for the most part!--Matthew 7:6!), Caryl Chessman (Alan Alda, in Kill Me If You Can! Check out the so-called "trials," and attitudes, he'd received!), Barbara Graham (another Circus Maximus Farce, predominated by typically murderous cattle, but particularly a skunk played by Peter Breck, and the way he railroaded Susan Hayward, in I Want to Live), Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino, in And Justice for All), Robin Hood (There's only one of him, so very unmistakably it would almost be an insult to him even to have to mention him by name!), Zorro (Tyrone Power, of course), Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster, along with a young lady for whom he'd "bought" a drink, after she'd uttered just a few of the truest words ever spoken; namely, "That's the trouble with this stinking world, nobody loves nobody!" It was also the way she'd said it, along with the profoundly subtle resonance to be detected in Gantry's initial response!), George Leach (John Garfield), Humphrey Van Weyden (Alexander Knox), and Dr. Louis J. Prescott (Gene Lockhart), in The Sea-Wolf, Tribune Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), the Lady Diana (Jean Simmons), and Demetrius (Victor Mature), in The Robe, as well as Glycon (William Marshall), in Demetrius and the Gladiators, and, frankly, even Centurion Paulus (Jeff Morrow, again, from part one, who's worth at least any hundred "Christians" I'm no less sorry I ever had to know!), Judy Graham Bayne (Mary Webster, from Eighteen and Anxious; who, to be sure, brings very glaringly to mind something Alan Watts said, in "Experiencing the Illusion of the Self," namely, that "You must present 'papers,' to 'prove' that you exist, that you were born in such-and-such a place; the physical presence of you does not entitle you to--compassion!"), Willie (Anne Baxter, in Carnival Story), Vic Pardo, and, of course, Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien, from White Heat. He played the ROLE of a SKUNK here, or, as Cagney had said, a "coppa," but, in his case, rarely, and, of course, only quite fictionally, as well as, thus, just as propagandistically, but for otherwise the very best of reasons, and by, again, otherwise, the very best of men, and, maybe, though not probably, no merely typical "actor" either. Mr. O'Brien was in top form here, in that particular sense, or "Persona," if nothing better as well; which, by the way, is at least a bit, again, just a bit, more than I can honestly or intelligently say for the kind of man he played, as Dan Taggart, in A Cry In the Night. For that matter, I can "just about" have "at least" no choice, while praying for mercy in the process, as I "paradoxically?" place Arthur "Cody" Jarrett right up there next to him, in White Heat, that is!--Or, more accurately, ALMOST!), Beckett? (Richard Burton, who was wrong, by the way, as should be just as "secularly" as scripturally obvious by now, with the countless cover-ups finally, and more modernly, democratically coming "unglued!" He was wrong, that is, about "clerical" lawbreakers being rightfully immune to anything but the "Justice" of "The Church!" It is particularly the real Church of God which had at least initially acknowledged the Divinely-Ordained "habit" of throwing such grossly, even criminally uncivil offenders to the very wolves, even in the "secularly official" sheep's clothing, they deserve!--I Corinthians 5!--Matthew 18:15-20!--Romans 13!--I Peter 2!--Plenty of whom were and ARE worse than King Henry II, played, of course, by Peter O'Toole!--Although take one guess as to whom She'll be blaming for having so scandalously "corrupted" her priests, just as the fact that only the prototype of all "modernly secular democracies" had been "free enough," finally, to bring it into the open, from out of its perennial closet, will help serve to make the disease appear more "Post-Enlightenmently" caused and therefore isolatable; even to the point of "suggesting" that perhaps the worst excesses of the Inquisition, Papally Ordained to "contain" it, had still been at least quite "understandable," but, in either case, NOT NEARLY EXCESSIVE ENOUGH!), Carmine Bonavia (James Belushi, in The Palermo Connection), Destry (Audie Murphy, whose remake I preferred to Jimmy Stewart's original, in every conceivable sense), The President (Eddie Albert, in Dreamscape. Contrary to "most," or rather ALL, actual candidates, for whatever offices, let-alone the "winners," this man had a true sense of the solemn responsibility of his job, rather than treating it as nothing but the kind of game which carries no personal consequences to himself, regardless of how unconscionably he destroys the lives of millions of others, and even an entire "civilization!" Where even what the Roman Catholic calls "Perfect Contrition" is concerned, he was truly, fictionally out of this world!), Forrest Gump? (In fact, it's not Rambo, or even John Wayne, who compares, in terms of sheer sinister effectiveness, to the innocent Forrest Gump, the mindlessly obedient paragon of genuinely, hawkishly Establishment rectitude, with a total indifference, or rather quite "patriotically satisfactory knowledge," of the wretchedly victimizing cause for which he was fighting, even with "Jesus" to "Sanctify" the very conflict itself!--Although, as illustrated, also, in the case of Sergeant Alvin York, played by Gary Cooper, there appears to be no single, unequivocally correct answer, Romans 12:18, Luke 22:35-38, applicable to all; lest, for instance, one of the favorite Centurions of Jesus is likewise automatically damned, on the basis of his profession alone! Either way, though, Jesus deliberately and even more clearly left no basis, any more than does the First Amendment alone, for self-righteously castigating even the absolutely unconditional pascifist in His Name, let-alone the conditionally Conscientious Objector; just as, for that matter, I would have come to exactly the opposite conclusion, even about WWI, although it's, at best, extremely difficult to believe those in charge would have been nearly as "understanding" as they'd been portrayed in the case of York!), P.L.O. Orville C. King (Myron McCormick, from No Time for Sergeants. He makes the third of my favorite N.C.O.s, along with Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason, from Soldier In the Rain. Even Warren Oates, in Stripes, was a bit too "realistic" to come in any better than a distant second at best, even though I almost adore the way Bill Murray finally gave such a somewhat better than the typical scoundrel of his kind a more thoughtfully dignified run for his money, as well as, at least in this case, vice-versa!), Lawrence Jameson (David Niven, in A Bedtime Story), The Gunslinger (Yul Brynner, in Westworld, still another at least as Magnificently Poetic Encore!), Andy Crocker (Lee Majors, in The Ballad of Andy Crocker), Dr. Jim Kiler (Robert Culp, in a T.V. Movie, of 1973, entitled Outrage), Abe Cross (Johnny Cash, in A Gunfight. Like Abe, I--JUST KNOW--and THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS!), Big Sam (Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Defiant Ones; along with, for that matter, Sheriff Max Muller, played by Theodore Bikel, a real tribute, here, even to his, unfortunately, entirely fictional profession!), Private Peter Moss and Finch (James Edwards and Lloyd Bridges, respectively, in Home of the Brave; where, even despite the terrible Spirit of Gravity they had to overcome, and I don't mean from the war per se, at least not the one against the Japanese, if not all-the-more because of the magnitude of such, I'll have to designate this film as among the most "Charming and Delightful" to be found, regardless of the danger of being as grossly and typically misunderstood as I'd inevitably be, on the basis of such "Charming and Delightful" language, even by those who know the film, but in entirely the opposite sense from those who don't!), Emiliano Zapata (Brando, in Viva Zapata; who, unlike even a lady as charmingly, delightfully refined as Senator Clinton, in the appearance of stature she so handsomely projects, "at least" had the selflessly, conscientiously "unambitious" sense as well as decency, even to quite "irresponsibly," according to the "thinking" of her own dismally-prevailing kind, "catch himself," and walk away, rather than circling even his first name, let-alone that of an entire country, in exactly the way his own had previously been circled, by President Dias. Neither did he "conveniently" rationalize that another would have simply taken over, and done the same thing, but rather heeded the advice of Jesus, to let someone else do it, instead, if that's the way it has to be, Matthew 18:7. I also say a prayer for mercy, as well as gratitude, and admiration, on behalf of his brother, Eufemio Zapata, played by Anthony Quinn), Henry Jasper "Hank" Whirling (Victor Mature, in The Big Circus), Richard Knight, Jr. (Tim Donnelly, in Parts: The Clonus Horror),
Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith, from Serling's "The Obsolete Man"), Marilyn Cuberle (Collin Wilcox, from Serling's "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You"), Gart Williams (James Daly, from Serling's "A Stop at Willoughby"), Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn, from Serling's "A Thing About Machines"), John Holt (Joseph Schildkraut, from Serling's "The Trade-Ins," along with a poker rival, played by the "improbable" Theodore Marcuse, who so admirably, movingly came through, by letting him walk away even!), Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn, from Serling's "One for the Angels"), Al Denton (Dan Duryea, from Serling's "Mr. Denton on Doomsday"), Martin Sloan (Gig Young, from Serling's "Walking Distance"), James A. Corry (Jack Warden, in Serling's "The Lonely"), Lt. William Terrance Decker, in Serling's "The Last Flight"), Joey Crown (Jack Klugman, in Serling's "A Passage for Trumpet," just as his performance was equally and no less meaningfully superlative, as Max Phillips, in Serling's "In Praise of Pip"), Serling's "Five Characters In Search of an Exit," James B.W. Bevis (Orson Bean, in Serling's "Mr. Bevis." Moreover, this one really does have plenty of Zen, particularly with Henry Jones involved!--But, as Alan Watts would also have added, not altogether too much of it! Henry Jones was truly a living embodiment, here, along with Alan Watts, of what the latter used to characterize as "The Element of Irreducible Rascality," or "Innocently Impish Mischievousness," the very kind the former was somewhat more "boorishly" trying to "cure" in Mr. Bevis!), Leah Maitland (Gail Kobe, to Don Gordon, the title character, in Serling's "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross," when she said to him, as few women in her position would have, particularly but by no means exclusively or even predominantly with so much money at stake, "You don't care about me! You don't care about anybody! The man I marry is going to have to have compassion; otherwise, I won't be able to love him!" Perhaps her father, played by Vaughn Taylor, would have been able to stop Montgomery Clift on time, too, in The Young Lions; had he been more decisively prejudiced in favor of men, rather than merely against Jews! Yet, even as it was, he almost succeeded--even for free! Yet, for all that, I can likewise empathize with the very sentiment which resulted in the self-inflicted broken hand of Mr. Ross himself!), Charles Whitley (Ernest Truex, in Serling's "Kick the Can" And, "incidentally," most Americans only "grow," if possible, correspondingly more insipidly, rancidly, pettily, and viciously self-centered with age, due primarily and decisively to a chronically and systematically encouraged laziness of "mind," leading to, again, if possible, increasing levels of atrophy! Fortunately, however, Ernest Truex provides still another relatively rare exception to this rule, as Mr. Pedott, in Serling's "What You Need."), Booth Templeton (Brian Aherne, in Serling's "The Trouble With Templeton," a particularly handsome performance indeed!), Reverend Jamison (Royal Dano, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Day of Reckoning"), Tip Corey (Sammy Davis, Jr., from a Rifleman episode entitled "Two Ounces of Tin"), Willard Prescott (Gerald Mohr, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Squeeze Play." While he cannot exactly be called a hero, he did prove to have been quite enough of a man to appreciate that there are rules, even in a war he was otherwise determined to unscrupulously exacerbate, but only to a point, merely for the sake of winning!), Ma Boyle (Dee J. Thompson, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Woman From Hog Ridge." Again, not exactly a hero, at least not until the very end, where she finally came through, in a manner which most revealingly served to help decisively redeem even an otherwise abominably unpardonable past.), Jeremiah (Booth Colman, from a Rifleman episode entitled "The High Country." Now, there was a man as well as a judge! In fact, next to the pathetically corrupt, politically opportunistic, cynically and brazenly blaspheming stiffs, in their systematically endemic desecration of the essence of everything so uniquely sacred, who pose as "professional judges" today, from the "Municipal" to the "Supreme," even Judge Roy Bean would be a vastly if "harrowingly" refreshing improvement!), Count Alfredo di Montova (Cesare Danova, from a Rifleman episode entitled "Duel of Honor." American westerns are generally good at depicting the TYPICALLY RACIST-AMERICAN, INSIPIDLY, EVEN "EDUCATEDLY" ILLITERATE CLOD for what he STILL is, but this one's right at the top here! In fact, most of them are nothing but a bunch of VULGARLY DIRTY-MOUTHED PLEBEIANS, even next to Cesare Danova, as Baranca, in still another Rifleman episode by the same name!), George Collins (Carleton Carpenter, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Coward." How can anybody honestly assess my alleged "arrogance," with such an empathetically and humiliatingly raw-to-the-bone admission here?--One about as comparable to my good friend, Brock Peters, in The Incident!), Abel MacDonald (George Mathews, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Angry Man." He's not exactly the greatest of heroes, but it can happen; just as, for that matter, McCain had an extremely difficult decision to make, one which most people undoubtedly bungle--either way!), John Jupiter (Peter Whitney, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Male Order Groom."), Walt Hake (Patrick McVey, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Hawk"), Colly Vane (Robert Culp, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Hero"), Heller Chase (Gigi Perreau, in a Rifleman episode entitled "Heller"), Lt. Paul Rolfe (Harry Carey, Jr., in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Deserter"), Stevan Griswald (Arnold Moss, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Schoolmaster"), Mark C. (Brad Weston, in a Rifleman episode entitled "The Silent Knife"), Dev Farnum (Dennis Hopper, in a Bonanza episode entitled "The Dark Past." Again, not exactly the greatest of heroes, but it can happen. In fact, it's quite a serious problem in the world today, violently polarizing opinions about God, both pro and con, just as tragically and dangerously--either way!), Thomas Bowers (William Marshall, in a Bonanza episode entitled "Enter Thomas Bowers." There are so many of these episodes I've forgotten about as many as I remember. This one fell into the latter category, even before I'd seen it again, today, and decided to belatedly include it, but while still remaining "somewhat" resolved to arbitrarily resist any further temptation to include them all!), Alan Fielding (Laurence Naismith, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Last Second of a Big Dream"), John Mallory (Laurence Naismith, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Shattered Silence"), Marshall Matt Peters (R.G. Armstrong, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "All the Scared Rabbits," just as he'd made an unusually deep impression, even despite as well as precisely because of all the crudely rough edges, in "Corner of Hell!"), Martin Rowland (Leslie Nielsen, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Glass Tightrope," just as I know very intimately how he'd felt, in "Tiger Left, Tiger Right," too!), Dr. John Kimble (Richard Kimble's father, played by Robert Keith, in the episode entitled "Home Is the Hunted," just as he moved me no less deeply to tears in Serling's "The Masks!" Yet, there's something I have against even a man as fine and noble as he, which correspondingly applies to an equally fine specimen of humanity, such as Adam Trask, played by Raymond Massey, in East of Eden! It's a problem stretching all the way back to Jacob, and his brother, Easu, as well as his son, Joseph; just as even his own father, and mother, had been rivals, over the same problem; and, for that matter, even the descendants of Isaac and Jacob, verses those of Ishmael, are ready to destroy this entire planet over essentially the same kind of issue! Indeed, the first murderer, Cain, really started the ball rolling, over precisely the same kind of problem!), Fatso (played by Jack Weston, in an episode of The Fugitive by the same name; just as, for that matter, he also had a murderer, like Cain, for a brother!), Max Bodin (played by George Voskovec, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Bloodline"), Gus Priamos (played by Gilbert Roland, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Somebody to Remember"), Lester and Naomi Kelly (John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Ill Wind"), Sam Reed (John Fiedler, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The End Game"), Sheriff Dalton (played by Percy Rodriguez, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Passage to Helena"), Annie Johnson (played by Hope Lange, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Last Oasis!" I'll even have to include Deputy Steele, played by Mark Richman, but only thanks to this nobly inspiring figure of a lady, in virtually every part she played, but particularly alongside Elvis, too!), Paul Beaumont (David Janssen, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Terror at High Point." Jamie, played by Buck Taylor, here, was quite a hero, too!--In fact, for me, one of the most moving heroes of them all! I'd known him at least a couple of times in school, as well as far-too-many James Bests, against whom we'd both had to incessantly contend! Moreover, a special tribute should also be extended here to Ruth Harmon, played by Elizabeth Allen, for her own tenderly supporting role!), Gus Hendrick (Jack Klugman, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Everybody Gets Hit In the Mouth Sometime." It was a dead ringer for my Mary, in virtually every sense, including her brats, as played here by Geraldine Brooks, who helped drive Gus so fatally over the edge!), Tad (Dee Pollack, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Devil's Carnival." When this episode first appeared, I was truly watching myself, at about the same age, and about as painfully as would have turned me into so much more of an Eden Saunders, also earlier played by Pollack, in a Bonanza episode entitled "My Son, My Son," had I not also been blessed with at least as solidly moral-an-upbringing, nevertheless, as Eden had rather quite tragically let go to waste. Neither can I blame such a rare advantage, as described by Sam Waterston, as Nick Carraway, at the beginning of The Great Gatsby, for even the terribly non-extra-legal extent to which Robert Drivas, as Roger Roland, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "The Sharp Edge of Chivalry," also hits so painfully close to home!), Euliss Dewey (Robert Duvall, in The Apostle), Damien (Yaphet Kotto, in a Big Valley episode entitled "The Buffalo Man"), Keno Nash (Albert Salmi, in a Big Valley episode entitled "Under a Dark Star"), Tom Lightfoot (Joe Don Baker, in a Big Valley episode entitled "Lightfoot"), Andro (Martin Landau, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Man Who Was Never Born"), Dr. Marshall (George Macready, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Production and Decay of Strange Particles"), Major Roger Brothers (Harry Guardino, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Human Factor"), Jim Darcy (Dewey Martin, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Premonition"), Harold J. Finley (Donald Pleasence, in an Outer Limits episode entitled "The Man With the Power," just as I could only dream of having had even a single teacher of his stature, who just as rarely, empathetically relates to him, the way I do, in Serling's "The Changing of the Guard!" Similarly, Sally Kellerman, as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, in Star Trek's "Where No Man Has Gone Before," is about as "believably" admirable as, say, the "improbability" of transforming even an Alexander, played by Michael Dunn, in Star Trek's "Plato's Stepchildren," into a Dr. Miguelito Loveless!),
Archbishop Oscar Romero (If anybody makes an ungrateful Roman Catholic Church look any better, even than does this great martyr; it's most Protestant Fundamentalists, as the insipidly watered-down Roman Catholics they are; the cheapest counterfeits, of the Master Counterfeiter Herself, and getting even more worthlessly, banally divisive all the time! Raul Julia did an excellent job, too!), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (His most intimate admirers may, symbolically enough, after-all, not like George "Kingfish" Stevens, nearly as much as I still do. Yet, therefore, what the devil could they possibly have, on the other hand, to be ashamed of, with relation to Sapphire and Mama, who were no less indignantly disgruntled against him? I wouldn't be surprised, either, if they hate Amos, even more than they do Andy, or that lawyer, A.J. Calhoun, another Mystic Knight of the Sea! It was among the greatest of all such shows ever conceived, and those who are so ashamed of it, particularly for the "reason" they have, ought, rather, to be ashamed of that; at least as much as I would be feeling ashamed of them, and of the entirely wrong way they insist upon denying their Roots, were I in the position of Kunta Kinte; which, in my own way, one for which even most whites, today, have only to be "thanked" as well, I am! After-all, to be "ashamed" of these "worthlessly, lazily freeloading" characters, and the great artists who animated them, is correspondingly, if only "inadvertently," to "honor" the kind of typically, tastelessly, vulgarly insipid "mentality" which had only "type-casted" them into their currently, relentlessly enduring positions of such racistically undeserved scorn! Perhaps Kingfish didn't exactly have The Life of Riley, as with William Bendix, which might serve to provide an argument for racial discrimination. Yet, Riley did help finish the job, even for Sapphire and Mama, when it came to even more "amusingly," even "innocently," thus "innocuously" helping set up both genders, as well as the traditional family structure, for a more devastating fall, instead, to this very day. Indeed, after so many years of having had it deliberately, demeaningly ground into me, at schools, it would be unendurably abrasive to have a wife eternally calling me by my last name, let-alone my first, minus even a title! It's a wonder this bungling caricature was "taken seriously" at all, even by Babs and Junior! Besides, what's really the big deal about George Jefferson, anyway? He might be "movin' on up," but in a way which only obscures even the real letter, let-alone the Spirit, of what Dr. King Meant! Indeed, he even starts to sound like about the same kind of bore who deserves Archie Bunker no less in return, over the grave of a much better show which fought the war for equality in quite a different way, by eliminating any hint of race! Was that a dishonest act of Denial, on a par with the total Cop-Out of those who insist upon ignoring even the Tragically and Disgracefully Neglected value of this? In the case of Amos 'N Andy, I don't subscribe to such a view at all! If George Jefferson wasn't in a state of any kind of Denial, then Amos 'N Andy wasn't a more Purely Artistic effort at the kind of Real Transcendence he Raves of having finally attained!), John Lennon (who was tragically consumed no less by the unusually glaring extent of his own lucidity, than by the total lack of it as well!), Cesar Chavez (albeit as a most inadvertent waste, along with Dr. King, in the service of others who probably aren't nearly as worth the effort, perhaps even on the whole, and not merely in the most tokenly, exceptionally "successful" forms!), President Hugo Chavez (since anybody with the moxie to defy what America really stands for, on the whole, from beneath its camouflage of the most superlatively sacred and thus even more cynically, unconscionably blasphemed rhetoric, can't be "all bad," at least not for now, and then only, at that, as a most expendably useful instrument, like unto virtually all politicians!), Dr. Richard Kimble, The Fugitive (Harrison Ford, too; although I can only wish, and nothing retrospectively more, that the original medic, from Korea, could have finally had to offer the most equally, meaningfully real kind of "Taps for a Dead War," by standing up to John Wayne, even more at the end, than at the very beginning, of The Green Berets, as impressively as he did, against Albert Salmi, in "Angels Travel on Lonely Roads," when, in the words of Kimble himself, to the latter, there were only "you, me, the sister, and the trees," minus any other systematically, twistedly, overwhelmingly intimidating distractions, to witness "the longest walk you just might find you've ever taken!"), Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Columbo, Cordell Walker (and Gordon Cahill, played by Rod Taylor), Billy Jack, Lucas McCain, The Barkleys, Superman (especially the originals, but even more especially when he was struggling just to walk again, in the most heroic battle of all!), The A-Team, Marshal Matt Dillon, and Kitty (a real bear of a lady, especially while runnung a poker game!), Herman Munster, Gomez Addams (Raul Julia, too, who very originally as well as successfully holds his own, even in the shadow of such a uniquely and superlatively difficult act to follow, in John Astin), The Doberman Gang, and too many more to explicitly cite; but, first of all, the King of Kings Himself!--Despite the fact that I wrestle with Him most often and fiercely of all!!! Dennis the Menace could also have made this list, too, in the wrong way! Thank God, as well as both our morally free wills (at least I hope it hadn't been primarily and decisively nothing but fear, in his case), that, despite our identical, and not so free, psychological predispositions, neither of us actually succeeded! Indeed, how many critical Signs all continue to miss, regardless of how clearly, "coincidentally" unaccidental they are, as in a perfectly showcased example such as this! It's even quite unthinkable to overlook Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison and Crispin Glover) here, along with, say, Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi), in Twisted Brain (also called Horror High), or even Tim Ochopee (Chris Robinson), in Stanley! Indeed, Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), in Fade to Black, should save me plenty of otherwise tediously essential explication here, too!--Just as I thank God, to this very day, that I'd Feared Him sufficiently to resist the temptation to take up the Cross, in exactly the manner Farley Granger did, as Martin Lynn, in Edge of Doom; with a Roman Catholic Church whose parishes are conveniently, separately "broke," when need be, and, "maybe," even a bit more irritatedly, vindictively, against America, for real, now that even Her "underlyingly," perennially Scarlett Colors are being exposed, in a way which is forcing Her to pay out millions in legally punitive damages! Even Martin's boss, at the flower shop, for whom he'd made deliveries, might have been a bit more "nice" than usual about it, but I've worked for enough of his kind as well to know much better! Consider, also, the grimly-portrayed character of Warren Stacey (Gene Davis), from Charles Bronson's Ten to Midnight, and the way he was treated on the job in particular; especially by a couple of typically air-headed bimbos, who'd also become his first two victims (number one of whom hadn't even a morally proprietary argument behind which to conveniently hide, while coming off in such a brutally, insultingly self-righteous way!), even though the scathingly dehumanizing treatment he'd received prior to that had been so liberally forthcoming precisely to the extent that they'd falsely assumed he'd NOT been capable of such drastically terminalizing responses! Their kind are usually as lucky in this respect as they are, again, the most characteristically regular offenders.
My Hobbies: I engage in a great deal of Reading and Writing, but as something much more than a "hobby!" In fact, I really should footnote this particular remark, as I'd heard it first, and most unforgettably, long, long ago, from someone at the very opposite end of my spectrum; that is, from Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi), a most avid fan of Poe, in The Raven! But, then, as, again, for the most extremely polar opposites, even he's a great favorite of mine, compared to just about anybody more insipidly in-between; for much the same reason even a real balance, as opposed to the usual counterfeits, is itself as extremely rare as anything else so meaningfully dynamic. Actually, it is I who meet this morbidly-obsessed lover of Poe half-way, at about the same spot one finds Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff) in the very last scene. The only difference is that Karloff had arrived more from Lugosi's end, while I was growing up more artificially, brutally sequestered in the position of the "good" Captain Kirk, after a transporter malfunction had separated him from his other, "evil" half! How can such "evil" be coherently accommodated in any meaningfully-constructive way, then, in the midst of what is nevertheless just as accurately postulated to be an Eternally Irreconcilable Conflict between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil? Look at it, for example, somewhat like this: The cynical side of me is something which ultimately has to go, as surely as it alone would be totally detrimental, even now; just as there shall eventually be no more objective than subjective-a-basis, even such a legitimately-indispensable need, for it. Yet, meanwhile, it is vital in helping to keep me balanced, in a state of psychic equilibrium; particularly or rather exclusively in its most genuinely humanistic form, which I distinguish from the usual breed of cynicism--all by itself.
My own condition had continued for far-too-many years as such, until the violently repressed and thus even more uncontrollably created as well as irritated "Mr. Hyde," to cite a more classically exquisite as well as accurately "undivided" analogy, finally had to emerge! Moreover, the catalyst, which helped trigger this crucially pivotal, permanently transfiguring catharsis, at the age of fourteen, and, then, even more scathingly, at age twenty-two, but which had been slowly building up, for the two years prior to the first, thanks also to so many hypnotically moving encores of "Black Magic" from Buddy Love, could at least have been worthy enough to involve one with even a trace of what Dr. Vollin had encountered in his lost Lenore!--Just as neither of them, I'm equally ashamed to have to admit, had been the least bit fit to lick the feet of Stella Perdie, either! Thankfully, however, "Dr. Jekyll" had never let go, either; just as, in the case of Captain Kirk as well, he was the one who succeeded at making the two live together! As for Spencer Tracy? I apologize to John Barrymore, and also to Fredric March; despite particularly the latter's being such an incredibly superb artist himself, especially in his role as a dead-ringer for William Jennings Bryan! But there's only one Dr. Jekyll, and, for that matter, only one Buddy Love! Moreover, here's still another expression of my good faith, in trying not to even appear I'm attempting to include everybody; for, if the fact that Spencer Tracy and Jerry Lewis are not to be found at the very top of this page, even now, along with Vollin and Bateman, doesn't indicate the kind of "blind spots" no truly informed connoisseur should be able to miss, then nothing by nature possibly ever could!
And, yes, there's also evidence I hadn't actually forgotten at least two of them, either. Just go to Idols of the Theater for confirmation of that. And, in an even further display of the same good faith, I'll also reveal that some of my very favorites are still only to be found there; just as at least a couple of others are only to be found in the twenty letters, thus far, which serve as an amplifying appendix to those thirty movie critiques, even as those critiques serve as an amplifying appendix to the current profile page. And that's still not the end of the story, as there are others yet who are not at all to be found, even there; although I'll try my best to include as many more as possible, even from years of work already long completed, but which I have no army of scribes to assist me in typing onto the computer. But, then, again, if nobody can figure out, even by then, just about who they would necessarily have to be; then there's nothing more I can do for them, than the master of Barabbas (Anthony Quinn) and his Christian friend was able to do for the latter, before Jack Palance had finished the bungled job of still two additional "traitors and fools." Can I only hope anyone is even capable of recognizing exactly Whom I had even most conspicuously left until last, above, among my list of heroes (Matthew 19:30)?--But only prior to the very one I'm so delighted didn't actually make that list, after-all, as much as part of both of us really would have liked!
However, there's something in particular, which I shall probably never include anywhere, at least not in any more detail than I'm currently offering; precisely because none of it is anybody else's business, for the same reason most would therefore be tasteless enough to feel the most maliciously "curious" here! But, then, the shame of what I've already admitted above, is reduced to scarcely more than a most cheaply inconsequential form of embarrassment, next to what I haven't yet revealed, and can scarcely bear to reflect upon, even to this very day; despite its being such a structurally vital piece of the above, particularly with relation to its own equally and also very prophetically symbolic kind of timing. I was eighteen years old, a freshman at Compton J.C., when I first encountered the real Lenore, but at least four years too late to have done either of us any good; regardless of how gently and sensitively she'd tried to persuade me to stay, rather than attempting to commit her memory to the flames; as precisely the same kind of person even Keenan Wynn, as writer Gregory West, had nevertheless succeeded at retrieving, in a much more timely and constructive fashion, at the end of Serling's "A World of His Own." That was also four years before the Lord had healed my desperately wounded soul, in a very special and miraculously unmistakable way, but only so that it might be even more woundingly, benumbingly shattered, once again, by still another; as well as in a manner which helped to destroy my Lulu, nineteen years later, at the tragically untimely age of thirty-five. In this connection, I still sometimes take out my own personal copy of Serling's original episode, entitled "Spur of the Moment," about young Anne Henderson (Diana Hyland); who, contrary to my Lulu, rather eventually lived on, at least long enough to regret having spurned the advice of her own "Heavenly Father," too! Yes, there was another, to whom she would have been more ideally well-suited, had my Left-Hand man (who is not The Walrus here, rather than his alternate) only been nearly as ready as he'd so enthusiastically believed (even despite the extent to which she'd initially been far-too-ready for him, albeit like trying to mix the "water and oil" of Sartre verses Lenin, which were about as problematically yet decisively separated, however, in this case, when he'd begun taunting a prospectively Roman Catholic mother-in-law whose "Church" at least "might as well" have taught Marx everything he'd known!); just as Rita, who would have been more ideally well-suited to my Right-hand man (who is Ratso Rizzo, as well as his alternate), likewise had the sense to recognize how unbearably alike as well as different they also shouldn't have been! Mary, in-between, could have been more ideally well-suited, but only as a fading shadow, even of the selfsame foibles which likewise served to render the only "Opposite Number" at my own point of "Optimal Resonance" just as unideally well-suited to still another of equally questionable integrity. But, then, I was so much of a psychological corpse, once again, by then, myself, that the only possible answer would have been as hopeless as Godfrey Cambridge had been so rudely informed, in an episode of Night Gallery, when he heard the final reply, "Sorry, one miracle to a customer." That's why the INTERNAL IMPACT of the FINAL BLOW, the one which confirmed all my worst suspicions about her, those I had been most trustingly disinclined to believe, had come as such a RUDELY ABRUPT SURPRISE to me, even though I had been Divinely Warned about IT from DAY ONE; as the STRUCTURALLY SYMBOLIC REPEAT of an INITIAL BLOW, the INTERNAL DEVASTATION of which I had been DREADFULLY ANTICIPATING from DAY ONE as well (Romans 9:9-13), but with a much more FRESHLY WOUNDABLE incentive for Denial, rather than merely one I'd falsely believed I could much more easily withstand during the second round, as coming no less symbolically from what had SYNONYMOUSLY or SYNTHESIZINGLY been a STRUCTURAL REPEAT of the one who'd unsuccessfully chosen me prior to the INITIAL BLOW! Yet, as Zorro said, before having swiftly finished the job, "I needed that scratch," even that FINAL BLOW, "to awaken me!"--Although this analogy should also be balanced with still another, one which applied with ALMOST equal force, when, during the first bout, Apollo Creed failed to stop clowning around with Rocky Balboa quite on-time! But, then, it was an entirely different kind of excessive self-confidence with which Apollo had to contend in the second bout, in a total reversal of my own respective forms of excessive self-confidence. Matthew 7:24-29, in conjunction with Proverbs 11:29, applies in a very real sense with equal force to those who had perpetually and successfully chosen me, albeit in the most Tragically Ironic ways which were Symbolically Fated to be; along with the vulgarly ill manners in which my own daring initiative had been spurned at every single turn, and as unnaturally, suspiciously, "as though" I'd awakened all the Devils of Hell!
Moreover, her full name might just as well have been Lulu Baines, from right out of Elmer Gantry; even though the one who so callously, cynically delighted, along with all her other, equally "Christian" friends, at helping hurl both of us over the very Edge, had scarcely been, in quality, anything remotely worthy of the name of even a "bible broad" such as Sister Sharon Falconer, either! However, just as any analogy is invariably imperfect in some respects, and even no less appropriately in its contrasts as well as similarities; it's the most "obvious" and "fascinating" one, here, which never at all applied to Lulu, save to the vulgarly beastial sensibilities of so many whom she'd continually had to spurn! Indeed, even the most "educated" and "sophisticated" of such scum were no more impressive, from beneath all the grease paint, than Slim Pickens, in One-Eyed Jacks! Moreover, for an image of Lulu herself, just turn to Pina Pellicer (actually, a "hybrid," between her, and that first lovely senorita Brando had been "courting," or rather conning, back down in Mexico), from the same film! Even more accurately yet, as I pointed out, long ago, in the opening pages of Philosophical Letters, Volume One, a real composite of this "cross" is possible as well; to the extent that, just as this Spiritual Bullfighter had come so painstakingly far, at more gracefully learning to woo the flesh into submission, in preparation for the most hopefully, climactically clean and skillful kill as well, she was correspondingly a dead-ringer for My Lady, both physically and otherwise. That's her! More accurately, though, Lulu had been so much more easily as well as fiercely provokable, that, unlike Pina, she would not have given Brando nearly the time to beat her to the punch, in calling Lon the "garbage pail" he was, right to his face, along with plenty of saliva, just for openers. Yet, Lulu made up for it, by having applied the same description to John Wayne, the "Duke," the very "Flower" of American "Aristocrisy!" I can't quite recall from whom I'd first acquired the expression, at least in the more blisteringly unforgettable manner, but I am much more certain Lulu hadn't gotten it from Brando. Legend of the Lost was truly among his finest performances, for basically the same reason she once had even more difficulty seeing it through. She almost made it, until Sophia Loren finally turned, along with Rossano Brazzi. All the painfully tragic dynamics combined, which resulted in her having died a slow, agonizing death, three years to the very day (8-30-'90), while despising me as much as she loved me the entire time; are much too complex to adequately reflect upon here, as instructively edifying to my purposes as they nevertheless very indispensably would be, including another "Sister Sharon Falconer" of hers, who also instinctively despised my image in the same cripplingly-bloodcurdling way as most who've ever laid eyes upon me, even as the most momentarily fleeting strangers, who were just as characteristically, beastially, and presumptuously inconsequential in precisely this sense, too! But "Sister Sharon Falconer I" really does take the cake in this sense, while "Sister Sharon Falconer II" even bore such a physically uncanny resemblance to Diana Sands, in A Raisin in the Sun, that only SOCKETS were present for "EYES!" As for the "tenderest" of all "genuinely Christian" impulses to be found in such creatures, the kind in which they so disingenuously need to believe, themselves, I'm also reminded of, again, the "warmpth" of Diana Sands, in an episode of The Fugitive entitled "Dossier on a Diplomat," where, and HOW, as well as the REAL REASON WHY, from beneath every "conveniently" self-mystifying excuse, she says to Kimble, "It's not that I fail to sympathize with your plight; I'm simply unable to accommodate it." Moreover, I cringe, with the same intensity of disgust they do, upon contemplating how many-too-many would be gloating, right now, upon encountering what they'd conveniently, viciously misinterpret to constitute a simple confession, here; particularly in light of what I could likewise add, concerning the violently unbearable conflict which continues to beset my own tormentingly guilt-ridden soul, and the challenge I must face to resist the hopelessly unhealable conclusion that these people, in all the "cleanliness" of their souls, are so numerously as well as unaccidentally reflective of how the Lord Himself actually feels! Correspondingly, how frightfully incessant is my own most fervently uncontrollable wish that the Lord had left me back in the mud pits of Egypt, since I apparently had to come into existence at all! But, then, there is much work to be done, including many more biographical details, as covered in still other places; along with the manner in which they very symbolically serve to reflect, microcosmically, when seen in relationship, like pieces to a puzzle, the major historical contours of the Beast With Seven Heads and Ten Horns, and Its Image; which is, itself, just the skeleton of the kind of elaborate patterning I mean, as well as a demonic counterfeit of the kind of Divinely Dispensational Patterning which absorbs it. The most detailed documents thus far along these lines have yet to be electronically transcribed onto Gather.
At the very least, minus the Duty I have to continue, I would that the end had come, for me, so much sooner, even, if possible, in her very place; as the kind of favor to both of us which only she would have failed to consider one to her, although not based in the least upon any question as to the genuinely selfless extent of my own particular motives. But, in fact, there was still another, who had encountered me, again, from long ago, virtually at the very foot of Lulu's grave; although she had arrived too late, and much less worthily than still another, at the age of eighteen, contrary to that of her much more vulgarly common equals, when I was twenty-two!--But, for all that, not quite late enough to have rendered her incapable of inflicting a much greater amount of damage than I'd been careless enough to assume had any longer been possible. Since her equally well-timed departure, after nine senselessly wasted years, again, to virtually the very day (9-9-'99, in fact), I've been caring, once again, for Lulu's own equally, symbolically well-timed replacement, in an almost equally painful repeat, for the past seven years now. I'm making reference, in this latter respect, to still another structurally significant, even prophetically pivotal benchmark, in a long and, retrospectively, no less ever-revealingly unbroken succession of the same, as to about the exact amount of time America itself has left to continue no less senselessly, ungratefully, presumptuously, and victimizingly squandering! Even the simple, basic need of human companionship is not sufficient to satisfy the "Eternally-Encased-In-Stone" Requirements of H.U.D., were one literally writhing from the kind of strain only an animal or a god can endure indefinitely; but, then, still other prerequisites, to Rita's having been officially allowed to stay, and which are far more "Crucially Humanitarian" in nature, even for H.U.D., along with a nation whose numerously professing atheists likewise gloat that, as Watts quotes them, "There is no God, and Jesus Christ is His Only Begotten Son," had been cynically, flagrantly, mean-spiritedly, even lyingly and thievingly discarded, by the management, two full years subsequent to their having been formally satisfied and acknowledged, just because the management correctly assumed it could sneeringly, contemptuously, whimsically, arbitrarily do whatever the hell it wanted, against those who have nobody to defend them, and get totally, unaccountably (but not "officially," of course!) away with it! The Manager at that time (currently ex-manager, and I'd still like to know why, particularly given the "timing!") had finally threatened me with eviction, if I refused to sign a paper, stating I no longer needed Rita anymore! How sorry I am, now, that I'd yielded to such an illegally unwarranted form of outright intimidation and extortion! You see, at least one of the more primarily and decisively determinative factors here is that they all simply hate Gypsies! Moreover, that "social worker" who had been sent out, to "get to the bottom of it," would be undeservedly fortunate even to be receiving welfare checks--but rather in name as well! Not only must we both scrape, at the current time, to afford the $1100 per month rent she has to pay, but the same spitefully malicious gossip is again occurring, coupled with every pettily disingenuous excuse to force her onto the street, from where she'll be improbably fortunate even to be able to borrow more credit, which, again, can be so easily, unfairly, whimsically destroyed, thanks to the property owners who control as well as ARE the rich, "legislative" parasites in Sacramento, for still another, similar rat-trap! Moreover, right now, the same 'Protective Services" Agency which had been sent out, three years before, to my apartment, to allegedly "investigate" as to whether she was "abusing me," is now "advising" me, as it "investigates" her situation, where she's currently residing, sick, and helpless, minus any but the assistance I have to offer, as well as the same which her mother, on her death bed, had me promise to provide, to leave her virtually for dead! And this doesn't even cover the numerous other stories, involving both our current places of residence, which I'd love an opportunity to air in a Real Court of Law, as diametrically opposed to the currently and cynically, mystifyingly misnamed ones! In fact, as Rita's lungs continue to fill with water, her extremities swell even larger, and her heart correspondingly weakens, even with the "help" and "concern" of "doctors," or, "legally glorified" drug pushers who care about nothing but cynically bilking the State, in a manner which only very disgracefully and tragically confirms the extent to which it wouldn't even have mattered, had Lulu not been swindled out of every penny of her medical insurance by LAUSD, after almost ten years of consistently dedicated service; I'm thereby reminded of the terrible meaning, at the end of Five Came Back, and Back from eternity, when the drums finally stopped beating!
Fall, 2001: Even here at home, your "Courts of Justice" are NOTHING BUT A DISGRACE! My little friend, Rita, and her sick, seventy-five year-old mother, were just tossed into the street, again, by a landlord who simply doesn't like Gypsies; although, while discriminating in this sense, he concealingly boasts that he doesn't need any legal reason to evict. And, just as he has no sound reason to evict, such as lack of payment of rent, damage to or uncleanliness of the property, or deliberate and excessive disturbance to neighbors; he obviously requires nothing more than a VICIOUSLY AND BIGOTEDLY MEAN-SPIRITED WHIM, as his "justification" to hopelessly demolish their CREDIT in the process! Yes, there was one problem in particular which a neighbor or two had more understandably expressed, but I'm loathe even to identify it, not only because it could have been resolved much more expeditiously to all parties concerned, but also due to the actual "reasons" which really only served to reduce this one to the level of nothing but a conveniently, rancorously mean-spirited excuse, even one with which most of you would undoubtedly concur, but which can only be proven via a competent sense of SMELL!! Not only did he perhaps greatly diminish their chances, if not totally ruin their ability, even to find another apartment, due to this blemish he left upon their record; but, in a deliberately sarcastic act of adding further insult to this injury, he went out of his way to insist that they not use him as a reference; not, of course, out of any, if necessary, "piously-stated concern" for a prospective manager to come, but simply in order to be SADISTICALLY AND MEAN-SPIRITEDLY DESTRUCTIVE OF THE LIVES OF OTHERS, while REJOICING IN WHATEVER INIQUITY THEY CAN HELP CREATE! When I attempted to explain certain of these "legal" inconsistencies, just outside the so-called "Court of Justice," in Downey-Flake, Ca., to the "lawyer" representing the landlord; he SNAPPED BACK AT ME, like such a DIRTY, FILTHY ANIMAL, with his SARCASTICALLY BRUTAL SNEER that I "take it up in Sacramento," that I should have GONE RIGHT FOR HIS THROAT; even DESPITE the fact that he RIGHTLY knew I was TOO MUCH of a MAN to be ABLE to SMACK a TYPICALLY, EFFEMINATELY "Male" FAIRY like HIM right across the face, without finding MYSELF immediately in SHACKLES--as ONLY EVEN a MILITANTLY LESBIAN FEMALE probably wouldn't be in my place! The TYPICAL "Judge" in this case, not long thereafter, had even been BRUTALLY CYNICAL enough to REDUCE the additional three weeks, in which to vacate, offered them previously by the "lawyer" for the landlord, to EIGHT MISERABLE DAYS; in total disregard, not only, again, for the very offer of the lawyer, and the lack of any morally viable reason to evict them; but, also, for the SEVERE PHYSICAL INFIRMITIES of both, their LACK OF TRANSPORTATION, and even, again, the very REASON they had no CREDIBLY alternative retreat but the VAGRANCY of the GUTTER! TO HELL WITH YOUR SO-CALLED "LEGAL SYSTEM," AND PARTICULARLY ALL THE "CHRISTIANS," OR RATHER MERE AMERICANS, "IF" NOT THEREBY OUTRIGHT TRAITORS, EVEN BY THE LATTER DEFINITION (SAVE FOR THE MERE FACT THAT SUCH SCUM ACTUALLY ARE IN THE GOD-ALMIGHTY MAJORITY, AS INDISTINGUISHABLE IN THIS SENSE FROM THE AT LEAST MORE "HONESTLY" PROFESSING NON-CHRISTIANS), WHO WORSHIP IT IN THE VERY NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF!
Spring, 2002: Rita's mother died, just a few months after the abovementioned eviction; from complications, by the way, involving pneumonia; in causative connection with another property owner who'd spent two months SNEERING that she and her mother could just get out, if they didn't like the fact that the central heating failed to work. There could even be something technically illegal, in connection with all this; or, at least, there certainly ought to be; assuming such would matter, de facto, either way! By now, she has managed to purchase a motor home; but the city ordinances, against her having any place to park it, are as senselessly and cruelly arbitrary, "at least" in any genuinely moral let-alone reasonably pragmatic frame of reference, as the average landlord is bloodlessly mechanical--in the ATTITUDE he displays, as well as via the requirements he imposes. Indeed, so many spaces have been sitting empty for more than long enough to warrant the additional observation that these trailer park landlords are as much poor businesspeople, in the most selfishly and exploitatively "pragmatic" sense, as they are idealistically hollow to the marrow, considering the amount of money they've already lost. Likewise, the average motel manager (almost exclusively foreign) ought to be taken out and flogged, again, if only for his ATTITUDE! Instead, the LICE, and THEIR "COURTS," HEARTILY CONGRATULATE the way she's being CURRENTLY HARASSED and THREATENED--out of parking even in her sister's driveway! Bellflower, Ca., in particular, should more appropriately be re-named HELLFLOWER!--Along with "just about" every adjacent city!
Rita was before employed by the state, to provide home care for her mother, who had herself been an SSI recipient. That was SSI's excuse for having refused Rita her fair share of benefits, as one who is, again, sick, with, among other things, a very bad heart condition, which renders her almost totally incapacitated. Again, the CHEAPLY MECHANICAL EXCUSE was that she had been "employed," and, "therefore," quite "necessarily" in good health. Never-mind the number of doctors who had submitted letters testifying as to her condition. And, of course, never-mind the fact that there had been nobody else to care for her mother, save perhaps in the kinds of "nursing homes" which numerous evidence serves to indicate are, among other things, too mortally dangerous, potentially, even to be called "human" KENNELS. Not unrelatedly, my own father and maternal grandmother are by now likewise merely two more no-longer-living testimonies, in support of the kinds of suspicions, based on evidence, which specifically apply in their cases as well! Moreover, it's not only a problem of being able to "prove" anything illegally amiss on the part of these "homes," but also of getting anybody in judicial authority to CARE, at least minus the money as well as time and energy to be able to afford it. Now, Rita, in the absence of her mother, has, just as had eventually been the case with my Lulu (when she became very ill, and could no longer work "part-time," after a ten-year period, for LAUSD), no income at all; and, even still, no medical insurance, either. All she receives is General Relief, in conjunction with whatever spare money her sister might be able to help supply, at least in the form of a temporary place to stay. Rita was even "legally" CHEATED out of her mother's life insurance, based on the CHEAP TECHNICALITY, thanks to a BUREAUCRATIC ERROR, if nothing more viciously collusive of the insurance company itself (a Texas-based operation), that her deceased sister constituted the only officially-designated beneficiary. When I first encountered Rita, eight years ago, she was in a very serious state of shock, which still persists to a very considerable extent, and was almost totally unable to get out of bed, after just having seen her closest sister, prior to the one above, carried out dead, in a transparent plastic bag. In general, she'd carried on where Lulu had been determined to cut it off, by having to see all her loved ones taken away first, rather than virtually none of them. And there are many structurally, symbolically prophetic signposts built into the fabric of this particular phase of my journey, which I'll not take the even more excessively necessary space to specifically outline here.
Summer, 2003: I thank God, as well as every Civil Rights MARCHER on the STREETS, that Rita has finally begun receiving her Social Security. I also thank Him for the way her mother's life insurance company has finally come through with the money, just as I am grateful for whatever reasons, if only quite undoubtedly other and lesser than the strictest INDIVIDUALLY, FREELY MOTIVATED elements of Idealistically Moral Sincerity as such, it turned out that the company had been guilty of no more, at least in the sense which only pragmatically-intended results matter at all, than the kind of MECHANICALLY, THOUGHTLESSLY INCONSIDERATE NEGLIGENCE which helped cause the therefore not even nevertheless very interimly, mind-relievingly anticipated restitution to arrive almost two years late. It certainly does not require much plausibly digestible speculation to conclude what would have been the result, even after over twenty years of consistently prompt payments, by Rita, of the premiums, had she required even a small fraction of that amount of time to make the very last payment! Now, what makes this morally evil double-standard "Eternally Just," to MOST PEOPLE, is simply the fact that, in "Eternally Just" America, it ALREADY "OFFICIALLY" EXISTS, at least in ways which are CONVENIENTLY, RHETORICALLY RATIONALIZED, in all their "Morally" as well as "Legallly" unfolding "Consistency." At least finally having the money helps provide a most urgently needed element of relief for her, even though the THOUGHTLESS BEASTS who so CALLOUSLY and UNNECESSARILY succeeded at MALICIOUSLY DESTROYING HER CREDIT, with unwarranted eviction notices the damage of which she cannot even contest in "court," have all the best reason, from their own TYPICALLY MEAN-SPIRITED PERSPECTIVE, to CONTINUE GLOATING that she is STILL UNABLE TO RENT EVEN A CARDBOARD TENT IN WHICH TO RESIDE! Just like the relatives who finally stole her trailer, and the brother-in-law (a DEAD RINGER for the old Peter Clemenza, played by Richard Castellano, in The Godfather!) who is STILL LAUGHING about how he GOT AWAY with PHYSICALLY ASSAULTING HER, AND STEALING HER PURSE, WITH A GREAT DEAL OF DESPERATELY-NEEDED MONEY IN IT, ABOUT WHICH THE POLICE "CAN" DO NOTHING, ANY MORE THAN THEY'LL THEREFORE AT LEAST "LOOK THE OTHER WAY," AND LET SOMEBODY WHO CAN, YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF IDOLATROUSLY, MODERNLY, TECHNOCRATICALLY, HEDONISTICALLY ALIENATED AMERICAN APES--TO THE CORE! After having faithfully cared for her mother, all alone, for so many years {and, in the end, having spent more than half-a-month at her bedside, in the hospital, all alone, practically every minute}; it was as though Life Itself had been WAITING, ANXIOUSLY, CRUELLY, VINDICTIVELY, to ASSAULTINGLY THROW EVERYBODY, AT ONCE, PARTICULARLY THOSE SHE FALSELY THOUGHT SHE HAD, AS WELL AS NEEDED THE MOST INTIMATELY, SUPPORTIVELY--THAT IS TO SAY, EVERYBODY SATAN HIMSELF HAD POSSESSED--IN SPIRIT AND ATTITUDE--RIGHT INTO HER FACE! The PLAIN AND SIMPLE MEANNESS OF SPIRIT, IN MOST PEOPLE, IS MORE THAN ENOUGH TO LITERALLY STAGGER AT LEAST THE MOST SENSITIVELY, UNUSUALLY, AND THUS EVEN MORE VULNERABLY, UNHEALABLY WOUNDABLE OF IMAGINATIONS! And, to the extent that Scripture describes this as a GAUGE of THE PROXIMITY of THE VERY END (II Timothy 3:1-5) (Matthew 24:9-14), we are undoubtedly ABOUT AT LEAST TWO MILLENNIA CLOSER THAN WE WERE--EVEN A MERE THIRTY YEARS AGO!
Other Interests: My world has been solitarily meditative for the past twenty-nine years. I've been despised and vilified in churches, particularly my own congregation, from where I'd been slandered and backbitten into exile (Isaiah 66:5), within a two-year period, and for the past thirty-five years now. The same thing happened at my university alma mater, until I'd finally received my Master of Arts, in 1978, from CSULB, which had also issued me my B.A. They were delighted to have me gone, but not nearly as much so as I am, to be rid of them! More precisely, however, there is still much unfinished business, but only from my perspective, and in accordance with my own painfully-cultivated conviction that virtually everybody can be wrong! Even more specifically, I've been longing, for almost the past thirty years, to drag certain of them into a real court of law; that is, if such an animal actually does exist, in the first place, anywhere but out of this world!
However, I must commend Gather, here, unlike even those spitefully malicious censors at Amazon, IMDb, and many other, even more "Liberally, Progressively Humanitarian" web sites, for welcoming even me as respectfully and honorably as they at least hitherto have, despite even the fact that their motives are still fundamentally and predictably profit-oriented enough to compel me to wonder why! This is even more unavoidably true, now that I've already been so rudely though hardly very surprisingly introduced, via the comments, of the average patron, in reaction to a couple of my articles, to the extent of what typically, ungratefully, ignorantly vulgar plebeians they are, with their correspondingly and endlessly petty preoccupations! Were I only capable of sending them pictures, they'd derive an even more rancorously murderous "thrill" out of having to see how "beautiful" the world outside their "rose-colored glasses" actually is! But, then, on the other hand, most and virtually all of them undoubtedly share at least one ex-First Lady's cynically, mockingly, contemptuously-expressed disdain for anything which threatens to disturb her "Beautiful Mind!" The couple of positive responses I've received are, unfortunately, neither nearly as numerous, nor as passionately if at all felt, as those which only continue to delight, minus even a single rebuke of them in my defense, at mindlessly and unconscionably discouraging my every effort!
Political Affiliation: Actually, I'm Off the Wheel of Becoming here (Malachi 4:5-6), just as I can already hear so many of you vicious animals sneering it now, even in your old-age adolescence, and a senility which never seems to show, but only because it could never become any worse than it had always been! You're sneering in the only possible way your kind were ever actually capable of "winning" an argument, particularly with nothing but even the wrong kind of ammunition to augment every falsehood at your disposal! In fact, the very nature of your tendency to utilize even words as nothing but the most venomously murderous weapons, like unto just about any good lawyer, judge, or politician from among you, only serves to demonstrate what kind of henhouse excrement you actually are, particularly by way of your own definition of the phrase, given the need you even more internally than otherwise have for not deciding to bypass them altogether, in favor of real sticks and stones! What you're ready to sneer, by now, is that I'm simply "Off the Wall," even though the actual fact is that not to be Off the Wheel is, by now, itself to be necessarily Off the Wall; and it doesn't much matter which one of them, either, particularly in that squares such as yourselves fail even to roll very smoothly or gracefully at all in the first place! And, of course, let's not forget your next, even "cleverer" corollary to that already most virulently petulant punch-line; namely, as Martin Riggs had it thrown back into his face, in Lethal Weapon II, "Who's the Dickhead, now!" But you're all about to find out, about as painfully and rudely as Arjen "Aryan" Rudd finally did, speaking of the "last laugh" itself, the only one that really counts, that your "Diplomatic Immunity" has just been revoked! Even if you more realistically succeed at taking me out as well, you'll get no further than Job 13:15, while bumping headlong into Matthew 10:28, just to complement 18:6-10! Of course, being, myself, like Aristotle, neither an animal nor a god, I'm anything but so naively, presumptuously, complacently smug as to fail to be quite acutely as well as chronically, incessantly alarmed at the possibilities, even probabilities, if not virtual certainties, as to my own personal fate, in the meantime; even short of what could be expected, but nothing more than hypothetically, beyond the perimeters of I Corinthians 10:13! Indeed, as Will Penny (Charlton Heston) once put it, there's no good way to go! That is, there's no good way to experience something which was never ideally meant to be!--Or, is it actually nothing but a most senselessly fanciful "Fluke," as Watts calls it, that man has such a deeply, universally-rooted aversion to physical death? Either way, even the newly-anticipated "messiah," Obama, for that matter, just could be another trick of the Ruling Establishment, which is perhaps calculating that no cheating, as Stalin would have said, not in terms of who casts the votes, so much as who counts them, may even be needed, to insure that a black candidate loses, if not rather a woman, instead of the most viably Democratic candidate, who is perhaps just as unaccidentally or rather conveniently in only third place. Besides, they may also be reasoning that, even if a bit of electronic and other forms of fraud may be required, the Race Card, or the Gender Card, would serve, at least "implicitly," as a most plausibly believable cover, in helping to spontaneously subvert at least enough genuinely warranted suspicion, if nothing more. Indeed, how many Democrats, who would vote for a woman, would not vote for a black, and vice-versa? And how many of those voters, either way, shall perhaps therefore go to--whom?--McCain? It's a real three-ring circus, for the mob's entertainment and distraction, a glorified personality contest, and a most pathetically misleading, mass-hysterical masquerade, embodying the illusion that any "real change" is possible! Even more fundamentally decisive here than their preference, if possible, for a Republican winner, is the dirty little "secret" that it just doesn't make any real difference, after-all, who wins! Just take, for openers, the word of a real expert on what he called THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, that is, Ned Beatty, from Paddy Chayefsky's Network, for he certainly appears to be quite thoroughly "In the Loop!" Moreover, speaking of "change," most would do better at least to wish, if not hope, that things could just stay as bad as they even quite currently are!
Religious Affiliation: I am Non-Denominational, and Non-Non-Denominational, just by way of including the most pompously, presumptuously belated category of all! Moreover, if there's anything even more ignorantly, shallowly, viciously insufferable than the Classical Morbidity of a "Christian Church" which had long been turned into nothing but a tomb, it's the contemporarily "Born Again," Disney-Outlandish "Joy" of those who "pity," at "best," or rather contemptuously scorn, who "prayerfully" as well as "sermonizingly" look down their "spiritually elitist" little snouts at anybody who's not merely as "happily," mindlessly, one-dimensionally narcotized as they no less laughably than blood-curdlingly Swear to God they alone are not! While they "piously" pose to themselves as "passionate lovers of Justice" who remain "magnanimously cheerful," nevertheless, because they have "that much faith" that "God will deliver," they slanderously deride anybody who actually does feel the pain of the current injustice, conveniently, shallowly accusing such an individual of "faithlessness." These worms will psychologically project onto him the image of nothing, as well, but the only kind of childishly spoiled-rotten "temper tantrum," for instance, to which they are alone able to relate, in the form of anything "less" than their, again, usually "cheerful" frame of reference!--Jeremiah 6:10-16; 8:5-13!--Amos 5:18-27; 6:3-8! Not only would they murder Jesus, over and over again, if they could; but they also very much can, and do, particularly with their own proverbial "kindness!" Barabbas (Anthony Quinn) described most of them very accurately, as the "stinking fish" they are, just as George Burns correctly observed that most of them ought to be out selling shoes! Their "Liberally, 'Secularly' Progressive Humanitarian" rivals have thrown out the clean baby with the dirty bathwater, just as these "Christianly Conservative" idolaters of Empire are the dirty bathwater! One can "almost" hear them so "piously" sneering, again, at me, right now, as if they were anybody to talk, let-alone judge anything or anybody: "Who do you think you are, Jesus?" Well, "perhaps" the Lord will INSIST they ask Him that themselves--VERBATIM! Absolute perfection may still be a long way off for me, but I suppose I should be grateful they at least quite conveniently hold those alone whom they instinctively despise most to the very highest of standards! They don't really want to strive, as slowly and painstakingly as it takes; but they are, as Nietzsche mocked, no less determined to make it so "gracefully" all the way, in one gigantic leap, regardless of what it takes even to so "lamentably" enjoy moving anything more "depressingly" because meaningfully "negative" entirely out of the way!
Also, if they're the ones who really turn out, in the end, to have "Known Him," all-along, then I also say, along with them--definitely--count me out! However, for people who love to contemptuously kick someone, particularly while they're the very ones holding him down; just because he dares so glaringly bear his soul, but in a way they're all too "strong" to handle, even after they'd encouraged him in the name of the Lord to trustingly, vulnerably, "laughably" open his heart to them (I know what Rachel Brown meant, from Inherit the Wind!); I've been long-prepared to gamble on even the biggest "long-shot," that they're the ones who'll finally be feeling the boot!--For, frankly, I don't believe they have the stomach to make it past Job 42:7-8; just as I'd be about as hard-pressed to try receiving them any more graciously, perhaps even for the very same reason I'll never have to be faced with any such option! Of course, it's not very easy to know where duty demands that one stop kicking, even against their will; thus avoiding, in the process, any careless presumption upon the very Soverignty of God, or at least of what they call His "Permissive" Will; especially when it's lasted so relentlessly, mercilessly long and hard, in the mouths of the most characteristically problematic kinds of liars, those who "conveniently" deceive even and especially themselves! "Deep" down inside (or, at least even it is much too "deep" for them!), they know they're mediocre, at best, in what they love to call "Character," as well as petty, vicious, insensitive, self-centered, cowardly in a totally disingenuous way which deserves even their own "subliminal" self-contempt; indeed, the entire array of typically, "Christianly" unsavory qualities they conveniently projected onto me, in a Systematically Ritualistic Murder, a Slanderous Character Assassination, I contend, precisely to the extent that they "at least" instinctively though not, of course, "consciously" knew those qualities were not true of me (Isaiah 5:20-21; 66:5). Yet, they "appeared" very "conveniently" true of me, while the assaults, of those whose Fear one can accurately measure, by how glaringly they wear their "Faith" upon their sleeves, and, of course, the actual Hate, of those so emotionally, "sentimentally" narcotized on what they call to themselves "Love," relentlessly continued against the "gutlessly depressing faithlessness" of my Anguish, and the reflection my own emotionally crippled as well as already long "religiously" raped and wounded conscience had been, in the struggle for life, of the kind of spiritual and moral impoverishment in which they "unwittingly" glory. While they're busy seeking after "Rewards," all I'm interested in are a few plain and honest answers--regardless of what they stubbornly, self-righteously, complacently decide such a Final Confrontation shall just as extremely require! Yes, I realize It will undoubtedly be necessary to have Jesus Himself right there, in a way even they can finally understand, before I'll ever be able to see anything even remotely resembling an honest answer, just as violently being forced out of as well as into any of them, and minus anything which quite "conveniently" can't be "proven!" Their kind love to quote verses such as John 10:10, as if they understood even what it meant, let-alone how it fails to apply to them, as those who should rather have passages such as Revelation 3:14-22, James 4:9-12, and Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:1-8 rubbed in their faces, about as crudely as attempting to "house-train" the kinds of dogs whose parents apparently never bothered teaching them how to wipe their filthy little snout-noses, either!--Although most of them were already "Bible Scholars" by the age of seventeen or eighteen, as those who'd at least learned even to paraphrasingly parrot the language so very well!
Rock Hudson, as Dr. Anton Drager, in The Spiral Road, very glaringly serves to illustrate the years of self-conflict with which their kind have cynically, unconscionably left me to struggle! And it doesn't get any easier at all! I'd long ago been of the prevailing impression that it takes guts not to run away from a fight, even as I nevertheless obediently did the opposite; but I have come to discover, since then, that the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and must continue to do, is patiently wait for Him to finally settle the matter, rather than taking things entirely into my own hands!--And I still despise my very life for it, but for an entirely different reason now (Jeremiah 15:10-21). Even if it proves to have been based on nothing more than the passionately Sicilian blood in my veins, it's a question of Honor which I find almost impossible to suppress; particularly in that I am also well-aware of how truly "funny" they "think" it is, to this very day, as I long to see just one of them, from among the "men," of course, who at least has what it takes to meet me alone somewhere, so that, as Glenn Ford said, as Jason Sweet, to Pernell Roberts, as Chocktaw Neal, in The Sheepman, it's "just him and me!"--That's right!--Just him, and a "no-good, stinkin', yellow-bellied sheepherder" such as I! But, then, one has to give even Johnny Bledsoe, alias Col. Stephen Bedford (Leslie Nielsen), from the same film, much greater credit, than any of these "Fundamentalist Christian" Worms, at least for having been "Chivalrously Sporting" enough to openly sneer to Jason that, "I know you'll never shoot me in the back, but I have the advantage that you can't depend upon that from me!" But, of course, before you can even be capable of giving someone such "fair warning," you first require even the brains, let-alone the guts, to inwardly, self-consciously realize you're actually no kind of "Christian" at all, even of the "Liberally Progressive Humanitarian" or "Buddhafied Jesus" if not outright hard-core "Dialectical Materialist" variety! Such normatively, perennially, "Christianly," degenerately self-righteous buffoons embody what Nietzsche astutely diagnosed as a Resentment "mentality," an instinctively, disingenuously, cowardly, impotently exhausted unwillingness to deal even with Actuality in any adequately theological way, let-alone all the "Sacred Ideality" to which they "alternatively" and glandularly flee; as those who thereby strive, so very "Faithfully," to "prove wrong" everything Marx as well as Nietzsche ever said about what basically provides the "substance" of their no less Biblically-identified incentive; put one way, of what R.D. Laing called their "violence masquerading as love," and an unbearably self-frustrated obsession, not only with a characteristically demonic kind of instrumental control, but also a more intrinsically sadistic victimization which they conveniently "sanctify" to themselves as something "morally mandatory." Five-Hundred years ago, their kind were the ones burning "heretics" at the stake, after having brutally crushed all their bones; but, of course, "not," as in the case of any explicitly, paganly "self-respecting" Roman, with a self-consciously unapologetic love of witnessing a "fine kill," rather than, again, in the most "lamentably, selflessly unavoidable" sense! Perhaps even the mob, and what Jesus called the most evil generation until that time, had been anciently turned against Him at the very end; but "at least" they loved the one He'd called the very first, and thus last, the greatest of all men, John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11); whereas, today, there is not a single "Christian Church," of any "denomination," which would hesitate to violently eject him, as nothing but the kind of "madman" only modern "men" could possibly be, again, and again, and AGAIN, the very least fit to judge!
Employers: I've never been welcomed anywhere. As for the supposed Civil Rights I've "enjoyed," on more menial jobs than I can count; I have a moderately book-length description of them, which any real lawyer, if any, ought to be extremely interested in, just for openers, reading--very carefully! A careful viewing of You Only Live Once, with Henry Fonda, would be very instructively edifying in this respect, too, as evidence that even being an ex-felon, like John Wisdom as well, is hardly any guarantee of fairer treatment! Check out Frank Whaley, in Swimming With Sharks, too! Yes, I could recount plenty of stories, even as a means of illustrating the average employer's lack of any moral or civic sense of responsibility, in helping a younger generation of "glorified" wage-slaves, whose parents assist in paying the bills (or, rather, "indirectly, " and, of course, "unofficially," "unnoticeably," even with the most "plausible deniability," to pay the salaries), to learn and be able to rely upon there being any real values in the work place, in being sincere and honorable, trying to do the right thing, and being more fairly, rationally reciprocated with a sense of gratitude, rather than the usual contempt for some "lower" species of animal, if, for no other reason (and no other reason is characteristically required, any more than it's often to be found in either case), just because he's "lower." Moreover, I'm not even referring to the money any longer--JUST THE ATTITUDE!
Judging from the ways they've treated, and, yes, I'll say it insistently, especially their most faithfully-trustworthy employees, even with money, just because they know they can be as easily, expendably replaced in an instant as they are even quite sadistically fun to torment even more, all the way out the door; it's nothing less than a circumstantially unrecognized, let-alone undeserved, but over-abundantly and thus even more presumptuously, ungratefully squandered Gift from Heaven alone, minus any of the honestly diligent effort they should be applying to assist it, that they're even able to stay open for business at all! And, again, while there are too many of these stories to write an entire book about here, I'll mention one characteristic example, the month I'd worked as a box boy, at the Food Giant Market in Compton, at the age of seventeen.
One clerk, a student teacher at my high school, but whom I'd never met on campus (although the maliciously murderous gossip had apparently reached his ears as well?), harassed and mocked me, every single day, right up until the day it was finally time for me to join the Retail Clerks Union. "As if" waiting for me to pay my dues, the manager called me over to him, right on cue, to tell me I was fired--minus any explanation!--And Costello (that was the creep's name) had been standing right beside him, grinning speechlessly at me with the same attitude of Claggart (Robert Ryan), while he was lying through his teeth to Captain Veer about Budd, right to Budd's face! That is literally the uninterrupted story of my life in the midst of the TYPICAL Anglo-American SCUM!--And I haven't forgotten the Union still owes me my thirty dollars back, forty years later!
The first job I ever had, next only to doing the gardening at home once a week, was a paper route, with the Herald American, which I'd started when I was twelve, in Norwalk, and continued, when, two years later, we'd moved to Compton. About a year after that, Colonel Smith, the owner of the paper, had told all the boys to come to the main office, also in Compton, to have our photos taken. None of us had been informed as to why, the answer to which had only been forthcoming after I'd been told, by more viciously sadistic mockers on campus than I could count, or even personally knew as "well" as they "knew" me, that my picture had been selected to show, between films, on all the movie theater screens in town. Not only was I uninformed, let-alone never asked for permission, but not a penny of rightful compensation, even in salary, let-alone damages, was ever offered!
The next job I'd ever had was one which did require a work permit, unavailable prior to one's sixteenth birthday. I'd been hired at a cafeteria called the Holland House, also in Compton. My sordid reputation on campus had apparently followed me there as well, since I was tormented and cursed at, every single day, for the roughly three months I'd lasted there, the longest amount of time I'd ever been permitted to remain on any regular job, save for the couple of years I'd driven a truck for my father. Of course, I hadn't even known these particular student-workers, although they'd "known" me, while typically, sadistically, mean-spiritedly relishing all the hell they were capable of administering, minus a single rebuke from the manager. Even that, however, had not been enough to satisfy them, as they simply wanted me gone!
Even one of the few "friends" I'd ever had managed to snag a job there, at my recommendation, only to become at least a more "passive" part of the problem, one who could easily afford to derive the amusement he did from my plight, while also feeding off my resultantly discernible sense of self-degradation and worthlessness! One day, just about a week before I'd finally had to leave, a black kid was hired, the first one on the job there since I had arrived. Somebody told him I'd called him a you-know-what behind his back, which was nothing but a dirty, maliciously-motivated lie! Yet, it resulted in a physical brawl after work one night, when he'd assaulted me in the parking lot, with the many eager spectators who'd helped engineer it ravenously hovering about the central arena! Take one guess, if you need even that many, as to who had alone been forced to bear all the blame! In Lonely Are the Brave, with Kirk Douglas, one sees a similarly and characteristically all-too-real kind of tragic irony, when a one-armed man (Bill Raisch, that same creep from The Fugitive) picks a fight with Douglas, for no justifiable reason at all, with every degenerate Mexican in the place enjoying it, and finally participating, on the side of the one-armed man. When the cops came crashing in, they instinctively made a beeline for Douglas, at the bottom of that great big pile of "human" garbage, and arrested him alone--knowing he hadn't done anything to cause it!
I'd had to deal with the same kinds of typical punks a few years later, at a summer camp job as a counselor with the Roman Catholic Divine Word Seminary, in Riverside, California. That job, after about six weeks, ended in much the same way, but minus only any of the physical violence, when I was finally discharged, on the "basis" of the most viciously slanderous gossip, from out of the same mouths which had been receiving "Holy Communion" every morning. In fact, the very "priest" who'd just as sadistically participated in their infamy was the same one administering those "holy" wafers every day. The particular fellow scoundrels at issue here had been part of a little "football club," presided over by him, and dedicated to making life as difficult as possible for every "nerd" on the job. I'd had a couple of good friends there, who could see what was happening, including a "Brother," by the name of Ray, and also Bob Flynn, a delightfully perfect image, even in spirit, of Bob Cratchit (Gene Lockhart), from A Christmas Carol. They could see how maliciously, spitefully I was being railroaded out of there, on the "charge" that I showed "favoritism" by playing chess with one of the boys in my group, Jeff Gompert, during after-hours. But they had been totally helpless to do anything, and even a bit surprised, if not at the level of viciously backbiting slander per se, then "at least" at the final result. Even the black priest who'd been serving as acting Director that year was able to smell a rat, but he hadn't the integrity to stand up to the regular Director, who was also that same damn "priest" just mentioned above. In his feeling of guilt, he finally offered me another job, as a substitute counselor, which I'd refused.
As already mentioned, I had even been fired from McDonald's, in Artesia, back in 1968, after about a month, along with all the rest of the crew, including Greg, whom I'd first met there, prior to our hitchhiking trek across America. While I could only have guessed as to why, there had been no more than a single identifiable "reason," in my case; namely, that, during a lie detector test, given to all of us, about a week prior to our dismissals, I had lied in my answer to only one question, that of whether or not I'd obediently thrown all the cooked, leftover food in the garbage before closing. I can only additionally assume the manager had thought there was money missing, which wouldn't have surprised me in the least, either, had it actually been true. This was probably what resulted in the lie detector tests, as I don't believe the manager had decided to blame any of us for the only other inadvertent folly involved, which was that we'd mistakenly interpreted our orders to mean that even the private "rent-a-cops" from a construction site across the street were likewise to be given all the food they wanted--for free. This was indeed a "charming" place of business, even for customers. One morning, in this particular role, I'd ordered some coffee, and then dozed off for a few minutes in the driver's seat of my car; after which I'd been abruptly awakened by a couple of cops, who demanded that I exit the car, while they proceeded to tear out all the seats, minus any explanation but to SHUT UP! After about ten minutes, they'd left me alone, and gone into the building, undoubtedly for still more of that free food they'd also been loading up to bring home to their families. After that, I'd also entered the building again, to ask the manager whether he'd called them. At that point, one of the cops started screaming, "almost" to the top of his lungs, that I had better get out of there--or be hauled away to a--PADDED CELL!
About the only truly decent job I'd ever had was in Pompano Beach, Florida, back in the Spring of 1970. What made it decent wasn't the kind of work involved, just as it had nothing to do with the pay. Rather, what served to make it so unusually, even uniquely, and just as surprisingly refreshing, was the fact that I'd actually been treated like a human being there, by Bill, the Stock Supervisor, and also by Bob Crutchfield, the Store Manager. Again, it had been somewhat unsettling to be regarded, for a change, as any kind of human being at all, even before having had to earn the privilege in any way. Unfortunately, however, I'd not been hired alone, but rather along with Ratso Rizzo and The Walrus, who'd ended up being deservedly fired for, among other things, engineering unauthorized midnight raids upon the cafeteria kitchen. Mr. Crutchfield even assumed the pose of something resembling a psychological counselor, during our final day in his office, while attempting to get to the bottom of the issue. The verdict he'd reached, and rather decently at that, as one who genuinely cared about being fair-minded to the hilt, with an attitude of sincerity I'll never forget, was that Ratso Rizzo and The Walrus had to go, but that I would be permitted to stay on if I chose. How sorry I am tempted to feel, to this very day, that I'd decided to stick with my "friends." But, then, Florida had never been my home, either, and my original intention was never to settle there permanently, something only a long-term concept of Fate prevents me from, again, regretting--to this very day (John 4:44)!
1999: While I could relate many more such tales about myself, I also have much to tell you about the Civil Rights which are being daily and viciously violated in the workplace alone, against my brother, James, despite all his pleas for PEACEFULLY LEGAL REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES! While the PREDOMINANCE of MEXICANS, along with their "leader," Martin, with whom he's forced to work, at OFRA, are harassing him constantly, JUST BECAUSE he's a "filthy Anglo," I live for nothing but to see the day your kind, who COULDN'T CARE LESS, JUST BECAUSE IT'S NOT HAPPENING TO YOU, as alleged "paragons of The Law," are handed the final bill, for all the WORKPLACE SHOOTINGS which are regularly occurring as well! Again, I'm PLEADING WITH YOU TO CARE, even as the words CHOKE IN MY THROAT, about as much as I'd rather be able to SHOVE THEM NO LESS MERCILESSLY DOWN YOURS! Indeed, what would you REALLY have my brother do, while he's being TAUNTED and even THREATENED daily, with the prospect of having SODOMY inflicted involuntarily upon him; not necessarily by homosexuals as such, but rather as the very means being utilized to HUMILIATE HIM AS A MAN, by making him play the part of the woman! You can SAY anything you want, about the kind of "animal" who decides he's finally had enough, and needs to SMASH THEM ALL TO PIECES, just in the name of HIS DIGNITY ALONE! Yet, if you are truly prepared to blame him instead of them, in the context of such a possible eventuality; PARTICULARLY as you CONTINUE REFUSING to ACT UPON this problem, in the very way you INSIST only you have the RIGHT to do; then YOU ALSO ought to be LEGALLY EXECUTED, BY NOW, right alongside his tormenters, who LIKEWISE DESERVE TO BE KILLED! Considering the additionally relevant damage, to his marriage as well as previous means of livelihood, Robert Duvall, quite RELATEDLY, had the RIGHT idea, in The Apostle, when he wielded that BASEBALL BAT--for which ANY REAL COURT in this land would have CONGRATULATED him!--Rather than sentencing him to a chain gang! In my brother's case, the numerous HORROR STORIES, involving also how my mother, and the Roman Catholic Priest of their parish, had VEHEMENTLY BLESSED every CYNICALLY ABOMINABLE DESECRATION of God's laws, just for the SHEER HELL of it, are recounted, in much more dismally astonishing detail, in Philosophical Letters, Volume III.
But, then, if Biblical tales about, for instance, God "whimsically" striking people dead, for the most "implausibly petty" of reasons, have you typically, "sophisticatedly secular moderns" busting a gut with laughter, particularly at the thought that anybody could ever take them seriously; then let's not overlook perhaps an even greater kind of objection, on your part, to the "primitively bloodthirsty savagery" of those offenses which were formally punishable by death under Mosaic Law. My brother's "ex" wife was raised by a father who heartily encouraged her to become the arrogantly, unconscionably vile beast she is, while bragging about the kind of "bitch battle" in which she enthusiastically "lives" to engage. Moreover, these are Roman Catholics, who still fancy, in the process, with the reinforcement of every "priest" they know, as well as virtually every other typically depraved "parishoner" in their midst, that they are "genuinely devout," just by participating mechanically in all the "proper rituals," as the most "gracefully-unmerited" substitute for any kind of actual virtue, or the least bit of intention to thereby help cultivate any! "Perhaps" the fact that her father, J. C. (who, according to my brother, not only bragged, in private, about his extramarital "conquests," but also snuck booze out of the bottles his wife had told him not to hit so alcoholically hard, and then blamed it quite successfully on my brother!), is on a Knights of Columbus committee, which officially welcomes the Pope, whenever he arrives in town, also has something to do with it, in addition to the real possibility that even the "priest" at the "parish" is one of her "customers!" Some of her favorite and most often-grilled-in expressions to my brother had been, for instance, to the effect that "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine," as well as "It's my way or the highway!" Just before she'd been "recruited" by the Norwalk Mexican Mafia, in conjunction with numerous comrades in the Norwalk Sheriff Station, to become one of their "bag whores," she'd cynically convinced my brother to get a vasectomy for her, while her only real intent had been to disable his capacity to have any more children, as she prepared to remove even the two they already had from his midst. About the only thing which had held their "marriage" together, for over fifteen years, was the extremely good sex this beastial nymphomaniac derived from my brother, and which she still didn't want to lose, particularly given also the fact that she considered even him her own personal property. Lulu equally despised this LOATHSOMELY VILE CREATURE, so much, and so understandably, that she just couldn't resist the BRAZENLY PRESUMPTUOUS AUDACITY of BARGING IN, QUITE UNINVITED, to Lulu's wake, just to "as much as" GLOATINGLY SPIT ON HER DEAD BODY! Not a week later, and just to MEAN-SPIRITEDLY GRIND IN ALL THE ANGUISH SHE COULD, she SNEERED CONTEMPTUOUSLY AT ME, "Ya killed her, Rich; the truth hurts!" How fervently I long to see the day when SHE'S the one FORCED TO FACE--THE TRUTH!
By the time she'd finally grown too "indignant" to any longer bear the "compromise" of sneaking her boyfriend in through the back window, while my brother was out working, as if she'd had anything to hide, or be ashamed of, and thus decided to waltz him in, right through the front door; it had also become plain enough to her that she'd wanted to retain them both, and thus had the brazenly unmitigated audacity to invite my brother to stay for a "threesome," which he refused! Physically, their "romance" might have been a "smashing success," but it definitely failed to blossom, or rather metamorphize, quite as improbably, fancifully, even ludicrously as that between Louis and Betty, in Revenge of the Nerds III, where the former "inordinances," particularly from the first segment, are more refreshingly and meaningfully if not quite as "stimulatingly" absent. His recently broken leg had been in a cast at that time, but this was no deterrent to her calling the police, and having him forcefully ejected, simply on the basis of her whim! There was even some kind of "hearing," or whatever they called it, in one of your American self-so-called "Courts," but it's still a most cynically-unstated "mystery," even after more than ten excruciating years, as to "exactly" why my brother had been barred, at the entrance, from the very "Court" where his fate, and that of his family, was being so one-sidedly, disingenuously, and secretly decided! That's the "strength" of such pure, unmitigated evil, as it dares do things, right in plain sight, which few would be the least bit capable of believing, even then, rather than bringing into question the credibility of anybody who could proceed to "exaggeratingly" make such a report! It was close to midnight when this happened, and he had no place to go but my residence, two houses down, where he'd stayed, thereafter, for about the next five years! The houses belonged to my mother, who hates my brother, a reminder to her of her husband; perhaps even more than she does me, as I continue reminding her of her father; but not nearly as much as she hates herself, as one of the strongest, and most "consciously," hysterically un-self-recognized incentives for the many things she's no less harmfully done, from beneath every "conveniently" well-rationalized excuse, whenever she even bothered with that much! Again, she hates herself, with a "Cinderella Complex" brutally raped into her as a child, by a rather large group of wickedly maternal aunts, all but one of whom are still "alive," well into their nineties! And, of course, she's been trying to "overcome," or rather deny, this condition, ever since! It's all in her manuscript, which she'd solicited my services to type for her, several years ago. This is a "Cinderella Complex" she's self-contemptuously passing on to me, in every way she "inadvertently" can; for, after-all, what am I, if not something as symbolically contemptible to her as her first-born son, and the one who's paid most obediently, sincerely, as well as dearly, for every single one of her hitherto stubbornly, arrogantly, hysterically unrepentant follies, as the very "Cinderfella" whose terrible debt to whom she'll never admit, and thus alone stand any chance of being the least bit able, let-alone honorably willing, to clear; something, for that matter, which, in an Italian Court of Law, she would have no choice, technically speaking, but to do! My brother's "wife" clearly recognized this fact, and gloated, with the most viciously, sadistically, mockingly savage kind of blood-lust, at the sheer stupidity and gullibility to be found in a situation upon which she could so easily and opportunistically as well as vindictively proceed to capitalize! Not only were those two scoundrels heartily congratulated, by their parish "priest," as well as by the "po-lice," and my mother, in addition to their two children; but they just had to mockingly, tauntingly rub it in, every time they saw my brother pulling up the driveway, as he needed to pass "their" house, in order to get to mine, all the way in the back!
I'll again briefly reiterate, just in case you failed to register what should be, to anyone, the nature of the UNSPEAKABLE HORROR just mentioned, the BRAZENLY HYPOCRITICAL AUDACITY, the kind of SWINISHLY VULGAR DEPRAVITY which provokes me almost beyond any inwardly containable endurance, precisely to the extent that there's no doubt as to the kind of evil involved here! That UNSCRUPULOUSLY, MONSTROUSLY EGOTISTICAL BROAD, who called herself my brother's wife, had been CYNICALLY, MOCKINGLY, BELITTLINGLY LAUGHING at the ways they'd been able to pull my brother's life right out from under him, and even his livelihood (many sordid details of which are still lacking here, along with about as many tediously voluminous tales about my "wonderful public servants," at the Norwalk Sheriff Station, including the time they came charging in, threw me to the ground, face down, and put a cocked gun to the back of my neck!); knowing that, by every legal as well as moral standard of decency, they were totally guilty, beyond even the slightest "mitigating circumstances," but with nobody in the world to care at all, lest it be to jump with glee, at the triumph of such unrighteousness, which far-too-many JUST PLAIN SPITEFULLY, MEAN-SPIRITEDLY did! At the same time, they were just as CYNICALLY, MOCKINGLY, GLOATINGLY, DEMONICALLY SNEERING at my mother, but only behind her back, of course, for being the fool she is; led astray, by her own vindictively evil heart, to the betraying of her own flesh and blood, precisely to the extent that it was not guilty, not deserving at all of such; while playing into the very hands of those who do hate even her, who contemptuously call her as stupid as my father repeatedly, and understandably, even desperately did, many times, but rather to her face, and, of course, to none of the most constructively well-intentioned avail. They were laughing, not only at my brother, and my mother, but at me, as the very one they knew could see what was going on, but the one they could also see to be just as helpless to do anything about it, that is, short only of YOU-SHOULD-KNOW-WHAT, and the very one whose consequently brutal distress they SADISTICALLY, BLOOD-CURDLINGLY SAVORED! They knew how wickedly as well as gullibly impervious my mother was, to any attempt, by me, to pleadingly reason with her, while they enjoyed seeing the ways she INSULTINGLY, DISMISSIVELY treated me, right in front of them. In fact, my brother had been RIGHT ON THE EDGE, more than once, of BLOWING THEM BOTH AWAY, even while feeling GUILTY for having REFRAINED, thus permitting such a MONSTROUSLY CYNICAL ACT to go unpunished, and THUS AUTOMATICALLY CONGRATULATED, to the inevitable detriment of society as a whole, too! One of the most mischievously falsifying evils ever so "modernly" and "sensibly" perpetrated, in the perverted name of "individual liberty," is that MUTUAL CONSENT constitutes the ONLY ACCEPTABLE CRITERION, save when a partner in matrimony even quite whimsically, capriciously, and cynically chooses to violate the same Solemnly Legal Oath her spouse would rather prefer to keep! The simple "solution," of this vile creature calling herself even "human," let-alone any kind of "wife," or "family," is to designate anybody who takes things such as God, and Duty, the LEAST BIT seriously, nothing but a "religious fanatic!"
The HARROWINGLY INCONGRUOUS PERPLEXITY is that, like Mary, my mother also has a heart, along with a genuineness, almost as unmistakably real as the RED HOUR GLASSES hidden not-so-carefully or avoidably underneath! I still reflect with dismay upon the times my mother had contemptuously mocked the poor, and cursed me to my face, as well as over the phone, on many, many occasions, whenever I tried to remind her about what she used to claim as one of her favorite stories of Jesus, involving Lazarus and the rich man. She likes to do, for people, only what they don't legitimately need to have done for them, but while automatically blaming them for all the rest, in the most characteristically, "morally" and "patriotically" or rather Spartanly and Cretianly American fashion. When I asked her, on as many occasions, even the same ones, how the devil she, or her daughter-in-law, as well as the latter's father, not to mention the parish priest, at St. John of God, in Norwalk, and even the sheriff of that city-wide EPIDEMIC of MAGGOTS hiding in the woodwork, also behind the most "professionally and responsibly respectable" poses, could have mindlessly condoned such brazenly, hypocritically, cynically unconscionable breaches even of Roman Catholic Law, the only verbal "answer" I ever received was--SHUT UP, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR OF THE MATTER! Yet, they all go on as though nothing happened, to this very day--as though they were all good, respectable Roman Catholics, every one! When they give no verbal responses to the many charges I've presented repeatedly over the past twenty years alone, what characteristically follows, instead, is that disgustingly dismissive shaking of the head, slowly, methodically, as though pitying a madman, out of whose mouth everything uttered must be, therefore alone, by nature quite incredibly and ridiculously perverse, or, at best, sincerely though psychotically delusional. During a more acutely vulnerable interval, well-timed to coincide with the shock treatments administered by Mary, my mother had taken the opportunity to sneer, right into my face, how DISGUSTING I was, and how I reminded her of the selfsame father she'd prayed to God in vain she'd never end up bringing into this world herself!
And this war is still ever-raging, between all of them and me, between all of them and my brother, whom his so-called wife, and her Mexican Mafia friends, had mistakenly anticipated would end up physically dead as well, long, long ago, as dead as they've by now very successfully helped to make him, in "just about" every other, more "figuratively inconsequential" respect! The only place he's had to live, over the past couple of years, is in my mother's house, which I gag on the thought of even trying to refer to as a real "home" at all! His daughter eventually pleaded to move in as well, along with her daughter, and yet another, with whom she'd become illicitly pregnant, subsequent to having made theirs her new address. She is just as BRAZENLY CONTEMPTUOUS as her mother had VICIOUSLY BRED her to be about OBLIGATIONS to ANY KIND of MORAL STANDARDS, and no less DEFIANTLY, SPITEFULLY ignored all my brother's warnings, as coming from one she'd also been taught to regard as nothing better than a joke, about doing any such thing. Ever since that little bitch moved in, she started doing everything possible to drive the already strong wedge between my mother and brother as unendurably far as she could, probably under her mother's own vindictively collusive guidance, until he finally had to leave, thus helping pave the way for her mother to fill the vacuum as well. Even while capitalizing on her father's hospitality, and cleaning him out of his last cent, she ranted and raved, like a spoiled, snot-nosed, vulgarly ungrateful child, about how she hated having to live there. I asked her, one evening, and as sensitively, understandingly as I possibly could, why she refused to find it in herself to thank God for what she did have, and even inquired as to why she couldn't move in with her mother, instead, since she liked her so much more. Her response was to go into a physically violent rage, while even ordering me to leave the house, particularly after I'd so "audaciously dared" describe her, in the process, as such an internally unsavory duplicate of her mother, Herodias! Again, why doesn't she move in with her mother? Perhaps, among other things, of a cynically, contemptuously opportunistic nature, the latter is merely very personally, jealously, rather than "morally" afraid the former will end up hitting the sack with her boyfriend, probably again, in violation of still another Biblical Injunction (Leviticus 20:14); which the latter would otherwise quite definitely relish the chance to help violate, strictly for its own sake, if nothing else as well!--Or, don't ANY of YOU really believe these Mosaically-Well-Tailored Lines in the Sand actually do come from God, rather than being merely as humanly, psychologically arbitrary in origin as any other conceivably possible standards which by nature would hold NO CATEGORICALLY-BINDING weight at all, and, thus, NO WEIGHT--AT ALL--that ANYBODY is MORALLY BOUND to ACCEPT! And this is what you typically, "sophisticatedly secular moderns" call "progress," and such a "superlatively civilized advance" over the "primitively savage" Law of Moses, a Law under which such vile creatures would have been STONED TO DEATH, LONG, LONG AGO! Indeed, one of the more dismally apparent reasons God even allows this kind of "Modern Advancement" to systematically run its course, is to demonstrate, the HARD way, why such things had been CAPITAL OFFENSES in the first place, and, by the way, STILL ARE!
Colleges: I attended Cerritos J.C. and CSUDH/CSULB, if one can honestly as well as accurately call them anything but zoos of viciously, backbitingly, slanderingly petty discrimination! Indeed, if possible, which it's virtually not, the so-called "students" were even worse than the "professors!"--Although being among the latter category is about all that's necessary, to find oneself welcome, to tell his story, at KPFK ("clandestinely" owned and operated by Emmanuel Goldstein himself! The bastards "think" they own Alan Watts, too, even though their friends at the "university" hold him in nothing but the vilest "academic" disdain; along with, no less symbolically, contemptibly, the great Paul Robeson!--Just as the "Conservatively Fundamentalist" Jesus Freaks no less presumptuously fancy they alone own the Risen Christ, with each side totally acknowledging the other's "exclusive rights" here, not to mention, again, a "university," in the "middle," which hates the Risen Lord as much as do those "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" on the "Left!"), rather than just as rancorously scorned, by those who, despite all their fancy rhetoric, have nothing but contempt for the concept of any of my "Civil Rights," let-alone the defense of real education itself! There might have been close to enough good "lecturers," per se, in all three institutions combined; but certainly not nearly as many, even among them, who were morally worth a damn; even to count on one set of toes, let-alone to have saved the original Sodom and Gomorrah! Not-at-all-accidentally, either, the abject "contradiction" never disturbed any of these "tenured professors" in the least, that they were being permitted to "function" at all, in the midst of the very "Fascist-Lite" State against which so many of them characteristically and incessantly rave!--Just as they're all still as hypocritically, venomously delighted as ever, to have done everything they could to help insure that Revelation 13:16-17 applies in a very special way to me! So much for the alleged purpose of their precious "tenure," as diametrically opposed to the actual one! "Mommie Dearest" certainly has no "reasonably plausible" doubt as to where to place virtually all the blame for these strictly professional "failures," either, particularly given the share of the bill which these "honestly hard-working" so-called "professors," of, among other things, "Ethics!," have left her to help bear! The State, too, should be very "intrigued" to know how thoroughly, formally classified I've had to remain, at Its expense, too, as one defined by an array of mental defectives in the form of nothing but a psychiatric shipwreck, despite my many years of effort at self-improvement, and the overcoming of strictly emotional handicaps for which I'd rather been slandered, gossipped about, out of the vile mouths of the greater bulk of so-called "students" and "peers" as well, discouraged, and kicked down, by just about every officially, callously, maliciously "official" decision!
One of the philosophy so-called "instructors," at Cerritos, another pettily mediocre herd animal who "thinks" he's such a top-notch "scholar," as well as "Somebody's Gift" (He wouldn't say God's, despite his close physical as well as "spiritual" or just as arrogantly self-exalting resemblance to someone who did; and God would be grateful, as the Ethical Being He also Is, at least for that much!) to this entire Insult-To-The-World of a "community," as Henry Drummond put it, from Inherit the Wind, had the knowingly lying gall to tell my mother I wasn't fit to teach (after having written such a "nice" letter of recommendation, for my "unconfidential" file, and perhaps even for the other, more blatently Unconstitutional one as well; albeit with the hypocritically "tactful" reminder about how honestly, unpretentiously, thus "problematically" lacking I am, in "tact!"!--As well as contrary to a hard and honestly earned California Community College Instructor Credential for life I'd been issued, albeit one which has never been used in over twenty years, no thanks to his kind of recklessly unconscionable, viciously mean-spirited, yet "legally unprovable," slander; as if anybody gave a damn, anyway, least of all those who are purportedly being officially paid and empowered to do so!), just because of what amounts to the fact that even a, at that time, so very "well-groomed" poodle such as I had not kissed his fat ass sufficiently; and yet the truth is that I deserved so much better than the typically repulsive dislikes of his kind, whose viciously self-serving egos (that is, again, their pompously, viciously fat asses!) have been just as cynically pampered, at public expense, for so very long they really "think" they rightfully own the place, rather than simply owning it per se, in a way they have neither the brains nor the guts to be able to explicitly call it, even and especially to themselves! Still another, at CSULB, a Hungarian immigrant who shared his department's disdain for anything Marx had to say, just because he said it, about as much as the many Jews among them should also be shut down, for their fascistically, mindlessly rancorous contempt of anything "Heideggerian" as well; was one who appeared to have delighted at the problem I had, like Billy Budd, speaking in front of an audience about which I likewise had the same feeling Christ did, every time snakes and vipers such as the Pharisees tried to trip Him in His speech. In addition to the cynical mean-spiritedness which instinctively impelled him more intrinsically, this particular scoundrel wanted to "prove" to himself I wasn't nearly as competent, even gifted, as he'd already seen far-too-much indication that I was. And it wasn't simply in-between even his attempts, along with various others of his "class" and "breeding," to "pick-up" on Lulu (while, according to her, "complimenting" the subject of my Masters Thesis, just to "suck up" to her; but which he ordinarily, ignorantly bad-mouthed, along with just about all the others!), that he'd turned out to be one of the most maliciously, slanderingly vile gossips of the bunch, telling others I should forget philosophy, and go back to driving a truck or something! The "chairman" of that philosophy department was an insultingly dirty-mouthed slob who struck me as having been more likely a covert C.I.A. plant, and who apparently failed to have even a Bachelor's Degree, just as he used to brag that he simply "didn't feel like" conducting any class (I'd been enrolled in two of his courses, Kant and Epistemology, during the same semester, as a senior), which occurred about half the time; and, of course, all one needed do was attend, during the other half, to see why even he had enough brains to recognize what a waste it was! And, yes, there's plenty more I have to say, about him, as well as various others, which really needs to be aired in a genuine Court of Law!
Indeed, as for anyone, and "virtually" everyone, who "seriously" doubts that most, and "virtually" all, of those "students" had been "positively" delighted, rather than "too terrified," even in their "indignance," to complain, along with their actual "reason" why? Well, in an even more tragically ironic twist upon what Kate (as magnificently portrayed by Miss Jo Van Fleet) had told her son, Cal, at one point, in East of Eden, these typically "good, decent, respectable" taxpayers perhaps, therefore alone, actually do belong in the equally typical "college" or "university!" However, that Hungarian clown, mentioned immediately above, did manage to provoke even a couple of others; who nevertheless candidly though "discreetly" informed me, in response to my own "call-to-arms," that they were not about to jeopardize their own "future careers," by making any "waves!" It was in that particular "seminar" that I'd even begun "flowing" fairly well, one evening, at the podium; due to which the "professor," in his utter disdain against what I was saying, and even defending quite "too" compellingly, rudely interrupted me, repeatedly, with "admonitions" to the effect that I should refrain from attempting to "monopolize" the class with my "prejudices!" We had to listen to his incoherently rambling and mumbling monologues most of the semester, and yet he displayed the brazenly disingenuous gall to accuse me, instead, of his very crime, for having so utilized the very small segment of time he'd compulsorily assigned to me in the first place! As for that other scoundrel, mentioned immediately above, there was one "student," in particular, who'd finally exited his class with an "A," while therefore laughing, cynically, hysterically, and no less truthfully, that he'd known absolutely nothing about Kant! One afternoon, Lulu and I were having lunch, in the university's "executive" Chart Room (since re-named the Vista Grande Room), when I noticed the time, and said I had to hurry to this particular class. Just as we were getting up to leave, guess who came waltzing in, as one who was really "out to lunch" himself! I passed by his table, and said, "Obviously, there's no class today, either." He just smirked cynically, even "light-heartedly" (he was a very "cheerful" fellow!) at me, "as if" to sneer, "And just what do you think you're going to do about it?" I'd gotten a "C-Plus" on my written final exam, minus a single comment, too. But he assured me, shortly thereafter, about the lack of any need for concern, as my final grade had "averaged out" to a "B!" I'd once attempted to get another of their "Tenured Doctors," to take a look at some of the papers I'd written for him, with accompanying "C" grades, and yet no comments. He simply sneered back that he wouldn't want any other "professor" grading his grading, in-between his equally, contemptuously vile sneering about my "presumptuous" attempts to get any answers from philosophy, rather than merely questions. They are "qualified" to "evaluate" students, but their unscrupulously self-serving "Code of Silence" is something totally "Sanctified," in ways I could illustrate with numerous other sordid tales!
Dr. Robert Eisenman does give a rather good lecture on the whole, although I had never been enrolled in any of his courses. However, I did hear him during a radio interview, wherein he was particularly and unwarrantedly brutal to the Apostle Paul, accusing him of having been something "roughly" equivalent to an "Anti-Semitic Hate-Monger!" In the process, of course, Dr. Eisenman conveniently neglects to refer his audience to Romans, Chapter Eleven, which is much more conclusively in rebuttal of his argument than any of the passages he cites in favor of it. But, then, does not even my brother, Nietzsche, accuse Paul of exactly the same thing, "at least" in the sense of his having allegedly been nothing but a fraudulently opportunistic hate-monger? Well, in addition to the fact that I don't agree, even with my closest brothers, about everything, the way only the most typically petty swine would insist upon, even and especially among "brothers," the fact still remains, just to give all concerned a "clue" here, that Eisenman, along with those so typically like him, is--NO FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE! Indeed, he even quite contemptuously, mockingly sneers at the credibility of his own observation that the reference to the "Bondwoman" in Galatians is an analogy in illustrating the transition from the Old Covenant of Law to the New Covenant of Grace. Moreover, even the very story of the "Bondwoman" itself is not something as anti-Arab as he so cynically, disrespectfully rants, while simultaneously dishing out all that "wholesome sentimentality" about "love!" Perhaps he need only look within, but I can personally testify that, if it's actually not there to be found, or even if it is, and he can see it, then he's truly most exceptional from among his colleagues at CSULB, amidst whom particularly the mockingly contemptuous scorn he'd displayed with reference to the miracles of the Bible would be a most characteristicaly, swinishly welcomed attitude! He sarcastically equates these Biblical stories with the ancient Hindu myths, as if the Bible made no mention of the fact that its claims are not the only ones, or "as if" there is no inherently coherent hint of an indication that it's a question, not of the competing claims necessarily cancelling out one-another, but rather of which one, if either, is true; just as, again, Dr. Eisenman sneers about all these things "as if" there were no religious sensibilities to more gracefully avoid offending, even as gleefully as he continues to do, particularly in that their hosts are brutally, cynically denied any of the "Equal Opportunity," within a supposedly "academically neutral sanctuary," which a sound understanding of the doctrine of Separation of Church and State would provide, contrary to the prevailingly incoherent misunderstanding of that selfsame doctrine. I am also of the "mockably contemptible" persuasion that the "Lost Ten Tribes" are not a subject he should be tackling with his usual levels of cockiness, either! Moreover, he had his names backwards, as Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, who became ruler over Jerusalem, while Jeroboam migrated as ruler to Samaria. But, then, even the INGENIOUSLY fallible Alan Watts was known to have said a thing or two as backwards as he didn't really mean them, just to give Dr. Eisenman every sporting "benefit of the doubt" structurally possible here.
Even more, I appreciate his questioning about the prophets having been murdered, an issue which I had also long-considered, in exactly the terms he'd conveyed. Yet, what did Jesus actually say? "Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar" (Matthew 23:34-35). As for the plural? There were many unnamed prophets in the Old Testament, incalculably more than those who are being so outstandingly showcased! Yet, despite even the magnitude of what Dr. Eisenman, along with a few other of his colleagues from whom I've personally had to learn, therefore even more FAT-HEADEDLY than ever have to offer, I'm just about sorry I couldn't have felt, let-alone seen and heard, his face being slapped silly, if not totally punched out, first class, just, if nothing else, for the way he'd sarcastically, insultingly, mockingly, and, thus, again, all-too-typically, like unto virtually all of his parasitically armchair colleagues, responded, to one of the questions of that condescendingly, scornfully unbelieving bimbo who hosts Radio Alchymy, when she'd asked if he'd believed the Ten Commandments had actually been given by God to Moses, by sneering, "of course not!," even as if, to him, every believer on earth lacked his "absolutely," presumptuously, arrogantly "Omniscient" handle on "The Truth!" That particular instance of swinishly vulgar chicanery on his part is comparable to the contemptibly bloodcurdling manner in which he'd ended with his own highmindedly, unwarrantedly self-sanctifying disclaimer against anyone who would come at him with "hate" of any kind, in response to his supposed gestures of "Infinite Compassion," as I know precisely what that means, coming from his kind, as well as from most professing "Christians," too! In fact, I'd derived my first encounter with such a typically "professional" posture, at CSULB, from Dr. Leonard Fels, at the Philosophy Department, while enrolled in one of his classes, during my first semester there. That vulgarly, bigotedly mean-spirited little Jewish dwarf, despite even deeper, more serious deformities than his merely physical ones, had initially been very courteous on the surface, until I began conducting myself in the classroom as more of an advocate than antagonist of Biblical Christianity; at which point, his hostility, not only against Christ, but, by his own admission, against (the very idea of) God Himself, had come transparently gushing forth, accompanied even by fits of rage as well as mocking. He'd been permitted to take the initial initiative of bad-mouthing the Gospel all he chose, and yet his responses to mine had once taken on the form of the following, delivered at the very peak of his thankfully somewhat feeble lung capacity: I'm not going to discuss religion! Suddenly, it was "religion," per se, which had become taboo, in a course on the same subject, no doubt, and not merely any view toward it other than that of his own. I was fortunate to have exited his course with a "B!" But, believe it or not (and I hardly can at all!), I actually couldn't help but to like him, just as he really couldn't help but to have liked me, too, regardless of how thoroughly he tried to blind even and especially himself to the fact. During a subsequent Sabbatical on my part, thanks to his "inspiration" and "encouragement" as well, I'd gotten the impulse to visit him, only to hear from Dr. Ringer that he had died the day before--another omen from the Lord delivered--not a day too late!
I've really acquired a much richer education over the years via the cinema, than in any of their "schools!" For instance, even Dean Jagger, as Justus, in The Robe, must be mentioned; as I've finally learned, in full, just why he had been so "impractically," and "senselessly," even "wastefully" correct, after-all, in his rigid intolerance against stealing, and his equally fanatical definition of the term itself! One "instructor" of philosophy, in particular, who'd lyingly called himself "my friend," will know what I mean here, based on a confession I'd once much too carelessly as well as unassumingly made to him, concerning the very shirt on my back; although he'd never yield an inch to me, even to this very day, and regardless of how much he'd undoubtedly believe me, even now; since, after-all, he needs it to use against me, most suspiciously beyond any sense of appropriate proportion even he would otherwise recognize and honor, for actual "reasons" which are totally unmentionable, and even quite "unthinkable," to a liar, a thief, and even a murderer of his typically "professional" level of "moral rectitude" and "personal integrity!" But the truth is that I could never even begin to hate thievery, nearly enough, as long as I'm able to take as little as a piece of bubble gum; regardless of how desperately I'd otherwise have to choke upon the dryness in my mouth, minus even a single penny to my name! After having been raised this way, and lived by it from my heart, I eventually began to compromise, in bitterness and disillusionment; by reasoning, along with Marx, that it is essentially impossible to steal, at least from a thief, and particularly if it is done precisely because he is a thief, rather than with absolutely no kind of sincerely, thoughtfully scrupulous concern for the difference. Just as the Biblical Scriptures ordinarily leave one somewhat "hanging" as to exactly WHAT constitutes stealing, it's not my loathing of stealing as such which had diminished, rather than having actually intensified; but, instead, again, my definition as to WHAT constitutes stealing, particularly from among so many forms which are not "officially" or "legally" CALLED stealing! Moreover, Robert Wagner, in It Takes a Thief, was so charmingly debonair, at about the same time of my own "transition," as to have helped me feel even more "inspired." I once even bought into today's popularly "self-evident" tripe, particularly with relation to the attitude, about how "regretfully unavoidable," if nothing else, such as "Glamorously Desirable," such "Systematically Underhanded Intrigue" supposedly is, ever-increasingly thanks to the "Equally Necessary Evil" of its own Destructively Self-Preservative Influence, at least as decisively as anything else; that is, until I really decided, as it were, to "Get Smart," an objective which shall indeed very soon be quite terminally applying to "Lovable Maxwell," too, but, of course, not in the only one of the two semantically possible ways available here which it actually could as well as should have, namely, from the inside out! Nietzsche likewise posed a potential danger, with questions such as, "Is not all life--stealing and killing?" Thank God I knew as well, even then, as did Jimmy Stewart, in Hitchcock's Rope, about how not to handle such nevertheless urgently neglected and "strictly academic" issues!
By now, forty years later, my definition of stealing no longer serves to exclude even the most "nobly understandable" criteria (Matthew 5:38-42). And, ironically enough, the very catalyst I have to thank for this Much Greater Light is much the same one which had originally "inspired" me to compromise at all; namely, the vast extent to which I have been ripped off myself over the years, at actual gunpoint as well, and in my own home, as well as elsewhere. One has to know how it feels from that end, to the point where either the hatred of everything it embodies is incurably burned in, or else, as usual, one is just as painfully driven in the exact opposite direction, of stealing whatever he can, from the entire world if possible, and if only because he can! In my case, the above had been merely so much of, again, a catalyst, that it's not even a mere empathetic concern for creating no further victims, deserving or especially otherwise, which primarily and decisively impels me by now, but rather a sense of personal Honor and Dignity much greater than what I'd believed it necessary to compromise for the purpose of defending. In this particular vein, I'll also offer the confession that I'm still not totally reconciled to the idea of paying back any of what pettily little I've managed to steal BACK over the years, at least not with a satisfactorily clear sense of conscience, or correspondingly any more real purpose than there would be to continuing to steal BACK even more. Moreover, some would accuse me, even now, of having left a couple of minor debts on the books, which collection agencies are continually trying to intimidate me into paying. Yet, I've never had any chance to state my case, even in one of their so-called "Courts of Law," as to why I simply don't calculate that I owe them anything, and why it is that, while I was negotiating in good faith the entire time, they simply were not. If they want to serve me a summons, I'll not hesitate to cross the entire continent, from west to east, again, if necessary, but, this time, strictly on business, in order to appear, and state my case, while even internally abiding by even the most questionably motivated as well as calculated verdict formally rendered. But, until then, I don't acknowledge in any legitimate way being called the kind of thief in their mailings which they have yet to prove, or rather demonstrate that they simply cannot!
High Schools: Dominguez, Compton, CA, another worthless zoo!--Although, to be more strenuously accurate, about the memories which hardly predominate or overshadow; there were a couple of good people around, including many more teachers who at least tried their sincerest best, given the severest kinds of handicaps, within as well as, of course, from without! In this connection, I find it more befitting to mention the only other college, not covered above, here, rather than there, so as to help keep it the less soiled, by way of association. More specifically, Compton, J.C., the first one I'd attended, had embodied the only serious attempt, from among the four, on behalf of anyone worth remembering let-alone mentioning, even despite its share of a rather more degeneratively "conservative" instead of "liberal" breed of just as dangerously pseudo-authoritarian representatives, as in the subsequent examples, to run anything closely resembling a real institution of higher learning! It's truly a sick joke to behold today's endlessly tedious spectacle, of holding only the feet of elementary, intermediate, and high school teachers so culpably on the fire--instead!--Rather than giving them the greater credit--instead! Even the one high school teacher of mine who'd finally given up trying to take any of the "students" seriously, in his electric shop class, was the only one who really seemed to make the most sense, therefore as well as nevertheless, or to have been the most genuine, in attitude as well; in addition, of course, to having thereby been a magnet, attracting all the worst elements, who were therefore, tragically, ironically enough, likewise the most transparently, unpretentiously "refreshing!"
The "instructors" of physical "education" were truly the rotten apples in the lot, sadistically as well as tyrannically mean-spirited to the core! There were also plenty of glaring indications to the effect that they'd been "covertly" planted, as part of a conspiracy involving much more than "merely physical concerns!" Indeed, they made scarcely any attempt to conceal their intention of "functioning" as the campus "Thought-Police," as methodically as they operated in conjunction with the worst bullies around, and a form of "incorrigibility" they found incalculably more usefully malleable than rationally and morally threatening; if only by "looking the other way," unless someone they were attempting to "enlighten" or "toughen-up" dared consider offering any kind of "resistance." I was regularly harassed and intimidated for presuming to speak up, and sent to the vice-principal's office on more than one occasion, due to the alleged charge that my virtual butch hair-cuts, which they'd ordered me to get, were still "too long," since the hair could be pulled all the way down to the middle of the forehead! There was, for instance, another kid, whom they called "wolfman," because he could take hold of his straight, black hair, at the very back of his head, and pull it over the top, all the way down to the bottom of his throat. But nobody ever bothered him, for much the same reason he had such a violently nasty disposition someone should perhaps have literally killed him, in case he ever were to have whimsically and spontaneously carried out at least one of his numerous threats to murder somebody else--myself included--and, in one case, even an English teacher, for having given him the "F" he well-deserved! On the whole, about the only thing worse, or perhaps even better, at that, would have been Mickey Rooney, at Platinum High School, or Glenn Ford, right in the very "heart" of The Blackboard Jungle Itself!
Moreover, what even that particular bastard mentioned above, along with far-too-many others like him, never had even the brains to understand, and have probably never learned yet, even to this day, is how unworthily fortunate they'd been that I Was a MORAL Teenage Werewolf, who OTHERWISE would have taken out plenty of them instead, rather than letting such a Spartanly Ravenous Animal continue tearing me up inside, to nearly the extent it still is! Like Brando said, at one point, to Ben Johnson, in One-Eyed Jacks, they came much closer to THE VERY EDGE than even I can bear to contemplate! But, then, of course, that same abovementioned bastard, first of all, but far from last, will sadistically, brutally, swinishly, vulgarly, mockingly, belittlingly, dehumanizingly sneer, back, again, until, by the age of sixty, even the most cynically hearty Laughter of the Gods is barely sufficient to override the virtually indistinguishable alacrity of demons, that I'm just a "pussy," after-all; even though they were the very ones who boasted, at that more spontaneously, transparently, "pre-Christianly" young and "tender" age, that they were the very ones who had no kind of theistic religion or idealistically-rooted morality behind which to hide, and correspondingly far less even of the possibly bogus pretense of any kind of excuse from real strength, for the fact that I'm still alive, even as much as they would have loved to murder me altogether, but slowly, tantalizingly, while savoring every "pussy-like" cry of physical anguish as well!--Which they undoubtedly would have done, even and especially as the kinds of real cowards they are, had I given them even a fraction of the very good reason to feel that way, even in strictly carnal terms, that they'd enjoyed giving me, especially in the kinds of spiritual terms I may soon be able to laugh about just as heartily, but at their kind of long-overdue expense, for a change! Even the professing "Christians" among them are of the same instinctively, degenerately rotten persuasion, from behind the sort of "Sid-Sawyer-like" whining as well as sneering which forces me to have to wonder which, if either type, I find the more disgusting! Even as they psychologically rape and torture you into becoming "good," they're instinctively, self-righteously ridiculing you to scorn for having been "weak" and "stupid" enough to succumb, just because they can't really face the fact that you are alone the one among them who is really decent by choice, even without having had to be beaten down so brutally, savagely in the process that even you, yourself, can barely if at all discern the difference after a point! Nietzsche really understood why the herd would instinctively, resentfully lust to devour anybody it knows to tower more innocently as well as magnanimously above it, but while also being vulgarly, swinishly, "freely and equally" thrust into its ravenously vindictive clutches!
Clubs & Organizations: None! In fact, as John Lennon says, I Found Out!--That the so-called "Liberals" are just as decadently, insipidly, rudely (like the way only swine would treat even still other swine!), selfishly, opportunistically disingenuous as the "Conservatives," to the point where they both very desperately need as well as deserve one-another! As Alan Watts says, "Tweedledum and Tweedledee A-G-R-E-E-D to have a battle!" Moreover, it's an evil entity, composed of pure energy, from Star Trek's "Day of the Dove," which is drawing its strength from the intensity of this fiercely mutual antagonism; just as Satan's the one who'll really be doing all the laughing then, too, like the "Wolf In the Fold" (John Fiedler) you'll really have on your hands by that imminently-upcoming time, in his own craftily-disguised mastery of the Principle of "Non-Duality," when the Final Threshold is reached, and the Polar "Flip-Flop" between what is "Explicit" and "Implicit" occurs; yielding the other side of the shortly-upcoming "Black Hole" of a "Perfect Storm," the "Eye of the Hurricane," in a very briefly "hopeful" interval of Suspension, or balancing of the opposing forces of its own unmixable Water and Oil, or Iron and Clay; until the correspondingly and just as superlatively implicit violence and agitation required to sustain it shortly yields the next, and next to last, of this trilogy of historically-unprecedented overturnings, just prior to the only comprehensively, genuinely cycle-breaking Transfiguration to occur. In the meantime, it must be "nice," for the "Left," in particular, to embrace such a "Universal Love," but merely as the kind of option, or "pleasure," rather than duty, on behalf of the "Inherently Undeviatable Tao," in either case, which hesitates not to take all the "liberties" it pleases; just as the "Christian Conservatives," at the other end, are plain liars, too, for the most part, especially to themselves, after the manner of Matthew 7:15-29, systematically "sanctifying" their wickedness under a cloak of "righteousness!" Even that Tantric-flavored bone Watts tossed to most of them, about letting the ego express itself so unhibitedly, self-indulgently, as a means of "neutralizing" it, via the "Law of Reversed Effort," only has any real, honestly as well as therapeutically constructive value, for one much more correspondingly and artificially beset with a systematically raped and wounded, an excessively "Yangian" authenticity of conscience (I John 3:20-21), the like of which these "Bodhisattvas" rather quite instinctively love to help cause, and then to mockingly, belittlingly destroy, particularly in its own eyes. How much more ascetically "honest," though less "convenient," in its austerity, it would be, for them to pursue a nevertheless more selfishly, dualistically "Hinayanan" version of "Enlightenment!" But, then, on the other hand, Gracchus (Charles Laughton), First Senator of the Mob, from Spartacus, did say, to his equally well-fed companion, Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), that it was his corpulence which made him so very "reasonable, pleasant, and pragmatic," while "the nastiest of tyrants are invariably thin!" While I do "appreciate" at least this much of their personal "Non-Support," if these characters ever do need me for anything (with minus even the welfare of society hanging in the balance, as while they continue mockingly, contemptuously sneering at me), and even if I don't fail to need anything from them in return (at least not for myself alone); then my answer shall be fairly similar to the one William Holden had for his fellow prisoners, at the end of Stalag 17: If we ever run into one-another again, just join me in looking the other way! Of course, just as both sides actually do despise one such as I, infinitely more than they claim to themselves to hate one-another, even to the point where they would at least delight at "uniting" no less "expediently" than they otherwise, ordinarily do at remaining "divided," in their more intrinsically-rooted agreement against me; one of their characteristically, disingenuously muddle-headed criticisms has to do with what they disdainfully, self-righteously call my "attitude," in a total reversal of the actual cause and effect here! While both sides venomously scorn my "attitude," just because it is genuine (although, of course, they don't call that the reason to themselves), they shall just as enthusiastically embrace my counterfeit (John 5:43), whose only "Technique," deontologically as well as teleologically, is to self-servingly, victimizingly play both ends against the middle; but, during this next, and shortly as well as briefly upcoming interval, as the historically and philosophically unique epitome, or prototype, as well as Anti-Type, of everything just as "synthesizingly" albeit counterfeitingly "Anti-Nazi" to the hilt. Even more, considering the ways he's already bad-mouthing both sides, as well as the explicitly Nazi "flip side" of his own "centrally synthesizing" and "qualitatively transfiguring" coin, many-too-many would do well to remind him, if possible, about the classically paradigmal folly of a "Metron," in Star Trek's "Arena," who hadn't been nearly as old as he'd thought, let-alone correspondingly "above" all those whose conflicting views he so undiscriminatingly, self-righteously, "objectively" condemned!
So much for the "Easternly Metaphysical Monism" of Watts, as merely very "amorally," licentiously relished by every "intellectually sophisticated" Yuppie on the "Left," but which Watts couldn't have meant "literally," anyway, as one who no less "Non-Dogmatically" advocated no "Doctrine," as distinct from having simply utilized a "Technique," or "Method," of "Intellectual Judo," which inherently eludes, or counters, all such "categorization," all coceptual grasping, clinging, and double-mindedness. If it applies "literally" to anything, it's to "The-Many-In-The-One and The-One-In-The-Many," but as an "all-inclusiveness" which can itself be dialectically offset, but with the "Yang" rather than the "Yin" just as exclusively, divisively, irreconcilably overshadowing, by what shall be quite essentially counter-expressed here as the concept that God does not necessarily or inherently embody even the evil as He does the good, but only controls the compossible unfolding of the former, as such is woven into the overall fabric of His universally teleological patterning, in a manner structurally, prophetically programmed to lead to its ultimately inevitable neutralization. Thus, to be genuinely "all-inclusive," the concept of "Non-Duality" as a "Doctrine" or "Dogma" would have to treat this as the "Yangian Pole" of its own most essentially paradoxical embodiment, as "counterbalanced" by the "Yin" of the "Essential Unity" of these "Opposites," even though the "Yangian" element just as Dualistically, just as concretely as abstractly excludes it; indeed, as separatingly, and permanently so, as with the many mortally-resurrected human individuals who shall be judged, and thrown into the Lake of Fire, along with the Devil and his angels, for whom it has been prepared (Matthew 25:41-46); or, at least, such a possibility can be thought, and not just as an analogically transcriptual reference to one's being internally blind to his own fundamentally inherent embodiment of the Godhead, but rather as a real possibility, an Existential Alternative, in the unfolding of Actuality Itself, which must be either true or false, but not both, and not neither. So, there, again, the "Doctrine" or "Dogma" of "Non-Duality" only succeeds, by its inherent nature, at dialectically eluding any attempt to formally classify it. Even more, Watts is intellectually well-disciplined enough to have realized that "Non-Dualism," while it cannot be, by definition, any kind of Divisively-Offsetting "Doctrine" or "Dogma," nevertheless cannot avoid being one, either, in its structurally futile determination to embodyingly "transcend" all Essential Opposites. Watts admits that his "Ecological Awareness" doctrine, as opposed to a "Ceramically Monarchical" construction, is what more plausibly appears to "fit the facts," even though what is being so much more "sophisticatedly outgrown" here cannot be, strictly speaking, proven any more false, in the process, than would thereby be required. His argument for the "contradiction" between a political democracy, combined with a religiously hierarchical theocracy, is not decisively accurate, however; save to the merely accidental albeit no less tragically unavoidable extent to which some typically, even disingenuously imperfect being, with a formal mandate to hand down the most crucially and judicially-binding decisions for all, is the only thing practically though certainly not theoretically standing in the way, short of Revelation 2:27, of a System which formally defines itself as being governed by Laws rather than the "men" who must inevitably interpret even the most otherwise legitimate-in-themselves of them. A "contradiction" which cannot work, when "The wrong 'men' use the right means in the wrong way," is, still, the only thing which has any hope at all of working, as there is by nature no freedom without the Law. Quite relatedly, that one about the Moral Law being real yet relative (and, of course, "purely operational" in origin and nature, as nothing but an alleged means to an end!) is at least as laughably inconsequential, to so many who purport to take it "seriously," as it shall not appear to them exactly so "funny," as in the presence of some Big, Fat, Jolly Buddha, when they inevitably awaken from their "Bliss," and have to confront the real reason they'd felt so "gratifyingly relieved" at the "rationally air-tight assurance" that there would be no Individual Moral Judgment to be endured at the very end, or even an element of "Reincarnation" any more "literally unequivocal" or "personally threatening" than an "analogically," Buddhistically "distilled" concept of "lighting of one candle with another!" Also, that argument of Watts, about thinking of the "chicken and egg" as being "one process," quite cleverly and accurately but disingenuously evades the no less clearly self-evident fact that either the one or the other had to have come first, certainly barring any kind of possibility that no beginning to such a process had been involved; although I'll correspondingly remain as rationally and compellingly self-subdued as Watts, in permitting nothing more "apodictically certain" than the term "plausible" to uphold my own theologically-rooted belief, or Nietzscheanly epistemological "hunch," that the "Time Barrier" is inherently unbreakable. In fact, the Bible declares the chicken to have come first!--Genesis 1:20-25. Indeed, Watts stretches the point even more obtusely, by "Non-Dualistically" hypothesizing an Everlasting Hell which is really of necessity very "Blissfully" or "Paradoxically" Tormenting; as if even Hegel had needed or necessitated Marx on the basis of anything save his own broken promises, albeit much more "inalterably" than God shall continue having any further use for Satan! It's rather the One who keeps all His promises (Titus 1:2) (Hebrews 6:18) that both sides should be fearing, lest they inevitably discover, the hard way, what it means that "Every inside has to have an outside," even if both happen to be on the same side, but as the tail end of the coin!--Revelation 20:10-15.
But, then, again, Watts similarly tries to prove that to say human nature is inherently evil is as hopelessly futile as trying to make this very belief the exception, but it only serves to demonstrate (in addition to the numerously erroneous or evil claims of evil) that something good likewise exists in a man to recognize this actual evil as such, just as those who deny its existence are thereby only demonstrating that they remain, however wilfully though subconsciously, so self-blindingly trapped in its clutches. But Watts didn't stop there, for he even had the savvy to take on Immanuel Kant, in the most superlatively skillful way, by "logically demonstrating," a-priori, that the First Postulate of Pure Practical Reason, namely, individually moral freedom of the will, is inherently incoherent; since there is no way any morally rational being could ever responsibly and thus freely choose the totally unthinkable illogic of absolute evil, unless God, who can by necessary definition not be at all responsible for any such thing, has nevertheless quite culpably created it with a deficiency; one which was either in place already, or else which was, for some senselessly impossible reason (like unto deliberately shooting oneself in the foot, even though one is not a masochist), knowingly chosen by the sinner himself. Granted, then, that Paradox cannot be avoided in any direction, any more than can the Law of the Excluded Middle. Yet, to put something as Uniquely and Sacredly Axiomatic as the Moral Law on trial is to tread the very Razor's Edge of all Existentially Legitimate Paradox, rather than self-contradiction; just as to insist, on the other hand, that "Non-Duality" is what actually, objectively succeeds at "swallowing up" such a "hopelessly dualistic self-contradiction," constitutes the kind of primally, self-evidently rooted, even quite blasphemously criminal absurdity which only serves most decisively to reveal a biased inconsistency against the notion of any real, individually judicial obligation to the Moral Law itself; which, by way of its inherently-rooted nature, is not being sufficiently understood in the eyes of anyone who assumes it even can let-alone need be "justified" or "established" on the basis of anything else, least of all even a Critique of Pure Reason which finds ITS very completion only in the Critique of Pure Practical Reason. In fact, the Second Critique not only completes the First Critique, but also stands supreme as its very basis; in the sense of establishing the only apodictically necessary foundation for the universality even of physical law, as the very medium through which the moral will objectively expresses itself. Establishing such a universality via the process of "Pure Reason" alone was really the basic motivation of Kant's artificially-makeshift philosophy of science, as he was sleepwalking out of his formerly self-described "dogmatic slumber." Perhaps at least one explanation for the fact that these "Avatars" have such a problem about the Absolute Moral Law is its Judicially Inherent Demand that the most Crucially Essential Distinctions be emphasized, rather than the kind of "Oneness With Everything" which makes everyone answerable, and yet no one, in terms of its strictly scientific relativity; but especially when God finally Awakens again from His Sleep, along with the Dream He's having that He's all the rest of us, just to escape the "Primally-Rooted Boredom" of His Solitarily Awake Intervals, "between" Kalpas, as the Only Person there inherently is at bottom, this certainly being a "Doctrine" it is inherently impossible in the strictest technical sense either to logically, objectively "prove" or "disprove!" However, these same "Liberally Progressive Humanitarians" actually have no problem at all about "Distinctions," when it comes to expressing their own inherent inability to "deviate from the Tao" in the form of abdications of the most Sacredly Moral Responsibilities, but as mere "options" to them which nevertheless fail to be so "Freely" and "Gracefully" animated by "Love," regardless if not precisely, cynically because of the importance of the need they may perceive someone else to have of them, but not vice-versa, or how incredibly undemanding certain ways of meaningfully fulfilling it would undoubtedly be, if their precious egos could only endure the thought of being "gullibly-enough perceived," and thus cynically, mockingly "used." Never-mind, either, their strictly rhetorical, or, "at least," quite strictly, rhetorically employed, their "purely scientific" and thus "purely religious" concept of a "distinction," or is it rather a "separation?," between a "distinction" and a "separation!" Moreover, what about the Paradox, the very Razor's Edge of all Essentially-Rooted Paradox, that of Free Will versus Determinism? After-all, if God determines all events, then where is there any room for freedom? As a problem, this time, not about the Inherently Insoluble Dilemma of how an immorally free and responsible as well as irresponsible will is possible per se, but rather more secondarily about the problem of how such a morally free will, postulating it to be possible, is reconcilable with the element of absolute teleological but not noumenally as distinct from phenomenally deontological determinism; this is not nearly the kind of hopelessly enigmatic dilemma commonly and superficially assumed, just as the reason why can be stated in one fundamentally and simply quantifiable sense; namely, that God can have His way, of its own free choice, even with the most incorrigibly rebellious will, in that He has so many ways of maneuvering such a will to want to make the choices He wants it to make, although it does not at all make these choices with any idea of pleasing Him in mind, that, whenever He instead does use force, it is because, for whatever always by nature very purposeful if not always so easily-discernible reasons, He chooses to do so. Did God harden Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 9:12) (Romans 9:17)? Check out how, for instance, in The Ten Commandments, God used Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) to harden Pharaoh's heart, maneuvering him to want to do, but for his own rebellious reasons as well as hers, what God wanted him to do. Indeed, Moses (Charlton Heston) even said to her, in answer to her boast that Pharaoh was putty in her hands, that "perhaps you are the lovely dust through which God shall work His purpose." In no way does this interfere at all, particularly not with the freely-chosen and basically moral predisposition of the individual. Pharaoh's basic moral will was not touched at all, just as even the very carnally rebellious choices he'd made were in no way coerced, to a neutralizing of his capacity to freely choose one way or the other. If most people are at least quite "unwittingly" putty in Satan's hands, then just imagine what they are with relation to God's capacity to maneuver them accordingly, even in their most rebelliously free will. To be sure, Satan himself is "unwittingly" the same kind of putty in God's hands, as God has teleologically though not deontologically "hard-wired" even what he will want to do, as well as the very prophetically-unfolding design of things, whereby whatever Satan chooses to do, but for his own reasons, to thwart God's plan, automatically assists God in rather fulfilling His rather than Satan's plans. God allows no compossible expression of evil for which He has no use, which also explains why it is so carelessly presumptuous of anyone else to pass judgment upon the right even of such evil to exist per se (Matthew 5:45), which is quite a different thing from one's duty of legitimately dealing with its existence in all the Biblically confrontational ways structurally, circumstantially available, nevertheless. Benny Hinn once recently and indignantly thundered that God had nothing to do with the Virginia Tech slayings. I disagree. God certainly didn't do or cause the shooter to want to go on his rampage, but He permitted it for some very urgently discernible reasons; which, in this case particularly, all are being thereby challenged to self-examiningly comprehend, but in a way "moral indignation" is so "passionately" utilized with the deliberate purpose of being able to avoid! The point is, not to forsake all truly legitimate indignation, but rather not to indulge it to such a characteristically, self-righteously, myopically disingenuous end.
And, after-all, had Watts been "literally" engaged with the self-contradiction, which he'd therefore taken the time and analytical precision to explicitly refute, that the entirety of reality is fundamentally, divisively, thus Dualistically "Monistic," he would have been able to say, also, that "The East includes the West, while the West excludes the East," but only while understanding, most centrally and symbolically, the death and resurrection of Christ, even assuming its historically-rooted actuality, as essentially nothing more than the analogical transcript of experience it nevertheless also so impeccably and centrally is, of the extent to which one must die to himself in order to be internally born again, thus recognizing the "Eternally Unchanging Truth" that one was always and inherently by nature so very "Timelessly, Unconditionally There," as "The-Which-Than-Which-There-Is-No-Whicher," and correspondingly to the exclusion of any notion that Christ was actually the Only Begotten Son of God, who had to die in order to atone for the actual sins of everybody else, but only to the individually everlasting redemption of those who invite Him in, when they hear Him knocking, and are thus alone His (Romans 8:9). To cite a more "arbitrarily a-posteriori" illustration of how Biblical Truth is only compromised by such a "synthesis," there is the Islamic "inclusion" of Christ, but as just another of the prophets, and not even the highest one at that; just as Watts "transfigures" Christ, by analogy the sun, the very Source of light and heat, but in a more "essentially a-priori" or "Non-Dualistically" one-sided way, into nothing but still another expression of the Buddha, analogizable in terms of the moon, which only reflects the same. Yet, the Law of the Excluded Middle remains, as the principle of "The-Many-In-The-One and The-One-In-The-Many," or "Non-Duality," automatically denotes a bias toward unity, as the more fundamental, in its "all-inclusive transcendence" of the principles of both unity and diversity, and a "Tao" from which nothing can by nature ever deviate in any real and absolutely judicial sense; in contrast with the Western view that the Law not only can be violated, but that all, save Christ Himself, are essential violations of it, doomed to individually everlasting extinction insofar as they remain under the Law, to be broken by it, or by this "Tao" from which nothing can possibly by nature deviate, rather than under Grace (Romans 2:5-16). In the Western religious view, Satan is a Real Existence, who must be actively resisted (James 4:7), head-on. Yet, the more "Westernly" and characteristically it deviates from the Golden Mean (Matthew 7:12-14), the more it forgets, in the process, exactly Who is nevertheless in absolute control, along with the imperative of knowing how to let Him fight the battle, with just the right balancing of the Law of Reversed Effort; as when, for instance, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock succeeded, in "The Empath," at neutralizing an imprisoning force field which drew its strength from their very attempts to resist it. Or, to cite still another analogy, one must actively guide the pen, but while permitting it to do the writing. What Watts had also been pleased to call the "heuristic" method actually does cut both ways, although Watts was not characteristically one to "let the cat" so "Westernly" slip "out of the bag," rather than rhetorically dodging every attempt to theoretically "pin him down," least of all with the abject contradiction of crystallizing conceptually into place, and even into stone, the "Doctrine" that all "Doctrine" is inherently false, by its very nature; just as Nietzsche's "Will to Power," for that matter, cannot be "Doctrinally" or Dogmatically crystallized without totally negating itself, if only after the manner of Schopenhauer, or via the more "Positively Counterbalancing" (or, more accurately with relation to Nietzsche's meaning, the term would be an even higher "Transfiguration" of the Will to Power, an Inner Strength which Unrancorously, Unconditionally says "Yes" to Life, to What Is, while becoming Stronger rather than Perishing from every "Misfortune," thus turning even it to one's own advantage!) form of Nietzsche's own "Eternal Recurrence," but certainly in that one cannot coherently declare the "Will to Power" to be "Metaphysically True-In-Itself," but only as still another means of enhancing the "Will to Power" as such; just as, for that matter, Marx cannot make the absolutely, unconditionally, baldly dogmatic assertion that, for instance, "all 'truth' or 'belief' is economically-conditioned," without such a statement quite self-contradictorily applying to itself as well. Technically stated, while it can be, and, perhaps even for the most part, is true, that beliefs are "economically conditioned," even to the extent that numerous Truths-In-Themselves are adapted in the process, but not at all because they are such; that's still quite a different thing from declaring, but beyond the very perimeters of legitimate science Marx claimed to himself to have insisted upon, that all truth, and thus all belief, is inherently conditioned economically, at least at the most basically foundational level. To the extent that Nietzsche meant the "Will to Power" in a "literally dogmatic" way, it was certainly in that such constitutes perhaps the singlemost self-evidently "working hypothesis" of all, next to that of Marx; although Marx would say Nietzsche's "hypothesis" is just a manifestation of his, and Nietzsche would say the opposite, with an equally Archemedean Profoundness, but in a more "Non-Dogmatic" way than Marx. This also helps serve to account, not just for Nietzsche's disdain of Schopenhauer's "Will to Live," and what he so "nihilistically" thought, on a formally metaphysical level, even and especially of it; but, more specifically, of what Nietzsche derided as Schopenhauer's "Dogmatism" of the "Will to Live." Nietzsche, like Watts, was essentially a "Non-Dogmatic" philosopher by temperament; just as Watts, for that matter, was too well-disciplined not to have realized that even the "trick" of successfully "washing away blood with blood," by "folding up" the "ladder" of the "concept" that concepts inherently fail to apply in any "literal" way to Reality, and "leaving it behind," technically leaves us riddled only in the most Hopelessly Insoluble Paradox, as to whether anything "Dualistically Exclusive" is nevertheless necessarily being descriptively applied to Reality. And, while there is, again, nothing by nature more inherently "unprovable" or "undisprovable" than what would amount, for Watts, to the "Doctrine" that we are all "God" having a "Grandly Primordial Dream," the kind of Paradox upon which its argument Inherently depends cannot be legitimately or logically denied any possibly legitimate applicability to the Duality of a Western theology in which God is not the universe, and yet is All-In-All. Indeed, one of the most candidly "parenthetical" admissions of Watts, completely out of step with his entire "Method," and even a self-tormentingly egotistical temperament which ended up almost as destructively dissolving even his most ingeniously constructive techniques for giving its unbearably festering presence the slip; was that, rather than baldly denying the "Real Existence" of the "Individually Finite Ego," he was simply countering a naturally "explicit" over-emphasis upon its existence with a correspondingly exaggerated emphasis upon its "Non-Existence," in order to achieve, in his words, the very kind of "Balance" nobody will listen to you if you attempt to advocate as much openly and theoretically. Indeed, I've served, for much-too-long by now, as one of the most glaring proofs of that! Watts even says, in another place, that "the ego doesn't exist." Then, in the next sentence, he states that if, however, "you try to get rid of your ego with your ego, it will take you--to the end of time." How, then, in the most "literal" sense, can something which doesn't exist get rid of something which doesn't exist with something which doesn't exist? Equally "boring," to most self-canonizing "Avatars" of a characteristically "Liberally, Democratically Progressive" persuasion, would be my own candidly "implausible" admission as to exactly whose Nightmare this really is, from right out of Serling's "Shadow Play!"
Other Accreditations: II Corinthians 5:20 and Ephesians 6:20 serve as much more adequate credentials than any of the others listed above, at least to anyone who can judge the works, even if they have an otherwise more understandable difficulty taking my word for it. I've striven to render the work as intriguingly captivating as possible, as something to be even quite intrinsically savourable, in the most artistically literary as well as essentially philosophical respects; but, even more importantly, and under the Lord's own much more selflessly ever-guiding Hand, as nothing more than a most potentially expendable means, nevertheless, assuming anything short of Ezekiel 33:28-33 is capable of commanding anybody's even most potentially preventable attention! Of course, it's still a literary portrait in progress, although I'm not certain about whether to employ the analogy of a medley, short of finding a more syntactically, gracefully flowing manner of combining the two. At any rate, when the remainder of the title is finally added, you can consider such to be a sign that this page is just about finished as well, at least with relation to my own more wastefully limited purposes here! Only a few minor touch-ups yet remain, while the amendments are almost non-existently negligible.
I also regret having no more impressive kinds of miracles to offer, but not exactly for your sakes, or at least not in the sense I would more genuinely prefer to be capable of indulging, even then. It's just that I'm well aware of the only kinds of miracles most of you would ever alone respect, if you could simply see, and thus perhaps alone even believe, even in any of them. However, the one you're currently beholding is about the only kind which the Lord truly considers the most valuably and ideally edifying, although letting it pass you by will certainly help to trigger something even more glaringly, undeniably persuasive, but not in exactly any way you're very likely to appreciate very much, either! It's not certain I'll ever come up with a totally satisfactory title page here. About the only thing I can just about guarantee, however, is that, when it is finished into place, or has rather only run out of time for such, you'll have no difficulty conclusively discerning as much, either way. Just pray, perhaps, and even if I just about can't, that there does turn out to be enough more time to complete it, but don't count on it alone proving nearly as necessary as even it may be potentially capable--at evolving--into Infinity! Yet, that might figure to be even your best bet, if it comes down to a question of which way the end itself is actually to arrive; but I just may surprise you with a real long-shot instead, even more than He would be the very One thereby surprising me in the process, albeit more delightedly, even if Satan is the one who gets first crack at dazzling you with all those miracles (Revelation 13), until the Sixth Seal finally opens (Revelation 6:12-17)!! God is, after-all, even the Master Semanticist of all time, with even-you-should-know-who being only a very distant second; but always to a most meaningfully-constructive purpose, regardless of how frustratingly capricious He's usually so good at appearing, and maybe not just appearing at that!
Moreover, it appears I may not be the main emissary, as at least one of The Inheritors of such a marvelous gift; for the same reason I could still use some assistance, even at covering the expenses; let-alone linking up with certain others on the same mission, before Adam Ballard (Robert Duvall) finally decides it's time to close in first; which shouldn't be very difficult for him, particularly as I've been doing anything but trying to hide, let-alone anything I should feel needs to be hidden. Nevertheless, the character with whom I most deeply relate is Sergeant James Conover (Ivan Dixon), as he's solitarily praying for guidance in his little chapel, and struggling with his severest misgivings, which he otherwise finds himself totally helpless to indulge! I could only wish the fact that I haven't been hauled away by Ballard yet, even though I have already been approached, is as much of a good sign, in itself, as I'd like to believe. They cuffed me, and subjected me to a psychiatric ward, for three days of "evaluation," as a possible "terrorist," back in March, 2000, and then released me. In fact, I'd been internally and "inexplicably" overcome, just two months prior to that episode, by an urge to pray about exactly such a possibility, and the answer I'd received was that what would occur would be precisely what had occurred. Even more, I'll give Ballard a chance to really prove me wrong, as the answers to my prayers, ever since, have exclusively been to the effect that no such forcible constraint would ever be imposed upon me again, unless the time of my own extremely imminent demise has arrived! But then, perhaps there's no basically good side to him, after-all, as the actual explanation for this delay; any more than there exists a real Lieutenant Minns (Steve Ihnat) to pivotally link together as many of us as there may be, while contributing to the cause with his own uniquely essential kind of talent. Again, while I do know Ballard is out there somewhere, keeping a close eye on me; the absence of Minns himself is not necessarily a bad sign, given the kind of timing which may yet prove to be involved; for, after-all, he was the very last of the four, in that particular episode of The Outer Limits, to have received his magic bullet in the head.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 60
October 9, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com
Germany and the Vatican are moving toward a financial new world order. By Andrew Miiller
The American economic crisis has unleashed forces of political upheaval that are propelling both Germany and the Vatican to the forefront of world affairs.
Recent developments reveal that Germany is seeking to rally all Europe under Teutonic leadership in order to replace the United States as the world’s sole financial superpower. Meanwhile, the Vatican is seeking to establish itself as the guiding force behind this forming European Empire. By working together, these two entities are furthering their respective goals.
German politicians have been especially vocal in putting the blame for the current economic upheaval squarely on the U.S. and on the shortcomings of U.S.-style capitalism. Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was the U.S. and British failure to listen to Germany that allowed the banking sector to get out of hand. According to German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, another system, one that will make the world multipolar, is needed.
Meanwhile, European Council President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to declare the American economic system dead. Following this declaration, he proposed a special conference be convened to rebuild the entire global financial and monetary system from the bottom up, the way it was done at Bretton Woods after World War ii.
As the financial crisis intensifies, Germany is specifically disassociating itself from the U.S. epicenter in an effort to present itself as a credible economic alternative. But if Europe is to be a viable alternative to the U.S-centric system, a truly integrated Europe, with a truly united economic policy, needs to be presented. And Germany is letting its European allies know that, as the world’s largest goods exporter and the paymaster of Europe, it stands ready to lead the eurozone to superpower status should such a unified economy be established.
But it will take more than the desire to replace the U.S. as global leader to forge Europe’s individual economies into one over-arching monetary and political system. The only way the various cultures and nationalities in Europe could possibly be united is through common ideology.
Pope Benedict xvi and his Vatican hierarchy recognize this fact. They are eyeing this economic crisis as an opportunity to establish Catholicism as the guiding force behind this forming European superpower.
“Politics needs religion,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said on September 30 in a speech published by Vatican mouthpiece L’Osservatore Romano. “When instead God is ignored, the ability to respect rights and recognize the common good begins to disappear.” The prelate went on to claim the current financial crisis was a result of a lack of Christian values in global politics.
Bertone’s comments followed a similar admonishment by the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Giampaolo Crepaldi, who called for Catholics to take a more active role in politics and stop leaving “God in the pew.” Such comments are backed by the pope, who noted on October 6 that the collapse of major banks shows that money is “nothing” and that “only God’s words are a solid reality.”
The Vatican is putting forward its brand of religious teachings as the solution to the world’s financial woes.
First the Vatican embedded Catholic laity in labor movements, government bureaucracies and secret services across Europe. Now it is calling upon these same people to use their positions of influence to further the ambitions of the church. This is the pope’s strategy for transforming the Catholic Church into the guiding political ideology that will unite all Europe.
Soon Europe will be looking to the Vatican for political guidance and to Germany for economic leadership. This united European Empire will then be able to supplant ailing America’s global economic hegemony and emerge as the world’s sole financial superpower.
As shocking as these predictions may sound, they were all made some 2,000 years ago and recorded in your Bible.
Biblical passages like Revelation 17 reveal that a powerful religious entity will rise up in the end time and become the guiding force over a resurrected Holy Roman Empire. This powerful church-state combine is prophesied to be a great economic powerhouse that intoxicates all nations with its wealth and splendor. Revelation 18:3 says, “The merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury” (New King James Version).
Notice this verse does not say that only the merchants of Europe will profit from this new economic system. It says that “the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.” This Catholic-dominated European Empire is to establish a global financial system that will encompass the entire planet. After the dollar falls, the world is going to get a new reserve currency.
There is a dark side, however, to this coming financial system. Verses 12 and 13 of this same chapter specify the vast markets that this mighty empire in the north will trade in, including “slaves, and souls of men.” It will operate in the slave market just as Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich used slave labor to power its industrial complexes along the Ruhr River.
This church-state combine is prophesied to plunge the world into a new dark age.
Yet there is hope beyond the bad news. This same chapter also foretells that, after this empire has reigned only a short time, Christ will return to the Earth and smash this power to pieces. He will then establish His Kingdom on Earth, and this Kingdom will never be destroyed.
'
No Time' for EU Commission
Sovereign Governments Are
The Order of the Day
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the chairwoman of the German Civil Rights Solidarity party (BüSo). Her article has been translated from German.
[PDF version of this article]
In my article dated Jan. 16 of this year, titled, "The End of 'Free' Market Economy: We Need To Save the Common Good in Germany!" (EIR, Jan. 18, 2008), I pointed out that the entire architecture of the European Union bureaucracy, from the Maastricht Treaty to the European Monetary Union and the European Central Bank (ECB), has a serious design flaw which, under conditions of great stress, could render the entire supranational edifice impotent, and could, once again, put national interests at the top of the agenda.
That is exactly what has come to pass. On Sept. 29, there was a run on six Irish banks, and the stock of the Anglo Irish Bank lost 46% of its value. The heads of the six banks stormed into the Prime Minister's office, sounded the alarm that their banks would be bankrupt within 24 hours, and demanded, and received, the Irish government's promise that it would henceforth guarantee these banks' deposits and obligations. The London Times reported that Irish officials had labored through the night to work up a credible plan, and that there had been no time to even consult with other governments, the EU Commission, or the ECB.
The same scenario was repeated in Greece with a run on banks in Athens and Thessaloniki, when panicked depositors attempted to pull out their savings, whereupon the Greek Cabinet likewise had to guarantee all assets—once again, without asking Brussels. On Thursday, Oct. 3, Finance Minister Alogoskoufis declared that the banking system was completely secure and reliable, despite the global financial crisis. And whereas on Monday, Sept. 29, the EU Commission was still threatening to "examine" the German government's decision to give government guarantees for the private action to save the Hypo Real Estate Bank, by Thursday the Commission had admitted that it had been "the right decision."
Maastricht No Longer in Force
France's original proposal to create a pan-European fund with Eu300 billion for troubled banks, along the lines of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bailout plan, has meanwhile suddenly come up against strong resistance. None other than German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, by no means known as a critic of the Maastricht Treaty, told the Wall Street Journal that "German citizens should not jump into the breach to stabilize situations for which other countries have been responsible. Germany is extremely wary of such grand designs.... I see no German interest in it whatsoever." If German interests suddenly once again take priority, then the European Union's Maastricht Treaty is de facto no longer in force.
Henri Guaino, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's special advisor, has reached the same conclusion, and told French TV that the Maastricht criteria no longer have any priority. And Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France's Minister of State responsible for European Affairs, remarked that, in this crisis, there had indeed been cooperation among national governments, but not on the level of the Commission. Small wonder, since the congenital defect called the euro prevents precisely that from happening.
In my January article, I wrote that,
Up to 1999, the Bundesbank was Germany's 'lender of last resort,' the source of credit, should the national economy go out of kilter. But with the introduction of the euro, currency sovereignty was transferred to the European Central Bank, and so we have the paradoxical situation in which national central banks are responsible for providing extraordinary liquidity—so-called 'Emergency Liquidity Assistance' (ELA)—whereas they have no sovereignty over the creation of currency. And this legal loophole, which the fathers of the euro believed could simply be ignored, is now proving to be the potential deal-breaker of the European Monetary Union.
Understandably, Steinbrück has his doubts about rescuing foreign banks by borrowing funds from private markets—funds which would then show up as debts in the federal budget. And in Article 103 of the Maastricht Treaty, it states that "any ... type of credit facility with the ECB or with the central banks of the Member States ... in favor of Community institutions or bodies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited." Article 104a further specifies that private banks are not permitted to provide credit to governments and other public institutions at discounted rates.
In my January article, I further wrote,
"This all means that the present EU financial architecture is unsuitable for Germany's character as a social state and for the common good, whose defense is mandated by the Basic Law, to save the global financial system, under the conditions of the currently exploding crisis of the system.
The developments of the past few days prove that only sovereign states are capable of acting in a systemic crisis. It is, therefore, of the utmost urgency, that governments, as sovereign representatives of their respective nations, help to put the old financial system through a regular bankruptcy procedure, and to erect a new financial architecture in the tradition of Roosevelt's 1944 Bretton Woods System.
OVER LONG-STANDING OPPOSITION
Jan. 6, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
As underscored by the featuring of economist Lyndon LaRouche on Russian TV Rossiya's prime-time Sunday news round-up on Oct. 5, suddenly, LaRouche's policy for pulling together an emergency alternative to the ongoing world economic cataclysm, is succeeding—so far—against the long-standing opposition directed against it.
The most significant developments thus far, include the following.
At the same time as the Russian TV broadcast, LaRouche commented on Sept. 5, the whole European Maastricht system is disintegrating, with the deliberate break-up led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and others. "There's a complete coincidence between what the Russian TV quoted from me," LaRouche said, "and the policy and the circumstances of the policy that has now essentially gone through in Europe, as the outlook of Europe, and that is coming out of the G-14 grouping."
The informal G-14 group of nations includes the G-8 major industrial powers (including Russia), and China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and sometimes South Korea, Australia or Nigeria.
So the whole G-14, implicitly by this broadcast and by the things coming from France and so forth, is saying that the entire system is going through reorganization, and that it's going towards a Roosevelt-style system, a Roosevelt-style reform.
This is a G-14 pattern. They want a change in policy. The G-14, with a leading role taken by the President of France, Sarkozy, is going towards what it describes as a New Bretton Woods system, and is holding back and suspending the conditionalities of the Maastricht system. The ongoing breakdown of the financial system in Europe is not really a suffering by everybody in Europe; in some cases it comes in the form of a liberation. They are now saying: 'Screw the Maastricht agreement; we don't have time to waste on that b.s. Instead we are going to go ahead with certain emergency measures in the direction of Franklin Roosevelt's reforms.'
The Europeans are acting. They are acting their way: not my way, but their way. That's what is happening. There is an agreement that the present IMF system is implicitly dead—that we're going back to something like the Roosevelt system—and that is coming from sources such as the President of France. It involves not just Europe, it involves also the G-14.
It is in this context that the ongoing pattern of emergency actions being taken by the European government, has to be understood. LaRouche added. They are doing things which will not stem the crisis, but which will lead them in the direction of taking the FDR-style measures between nations that are required. We summarize the pattern of actions here:
* GERMANY. After announcing a Federal guarantee for private bank deposits, in the amount of over 500 bil euros, on Oct. 4, Berlin is now considering taking sector-wide responsibility for its banking sector, and not simply carrying out case-by-case interventions in the financial collapse, as it had been doing up through this weekend. Over the weekend, the government pushed through an attempted rescue for Hypo Real Estate, the second largest in the country, involving government guarantees of 26.5 bil euros.
* SPAIN. The government is prepared to unilaterally back up bank deposits if the EU fails to come up with a plan, said Pedro Solbes, the Economy Minister.
* ITALY. The government has intervened to shore up UniCredit. Also, the government is guaranteeing individual bank accounts.
* UNITED KINGDOM. The government is looking at extending guarantees for private accounts; and at starting to take stakes in banks.
* IRELAND. The government announced its plan last week—the first in the EU—which gives guarantees for two years to deposits and debts of six banks owned in Ireland. The parliament passed it quickly.
* SWEDEN. Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg this morning announced the doubling of the deposit guarantee from 250,000 SEK to 500,000 SEK. Also today, the Swedish Central Bank announnced new emergency liquidity funds for banks.
* GREECE. The government last week announced that individual bank accounts will be backed.
* DENMARK. Early this morning, the government announced it will guarantee all bank deposits in the nation for an unlimited amount, as part of an arrangement with banks to create a US$6.5 billion (35 billion Danish crown) liquidation fund.
* ICELAND. The government has made known it is drafting a sweeping plan for intervention. The Banking Minister said that a rescue plan is "well under way." Pension fund investments located abroad, for its 300,000 population, have asked to be repatriated, to bring cash home.
I blame Georgia's leaders.
By Lira Tskhovrebova
from the October 8, 2008 edition
E-mail Print Letter to the Editor Republish del.icio.us digg
Tskhinvali, South Ossetia - In a speech before the United Nations last month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili implored world leaders to set up an international investigation to find out the truth about the war in South Ossetia.
I couldn't agree more. But I think the results of an honest investigation would reveal a very different "truth" than what President Saakashvili claims.
I know this because I was in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Aug. 7 when Georgian troops marched into the city and killed my friends and neighbors. I huddled with my family in terror for three nights while Saakashvili's tanks and rockets destroyed hundreds of our homes, desecrated cemeteries, gutted schools and hospitals.
I also have good reason not to trust what Saakashvili says. For three days before the attack I had been getting calls from many Georgian friends warning me to get out. They said Saakashvili was planning an attack. Most of the Georgians living in South Ossetia left because they knew what was coming.
On the night of Aug. 7, Saakashvili went on television and assured the frightened civilian population of South Ossetia that he would not attack us. This was long after the time Saakashvili now claims Russians had begun "invading" Georgia.
Ossetians went to bed relieved and thankful for a peaceful night.
Less than two hours later, according to credible international accounts, his artillery, bombers, and three brigades of ground troops unleashed what I can only describe as a fierce hell on our city. In the moment, we knew only our fear as we hid. Afterward I spoke with hundreds of Ossetians to find out what was done to us.
My friend's elderly father tried to douse the flames set by Georgian fire on the home he had built with his hands. His leg was severed by shrapnel from Georgian weapons. He bled to death while his disabled wife crawled from their burning home.
Ossetians saw Georgian tanks firing into basements where women and children hid for safety They saw fleeing families shot down by Georgian snipers. We learned that the Georgian military had used Grad rocket systems and cluster bombs against Tskhinvali.
Yes, I would very much like to see an international commission investigate the truth of what happened.
When I came out from hiding, thanking God that the Russians had saved our lives, I was dismayed by the reaction of the international media to what had happened. There was nothing about Ossetian deaths and the unprovoked horrors inflicted by Saakashvili's military. It made my heart sick.
The truth has been crushed by Georgia's powerful public relations machine as mercilessly as Georgian tanks rolled over the defenseless civilians of Tskhinvali.
I know that Americans are a generous and fair people. But Americans haven't been told the truth about what happened to us. Americans don't understand that Ossetians are an independent, Christian Orthodox people with a deep history in our land. The world talks only about Georgian freedom. What of freedom for my people? Does our suffering, do our voices, mean nothing?
I don't blame the Georgian people for what happened to us. The vast number of Ossetians and Georgians want to live in peace. I blame Georgia's leaders.
Saakashvili has persuaded the world that he is a "beacon" of democracy and openness. But he won't even tell his own people the truth. My Georgian friends weren't allowed to see any Russian news sites during the conflict because all of those sites were blocked by Saakashvili's government.
I know we are a small people, and I make no claim to understanding the experts in geopolitics with their theories and pronouncements about the great powers. But I have fought for women's rights in Ossetia for 12 years and I believe in the truth.
In a recent article, Saakashvili cynically dismissed Ossetian suffering and deaths because, he said, Russia had "lied" about how many of my people were killed by the Georgian military.
It breaks my heart to even engage in this discussion. No one – including Saakashvili – knows how many Ossetians were killed by his Army. I have friends who buried loved ones in their backyards because there were no alternatives. Many people are still missing.
Does Saakashvili believe his vicious attack on a civilian city was justified if he only killed a few hundred rather than a few thousand? Do Americans realize that a military trained and equipped by the US government attacked a civilian population as they slept in their beds? Can they justify sending another billion dollars to Georgia and nothing for those Georgia attacked?
I have made an urgent appeal to the world for humanitarian relief for our people at the website helpossetianow.org. I beg the United States and the world to find out the truth. Please hear our voices.
• Lira Tskhovrebova is the founder of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights and has worked for more than a decade to improve relations between people of Georgian and Ossetian descent in the Caucasus.
By Richard C. Cook
10/10/08 "ICH" -- - The crashing stock market has given its verdict. The financial rescue plan currently being implemented by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System will fail to revitalize the producing economy, even with continued interest rate cuts. This is because the banking system is essentially a supply-side, trickle-down mechanism with a currency based on a pyramid of bank lending and debt. All the current plans being suggested by economists and others to save the financial system by varying degrees of tinkering are useless. Similarly useless is the pumping in of credit or liquidity by Treasury or the Federal Reserve because it is no more than new debt to roll over old debt.
The cause of the financial failure is that the producing and consumer economy is “maxed out” and is unable to repay existing loans much less new ones. This is because purchasing power in the U.S. has collapsed.
Purchasing power has collapsed not only because we have outsourced our industry abroad and allowed our infrastructure to crumble, but also because of structural defects identified decades ago by C.H. Douglas and John Maynard Keynes. These defects occur due to the need for retained earnings (i.e. savings) to overcome the Law of Diminishing Returns. This leads to insufficient aggregate demand; i.e., the gap between prices and purchasing power that is endemic in an industrial economy.
The problem is not the collapse of the stock market which simply reflects the deflation of the bubble economy. The problem is the oncoming recession/depression caused by the absence of an economic engine to generate new producing power.
Keynesian plans for top-down creation of jobs by government deficit spending has never worked and has always ended in an attempt by the government to inflate its way out of debt. Everything being suggested by the Obama/McCain campaigns is based on the failed Keynesian formula.
An entirely new paradigm is needed. This can be provided through dividend-based economics like the Alaska Permanent Fund, the 2008 tax rebate stimulus, and the basic income guarantee (negative income tax) discussed during the 1960s and 1970s.
Following is the “Cook Plan”:
1. Non-taxable vouchers should be issued at the rate of $1,000 per month per adult and $500 per month per child which may be used for food, housing, fuel, communications media, utilities, and educational services provided at outlets within the U.S. Distribution of vouchers may be delegated to state and local governments.
2. Vouchers will be deposited by service providers and vendors only in a new network of local chartered savings banks—one for each county in the U.S. Deposits will be made to the bank in the county of the local point-of-sale.
3. Banks will lend locally at zero-percent interest using voucher deposits as capitalization. The banks may create loans at a 1:10 reserve ratio with borrowers paying administrative fees only. Borrowers must provide a 20% down payment as collateral or purchase default insurance at 2% of the loan principal.
4. Lending will be made only to business entities, including family or commercial farms, operating from an established location within the county.
This system will create a grassroots “bottom-up” economic infrastructure to parallel the “top-down” Federal Reserve System which is collapsing. Transfers between local savings banks and the banks of the Federal Reserve System will be denominated in U.S. dollars with vouchers redeemed within the banking system.
The system could be implemented within a matter of weeks through seed-money provided by the federal government. It could be replicated by any other nation.
It is requested that readers give this plan the widest possible distribution.
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared in numerous websites and print magazines. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, will soon be published. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.” His website is www.richardccook.com . Comments or requests to be added to his mailing list may be sent to EconomicSanity@gmail.com . Also see a series of his speeches on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/GracchusJones .
Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
13/10/08 "Information Clearinghouse" ---- - Leaving the issue of fraud aside, the bail out scam is also doomed to fail because it avoids diagnosis and dodges the heart of the problem: the inability of more than five million homeowners to pay their fraudulently ballooned mortgage obligations.
Instead of trying to salvage the threatened real assets or homes and save their owners from becoming homeless, the bailout scheme is trying to salvage the phony or fictitious assets of the Wall Street gambler and reward their sins by sending taxpayers’ good money after gamblers bad money. It focuses on the wrong end of the problem.
The apparent rationale for the bailout plan is that while the injection of tax payers’ money into the Wall Street casino may not be fair, it is a necessary evil that will free the “troubled assets” and create liquidity in the financial markets, thereby triggering a much-needed wave of lending, borrowing and expansion.
There are at least five major problems with this argument.
The first major problem is that the current financial disaster is not really a liquidity problem as it is repeatedly portrayed to be. It is a problem of faith and trust, or lack thereof, which in turn stems from the disproportionately large amount of junk assets or mortgages relative to real assets. It is true that lending and credit expansion has almost come to a halt and, in this sense, there is a serious liquidity crisis. But this illiquidity is not really due to a lack of good money or real assets in the system. It is rather because owners of such valuable assets are unwilling to lend their precious possessions to owners of troubled assets, or worthless papers.
As Herman E. Daly, University of Maryland economist, puts it, “The value of present real wealth is no longer sufficient to serve as a lien to guarantee the exploding debt. Consequently the debt is being devalued in terms of existing wealth. No one any longer is eager to trade real present wealth for debt even at high interest rates. This is because the debt is worth much less, not because there is not enough money or credit.”
The second major problem with the bailout scheme is that it is simply unfeasible and ineffectual because there is just not enough good money to redeem all the bad money that has ballooned or bubbled to a multiple of the good money and/or real assets.
The initial $700 billion bailout money falls way short of what is needed to rescue the Wall Street gamblers, as it is only a fraction of their accumulated bad debt. According to a September 29 Washington Post report:
“Twenty of the nation's largest financial institutions owned a combined total of $2.3 trillion in mortgages as of June 30. They owned another $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities. And they reported selling another $1.2 trillion in mortgage-related investments on which they retained hundreds of billions of dollars in potential liability, according to filings the firms made with regulatory agencies. The numbers do not include investments derived from mortgages in more complicated ways, such as collateralized debt obligations.”
These three categories of mortgage-related financial instruments add up to a $4.7 trillion obligation for the twenty largest financial institutions. This is nearly seven times as large as the initial Paulson/Bernanke bailout plan of $700 billion, which means the plan is destined to be ineffectual.
Nationwide, the ratio of bad to good money is much higher. According to Herman E. Daly, “Financial assets have grown by a large multiple of the real economy—paper exchanging for paper is now 20 times greater than exchanges of paper for real commodities.” This means that the initial $700 billion bailout fund is simply a drop in the sea of bad debt, and that, therefore, there is not enough good money to pay for the mountain of junk assets accumulated by the gambling financial institutions.
The third major flaw of the bailout plan is that, as mentioned earlier, it does not address the real problem: the problem of rescuing the financially-distressed homeowners. As Dr. Paul Craig Roberts points out, “the Paulson bailout does not address the core problem. It only addresses the problem for the financial institutions that hold the troubled assets. Under the bailout plan, the troubled assets move from the banks' books to the Treasury's. But the underlying problem--the continuing diminishment of mortgage and home values--remains and continues to worsen.”
Simply moving soured assets from fraudulent lenders to the Treasury, that is, buying junk mortgages at face value, will neither help the millions of homeowners facing homelessness, nor help mitigate the raging financial crisis. The bailout should, instead, focus on defrauded homeowners and real assets, not fictitious capital and its unscrupulous owners.
Instead of trying to salvage a mountain of soured assets and prop up bankrupt institutions, the government should allow for a market cleansing, or destruction, of such worthless assets by purchasing the threatened mortgages not at their inflated face value but at the current, depreciated, or market value—as the FDR government did in response the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This alternative, homeowner-based solution would have a number of advantages. First, and foremost, it would help citizens facing the specter of homelessness stay in their homes by allowing them to pay affordable mortgage installments based on reduced or realistic home prices.
By the same token, this solution would also allow the government to gradually recover the market-based home prices it would be paying the troubled commercial mortgage holders. Obviously, this means that, instead of the predatory banks and similar financial institutions, the government would now be the title holder of the rescued homes; of course, until such homes are paid for, upon which time the homeowners would take the possession of their home titles.
By cleansing the market of the dead-weight of tons of junk assets, and allowing threatened homeowners to pay affordable mortgage installments, this bottom-up solution would also help restore faith and trust in the financial system, and in the lending and borrowing mechanism—thereby also mitigating the liquidity crisis.
Furthermore, by bailing out homeowners (and real assets) instead of Wall Street gambler, the government would need only a fraction of the money needed to pay for the huge bubble of the junk assets that have ballooned on top of a much narrower base of real assets. Compared with the scandalous Paulson/Bernanke bailout scheme, this means that the government would end up with enough excess money to invest on a long-term, robust stimulus plan a la the New Deal of the 1930s.
And this brings us to the discussion of the fourth major problem of the Paulson/Bernanke bailout scam: lack of any economic stimulus plan, which is badly needed for economic revival. While government substitution for predatory lenders and the resulting institution of realistic or devalued mortgage installments will certainly lighten the financial burdens of the economically-pressed, it will not relieve them from the need to earn an income and make a decent living. Nor would it (by itself) provide the badly needed purchasing power or necessary demand to stimulate the economy.
To achieve such broader socio-economic objectives requires no less than duplicating (and perhaps even going beyond) FDR’s New Deal reform package that proved critical in ending the Great Depression of the 1930s. A comprehensive long-term public investment in both social and physical infrastructure (health, education, roads, bridges, levees, schools, green energy, etc.) is bound to create jobs, inject purchasing power and liquidity into the economy, and revive production and expansion.
Of course, such an urgently needed comprehensive investment in the future of our society requires extensive public financing, which, in turn, requires a careful and socially-responsible fiscal policy. And this brings us to the fifth major problem of the Paulson/Bernanke bail out scheme: absence of any mention, let alone change, of our warped or lop-sided fiscal policies and priorities.
The sad and sick status of our public finance (the rising budget deficits, the soaring national debt, the curtailment of crucially important social spending, and the resulting neglect of both social and physical infrastructure) is a direct consequence of our warped fiscal policies that give priority to the interests of the super rich at the expense of everybody else. It is a direct result of the looting of our public money through a combination of (a) huge “supply-side” tax cuts for the wealthy, and (b) drastic increases in the share of military spending at the expense of non-military public spending.
In a real sense, even the current financial meltdown is a logical outcome of an economic philosophy that promotes extreme social inequality. Contrary to “expert” punditry and popular perceptions, it is not simply due to personal greed; more importantly, it is the result of a systemic failure, or the outcome of the diverging and conflicting class interests.
Progressive taxation, social spending, New Deal reforms, and the War on Poverty were designed not only to protect the poor and working people against the woes and vagaries of market mechanism, but also to save capitalism from itself. Instead of viewing public spending on social safety net programs as long-term investment in the future of the nation, trickle-down economic philosophy views such expenditures as overheads that need to be cut as much as possible.
To this effect, proponents of this philosophy have since the early 1980s been working very hard to cut taxes for the wealthy, to cut non-military public spending, and to reverse most of the social safety net programs that were put in place by FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s War on Poverty.
Not surprisingly, the result has been an extreme concentration of national riches and resources in fewer and fewer hands, side-by-side with a steady deterioration of the living conditions of the overwhelming majority of our citizens. Unable to make ends meet, most of our citizens exceedingly resorted to borrowing.
Predatory lenders proved to be both creative and merciless in taking advantage of the economically vulnerable, or the legitimate aspirations and dreams of homeownership. Unfettered by the irresponsible government deregulation policies, these rapacious lenders pushed loans, engaged in deceitful or fraudulent lending practices, and unscrupulously invented many shady financial instruments that resulted in the accumulation of massive amounts of fictitious assets that proved unviable, and eventually collapsed under their own dead weight.
Unless the lopsided national priorities and perverse fiscal policies, known as trickle down or neoliberal economics, which began under Ronald Reagan, are somewhat rectified or mitigated, and the resulting financial resources are invested through a broad and carefully-crafted plan of social and economic recovery, no bailout plan of the plutocrats, by the plutocrats, for the plutocrats can succeed in reversing the current cycle of economic decline.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.
The Russo-German Plan to Dismantle NATO
October 16, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com
Growing cooperation between Moscow and Berlin is undermining the influence and credibility of arguably the most important security organization in modern history.
Brad Macdonald
Within days of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in early August, our editor in chief, Gerald Flurry, told students at Herbert W. Armstrong College that he believed Moscow had struck a deal with Germany over Georgia before it attacked. After delivering that message to the students, Mr. Flurry wrote in the October issue of the Trumpet, “I believe Germany may well have been complicit in Russia’s plan to attack Georgia!”
That analysis was bold and unique. At the time, there were no media reports suggesting behind-the-scenes dealings between Moscow and Berlin. Since then, however, a pile of evidence has emerged (read this, for example) pointing to a growing cooperation between Russia and Germany.
Some of the strongest evidence of a growing Russo-German partnership came earlier this month. On October 2, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in St. Petersburg. Among other topics, the two leaders discussed Germany’s position on nato, particularly the American-led efforts to welcome Ukraine and Georgia into the ailing organization. Speaking at a press conference after the meetings, Chancellor Merkel left little doubt as to where Germany’s allegiance lies. She told reporters that the German government patently objects to nato membership for both counties—and even opposes placing either Georgia or Ukraine on the path to membership.
This announcement was not insignificant, for nato or for America. Since nato operates on consensus, and any member nation can effectively block potential candidates from membership, Merkel’s rejection severely undermines nato plans to expand. It also undermines America’s geopolitical strength, which is often manifested through that organization.
But Germany and Russia’s crafty assault on nato and America didn’t end there. During the meetings, the topic most intensely discussed was the idea of a “new collective security agreement between Europe and Russia, dubbed Helsinki ii” (Stratfor, October 2). That’s important: Europe’s largest and most influential nation is not only backing Kremlin efforts to undermine the premier Western security alliance, it is actively seeking to form a new strategic alliance with the Russians!
The new geopolitical reality is that Germany fears Russia more than it fears the United States!
The timing of a Helsinki ii agreement is beyond coincidental. Stratfor continued (emphasis mine throughout):
The so-called Helsinki ii pact would echo the Helsinki agreement in 1975 that entailed closer relations between Europe and the Soviet Union. The agreement emerged at a time when the United States appeared weak after being tied down in Vietnam, and European politicians were experimenting with ‘ostpolitic,’ a tactic of seeking rapport with the Soviets.
As was the case with the first Helskinki agreement, America’s geopolitical impotence lies at the foundation of Germany (and eventually European) efforts to form a new strategic partnership with Russia!
Germany’s decision to reject American interests and side with Russia on the nato issue is of “great significance,” wrote Stratfor founder George Friedman last week. Merkel, remember, is the most pro-American politician in Germany and the most pro-American German chancellor in nearly 20 years. Moreover, as Friedman noted, as an East German she has an inherent unease about Russia. Yet, despite all this, she still chose Russia over the United States.
Why?
The first reason is simple. Germany relies heavily on Russian energy, and with the cold months approaching, it would be foolish to irritate a key energy supplier.
But there was more to Germany’s decision than gas. Friedman observed, “Germany views the U.S. obsession with nato expansion as simply not in Germany’s interests.” He continued:
First, expanding nato guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia is meaningless. nato and the United States don’t have the military means to protect Ukraine or Georgia, and incorporating them into the alliance would not increase European security. From a military standpoint, nato membership for the two former Soviet republics is an empty gesture, while from a political standpoint, Berlin sees it as designed to irritate the Russians for no clear purpose.
Next, were nato prepared to protect Ukraine and Georgia, all nato countries including Germany would be forced to increase defense expenditures substantially. This is not something that Germany and the rest of nato want to do.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Germany spent 1945 to 1992 being the potential prime battleground of the Cold War. It spent 1992 to 2008 not being the potential prime battleground. Germany prefers the latter, and it does not intend to be drawn into a new Cold War under any circumstances. This has profound implications for the future of both nato and U.S.-German relations.
What does all this mean?
It means Germany is in the midst of a “strategic crisis in which it must make some fundamental decisions.” The Germans are right now deciding their future. Should they remain an ally of the U.S.? This would mean maintaining their support for America’s foreign-policy objectives, which include expanding nato and increasing the alliance’s military presence on Russia’s doorstep—a move that would assuredly infuriate the Russians.
Germany’s other option is to realign itself with the newly resurgent Moscow. This option is infinitely more appealing right now, because while upsetting America is not ideal, it comes with far fewer risks than upsetting the feisty behemoth next door.
Friedman continued,
If Germany were to join those who call for nato expansion, the first step toward a confrontation with Russia would have been taken. The second step would be guaranteeing the security of the Baltics and Poland. America would make the speeches, and Germans would man the line. After spending most of the last century fighting or preparing to fight the Russians, the Germans looked around at the condition of their allies and opted out.
The Germans saw what happened in Georgia in September. They know that Russia is in the mood for confrontation. They recognize that now is a time to cajole the Kremlin, not confront it. And they know that any benefit that might come from maintaining support of America will be far outweighed by the repercussions that would come from annoying the Russians.
“Everything in German history has led to this moment,” Friedman concluded. “The country is united and wants to be secure. It will not play the role it was forced into during the Cold War, nor will it play geopolitical poker as it did in the First and Second World Wars. And that means nato is permanently and profoundly broken.”
Think about that. This respected analyst recognizes that a growing Russian-Germany relationships signifies that nato—arguably the defining security organization in modern history, and a key geopolitical instrument of the United States—is now permanently and profoundly broken.
For years the Trumpet has forecast the demise of nato as an influential American-led organization. When Russia invaded Georgia on September 8, nato’s demise drew nearer. Since then, the steady flow of evidence pointing toward an improving Russo-German relationship, which is largely founded on an anti-nato platform, indicates that nato’s demise is inevitable.
Russia and Germany are cunningly undermining and systematically dismantling nato!
The demise of this American-led security alliance, the rise of a resurgent Russia, the newly forming European superpower, and the imminent emergence of a new Russo-German pact all are evidence that a major shifting of geopolitical tectonic plates is currently underway. The Trumpet stands by its warnings of recent weeks: Watch Russia and Germany closely!
History shows that the formation of a strategic pact between Russia and Germany—which these two nations are forming right now—is a precursor to war!
For more information, read Mr. Flurry’s article “Russia’s Attack Signals Dangerous New Era.”
By Stanislav Mishin
October 10, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- The American way of life is dead and like a beheaded corpse, still stumbling around, it has yet to come to that realization that should be obvious to anyone.
The American way of life, a system unsustainable by any stretch of the imagination, was facilitated on two facts: cheap gas and a valuable currency, the currency then morphing into cheap credit.
Since the US signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to value oil only in US dollar, something that happened in 1948, the US dollar has been a powerful currency, quickly rising to the level of the world reserve currency. As soon as all nations needed the dollar to purchase oil, there seemed to be no end as to how many dollars could be printed and what first the US government and than the ever down sized taxpayer, could afford...just add the cheap credit.
Godless consumerism never really took off the way it did until Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1973. From then to now, there was no stopping it. Add to this, the cheap gas, partially guaranteed by that God forsaken deal between America and the worst of the worst of the Islamic jihadists, and the far flung suburban life style, with houses packed full of cheap priced and even cheaper quality Chinese goods, was born.
Of course, anyone with half an understanding of reality and economics knew it could not go on forever and so it has come to an end. However, the elite oligarchies of America, must be congratulated that they were able to keep it going for so long. Of course the estimated $500 Billion in plundered Russian wealth, from the early and mid 1990s, sure did help.
However, the era of the dollar is over and with it US power. The dollar has been in a steady free fall for the better of the past 6 years, faster than the steady decline of the preceding 30 years. How is it, that with a prolonged war, costing close to $1 trillion, no new taxes have been raised? Well, that's what printing presses are for and why since 2004, the Fed has stopped issuing the M3 report.
Due partially to this dieing dollar, the falling US power that has stopped being able to pressure Arabs into pumping more, increase in demand world wide and the resurgence of Russian industry drinking up their own oil, the price of oil has skyrocketed. It sure does not hurt that the US idiocy of having cake and eating too is still fully in the swing: that would be the plan to be foreign oil independent while not drilling your own oil or to build nuclear power plants.
The era of big spending, large houses, long commutes and giant SUVs and trucks are over. Sure, the contraction back into tightly packed cities and small modest houses, budgeted spending and compact cars will not come over night and it is equally sure that the indebted and breaking US consumer will fight it every step of the way, but it is over.
The first thing to already go is the big trucks and SUVs. Sure there are plenty still on the roads, but sales of new ones are falling fast, actually collapsing out right would be a more proper term. Next, considering the absolute lack of public transportation in most US urban and suburban areas and for that matter the very city centers, next will come the car pooling fad, as smaller cars still eat gas, a commodity still climbing in price.
Sooner or later this will reach a tipping point as well, where even car pooling will no longer work, as incomes will never keep up with inflation. Incomes will further degrade as the cycle of cut backs by suppliers followed by cut backs and layoffs by businesses continues. Fewer hours and less real pay will make the expense of far flung large yards, expensive to heat and cool large houses and high gasoline bills, seem rather infuriating and pointless to support.
A final hit upon the suburbanite will be the high increase in the cost of goods around him. Since rail head are limited and diesel is sailing far ahead of gasoline, the best prices on goods will be those around the inner city, closest to the rail heads. Goods that have to be trucked out to the various far flung stores will bare the price of the fuel that delivers them. Many stores will close driving not only jobs away from the suburbs but also the ability to live comfortably.
As more and more suburbanites return to live in the city, the property they sell will have massive downward pressure on their neighbors' property values. This in turn will force more of their neighbors to equally move out. Would be farmers should take note, perfectly good farm land will be rather cheap to come by...just have to burn off the ply wood massive shacks on it.
Crime will also initially sky rocket, especially in the far flung neighborhoods. The satellite cities that grew up around the big cities will be hardest hit and many will bankrupt as their tax base continues to erode. With bankruptcy will come cut backs in services, to include the police force. Gun rights advocates should take heart as more and more Americans will quickly come to depend on self protection for their sole source of protection.
Large quantities of second hand goods will also come on the market, as people move away from large stuffed houses in the suburbs to smaller, some times much smaller, apartments and houses in the cities. Craig's List, Ebay and garage sale hunters will greatly benefit, at least in the short term.
But there will be massive problems in the cities. Over crowding is the most obvious one. But with little industry, little money and only the service economy to rely on, the cities will be poor, angry and dangerous, as well as over crowded. The country side will become once again lonely and manageable and small towns and villages a lot more inviting. A return to America cira 1920s is more likely.
Illegal aliens take note: not only will American workers compete more directly with you over jobs than any time in the past 50 years, but they will fully view you, and correctly to boot, as the usurpers you are of their livelihood. Illegals' lives are going to get very dangerous and violent.
Tourism will of course suffer, so all those far flung, well developed tourist hot spots, that also happen to be in hurricane paths, will become lonely and decayed. It will become harder and harder for the government to pay for their almost annual rebuilding or even to justify it. Nature will be a big winner in all this.
But one final issue must be faced, the one issue that could easily launch those over packed cities into full scale revolt: veterans. Yes, with bankruptcy of the great big world wide empire, some one million well trained and often enough, well armed, veterans will be returning to the cities where their chances of jobs are slim at best. If they take arms, things in the America of the 2010s will be rather interesting and lively indeed.
Stanislav Mishin
© 1999-2006. PRAVDA.Ru
Russia Strikes, and Wins—Again!
January 22, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com
Last fall, Russia brokered a deal with Germany that darkened the Kremlin’s shadow over Georgia. Last week, a similar deal was done over Ukraine.
Brad Macdonald
Last August, when Russia invaded the tiny nation of Georgia, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “Russia’s attack on Georgia … marks the beginning of a dangerous new era in history” (emphasis mine throughout).
Dr. George Friedman from Stratfor said this about it: “The war in Georgia … is Russia’s public return to great-power status.”
Securing Georgia within the Russian sphere of influence could be considered stage one of Putin’s plan to shore up its periphery, and return Russia to “great-power status.” And it was largely successful, thanks in no small part to the complicity of Germany! If you haven’t already, I urge you to read “Russia’s Attack Signals Dangerous New Era.”
For a short while, the Georgia invasion dominated global headlines. A handful of astute analysts captured the magnitude of the event and how it demonstrated the confidence and dark ambition of the Kremlin. Then the financial crisis of September 2008 struck, and Russia’s history-altering actions began to be neglected in the media. With world leaders and journalists focused on economic crises, pressure on Vladimir Putin subsided, and the former kgb operative was left alone to concoct stage two of his grand strategy to forge Russia into a global power!
Last October, Mr. Flurry anticipated what stage two might be: “Will a crisis occur over Ukraine? That area is the breadbasket of Russia, and surely it is willing to wage war over that as well.”
He got even more specific. “Russia has Germany—and all of Europe—over a barrel. Cutting off part of the flow of gas to a country would wreak havoc on the economy!” he said, implying that a gas crisis with Europe might well be used to carry out stage two of Putin’s plan: to wrest Ukraine from Europe, and augment Russian power.
He was right!
Two months later, on January 1, Putin restricted the flow of natural gas into Ukraine. At first, European countries—their supply lines and tanks at full capacity—didn’t appear overly worried. Many thought it would be a short-lived spat between Kiev and the Kremlin. Four days, two massive supply cuts and one low-pressure system later, the heart rates of Europeans began to rise, quickly, as they realized Russia was precipitating a major energy crisis—again.
Tensions soared. Like the homes of millions of Europeans, relations between Russia and Europe chilled, fast. For nearly three weeks, diplomats and politicians scurried furiously. The Kremlin argued that its beef was with Ukraine, not Europe. That was diplomatic drivel. Moscow was well aware that the EU imports 25 percent of its gas from Russia, 80 percent of which flows through pipelines dissecting Ukraine. Like it did with Georgia, Russia was punishing Kiev, knowing full well the pain would resonate across Europe.
Many claimed the spat was about money. It wasn’t. Ultimately, it was about Ukraine!
“Ukraine hems in the south of European Russia so thoroughly that any hostile power controlling Kiev could easily threaten a variety of core Russian interests, including Moscow itself,” Stratfor analyst Peter Zeihan explained (January 13).
Ukraine also pushes far enough east that a hostile Kiev would sever most existing infrastructure connections to the Caucasus. Simply put, a Ukraine outside the Russian sphere of influence transforms Russia into a purely defensive power, one with little hope of resisting pressure from anywhere. But a Russified Ukraine makes it possible for Russia to project power outward, and to become a major regional—and potentially global—player.
Russia sees the creation of a government in Ukraine that empathizes with Moscow and is not a proxy of Europe or America as a national security necessity—and a fundamental need in its grand strategy to become a dominant international power.
Last August, Putin sent tanks into Georgia as a means of telling Tbilisi, Europe and America that Georgia belonged to Russia. In January, he stopped sending gas to Europe via Ukraine, this time telling Kiev–-and all of Europe—that Ukraine belongs to Russia!
Unsurprisingly, as the gas crisis intensified it became more evident that the solution would undoubtedly run through Berlin. By last Saturday, January 17, nearly three weeks after it began, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had reached a preliminary agreement to restore gas supplies to Ukraine and Europe. Less than 48 hours later, a formal agreement had been signed, and the lights and heat were back on in Europe.
The reconciliation was surprisingly sudden. A myriad of discussions had occurred between every shade of politician and diplomat from Europe, Ukraine and Russia in the 17 days preceding that meeting. They had all failed—until January 17.
So what changed?
Notice what Stratfor reported that weekend (January 19):
Two very telling details about [this deal] reveal the future of Ukraine and Russia’s relations with each other, and with Europe. First, as we noted while following the negotiations, this energy crisis was never about the big public summits involving the Russian and Ukrainian leaders and the EU, but the behind-the-scenes deals being struck by the real power brokers: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
All the wheeling and dealing between Russia and the EU and Russia and the host of European countries it met with simply didn’t matter. The solution to the crisis was forged in behind-the-scenes deals between Russia and Germany!
The date of the meetings that clinched the deal won’t be lost on regular Trumpet readers. “On January 16, Putin [met] with Merkel and then returned to Moscow where he met with Tymoshenko—with a deal struck soon after” (ibid.). The solution was hatched in Berlin on January 16—in private meetings between leaders from Russia and Germany—and then basically imposed on Ukraine the next day, January 17, in Moscow!
Why did Germany get traction with the Russians? Because, as Stratfor continued, “they are the only ones who really understand and are willing to commit to what needed to be done in order to get the natural gas flowing again: return Ukraine to the Russian fold.” Is it possible Germany might have known the solution to the crisis lay in conceding Ukraine to Russia because it had already discussed the idea, perhaps during the secret meetings it had had months earlier with the Kremlin over Georgia?
Between the hoopla surrounding the inauguration of Barack Obama and the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was being discussed on the same day, the January 16 meeting between Russia and Germany was largely neglected by the media. But time will likely prove Jan. 16, 2009, a significant date in the Russo-European relationship. That was the date Germany—in a deal akin to its deal with the Kremlin over Georgia a few months earlier—struck a deal with Russia that will ultimately see Ukraine return to the Russian fold!
As was the case with Georgia, don’t be surprised if Ukraine’s relationship with many European states begins to chill. The rest of Europe must now decide if it wants to follow Germany and release Ukraine to the Russians in return for lights and heat—or, oppose Germany, upset Russia, and stand in the dark and cold with Kiev. From a practical standpoint, that’s not a difficult decision.
In the very least, Ukraine’s quest to become a member of nato, and more integrated with Europe and the European Union, is dead. Don’t be surprised if, over the next few months, Kiev—adjusting to life without the backing of Europe—accepts the inevitable and assumes a more pro-Russian stance. Perhaps the pro-Western government of Viktor Yushchenko will soon be replaced by a pro-Russian regime.
History shows that momentous events are often the result of a series of seemingly innocuous decisions, announcements or agreements. Witness World War ii. For years before Hitler’s Nazi death machine finally struck, the ambitious German chancellor made decisions and announcements that seemed benign to most leaders of the time, but proved to be otherwise.
Germany also formed seemingly innocuous relationships such as that with Russia, which, geographically, revolved largely around the vast, undulating plains that separate Moscow and Berlin—plains that today, at least partially, comprise the nation of Ukraine. •
Obama Goes Ahead With Missile Defense Shield Despite Disarmament Pledge
The United States would continue to develop a missile defence shield until Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama said in the Czech Republic.
by Toby Harnden and Bruno Waterfield
"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven," he told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle.
Members of the "Humanist Movement" demonstrate in Wenceslaw's square in Prague against a planned US anti-missile radar station. US President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear-free world builds on solidifying support at home and abroad amid what experts fear is the rising risk of an atomic weapons attack.
(AFP/Joe Klamar)"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies."
He hailed the "courageous" Czech Republic and Poland for "agreeing to host a defence against these missiles". Russia is strongly opposed to radar stations for a missile defence shield being established in countries that it still regarded as within its sphere of influence.
But Mr Obama also spoke of the potential for a rapprochement with Iran that would remove the need for such a system.
"If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed."
Tehran, he said, had a choice. "We want Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically. We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That is a path that the Islamic Republic can take."
The centrepiece of Mr Obama's speech was a declaration that because the United States had dropped two atom bombs on Japan in 1945 it had a "moral responsibility" to work towards securing "a world without nuclear weapons".
He said nuclear weapons were the "most dangerous legacy of the Cold War" and the risk of a nuclear attack had never been greater because "terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one".
The crowd enthusiastically cheered the more idealistic parts of Mr Obama's speech but was relatively subdued when he spoke about his backing for missile defence.
Petr Sramek, 33, was among those disappointed that Mr Obama had not dropped a policy that was opposed by more than two thirds of Czechs.
"I really liked the clear message on nuclear disarmament but I am against the missile defence system. It is more about geopolitical influence then defence against missiles."
Arena Protivinska, 30, described herself as a "big fan" of Mr Obama but accused him of "hypocrisy" for urging world peace while also pushing forward with the missile shield.
"He sounded like George W Bush saying that we should be afraid in order to justify missile defence."
Speaking in a city chosen for the symbolism of its peaceful toppling of communism through the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Mr Obama denounced "fatalism" over nuclear proliferation and said he would lead a global effort to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.
"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act," he said. "We cannot succeed in this endeavour alone, but we can lead it.
"So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment and desire to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."
Mr Obama called for a reduction of the role of nuclear weapons in American national security strategy. He wanted to negotiate a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia - to which Moscow agreed in principle last week - and was seeking a treaty to end the production of fissile materials used in nuclear weapons.
He also announced that the US would host a global summit on nuclear security next year and that he would work to ratify the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1999 but rejected by the US Senate.
He strongly condemned North Korea over its rocket launch, which came hours before his speech. He said Pyongyang had to be called to account. "This provocation underscores the need for action, not just at the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons," he said. "Rules must be binding, violations must be punished, words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."
Mr Obama's reference to the atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as 220,000, was part of his effort to rebuild bridges with the world by promising, as he said in Strasbourg, "to listen to learn and to learn" and to acknowledge American failings.
Gary Samore, a White House adviser on arms control, indicated that Mr Obama's call for ridding the world of nuclear weapons should not be taken too literally. "In terms of a nuclear-free world, we recognise this is not a near-term possibility," he said. Rather, the call was an attempt to "seize the moral high ground" in order to increase pressure on countries such as North Korea and Iran.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009
Published on Thursday, April 9, 2009 by RebelReports
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up to Obama's Bloated Military Budget and $75 Billion More in War Spending?
Obama wants billions more for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars on top of a US military budget that already surpasses Bush-era spending by $21 billion. Where is the resistance?
by Jeremy Scahill
Much of the media attention this week on President Obama's new military budget has put forward a false narrative wherein Obama is somehow taking his socialist/pacifist sledgehammer to the Pentagon's war machine and blasting it to smithereens. Republicans have charged that Obama is endangering the country's security, while the Democratic leadership has hailed it as the dawn of a new era in responsible spending priorities. Part of this narrative portrays Defense Secretary Robert Gates as standing up to the war industry, particularly military contractors.
The reality is that all of this is false.
Here is an undeniable fact: Obama is substantially increasing US military spending, by at least $21 billion from Bush-era levels, including a significant ratcheting up of Afghanistan war spending, as well as more money for unmanned attack drones, which are increasingly being used in attacks on Pakistan. (David Swanson over at AfterDowningStreet.org does a great job of breaking down some of the media coverage of this issue across the political spectrum).
Obama's budget of $534 billion to the Department of Defense "represents roughly a 4-percent increase over the $513 billion allocated to the Pentagon in FY2009 under the Bush administration, and $6.7 billion more than the outgoing administration's projections for FY 2010," bragged Lawrence Korb, author of the Center for American Progress' report supporting Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan, in an article called, " Obama's Defense Budget Is on Target."
Obama and his neoliberal think tankers clearly didn't think much of Rep. Barney Frank's call earlier this year to cut military spending by 25% to pay for urgently needed social programs and economic aid to struggling Americans. "To accomplish his goals of expanding health care and other important quality of life services without ballooning the deficit," Frank said, Obama needed to reduce military spending. "If we do not get military spending under control, we will not be able to respond to important domestic needs." Well, not only is overall military spending on the rise, but Obama is about to ask for billions more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a "supplemental" spending bill, the type which were staples in Bush's campaign to mask of the full military budget and total cost of the wars. Obama could seek the funding as early as Thursday.
Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that we may actually see some spine coming from Congress in standing up to Obama's request for this additional $75.5 billion in war funds. The WSJ characterized the situation as one of "raising tensions" between Obama and some lawmakers opposed to the wars. It should be noted off-the-bat that the Congresspeople speaking out are, predictably, members of the usual suspects club and the Democratic leadership is probably at this moment sharing cocktails in the backroom with McCain and McConnell, but, nonetheless, it is worth examining what is being said:
"I can't imagine any way I'd vote for it," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and leader in the 77-member congressional Progressive Caucus. It would be her first major break with this White House.
Ms. Woolsey fears the president's plan for Iraq would leave behind a big occupation force. She is also concerned about the planned escalation in Afghanistan. "I don't think we should be going there," she said.
Similar sentiments echo across the House. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said he fears Afghanistan could become a quagmire. "I just have this sinking feeling that we're getting deeper and deeper into a war that has no end," he said.
Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) dismissed Mr. Obama's plans as "embarrassingly naive," and suggested that the president is being led astray by those around him. "He's the smartest man in American politics today," Rep. Conyers said. "But he occasionally gets bad advice and makes mistakes. This is one of those instances."
Obama has vowed to break with the Bush-era tradition of seeking such supplementals to fund the war, saying that beginning in 2010 he will fund the wars as part of his overall budget. The anti-war caucus of Democrats is unlikely to have enough votes to block it given the increasingly overt pro-war nature of the Democratic leadership. And, as the WSJ notes, the funding bills are likely to pass "since many Republicans will support them."
An interesting point nestled half-way through the WSJ piece illustrates a point some antiwar activists have been making since Obama's election-he is likely to win increased support from Democratic lawmakers for wars they may not have supported when Bush was in power:
The president argues that Afghanistan has been neglected, allowing al Qaeda to regroup and exposing the U.S. to new dangers.
Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.) suggests Democrats may be less inclined to joust with the current White House on the issue than they were with former President George W. Bush. "We have somebody that Democrats feel will level with them," said Mr. Larson, the House's fourth-ranking Democrat.
This truly is one of the most important trends to watch with the Obama presidency, particularly as it relates to war policy. Obama is in a position to greatly advance the interests of empire, precisely because he is able to build much wider support for policies that are essentially a continuation of those implemented by Bush.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Obama Risks Liberal Backlash on War Funding
by Greg Hitt
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to request new funding from Congress for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he risks a backlash from antiwar lawmakers.
Mr. Obama is expected to seek congressional approval of $75.5 billion for the wars, perhaps as soon as Thursday. The issue is already raising tensions on Capitol Hill, especially among liberals who are sympathetic to the president's broader agenda but voice concerns about his timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his plans to beef up forces in Afghanistan.
"I can't imagine any way I'd vote for it," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and leader in the 77-member congressional Progressive Caucus. It would be her first major break with this White House.
Ms. Woolsey fears the president's plan for Iraq would leave behind a big occupation force. She is also concerned about the planned escalation in Afghanistan. "I don't think we should be going there," she said.
Similar sentiments echo across the House. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said he fears Afghanistan could become a quagmire. "I just have this sinking feeling that we're getting deeper and deeper into a war that has no end," he said.
Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) dismissed Mr. Obama's plans as "embarrassingly naive," and suggested that the president is being led astray by those around him. "He's the smartest man in American politics today," Rep. Conyers said. "But he occasionally gets bad advice and makes mistakes. This is one of those instances."
The supplemental-spending request is intended to provide funding for the wars through the balance of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, and into the early weeks of fiscal 2010. Beginning in fiscal 2010, Mr. Obama intends for the wars to be funded as part of the regular Pentagon budget. That is a change from the Bush White House, which annually sought war funding outside the regular military budget.
The bill is likely to run into political turbulence from more conservative Democrats as well. Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha -- chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense -- has said he will look to add several billion dollars to the bill to boost spending on equipment.
The emerging rifts present a new political challenge for Mr. Obama. As a senator, he voted against Iraq war funding bills. In his campaign for the White House, he criticized rivals Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and John McCain in the general election for their hawkishness on the issue.
As commander in chief, Mr. Obama made a surprise visit to Baghdad this week and praised the U.S. military's accomplishments, including the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the reduction of violence. Now he is responsible for keeping the efforts funded.
Democratic opposition isn't likely to block the bills, since many Republicans will support them -- if the White House can keep the legislation free of measures imposing stringent conditions on commanders in the field, and doesn't allow unrelated spending to be tacked on.
"Everyone wants to make sure our troops in the field have the resources they need," said Michael Steele, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio). "If the Democratic leadership in the House puts together a package that does just that, they can expect Republican support."
The danger for Mr. Obama is that a chorus of criticism could stir new public unease with the U.S.-led wars. A public backlash could be particularly problematic for Afghanistan. Mr. Obama's strategy envisions that the U.S. military could be engaged there for years to come.
"The president certainly has a case to make," said Rep. John Tanner, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee who supports the White House.
Mr. Obama has announced plans to draw down U.S. forces in Iraq. Many of the 140,000 troops now stationed there would exit by the summer of 2010. About 50,000 would be left behind and drawn down further the following year.
[adding up]
U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, meanwhile, would grow by more than 20,000, on top of the 38,000 already on the ground. The president argues that Afghanistan has been neglected, allowing al Qaeda to regroup and exposing the U.S. to new dangers.
Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.) suggests Democrats may be less inclined to joust with the current White House on the issue than they were with former President George W. Bush. "We have somebody that Democrats feel will level with them," said Mr. Larson, the House's fourth-ranking Democrat. But he says the debate will come down to whether Mr. Obama can point to a way out of Afghanistan. "It's more about the exit strategy," he said.
The administration has begun trying to build support on Capitol Hill. Last week, a team of top Obama advisers, including Bruce Riedel, who is leading a review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, conducted a briefing for members of both parties.
"We look forward to working with Congress to give our men and women in uniform what they need this year to do the hard work we are asking of them in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the White House budget office.
But some members of Mr. Obama's party aren't planning to cooperate. Rep. Woolsey and two other congresswomen recently urged the president to set a clear timetable for redeployment of troops from Afghanistan and to reopen the congressional debate over what the U.S. role there should be.
"A clear authorization of the use of military force must be established," Ms. Woolsey wrote, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, both California Democrats.
Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
This presentation appears in the April 24, 2009 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
LAROUCHE: THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOCKED
An Opportunity To Bring This Planet
Out of the Crisis
Here are Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a luncheon meeting of notables in Washington, D.C., April 15, 2009.
This past Saturday, I delivered an international webcast, which some of you may know something about, and some may not, which had three segments which I addressed. First, were some opening remarks which have sent shock waves through the present administration in Washington, the Presidential Administration. The President himself was shocked, according to his representative, by what I said. But it was necessary for me to say it.
We're in a period, in which the role of the United States is absolutely crucial, in the possibility of a recovery from what is not a depression, but is a global economic breakdown crisis. There has been nothing like this in European history since the Middle Ages, since the so-called Dark Age of the 14th Century. This is not a depression. This is a total breakdown crisis.
Now, such crises can be corrected, which is what I'm concerned about, and they're corrected by a reorganization of the economic system, by actions among nation-states, to reorganize their relationships in order to organize a recovery, and in order to staunch the flood of breakdown in process.
Unfortunately, the President's economic policies, as influenced by various people who are presently in control of his policies, are an absolute disaster. It's a disaster not only for the United States; it's a disaster for the planet. Because there can be, because of the role of the dollar—it's not a reserve currency in the old sense that it was before 1968-73, but the dollar-denominated debt in the world is the largest factor. And therefore, the ability to recover from this world depression, and to reorganize and restart international trade, depends upon a reorganization of the role of the dollar, which means ending the world monetary system in its present form, and going to an international credit system, under which a fixed-exchange-rate system among nation-states, will be the basis for turning the dollar—which is now almost a waste product—turning it back into something which is of value for the world as a whole.
And the President presently has no grasp of it.
Otherwise, the good side is, that with a few exceptions, whom I would like to throw out the window, most of the cabinet and related people that have been brought in with this Administration, are competent and capable people. Whether I agree with a lot of everything or not, is irrelevant. They are competent, and left to their own, and with the right guidance, they would be a good instrument in international relations, and otherwise, for getting the world organized to get out of what is otherwise, a general breakdown crisis.
That's where we stand.
Saying What No One Else Will Say
Now, what I did on Saturday—I said things that nobody else dare say. But they had to be said.
Now, you know, usually in diplomacy, diplomacy is called polite lies. Polite evasion of the subject. Maybe you whisper the truth to one another, in discreet circumstances, but you don't tell the truth publicly. Or very rarely. And often when you do that, it's in very angry tones. Unless people are very angry, they don't tell the truth.
But, we're in that kind of situation, in which the truth had to be said about the problem which is inside the present Obama Administration. So I said it, and I said it plainly. I said it personally. I didn't pull any punches. I was accurate, I was very careful to be accurate. Nothing I said was wrong, but what I said, for some people, was very offensive. But somebody had to say it. And I'm the kind of person who does, from time to time, do exactly that in international affairs. I do say what everybody else is afraid to say, because I know somebody has to say it.
And sometimes it works. Sometimes it succeeds in bringing about a better understanding. And I would hope, in this case—the President can not complain that I said anything about him that's untruthful! Everything I said about the President is absolutely truthful. And I can swear by it, and God himself will approve of what I said. There's no doubt about that. But it had to be said, and he's very angry about it right now.
But we could not go on the way we were going, when he made that trip to London, and sold out, in my view, sold out the United States, and sold out the world, by the agreement reached in London, and therefore we have to get back the United States' true interest, after eight years of Bush, and now, this recent catastrophe of some of the people around the President, who are presently controlling his economic policy, which, frankly, is a disaster.
Now, since it is a disaster, and I know it's a disaster, and I know it's going to come on as a worse disaster, I don't think this present economic policy of the United States will survive very long. I think the breakdown crisis is coming on fast, and this present policy will be scrapped. And we will be forced to go back to a new policy. And for that purpose, we have, in the Administration, in the cabinet and people around the cabinet, we have a combination of people who are qualified, in my view, morally and intellectually qualified, to make the adjustment, make the change we need.
Because, what we have to do is, we have to take the dollar-denominated debt of the world—it's now not funded. It's lost its ability of negotiation. We have to turn that indebtedness, denominated in dollars, into an asset for long-term growth of trade and investment.
For example: What we need above all—we are now in a nuclear age. Some people are talking about a post-nuclear society, post-nuclear economy—that's nonsense. We could only sustain about 5 billion people on this planet without nuclear power. That is, nuclear power is not a matter of the number of calories you have; it's the amount of the energy flux density—that is, the number of calories per square centimeter of cross-section of flow. And you've got to the point now, that you can not deal with the problems of the planet, the physical economic problems of the planet can not be dealt with, without proliferation of nuclear power, nuclear fission power, and things beyond that, things comparable to that.
So, the idea of going to windmills, the idea of going to this kind of thing, solar energy, all this sort of stuff, the "free energy," will not work. It's a disaster. And it would cause the greatest genocide the planet has ever seen if we were to go with such a policy. Only a high energy-flux-density policy can save the planet.
And you look at Africa, you look at the poor of China, you look at the poor of India, and this sort of thing throughout the world, you can not possibly sustain this world population in growth now, under present conditions, without a real boost in power, in power technology, in modern technology.
And also, this means largely increasing what we call the energy flux density, but also capital intensity. And we have to get more and more capital-intensive investment. Otherwise, we can not solve the problems of this planet, in terms of maintaining a population which is now 6.7 billion people. We can not sustain that without this change. And the population is going to grow, unless we have genocide. And therefore, we need this program of development.
Africa: Potential Breadbasket
One of the big emblems of this is Africa. Africa is essentially entirely, in fact, a British colony. It's an Anglo-American colony, but really it's a British colony. And there's no hope for Africa under these conditions. What we've seen recently in the confrontation with Zimbabwe, from London, and from London also, against Sudan, are examples of a growing threat against all of Africa, coming from the British Isles, or from that interest. And the United States has been long a collaborator with the British in supporting that policy, especially since the 1970s.
So therefore, we know we have to have a change in policy, which means, among other things, in view of the food requirements of the world: Africa is the largest area of potential increment in food supply, good food supply, for the world. The area is one populated largely by people who are farmers. They're not very skilled farmers, in the main, but that's not the problem. With the introduction of improved technologies, we can make these farmers more productive, because there will be less waste of their product.
They have diseases they have to fight against, all kinds of diseases, including crop diseases. They have no transportation systems. There's a study that was done recently in Europe, a photographic study of all of Africa. It was done at helicopter level, where they spotted every part of Africa, and shot it from helicopters, in regions. And if you look at that helicopter study, which I think a number of people have access to, if you see that, if you see how undeveloped Africa is, and then you take all these things into account, and you consider the raw materials that Africa has, which are undeveloped, for their African benefit; you consider the agricultural quality of the population; consider the problem of why they lose food supply—you see that Africa is one of the great areas for development on the planet as a whole.
And to do that job, there has to be a concerted effort, an agreement, among other continents of the planet, to assist Africa in acquiring the infrastructural development, which will enable the Africans to develop their country, even without a sudden surge in their technological capabilities, as individual persons.
And that's the kind of mission we have to go with. We have to go for much more nuclear power.
Take India. And you look at the problem there. India does not have a very large, high rate of export-dependency, as China does at this time. So India seems more stable. But you look inside India, you see the water supplies, the freshwater supplies, of India are being drained down, historically. You see that the conditions of life are deteriorating. They have 1.1 billion people, compared to China's 1.4 billion people, or so. And most of these populations are extremely poor. And the conditions of life are poor, and the natural conditions are degenerating. So, without investment and development, the large populations of many nations, are largely in danger.
We can fix that, with nuclear power, and other such means, in modern technology. But we have to make that turn, because we realize we're going toward 7.5 billion on this planet, at a very rapid rate, without genocide, and therefore, we have to work on a continental basis, and continental cooperation, with heavy emphasis on long-term capital improvement, physical capital improvements—in power, water, development, and these sorts of things.
We're also going—contrary to rumor—into a global cooling period. The planet as a whole is now going naturally into a period where, because of sunspot activity, and because of the long-term Ice Age activity—the planet's been in an Ice Age for about 2 million years. We have fluctuations in the Ice Age. Sometimes the ice builds up, sometimes it shrinks. These Ice Ages tend to go about 100,000 years each, something like that in a period. And you get a melting period in between, more or less. We're going into a global cooling period, both because the sunspot activity is down, which is about an 11-year cycle, so we have an 11-year cycle of cooling in progress because of sunspot activity. And we have, in the whole Solar System, we have another development, which is about a 100,000 year cycle.
So, we're headed for global cooling. Which means that areas which are now producing food, will tend to produce less food. And those areas which could produce more food, are now much more important for the future—provided we develop them.
So, we're in that kind of a period, in which we need imagination and good sense combined.
The United States Is Crucial
The United States is crucial, because of our constitutional structure. We don't have an oligarchical tradition in the United States, which you have in Europe, for example. That's what holds Europe back—too much oligarchy, and oligarchical tradition.
In the United States, we have a constitutional system which is the best in the world in terms of its utility. Unfortunately, we have a large mass of people in the United States who are rather powerful and influential, who do not represent that very well. Who are predatory characters. But if we react to this crisis by recognizing what the problem is that we face, and recognize that the present international monetary financial system can not survive—there is no way that you can reform the present international monetary system, and have people survive. You have to make a fundamental revolution, which can be made, simply by treaty agreements, and change the world system, from a monetary system, to a credit system.
If we change to a credit system, that is, using the agreements among sovereign nation-states—credit agreements, long-term credit agreements among sovereign nation-states—we can create a new kind of international economy, to replace the present British-dominated monetary system, which has been dominating for a long time.
That means, long-term credit, commitments for large-scale infrastructure development. Transportation, power, sanitation, and increasing of the conditions for productivity, to meet the standards required now.
So, on the one hand, we have a great opportunity, and the greatest crisis in modern European history exists. That's before us. We have the greatest follies of mankind, which have been contributed—especially in the course of the 20th Century. The 20th Century, with a few exceptions, has been a century of disasters, for the world as a whole. We're now coming out—we're now in the 21st Century. We have the opportunity, the force, scientifically and otherwise, if we agree, to recover, and to get to a growth pattern which meets the challenge for humanity throughout the planet.
But it's going to be tough, because the world is now dominated by a financier interest, radiated from London, organized from London, also represented by our Wall Street operation. This financier interest is determined not to allow its way of life, its way of rule, to be disturbed. They will fight as much as they can. They're now weakened by the fact that their system is collapsing. But what we have to do, is simply have agreements among sovereign nation-states, in a manner which is consistent with what happened in 1648 in Europe, with the Peace of Westphalia. A system of nations, each of which is sovereign, and which agree to support the interests of the other, as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia proposed.
Under those conditions, we have the knowledge, we have the opportunity, to bring this planet out of this crisis. And that's what I'm committed to. And I would hope that I can get Obama, President Obama, to change his ways, and understand that. But I had to scold him. I had to take the student into the classroom, back of the classroom, out into the woodshed, and talk to him, as an adult talks to a child who's behaving badly.
He can do the job. He's intelligent. There are a lot of things he doesn't know that he should know. But we do have, in the United States government, around the institution of the Presidency, we have people who are competent, who do understand, and if they're given the freedom to do what they must do, they will advise the President competently, and we can do what I've indicated we must do. And they're moving in that direction. They're thinking in that direction—they're good people. They're not perfect, but they're good people.
Published on Friday, April 24, 2009 by the Chicago Tribune
US to Release Photos Showing Alleged Abuses by American Personnel
by Peter Wallsten, Greg Miller and Julian Barnes
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At least 44 pictures will be released by May 28 -- making public for the first time images of what the military investigated as abuse that took place at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Defense Department officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East.
The photos, taken from military criminal investigations of abuse, are apparently not as shocking as the photographs from the Abu Ghraib investigation that became a lasting symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But some show military service members intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them. Military officers have been court martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.
"This will constitute visual proof that, unlike the Bush administration's claim, the abuse was not confined to Abu Ghraib and was not aberrational," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the agreement as part of a long-running legal battle for documents related to Bush-era anti-terror policies.
The photo release decision comes as President Barack Obama is already trying to quell a drive to investigate Bush-era anti-terror practices. But now the photos and a series of other possible disclosures stemming from the ACLU lawsuit threatens to fuel the already explosive controversy.
Additional disclosures to be considered in the coming weeks include transcripts of detainee interrogations by the CIA, a CIA inspector general's report that has been kept mostly secret, and background materials of a Justice Department internal investigation into prisoner abuse.
In each instance, Obama and his administration are being forced to decide whether to release material entirely, disclose it with redactions or follow the lead of the Bush administration and fight in court to keep the material classified.
Last week, Obama opted to demand relatively few redactions when his administration released Justice Department memos detailing the Bush administration's justifications and strategies for harsh interrogations.
But those disclosures created a problem for the president, prompting Democratic lawmakers and interest groups to demand that Congress investigate the Bush-era practices and possibly prosecute officials of the prior administration.
With Obama trying to navigate ambitious health, tax and environment legislation through Congress, the White House fears that such an investigation could become a highly partisan distraction ¿ and Obama has for that reason already rejected the idea of a 9/11 Commission-style review of Bush's anti-terror policies, according to an official.
Now, with the president must consider the release of new materials that could be inflammatory and heighten the already combustible mix of political pressures he faces. While the liberal base that elected him wants wide disclosure and an investigation of Bush practices, pursuing that course would likely alienate the intelligence and military communities that are crucial to Obama's success as president.
Obama tried to walk that rhetorical line last week, heeding liberals' calls to release the torture memos but appearing to argue against further investigation or prosecution by saying that " "this is a time for reflection, not retribution."
Instead, he managed to anger both constituencies.
"My sense is the president was trying to please a lot of audiences at one time and that over the last (week) he has totally failed to put the mind of the intelligence community at ease," said Mark Lowenthal, a former senior adviser to CIA Director George J. Tenet. "He is going to end up with a national clandestine service that will not be willing to do anything because they feel he will not be there for them when they need him."
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
by Marjorie Cohn
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn't believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury's 2005 memos asserted that "enhanced techniques" on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush's illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.
The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 "subject to a determination of legality by the OLC." She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.
Team Bush claimed - and still claims - that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com
The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan
by Tom Andrews
President Obama said it best when he talked about U.S. policy in Afghanistan on the CBS news program 60 Minutes last month: "There's got to be an exit strategy".
Well, there isn't one. There is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy. The Appropriations Committee is expected to dutifully vote out their bill Thursday and send it to the floor of the House for a vote next week.
I realize how hard it would be for Congressional Democrats to require the Obama administration to develop an exit strategy as a condition for continued war funding. After all, this is our guy, right? The last thing our guy needs is a Democratic Congress second guessing, making demands, and putting conditions on the war funding.
But this is exactly what we and the administration need precisely because he is our guy.
Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. This is exactly the right time to engage the administration in a respectful but critical discussion about where this military escalation is leading us.
Sending tens of thousands of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan-without a plan to get them out-is a bad idea for many reasons.
First off, the ink on the President's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan wasn't even dry before the Pentagon acknowledged that it already has a request in to the administration for an additional 10,000 troops. What's worse, there are indications the Pentagon has even more requests waiting in the wings.
The fact is, there are simply not enough U.S. soldiers to secure Afghanistan. Estimates as to what would be required range for 200,000 to 600,000 troops. And, don't look to our NATO allies to be of any help. The leader of Canada's Liberal Party told me last week that the only way Canada citizens would support sending any troops was if there was a clear exit strategy with a date certain for their withdrawal. As a result, all Canadian soldiers will be on their way home by 2011.
Those of us who live on this side of the border should be demanding the same from our political leaders.
The lack of an exit strategy is already making things worse in Afghanistan. Failing to say when and how we will remove our forces is playing into the hands of Taliban leaders who are using the presence of our troops on Afghanistan soil-and the announced escalation-as their most powerful recruitment tool. The New York Times reports that the escalation has mended fences between the otherwise fractious leadership of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who announced that they are joining forces to fight the new troops as they arrive.
A BBC/ABC public opinion poll of Afghans reveals that fully 80% of the population is opposed to an escalation of American troops. Many of those who are shooting at our soldiers are not jihadists; they are proud Afghans who are famously sensitive to the presence of foreign forces on their soil.
The lack of an exit strategy also works against President Obama's regional strategy-outreach to the neighboring nations who have zero interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan because it would threaten their national security as much, if not more, than our own. How likely will China, Russia and particularly Iran be to join the U.S. if the outcome might be tens of thousands of U.S. troops on their border?
We need Congress to step up now and help prevent what has now become "Obama's War" from turning into a quagmire that undermines, if not destroys, the critically important agenda the President is fighting to pass here at home.
We need to step up too. We can start by contacting Members of Congress and urging them not to succumb to a vote-now, ask questions later approach to war funding even if it is our guy who is asking for it. We need a critical check-and-balance before it is too late to stop an endless war in Afghanistan.
The war spending bill is on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.
Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.
US Senate Stiffs the People, Cheers Wall Street
by Jim Hightower
Sam Rayburn, a longtime speaker of the U.S. House, once said, "Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it's right."
Last week, 45 U.S. senators dodged an excellent chance to do just what Mr. Sam advised. At issue was a straightforward, common-sense amendment proposed by Dick Durbin, D-Ill. It would have allowed bankruptcy judges to help hundreds of thousands of financially strapped homeowners who now find themselves trapped by exploding, exorbitant interest rates that bankers had attached to their loans.
Here was a conspicuous opportunity for even the most ethically blind of our congress-critters to take a principled stand, for Durbin's bill practically had a flashing red-and-yellow neon arrow attached to it, declaring, "Vote Here for the People Against Greedy Bankers."
Actually, even GBs would've benefited, for the bankruptcy provision would have allowed families to stay in their homes and keep making monthly payments to banks (albeit in reduced amounts). Also, banks could still make a profit (though not a killing), and there would be far fewer vacant homes going on the market, thus giving a badly needed break to America's depressed housing market.
What a sensible idea! So, naturally, the Senate stomped it to death.
The members were prodded to do so by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and other upstanding members of the hyper-aggressive GB lobby. These are, of course, the same banksters who for years speculated rapaciously on people's homes, created a housing bubble that has since burst and shattered our economy, reduced their own financial fiefdoms to insolvency, then rushed to Washington to unscrew the Capitol dome and help themselves to a taxpayer bailout that is nearing $3 trillion.
Yet, the very idea of allowing bankrupt families to get a small break in bankruptcy courts has caused Wall Street elites to squawk like a banty rooster choking on a peach pit. They dispatched hundreds of well-connected lobbyists to Congress, to the White House and to key government agencies to nix Durbin's amendment (which, ironically, would've been attached to a bill that awards even more billions of taxpayer dollars to the banks).
Among the influence peddlers hired by bailout recipients were more than 100 former lawmakers, top congressional staffers, White House aides and agency officials.
Goldman Sachs alone has more than 30 ex-government officials in its lobbying army, including former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and the former top staffer to house banking chairman Barney Frank.
The first and chief target of this furious lobbying blitz was a guy who had long backed the homeowners protection plan, promising again and again last year that he would lead the fight to pass it: Barack Obama. The banker lobbyists were aided in this effort to back off Obama by two White House insiders who have shown themselves to be shameless Wall Street softies - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and top economic advisor Larry Summers. Timid Timothy reportedly argued that even a small, tightly targeted bankruptcy provision for common folks would create "uncertainty" for big investors in Wall Street banks.
Never mind that millions of homeowners are facing crushing uncertainty over their mortgages, Obama and team promptly disappeared from the legislative fight, abandoning Durbin.
This let Wall Street's hired guns go after pusillanimous, bank-financed Democrats. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, for example, was a swing vote, counted on by Durbin. But with no pressure from Obama, Bayh was free to sidestep principle and vote his own political pocketbook. Up for re-election next year, Bayh's top campaign donor is Goldman Sachs.
Needing 60 votes for passage, Durbin got 45. In all, a dozen Democrats gave Wall Street a big wet kiss by voting against Durbin's amendment, which also was a vote against America's hard-pressed homeowners - and against Mr. Sam's sage admonition.
"The banks are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill," sighed Sen. Durbin afterward. He added this sobering note: "They frankly own the place."
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Rita passed away Saturday Sabbath, June 13, 2009 (Ezekiel 24:15-27). In the Spirit of Elijah, Richard O'Donnell
More than 30 militants killed in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (AP) - Military jets and artillery pounded suspected militant hide-outs in two towns in Pakistan's northwest on Sunday, killing 27 fighters, officials said. Elsewhere in the volatile region, a citizens' militia killed seven suspected militants.
As the violence raged, President Asif Alil Zardari claimed the entire country backs the battle against the extremists.
The military has stepped up strikes in the past week on suspected militant bases in Bajur, where violence has spiked again almost five months after the military declared victory after a months-long offensive.
Two local government officials, Iqbal Khan and Nawaz Khan, said bombs dropped from planes on targets in Salarzai town killed 13 militants. In nearby Charmang, shelling killed 14 militants, the officials said. The military has attacked targets in Charmang several times in the past week.
In nearby Upper Dir, a citizens' militia engaged in a two-hour clash with militants that killed seven and wounded one more, police said.
Ejaz Ahmed, police chief in the Upper Dir region, said the fighting occurred late Saturday night near the village of Patrak, about 4 miles east of Dir Khas, the region's main town and district headquarters.
Several civilian militias, known as lashkars, have emerged in Upper Dir since a suicide bombing on a mosque two weeks ago blamed on the Taliban killed at least 33 people. The militias carry out patrols and have been pursuing remnants of Taliban who had tried to expand their influence into the area.
Ahmed said scores of militants have been trapped and killed by the militias in several villages, with police cutting off escape routes. The Taliban members who were killed Saturday had been trying to flee when they came across the militiamen and opened fire, he said.
"Due to heavy losses, militants have been attempting to escape the area under cover of dark, and last night's incident was one such attempt," Ahmed said. He said no civilians were killed in the fighting.
The report could not immediately be confirmed because of military restrictions on news media access to the area.
Up to 1,600 tribesmen in Upper Dir cleared three villages of Taliban fighters two weeks ago, killing at least six militants.
Zardari said the military has been having success against the Taliban because Pakistan's people are backing the troops.
"The operations before this were not successful because they did not have a public support," Zardari said in a speech marking what would have been the 56th birthday of his late wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated 18 months ago.
A majority of Pakistanis oppose extremism, but the Taliban has gained influence in several areas - including Dir and Swat Valley - in recent years. The militants also have some support in tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan, where U.S. officials say they plot attacks on American troops across the border.
Previous army offensives against militants have failed to drive them out completely, and the government has struck a series of peace deals that have fallen apart.
Public support for the Swat offensive could erode if the government is perceived to have failed more than 2 million people displaced by the fighting or if civilian casualties mount.
Troops continued Sunday to try to clear a road blocked by the Taliban in the nearby South Waziristan tribal area, where shelling and bombing of suspected militant targets has increased and ground troops have been moving into position since the government announced the military would go after Pakistan's Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud.
Two intelligence officials said six suspected militants were killed Sunday in South Waziristan when a military jet pounded their positions minutes after they fired three rockets that missed a military camp. The officials spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
South Waziristan is Mehsud's tribal stronghold, a chunk of the remote and rugged mountainous region along Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan where heavily armed tribesmen hold sway and al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders could be hiding.
Washington supports both the Swat and Waziristan operations, seeing them as a measure of nuclear-armed Pakistan's resolve in taking on a growing insurgency. The battle in the tribal region could also help the war in Afghanistan because the area has been used by militants to launch cross-border attacks on U.S. and other troops.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Northern Italian communities had, for years, complained about low-flying American military aircraft. In February 1998, the inevitable happened. A Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler with a crew of four, one of scores of advanced American jet fighters and bombers stationed at places like Aviano, Cervia, Brindisi, and Sigonella, sliced through a ski-lift cable near the resort town of Cavalese and plunged twenty people riding in a single gondola to their deaths on the snowy slopes several hundred feet below. Although marine pilots are required to maintain altitude of at least one thousand feet (two thousand, according to the Italian government), the plane had cut the cable at a height of 360 feet. It was traveling at 621 miles per hour when 517 miles per hour was considered the upper limit. The pilot had been performing low-level acrobatics while his copilot took pictures on videotape (which he later destroyed). In response to outrage in Italy and calls for vigorous prosecution of those responsible, the marine pilots argued that their charts were inaccurate, that their altimeter had not worked, and that they had not consulted U.S. Air Force units permanently based in the area about local hazards. A court-martial held not in Italy but in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, exonerated everyone involved, calling it a "training accident." Soon after, President Bill Clinton apologized and promised financial compensation to the victims, but on May 14, 1999, Congress dropped the provision for aid to the families because of opposition in the House of Representatives and from the Pentagon. This was hardly the only such incident in which American service personnel victimized foreign civilians in the post-Cold War world. From Germany and Turkey to Okinawa and South Korea, similar incidents have been common-as has been their usual denouement. The United States government never holds politicians or higher-ranking military officers responsible and seldom finds that more should be done beyond offering pro forma apologies and perhaps financial compensation of some, often minimal sort. On rare occasions, as with the Italian cable cutting, when such a local tragedy rises to the level of global news, what often seems strangest to Americans is the level of national outrage elsewhere over what the U.S. media portray as, at worst, an apparently isolated incident, however tragic to those involved. Certainly, the one subject beyond discussion at such moments is the fact that, a decade after the end of the Cold War, hundreds of thousands of American troops, supplied with the world's most advanced weaponry, sometimes including nuclear arms, are stationed on over sixty-one base complexes in nineteen countries worldwide, using the Department of Defense's narrowest definition of a "major installation"; if one included every kind of installation that houses representatives of the American military, the number would rise to over eight hundred. There are, of course, no Italian air bases on American soil. Such a thought would be ridiculous. Nor, for that matter, are there German, Indonesian, Russian, Greek, or Japanese troops stationed on Italian soil. Italy is, moreover, a close ally of the United States, and no conceivable enemy nation endangers its shores. All this is almost too obvious to state-and so is almost never said. It is simply not a matter for discussion, much less of debate in the land of the last imperial power. Perhaps similar thinking is second nature to any imperium. Perhaps the Romans did not find it strange to have their troops in Gaul, nor the British in South Africa. But what is unspoken is no less real, nor does it lack consequences just because it is not part of any ongoing domestic discussion. ... it is past time for such a discussion to begin, for Americans to consider why we have created an empire-a word from which we shy away-and what the consequences of our imperial stance may be for the rest of the world and for ourselves. Not so long ago, the way we garrisoned the world could be discussed far more openly and comfortably because the explanation seemed to lie at hand-in the very existence of the Soviet Union and of communism. Had the Italian disaster occurred two decades earlier, it would have seemed no less a tragedy, but many Americans would have argued that, given the Cold War, such incidents were an unavoidable cost of protecting democracies like Italy against the menace of Soviet totalitarianism. With the disappearance of any military threat faintly comparable to that posed by the former Soviet Union, such "costs" have become easily avoidable. American military forces could have been withdrawn from Italy, as well as from other foreign bases, long ago. That they were not and that Washington instead is doing everything in its considerable powers to perpetuate Cold War structures, even without the Cold War's justification, places such overseas deployments in a new light. They have become striking evidence, for those who care to look, of an imperial project that the Cold War obscured. The byproducts of this project are likely to build up reservoirs of resentment against all Americans-tourists, students, and businessmen, as well as members of the armed forces-that can have lethal results. For any empire, including an unacknowledged one, there is a kind of balance sheet that builds up over time. Military crimes, accidents, and atrocities make up only one category on the debit side of the balance sheet that the United States has been accumulating, especially since the Cold War ended. p7
What we have freed ourselves of, however, is any genuine consciousness of how we might look to others on this globe. Most Americans are probably unaware of how Washington exercises its global hegemony, since so much of this activity takes place either in relative secrecy or under comforting rubrics. Many may, as a start, find it hard to believe that our place in the world even adds up to an empire. But only when we come to see our country as both profiting from and trapped within the structures of an empire of its own making will it be possible for us to explain many elements of the world that otherwise perplex us. p8
The term "blowback," which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of "terrorists" or "drug lords" or "rogue states" or "illegal arms merchants" often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations. p9
One man's terrorist is, of course, another man's freedom fighter, and what U.S. officials denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previous American imperial actions. Terrorists attack innocent and undefended American targets precisely because American soldiers and sailors firing cruise missiles from ships at sea or sitting in B-52 bombers at extremely high altitudes or supporting brutal and repressive regimes from Washington seem invulnerable. As members of the Defense Science Board wrote in a 1997 report to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors [that is, terrorists from one country attacking in another]." The most direct and obvious form of blowback often occurs when the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S.-sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a ClA-engineered overthrow of a foreign political leader. All around the world today, it is possible to see the groundwork being laid for future forms of blowback. For example, is estimated that from the Gulf War of 1991 through 1998, the U.S. p12
In pursuing the war in Vietnam in the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered more bombs dropped on rural Cambodia than had been dropped on Japan during all of World War 11, killing at least three-quarters of a million Cambodian peasants and helping legitimize the murderous Khmer Rouge movement under Pol Pot. In his subsequent pursuit of revenge and ideological purity Pol Pot ensured that another million and a half Cambodians, this time mainly urban dwellers, were murdered. Americans generally think of Pol Pot as some kind of unique, self-generated monster and his "killing fields" as an inexplicable atavism totally divorced from civilization. But without the United States government's Vietnam-era savagery, he could never have come to power in a culture like Cambodia's, just as Mao's uneducated peasant radicals would never have gained legitimacy in a normal Chinese context without the disruption and depravity of the Japanese war. Significantly, in its calls for an international tribunal to try the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge for war crimes, the United States has demanded that such a court restrict its efforts to the period from 1975 to 1979-that is, after the years of carpet bombing were over and before the U.S. government began to collaborate with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese Communists, who invaded Cambodia in 1978, drove the Khmer Rouge from power, and were trying to bring some stability to the country. Even an empire cannot control the long-term effects of its policies. That is the essence of blowback. Take the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in which Soviet forces directly intervened on the government side and the CIA armed and supported any and all groups willing to face the Soviet armies. Over the years the fighting turned Kabul, once a major center of Islamic culture, into a facsimile of Hiroshima after the bomb. American policies helped ensure that the Soviet Union would suffer the same kind of debilitating defeat in Afghanistan as the United States had in Vietnam. In fact, the defeat so destabilized the Soviet regime that at the end of the 1980s it collapsed. But in Afghanistan the United States also helped bring to power the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement whose policies toward women, education, justice, and economic well-being resemble not so much those of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran as those of Pol Pot's Cambodia. A group of these mujahedeen, who only a few years earlier the United States had armed with ground-to-air Stinger missiles, grew bitter over American acts and policies in the Gulf War and vis-a-vis Israel. In 1993, they bombed the World Trade Center in New York and assassinated several CIA employees as they waited at a traffic light in Langley, Virginia. Four years later, on November 12, 1997, after the Virginia killer had been convicted by an American court, unknown assailants shot and killed four American accountants, unrelated in any way to the CIA, in their car in Karachi, Pakistan, in retaliation. It is likely that U.S. covert policies have helped create similar conditions in the Congo, Guatemala, and Turkey, and that we are simply waiting for the blowback to occur. Guatemala is a particularly striking example of American imperial policies in its own "backyard." In 1954, the Eisenhower administration planned and the CIA organized and funded a military coup that overthrew a Guatemalan president whose modest land reform policies were considered a threat to American corporations. Blowback from this led to a Marxist guerrilla insurgency in the 1980s and so to CIA- and Pentagon-supported genocide against Mayan peasants. In the spring of 1999, a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N.-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that "the American training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques" was a "key factor" in the "genocide.... Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection. According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala-financed and supported by the U.S. government-destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed. Jose Pertierra, an attorney representing Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who spent years trying to find out what happened to her "disappeared" Guatemalan husband and supporter of the guerrillas, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, writes that the Guatemalan military officer who arrested, tortured, and murdered Bamaca was a CIA "asset" and was paid $44,000 for the information he obtained from him. Visiting Guatemala in March 1999, soon after the report's release, President Clinton said, "It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.... The United States will no longer take part in campaigns of repression." But on virtually the day that the president was swearing off "dirty tricks" in other people's countries, his government was reasserting its support for Turkey in its war of repression against its Kurdish minority. The Kurds constitute fifteen million people in a Turkish population estimated at fifty-eight million. Another five million Kurds live largely within reach of Turkey's borders in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The Turks have discriminated against the Kurds for the past seventy years and have conducted an intense genocidal campaign against them since 1992, in the process destroying some three thousand Kurdish villages and hamlets in the backward southeastern part of the country. Former American ambassador to Croatia Peter W. Galbraith comments that "Turkey routinely jails Kurdish politicians for activities that would be protected speech in democratic countries." The Europeans have so far barred Turkey from the European Union because of its treatment of the Kurds. Because of its strategic location on the border of the former Soviet Union, however, Turkey was a valued American ally and NATO member during the Cold War, and the United States maintains the relationship unchanged even though the USSR has disappeared. After Israel and Egypt, Turkey is the third-highest recipient of American military assistance. Between 1991 and 1995, the United States supplied four-fifths of Turkey's military imports, which were among the largest in the world. The U.S. government, in turn, depends on the NATO base at Incirlik, Turkey, to carry out Operation Provide Comfort, set up after the Gulf War to supply and protect Iraqi Kurds from repression by Saddam Hussein-at the same time that the United States acquiesces in Turkish mistreatment of its far larger Kurdish population. One obvious reason is that communities like Stratford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Black Hawk and Comanche helicopters are made, depend for their economic health on continued large-scale arms sales to countries like Turkey. At the time of the Gulf War, a senior adviser to the Turkish prime minister said to John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, "If you want to stop human rights abuses do two things-stop IMF credits and cut off aid from the Pentagon. But don't sell the weapons and give aid and then complain about the Kurdish issue. Don't tell us about human rights while you're selling these weapons." The capture in February 1999 of the Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan exposed the nature of American involvement with Turkey, in this case via a CIA gambit that holds promise as a rich source of future blowback. The CIA term for this policy is "disruption," by which it means the harassment of terrorists around the world. The point is to flush them out of hiding so that cooperative police forces or secret services can then arrest and imprison them. According to John Diamond of the Associated Press, "The CIA keeps its role secret, and the foreign countries that actually crack down on the suspects carefully hide the U.S. role, lest they stir up trouble for themselves." There are no safeguards at all against misidentifying "suspects," and "the CIA sends no formal notice to Congress." Disruption is said to be a preemptive, offensive form of counterterrorism. Richard Clarke, President Clinton's antiterrorism czar, likes it because he can avoid "the cumbersome Congressional reporting requirements that go with ClA-directed covert operations" and because "human rights organizations would have no way of identifying a CIA role." The CIA has carried out disruption operations in at least ten countries since September 1998. In the case of Ocalan's capture, the United States "provided Turkey with critical information about Ocalan's whereabouts." This was the first time some of the details of a "disruption" campaign were made public. p17
Because we live in an increasingly interconnected international system, we are all, in a sense, living in a blowback world. Although the term originally applied only to the unintended consequences for Americans of American policies, there is every reason to widen its meaning. Whether, for example, any unintended consequences of the American policies that fostered and then heightened the economic collapse of Indonesia in 1997 ever blow back to the United States, the unintended consequences for Indonesians have been staggering levels of suffering, poverty, and loss of hope. Similarly, the unintended consequences of American-supported coups and bombing in Cambodia in the early 1970s were unimaginable chaos, disruption, and death for Cambodians later in the decade. Our role in the military coup in Chile in 1973, for example, produced little blowback onto the United States itself but had lethal consequences for liberals, socialists, and innocent bystanders in Chile and elsewhere. On the nature of American policies in Chile, journalist Jon Lee Anderson reports, "The plan, according to declassified United States government documents, was to make Chile ungovernable under [elected socialist president Salvador] Allende, provoke social chaos, and bring about a military coup.... A CIA cable outlined the objectives clearly to the station chief in Santiago: 'It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.... We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that United States Government and American hand be well hidden." No ordinary citizen of the United States knew anything about these machinations. The coup d'etat took place on September 11, 1973, resulting in the suicide of Allende and the seizure of power by General Augusto Pinochet, whose military and civilian supporters in their seventeen years in power tortured, killed, or "disappeared" some four thousand people. Pinochet was an active collaborator in Operation Condor, a joint mission with the Argentine militarists to murder exiled dissidents in the United States, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. This is why, when Pinochet traveled to England in the autumn of 1998 for medical treatment, Spain tried to extradite him to stand trial for genocide, torture, and state terrorism against Spanish citizens. On October 16, 1998, the British police arrested Pinochet in London and held him pending his possible extradition. Although few Americans were affected by this covert operation, people around the world now know of the American involvement and were deeply cynical when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright opposed Pinochet's extradition, claiming that countries like Chile undertaking a "transition to democracy" must be allowed to guarantee immunity from prosecution to past human rights offenders in order to "move forward." America's "dirty hands" make even the most well-intentioned statement ~ about human rights or terrorism seem hypocritical in such circumstances. Even when blowback mostly strikes other peoples, it has its corrosive effects on the United States by debasing political discourse and making citizens feel duped if they should happen to take seriously what their political leaders say. This is an inevitable consequence not just of blowback but of empire itself. What, then, of the very idea of an American empire or, for that matter, American imperialism? "Hegemony," "empire," and "imperialism" have often been used as epithets or fighting words. They lie at the heart of Marx's and, especially, Lenin's condemnation of capitalism. During the Cold War, Communists asserted that imperialism was one of the "contradictions" of capitalism and hence a root cause of class struggle, revolution, and war. However, the terms also evoke images of the Roman and British empires, as well as of the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica that were said to have accompanied them. Imperialism is further associated with the racism and exploitation that accompanied European, American, and Japanese colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and with the violent reactions to it that dominated the non-Western world in the wake of the Second World War. p20
In 1917, the Soviet Union inherited an older czarist empire in Europe and central Asia, a multinational union of peoples based on conquest and a particular civilization ... [the] seven "people's democracies" in Eastern Europe that formed the heart of the Communist camp until its collapse in 1989: East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria. Its American equivalent was not NATO ... but the system of satellites the United States created in East Asia. These included at one time regimes in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the . ~ Philippines, and Taiwan. Over time, and with the development of a nuclear arms race between the United States and the USSR, the two empires based on satellite regimes created after World War 11 expanded into much more extensive alignments based on ideology, economic interactions, technology transfers, mutual benefit, and military cooperation. For the Soviet Union this was the world that for a brief moment during the 1950s stretched from Moscow to Hanoi in the east and to Havana in the west and that even included, at least formally, China. For the United States it came to include most of the rest of the world-places where the United States assumed responsibility for maintaining some ill-defined "favorable" military environment (what the Pentagon now likes to call "stability") and where we insisted on free access for our multinational corporations and financiers (what our economists now call "globalization"). p24
Unlike in Europe, the main Cold War conflicts in East and Southeast Asia were not between democracy and totalitarianism but between European colonialism and national independence movements. The reluctance of the main European powers to give up their colonies led to wars of national liberation in Indochina against the French, in Malaya against the British, and in Indonesia against the Dutch, in all of which the United States supported the side of imperialism. The Dutch were finally driven from Indonesia; the British, after a decade-long war, finally acquiesced in Malaya's independence, followed by its becoming two independent countries, Malaysia and Singapore. After the French were defeated militarily in Vietnam, the United States fought an incredibly bloody and prolonged conflict before it, too, was forced to abandon its imperial role there. The United States also supported a long counterinsurgency struggle in the Philippines against a guerrilla movement that considered the post-independence Filipino government a creature of the Americans. Only after our defeat in Vietnam did we begin to adjust to the idea that East Asia was different from Europe... South Korea has been occupied by American forces virtually continuously since the end of World War II. It was the scene of the most important armed conflict of the early Cold War years, the place where the United States and China fought each other to a standstill and froze relations with each other for two decades. Thanks to the United States and the Soviet Union, which in 1945 divided the country for their own convenience, a half century later Korea remains the last place on earth whose borders are determined by where the armies of World War 11 stopped. South Korea's rise during the 1960s as a "miracle economy" and its spectacular financial collapse of 1997 were directly related to its status as a satellite of the United States. South Korea was the first place in the postwar world where the Americans set up a dictatorial government. With the exception of its authoritarian president, Syngman Rhee, it consisted largely of former Korean collaborators with the Japanese colonialists. Despite opposition from the Korean people, America's need for a staunchly anti-Communist regime took precedence, given the occupation of North Korea by the USSR. In 1960, after Koreans searching for democracy overthrew Rhee, the U.S. government threw its support behind Park Chung-hee, the first of three army generals who would rule from 1961 to 1993. The Americans tolerated a coup d'etat by General Chun Doo-hwan in 1979 and covertly supported his orders that led to the killing of several hundred, maybe several thousand, Korean civilians at Kwangju in 1980 (probably far more people than the Chinese Communists killed in and around Tlananmen Square in 1989). In order to keep South Korea firmly under its control, during the 1980s the Americans sent as successive ambassadors two senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Lilly and Donald Gregg. Nowhere else did the United States so openly turn over diplomatic relations to representatives of its main clandestine services organization. South Korea is today probably closer to a genuine parliamentary democracy than any country in East Asia, but no thanks to the American State Department, the Pentagon, or the CIA. It was the Korean people themselves, particularly the students of the country's leading universities, who through demonstrations and street confrontations in 1987 finally brought a measure of democracy to their country. After the democratically elected government of Kim Young-sam took office in 1993, President Kim felt sufficiently secure to put the two surviving dictators, Chun and Roh Tae Woo, on trial. They were convicted of state terrorism, sedition, and corruption. The American press gave the trials only the most minimal coverage, while the U.S. government ignored them as a purely internal Korean affair. The rule of Syngman Rhee and the U.S.-backed generals was merely the first instance in East Asia of the American sponsorship of dictators. The list is long, but it deserves reiteration simply because many in the United States fail to remember (if they ever knew) what East Asians cannot help but regard as a major part of our postwar legacy. U.S.-sponsored Asian dictators include: * Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo in Taiwan. (Taiwan started to democratize only in the 1980s after the Carter administration had broken relations with it.) * Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines (brought down by Corazon Aquino and her People Power movement after Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had hailed him as a democrat). * Ngo Dinh Diem (assassinated on American orders), General Nguyen Khanh, General Nguyen Cao Ky, and General Nguyen Van Thieu in Vietnam. * General Lon Nol in Cambodia. * Marshals Pibul Songgram, Sarit Thanarat, Praphas Charusathien, and Thanom Kittikachom in Thailand (where they were essentially caretakers for the huge American air bases at Udom, Takli, Korat, and Ubon). * General Suharto in Indonesia (brought to power with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency and overthrown with the help of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency). Several others had careers too brief or obscure to remember clearly (for example, General Phoumi Nosavan in Laos). These men belong to the same category of petty tyrants that the former Soviet Union used to staff its satellites in Eastern Europe from 1948 to l989 ... p27
During the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, the parallelism between the policies of the United States and the USSR continued but with a new geographical focus. Both sought to shore up or establish puppet regimes in territories that were on their borders or in adjacent regions that had long been claimed as spheres of influence. The USSR was preoccupied with Afghanistan; the United States, with Central America. Both superpowers utilized the rhetoric of the Cold War to justify their aggressive actions against much smaller states-anti-capitalism for the USSR in Afghanistan, anticommunism for the United States in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and the island of Grenada- even though capitalism in Afghanistan and communism in Central America were both essentially absurd ideas. Propaganda apparatuses in the United States and the USSR effectively disguised from their own peoples the true roots of revolt in both regions-a religious revival in Afghanistan, opposition to oligarchies that had long fronted for American corporations in Central America. President Reagan and his CIA director, William Casey, claimed they were trying to halt the erosion of the "free world" in the wake of the Vietnam War. Whether this was truly their strategy or merely political rhetoric has never been clear, but what could not be clearer was that, in 1981, the United States launched Vietnam-style operations in Central America and put large sums of money, often covertly raised, into supporting an insurgency against a Sandinista government in Nicaragua sympathetic to Castro's Cuba. At the same time, superpower detente, arms control talks, and Sino-American rapprochement virtually eliminated any real threat of war between hostile camps in Europe or East Asia. While the American demonization of Castro's Cuba ratcheted upward and the government argued vociferously that Cuban-inspired insurgencies were the hemisphere's greatest threat, the Cold War was already essentially over. The superpowers continued it only as propaganda cover for their respective neighborhood imperialisms. p30
Thirty years ago the international relations theorist Ronald Steel noted, "Unlike Rome, we have not exploited our empire. On the contrary, our empire has exploited us, making enormous drains on our resources and energies." Our economic relations with our East Asian satellites have, for example, hollowed out our domestic manufacturing industries and led us into a reliance on finance capitalism, whose appearance has in the past been a sign of a hitherto healthy economy entering decline. An analogous situation literally wrecked the former USSR. While fighting a losing war in Afghanistan and competing with the United States to develop ever more advanced "strategic weaponry," it could no longer withstand pent-up desires in Eastern Europe for independence. The historian Paul Kennedy has dubbed this condition "imperial overstretch." In an analysis of the United States in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he wrote that it too cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the "number one" position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategic realm, it can preserve a reasonable balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain these commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of the ever-shifting patterns of global production. This test of American abilities will be the greater because it, like Imperial Spain around 1600 or the British Empire around 1900, is the inheritor of a vast array of strategical commitments which had been made decades earlier, when the nation's political, economic, and military capacity to influence world affairs seemed so much more assured. p32
The American political and intellectual establishments remain mystified by and hostile to the economic achievements of Asians, just as the Soviet establishment remained mystified by and hostile to the economic achievements of Anglo-American and Western European capitalism. It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come ... [from] ... our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda. As sociologists Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver warn, "There are no credible aggressive new powers that can provoke the breakdown of the U.S.-centered world system, but the United States has even greater capabilities than Britain did a century ago to convert its declining hegemony into an exploitative domination. If the system eventually breaks down, it will be primarily because of U.S. resistance to adjustment and accommodation. And conversely, U.S. adjustment and accommodation to the rising economic power of the East Asian region is an essential condition for a non-catastrophic transition to a new world order." The United States today desperately needs a new analysis of its role in a post-Cold War world and of the sorts of policies that might prevent another major war, like its last three, in East Asia. Some of the significant changes to come in East Asia are already visible: China's increasing attempt to emulate high-growth economies elsewhere in Asia; the reunification of Korea; Japan's need to overcome its political paralysis; America's confusion over how to adjust to a self-confident China and to a more independent Japan; the growing importance of Southeast Asia as a new economic center of gravity. American policy making needs to be taken away from military planners and military-minded civilians, including those in the White House, who today dominate Washington policy making toward the area. American ambassadors and diplomats in Asia should have at least an elementary knowledge of East Asian history, languages, and aspirations. The United States desperately needs options for dealing with crises other than relying on the carrier task force, cruise missiles, and the unfettered flow of capital, just as it needs to overcome the complacency and arrogance that characterize American official attitudes toward Asia today. Terrorism(by definition)strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The innocent of the twenty-first century are going to harvest unexpected blowback disasters from the imperialist escapades of recent decades. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individually and collectively-for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Before the damage of heedless triumphalist acts and the triumphalist rhetoric and propaganda that goes with them becomes irreversible, it is important to open a new discussion of our global role during and after the Cold War...
Published on Monday, June 22, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Awayby Chris Hedges
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran's democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator's Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.
We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that "the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy." But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyranny. These tyrants were almost always propped up and funded by foreign powers. This suppression and distortion of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power, unleashing another tragic cycle of Iranian resistance.
"The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country," Stephen Kinzer, the author of "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," told me. "For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship."
"Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians," Kinzer said. "Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.
Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today-the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy-would be dead now."
Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran-something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America's venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.
Where were we when our election was stolen from us in 2000 by Republican operatives and a Supreme Court that overturned all legal precedent to anoint George W. Bush president? Did tens of thousands of us fill the squares of our major cities and denounce the fraud? Did we mobilize day after day to restore transparency and accountability to our election process? Did we fight back with the same courage and tenacity as the citizens of Iran? Did Al Gore defy the power elite and, as opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has done, demand a recount at the risk of being killed?
President Obama retreated in his Cairo speech into our spectacular moral nihilism, suggesting that our crimes matched the crimes of Iran, that there is, in his words, "a tumultuous history between us." He went on: "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." It all, he seemed to say, balances out.
I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in Iran. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation was reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out these policies against us?
We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence. The louder the Israelis and their idiot allies in Washington call for the bombing of Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the happier are the bankrupt clerics who are ordering the beating and murder of demonstrators. We may laugh when crowds supporting Ahmadinejad call us "the Great Satan," but there is a very palpable reality that has informed the terrible algebra of their hatred.
Our intoxication with our military prowess blinds us to all possibilities of hope and mutual cooperation. It was Mohammed Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005-perhaps the only honorable Middle East leader of our time-whose refusal to countenance violence by his own supporters led to the demise of his lofty "civil society" at the hands of more ruthless, less scrupulous opponents. It was Khatami who proclaimed that "the death of even one Jew is a crime." And we sputtered back to this great and civilized man the primitive slogans of all deformed militarists. We were captive, as all bigots are, to our demons, and could not hear any sound but our own shouting. It is time to banish these demons. It is time to stand not with the helmeted goons who beat protesters, not with those in the Pentagon who make endless wars, but with the unarmed demonstrators in Iran who daily show us what we must become.
The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal "wars of aggression." They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for pre-order.
Published on Monday, June 22, 2009 by RebelReports
Obama's Undeclared War Against Pakistan Continues, Despite His Attempt to Downplay It In a new interview, Obama said he has "no intention" of sending US troops into Pakistan. But US troops are already in the country and US drones attack Pakistan regularly.by Jeremy Scahill
Three days after his inauguration, on January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama ordered US predator drones to attack sites inside of Pakistan, reportedly killing 15 people. It was the first documented attack ordered by the new US Commander in Chief inside of Pakistan. Since that first Obama-authorized attack, the US has regularly bombed Pakistan, killing scores of civilians. The New York Times reported that the attacks were clear evidence Obama "is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy." In the first 99 days of 2009, more than 150 people were reportedly killed in these drone attacks. The most recent documented attack was reportedly last Thursday in Waziristan. Since 2006, the US drone strikes have killed 687 people (as of April). That amounts to about 38 deaths a month just from drone attacks.
The use of these attack drones by Obama should not come as a surprise to anyone who followed his presidential campaign closely. As a candidate, Obama made clear that Pakistan's sovereignty was subservient to US interests, saying he would attack with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. Obama said if the US had "actionable intelligence" that "high value" targets were in Pakistan, the US would attack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, echoed those sentiments on the campaign trail and "did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. 'If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,' she said."
Last weekend, Obama granted his first extended interview with a Pakistani media outlet, the newspaper Dawn:
There are a number of issues raised by this brief response offered by Obama. First, the only difference between using these attack drones and using actual US soldiers on the ground is that the soldiers are living beings. These drones sanitize war and reduce the US death toll while still unleashing military hell disproportionately on civilians. The bottom line is that the use of drones inside the borders of Pakistan amounts to the same violation of sovereignty that would result from sending US soldiers inside the country. Obama defended the attacks in the Dawn interview, saying:
Despite Obama's comments about respecting Pakistan "on its own terms," this is how Reuters recently described the arrangement between Pakistan and the US regarding drone attacks:
Pakistan is now the biggest recipient of US aid with the House of Representatives recently approving a tripling of money to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for five years. Moreover, US special forces are already operating inside of Pakistan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Baluchistan. According to the Wall Street Journal, US Special Forces are:
In February, The New York Times reported that US forces are also engaged in other activities inside of Pakistan:
It is clear-and has been for a long time- that the Obama administration is radically expanding the US war in Afghanistan deeply into Pakistan. Whether it is through US military trainers (that's what they were called in Vietnam too), drone attacks or commando raids inside the country, the US is militarily entrenched in Pakistan. It makes Obama's comment that "[W]e have no intention of sending US troops into Pakistan" simply unbelievable.
For a sense of how significant US operations are and will continue to be for years and years to come, just look at the US plan to build an almost $1 billion massive US "embassy" in Islamabad, which is reportedly modeled after the imperial city they call a US embassy in Baghdad. As we know very clearly from Iraq, such a complex will result in an immediate surge in the deployment of US soldiers, mercenaries and other contractors.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill