Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
There are a lot of smug, self-righteous folks out there — I hope not but maybe some right here reading this — who like to look down their noses at what they call “sheeple”.
Tellingly, if we are really honest with ourselves, at one time or another and to a greater or lesser degree, we’ve all been sheeple. We’ve gone with the flow. Gone along to get along. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say, I have too.
What am I supposed to take from that?
The hardest thing for me, as a very smart person, with a smart mouth, and a smart aleck attitude, to learn and fully internalize has been this:
Don’t judge.
Of course, there are situations and people all of the time which require a “judgment call”. Should I trust this person? Is that guy over there yelling at the top of his lungs about UFOs dangerous? Is this politician focused on getting my vote telling the truth or blowing smoke?
What I mean by ‘don’t judge’ is simple. Don’t make final declarations which cut you off from any further understanding or appreciation, whether it’s about a person or a circumstance.
Sheeple, for example.
The idiom implies that such people are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they purely are followers. The herd sleeps, they sleep. The herd chews on grass, they chew on grass. The herd runs into the chute to their slaughter, they run into the chute to their slaughter.
There’s some truth to that. But the fact is, we all do this. Anybody out there wearing their pants backwards or answering the phone by reciting Shakespearean couplets? Any of you celebrate your last birthday by playing the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida naked at the bottom of an empty swimming pool?
We all do a lot of things in concert with others. We go to concerts and sing along with the chorus to our favorite songs. By the millions we watch the same TV shows, laugh at the same jokes, cry at the same tragedies, sit like hypnotized lumps taking in the daily news, then say the same things everyone else is saying about the same scandals.
And the undeniable truth is, sometimes it feels great being part of some “community” of people doing the same thing. Is anyone going to tell me that tens of thousands of people packing into a stadium or millions of people glued to the boob tube, watching grown men — very big grown men — battle to cart what looks like a leather melon to the end of a grassy rectangle, that’s asserting individuality and true independent thinking?
Rah rah rah. More beer! Yay!
Don’t judge.
Let me take this to another level.
‘Useful idiot’ is another phrase I’ve been giving serious thought to.
I watched a couple videos the other day, then shared them with a few trusted friends. They were appalled. They’re not speaking to me now.
Okay, what could be so offensive other than a porn movie featuring Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and a freshly disemboweled chimpanzee?
If you think you can handle it, here are two of a whole series of YouTube videos by a minor-genius video blogger by the name of Mark Dice.
Okay . . . if I don’t judge, what then? What exactly do I do?
First, some perspective.
Our heralded democratic system is a great leveler. Every person in those videos, the ones who didn’t know why we celebrate the 4th of July and those who don’t know what country Mount Rushmore is in, has the right to vote. And here’s a truly sobering fact . . . EACH OF THEIR VOTES counts exactly the same as EACH OF OUR VOTES.
Hey, it’s right there in the Constitution! One person, one vote. This is democracy in action, folks! Equality in the voting booth is the oxygen of our amazing political system! Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between, this is SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL . . . I can’t stop crying!
[ 42 minutes later: It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally gotten a grip and will now continue with my touching article. ]
Political activists are always asking: how can we get people involved, how can we get them engaged, how can we get them to vote, be a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem? That means everyone! Even the sheeple in the videos deserve to have a voice, right?
I’m simplifying but . . .
“Dude! I got some great reefer! If you vote for Bernie Sanders, man I’ll get you so high, you’ll meet Jim Morrison.”
“Hey, you are one fine-looking babe! How would you like $18,000? Tell you what, if you vote for this peace candidate, Theresa Treehugger, I’ll get you your money!”
Ridiculous? Actually, here’s the deal. Either we do it or someone else will. And then it will look like . . .
“Let’s make America great again! F*ck the Mexicans. F*ck the Muslims. Kill the Chinese. Kill the Russians.”
Make no mistake about it: USEFUL IDIOTS ARE STILL USEFUL!
To really make you understand and appreciate how important this is, here’s my final thought. Someone in some elevated seat of power, someone with the money and resources to completely shape the future of your world, is thinking that very thing . . .
‘Lockdown’ is a prison term. When the inmates get unruly and there’s the threat of an insurrection, they “lock down” the facility, restricting movement and preventing collective violence against their benevolent jailers.
So, we are being told we have an “insurrection” being mounted against an orderly life and the greater good of the people of the world, by an invisible enemy — aka the coronavirus — which despite having a curious resemblance to the invisible terrorists which were lurking behind every tree after 9/11, now is the only matter worth being mentioned or discussed by our spectacle-friendly, melodrama-driven media and health-conscious government.
Well, I agree in part with that assessment. We are under violent attack by an invisible enemy — one which in fact is hiding in plain sight — and certainly does present an existential threat to the entire human race. In fact, this invisible threat is the one which spawned the coronavirus itself, the response to the coronavirus, the justifications for panic and fear of everything related to the coronavirus, is pushing a balls-to-the-wall vaccination campaign, and originally initiated and now enforces all of the lockdowns across the globe.
And I agree. Absolutely! The only way to deal with the dysfunction and chaos of our present circumstance is A THOROUGH, MASSIVE LOCKDOWN!
But here’s the problem. And it’s a VERY BIG PROBLEM!
Right now, the wrong people are being locked down. Innocent people who are not the problem, not even partially responsible for the problem, people who if anything would LOVE TO FIX THE PROBLEM, are being locked down. And the malicious, manipulative control freaks of the world who created the conditions for the outlandish, misdirected, cruel, oppressive lockdowns are not.
THAT’S what’s wrong with these current lockdowns.
We saw the evidence of this con from the start.
For the first time in history, instead of isolating the sick to protect the healthy, they LOCKED DOWN EVERYBODY. Statistically, nothing about this coronavirus business passes the smell test. As fudged and manipulated as the numbers are, we are not facing an epic world health crisis. Even so, typically when large numbers of individuals become sick, it’s the healthy people who keep things going, who keep society functioning, so that resources can be focused on keeping the sick alive and making them well again. This time, everything was shut down. Everyone was forced to stay home. Not only did this make normal functioning impossible, it compromised the health of the healthy, making them more vulnerable to possible illness, not just from the coronavirus but from other medical challenges. Moreover, heart patients, diabetics, people with high blood pressure, cancer, obesity, psychological issues, NO ONE COULD GET PROPER TREATMENT. Thousands have died. The horror and disgrace of this willful negligence gets little to no attention.
The whole approach to the “pandemic” has been so irrational, counterproductive, so opposite of established protocols and responses, there is only one conclusion. It was intentional, callous, arguably punitive and malicious. Those driving the response to the crisis — whatever it really is — had either lost their minds, or had and continue to have some extremely disruptive, oppressive plan. I personally think it’s entirely about money: short-range profits for pharmaceutical companies, long-range profits for those who now have everyone under their boot heels and can extract the last few drops of blood from us.
There’s no other conclusion that holds up to rational analysis. Those at the helm of this monstrous assault on the established structures of society and the just, orderly conduct of everyday life know exactly what toll this is taking. This is going as planned. The monopoly capitalists, the puppet masters of technological tyranny, the insatiable, arguably insane ruling elite are jumping for joy in their gated communities and virtual star chambers.
The inescapable conclusion is . . .
The people who should be locked down — and locked up — are the predatory capitalists, the greed-driven monomaniacal profit seekers who put their own enrichment and that of their elite class ahead of everyone else.
Those who would despoil the planet, pollute the air and water, drive species extinction, multiply wealth inequality, use racism as a weapon of social and political control, THEY should be locked down. They should be quarantined and not allowed to circulate among us, spreading the filth of their self-promoting, self-enriching, self-aggrandizing, amoral, predatory pathology.
Those who are restricting and eliminating what few freedoms we now have, who violate our privacy, who insinuate themselves into our homes and the sanctity of our marriages and family relationships, should be LOCKED DOWN. Those who would further isolate and marginalize good, decent people, should be isolated and immobilized before they entirely destroy the fabric of a functioning society.
Those who see everything as a commodity, who see human beings as only producers and consumers, who view every moment and opportunity in life as just another chance to extract more wealth and achieve more power, then use it to exploit and abuse the rest of us, THEY SHOULD BE LOCKED DOWN.
Make no mistake about it. We have a horrific disease spreading across the planet, a plague of unparalleled dimensions, a killer of unprecedented destructive power and lethality. It is a disease so dangerous to humans, so toxic to our families and communities, so in total opposition to the nurturing and growth of healthy individuals, so foul as to kill the human spirit and vanquish the spiritual and emotional lives of all sentient beings, we need to immediately take drastic and decisive action.
No energy should be spared. No action is too extreme. Hesitation when dealing with such a grisly threat is not an option. It may be too late already.
The lethal virus we are now facing is called GLOBAL NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM!
We have no choice. There’s no longer a margin for error. Its viral super-spreaders MUST BE IDENTIFIED AND LOCKED DOWN. These psychopathic criminals are so aggressive, so relentless, so obsessed and possessed, so convinced of their right to inflict themselves on others, we have little choice in the matter. They must be rounded up and sequestered.
It will not do to “send them to their rooms”. They must be locked down in tomb-like, hermetically-sealed chambers, cut off from all communication with the world — their breath, their words, their world view, their fanatic sense of entitlement are all equally pathogenic — left alone with their mountains of accumulated wealth: stocks and bonds, spread sheets, jewelry, derivatives, diamonds, gold and other precious metals. They must be locked down in cocoons of lavish isolation to hoard and treasure all their worldly booty, to reflect and gloat on their affluence and importance, to relish how exhilarating it feels to deprive other less fortunate people — that would be “we the peons” — of even an hint of their splendid opulence.
Yes, lock them down, put and keep them and all their glitter out of sight. We don’t need to be reminded of their avarice, gluttony, selfishness, pride, arrogance, contempt. Bye-bye to all of it! Lock these predators down — DISAPPEAR them — so we can get on with our lives. So we can hug each other again and enjoy sunsets and watch our children grow and delight in a simple meal at a restaurant and visit our friends and listen to music together and gather to worship and dance and play tennis or join a book club. Put the monsters out of sight and out of memory so we can live our lives without having to endure such loathsome miscreants, or fear they are watching us with their condescension and contempt, sneering at us through the mirrored windows of their skyscrapers or from behind the tinted glass of their stretch limos.
LOCK THEM DOWN! . . . NOW!
LOCK DOWN those who prey on others for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who promote endless wars for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who promote endless lies and false narratives for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who make us sick, keep us sick, then exploit our incapacitation for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who incarcerate people of color for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who promote debt slavery for profit.
LOCK DOWN those who promote privatization of the public commons for profit.
LOCK DOWN those now accelerating wealth inequality to destroy the lives of middle and working class people.
LOCK DOWN those who use everyday people as cannon fodder to protect their portfolios, property, and privilege.
LOCK DOWN those who have silenced the voice of the people and destroyed democracy in America.
LOCK THEM DOWN, because at least for now, the alternative is too distasteful.
The alternative is termination.
There are sites in Nevada devoted to storing the toxic byproducts of nuclear fission. For example, Yucca Mountain was being prepared as a massive depository for life-threatening waste. It’s time to reinstate funding for this project and get it ready for a new form of toxic sludge. It’s huge, far from anything or anyone else, just waiting to be put to good use.
Perfect, I say!
The perpetrators of our oppression deserve their own truly “private space”.
We deserve to be free from their pathological obsessions and devious manipulations.
It’s practically the definition of a win-win proposition!
We should spare no expense nor any speed. Lock them down now! Let them take it all with them. Ship their yachts and private jets, their stores of wealth in every transportable form, send it all packing, dump it all in those spacious Yucca Mountain caves. After all, if this wonderful stuff is so important to the wealthy, who are we to deprive them of the pleasure of wandering through their piles of caviar, vintage wines, mounted animal heads, fine art treasures, tuxedos, evening gowns, pheasant-under-glass, diamond belt buckles, polo horses, and gold-plated sex toys?
LOCKDOWNS . . . YES!
But this time let’s get it right.
Quarantine the truly diseased and dangerous, those who are the real plague upon us.
Pandas are not native to Japan. They’re from China. But Japanese people love them, my wife among their biggest fans. And as close as I can determine, there are eleven of these beautiful, fascinating creatures, living here in Japan right now: seven at Adventure World in Wakayama, one in Kobe, three in Tokyo.
A baby panda was just born in Wakayama this past November. At first they thought it was male, but panda experts arrived from Chengdu, China and on closer examination, little 楓浜 — Fuhin is the name given to the baby panda and you can even watch the naming ceremony on YouTube — turned out to be a female.
Why are panda births such newsworthy events?
Aside from all the usual complications and obstacles which impede successful fertilization and full-term pregnancies, then the newborns striving to survive their frailty the first month or so, giant pandas are only fertile in the spring of each calendar year for 12-25 days, and “in the mood” — receptive to mating — for 2-7 of those days.
Thus typically, a giant panda only gets pregnant every two years.
When baby pandas are born, relative to their mothers, they are very tiny, usually around 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces).
Fuhin is now 4 1/2 months old and it’s almost impossible to believe how much she has grown since the above photo, taken soon after she was born. Here is a very recent video.
Anyway, my lovely wife with her unique fascinations, and I, curious and always open to encounters with new species, set out in a joint pursuit of “panda love”, spending a couple days in Wakayama, a splendid area of Japan to the southeast of Osaka. We saw three giant pandas, but not baby Fuhin, who was still safe in her private quarters, not on public view.
Then ten days later, we went to Kobe to visit Tan Tan, who is a mature 25-year-old female — that’s the equivalent of 60-70 in human years — notable for her very short legs. She has been a favorite among panda watchers for over 20 years now!
Let’s see. That leaves three more to see in Tokyo. Then we’ll just have to go directly to Giant Panda headquarters in Chengdu, China. I’m embarrassed to say that I personally was in Chengdu back in 2009 but didn’t visit the panda breeding center there. What can I say? I only had seven days there and Chengdu is a huge city with a host of very interesting attractions and things to do. I did make it to the Great Wall!
Watch for updates. Our new found panda obsession will not be going away soon.
In the forums for our national conversation, there is no earnest discussion of peace and cooperation now … period! I’m not talking lip service or political posturing. I’m talking REAL DISCUSSION, widespread, inclusive, comprehensive discussion. In the media, by our leaders, among everyday people. NONE!
We have a war economy, a war on terror, troops fighting in seven countries (that we know of), over 800 military bases across the planet, countless secret missions and ops, soon weapons in space, and to add more gasoline to the fire are insulting and openly hostile to Russia and China — apparently to provoke them into a war. We the public are to believe the only available options are how much war and who to attack next.
There are no prominent media platforms, no high-visibility celebrities, no folk or pop songs being aired, no TV shows or movies, no major love-ins/teach-ins/sit-ins, no massive demonstrations, promoting peace.
If spectacle is out of the question because of Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing, an effective peace movement would at bare minimum establish a national conversation about peace with the powerful tools that are available. But the current appeals for peace are a total washout. That’s the reality. There are sparsely-attended Zoom sessions, enthusiastic but isolated and very small clusters of activists, occasional listless street protests, none of which create enough buzz to be news to the greater mass of American citizens. They hear as much about peace now as they hear about powdered wigs.
As for our spokespersons at a federal level, all they officially talk about is “defending our national interest” — whatever that means — and the need for bigger, more powerful, more exotic, more expensive weapons. This salivating for a bigger badder military is bipartisan. Apparently blowing things up, creating animosity, and making more refugees are the only items the Democrats and Republicans can agree on.
But here’s the wrench in the gears of this doomsday machine: The simple, obvious truth is, all of the current talk about the urgent need to extend and expand our military is predicated on completely flawed thinking and a deceptive premise, one that we’re hearing belched out with teeth-gritting hysteria more and more these days.
Here it is:
“We can’t win a war against China or Russia, much less both at the same time.”
Actually yes! This is completely accurate.
BUT THE REAL TRUTH IS, THIS SHOULD BE A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. Because THEY can’t win a war against us either! It’s a perfect standoff. No one wins. No one loses. Why bother?
What a relief! There will be no war. Right?
Wrong.
Instead, it’s the basis of the further absurd claim that since we can’t beat Russia or China, we are militarily weak, vulnerable, lacking the necessary hardware and fire power. It’s used to promote expanding the military even more.
Where’s the deception? The deception is the wording. It should be: We currently can’t win a war of AGGRESSION against them, attacking them on THEIR soil. The need for the pivot to Asia. Putting NATO troops and missiles on Russia’s borders. Our never-ending wars in the Middle East. Expansion of our military footprint in Africa. Our secret ops everywhere. All of this projection of power “over there” to confront and defeat our “enemies” on their soil, in their waters, in their skies, requires bigger and better weapons, more ships and planes, trillions more dollars to float the bloat.
This sprawl of U.S. fighting forces is predicated false assumption is that WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEFEAT ANYONE, ANYWHERE, AT ANY TIME.
Who voted for this? Did you? I sure didn’t.
This mindset, this thinking comprises the essential core of exceptionalist madness. It’s the sort of delusion and arrogance that brings every empire down. And it obvious that it’s bankrupting our country . . . socially, morally, and economically. The self-sabotaging assumption that the U.S. should rule the planet is at the root of all of our geo-political machinations, misadventures, miscalculations. It’s making us the pariah of the world community and ultimately will destroy our unacknowledged empire from within. We will collapse from the weight of our hubris and recklessness. If we don’t push our adversaries too hard and too fast, ending up with a humiliating defeat on the battlefield, then eventually the waste of so much of our national resources on the pursuit of world empire will eviscerate America from within. We already see the shocking signs disintegration, the destruction of a functioning society every time we turn on the news. Some folks only need to look out their window.
THE BIG PICTURE, THE SOBERING REALITY.
Nothing will change, this self-destructive addiction to a failing world view and foreign policy will not go away, with the incentives now in place to perpetuate war, perpetuate empire, perpetuate the MISCM complex. NOTHING WILL STOP THE MADNESS! Yes, there will be minor adjustments, tinkering, fine-tuning. But it will always be tinkering and fine-tuning an out-of-control military, putting a pretty face on a thuggish foreign policy, and disguising our blood-drenched ham-fisted attempts at world conquest as a visit by the Democracy Fairy.
Most importantly, the policies that have resulted in endless wars, rivers of bloodshed, mountains of corpses, and nation-shattering chaos across the world are choices that the vast majority of everyday citizens NEVER APPROVED OF, NOR WOULD THEY EVER if they truly understood what was happening.
Without a genuine national conversation which at bare minimum focuses on reducing our military footprint and ending our wanton aggression, redefining the role of the military, promoting real peace, seeking genuine partnerships on a whole host of issues that require international cooperation, reaching out (as both China and Russia both do) to create win-win situations based on mutual respect and shared values, our current trajectory — a high-risk flirtation with nuclear war and other epic disasters — will continue unabated.
How do we begin a national conversation which seriously promotes peace?
How do we begin a national conversation which marginalizes or axes the warmongers?
How do we the people insert ourselves into making the decisions that impact our lives and future?
It starts with emptying the seats of those now in power. Then filling them with individuals who are not captured by the psychosis of American exceptionalism, not beholden to the military-industrial-congressional-media complex, committed to representing the interests and promoting the general welfare of all citizens, determined to restore the proper balance of the branches of government as required by the Constitution, and invested in promoting cooperation and peace among the nations of the world community.
For that, we need the full support of at least 150 million everyday citizens, who demand to be heard and treated with dignity and fairness. Enlisting and engaging these individuals is the central goal of the Peace Dividend Project.
