Update: Stairway To Heaven

 

Okay okay.  The title is hyperbole.  It's not so much a stairway to heaven as a ladder to my laughing place.

Then again, I don't really laugh up there.  I smile, feel good, enjoy the silence, daydream.

I guess that makes it more a non-pharmaceutical mood elevator.

Why do we seek high places?  We generally look up when we pray.  We don't send our prayers into the dirt, we launch them out and upwards to float into the ether of spiritual space.  We certainly don't ever aspire to the lower moral ground.  We don't say, 'I'm at the bottom of the world.'  We don't declare, 'I had a valley experience.'  When we smoke a joint we don't get low.  In fact, quite a bit of what we do is to attempt to elevate ourselves to a higher level, a higher plane.

I guess we just assume that somewhere "up there" is some comfort.  Maybe some answers.  And if we don't get the answers we need, at least we have a nice view or easy exhilaration.

Before I came to Japan, I thought -- like I believe most Americans think -- Japan was a concrete jungle.  Skyscrapers, lots of neon, bright lights, huge flat panels displays on the sides of towering buildings, set on an sprawling basin of cement and asphalt.

70% of Japan is covered in forests.  The forests cover the endless peaks and escarpments of countless volcanic mounds, hills, and mountains.  They don't build structures on top of these elevations.  Certainly not buildings and luxury homes.  Thus the dominant motif is unspoiled natural beauty, just about everywhere you look, except of course the towns and cities.  For a small country, Japan has an abundance of breathtaking scenery, hundreds of miles of hiking trails, thousands of miles of back-country roads.

I've written two previous articles about my trek up the small mountain near my house.  As the seasons change, much about the trek alters enough to keep it fresh.  At the same time, it is what remains constant which is the attraction.  That and the convenience.  I literally ride five minutes from my home to the trail head on my bicycle.

I think of America.  Hard as I tried, I could hardly do anything without getting in a car.

How much my life has changed.

(Click on the pictures and they will open up full-scale.)

 
Peace!


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Update: Stairway To Heaven

In a land of pigs . . . bacon is a sacrament!

 

It's easy to talk of American exceptionalism.

But what do we have to show for it?

An economy that's on the verge of collapse.

A military that can't win wars.

A democracy which is no longer a democracy.

A citizenry more divided than united about almost everything.

Except maybe . . . how exceptional we are!

 

The U.S. is now considered the greatest threat to world peace on the planet.

I guess that puts us in a class by ourselves.

But . . . exceptional?

Disturbing yes.  Probably embarrassing.  Unprecedented perhaps.  Maybe shameful.

But exceptional?  To whom?  By what measure?

Aah . . . by our own exceptional standards!

In a land of pigs, bacon is a sacrament.

Oink oink!




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


In a land of pigs . . . bacon is a sacrament!

ASD: A Pandemic for an Empire in Decline

It's important to label everything, as if giving something a name somehow establishes control over it, mastery.  If it's a disease, just being able to say, "It's obvious that this person suffers from catalomistic phrenapsidia," puts us well on the road to a cure.

An acronym is even better!  Three or four letters does the trick.  Knowing that 10.2% of our children are ADHD, coupled with the understanding that we can douse them with all sorts of miracle drugs -- prescription meth -- puts us all at ease.  Situation under control!

I've come up with both a new pathology and a self-generated acronym that sums up what seems to afflict our political leadership -- or lack of leadership might be more accurate.

ASD!

Doesn't it just roll off your tongue?

While phonetically it's a cousin of LSD, and you could certainly speculate about possible fanciful connections, LSD is just short for its chemical name -- lysergic acid diethylamide.  ASD tends to be more descriptive and incisive, comprehensive, and indeed incriminating.  It says just about all that needs to be said about behavior that seems counter-productive, anti-social, self-serving, self-obsessed, even ultimately self-destructive, manifestly driven by values most of us don't understand, much less share.

ASD stands for Advanced Sociopathic Disorder.

What are the symptoms of sociopathy?

• Glibness and Superficial Charm
• Manipulative and Conning
  They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
  Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
  Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
  A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
  When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Incapacity for Love
• Need for Stimulation
  Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
  Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
• Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
  Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
  Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
• Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
  Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
• Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
  Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Given this characterization, maybe I'm being unfair in exclusively singling out our leaders.  Perhaps it's an affliction that is spreading virally down through much of our society.

Certainly there are good, decent, caring, kind, compassionate people all around.  Yet we tolerate, even celebrate, egomania and narcissism like it's a national religion.  A sign of the times?  Or a symptom of societal malaise, massive disillusion, and a spiritual vacuum.  Is there no public path to self-aggrandizement and extravagance which isn't acceptable now?  Can we make it through a day without taking a selfie?



They say desperate times call for desperate measures.

Maybe desperate times create desperate people.

And desperate people?  What is their future?

If they were only dangerous to themselves, that would be one thing.

But . . .

(And now we turn our attention back to our leaders.)

When we see the recklessness of the sociopaths running things these days, we need to seriously ask ourselves.

Who is to stop them? 

If they aren't listening to others . . .
. . . and there's no voice of conscience on the inside . . .

Then what will stop them from destroying everything?

Because there's no denying . . .

It would be a truly AWESOME SELFIE!

#POTD
 




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


ASD: A Pandemic for an Empire in Decline

TPP . . . just extrapolate and you’ll get it.

 

Because of some trademark or product protectionist agreement or with Bayer, there is no such thing as generic aspirin here in Japan.

They sell aspirin in blister packs, ten to a package, for a little over $8.00 here. As if aspirin is some sort of amazing wonder drug.

Therefore, this bottle which I bought the last time I was in America for $6.99 here in Japan would cost over $240.00!

This is a simple example of how what would appear to be an innocuous patent agreement can dramatically impact the cost and availability of a consumer item.

I bring this up because the public is finally beginning to wake up to the perils of the TPP, a so-called free trade agreement aggressively being promoted by the Obama administration.

The type of arrangement which priced my aspirin in the stratosphere will exponentially expand under TPP.  Of course, this only scratches the surface in terms of the horrifying implications.  TPP is a weapon of mass socio-political devastation.  Here is the entire text.

There are 12 countries included in the TPP:  U.S., Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Chile, Vietnam, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam, representing 11.3% of the world population and 40% of the total economic activity across the planet.

TPP will affect just about everything bought and sold, used by most of us on a regular basis --  food, clothing, medications, movies, songs, cars, smart phones, furniture -- you name it and TPP will be there with its hairy arms wrapped around it one way or another. 

The TPP trade agreement runs over 5,000 pages.  It's been in formulation and negotiation for over three years.  Until very recently, it has been completely kept from the public eye -- literally it was subject to a top secret classification and anyone even attempting to discuss its details was subject to fines and imprisonment -- which alone should have raised major red flags about its contents.  Parts of it were leaked and then finally the entire text of this burdensome document was released.  Now the worst suspicions of those issuing warnings all along have been confirmed.  There is so much to condemn about this diabolical gift to corporations, we could go on for months detailing its egregious agenda and ruthless grab for power.  Much of the analysis and resulting critique is very technical. Most people can be forgiven for having their eyes glaze over and their attention wander.

I offer my simple anecdotal tale to make this complex issue real and accessible.

I submit it as a typical dose of daily life and hopefully a loud wake-up call.

Corporations do whatever they can to maximize profit . . . period!

Corporations are not community-minded or people-oriented.

Corporations are not loyal to countries or their citizens.

Corporations are not in the business of being nice.

They are only in business to make money.  Anything which stand in the way of making money must be eliminated or changed.

We've had NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, WTO.

TPP is now the last in a long list of systematic efforts to fashion the rules, engineer the marketplace, game the system, load the dice, all in the name of making greater profits.  The TPP is a brilliant, if insidious redesign of the macro-economic regime to favor profit over people, corporations over government, faceless multinational corporate hegemony over local community and citizen control.  Please understand . . .


TPP is not an abstraction. It is a genuine threat.

TPP is the worst trade agreement in history.

TPP will crush people under the weight of corporate greed.

TPP will destroy America as a sovereign nation and a functioning democracy.

TPP will destroy any hope for citizens having a say in the future of this country.

TPP will imprison the 99% and make us permanent slaves of the corporate state.

TPP is misleadingly named the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is being sold as a trade agreement.  It in fact is neither.  It is not a partnership of nations.  Nor is it a mere trade agreement.  Designed by multinational corporations, mostly headquartered in America, it is a supra-national framework for destroying the sovereignty of nations and giving citizens of those nations -- that's you and I -- even less say in the industries and marketplace which produce and make available the items we purchase, including the basic necessities of life.

As workers, it gives us less power to improve our wages and working conditions.  Worker safety will suffer, union organizing will become all but impossible.

As consumers, the quality and safety of everything we buy will be compromised.  It will be a race to the bottom, as any attempt at regulation and requiring transparency is challenged under rules limiting and barring practices which interfere with pursuit of profits.

As members of communities, any and all of our efforts, both local and national regulation of environmental conditions -- meaning he purity and safety of our ground, air, and water -- will come under attack, and all of the progress made to improve the environment over many decades will unravel.

The evil step-sister of TPP is TTIP -- the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership -- a nearly identical regime of corporate tyranny targeting the 28 nations of the European Union which is simultaneously under negotiation and aggressively being promoted by our self-described "progressive" president.

Greenpeace just managed to leak 13 of 17 chapters of the most recent version of TTIP.

There have been massive demonstrations and riots going on in Europe against TTIP for quite some time now.  The release of the text of TTIP has heightened tensions even more.

U.S. citizens might just want to ask themselves:  What's all the fuss about?





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



TPP . . . just extrapolate and you’ll get it.





 

Candidate Contracts: Replacing Bad Brains With Good Brains

 

Democracy is dead in America.

Representatives no longer represent.

I'm reminded of the classic comedy featuring Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle . . . Young Frankenstein.

Why was the Frankenstein creation a monster, disloyal, cold-hearted and destructive?

He had a bad brain.

A bad brain results in bad behavior.

The brains of our elected officials, the monsters who roam the two legislative bodies of our government, the Senate and the House of Representatives, have been corrupted by money, effectively destroyed, are now lacking the capacity to fulfill their constitutional mandate. They no longer are controlled by the citizens who elected them to office.  They now are exclusively the lapdogs of the rich and powerful -- disloyal, cold-hearted, destructive.

 

We must replace the bad brains.

I call this procedure a lapdogectomy.

The lapdogs must go.  They must be replaced with good brains, those individuals who are willing to respond to the needs of their constituents -- those candidates who will guarantee to us the voters that they will do the job we elect them to do.

How do we know who has a bad brain and who has a good brain?

The candidate contract is actually better than an MRI or CATSCAN in this respect.

After we the people have decided what issues are critical -- based on numerous credible issue polls, there already is a good list of what the public wants done but isn't getting done -- we formulate candidate contracts spelling out in no uncertain terms what we expect our elected representatives in Congress to do IMMEDIATELY UPON ARRIVAL in the nation's capital.  The contracts are presented to every candidate for office in the coming election.

Candidates with bad brains refuse to sign them.

Candidates with good brains gladly sign them.

We do not vote for people with bad brains.

We only vote for people with good brains.

Make sense?

Replace bad brains with good brains.

Could it be any easier?



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Candidate Contracts: Replacing Bad Brains With Good Brains