Let's Do Something Stupid

Let's invade "Iraq" again.

Let's invade "Syria."

Let's invade "Iran."

Let's invade "Russia."

Let's invade "North Korea."

Let's invade "China."

Let's invade "Vietnam."

Let's attack more countries with drones.

Let's give "Israel" more money than they ever dreamed of. While we're at it, let's give them a few tankerloads of weapons.

Let's build another prison in some other country.

Let's torture the people we imprison there.

Let's keep them there forever.

Let's overthrow a democracy.

Let's plausibly deny something.

Let's categorically deny something else.

Let's speak to reporters on background, revealing selected classified information.

Let's make all information classified.

Let's shoot some descendents of slaves.

Let's shoot people who look vaguely like descendents of slaves.

Let's reserve all the jobs for "white" people.

Let's reserve all the decent housing for "white" people.

Let's shoot immigrants.

Let's shoot children, especially immigrant children.

Let's shoot women, especially when they speak or get abortions.

Let's have another TV network of liars who try to get people enraged about what they lie about.

Let's have more radio networks who do the same thing.

Let's tell some lies ourselves, especially about important matters that concern us.

Let's elect a bunch of psychopaths to public office - national, state, and local. Let's give them a lot of money.

Let's make sure banks and corporations have complete freedom to do whatever they want.

Let's make the tax system more regressive, so that poor people bear a greater burden than they do now.

Let's find ways to make the already rich even richer.

Let's name a football team "The Darkies." Let's put it in the nation's Capital.

Let's put all the reservation land up for sale.

Let's sell the national parks.

Let's clearcut all the forests.

Let's have a big oil spill.

Let's cut off all the mountaintops.

Let's build the Keystone XL pipeline. Let's make sure it leaks.

Let's have a huge oil train derailment.

Let's do fracking in every state. The more earthquakes the better. 

Let's forget about climate change. Start by taking all those scientists' jobs away.

Let's legalize the importation of ivory and rhinoceros horns. 

Let's kill all the sharks for their fins.

Let's kill all the whales, for no particular reason.

Let's raise the weight limit on our crumbling infrastructure.

Let's repeal the Bill of Rights. Except, of course, the Second Amendment.

Let's abolish all workers' rights.

Let's spy on everyone everywhere. Let's blackmail people with the information we get.

Let's make everyone on  the planet become "Christians." Let's burn those who refuse at the stake.

Let's have more sex and violence on TV.

Let's have more violent video games.

Let's put more people in jail.

Let's make more things criminal so we can put more people in jail.

Let's abolish public schools. If kids want to learn they can pay for it.

Let's sell off all our highways and city streets to private job creators. People can pay to ride.

Let's privatize city water, sewer and garbage collection.

Let's privatize all health care.

Let's privatize police and fire departments.

Let's act like jerks out on the highways.

Let's be cruel to animals, especially the ones we plan to eat.

Let's destroy some wildlife habitat.

Let's spill some chemicals.

Let's steal from future generations.

Let's turn the entire planet into manufactured products.

Let's make sure those manufactured products are shoddy and harmful.

Let's laugh all the way to the bank.

Let's bring back Bush and Cheney to run things again.

Let's...
_________________________________________________

All this stupidity is enough to make one scream and cry.

I've linked to this song before. It keeps coming back.

We've heard this song before. It's like déjà vu.

Let's do something stupid, set to music.

I saw Jimmy Buffett do this song many years ago. It was an underwhelming experience.

For  a full movie on stupidity, click here.

Some might remember The Fugs. Another Fugs song. And another Fugs song.

This is the stupidity that got me started on this rant. You have to wait a few seconds for the comment to appear. It was preceded by this.

I started a hashtag: #LetsDoSomethingStupid . It was already taken. This might work: #Let'sDoSomethingStupid .
________________________________________________

On the positive side, there are many people dedicating their lives to making things better. One of them is Robert Pierce, an organic farmer in Madison. He is featured in the groundbreaking (pun not exactly intended) documentary Food Patriots.

The picture is from the South Madison Farmers Market, an affiliate of a national organization, Growing Power, based in Milwaukee.

We aren't doomed to stupidity. As painful as it might be for some, we can learn a lot from people who descended from slaves. It might save our dying civilization.

Here's an update on the value and need for organic agriculture.

This update on the Senate Torture Report is worth reading.

NPR has an update about justice, or lack of same, at the Guantanamo prison camp.

Here's an update about our client state "Israel."

In another startling update, it turns out that Jesus, the inspiration for countless attempts to force people to believe this or that, may never have existed. In some places one could still get burned at the stake for saying this. This calls for another look at Life of Brian. ______________________________________________________

This song is due for a revisit. This too.

I have my own update in regard to ISIS/ISIL/The Islamic State. Here's my update about "Russia," "Ukraine," "NATO" and the "U.S."

Some might remember Bobby Darin. I'm pretty sure this was his biggest hit.

Here's Tom Paxton. 

Emptiness

It seems almost pointless to write anything about what is going on between "Israel" and the "Palestinians." It is a tragedy of human failure, that in this technologically "advanced" era the species homo sapiens can do no better than bombing masses of children, old people and other non-combatants. What could I write that would make anything better? Would the killing stop?

Hardly. "Israel" has eased up on the missile and other attacks, mainly due to worldwide revulsion. Its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed regret for the casualties, but placed the entire responsibility on Hamas, the governing body of "Gaza." "Hamas" of course blames "Israel."

Thanks goes to both of them for nothing from the rest of life on this planet. It's all O.K. as long as you have someone else to blame. I suppose this is what is known as a zero sum game. Zero sum, that is, if you count two hundred or so "Palestinians" equal to one "Israeli." When "Israel" launches one of its periodic assaults on "Gaza" they call it "mowing the lawn."

For what it is worth, I did write something a couple of weeks ago about the situation in "Gaza," a comment to a review of a TV series on NPR:

I don't have cable or dish, but am glad this series is airing. It may be in the collective unconsciousness by now, or the volksgeist/zeitgeist of the times, but I have come to the view of the situation in the "Holy Land," as an allegory for human interaction.

The key element in conflict is identity. The more extreme the identity, the more violent the expressions of that identity. If Jews weren't so self-identified before World War II, they certainly became so afterward, especially the ones who migrated to "Zion."

The "Palestinians" were not such a cohesive identity before the creation of "Israel," but they became so afterward. There is nothing like displacement and mistreatment to create a bond among people treated so.

The greatest absurdity of all, though, is the endless reward to "Israel" from the "U.S." government in money and weaponry for whatever mass atrocities they commit. No "side" in this conflict is "better" than the other, but the phoniness of "U.S." carte blanche only serves to make it worse. Our power structure couldn't care less about either "side," but domestic political concerns dictate that "we" keep the money and arms flowing. Death and destruction indefinitely into the future, all for political careers. The blame lies largely here. We are a nation run by cowards.

Identity is one of the strangest aspects of human consciousness. It enables people to kill each other, to force people to believe in something - or else, to create self-myths, rituals, culture and myths about "others" who are not part of one's identity. It may succeed in annihilation of the human species, should we continue in our pathological ways.

All this is happening, of course in context with global climate change. The news gets worse every day, it seems. So far, the industrial world has done next-to-nothing about it when measured against what needs to be done. The predicament is so enormous that the easy was to deal with it is to deny it exists, especially if one's short-term interests - like wealth, power, privilege and comfort - can have influence similar to drug addiction.

Then there is identity. Here in the "U.S." we have a combination of fundamentalist Christian identity working in tandem with "right wing" paranoia. I only use the term "right wing" because so many believe there is such a thing, an "ideology" along an imaginary horizontal spectrum, with a philosophy of "free enterprise," limited government, low taxes and a strong work ethic. This is the periphery, or facade. What "right wing" actually is is a mix of bigotry, intolerance, parasitism, xenophobia, scapegoating, vitriol and empire. There are variations, but the essence is a mental/emotional state of reptilian brain paranoia.

I have been writing about this for years, approaching the subject of our collapsing civilization from a perspective of moving from lower consciousness to higher consciousness. This avoids the duality of "left" versus "right," and thus is despised by those who consider themselves "leftists." Those who consider themselves "rightists" of course have no use for this view either. Both "sides" are addicted to duking it out in the forum of ideas, or lack of same.

Both sides are identified with their stances. It is the same as being identified with "Israeli-ness" or "Palestinian-ness." Or "American-ness." "Ukraine-ness." "Russian-ness." Adherent protestations notwithstanding, there is nothing inherent in any identity. There is no more substance to any identity than to being a fan of a sports team.

Or rock 'n roll band. I went to a few Grateful Dead shows, six to be exact. There was a certain snobbiness or a kind of hippie-elitism to think of oneself as a "Deadhead" - a dedicated aficionado of the band. As much as I liked the band and its music, I just couldn't get into the identity of being a Deadhead. The absurdity of such an identity was to me surreal. Most surreal were some of the people I would identify with were I to find Deadhead-ness meaningful.

Time of course is running out, but there is still a possibility of changing course. If we start to recognize the emptiness of paranoia, regardless of stance. Likely the best organization working to increase awareness of climate change is 350.org, yet it falls neatly into the trap of duality, and as a result is not having much effect.

In Buddhist practice it is said in various ways that through meditation, study, good works and helping others people can aid in the liberation of all sentient beings. Central to Buddhist awareness is the concept of Emptiness, that all independent existence is illusory. In other words, identity with some group as separate, unique, superior and deserving of special treatment is without substance - empty. Killing people to assert that an identity without substance is beyond criminal. It is stupid. Stupidity tends to result in a balancing, commonly known as reaping what you sow. The sooner we recognize this relationship between cause and effect, the sooner we can save our civilization. We "Americans" can start by ceasing to fund and protect the criminal occupation of "Palestine" by "Israel." The sooner the better.

I should add that our current power structure does not allow for defunding of "Israel." We can replace the power structure voluntarily, or we can wait for the system to collapse, and our lives along with it. We have a choice.
__________________________________________

Here's an old song. Here's another. This too. Here's a song by Steve Earle.

For those interested in Buddhist practice there are many opportunities. The World Buddhist Directory is a comprehensive listing of temples, sanghas and study groups around the planet.

For another journey into the surreal, this story about militarization of police should suffice.

R.I.P. Robin Williams.  If there is one thing we can learn from his passing it is that we are all in the same boat. Every day is a gift and an opportunity, and we are challenged to make sense of our lives no matter who we are. We cannot afford to think of ourselves as separate beings.