Christian

Viewing the Present through the Past

I’m in the mood to rant. Those of you who’ve been with me a while know I do that from time to time. Some of you, the more insane, even love me for it. A few of you pat me on my head, and abide me my rants.

For those in the mood, not to love or to abide, then I would say…. run.

Come back tomorrow, the fit of truth will have passed, and I will be a cuddly clown again, cooing and capering for pleasures… cloying.

But right now, like Lovecraft’s mad apocryphal Arab, Abdul Alhazred, the fit is on me. Sometimes the blood seeps into my eyeballs, the blood of all those we are killing… and it is either speak or die.

So the words will have their say….

Everyday

Everyday I wake up, I ask myself if I’m on the side of the angels

Every single day.

I don’t take it for granted I am.

On the side of the angels I mean.

Most people take it for granted, that they were right yesterday, and will be right today and tomorrow. Particularly Americans. Americans are always so sure that they are right, adamant of their right before they do something so glaringly wrong. No nationality in the history of the world has ever been so documented in their lies not just against other nations, but lies against their own citizens. America has repeatedly and consistently been wrong about yesterday, yet continues to follow the same wrong path through ever more bloody todays and tomorrows.

As if true choice, and true change were concepts America steered away from long ago, and no longer even sees.

I don’t take it for granted that in the night, the causes I love have not been invaded by the causes I loathe, And the things I adore, have not been replaced by what I despise

That is the nature of evil

It sheds its skin

It is ever changing, ever moving

And you must be on guard

Ever on guard

And guided not by stagnant allegiances

But by the fruit of your present tree. That is the constant question you must challenge everyone and everything with. What are your actions sowing? If they are things you fear to show, and fear to acknowledge, then your fruit is rotten, and your tree withered.

And the only sane thing to do, is to cut down the old… and to plant a new tree.

But god… are we fond of the old.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called burning people righteous.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called slavery holy.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called Jews an abomination.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity cheered killing Arabs to save them.

And of that generation, that is ever changing and always unchanged, I would say simply

If people die at the end of the day… perhaps it be not Christianity, but something else.

Something that wears the skin of righteousness but not the heart.

Perhaps Rome never relinquished herself to Daniel’s Christians

Perhaps Rome, the idealogical not the geographical, survived

The only way evil ever does endure

by hiding

by changing

by subverting

Like klansmen and scorned ex- slaveholders invading Lincoln’s party post the Reconstruction,

Making of the Republican party

Making of the Party of Tolerance and Abolition

That which it was not.

A party of bigotry and landholders (that is not an insult, that is history and verifiable fact in the wake of the reconstruction)

Perhaps in this same way Rome, the religion of Rome

Rome, the ancient

Survives under the guise of the religion it hated

Even to the naming of the days of the week

And not keeping the Sabbath

So Be ever mindful Christian soldiers

Marching as to war

That you have been

led astray
bamboozled
hoodwinked

And be wary
lest the cause you fight for my Christian Brothers
is the one you should be armed against

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In the Years of the World: Greetings from the 8th Millennium

I have to say, as much as I favor the morose, that’s in my soul, equal parts Poe and Bennett and Baldwin and Himes and Woolrich, and aye Barker’s there too, there’s equal parts of me that sees only the gold.

That sees some grand beauty in our design.

That believes fervantly that we are the stuff of stars, and reprimands loudly at what poor use we’ve made of it.

We can be more.

Even onto the ending of the world.

We can be more.

Last night was a fine night.

And today was a fine day.

And we can be more.

In the ancient Ethiopic Calendar (which I am a follower of, more than the Gregorian) Today is the 23rd day of Tahsas in the 7511th Year of the World. I never tire of living in the 8th Millennium. :).

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Ruminations from the 8th Millennium

Those of you who have been with this blog from the beginning know occasionally you’ll be seeing a secondary date on my postings; it belongs to the ancient Ethiopian calendar which I’ve taken a shine to.

In the Ancient Ethiopic… today is the 21st Day of Tahsas (pronounced Kiahk in the Coptic), the year 7509 of the 8th Millennium, in the years of the world.

In the years of the world.

I never tire of living in the 8th Millennium. :).

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O Tidings of Comfort & Joy! Israel America and Dark Reichs

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

I’m listening to old 70s Soul Cinema trailer clips, and they are cracking me up. The best? This little tag line from Fred Williamson’s BLACK CAESAR…

“This Caesar comes to bury you!”— How Frigging cool is that!I have to pick up that movie on DVD and watch it now. 🙂

God rest ye merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our savior
was born on Christmas day.
To save us all from Satan’s power
when we were gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

The odd thing I find about Christmas, and this supposedly benevolent time of year, one of them, is it is typically the time America ramps up her military strikes against non-christian countries.

“Celebrating Ramadan with your families are you? Well let me drop off my present from Uncle Sam….
this megaton bomb bitches!! Merry Christmas MFers!!!”

I sadistically jest, but the truth is that sadistic without any jesting involved.


From God, our heavenly father,
A blessed angel came.
And unto certain shepherds,
Brought tidings of the same.
How that in Bethlehem was born,
The son of God by name.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

I want to highly recommend a book I had mentioned picking up previously, DIGGING:THE AFRO-AMERICAN SOUL OF AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC by Amiri Baraka.

A compilation of essays covering several decades of this uniquely American art form of Jazz/Blues as only an insider can, it is not only a seminal dissection of the times and the players in the music scene, it is as brilliant a dissection of America the American id and American fallacies as I’ve ever read.

It is an essential book, and is easily my recommended read of 2009.

It is a book on the masters of the medium, Trane, Coleman, Miles, the list goes on, told by someone who knew and played and laughed with them.

It is a book told with an authority, validity by one of not just the world’s preeminent poets but one of the world’s preeminent music lovers, and you’re NEVER going to get that again, EVER. By anyone.

Because those pioneers are all shuffled off this mortal coil, and what is left is the vultures to retrofit their memories and their music. The vultures who would paint Black Gods white.

We are now deep in the age of Sony and Time Warner and American Idol and corporate bs as the end all and be all of music.

Deep in the age of the tail wagging the people.

So the discussion DIGGING engages in, of the music as the gestalt, and the natural by product of the fears, the hopes, the politics, the loves, the controversies, and most of all as a chronicler from an abused mass of Americans not allowed to be Americans, this understanding of music as a call and a component in change, you are NEVER going to see presented from this capitalist controlled society again.

Music to them. the suits, is either a way to sell you something or to divert you from something, but never a way to engage you in something constructive or progressive or enlightening.

So DIGGING, written by this eight decade old LIVER and SURVIVOR and SHAPER of the most turbulent of American Years, I see as absolutely a historic document from day one, and an essential component to understanding what music was, and what it can be again.

You’re looking for a gift to give that music lover in your life? This is the book you give them. His list of recommended CDs alone is worth the price of the book!! I’ve tried some of his recommendations and they are dead on. Highest Recommendation.

“Jazz is the music of Americans who were not allowed to be American.”

To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

I’ve followed the recent rash of removals of Black Mayors, from offices throughout the country, for the most trumped up nonsense with some interest. It is very Jim Crow like, and in the age of Black Newspapers and Black Radio Stations and even Black owned theaters… we would have called this convenient confluence of events what is it… a witch hunt, and a power grab, and a turning back the clock.

We would have called it clearly… injustice, and undemocratic, this usurping of the duly elected representatives of the people, by legal maneuverings of a very few people.

But we no longer live in an age of Black owned anything. Brown vs. Board of Education led the way to that.

Brown vs. BOE while a good case in the micro-level, on the macro-level can clearly be seen for what it is, a defeat cloaked as a victory. Zora Neale Hurston said this decades ago, and she was derided for it by everyone, Blacks as well as Whites.

She ended up dying a broken woman. But she was right, and no one has ever been more right.

“Our victories give them weapons they did not have before”

Separate but Equal, there is nothing wrong with that concept. The problem was the practice. America was never Separate AND Equal. It was alway seperate AND UNEQUAL. Inferior service, inferior representation, inferior choices.

And BROWN vs BOARD rather than treat the root cause of the problem, unequal and unjust allocation of dollars and resources, instead became a model for even more unequal allocation/distribution of resources.

That leads to our present atmosphere of disenfranchised people, devoid of real recourse or representation. With representatives picked off one by one, with not even a real Black owned paper or radio station left .

And you may be saying, I’m not Black why should I care?

You should care because

“what you do to the least, you do to to me”

or

“They came first for the Jews, but I wasn’t a Jew so I said nothing”

or

Because ultimately the crimes they, the robber barons of this… trifling age, get away with in Haiti or Iraq or Palestine or Philadelphia today, they are ultimately perfecting to try on you tomorrow.

Because while I’m fond of terms like Black and White, the truth is that this is a class struggle, between those who want to be, once again, their fathers’ sons and be the masters of men. And they will not let color deter them from your fall. They want the mass of men as slaves or serfs, and each peoples’ fall, from Liberia to Haiti to Iraq to Palestine brings them a step closer… to preparing your fall.

They are greasing America to fail, the agents of Oligarchy, they hope to put to bed, at last, even the lie of liberty.

So that the people, frustrated with services closing, taxes rising, food and water unsafe, quality health unaffordable, cost of living escalating, fear and crime their only constant food, and hunger and pestilence and perversion and death in the air, and America made into Gomorrah… so the people, frustrated, will be ready at last for their nation’s march to terror and totalitarianism.

Will be ready, at last, for America’s fall.

Mistakenly blaming their liberty for their pains, when it was not liberty that failed them, but they that failed their liberty by not killing the leaders that led them to such mire and such madness.

So remember this… rambling of mine from the edge… the next time you hear of a suspicious removal of an elected representative, or of an odd arrest, or a case tried in the press/tv, as many increasingly are.

Because with every broadcast, you are being manipulated closer to that day of your own dark Reich.


Ohhhh,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

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