Playhouse 90’s A TOWN TURNED TO DUST aka Echoes of the current political landscape!

“We didn’t know he was guilty.

We strung him up, to satisfy the mood.”

 

“There’s the hunger for the niche.

I wanted to be somebody.

So I decided who the victim should be.

I pointed to an old man.

I led the mob.

I wanted to be somebody.”

— Playhouse 90 A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST

 

Those quotes from 1958, written by one of our great writers to highlight a mindset of ignorance and prejudice and lynchings, are oddly and shamefully relevant. Being that here 60 years later the current occupant of the white house stole into the office, on such rhetoric of hate and stupidity and intolerance.

Invaded the most powerful office in the world, swept in on the unreasoning bellows of the mob.

I love Amazon Prime for making available these forgotten and overlooked pieces of cultural and cinematic history.

 

Today I watched from the early days of television, PLAYHOUSE 90s A TOWN THAT TURNED TO DUST.

Directed masterfully by John Frankenheimer, written by Rod Serling, starring a stellar cast including Rod Steiger, William Shatner, Fay Spain,  Eugene Iglesias, Mario Alcade and James Gregory.

From 1958, when Jim Crow and Lynchings still infested large swaths of America, this live production is unfortunately again relevant in 2019, will always be relevant as long as there are masses who want to blame their lives on others rather than taking responsibility for their lives. And ready, these masses, to be led by the loudest voice of hate, rather than the more thoughtful voices of reason.

Watch it now courtesy of Amazon Prime (search for it under the title AN EVENING IN THE ZONE). This is a film that deserves to be owned on DVD/Blu-Ray. Deserves to always be readily available, and not at the mercy of ephemeral streaming  contracts and whims.

I would like to think if Americans were raised on films like 1936’s FURY by Fritz Lang and 1943’s THE OX BOW INCIDENT by William Wellman and this one by John Ftrankenheimer, if these films were required viewing, we would stop repeating the same mistakes and committing the same attrocities and empowering the same hate mongers. To the point where the occupancy of the White House would be different.

There is nothing sadder than history and mistakes not learned from.

FALL OF THE CITY / American Election Results! Hillary wins at the Polls but loses due to the bs Electorial College?! That’s Nonsense!

You expect me to rant, I’m not goint to rant.

Except to say I did my part, I voted for the candidate who actually had some experience both on the national and international stage, ie the candidate who wasn’t Trump.

First it is sad that in a nation of 322 million people, these are the two individuals that rise to the largest seat in the nation and the world. Sadder still that anyone would vote for Trump, much less in any numbers (That being relative since only about 125 million people voted in total. Not great numbers in a nation of over 300 Million). And yet more direness, that again the popular vote which is obstensibly what we are fed is this Nation’s great Democracy in action, loses to the backdoor shenanigans of the Electoral College (Clinton beat Trump by over 200,000 votes). A stop gap measure created for just such a reason, to muddy the waters, and make the will of the many, subbordinate to the desires of the few.

I guess I am going to rant.

This is a talk show president of an apathetic and ignorant population that chooses based on sound bytes and media bias rather than on the record/resume of the individual. Whatever else you say for or against Hillary Clinton, she is an experienced and tested politician on the national and international level.

Even the 2nd Bush, at least was a Governor first. Trump has never even been a mayor, he lacks any diplomacy. He’s a walking talkshow host. Who now… due to a, from my vantage, very suspect election day voting process, and the fuzzy math of the Electoral College has been granted the most powerful seat in the world.

And he is going to use it to make himself and his friends richer, by making the poor, poorer. That is absolutely his agenda. If you make under $300000 and voted for Trump, you are worse than an ignorant, fool… you are a slave.

You are a nation of masterless men… seeking a master. In Archibald MacLeish’s great FALL OF THE CITY, he forewarned against days like this , a whole population  ‘seeking to be free of the burden of their freedoms’.

The people invent their oppressors: they wish to believe in them.
They wish to be free of their freedom: released from their liberty —
The long labor of liberty ended! — Archibald MacLeish, “The Fall of the City”

If I was a foreign nation looking at this election, I would see… opportunity. An America that eschews moving forward for the familiarity of moving back. That seeks division over unity, and hate over hope. An America that is ready to fall.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/86853-the-fall-of-the-city/

 

I can not control the ignorance of the led, or the machinations of their leaders, all I can do is prepare, enlighten, and support those better voices of our nature and our America. All I can do is define America not as those resources and liberties the venal waste, but those individuals who against the odds seek, preserve, and uplift what is best and noble.

But I think in this Trump coup, is the impetus for the formerly apathetic to get involved, to turn around this ship of corruption that is America, beginning with eradicating this Electoral college idiocy.

The end?

No, this is the beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Suffer Fools

People forget.

People forget what their job is.

Our job is to stand between the darkness and the light…. and hold the line.

People forget.

That’s why we have these clowns and fools running for the most powerful office in the land, and poised to take it.

Because people forget, the American people forget that we are suppossed to hold the line between the darkness and the light,

And that line does not suffer fools.

 

My musings on the world brought to you by today’s Book of the Day :
The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein by Thomas Ligotti

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST and 2012 American Election Results!!

I’ve been listening to Jon Ronson’s simply fascinating THE PSYCHOPATH TEST. A book that has the staggering central premise, that a telling percentage of the people in positions of power, heads of business, captains of industry, even presidents of nations, are psychopaths. Not just calling them names, or using the term as a throw-away appellation, but meaning many of these people who scrape and claw for positions of power are true, dyed in the wool, clinically diagnosable… psychopaths.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Psychopath is defined by Webster’s dictionary as : a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

Bloody hell, if that is not a spot on description of too many people who have run, and in many cases ascended to positions of influence from the United States to Israel to Britain to Greece. 🙂

So the PSYCHOPATH TEST espouses that the type of men (and women) that gravitate to such positions of control over the lives of many, often exhibit the same psychosis, check all the boxes, as those who seek the violent and criminal control over individuals. It takes, in both cases, a disregard for the individual; and seeing the other as something to be used for the controller’s own selfish ends and needs. The only difference is in degree, and that one does it, under the guise of lawfulness.

Listening to the audio book in the build up to the election, and in the wake of the American election results, it becomes clear just how much psychopathic behavior is part and parcel of the people who would seek and struggle and claw for positions of control over our lives. And more, how much psychopathic behavior flourishes in the camps that get swept up in the rigged game that is the American political process.

The Obama/Mitt Romney nonsense was from the first a rigged game. Both on the payroll of the same big business/industrial war complex machine, whoever lost between those two fabricated opponents, Big Business wins and the American people lose. Clearly given Mitt Romney as a choice, Obama comes off as the lesser of two evils, and the knee jerk vote if you’re programmed to vote either Democrat or Republican (I’m not).

But lesser of two evils or not, only a fool or a liar could look at Obama’s record in the past four years and see it as anything but Bush-lite. The expansion of the same war and big business and eradication of civil liberties that Bush’s reign consisted of.

So such is the power of the spin, and mass media, and lies as truth, they can get liberals to embrace a dark colored but well spoken conservative posing as a liberal, and they can get conservatives to hate a man who is doing what the conservative party has always done, which is support big business at the expense of the middle and working class; and thereby manage to move the conservative party from conservatism to totalitarianism just to find some distance in ideology between two candidates who are both clearly in the pay of the same conservative interests.

Forget the bullshit, issue-obscuring, bills that were tossed up for the American people to believe they were voting on something of meaning; on the real important issues of America, War, Corporate Welfare, expansion of government powers and surveillance, Obama and Romney are kissing cousins. It was a mainstream presidential election, without any true liberal candidate represented by the big 2.

Being someone who doesn’t let mass media pick my options, I voted for a candidate that wasn’t the lesser of two evils, but one I could feel good about voting for. A third party candidate, with experience and a platform and a stance I liked, I’m speaking of former Governor Gary Johnson.

But the mass of America, so programed to not seeing anything beyond what the media wants them to see, saw only the two evils presented them.

And that, in the fullness of time, may be a shame… and a tragedy.

In many ways it’s far better to have the winner of an election be, the open conservative rather than the hidden one. Because people make apologies or just fail to see the rampant conservatism of Obama’s reign, something they would have galvanized against if Romney had ascended to the Presidency.

So instead we have four more years of the American people losing EVERYTHING to corporate interests, but because we’re getting hit by a silk covered fist, we concentrate on the silk, and ignore the knuckles that are knocking our teeth out.

In many ways Obama’s reelection is far more damning to Civil Liberties than Romney’s could ever be. The latter would have galvanized opposition, the former elicits protective excuses. I don’t care if you are Black. I care if you are a tool for big business, and an agent for destruction of the middle and lower classes.

And this Obama has been.

If the halls of our political process are filled with psychopaths, as the book THE PSYCHOPATH TEST hints at, then perhaps the only thing more dangerous than voting for an obvious psychopath, is voting for a reasonable man, in the pocket of psychopaths.

Time will tell. For all of us.

WEDNESDAYS WORDS

WEDNESDAYS WORDS is a new weekly installment that ranks the most interesting, intriguing books of the week (old, new, reissues, digital, etc). Contributors represent a variety of genres and sources. Each book includes Title and publisher blurb.

Book Description
Release Date: September 19, 2012

The New York Times bestselling author of Armed Madhouse offers a globetrotting, Sam Spade-style investigation that blows the lid off the oil industry, the banking industry, and the governmental agencies that aren’t regulating either.

This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.

For Vultures’ Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He’s built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the billionaires of financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets and bandits for Big Oil.

With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures’ Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can’t write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores

With the US presidential election only weeks away, I thought this book would be a perfect read to tell you what neither of the ‘mainstream’ [i.e. hand-picked/business friendly] candidates want to discuss. Namely, out of control and unchecked petrol/gasoline companies/prices.

The price gouging at the gas pump, indicative of a larger across the board push by business to suppress workers’ raises/salaries; while increasing, seemingly without end, the cost of goods.

An unsurportable dichotomy.

A one-book WEDNESDAYS WORDS, but it’s a good book.

The WEDNESDAYS WORDS column is a new blog feature, appearing (you guessed it!) every Wednesday. Come back next week to see which books make the list!

If you’re a publisher, writer, or other creative representative looking to submit items for WEDNESDAYS WORDS, just leave a comment on this post with your email/contact info, comments don’t get posted they come right to me, and I’ll reach out to you with the snail mail details.

And as far as readers, if you see items on WEDNESDAYS WORDS you’re considering purchasing then, if you are able and would like to support this blog, please utilize the attached links.

Your helpful purchases through those links, generates much appreciated pennies to keep this blog running. Your feedback and support… just way cool, and way appreciated. Thanks!

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Gary Johnson Romney Obama Ron Paul Stewart Alexander and the Lesser of Evils

“I’m an old lefty. I believe the government must do for people, what people cannot do for themselves.”
— Green Arrow courtesy of Dwayne McDuffie’s excellent JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED

I’ve been watching classic episodes of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, a show that remains animated television at its best, and for most of its run the love letter of producer/lead writer Dwayne McDuffie. The recently departed Dwayne McDuffie who followed up his stellar work at Warner Brothers Animation, with unfortunately editorially sabotaged work at both DC COMICS and MARVEL COMICS.

With the 2012 US Presidential election nearly upon us, the take away from my watching of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED is that line, and the idea that only in a country as monumentally effed up and corrupt and mismanaged as America, could anyone consider either of the television approved candidates, Obama or Romney, steeped as they both are in the blood and oil and pus and complicity of big business, as viable people’s candidates.

You are a fool if you believe Obama is, and has been, in his tenure anything more than Bush-lite. He has rubber-stamped policies, in the past four years, that have destroyed civil and economic liberties domestically and expanded the endless war abroad.

And to make his conservatism seem liberal, he is contrasted with a malicious madman in Romney, though both candidates are more alike than they are different, taking money as they are from the same masters. But this illusion of conflict is played up in the media, to give the American people once more… the illusion of choice; a choice between the lesser of two evils, the choice between big business crafted puppets, between Mussolini or Hitler if you like, which is to say… no choice at all.

I voted for the ‘lesser of two evils’ four years ago, and I’ve regretted it since, with every bill or shredding of civil liberties that Obama has signed into law.

In many ways I think we would be in a better place if the obvious madman Mccain, had come to power 4 years ago, because people would have rallied against his obvious butchering of civil liberties, rather than this death by inches thing that has occurred under the cult of personality, which is the presidency of Obama.

He has been as ‘republican’ a president as you could hope, with all the negative connotations of that word, but his every action has been defended (or ignored) by people who see his labels (Democrat, Black, Liberal) rather than his actions (Republican, Conservative). And Republicans, conservatives become more conservative/republican to keep/enforce this artificial feud (which serves no one but big business), this artificial division of them and us.

So I’m not inclined to be backed into a corner again this year, this year I’m voting for a candidate whose views intrigue me, and whose background and history gives me reason to feel… justified.

Candidates on the ballot or write in candidates not sanctified by big business are few and far between, here are a few such candidates:

GARY JOHNSON– The former republican, and two time Governor of New Mexico, now running under the Libertarian ticket, has me very intrigued for his anti-big business stance, and his history of not raising taxes,

STEWART ALEXANDER –
http://stewartalexanderforpresident2012.org/- I’m also intrigued by the ticket of Alexander and Mendoza that is running for the Socialist Party. Their stances on the issues is the about face from the “give big business our first born” dance the American people have been on, though their lack of any documented political experience and lack of endorsements is a bit of a concern. As is the general sub-par nature of their web-site and presentation. But at this point in America’s history, I’ll take the well meaning amateur, over the slick big business approved trained seal… any day.

RON PAUL– I can’t really figure out from day to day if Ron Paul is running or not running for the Presidency, however it’s an impressive site the 75 year old has, and the stances he pays lip service to, you can really get behind. Give it a read, and should his name show up on a ballot, I don’t think anyone would have an argument picking him over Romney or Obama.

So where is the candidate who will do for the people, rather than for big business? Well he may be one of those above, take a look for yourself and decide.

You only have one vote, and despite what any one tells you, it is not wasted if you go against the majority or the ‘sure thing’, it is only wasted if you go against your conscience.

When the record shows that 99.99999999% of the population voted for the lesser of evils or established evils, be not afraid to stand alone as that man or woman who voted out of hope… rather than fear. One of the votes I’m proudest to have cast, was a ‘losing’ vote, was for Ralph Nader. And I’d cast it the same way today, given those same candidates and situations.

I’d cast it for the attempt to make things better, rather than the certainty and fear of keeping them the same.

Here endeth the Lesson

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A choice of Romney or Obama means the American People Lose

Here’s the thing.

The lesser of two evils, is still evil.

I voted for Obama four years ago, though his voting record in Congress, and the big-business backers to his presidential campaign, raised serious questions for me, whether his deeds as president would live up to his words.

Four years later we can see they have not.

Those eloquent speeches, riding into the office on the quotes of men who fought for civil liberties, have been lost in a presidency that has seen sweeping expansion of state powers and infiltration of big-business interests at the expense of civil liberties and the citizenry.

We live in a ratcheted up cointel-pro state.

Ah, yes… you don’t know that term.

It’s used sparingly these days. It’s a doctrine, it’s a doctrine, and a plan of action… for keeping things the same. It’s in many ways just a retrofitting of the doctrine of manifest destiny.

It is a doctrine that has been used in this country that consists of the state sanctioned murder of movements contrary to the status quo, be those movements the Native American or the Black Consciousness movements of the 60s or Move in the 80s

(MOVE? You don’t know the name… Ahh— I forget how little of the world the press let’s anyone see these days.

MOVE was people wanting to live, their way, in the cradle of Liberty, the city of Love, and finding themselves in the way of interests…virulent.

It’s my 9-11.

Philadelphia Mayor requested it, the bombing, and the Pennsylvania Governor ordered the dropping of a bomb, in the heart of the city, on American citizens, to settle an issue of homesteading, gentrification, and because he didn’t like the way they lived.

Look it up.

Take a few minutes away from playing Angry Birds, and you will find a story… to make a right man wrong.

The tax-dollar paid bomb killed men, women, and children. We dropped a bomb in the heart of an American city, and not a station mentioned it.

Welcome to the war.

And yet there were survivors.

Surviving is what we do.

And they had the survivors incarcerated… for having the temerity to have survived. They are still 30 years later, incarcerated, unwanted truths… locked away.

It was the story that a young reporter called Mumia was covering, before he was shot down by Philadelphia police bullets, and thrown on Death Row for not having the good manners… to have died quietly.

That… is MOVE. That is a story of a great wrong, and it waits… to be righted.)

or the Branch Davidians in the 90s (a multi-racial, an multi-ethnic group, whose massacre at Waco has been coopted by militant and hate groups that share none of the interests of the Davidians).

And that increase in surveillance, control, and punishment of citizens for exercising their rights as citizens, that cointel-pro that has seen the massacring of American citizens and American Liberties for years, has received a new rubber stamp approval by Obama. He has signed and trumpeted every erosion of civil liberties put in from of him in the last four years.

His presidency in effect has been in many ways a continuation and mirroring of the Bush years, which is not surprising considering the backers are the same.

What I’m saying is I voted for the lesser of evils 4 years ago, hoping the words and the promises were the man.

They were not.

They were just rhetoric. Having watched his administration, two things have become clear to me…both Democrats and Republicans are not about the issues, they are about the tribalism.

I say that because in ways deep and true Obama’s presidency has been a staunch ‘conservative republican pro-big business, anti-civil liberties, pro-corporate welfare anti-citizen’s welfare’ presidency.

So people, conservatives who defended Bush’s presidency, should have for the past four years been defending Obama. And liberals, who berated and opposed Bush’s presidency should have been equally vocal in their opposition to Obama.

But oddly enough that’s not what happened. And it’s because it’s not the issues staunch do-or-die Republicans or Democrats, and much of the press care about, it is the football game. It is cheering for your colors, right or wrong.

And that way, that tribalism, that excuses wrong if it is done by your team, and hates right if it is done by the other team… has no place in a sane world. Which is obvious by looking at our world.

You have to be able to call wrong, wrong, regardless of the color it wears. And you have to be able to call right, right, regardless of the team it is on.

At the end of the day, such pointed tribalism, is the height of irrationality and the height of self destruction.

I voted for Obama four years ago, because he was the lesser of two evils, and I hoped he would live up to his pretty speeches and his word. He did not.

Romney and Obama are backed by the same corporate interests, they are a rigged game, spouting diatribes on inanities at each other, but on the real choices, “do I send troops to kill here”, “do I leave Gasoline companies untaxed”, “do I offset mounting debt by instituting a flat mandatory tax on business generating revenue in the US”, “do we punish companies for off-shoring, and H1visas, and not hiring domestically”, in the serious things where it is about the rights of big business to rape the American people… Obama and Romney are in complete agreement, they are (bs stances on homosexuality aside) kissing cousins. 🙂

They will do whatever they are told to do.

So no, I won’t be choosing between the lesser of two evils this year. I’ll vote for someone else, an Independent I like, or a write in candidate.

And yes, yes, I know the argument that a vote not for a front runner is a wasted vote.

That argument never held water with me. All a man has is one vote, and the granting of that vote, if it takes the will of other men into consideration, the will of the majority, how then is it his vote?

Let 300 million Americans vote for the same person, the popular candidate, and I will alone spend my one vote on the candidate I believe in. And if he wins not, then he wins not, but he will not lose for my absence.

Let the records at the end of days show that, while all the lions or hyenas roared in unison, that the son of David followed not the sure thing… but pursued even onto defeat… the right thing.

So what candidates am I toying with currently…

Well I’m sure the landscape has more changing to do between now and November, but I’m intrigued by:

Stewart Alexander

and

Gary Johnson

As far as write-in candidates, I like big name stars who go out there fighting for the little guy and aren’t above getting arrested doing so. 🙂 .

So a write in ticket of George Clooney and Danny Glover, I think would be pretty damn awesome. Neither one being a stranger to international affairs, and really after Bush II, it’s obvious that a real deep understanding of just about anything isn’t necessary to be president. :).

So yeah those are the names I’m researching now, for a list of all 2012 candidates, go here:

Presidential Candidates 2012

And I guess I’ll leave you with a quote, that seems to have value in these valueless times:

“A warrior must focus his attention
on the link between himself and his death.
Without remorse or sadness or worrying,
he must focus his attention on the fact
that he does not have time
and let his acts flow accordingly.
He must let each of his acts
be his last battle on earth.

Only under those conditions
will his acts
have their rightful power.
Otherwise they will be,
for as long as he lives,
the acts of a fool.”

—Don Juan as quoted by Carlos Casteneda