“The work doesn’t get done on the far left and it doesn’t get done on the far right. It gets done in the middle. If you look at the folks opposing this bill, they’re the extremes. Quite frankly, extremists are extremists and I don’t really care. If they’re willing to become less ideologues and more realists, then come on board.” (Senator Jon Tester, D-MT, to Missoulian editorial board)

In the real world, compromise is the last step in reaching an agreement. People fight to get everything they can get, push as far as they can go, and the other side does as well. Then comes the term “at loggerheads,” and a compromise is made. Everyone somewhat unhappy, somewhat pleased.

The Democrat Party has cheapened the term, however. They enter a room on bended knee, giving up in advance, seeking a deal before fighting.

They are not weak or stupid, however. They are merely dishonest, sold out. They behave that way because they do not believe in the things that they say they do in public, so that “compromising” before fighting effectively undermines their own base. That’s why I mentioned to Swede yesterday that Republicans do not have to lie to their base like Democrats do, and consequently appear more honest.

Continue reading “Spare change, anyone?” →

Genuine question here: News reports I see and read from other countries say that there were massive desertions of Kiev-based forces in Crimea, and a welcoming of Russian forces, so that there could be no action against Russia without fomenting an internal rebellion.

What does American news media report?

Exercising a the gym today I listened to Rocky Mountain High, by John Denver, and the line

“Talk to God and listen to the casual reply”

struck me. JD had a special talent with words and imagery. I heard the song like first time ever, and it put me in a place, an attitude, and it added exuberance and understanding to my day.

Rocky Mountain High is Colorado’s second state song. Here is the first, one to which very few people know the melody:

Where the Columbines Grow
Written & Music by A.J. Fynn

Where the snowy peaks gleam in the moonlight,
above the dark forests of pine,
And the wild foaming waters dash onward,
toward lands where the tropic stars shine;
Where the scream of the bold mountain eagle,
responds to the notes of the dove
Is the purple robed West, the land that is best,
the pioneer land that we love.

chorus:
Tis the land where the columbines grow,
Overlooking the plains far below,
While the cool summer breeze in the evergreen trees
Softly sings where the columbines grow.

The bison is gone from the upland,
the deer from the canyon has fled,
The home of the wolf is deserted,
the antelope moans for his dead,
The war whoop re-echoes no longer,
the Indian’s only a name,
And the nymphs of the grove in their loneliness rove,
but the columbine blooms just the same.

chorus

Let the violet brighten the brookside,
in sunlight of earlier spring,
Let the fair clover bedeck the green meadow,
in days when the orioles sing,
Let the golden rod herald the autumn,
but, under the midsummer sky,
In its fair Western home, may the columbine bloom
till our great mountain rivers run dry.

OK. Not all that bad, but a little overdone, too flowery and fluffy. It’s fairly typical fare for state songs coming out of the 19th and early twentieth century. But here is what I understand of poetry, which is not much: It is freeze-dried language that evokes images, emotion and meaning in as few words as a talented poet can use.

There was a lot of controversy about using Rocky Mountain High for the state song, especially the line

Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high.

If you don’t know what that means, you have not lived well, my friend.

So which is it?

Let the violet brighten the brookside,
in sunlight of earlier spring,
Let the fair clover bedeck the green meadow,
in days when the orioles sing,

or

And the Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high, Colorado.

No brainer, if you ask me, who was the better poet.

American news outlets, it does not matter which one as they are all alike, are reporting now that Russian troops are amassing on the Ukrainian border. The Russians say that this is not true. I happen to know what is true. I’ll share it.

The Americans are lying and the Russians are telling the truth.

That simple bit of knowledge could rock your world, dear reader, if only it could somehow penetrate the castle wall of propaganda with which our news, education and entertainment systems have so fortified you since you came on board. I remember way, way back that it was but one simple fact, that Americans were lying and Cubans telling the truth about some insignificant matter, that put a small hole in my own dike.

Please watch the movie Wag the Dog. It explains it all. It’s a very funny movie with big names like De Niro and Hoffman and Harrelson and even Willie Nelson. It is entertaining, but in true Hollywood tradition, is smuggling truth to us. It is actually a documentary.

Instead of mountain men we are cursed with a plague of diggers, drillers, borers, grubbers; of asphalt spreaders, dam builders, overgrazers, clear-cutters, and strip miners whose object seems to be to make our mountains match our men – making molehills out of mountains for a race of rodents – for the rat race. (Edward Abbey, Down the River with Henry Thoreau)

Imagine two people spending their nights alone in the wilderness. One is only barely asleep, aware of every noise and certain that in the thick soup are bears and mountain lions. He will awake at the slightest noise, holding perfectly still until he resolves its puzzle in his mind. Wind caused a pine cone to drop on the tent? Deer passing through? A ragged coyote looking for an easy meal? Each noise creates a moment of panic. The woods at night are dangerous. They need to be so. If we remove the danger, we remove the most important thing that wilderness offers: Wild. It is a journey into the soul.

Our second man is a coward. He’s in the woods out of necessity, hunting for game. That’s not a problem. We’re omnivores, after all. The problem is that he feels a need to have a gun at his side to help him sleep. He doesn’t own his fear. He has not yet let his inner child have a vision quest.
Continue reading “Fear primordial” →

We have taken to watching the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon lately. He’s very funny and the show is very entertaining. He might have a good long run, and I wish him the best. Fallon is a practiced comedian, that is, he works very hard on his bits. All of his accents and characters are the product of hours before a mirror, honing them to perfection. That, coupled with his personal happiness, natural charm and friendliness, makes him the perfect host for that show.

NBC is using him for cross-marketing purposes, however. His monologue each night is laden with current fashionable politics. The official US propaganda line these days is that Vladimir Putin is a monster. Most Americans are aware of events in Ukraine, and many can now locate it on a world map. That’s highly unusual. Our propaganda machine wants such awareness. So Fallon’s writers, who no doubt don’t give two shits for anything other than getting good laughs, have been instructed to introduce topical material into the monologue. They have have him opening with Putin impressions and bits. It’s Cold War fever again!

The last show I saw had Fallon mocking the vote in Crimea to remain part of Russia, inferring that the count had to be rigged since it goes counter to what we are told to think about that situation. Who can know. But he should temper that humor a bit. In the US our elections are true farces. The candidates are controlled by the same money, and when they are not, the results are stolen by easily-hacked electronic counting machines. So let’s contain the mockery. We’re in no position to judge.

I understand the confusion, however. I have a hunch the Crimean vote represented a true expression of public sentiment, and that would indeed be a foreign thing for any American to witness.

We used to take two publications when I was growing up: the Saturday Evening Post, and Life Magazine. Both went under in the 70’s. The reason was waste product, an advertising concept. The magazines had broad appeal – there was as likely something in any issue for me, my parents and older brothers. That created a problem. The makers of Geritol, for instance, did not want to pay to advertise to readership that did not use their product.

It’s called segmentation. Advertisers insisted that magazines target audiences so that when they bought space, there was no waste. Hence, magazines like Gum Chewers Quarterly and Knot Tying Weekly Along with Cosmo and it’s endless ‘how to surprise him in bed’ lists and GQ for the self-imagined sophisticated male.
Continue reading “The appeal of silence” →

“[The Cherokee] would go down to the water early in the morning, wade out waist deep, take the water of the river and throw it up over his head, and say, ‘Wash away any thoughts or feelings that may hinder me from being closer to my God. Take away any thoughts or feelings that may hinder me from being closer to all my brothers and sisters on the earth, and the animals of the earth.’ And they would wash themselves and cleanse themselves every morning, and they would walk out of the water.” [Adapted from Freeman Owle, “Going to Water.”]

Those words are posted on an information sign on the Oconaluftee River near Cherokee, outside Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I found them moving.

In comments below the previous post we were discussing the propaganda that we swim in daily here in the land of the blind, and I remember Jacques Ellul wrote about the “illusion of progress.” We have this notion that life is getting better. We have better aircraft, phones, Internet, interstate Highways, GPS systems, all due to the Department of Defense, an Orwellian euphemism. That government agency controls our technology, and for so long as that technology gives them an advantage over enemies, real and make believe, it is kept under wraps. When the advantage is gone it is given over to the private sector.

War is progress.

That image of a man wading into a river, cleansing his body and mind in preparation for a new day – we have surely regressed. What more is there to life than to exist in peace and in nature and among our fellow humans?

I said something nasty to Polish Wolf the other day, and that’s OK because he’s nasty to me in turn. The only way to avoid nastiness with him is to give him the respect he thinks he’s due. He’s young and has many years to ripen, so for now I’ll just repeat the nasty statement: “There seems to be a high degree of correlation in this country between self-proclaimed expertise and incuriosity.”

This came to mind last night when I again said something I regret, this time to my son. I immediately took my comment down off of Facebook, but too late. It went out over the tubes. He is young too and has many years to ripen, and him I like quite a bit. So the comment sticks in my craw as a piece of advice that I could have used (but been too dense to grasp) at any time in my life. Wish I’d just shut up.

He put up brief comment about the events in the Ukraine, and there followed another comment from a young friend of his who talked about how awful that the Soviets were invading. I chimed in that it appeared to me that Ukraine had been invaded by the EU. The friend advised me that there were no EU uniforms there. I said oops – my bad. I did not know that invaders always wore uniforms. And my son said that it was off-topic anyway, and that there is lots of stuff there that can’t be knowed. And that’s when I dropped the rich morsel on him. I said “You could try being curious.”

Everything there is knowable. Everything going on now in Egypt and Venezuela is knowable. It’s just history playing out. CIA, MI6, NATO and Mossad have unimaginable resources and can make large events happen, and our incurious news media reports all of it as if it is what it appears to be. But it’s not. Ukraine is what it always has been – a buffer for the Russians against invading western forces. The whole of the World War II played out as just another invasion of Russia. Had not Neville Chamberlain and certain British and American factions wanted that invasion, a certain angry maniacal Austrian would have been stopped early in his tracks.

Ukraine is a breadbasket, and a strategically located country from which force can be projected. Whichever imperial power controls Ukraine has hegemonic power over other places, most notably, the Balkans. It’s part of the great game, and sad for them that lives there to be in a place that imperial powers are concerned about. Like the poor schmucks in Afghanistan.

How do I know this? How can this not be known? I don’t want to brag, but I have many years of curiosity behind me, and these questions are long answered in my mind. These events are easy to understand. It doesn’t do me any good to be the only one I know* who understands them, so all my years of burrowing amount to no useful purpose. That’s why this blog is taking a different tack, on to more important things.

I just wish I knew what those things were.
_________________
*Oops! SK, SW – just poor wording. There are at least three of us.