Category Archives: American Dysfunction

Soros Jamming

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I wrote my first song about George Soros during COVID because I felt we’d become so Balkanized as a country that there was little that opposing factions could say to one another. The binary polarization had made dialogue nearly impossible to have.

I also recognized that this division and strife was being funded on the left with money from George Soros.

Liberal Democrats had become so enraged about anything connected to Donald J. Trump.  A term called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was coined on the right to describe and explain it. Stephen King definitely suffers from it. Probably Rosie O’Donnell, also. This seemed odd because there was a time when Trump was a beloved cultural icon, offered referred to as a “tycoon.” But not any longer. Most on the left have imbibed the narrative that Trump is anathema to our democracy.

Additonally, the left conveniently began turning a blind eye to the rioting and mayhem fueled by Antifa and BLM groups. You may as well lump in the litany of vaccine and mask mandates for businesses and schools and it began to feel like chaos was a strategy that Soros was funding, with the playbook being written by Saul Alinsky. This is an overly “glowing” account of Alinsy’s how to get whatever you want.

I have a beautiful chartreuse cat named Lucy. Lucy tends to pester me when I get up before my wife and she will not relent until I feed her. I began capturing snippets of Lucy each morning and I thought I’d do just Lucy, some drums and some heavy guitar and see how it sounded. I was also recording tracks for a full-lengh release that would become Living In Some Strange Days.  What eventuallyl became “Soros Jam (Biden Mix)” ended up on that disc.

[Lucy resents being compared to Kamala Harris]

Now, we’re watching the Democrats, the “party of democracy” once again reveal that they hate the other half of America and could care less about democracy of any kind. They’ve kicked Joe Biden to the curb and installed Cackling Kamala Harris (who sounds like my cat, Lucy) as their choice to unseat The Orange Cheeto. How will it all shake out? No one knows.

And of course, America’s legacy media organizations feign objectivity, yet peddle a set narrative favorable to Democrat’s political success. To say our media industrial complex ‘lies through their teeth” would be a gross understatement.

All this to say, I thought it was time to dust-off my jam, remix it and add a new snippet at the beginning, while tweaking the knobs a bit on EQ and other things.

Royce White 101

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My blog has transitioned to mainly music these days. Well, most of the time. But today, I turn back to the political.

Truth be told, this post is still about music—because the songs I write and even some of the covers that I do are rooted in a space where certain political and moral ideas are central.

There’s a guy named Royce White. If you know basketball, you recognize the name and maybe know a bit about his story. He was a force on the court, but he’s become a much bigger force off the court. The hardwood could not contain his breadth and boldness. Continue reading →

Christmas Songs on Pearl Harbor Day

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We have been focused on the COVID Cloud since last March. That’s eight months, earthlings!

Like most false narratives, the design of it fixates on some fractional element of a much larger malady and malfunction. In the case of the COVID (or the “Kovidika,” as I’ve started calling it, one of my numerous descriptors seeking to mock the fear and loathing all about me), Americans seem hard-wired against accepting anything that promises pain: we deny death, lack empathy for anyone suffering through tough times (like grief and loss), and perhaps worse—refuse to own any responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. It’s as if we’re all clamoring for the Staples “easy button” in some national ceremonial act, hoping away the COVID. Oh, right. I almost forgot. The vaccine will save us. Stupid me.

Today is the first Monday in December. Did you remember it’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Will the day come when white people will have to denounce the events that occurred on that day in 1941? Locally, another windstorm has darkened significant portions of Maine’s power grid. Does Janet Mills see this as a problem? I don’t imagine any of the media sock puppets consider thqt worth investigating any further than a perfunctory posting of numbers of people without power—just like they do each day, fogging their fear, telling us of more positive tests of peopl with COVID. They are invested in numbers lacking context or meaning.

Our infrastructure is badly in need of an upgrade. The solution seems to be stringing more fiber optic cable in order for us to Zoom in perpetuity. But what about our crumbling roads, a malfunctioning power grid that’s the same one we’ve had for 70 years, not to mention our buckling bridges. I have fostered a keen interest in the topic of infrastructure. In fact, I pitched a series of investigative articles to this guy back in the day. He handed me off to some American expat living in Germany who passed on my articles. Not that they weren’t any good, they just didn’t match his “style” of writing. He’s now manning the switch on a fear-fog machine of his own, like much of those remaining in the legacy media. All the journalists with any remaining moral compunction have abandoned panic porn to write honestly, like this guy. I admire his work along with a handful of others. The rest, I’ve left in the dust to pander and put forth their propaganda passing as news. Continue reading →

Words Don’t Matter Anymore

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When I launched this blog in 2012, I was passionate about blogging. At that time, I still believed in the power of words—that words truly mattered. I no longer hold that as a truth.

Back in 1995, after coming to the end of another job and place of employment, I took the summer off. I read, I ruminated, and I planted a garden. There was a particular richness to that brief respite from work and busyness.

In many ways, that summer changed my life at the time. I made a transition in my thinking and outlook. I also read Neil Postman for the first time. What Postman taught me about the world is something I’ve carried with me ever since, especially in terms of how I view technology.

In 1995, there was no Facebook. News and presidents didn’t take to Twitter to make proclamations. I would not learn of the internet for another year. It was the perfect time to come to Postman’s ideas and live amidst the wreckage across the following 25 years, watching a world altered by technology.

Unlike 2012 when I’d spend copious amounts of time researching and organizing my thoughts in order to write a lengthy post that would ultimately be read by very few, these days, I simply present some truncation of a greater truth, or the more detailed ideal that I am working from. I am reading less these days than I did in 1995, but I still read. I’m probably reading and writing less because I’m playing guitar more. Since words matter no more that’s a worthwhile trade.

I don’t believe science and technology will save us, greatly improve our lives, or bring about anything particularly special to how we currently live. That thinking comes from internalizing Postman 25 years ago.

Here is Postman on technology, in five points:

One, we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price.

Two, there are always winners and losers—the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners

Three, embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes the bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on.

Four, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates (or Jeff Bezos).

Five, technology tends to become mythic; i.e. perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us. …. When a technology become mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control. Continue reading →

Wisdom Out the Window

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Back in 1985, I’d recently walked away from fundamentalist religion. I’d been a student at a school run by a Baptist megalomaniac named, Jack Hyles. I’ve written many posts about Hyles across the footprint of my blogging that dates back to 1993. Of course, in 2020, blogging is as anachronism, just as outdated as a rotary dial phone. Doesn’t mean it’s bad—it’s just not the way the ignorant masses roll these days, especially the impressionable kids.

I was just an impressionable kid myself back in the mid-1980s when Ray-Bans were all the rage. But, I had determined to dry the wetness behind my own two ears. I figured broadening my understanding was the way to go. Moving beyond mere Bible verses and jeremiads offered in daily chapel services at Hyles-Anderson College seemed like a step in a new direction.

Mark was two-years-old and Mary was working the breakfast shift at the local Wendy’s. I was working the afternoon shift keeping the prisoners at Westville Correctional Center healthy and medicated (I was a medical assistant employed by the Indiana Department of Corrections).

With my morning free save for childcare, I decided to take my three semesters of credit at the University of Maine and see if I could ramp up my hopes of success in higher ed. Purdue University had a satellite campus about 20 miles away from where we were living and just up the road from the prison where I was working in Westville. Not sure why at the time, but I enrolled in Philosophy 101. It was probably a morning time slot thing.

Thinking college was the way to go (Purdue satellite)

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Locked up for now (but not, then)

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Do you remember the early days of coronavirus? It was only two months ago, but it seems like years. Maybe our perceptions of time change when we’re under house arrest.

If you are like me (and you’re probably not), you’ve been searching high and low for some variation on what’s been the equivalent of fear-mongering and propaganda by the mainstream media. I’ve used the term “fear-fogging” on this blog to connote the idea of fear being spread like the way fog rolls in off the ocean and envelopes everything in its path, reducing visibility to zero. The media’s kind of like that these days.

Unfortunately, despite my best intentions, I’ve internalized some of this propaganda and groupthink, too. As hard as I fight it, sometimes when I go out in public, I’m scared that the ‘krona might get me, too.

Speaking of internalization; how about the idea that the last time there was a major pandemic in the U.S. (and across the globe) was the great pandemic of 1918.  That’s actually wrong. The U.S. had pandemics in 1949 to 1952 (polio) and 1957. I got this from the website for the Centers for Disease Control (for you scientists lurking out there, fact-checking any alternative storytelling) re: the 1957-58 global pandemic::

In February 1957, a new influenza A (H2N2) virus emerged in East Asia, triggering a pandemic (“Asian Flu”). This H2N2 virus was comprised of three different genes from an H2N2 virus that originated from an avian influenza A virus, including the H2 hemagglutinin and the N2 neuraminidase genes. It was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.

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Holding More Than One Idea (The Err of Caution)

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What week of lockdown is this? I’ve lost track.

I hope everyone’s holding up, well. I’m guessing many are not. Actually, I know many aren’t.

My daytime job involves taking calls in a healthcare setting. Since early March, I’ve listened to people cry, melt down, and I’ve experienced and uncomfortable level of fear being projected my way for the past weeks and now, months. This has got to stop!

As a parent coping with the loss of a son, I’ve been struggling with the feeling of sliding back into that “deep dark hole” that’s taken me months to get to the lip of, and then, up into the light of living again. Why has this pandemic triggered these former emotions that were more painful than any human should be forced to endure? I’ve asked the question “why me?” so many times I can’t even come up with a reasonable guess.

I’m not sure why, but often following Mark’s death, I was so fucking angry. I simply wanted to hit someone or worse. Rather than acting out on this urge, I simply turned inward. I remember a former radio psychologist, Dr. Joy Brown, saying that depression was “anger turned inward.” I’d concur. I was so depressed that I contemplated suicide.

Picking up the guitar saved me nearly two years ago. I’ve played my old acoustic (or my newer electric) nearly every single day since August 2018. I’m amazed that two guitars (and a Vox amp) could have made such a difference, but they have. Still, the past 8 to 10 weeks have been difficult as hell, even playing and writing songs and performing via the interwebs. There’s only so much shit that even my guitars can deflect away.

When the Covid-19 outbreak ramped up, there were conflicting reports of its severity. Initially, some said that it wasn’t any worse than the common flu and that “people were overreacting.” Then, protocols were established as cases exploded, especially in the large, urban population centers like Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

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Friends and Enemies

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We’ve all heard the expression, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” What does this mean? Should it even matter?

For a few weeks now, I’ve been ruminating on several things during this period of lockdown, or as I call it, “house arrest.” One of them is how social interactions and the so-called “glue” that holds us together seems to have been altered (perhaps permanently damaged?) by the novel coronavirus—maybe even worse than the lungs of someone who acquired Covid-19.

I’ve been spending minimal time in Zuckerberg’s Lunchroom, aka, Facebook. Why? Because people I once respected, or at the very least—could tolerate—have become people I hope I never have to ever spend time with in real time, again.

I know that I’ve been scarred by grief and loss. To not recognize this shows ignorance about anything related to the loss of someone held dear. At the very least, when someone is snatched from your life, you forever carry that experience and it colors perceptions, emotions, and human interactions.

Having touched on that, the process of moving through the time of days, weeks, months, and even years after a tragedy forces you into various altered states. It’s an evolution back to some newly-constructed “normalcy.” Then, you are thrown into stasis induced by stay-at-home orders and you feel like you have been ejected back into a place of darkness, pain, and you’re flailing about struggling to stand again.

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Let Them Eat Ice Cream

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During the run-up to the 2016 presidential election that would deliver Donald Trump as our 45th president, I wrote several posts about the neoliberal Democrat Hillary Clinton, like this one. That followed Bernie Sanders’ first bait-and-switch, where Bernie “I’m going to deliver a revolution” Socialist Sanders turtled, dropped-out, and endorsed a corporatist in Clinton.

We all know the end-game, don’t we? And yet, duped progressives again threw significant support behind Bernie’s faux revolutionary rhetoric and Democratic Socialism once more. Is it any surprise that the result was basically the same yet again?

Blame it on the Orange Man.

Because most Americans are binary to a fault, they can’t get their brains around the idea that Sanders was a Socialist sham. I mean here was a 78-year-old white guy who hadn’t held a job outside politics since 1980, when he was elected for the first time as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

Democrats have one narrative trope and one only: blame it all on the Orange Man. Actually that’s become a Democratic cliché.

Question: Who caused the coronavirus pandemic?
Democrat: The Orange Man.

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