The People Thang

Back to Democracy: A Bloody Slide Show

Thrash: So this bitch tells me if you’re so smart why ain’t ya rich?

Warlord: No way.  That's check, by the way.

Thrash: Oh yeah.  So I looks at her and says if you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart.

Warlord: Forked that interview.  Checkmate, bro.

Thrash: Word.  AW MAN! Should have stood my ass up and walked out right then . . .  

Warlord: Don’t look, but here come Sox and he got Fatback and Fair in tow.

Thrash: Those two again?  

Warlord: I gotta talk with Sox.

Thrash: Wait in line bro.  I got unfinished business with that cat.  Yo Sox!  Yo Sox!

Sox:  Thrash, my friend.

Thrash: Yo. Hey, my main man!  Hey "Little Dudes Two" too.

Fatback and Fairy nod amiably, but warily.  They smile at Warlord.

Thrash:  Yo Sox.  Why ain’t you down with the people man?  The people gotta rule.

Fatback grimaces and rolls an eye at Warlord.

Sox: The people?  People like you?

Thrash: Yo, I’m a people. Warlord’s a people.  The little dudettes is people. We’s all people.  Even Warlord’s old fella who made his pile selling jellcaps to them Zulus off 125th St.  He's people. We’re all people, man.

Sox: And all people can rule themselves?

Thrash: Who else gonna rule them gramps?  You?  Fatback?  The rap king of his choosing?

Sox: Boy, ifs all peoples can rule their own selves than why don’t they?  Why don’t you?

Thrash: Ain’t nobody but me rules me. But don’t pretend you don’t know the problem, man.  The Man is the problem, man.

Sox: The Man?  Uh huh.  Here we go now.  Just who, by the freaking way, is this "the Man"?

Thrash:  You know what I mean.  He be evicting whole buildings to build a parking garage.  He be closing factories when people already don’t have jobs.  He be shooting us down in the streets.  Leaving us to bleed out on the pavement like he wouldn’t do a dog.  He give us Bantu schooling too, yo.

Sox: And what grade did you finally manage to finish?

Thrash: Yo Gramps.  I dropped out as soon as I knew how, and that was the only thing to do.  I wasn’t learning nuthin’ there.  I’m an autodidact now.  And I’m a teacher too.  Ain’t I, Warlord?

Sox: You an auto sumthin’, alright.  You think anyone can quit school and keep reading and learning like you do?  (Sox puts air quotes around “learning”.)

Thrash: Maybe not man, but I ain’t the only one. But we’s all gots our strengths and weaknesses.

Sox: Sure enough, but can peoples rule themselves without learning?

Thrash:  Well, I grant you some peoples gonna do more learning than others gonna do.

Sox: Did you answer my question though?

Thrash: What is your question, old man? There’s ruling oneself and then there’s democracy where we rule each other.

Sox: Breakin’ it down, now.  That’s good.  That’s good.  . . . Ok.  Ruling oneself?  Can everyone rule his or her own self?

Thrash: Sure.  Why not?  We makes our choices and takes the consequences.

Sox: And are all people equally qualified to understand their choices and the consequences of those choices?  Do all people even know what all their choices are?

Thrash:  Yeah.  I got you.  I feel you, Daddy.  Everbody needs some guidance now and then.  That goes without saying.

Sox: And all people need the same amount of guidance?  Some don’t need more and some don’t need less.  And who’s qualified to be a guide?

Thrash: Well you know that all depends.  If I wanna know how to fix a bicycle, I ain’t gonna ax you.  But I know where to find you if I wanna learn some highfalutin BS Mr. Interlocutor jujitsu.

Sox:  So you’re saying that it all evens out.  Everbody gives and receives the same amount of guidance in their personal lifes?

Thrash:  Yeah, I’ll stick with that.  It all evens out over time.  Sure. You just gots to look at the la-onnng run, grampoops.  The long run, yeah.

Sox: Is you including or excluding simpletons, the heartbrokens, small children, dreamers, old age dementeds, juicers, crackheads, regular crazies, and the criminally insane?

Thrash: Well, little kids gonna grow, and the old seniles had their day.  You know that.  But I’ll grant you some people ain’t so right in the head.  Some people born less damaged.  Some people more.  Some people get damaged or damage themselves.  But most of that’s not even damage, that's just normal variation man.  Sometimes the extreme is where you gotta be. If all crazies didn't have something to say once in a while, nobody'd be listening to you!  That's for sure!  But mostly the lunatics stay on the fringes and don't even know about each other and wouldn’t have nothing to do wit each other if they did.

Sox: Ok. Ok.  Ok. Fair enough.  But is you saying that everyone else who's not off the hook is the same in their mental capacity to take care of themselves?

Thrash:  They’s differences.  They’s differences.  I said that, ole Man. But in some ways that don’t matter.  And in some ways it’s a plus even.  We all learn from each other, bro.  Even mental defectives.  Like I said, even they got something to offer if we only know how to look.

Sox: Admirable.  Admirable.  Like “The Fool on the Hill.”

Thrash: That’s right.  That’s right.  “He know’s they’re the fool.”

Fatback and Fairy sing:  “And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.”

Warlord chimes in: “Well on the way, head in a cloud. The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud.”

Sox:  Ok.  What about democracy now?

Thrash:  Well it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?  Everybody does their part.  And no one gets too big in the head.

Sox:  You finally starting to interest me, boy.  Now how do you suppose we prevent anyone from getting too big in the head?

Thrash:  By paying attention man.  If someone doing wrong and talking shit, we shout em down or turn away.  And if someone doing right and making sense and maybe even seeing a little farther down the road than the rest of us - we still got to pay attention, ask questions, criticize, keep him on his toes and we keep on our toes.  Cause he may be a genius or he may be crazy, he may be good or he may be evil, or it might just depend on the day, the dice, or the weather.

Fatback:  Sox, I like that.  I like that a lot. I’m gonna start a 'Cademy someday and teach people how to do like what he’s saying.

Fairy:  I’ll be your first pupil, man. That’s for me.  But after a while, I’ll found my own 'Cademy.

Fatback: Oh no you won’t, fool.  You can’t call it a 'Cademy.  That’s mine.  You gots to call yours something else, man.  It’s only fair.

Fairy: I’ll think on that, bro.  It’s all about keeping track of what’s being done and what’s being said.  If there’s a lie or lies, peoples gotta know how to see em.  You can’t call out lies, if you can’t see em.

(With wide big grins Fatback and Fairy high five and fist bump.)

Sox:  Well my, my, my.  My son, you're getting universal endorsement and acclaim.  You should be getting worried about now.  So, for a democracy, that's all you need?  Vigilance?

Fatback: And the education and training to be able to know what to pay attention to.

Fairy: And the practice and guidance to be able ask questions and make points effectively.

Fatback:  And patience and courage when lots of people are sucked in by bad, every day a bad hair day, bad dudes.

Thrash: Well, if only we had that.  If we had that, that might be all we needed.   I mean everything else might just flow from that.  I mean if we had that or most of that, we could probably build anything else we need. Everything else!  So the question you should ax now is, why don't we have that.  Why are we so far away, man?

Sox:  That there is a very good question.  So, why are we so far away?

Thrash:  That's the Man, man.  He just want people to be smart enough to follow orders and mind the machines.  He don't want nobody knowing how to think and asking questions.  He don't want questions about why he makes 1000 times more than somebody humping his butt when he don't work at all - or if he do, he sure don't work 1000 time harder.  Not even 10 times harder maybe.  No, he just want them to be able to read the instruction manual and to believe your Big Lies.

Sox:  My Big Lies?

Thrash:  Oh yeah!  Don't be saying that you don't be preaching that everyone should know his place and love where they're at.  And don't you two be nodding your heads, or I'll be raising a knot on the both of them.  Cause that's what you'd deserve and justice is everyone getting what they damn deserve.

Sox: Do I say that we have justice here and now?

Thrash:  No, I know what you say.  I know what you say.  You say justice and perfection is just somewhere outta reach in some upsidedown fifth dimension green pastures of perfection somewhere else anywhere but here.

Sox: Do I say we shouldn't be working towards justice even if it's always a guiding mirage?

Thrash: Who knows what you say?   Have you ever noticed most people can’t make heads or tails of you?  Some people say you got wisdom.  Other people think they know better.  I heard what your old lady told ya the other day.

Sox:  Zan got a lot of opinions and she ain’t shy about saying ‘em.

Thrash: She tear you a new one every other day!

Sox: Well I like to think I deserve her.  At least I try to.

Thrash: So we back to justice now?

Sox: Well, I think we should be talking how the guiding myths of a people should guide them toward justice.

Fatback and Fairy: No justice, no peace.  No justice, no peace!

Sox:  How does a people get closer to peace and justice?   Can they do it by following leaders?

Thrash: That’s a part of it.

Sox: But it’s not enough, is it?

Thrash: Like I say, it’s gotta come from the people themselves.

Fairy (quoting):  “If I could lead you to the promise land, I wouldn’t do it.  Cuz someone else could come, turn you around and lead you right back out again.”

Fatback:  The thing is: the right kind of myth is a guidance that stays inside people, guides them, and helps them guide each other.

Thrash:  But, the Man!  The Man gets ahold of the myths and twists them so they lift him high and push everybody else down.

Warlord: Yes.  If he can, he will.  A scorpion is a scorpion.  A frog is a frog.  A lamb is a lamb, and a lion is a lion.

Fairy: But if he can’t, he won’t.

Thrash:  What gonna stop him?

Fairy:  The people paying attention.  

Warlord: There really ain’t no one “the Man”.  Big shots don’t like other big shots getting too big headed or playing them.

Fatback: The Big Myth can help stop him.  It might help him stop himself.  It might help the people stop him.

Thrash:  Ain’t no myth that The Man hasn’t hijacked - if he didn’t make it up himself in the first place.

Sox: Do think some evil tyrant or wannabe can make a myth that’s gonna live and grow inside people?

Thrash: They can make people feel scared, or small, or weak, or shameful, or alone.  That’s some mighty mojo.

Sox: Well do you think that if people are bound to cherish that kind of myth with no escape, that they are fit to rule themselves?

Thrash:  Well, they do.  A lot of them do.

Sox: So won’t those people then be ruled by others?

Thrash: Well, yeah.  But only for a time.  I mean that won’t last.

Sox:  It won’t last?  It seems to last.  Why won’t it last?

Thrash:  Because it’ll explode.  Or the air will just leak out over time.  Or people will just shrivel up and die.  But they won’t. They won’t.  They want to live.  They want to be good.  They want to be free.  They want to be good and good to each other.

Sox: Do they?

Thrash: Well.  Little children.  Look at them.

Sox: They don’t kick and hit and bite each other?  Take each others’ toys and lollipops?

Thrash:  They gots to be guided.

Sox: What if those thats guides them believe they are alone, and weak, and shameful, and must be led by the better and the best?

Thrash: Nobody’s gonna teach that to their own sons and daughters!

Sox: No one?

Thrash:  But that’s why we gotta smash down the myths.  It’s only myths make people believe crap like that so they teach it to their kids.  

Sox: But you already said that without myths people gotta rely on leaders and teachers.

Thrash: Did I say that?  

Fatback: I think you agreed that people need myths to help them guide themselves from inside.

Thrash:  But the myths get twisted and hijacked by the Man.

Warlord: Or by the people themselves.

Fatback: What is there in this world that can’t be twisted or perverted?

Sox: Who do you really think makes these myths?

Thrash: Well teachers and leaders play a big part.

Sox: And who plays the other part?

Thrash: Ok.  It has to be the people themselves.

Sox: And who perverts these myths more? The leaders or the people?

Thrash: Yeah they both do.

Fatback: So you just said that leaders and teachers together make myths - and together, in their own way, they fuck ‘em up.

Thrash: Yeah.  I said that.  I’ll say that.

Sox: Do you wanna give up on this “people rule” jag now?

Thrash: No Sox.  I can’t do that.

Sox:  How can you not give up?

Thrash: We can build better and better myths over time.

Fatback: And teach other to think, and share ideas, and ask questions

Fairy: And to watch over each other and to know lies when you see ‘um

Warlord: Even you telling them to yourself, man.

Sox: Can a people do that, Thrash?

Thrash:  Not today.  

Sox: Tomorrow?

Thrash: Maybe tomorrow.

Sox: Maybe tomorrow?

Thrash: Tomorrow isn’t just a day.  It might take many tomorrows.

Sox: And will you live through enough tomorrows to see the day?

Thrash:  I don’t have to.  I just gotta do the best I can to get us all closer.

Sox:  But isn’t that your myth?

Thrash: It may be a myth, but I don’t have to believe it.

Sox: You don’t?

Thrash: No, I just gotta do the best I can.

Sox: Even though you don’t believe?

Thrash: I got no other choice.  We got no other choice.  All the other choices are worst.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Back to Democracy: A Bloody Slide Show

Can This "Democracy" Be Saved?

Mr. Douthat is right again.

trimp's "Staff And Cabinet of Deplorables" actually could consolidate their power with massive tax cuts to the working/middle class along with a robust program of public works extending well beyond roads and bridges.

So why don't they?  Why won't they?

If they don't, it's not because they're stupid even though they actually are VERY stupid.  It's just that "stupid" is "emotional" more than it's anything resembling "intellectual fire power" or the lack of same).

If they don't consolidate their power that way, it’s because they can’t. They can’t because they're constrained by logic and reality. Simply cutting taxes for the middle/working class (the 99%) in any substantial (and therefore politically sustaining way) would be unsustainable - even without an infrastructure overhaul.  It would also be wealth redistribution - even if the 0.1% weren’t taxed in a confiscatory way.

On the same vein, any significant tax cut for working Americans (which includes the Middle Class, of course) would reduce the scope of the Federal Government in ways too galling, disruptive, and unacceptable to the 0.1%.   It wouldn't just mean drastic curtailment of social welfare programs.  It would mean cutting into the “defense” budget in ways that radically reduce massive public subsidies to corporate profit in the form of R&D and procurement.

No. Especially when they’re ignored, wealth and income inequality curb the trimp clown car just as much (or more) than they may yet infantilize the perhaps overrated "resistance". 

But confronting wealth and income inequality may be more horrifying (to some) than watching democracy get trimpled to death as we dither on and on.

Fire Water and Sky Stuff

Who are "We"?

Ask the Indians (as we named them).

We gave them mirrors and blankets

And taught them how to scalp

But we ARE Indians.



Ask the Africans

Who we enslaved, impoverish, imprison, and shoot.

And they give us juke, jazz, and soul

But we are Africans.



Ask the NAZIs

Who we gave Old Protocols

Of Zion and Eugenics

But we are NAZIs



Ask the Immigrants:

Jews, Polacks, and Wops

We gave them torches, shovels and GI Bills

And we are immigrants




Ask the Irish Chinese

We gave them hammers, tongs, and movie roles

They gave us jigs, sad songs, and restaurants

And we are Irish Chinese




Ask the Vietnamese

We gave them napalm

Agent Orange

And Coca-Cola


And we are Vietnamese


Ask the Indonesians
We gave them genocide
And we are Indonesians

Ask the Arabs
We give them cruise misses and drone bombs
We gave them Saddam
And we are Arabs

Ask the Iranians
We gave them a Shah of their own
And we are Iranians

Ask the Philippinos
whom we Cuba Libra’d
Mindanao’d, Vieque’d and Guantanamo’d

Ask the Japs
who we Hiroshima’d and Dresden’d



We are fire, water, sky, and stuff.



Just ask us.

We'll tell you.

We're the greatest

We're the settlers who settle things.

We're the soldiers who soldier on

We're the workers waiting for the weekend

We're the scholars cribbing for degrees

We're Mom

We're Apple Pie

We're the street we live on

We're the sad eyes of Abraham Lincoln

We're the mad eyes of John Brown

We're the skull keepers of Geronimo

We're the tree shadowed sidewalks where children find soft worms after light rains

We're the soft sunlight of Easter Morning in our short suits and caps

We're the laugh track on the Gong Show.

We're the horror show you don't wanna know

We're the children ducking under blankets during the Witching of Oz

We're french fries and tendentious lies

We're Italian food when we're in the mood.
We're the Whoville Whos who never made first base
We're all spraying Abbot und Costello mace.

We're the people who don't care about history cuz that's not where we wanna be.

We're whoever we wanna be

We're fake news that spit to print

We're the click bait that keeps the lights on.

We're the jailbait that that lights the boys on

We're Flint freezing drinking water sprayed on Standing Rock

We're the welcomers of refugees.

We're whoever we wanna be
We're the makers of refugees.
We're whoever we wanna be
We are the refugees.

We're whoever we wanna be.


Ask us.
Just.
Tell you
We will.
The greatest
We are.

HAH! (to Brian)

HAH! . . . (That stands for “Histories Are History!)

Pills (and maybe some age, experience, orneriness, determination, and not a little desperation) have, in the twilightofmelife, enaabled me to be “in the moment” much more than (even as a small child) I can ever remember.  But that’s mostly (I hope) different from the “that was then, this is now” attitude of some lout who just keyed my car and shot my dog now that I’m about to go all Sonny Corleone on him with a metal trashcan.  My “ability” to separate myself from past and future is the kind mostly available to old washouts who never had kids. (Yeah I know you’re gonna teach yours to shoot AR17s - or whatever the fuk those things are.)

You told me, back when it was still *mostly* a joke, that a main reason for thumping for trump was to send a big “Fuck you!” to the system.  I don’t need to go back and find that because right there is a big difference between you and the insane clown posse that somehow actually got “electorated”. YOU would never deny you said it.  But the pigfuckers who actually have their nasty, stubby, sticky fingers on actual levers of actual power would!  And, if they were (somehow) actually pinned down with their own words by some little four eyed wise-ass, they might actually even say “That was then this is now, muthafuker!” And you know that - just as well as I do.

Jeb! Bush was recently in my neighborhood.  If I had gone to hear his talk and had a chance to ask a question, I would like to have said something like:

“Mr. Bush, I would MUCH rather have you as president than trimp, and I would MUCH rather have Killary than you, but we can all (maybe for different reasons) agree that “The Joker” who was clearly unqualified before the election is now a stupefying danger to the US.  And, that's true no matter HOW we define "national" interests. With only one week in office he has begun a systematic assault on the rule of law and is proving himself to be a threat against the entire world.

Do you see any ways for most Americans to unite against this ongoing trainwreck, and how are you planning to support this resistance?”

Even though I’m forced to believe in the necessity of building true democracies in our land and the world, I have no romantic faith in the the wisdom of the people. (It might be because they’re too much like me.   Or maybe it’s because too many might be even stupider, lazier, and more petty than I am.  Was it George Karlin who pointed out that even if you’re average, it means that half the population is dumber and sleazier than you? And if anyone’s way above average, then the situation bound to seem even more hopeless! )

I would not be too surprised if trimp, who’s careening recklessly about at over 95 miles per hour, hits a solid stone wall pretty soon.  And I have to hope it happens sooner than later even though I know it means getting Pense who would be even worse than Jeb!  I have to hope it even though it may well mean fuktards will soon be saying “The system works!” like they did after Nixon got shitcanned.

If you’re thinking seriously at all about this mess, you may be of the mind that the system needs a severe shakedown - or maybe even good smashing that flattens it down to ground level (or deeper). And everybody has reason to feel that way at times. But that’s where history comes in.

I am really not all that much older than you, but separate drinking fountains etc. etc. etc. are within my living memory. I remember the Vietnam War when nobody (and I mean fucking NOBODY) could (in my hearing or reading) explain why they were opposing or supporting that clusterfuck in any sensible way.  (In my Bart Simpson stage, I loved to curse out insults to hippies from the safety of the backseat when driving them by.  Most of them laughed, so that was in their favor. But the people who supported the war were just freakn' dicks as far as I was concerned.) And I vividly remember reading SnoozeWeek (actually Time) magazine about the MyLai massacre and befuckinglieving, “Well. There it is. Now we have to stop this. We’re learning something. We’ll never let that happen again” (I couldn’t have been older than 11, but stupid dies hard.)

But there really is a way Vietnam was only one link in a chain of genocidal intentions that probably predate Hengist and Horsa and the suppression of Celtic peoples in the British Isles. In the same way separate drinking fountains, the prison industrial complex, and spastic trigger fingers on white cops are all extensions of industrialized black chattel slavery that truly was quite different from previous slave systems in the Western World.  Like Malcolm X some people were temporarily “empowered” by a deviant domestic variation on “Islam” that explained all this by positing caucasians were actually a strain of “white devils” wreaking horror and violence on the world.  I loved reading Malcolm's autobiography where he would say something like “I met some devil who tried to tell me . . . “ so casually and matter of factly! That stuff still tickles me as much as the slightly more supportable claim that the only true “humans” are Africans because every other strain has Neanderthal DNA!

But Malcolm had a little more “soul” than that. He made the effort to travel to Egypt and be exposed to true Muslim teachers of some learning and wisdom.  It blew his mind, but he never stopped fighting for justice even if it meant being frightening to some.

For many reasons most Muslims, like most “Christians”, are not well learned or cosmopolitan. If they learned to read at all, it was for the same reason most Christians were taught until fairly recently. (Only so they could read their holy scriptures. But whatever poetry and wisdom there is in the Bible or Koran, there’s also a whole bunch of nastiness and gibberish. Most people must rely on “teachers’ to explain the mysteries, contradictions, confusions, and nonsense in texts written thousands of years ago in much simpler societies. And one of the reasons those texts are so garbled is that they are heavily edited versions of oral traditions that are many times older.)

So many Muslims may not even know the nation states they were born in were established by French and British politicians and that their torture chamber governments remain in power now only with US support. They’d only know that if religious teachers are allowed to preach it to them.  And, of course, different teachers can then differently preach all sorts of other crazy conclusions derived from those serious facts.  Just like in the US, the average person in most Muslim countries only knows their life, the lives of their children, and the lives of people like them are being blighted by some “system”.  So yes, a large percent of them might numbly support some drastic “nothing to lose” lashing out - even if they, at the same time, quail at the thought of themselves (or their children) blowing themselves up in a packed crowd of “infidels”.

What’s so alarming and so vividly telling HERE and NOW in La La Land - is the very nations so far excluded from the trimp/Bannon ban are NOT the ones where those kinds of sentiments are most recklessly cultivated. No, trimp/Bannon are doing what they tacitly promised in their travesty of a campaign. They are rocking the system.  Like drunken teenagers raving loose in the dead of night with cans of gasoline through an empty high school building, they’re smashing windows, defecating on teacher’s desks, playing kickball with globes, and looking for a lighter.

Yup, I voted for Killary, and would even have voted for Jeb! if the alternative was trimp.  But I still know the system could use a drastic shaking down. Yet history tells me that what came before the present version of “the system” was much worse for everybody. Everybody! It also makes me aware that much of the most “just” parts of “the system” are actually very new - and, for that reason, might be very fragile.  But, like I said, I actually do believe that democracy is our only alternative, and that, despite ourselves, it will develop and fortify itself somehow (if we don’t destroy ourselves first).

On the other hand, though the arch of history may bend toward justice, it’s a very, very, VERY long arch.  It CAN be bent the other way.  An old washout like me can afford to sit back and take the long view.  In my medicated bliss, I can “know” the arch of future history will eventually bend back toward the light.   Other dead enders and I can AFFORD to be SURE of that . We can have our farty faith - no matter how much “future history” is warped by the trimp/Bannon crew and their (hopefully) imminent replacements.



Do you really have that luxury?