African Americans vs. "evil rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places" (aka rich Republicans and / or neo-conservatives [including their Democratic sychophants], and hangers-on) . . .

Well, I've read Orwell's 1984, was in the deep South during the race riots that began in Greensboro, NC, February 1, 1960, and in the late '70s (early '80s?), read and have an affinity with Paul Feyerabend 's general description of the “political process” (see below). ¹

From these perspectives, the events unfolding in Ferguson, MO the past few days (since the “police” [four different police forces have been involved] shooting of an unarmed teenager there on August 9, 2014) underscore the questions asked in my last blog entry (July 9, 2014 “My response to John Whiteheads June 10, 2014 ‘guest column’” on Paul Craig Roberts' Institute for Political Economy WWW site) and further provide examples in line with analogies in the rest of the world as exclamation points.

Before we begin with a 9 minute 37 second news clip of the St. Louis County Police Department's “infantry battalion” response? on the evening of August 13 to the concerned citizens of Ferguson, MO “testifying for” their right to know and understand the background behind the killing of the unarmed teenager, I would like to point out that “testifying for” is the meaning of the word “protest.”  And that as we continue our journey on the way to peace, we place ourselves in a position of psychological disadvantage if we use the word “protest” because it has been tainted with a negative connotation by the military-industrial-CIA-corporate-educational-FBI-financial-media-medical-NSA-police-political-prison-Secret-Service-terrorism-expert complex (or “hero system”). ²

St. Louis County Police Open Fire on Peacefully Testifying Neighbors (news clip)

Before looking at the demographics (which are certain to have some impact) of the social problems presented by this situation, I mentioned Paul Feyerabend's general description of the “political process” above:

“The way in which social problems, problems of energy distribution, ecology,
education, care for the old and so on are ‘solved’ in our societies can be roughly
described in the following way.  A problem arises.  Nothing is done about it.
People get concerned.  Politicians broadcast this concern.  Experts are called in.
They develop a plan or a variety of plans.  Power-groups with experts of their
own effect various modifications until a watered down version is accepted and
realized.  The role of experts in this process has gradually increased.  Intellectuals
have developed theories about the application of science to social problems.
‘To get ideas’ they ask other intellectuals, or politicians.  Only rarely does it
occur to them that it is not their business but the business of those immediately
concerned to decide the matter.  They simply take it for granted that their
ideas and those of their colleagues are the only important ones and that people
have to adapt to them.” ³

As Mike Summer points out in his diary (read the comments to his diary also), the Normandy School District (a merger of two of the poorest, most heavily minority populations ‐ Normandy and Wellston ‐ around St. Louis) has a poverty rate of 92% (Wellston's poverty rate is 98% and 100% minority). ⁴

How much does a box of Swisher Sweets cost?  A 60 count box for $21.99 at Good Luck Wholesale ($44.00 - $50.00 retail).  What would be the selling price in the “black” market for one of those cigarillos?  $1.50?  $2.50?  There must have been a market! ⁵  Though as Hunter's diary suggests, why are we even dwelling on this question?

More interesting is the “politics” of the school district (stay with me through Mike's description):

“. . . [T]he state education board voted to merge the districts in 2010 (the first change to state school district boundaries in thirty-five years).  Plagued by white flight, crashing property values that destroyed tax revenues, and a loss of state funds as the better‐off residents of the area sent their children to private schools, the resulting district is short of everything.  Residents of the district voted again and again to raise their own property taxes, until their rates were actually the highest in the state, but a higher percentage of nothing was still nothing, and district revenues trended steadily down.

After the merger, the state board proceeded with the next step in their plan.  In 2012, they rated Normandy as a failed district, removed its accreditation, and placed it under direct state control.  The idea was to reform the district to the state board's design, only there was one problem:  the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that students in a failed district had the right to go to other districts.  Hundreds of Normandy students signed up to do just that, heading for classrooms in surrounding districts, some of which were majority white.  At first, this generated tension.

News of the Supreme Court's upholding of the transfer law initially sparked anger
and fear among some white Francis Howell parents.

“I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed, or taking a
drug, or getting robbed,” one mother said during a school board meeting,
referring to the prospective arrival of Normandy students.

“We don't want this here in Francis Howell,” another parent said.

But for the most part that attitude didn't last.  Normandy students settled in at their new districts, and despite a financial drain ‐ Normandy had to cover the cost of transportation and pay tuition to the other districts for those students who transferred ‐ things seemed on an upswing in the district.

“...the remaining students and school community came together to celebrate
a spirit of new beginnings.  They held pep rallies and welcome‐back‐to‐school
gatherings.  Students at Normandy High School said they began tutoring each
other to improve the school's academic ranking...

“Indeed, walking the halls of Normandy High School at the beginning of the
school year, there was a sense of optimism despite the dire state of things.

Well, you know what they say about optimists.

Funding the transfer students was costing the district more than it cost to educate students within the district.  Part of that was transportation, but most of it was the simple fact that other districts spent far more on their students than the poverty‐stricken Normandy district.

The state board of education took over the district's finances, but rather than providing a new stream of revenue, they figured out a simple way to reduce costs:

“On Friday afternoon, the board met in a hastily called meeting to change
Normandy's accreditation status ‐‐ or at least how that accreditation is
described.  Normandy now has ‘accreditation as a state oversight district,’
the revised June minutes now read.

Get that?  The state board, which had taken away the accreditation, now argued that Normandy was accredited, magically, without having the district actually meet any of the standards they had set.  How did that happen?

“The Missouri State Board of Education, pursuant to its statutory authority
to waive its rules, including those regulating accreditation, has accredited
the Normandy Schools Collaborative and thus its schools, the state's motion
to the court says.  Because of that accreditation, the Plaintiffs are not entitled
to relief . . . .”

The school is now accredited because the board has the right to ignore the law the board claimed it was enforcing in the first place, and parents now have no right to transfer their kids to another district ... because the school is accredited.

Naturally, the case is headed back to court.  And if the accreditation by decree isn't enough for you, there's another bit of magic applied by the board.  That transfer law?  It only applies to school districts.  But see, Normandy Schools are no longer in a school district.  Normandy schools are now in a special collaborative and, according to the state board, “are not in any district in this state.”  So there you go.  You can't transfer from a district if you're not in a district, and if you happen to be in a district, it's magically accredited.  Problem solved.

So, who actually runs the school district that Michael Brown attended?  Well, the president of the board of education is Peter F. Herschend of Branson, Missouri.  Herschend isn't a former teacher, or a former principal, and doesn't have any training in the education field.  He's the owner of Herschend Family Entertainment, which runs Silver Dollar City in Branson (amongst other amusement parks) and owns the Harlem Globetrotters.  He's also one of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party in the state.

So, when you're wondering who runs Michael Brown's school district ‐ when you're wondering who's in control of an urban, minority district so poor that a student has to steal a bunch of cigarillos to survive ‐ it's a white Republican millionaire from out state.”

Finally, at the Federal level, it is interesting to note that the St Louis County Police Chief was amongst a host of other county police chiefs from around the country who have attended counter-terrorism training in Israel! ⁶

Lately the words of Amos to Israel from the Hebrew Original Witnessing (echoed by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Haggai to Judah) have been ringing clear:  “Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stomp righteousness into the mud.  Do you realize where you are?  . . .  People hate this kind of talk.  Raw truth is never popular.  But here it is, bluntly spoken:  Because you run roughshod over the poor and take the bread right out of their mouths, you're never going to move into the luxury homes you have built.  You're never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards you've planted. . . .  Justice is a lost cause.  Evil is epidemic.  Decent people throw up their hands.  Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath. . . .  Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square. . . .  Go out into the streets and lament loudly!  Fill the malls and shops with cries of doom!  Weep loudly, ‘Not me!  Not us!  Not now!’  Empty offices, stores, factories, workplaces.  Enlist everyone in the general lament. . . .  I can't stand your religious meetings.  I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.  I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.  I'm sick of your fund‐raising schemes, your public relations and image making. . . .  Do you know what I want?  I want justice ‐ oceans of it.  I want fairness ‐ rivers of it.  That's what I want.  That's all I want.”

Updates:

• August 16, 2014 ‐ Judge rules in favor of Normandy families who want to transfer schools unfortunately, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article filed with static and pop-up advertisements often blotting out the news.
• August 19, 2014 ‐ Looks like the people of Ferguson hold quite a bit of power afterall . . . See Walt starr's diary on the Daily Kos . . . .
• August 20, 2014 ‐ Apparently a pattern has been established . . . video of the St. Louis Police killing of a black, mentally ill 25 year old just four miles from where the August 9 killing took place . . . .
• August 29, 2014 ‐ Best overall analysis of the situation not only in Ferguson, MO but also in the United Orwellian States of Amerika ‐ “"Ferguson isn't about black rage against cops.  It's about white rage against progress” . . . .
• September 7, 2014 ‐ New light on an old story (August 5, 2014 police killing of a 24 year old black shopper in a Wal‐Mart store in Beavercreek, OH) . . . .
• November 24, 2014 ‐ In response to the St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch's ‐ how shall we say it?  “subornation of perjury” ‐ in the “handling” ⁷ of the St. Louis Grand Jury to return his verdict of “No True Bill” indictment, I must now add that in the past I've also read Kafka's The Trial.  And, in particular, the inclusion in that book of the fable “Before the Law” previously published by Kafka. . . . ⁸
• December 9, 2014 ‐ Calling the kettle white ‐ “Thug Kills White Prosecutor and Wife in Texas” ‐ and the difference being white makes . . . .
• December 11, 2014 ‐ The reports just keep pouring in from around the country . . . Georgia man killed in drug raid was “face down when shot in the head” . . . and back . . . .
• December 18, 2014 ‐ Angela Davis ‐ “Right on!” again ‐ “From Michael Brown to Assata Shakur, the racist state of America persists” . . . .
• December 31, 2014 ‐ the folks over at “Mapping Police Violence” have done a real service in analyzing at least 1,175 of the persons killed by police in 2014.  At least twenty-six percent of that number (302) were African-American while at least eight percent of that number (98) were white.  African-Americans make up approximately thirteen percent of the population of the United States.  So, African-Americans were killed by police at twice the rate of their representation in the general population.  See the map, notes, and charts on the WWW site link above.
• January 5, 2015 ‐ A member of the St. Louis County Grand Jury in the determination of the “No True Bill” indictment in the Ferguson, MO killing of the unarmed teenager is suing the suborner! . . . .
• May 4, 2015 ‐ A White Son Of Ferguson On Why St. Louis Can't Change ‐ a long history . . . .
• May 5, 2015 ‐ Federal judge says St. Louis County grand juror's request to talk about Ferguson belongs in Missouri court"
• May 15, 2015 ‐ Ken Burns' Commencement Address to the 2015 Graduates of St Louis University . . . .
• March 26, 2017 ‐ a series of artistic updates:
• Hell You Talmbout ‐ Hanelle Monáe and Wondaland's music video ‐ repetition of names of the many African-Americans killed by police over the years
• Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery's 2016 book, They Can't Kill Us All:  Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement
• Miguel's How Many (Rolling Stone's backgrounder)
  
  
  
  Tes One's “Stand Our Ground” Poster
• The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas' 2017 best selling book for teens and young adults
• Background on the Missouri courts decisions to dismiss Grand Juror Doe's lawsuit vs the "suborner" - St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch.

To tell the truth - what a tangled web we weave!


















































1  The quoted reference in the subject of this blog post is to a verse in the Christian Belated Witnessing ‐ Ephesians 6:12.  As Paul Craig Roberts writes, “The only exceptional thing about the US is the extent of the evil that resides in Washington, D.C.”  In addition, see his “On the Brink of War and Economic Collapse”.  While outside “the Beltway,” consider what U. S. Marine General Smedley Butler said of his service in Central America, “I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General.  And during that period I spent most of my time being a high‐class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

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2  Peace is war for the neo-conservatives (Project for the New American Century) and their puppet in the White House (Cf. for examples, Dr. Cornel West [Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary] on the “Niggerization of America” and “Going Off on Obama” and my more recent blog entry based on a reference on Paul Craig Robert's Institute for Political Economy blog to Thad Beversdorf's recent analysis, in addition to the "Nuclear Vault" in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and David Keen's Useful Enemies:  When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them ‐ “PNAC Historical Documentation and even Democrats enamored with all things Russian . . . not admitting The Most Essential Lessons of History”; also see the items for the August 29th, December 18th, and May 4th “Updates” at the conclusion of this blog post.)

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3  Science in a Free Society [London, England:  NLB, 1978], pp. 117 ff.  For an even more realistic view (taking into account the importance of money in the media / political process) see Bill Moyer's interview with Marty Kaplan (Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California) “Big Money's Effect on Big Media”.

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4  See the 2010 Census Block Data graphic for St. Louis, MO.  Click here for further information on the methodology.  Cf. the recent New Yorker cover and Jessie Hagopian's blog on what can be called the “school-to-prison vs. school-to-grave” pipeline for African-American children.  And, remember “the Angola 3” (see also one or more of the three documentary films “In The Land of the Free”, “Hard Time”, and “Herman's House”).

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5 See the more recent strangling death of a black person (Eric Garner) by a white police officer here and also here for selling cigarettes!

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6 Again, in case you missed it from its reference in footnote 2, see for deep background, my more recent blog entry based on a reference on Paul Craig Robert's Institute for Political Economy blog to Thad Beversdorf's recent analysis, in addition to the "Nuclear Vault" in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and David Keen's Usefull Enemies:  When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them ‐ “PNAC Historical Documentation and even Democrats enamored with all things Russian . . . not admitting The Most Essential Lessons of History”!

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7 For a beginning look at how the suborner “handled” the grand jury process see Questions No One Asked!

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8 For additional insightful background on The Trial, see Jacques Derrida's article “Before the Law” in his Acts of Literature; see also (if you can find it in English translation) his Force of Law:  The Mystical Foundation of Authority, 1990.

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My response to John Whiteheads June 10, 2014 "guest column" on Paul Craig Roberts' IPE WWW site . . .

Good Day!

I'm just cutting and pasting the text portion of the letter I sent to my politicos (senators, representative at both federal and state levels, governor ‐ the change from “one person, one vote” to “one dollar, one vote” has me agreeing more and more with Stéphane Hessel's “Time for Outrage” and tending more and more toward the French Invisible Committee's training manual “The Coming Insurrection” . . . ) as per Subject (John Whiteheads “guest column” and the IPE WWW site):

It was George Santayana who wrote in Volume 1 of his Reason and Common Sense ‐ “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.  When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement:  and when experience is not retained . . . infancy is perpetual.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  And the focus for this letter stems from the remembrance that the people of Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany failed to ask questions, demand answers, and hold their government officials accountable and we certainly know how those situations turned out.

So, from a long history of considerations around these themes (see Endnotes), the following questions (of many more) requiring your answers come to the forefront:

1)  What's the rationale behind turning government agencies into military outposts?  As of six years ago (the most recent BJS census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers - you can probably update me with more recent statistics), “73 federal law enforcement agencies . . . employed approximately 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers who were authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the United States.”  About 94,320 of those officers (78.6%) were under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS - 54,600 officers) or the Department of Justice (DOJ - 39,720 officers).  Those figures do not include numbers which could be counted in the CIA, TSA, or contract security guards (for example, the Federal Protective Service had approximately 15,000 supplemental troops).  There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.

2)  What's with all of the government agencies stockpiling hollow point bullets?  For example, why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic sub-machine guns and 320,000 rounds of hollow point bullets?  For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?  Why does the Postal Service need “assorted small arms ammunition”?  Why did the DHS purchase “1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, along with 7,000 fully-automatic 5.56x45mm NATO ‘personal defense weapons’ plus a huge stash of 30-round high-capacity magazines”? That's in addition to the FBI's request for 100 million hollow-point rounds.  The Department of Education, IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, are also among the federal agencies which have taken to purchasing ammunition and weaponry in bulk.

3)  Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?  And why is DHS acquiring more than 2,500 Mine-Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles, only to pass them around to local police departments across the country?  According to the New York Times (June 8, 2014):  “As President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s ‘long season of war,’ the former tools of combat ‐ M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more ‐ are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.  During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night‐vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.  The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.”

4)  Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country?  And what exactly are they training for?  In Richland, South Carolina, for instance, U.S. Army Special Forces are participating in joint and secretive exercises and training with local deputies.  The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of the drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.  The Army and DHS also carried out similar drills and maneuvers involving Black Hawk helicopters in Texas, Florida, and other locations throughout the U.S.  (Minneapolis, MN ‐ August ‐ September 2012 [Minneapolis Star and Tribune, August 30, 2012]), ostensibly in order to provide officers with realistic urban training.

5)  What is being done to protect the American populace from the threat of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, being used against them?  Policy analysts point to Department of Defense Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” (issued on Dec. 29, 2010 ‐ updated September 21, 2012 ‐ and available on the Defense Technical Information Center WWW site for reading) as justification for the government's use of military force to put down civil unrest within the United States.

6)  Why is FEMA stockpiling massive quantities of emergency supplies?  On January 10, 2014, FEMA submitted a solicitation (HSFE70-14-I-0006 available on the FBO WWW site) enlisting the service of contractors who could “supply medical bio‐hazard disposal capabilities and 40 yard dumpsters to 1,000 tent hospitals across the United States; all required on 24 ‐ 48 hour notice.” This coincides with other medical requests seeking massive amounts of supplies, such as “31,000,000 flu vaccinations,” “100,000 each of winter shirts and pants and the same for summer” and other goods and services requests as well like tarps, manufactured housing units, and beverages.

7)  Why does the TSA need $21,000 worth of potassium chlorate (about 116 pounds), a chemical compound often used in explosives?  (Solicitation Number:  HSTS02-14-Q-NCP059 available on the FBO WWW site) (Contract awarded to the same corporation that provided multiple explosives to the suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)

8)  Why is the Pentagon continuing to purchase mass amounts of ammunition while at the same time preparing to destroy more than $1 billion worth of bullets and missiles that are still viable?

9)  Moreover, what is really being done to hold the Pentagon accountable for its doctored ledgers, fraud, waste and mismanagement, which has cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars?  According to Reuters, “The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments.” That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for.  That sum exceeds the value of China's economic output last year.

10)  Given the similarities between the government's Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools (Buchanan High School, Troy, MO.; Acadiana High School, Knoxville, TN; Germantown High School, Madison County, MS), in shopping malls (Southland Mall, Hayward, CA; Oak Court Mall, Memphis, TN), and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers, and bystanders into thinking it's a real crisis, how much of what is being passed off as real is, in fact, being staged by DHS for the “benefit” of training law enforcement, leaving us none the wiser?  These training exercises come complete with their own set of professionally trained Crisis Actors playing the parts of shooters, bystanders, and victims in order to help  schools and first responders create realistic drills, full-scale exercises, high-fidelity simulations, and interactive 3D films.

11)  Given that Americans are 110 times more likely to die of food borne illness than in a terrorist attack, why is the government spending trillions of dollars on “national security”?  How exactly is the $75 billion given to 15 intelligence agencies annually to keep us “safe” being spent?  And why is the DHS giving away millions of dollars worth of federal security grants to states that federal intelligence agencies ruled have “no specific foreign or domestic terrorism threat”?

12)  Why is the government amassing names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation, and what criteria is the government using for this database?  Keep in mind that this personal information is being acquired and kept without warrant or court order.  It's been suggested that in the event of nuclear war, the destruction of the US Government, and the declaration of martial law, this Main Core database, which as of six years ago contained some 8 million names of Americans (you can probably update me on the most recent statistics), would be used by military officials to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security, a program to be carried out by the Army and FEMA.

Taken individually, these questions are alarming enough.  However, when viewed collectively, they leave one wondering what exactly the U.S. government is preparing for and whether American citizens shouldn't be preparing, as well, for that eventuality when our so-called “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is no longer answerable to “we the people.”

As President Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general, warned of the dangers of the military-industrial (and now, additionally, congressional-corporate-educational-FBI-financial-media-medical-police-political-prison-Secret-Service-terrorism-expert) complex (or “hero system”) in his 1961 farewell address:  “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge . . . machinery of [war] . . . .”  And now as The Guardian (June12, 2014) reports, a war against its own people. ¹

Endnotes:

Three Strikes and You're Out:  Toward a Legal Philosophy and Spiritual Approach for the pro-Life (i e, anti-nuclear war) Movement - homily I delivered at Burlington Northern Railroad Company's corporate headquarters on Sunday, August 5, 1984, with the title “CONNECTIONS:  Past, Present, and Future” as kickoff for the Burlington-Northern Project – available here.

Ocean Beach Rag Comment to March 5, 2012 article “Thousands of College Students Converge on California Capitol ‐ Hundreds Occupy Inside” March 9, 2012 - available by request

Sincerely,

Updates:

Not having any responses to my letters in the almost three years since mailing, around mid-April, 2017, I began asking the one dozen questions from the letter - one a week, for twelve weeks - on both of my Senators' governmental contact WWW sites . . . ).

I was somewhat surprised at the response of Senator Al Franken to, judging from the date of the letter, what, perhaps, was by that time, the third question posed, suggesting that the question was an “opinion” and thanking me for expressing my “opinion.”

The staff member (who's task it was to write that letter) must have thought that either the original letter of twelve questions, or these questions, posed on a weekly basis, were my “opinion” rather than questions for which I was expecting answers (recall that the questions were raised in a "guest column" by John Whitehead which was referenced on Paul Craig Roberts' Institute for Political Economy WWW site [they originally appeared in John's 2013 book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State]).

Senator Klobuchar remains silent (though continues being busy with “rants and raves” regarding all things “Russian” [see the “example” link in the leading, explanatory paragraph of my blog entry of March 27, 2017]).

John begins his quest column with the following quote from Professor Henry A. Giroux (in his Truthout article “Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” February 10, 2014; Professor Giroux currently holds the Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University; he is also the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy; if you are interested in reading some of his other articles, then click here; his most recent books are America's Addiction to Terrorism and America At War With Itself; and his WWW site):

““Why should anyone trust a government that has condoned torture, spied on at least 35 world leaders, supports indefinite detention, places bugs in thousands of computers all over the world, kills innocent people with drone attacks, promotes the post office to log mail for law enforcement agencies and arbitrarily authorizes targeted assassinations?”

In this era of endless war, with its attendant deceptions, dishonesty, untruths, hateful speech, alternative facts, and reductive curating, being a politician of the ”democratic” stripe certainly doesn't seem to mean much judging from these actions!











































1 It appears as though the war against the American people is beginning in earnest.  With preparations detailed in the Seton Hall University Law School “Battle Lab” study, the two way street between Chicago and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Homan Square in Chicago, and the most recent LAPD killing practice session in downtown Los Angeles.

Even more recently, in a planned massive military exercise in the Southwestern United States, “special ops”s are directed to swarm and operate undetected among civilians who have been deemed to be “hostile” ‐ March 26, 2015, Daily Mail article here . . . .

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Work . . . Job . . . Occupation . . . Vocation . . .

For heaven's sake . . . .  What is it that pulls one out of bed at such an ungodly hour . . . to write?  Which of the nine muses (this time) or, perhaps, one of the candidates for the "tenth muse," or Mnemosyne, herself?  It certainly wouldn't be Zeus!

So, the tradition is to call upon one (or more?) of the muses . . . .

But how to pick THE thought for expression out of the "blooming buzzing confusion of the outer world"?

This one, it seems to me, stems from a "conversation" with a homeless woman while waiting for the bus yesterday here in Palm Springs, CA - "I have rights . . ." she kept saying while listing a litany of abuses from landlord and county . . . .

So, it must have been that in my sleep I was reflecting upon my experience back in Minnesota - just coming into actual retirement and being a live-in, caretaker for a 76 year old man (formerly a technical VP at 3M) with mild Altzheimer's.  Experiencing first hand his (and his wife's) battle with a series of "guardian / conservators" (the Dakota County  investigator had taken their client's fearful expression that he did not want his wife [current or ex-?] to be his guardian-conservator as the gospel truth - $200,000 in lawyer's fees later, his wife was finally named to be his guardian / conservator).  With one guardian-conservator they had run into a situation which involved Federal tax returns from individual submissions and the question arose as to whose assets they were, so that the guardian-conservator cut off all funds to the household (this was not the first time they had faced this situation, as an "emergency guardian-conservator" appointed by Dakota County for a ninety-day period, did absolutely nothing except once a month write his client a check for food and himself a check for $50.00 for writing the check for food; that is to say, none of the household bills were paid during that period and they faced having their electricity shut off just previous to Christmas [you can imagine what this would be like, living in Minnesota], not to mention their health insurance cancelled).  They had "rights" after all . . . .

And, grasping at straws for survival, one day upon reading the paper I saw an ad for newspaper route work and suggested that we try that avenue for temporary income.  This was 3:00 - 6:00 AM (12:00 [Midnight] - 7:00 AM for the Sunday paper), seven days a week work (at less than minimum wage [not counting the "tips"], it turned out), with a commitment on my part for one year (of service).

Was I an idiot?  Probably only in the sense of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" . . . .

Thus the title for this post!

Have a great day!

On Obituaries . . .

Good Day!

After my next youngest brother had come home from the hospital ‐ post 8th heart stent visit (with a total of 9 stents inserted) ‐ he forwarded an obituary that he wrote (because the angina on this occasion was fairly serious).

Having as recently as yesterday said “goodbye” to a long time “loved one” (the subject of another blog - “It's been good knowing you, Sandy [name has been changed to protect the innocent]” ‐ she once gave me a ring inscribed “True Love Waits,” to which I, jokingly, added “Forever”), I was taken in this morning's sleep to that place of writing my own obituary . . . and had to make these hasty notes . . . with analysis at a later time . . . .

“‘Known by many, and loved by fewer’.  He is survived by siblings (etc.) . . . .

As a dove flying through the heavens, suddenly flies into the reflection of the world in a plate glass window, so, an event in 1989 left him “permanently disqualified” for life.  But given the stupid, human quest for survival, he attempted to continue in the game of life and was successful ‐ off and on ‐ depending upon whether or not the state's sanctions permitted him to work at his life's task(s).  He was a kind of “dead man, walking,” though different from your typical American Civil Religious Somnambulistic Schizophrenic.”

As an INXP, to those he was able to love, he loved with commitment:  caring deeply ‐ indeed, passionately ‐ sensitively, with strong capacity for devotion, sympathy, and adaptability.

His internet signature and tag lines summed him up in three ways:  "Appreciative Systems Synthesist," Dante's “Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi un tempo felice nella miseria” (“There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time in misery.”), and John 15:13.

Though in his recent babbling there were often references to Job 13:15!

He would wish you well as you are able to continue playing the game of life.¹

Cremation memorial service, Lakewood Memorial Chapel; no flowers; memorials to Joseph's Chateau or a charity of your choice"

¹ These additional notes upon “analysis”:

During a marriage counseling session back in the ‐ I'm going to say, early 70s ‐ the counselor asked me whether I thought that life was a game.  Being “wet behind / between the ears,” I just naturally answered, “No” (though I thought differently; I thought, ”We're in deep dodo, if it isn't.”)

Some ten years later, during divorce counseling at Lutheran Social Services in Minneapolis, I had taken the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - for, at least, the third [of many] time[s] in my life) ‐ and here are the psychiatrist's (John H. Mowery's) conclusions (recently dug out of an email I shared [just before mid-summer, 2006] with another friend on the journey).

“This is a valid MMPI.  Individual counseling is indicated.  A neurotic depressive disorder is suggested, severe in degree.  The basic personality appears to be obsessive-compulsive and prone to neurotic symptoms under strong degrees of stress.  Perhaps an eclectic counseling approach might be effective.  This would involve development of greater emotional insight, a better self-concept, better social skills, a higher level of emotional maturity, and a redefined philosophy of life.  If the depressive symptoms should deepen significantly, despite good counseling techniques, psychiatric referral should be considered.”

Today, those conclusions certainly appear to be a canned response, and back at the time - having read (in alphabetical order) Becker, Berger, Brown, Eysenck, Feyerabend, Foucault, Freud, Fromm, Goffman, Grunbaum, Jung, Laing, Legman, Masson, Menninger, Popper, Rank, Reich, Sullivan, Szasz, and Wilson-Schaef (not to mention many more), here was my response to John:

How could you miss as regards my basic personality being obsessive-compulsive?  Don't I live in modern Western culture?  Wilhelm Reich saw that our whole culture was sick, and Erich Fromm coined that beautiful, liberating, yet, empirical scientific expression:  “the pathology of normalcy.” Otto Rank held that all our human problems arise from our ceaseless attempts to impose our fictions on the natural world, to over control it.  We deny our finitude with the same dedication as the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, but now whole masses are playing the game, and with a far richer armamentarium of techniques.  The skyscraper buildings, the clover-leaf freeways, the houses with their imposing facades and immaculate lawns ‐ what are these if not the modern equivalent of pyramids:  a face to the world that announces “I am not ephemeral, look what went into me, what represents me, what justifies me.”  The hushed hope is that someone who can do this will not die.

Life in contemporary society is like an open-air lunatic asylum with people cutting and spraying their grass (to deny untidiness, hence lack of order, hence lack of control, hence their death), beating trails to the bank with little books of figures that worry them around the clock (for the same reason), ogling bulges of flesh, bent over steering wheels and screeching around corners, meticulously polishing their cars, trimming their hedges (and of course spraying them), giving out parking tickets, saluting banners of colored cloth with their hand on their heart, killing peasants in third and fourth world countries, carefully counting the dead, missing, wounded, probable dead, planning production curves that will absolutely bring about the millennium in thirty-seven years (if quotas are met), filling shopping carts, emptying shopping carts, nailing up vines (and spraying them) ‐ and all this dedicated activity takes place within a din of noise that tries to defy eternity:  motorized lawn mowers, power saws, electric clipping shears, powered spray guns, huge industrial machines, jack hammers, automobiles and their tires, giant jets, electric shavers, motorized toothbrushes, dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners.

This is truly obsessive-compulsiveness on the level of the visible and audible, so overpowering in its total effect that the human beings' natural animal spontaneity is almost wholly stifled.

In this kind of normal cultural neurosis, the material-technological character-lie is so ingrained that the human beings' urges toward mystery, awe, and beauty show up only minimally, if at all, or in forms that are so swallowed up in culturally-standardized perceptions that they are hardly recognizable.  We are closed off, tightly, against dimensions of reality and perceptions of the world that will threaten or upset our standardized reactions:  we will have it our way even if we have to strangle the segment of reality that we have equipped ourselves to cope with.

The significance of Reich's, Rank's, Fromm's and Ronald Laing's work is that everyone is crazy, because everyone sees the world within the culturally neurotic perceptual system (the only one who has a chance of getting out of it is the one who is mentally ill, who has a breakdown and so leaves the old perceptual system behind and emerges into a new, less automatic and constricting one [as Fromm mused “the real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity” The Sane Society, p. 34]) ‐ normalcy is illness.  How could it be otherwise?  Each person will twist the world in some way to try to accord it with their fantasies, wishes, fears; they will fail in some way to see obvious things in the world because these obvious things are a threat to them; they will knuckle under to some kind of authority, some source of sustaining and transcending power which gives them the mandate for their life and nourishes their equanimity.  Neurosis is a constriction of perception and action due to the need to maintain a positively valued self from within an inferior power position.  And so we can flatly and empirically say that everyone is neurotic, some more than others.

Over and out for now . . .

I'm considering adding a few more paragraphs or, perhaps, another footnote to this writing.  But, it will still be capped‐off with this reference to my November 5, 2014 blog entry (which mentions work by some of the author's referred to above).

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