Mazel Tov....Stumbling Round Israel....Tripping Over Joe Lieberman...Again...

Why can't we discuss Israel? because its a big pain in the ass, thats why.
Greetings from the hell pit that my life has been lately, and my recovery day from the wonderful bar mitzvah yesterday of a fantastic kid who I have watched grow into a really great person. It was touching and funny and I really enjoyed it. But because I'm somewhat of a "negative" person or something, (I prefer a sort of Woody Allen before-the-fall, neurotic-ish, realist, NYC, outlook...thats not all that negative is it?) My perception of things is always about what is happening between the lines, inside the message, and I agonize so much about all this organized religion stuff. But this temple and rabbi always get me because the Israel issue is BIG...and that sticks in my craw a little...and why? Because the ideas that are swirling around this community and this country, and what people end up feeling and acting on regarding the hardest issues that we face these days involve a sort of stark fear..

Liberals pussyfoot around this issue because its such a sensitive spot and it seems to hit every soft spot of emotion and fear possible. The passion involved makes it impossible to argue it, much less fight a war over it. In dealing with something that inevitably leads to religious issues, I've found that its best to not set foot in that taboo land of god.How could I possibly understand faith? Its something that I lack, for better or worse...except for a faith in nature and certain people...far fewer these days and ever dwindling. I also don't know as much as I should about the political details of the holy land, probably, because I reject the idea of religious war and I don't believe that any god that exists gives a shit about land and temples or shrines and governing entities deciding who gets what . I think that if there is a test to being human and gaining entrance into whatever heaven might be, and if its in the scriptures or written in the skies, it must concern how easily a soul is able to let go of these earthly things, and understand that there is no control over anything, much less who gets the rights to one holy place or another. It also must be somewhat about how we treat our worst enemy and the weakest among us...right? And something about looking within and questioning our motives and the societal standards and rules set up around those motives.

If we can't see ourselves in every person out there and have empathy for the struggles of others, then what good is it if we own the ground that god's son walked on? Its only a piece of dirt...how does that compare to a life? Or is life really that cheap?
The human animal has always migrated, and there have always been wars, along with barbaric behavior, in order to gain control of whatever the Spice resource of the time is.
Today at part 1 of the epic bar mitzvah, of the guy with the turtle above, sorta like a young man now, I saw a bunch of people that I've known for more years than I can remember passing me by. And again I was in that pew wondering about what goes into this wonderful community thing that unfortunately also includes giving up a certain amount of logic and reason and accepting the feeling of a very definite line of separation between these people and...others outside of this place. These are the chosen people, after all. I'm not denying that. I think its good to have a well developed ego and feeling about purpose in this life, but what of the rest of us...the...er...left behind...what about us?
Who was I and how did I get through all of everything for all of these years? Who are these young adults and how did they get so big? The boys were shrugging off their mothers fixing their hair or patting their shoulders; the girls were in little cliques and talking in code, holding their phones, and flipping that young shiny hair around. Its all so young and fertile and...scary....because the time really did fly by like nothing. But still, we've all been busy, busy, so its not yet porch and rocking chair time. We still have weddings to go through and grandchildren too, I suppose (though I have been notified by my young alien that he intends to give me NO grandchildren....whatever...I'm beyond trying to reason with the creature until he is at least 18...because he knows everything! And he can see the future!)

During all of that hugging of people I hadn't seen in so long, and measuring all the kids against my vaguely changing self, (at least I hope I'm not changing as fast as they are,) the "liberal-politics-blogger" and how is it going thing came up over and over...to which I had to explain that I've been away and so crazy busy, etc...and that this blog of not much content, is not what I do usually, and all that...yeah, not much posting going on lately....
Along came a dad who I guess I have known since nursery school in the little schoolhouse up the road, and we have met the family again since Will has joined the son in a different school. I was talking about blogging, with some friends, and especially a friend who started a business/bakery that makes snacks for kids with food allergies, and who is adding a blog to her site, when dad piped in that he is a friend of Joe Lieberman and worked on his campaign and has been involved in politics himself. Silence. Should I go there?
Don't do it Melina! Don't jump! But, you know me....
"I have to say...well, you must know... that Joe is not my favorite person in the world, though I would like to talk to him, if I can find him."
So, my friend with the food allergy site glazed over and moved on to say hello to other friends. My other friend just sat there glazed and unbelieving that I was actually going there, and looking to the side for escape possibilities. I bit:
"I actually was just in Chicago with Ned Lamont. I worked on his campaign. I LOVE him! I hope he runs again for anything."
And then I went on to say that I know that Joe has a great voting record, and that he has been not so bad for us. But the problem is that he thinks that his skewed view of the Iraq war is compelling enough, against the views of all the experts and in siding with a view that only George Bush and Barney the dog support anymore, to tear the Democratic party apart, not respect our wishes, and threaten over and over to take his vote to the republican side. This goes against what his constituents want and we have made that clear. The majority of us don't want him to be doing what he's doing, and yet he keeps speaking out in favor of the war...at the same time speaking to us in a condesending, paternalistic fashion, which makes clear that he believes that we are children who dont know our own minds.
I then took a breath.
To which he said: "Well then, how do you feel about Israel?"
Hmmm...How do I feel about Israel?
I was trying to say that it was complicated and that I don't believe in war for land...that perhaps it has a strategic purpose in the Middle east, and that I really don't know enough about all the details to speak on some of these issues....
And, fuck it, I'm a PC liberal...and we don't talk about this subject.
But heres the rub: Joementum Lieberman uses the psychology of fear about the Holocaust/Israel, and it somehow bleeds into a line about Iraq and Iran, and how the Middle East is "gonna blow up," and how unsafe we are. I felt myself mouthing that "be afraid, be very afraid..." line....That mushroom soup with the puff pastry mushroom floating on top could soon be a mushroom cloud!

Part of this is just Joementum talking points , and there is a pretty big fear of the middle east, in general, going round. What it would mean to us if it "blew-up," which seems pretty selfish somehow, because if it blows up (and I think that this rhetoric line involves wars and civil war and Iran taking over Iraq and becoming that much more powerful,) but mostly what it comes down to for many, many people is this myth that Joe is somehow holding Israel together all by himself.
And we don't talk about Israel...or do we?
Supporting Israel is to honor the fallen Holocaust victims. I hear this alot.

I finally said to the woman next to me (a very smart woman, I should add,) that America is NOT deserting Israel no matter what any of us think. And she said that she was not so sure. She said that some of the women at her synagogues had said to her that if Obama got in they were worried about America's continued support of Israel...and also said that if he was the nominee, even as vice, that they would vote republican! Republican!!

She didn't say that she felt that way, but I was sort of plunged into another reality, almost a splash of cold water, shaking my head to try to wake up...
I was tired...it was a long day...and I couldn't see any of this ending well or helping anyone come to any great conclusion. So, I ended the long night of part 2, disco party/sit down dinner, by talking to a friend's husband who I had never had a chance to really talk to...and we had alot in common and he was fun to talk to...so there...I had to flee to a sympathetic and agreeing listener...and talk tech, agreement politics, and recovery.

OK, here is my point: Do I know enough about Israel? No...not enough to know the ins and outs of the legal wrangling. But, I really don't believe in war, especially in the name of "god," whatever that means anymore.
What I really don't believe in, is American children being taught that they are in danger of another genocide and so they should always know that they are really wedded to another country that they are supporting from afar. I think that American children need to be raised American, and that they have to know that if there is another attempted genocide, we will all stand up and say NO! This would presumably be part of the superior American education system that is teaching decision making and philosophy and ethics...oh, wait a minute...never mind....

To this, I've heard " Well, they didnt stand up and say NO last time, did they?"
But you know, genocides have been going on since the beginning of time and even more recently since the Holocaust, and there is even one right now in Darfur. Why is it that the Jewish genocide was worse, and deserving of a country of its own?
At one point the dad said that (well, you're a Jew, right? ...No, my mom isn't, so I'm not, Oh...) hadn't I ever experienced antisemitism?...
Uh-Oh.... there I was with a black kid who lives part of the time in the "inner city," such-as-it-is, of my town, and please don't tell me that antisemitism is worse than the racism that people of color experience all the time. They can't even hide their difference...so don't tell me that you are saying that this piece of the barbaric human experience is any more poignant and deserving of a separate state than that; not for the antisemitism reason anyway. Its all bad and its all the very vilest of human nature to attack those who don't look like them, worship like them, live like them...fill in the blank....is Israel purely about reparations?
As I looked around the synagogue that morning, I noted that there was but one girl of color, a light skinned African-American girl. Why is that? Why is it that no black people can afford to live around here? Someone actually said to me that there are no black Jews, to which I said, ...um...NO?!

And anyway, this synagogue experience is supposed to be all about welcoming anyone in the community who wants to drop in for services and a bite. Its really quite nice and welcoming with kids running around and people whispering and shuffling. Its like a microcosm of real life minus racial diversity and plus a cantor. The rabbi is a cool guy who is a rabid Red Sox fan, and often uses baseball metaphors to make his point. It's just unfortunate that the mass transit system here is totally unreliable and on the weekends its worse...so its not like many people of color are walking down the street. No, they tend to be pretty much corralled down by I-95 where they were put in the first place.

The thing is that this sort of racism is still a huge problem here in America; and its your America where you need to direct some of your attention... because this meddling in the middle east in order to ensure the safety of Israel ,(and the oil...don't forget the oil,) and something about terraists, is only making us less and less safe here...and more and more fearful of people who look different and live differently than we do.

Call it a series of strategic military outposts, call it our need for oil, call it anything, but don't call it anti-semitism or say that its your real country. Your actual country is here under your feet, until you move over there and take citizenship or dual citizenship. Most people I know wouldn't think of moving there permanently, but they have this blind support thing going on. Its a nice place to visit and it makes them feel closer to God, so who am I to question?

I am all for that actually. Faith is a fantastic thing.... But how many people do you want to have died in a civil war in a country that will never right itself until we are out of there, and how many kids should die to protect a country that was created as a deal with a people who needed or wanted a land of their own...? Here is where I don't know enough...
My big question of the night was : And how will you all get there when the next holocaust comes? Airlift? Ship?...whats the plan?

In desperation, the dad parried with a "But If we pull out of Iraq, it will be carnage."
Thrust: "If we stay its carnage."

"God wants us to have Israel...no shit...its in the Torah."
"God wrote that?"
"Yes!"
"On paper?...they didnt have paper back then. On leaves? On rock? God told man??"

So man, in his imperfection, has translated what he heard in his head??? And a zillion years later we are still living by those rules? Oh please....I was saying something about metaphor and the study of theology and the guy wanted to know exactly-which-scrolls-and-bibles-I-have-read...so as to...you know...argue them with me, point by point...but I was finished already when we were talking about how the thing came into being in the first place...there IS no argument past that on the content...is there? Its a matter of faith..which I don't possess....sorry...Its really tragic for me, I know...
See, at this point I start to go all Marc Maron, internally. I want to assure you all out there that this was in no way loud, and it happened over a 12 hour period of time, in that certain people were seeking me out to finish, and I was ducking...here was a full grown man, and a hall full of people for that matter, who, at the root of this whole thing, believe in a theory that relates back to a story told to man by a being who is rather invisible and who flies...then the man wrote it down...miracles...more magic...and here we are!

I'm not putting down anyone's belief because I know it brings comfort, but its at moments like this that I know that I am one of those Sun God folks...In that early man worshiped the sun because it was a tangible thing that they could see and it gave them food, warmth, and light; that makes sense to me. In the same way, I am in awe of the nature that I am surrounded with, and the unplanned way that grandpa has kept this place somewhere between wild and falling down, has given me a real respect for how the forest can send its tentacles into your walls and take your house down very quickly, just as a buck (deer, not my dog, Buck,) will stand outside my back door and stomp his hoove at me rather than run away.
Is that a physical ecological cycle or is it magic made possible by god?

Whatever gives anyone comfort in this world is a good thing, just don't use it to launch wars on my dime and with the kids from my country, unless there is really, really good reason...and Im sorry, there just isn't enough reason here.
Just like anything else, we are supposedly learning in our religious practice, and it goes in cycles that could be hearkened to the political cycle. So, If you elect the cowboy who you would like to have a beer with; if you dumb down education; if you don't care enough to get up from the couch during Who Wants to be a Millionaire, (at least to turn on Olbermann or Jon Stewart so you can learn something,) then this is what you get. If you raise your children to think that they are of an embattled people who are always in danger, you might not like what you get ultimately. Its all an experiment in human psychology because this holocaust stuff is pretty new in the scheme of things. In a hundred years everything will be different and if the planet still exists they will surely look back on this little episode as nothing more than insanity that gripped a powerful nation and caused many deaths/did alot of damage before things swung back the other way. So what does it matter anyway> Am I making some big point or something by just being there and being the one who people talk to about this stuff?

I guess that it was the Joementum thing that really got me. Here it is mathematically:

If Joe=Security for Israel=Security for the Middle East=keep the Iraq War Going=Bomb Iran=Vote Republican for SECURITY..because you should be afraid, very afraid...well, something is wrong....because the whole things equals that we are LESS FUCKING SECURE!! And no one can deny that; not even Joe.

Will the American people go for it again? I don't know. Some of this stuff is knee jerk with this crowd, but there is a whole world out there, and especially in the inner city who are wondering what Joe has done for them. Because, let me tell you, the all-children-in-Connecticut-have-health-insurance line is bullshit. Most of them may have something, but no one accepts it except for some downtown clinics, and you have to be a Rhodes Scholar with alot of time on your hands to get something like an operation approved...unless you go to the emergency room...and even then, you can be billed later if its not pre approved. But at least the hospital has a deal with the Husky plan and there is someone there who has gone to school to know how to deal with this stuff. And I would like to hear Joe speak to the unregulated utilities, and the public housing...the list goes on, folks...lets get Chris Shays in here too...he rides around on this magic carpet just as much as Joe....

One more thing, and this is for Ned Lamont who is one of my heroes, and who I would gladly support again: Two families were standing and talking and laughing about how proud they were of their kids getting involved in Joe's campaign and really working hard at rallies and with the signs, yelling. And I said, (I am such a kill-joy...they must just cringe when they see me coming...)
You know, where I go in the inner city, Joe sent big vans down and he hired black kids for $60-80 per day...sometimes a 12 hour shift...to wear a Joe T-shirt and be transported to rallies (often Ned Lamont rallies,) and cause a commotion and raise hell. I saw a bunch of them running up and down Greenwich Avenue. I also saw some of them instructed to push their way to the front of a crowd when Weicker was giving a speech for Lamont, and hold signs for Joe in front of the TV cameras. In doing that they also pushed and stepped on some pretty old and feeble people, not to mention ME. Now I am pretty strong and tall, but some of these kids were huge and more than a little menacing!

The thing that I found totally outrageous is that Joe's campaign was paying these kids money to support a cause that they didn't know about at all. I asked them if they knew what Joe stood for, and the few that I spoke with didn't, nor did they care, they just needed the job.
But the rub is that these kids live in a complex where very few people can get ahead in Lieberman's Connecticut. If the utilities are unpaid they are cut off. The utility companies have a 3 strikes, non negotiable policy these days. Once they cut off the utilities, the project starts eviction proceedings because its in the lease that utilities must remain on or the tenant will be evicted. If a tenant falls behind even one payment on their utilities they lose the option to pay by the budget plan, and they start getting hit with huge bills...and let me tell you from my side of town, these utility companies need some sort of regulation because they have a monopoly, no matter how much lip service they pay to offering an alternative...its not happening...and they keep raising rates. This cluster housing is a shining star that Joe and his people hold up as Connecticut's great advancement in helping the poor, but they give people an apartment a shoddily constructed house that looks nice form the outside but is made literally of plastic and they adjust the rent according to the income of the tenants, the lack of jobs and whatever is going on...BUT, the offer little help in the way of helping people understand how to balance a budget, how to have a checking account, how to pay bills, and they have no way of helping all of the families that need help when it comes with the utilities. The one social worker who helps the 230+ families in this complex works through a community center that is funded privately by one donor who saw a need and made this a permanent fixture. But I'm not seeing the city government stepping in regarding the fact that this one social worker cant possibly help everyone in the complex, and that the utilities have adopted a zero tolerance policy. I also see things like the supermarket being moved a couple of miles away, across the street from another big new supermarket...city planning at its best...and that the free WiFi provided to all of downtown stops at the edge of this community, so few people have access to the Internet unless they go to the community center. One emergency, one Dr bill, one mistake, and its over...

It is these kids who will eventually have to join the military for a signing bonus in order to bail their family out, bail themselves out, or just survive...

This is Joe's war...and they didn't even know that they were supporting the war by earning those few bucks wearing a T-shirt and handing out fliers.
I found that more perverted than any wide stance or page scandal. $60 or $80 a day doesn't go far, and neither does and additional 25 grand signing bonus when you think that someone could maybe go to college and earn a lifetime's worth of income....and that is nothing compared to what these lives might be worth if they had hope for the future beyond throwing themselves to the military because there are no jobs, and anyway, who can make it on minimum wage?

How much is a kid from the inner city worth these days? Apparently not much to Joe Lieberman and the people who he is scamming with the fear card.
So Joe is keeping us safe using these children...and its not working, but lets throw some more bodies in there just to see if we can turn it around against all odds...using these very children. But hey, they got a free T-shirt.

So, maybe they hate me, or just roll their eyes when I come around. maybe I HAVE to talk about this stuff because I cant do that "oh it's just to stressful for little me" thing. I don't see where politics stops and life begins. At what point do we get in our SUV's and drive away from the problems? I can't, because the people who are struggling to get by in this world, whether they have learned to work the system so are scam artists, or are honestly trying to get ahead, are all part of our society and all a product of the programs that we have created and canceled, for better or worse. So, there is no way to just go on with life and say "no talking politics tonight because its just too much for me" These people are us...aren't they? Couldn't each one be our brother or sister?...thats how we have to look at this.
What else is there?

Israel, Iran, Iraq, Lieberman Speaks w/ Foot-in-Mouth Again...Half-Breed Is All I Ever Heard.....And Tony Soprano Through The Looking Glass.....

A couple of weeks ago I was at the bar mitzvah of a close friend's son, and had the opportunity to talk with another friend's husband from here in Stamford, and a certain not so little community of Jews in and around Revonah, from which has spawned the likes of Senator Joementum Lieberman. We were looking at the glass cases of Jewish memorabilia and I was commenting on how my grandfather has a piece of camp money just like what we were looking at, framed on his wall....an old friend or business acquaintance had given it to him when Grandpa was doing something or other for Israel in the olden days. There was something about me declaring in some way that a part of my family had done something for Israel and the Jewish community in New York that sort of emboldened him into thinking that I was of the like mind that is whispered in the Jewish community here.
The wife, a friend of mine who is liberal but who seems to draw the line in what we can discuss, at Israel (and believe me, I don't think this can be discussed, any more than any religiously driven war can,) knows most of my politics and was literally stuffing her husband into the car as he exclaimed "I hope that Bush just hurries up and attacks Iran and gets it over with for the sake of Israel, before hes out of office...."
I think I was screeching, "ARE YOU KIDDING?" as I saw her lips moving furiously behind the Volvo glass and they proceeded to wave nicely and drive away...clenched teeth probably muttering about how I'm not one of them...not really...My Mom is a catholic, don't you know!...never was, never could be...thats the heart of it; Whats your Mom?
One thing thats really gotten to me about a big part of the Jewish community here (and probably in general) is that they worship Israel as a promised land in such a knee jerk fashion, and if I ever get down to really talking with most of these people, their feelings are not based in logic and reality, but in fear and indoctrination. I know people who go there for summers as if its their country home, people who plan to be buried there, and people, like this guy, who want to go and settle the front lines there and be a human shield to protect Israel from the evil Palestinians. I should add that his wife poo-poohs that, and says that they will, of course, never do that. But that doesn't stop them from indoctrinating their kids with this deep love of Israel as their REAL country and where they should be sending their resources. And to hear her son talk about the deep spiritual feeling that he got from being in Israel with a big group from his Jewish school in the yearly trips they take, added to his other trips, and how he wanted to raise more money for Israel...well....
whatever....
I'm working with people in the inner city and busting my ass here to try to get computers and supplies to the "other America," which John Edwards speaks of, and which exists in greater and greater numbers right here, next door....people who cant get jobs and until recently, an uninformed voting block of young people who felt like they had no say in anything...so why bother voting...? That is until you lose your country twice to election fraud that made each and every vote count so much that...well, it would be a different world right now if nader had stepped back, and if every kid had voted...and if everyone who wanted to vote had been able to.

Another friend, who is much less involved with the whole synagogue world and more liberal and involved in the American community here...this community of immigrants and a rainbow of people outside of the Revonah Woods world, ...her older son's bar mitzvah project involved bringing canned foods to the poor in our town here....Social jews like I grew up with who havent gone overboard and carefully reach out to all of those around them.
My feeling is that if you are an American and you see that there are lots of problems here...you are educating your kids here and you have a career here...you pay into the system here and expect to retire here...and expect your grandkids to be raised here...then you may be an American, not an Israeli. The huge American investment in Israel has to do with many things, with fear being key to alot of the heavy support that I see. I'm talking about people who, if you question them closer, have been raised in synagogues and homes where they have been told that when there is another Holocaust, they will need a land to flee to. This is stated as if the Jews are the only group that have or will ever have a Holocaust type of crime committed against them...and, in my mind, in the same world where the Darfur genocide is happening right now, how can any of this make sense?
If, and its a big if, there were ever a holocaust here, we would all band together as Americans and fight it...not flee to another country. To expect less is a slap in the face to me and every other American halfbreed shiksa spawn, not to mention gentile and/or human being, including the Muslims, who it is said, are told by the Koran to "kill the Jews."....
When does the insanity end?

Its one thing to hear this stuff from old people in their 90's who were in the camps and who's parents fled the Nazi's or the pogroms or whatever. Its wholly different to see my peers: educated, liberal, Americans in their 40's, with careers and families, disolve into the line of "the rabbis always said..." or "we were raised to think..."
What do you think now? Where is your information coming from? And who told you that Faux news was incorrect on most issues but the ONLY network that was truthfully reporting on Israel?
These are all things that Ive heard on a daily basis around here...and things that I never wanted to go into.
Part of it is my very real hurt from the Jews in my life making it clear to me that I was not a full fledged member of my father's family because my Mom is a Catholic. But this message also came from people who are "social Jews" and who never took the time to try to officially convert us, much less to attend any synagogues regularly themselves. But somewhere there is the idea of not only having male heirs, and that sexism thing, and also having real Jew male heirs, that seems to jump across all logical reality and rest somewhere in between the cracks of the Western Wall....
"Thank you god that I was not born a woman..."
Yeah, right...good luck with that, bub!


If you are an immigrant you love and support your home country, but you also embrace your new country as your own...especially a couple of generations down the line?
I am an American out of Russia and Germany and Sweden and off the Fucking Mayflower, and Im a little tired of people funneling money to other countries for whatever reasons that are not about actually about helping people for humanitarian reasons!
Lets be clear once and for all about what our reasons are for supporting Israel or Darfur or Iraq and Iran, and if they make any sense along the way, OK?
You left your family behind to try to blaze a new trail in a country where there is more (though less and less) opportunity than where you came from? OK...
You want to spread our brand of democracy to a country that hasn't asked for it? Not OK...
You want oil, military bases, and land for your own land....I can understand that on some level, so OK...(it at least makes some basic sense from a certain point of view.)
You think that a holocaust is coming to your people and you think that God gave you the land of your God, where all sorts of religious things happened and that were written on stone and on papyrus leaves ...and then told through generations...and then some thousands of years later the UN decided in some back room dealings to GIVE you God's lands officially....and you have to flee there because you are unsafe here...?...less safe than any other group in particular?
Its a little far fetched to me....a long religious war ensues and no one will ever back down? Not OK....
I will be able to accept it all when this guy and his family, and Joe Lieberman and his family, move to Israel and give up their American citizenship in order to protect what God has left to them. Otherwise, what is it exactly that Joe is talking about here?
I cant embed the video here yet, but the link just above will take you to Joe's comments on Iran and our need to go in there and show them who is boss...not like, a ground war mind you...but use of force in one way or another , regardless of what it would mean to the balance of things, diplomacy, our inept leaders...just use this fucked up administration to carry out what is the Jewish line around here, and probably elsewhere; Iran is a danger to Israel and America needs to take it out.
Screw the crap about military bases and whatever else Joe is spewing...he is full of lies...and Mark Green has removed Sam Seder, Marc Maron, and anyone else from the airwaves who will speak out about this...(well, maybe Randi....but last I heard, she wont speak about Israel.)

I have no real dog in this fight except that I want to stop the war, bring our troops as close to home as we can, as quickly as we can...and I really want to see America start working on border security, import-export security, and re-regulation of big business and the divide between the CEO level and the workers in this country...the Two Americas as John Edwards would say....health care...and a turn towards a basically more socialist form of democracy. The unregulated, unexamined growth of capitalism has been a disaster, and its not gonna work...so, again, we have to turn this boat around before it hits an iceberg.
I think that ultimately, even in these strange times that we're living in, the human suffering involved in this piece of things already is more than is morally acceptable to most Americans.



Yesterday and last night I kept trying to write a post here that was going round and round in some fun house mirror-broken image that life seems to have become for me these days. I was talking about how maybe none of this or anything is real, and how it seems almost like a grand kabuki dance representing the deep dysfunction inherent in the human condition (yes I have been reading a very old translation of Bernard Henri Levy's Barbarism With a Human face...and yes, I know that its probably not the best thing for me to read right now...) ...and also a repeat of what this species seems to do over and over again...Which has something to do with the definition of insanity, right? But its not even the expectation of a different outcome, because this time God is real, and this guy knows what hes doing, that has me in a twist; its the weakness with which we take for granted the swarm of paparazzi on the screeching Hilton's car, her anguished face and mental illness splashed across the Post, because this picture is what WE want...we want it; and what the public wants , the public gets...the specter of McCain AGAIN given feature slot o' Sunday time to spew HIS garbage......
AND the return to negotiation of a political party that we put into power recently to go and do our bidding, as if we really didn't mean END THE WAR!....and its the very loud hole in our press coverage of how devastating the worldwide outcry against America has been as Bush makes his tour through the waning moments of "power," or whatever they are calling that particular psychopathology anymore. Lame sociopath....
Friday, somewhere between Kieth Olbermann pulling his ear piece out, because he too is 3 weeks behind on the Sopranos and he didn't want to hear the guest commentator's wrap down of the last few episodes, and midnight, I decided to stop what I was trying to do and watch a mini Sopranos marathon so I could stop humming loudly whenever it comes up on whatever new show I'm watching....and to avoid the inevitable spoilers for the rest of the week as this thing gets deconstructed.
And there, in the last episode when the three pronged death plot is put in place, and slo-mo blood flies, between the glaring mention of Sylvio being in "critical condition," (because Miami Steve keeps his options open,) and Tony going to sleep cradling his uzi (...in what I think might have been his mother's bed...?...ah, who knows?....,)I was again struck by the universality of what seems to be basic human animal instinct...and just a little bit of history repeating...
These people are not my friends and I don't think Ill miss them. I grew up with one too many people like that in Brooklyn.... and when it comes down to the cocktail party where a dazed and confused Melfi is, finally, after all of these years, looking at the situation and saying to herself..." you think so?...hmmm..maybe I'll have to check that out..." Like that was the first time she really looked into what was going on...? PLEASE!!...I just sort of lost it. If it wasn't so true to life, or what passes for MY life, it would be laughable.
You know who she reminds me of? Condi Rice!! A highly educated puppet for whatever leader makes her feel like a woman out of control and a man in control all at the same time....and she falls for it hook, line, and sinker...its fascinating and powerful and sexy and fun....and it has an ideology and intellectual basis that gives it some reason...but does that make it right? And has she or any of us struggled enough with the ramifications of entertaining the emotional basis of this type of pathological, aberrant behavior, explained away as necessity or illness or whatever...and is it aberrant behavior anyway?...and how does that make YOU feel?.... But what compels her to set aside common logic and treat this guy, even after she realized what was going on? Would it be the same if he was, say, a pedophile as opposed to a murderer and crime boss? Both types of sociopaths cant be cured and use the psychological system to strengthen themselves...so why would one be acceptable and one not?...ah, its social....:
The sleazy Bogdonovitch, playing himself, no doubt, uses Melfi's dangerous patient as a titillating cocktail conversation booster for his own bored and boring purposes. ( Hey now, there is a shrink I'd like to confide in...not!!...but then I thought he was reprehensible from the get go.) Suddenly then, in the light of her half drunk shrink friends, she could see clearly the line she had been straddling for too many years. ...or at least the need to read the fucking study...sheesh!
As is usual in these matters, the shrink is more fucked up than the patient...or was it supposed to be partly about that anyway? Like, were we supposed to take her seriously all of these years?

How does one put one foot in front of the other, moving forward with such surety, effecting the world, but not ever stopping to look at what the repercussions are?....like, what if you're wrong, or you missed something? Does it take a huge table of your peers gossiping snarkily to make you go, "hmmmm....I should look at that." What is it with shrinks these days?


And then, what of George Bush and his crew...his doctors, his psychopharmacologist, his advisors..? The bubble of yes-men has surely broken enough that he can see who is screaming at him to look closer at what the people want....or, at least to look at his own legacy, if nothing else!
What is that all about if not the ongoing delusion of a sociopath and his enablers?

So, like a count of the dead in Iraq since the Democrats decided to vote to fund the surge, maybe Melfi has to take a look at who got killed while she, a professional with a duty to report abuse or murder, turned a blind eye and, in fact, supported his sociopath tendencies.
And Melfi is not real...its the Bushies who need to take a good hard look at themselves and, for lack of a better explanation of what the fuck has happened to this country, go directly to jail...or at least step down and slither away like the snakes they are.

If this is some sorta Kabuki representing all of man's history from the primordial ooze, to the intelligent design mid-section (which people sorta halfway have to believe when the alternative is the nothing but blackness beyond this place,) to George Jetson's "Jane, stop this crazy thing!" its a slo-mo dance of the absolute ...denial and power and surety to a fault, yet all based in fear and control.

This is the ME generation's reality, which is that individual interest seems to trump even the survival of the species or planet....so ME must go on somehow and you...um...ME... should be able to take it with you/ME/I.
And nothing is really wrong with that because its instinct to feather your nest at the expense of others...and that is a great argument for Darwinism in and of itself! Self delusion about you and your kind does nothing if not move evolution along in one way or another.

But, Don't we wreck everything ultimately? ...and dont we do it over and over again in a predictable manner?
And sometimes it seems to me that its the artists, the empathetic commentators, the emotional liabilities, who are not bound to survive in the grand scheme of things. People who think and feel are probably on the way out, folks...surety is in, no matter what it takes down with it. As long as God is on my side, I know what to do...whats right...and I'll have fries with that!
That may be the base of the neocon movement and the mafia and humanity, when it comes down to it....
Ethics and morality and the endless agony of the poets...the philosophers and comics...gone!
Its hedge fund time, baby!!

I keep thinking that there is the possibility that they know something that we dont...and its probably that the niceness and order that we are trying to impose onto the barbaric animals that we really are,...impose rules by any means possible,...is folly. We are not built that way...and its not necessarily kindness and gentleness that is seen in the Bible, unless you pick and choose among some certain things that Jesus said in the New Testament...OK, OK, OK....
Maybe I'm delving a little too close to that all popular Catholic belief that mankind is born bad (bad, bad, bad!)....I don't mean that at all, (I only got that halfway anyway...the other half is Jewish neurosis; which maybe also translates to bad, but not fromt he same root....) I just mean that if we are to deny the base animal form of humans, we cant ever deal with the parts of ourselves that want to control all the oil in the world, much less the neighborhood and asbestos dumping.
As far as Tony Soprano being the everyman representing the neocon movement and their cluelessness about their own sociopath insides (...but then, I don't know how much sociopaths are really in touch with their insides at all, or how much they feel that the rules of society relate to them in particular,) I cant say much more,....
But I did want to say that that Jill bowled me over Saturday morning with her take on the state of things as seen through the Sopranos lens, over at Brilliant at Breakfast, and probably said alot of this more concisely than I ever could in my wandering wordiness.

So long Tony...if he lives or dies...well, I don't care, and I'm not so sure that is the point or if it matters anyway . It seems to me that the real essence of this whole thing with the family, the kids the pool, taking out the garbage, and living the "real life," is the image of Tony in the bed cradling his "gun"...Did anything thats happened over all these years make any difference in Tony at all? The therapy? The deaths? The attempted suicide by his son?....I don't think so...
I keep thinking that at the end of the last episode he will wake up from a long, long dream and put on his suit and go to his job as a stockbroker in Manhattan or something...wouldn't that be the cherry on the cake? The Who Shot J.R.? ...man, was this a big waste of time manipulation or what?
Have we really looked into ourselves and learned from Tony? Can you learn from a bozo sociopath?...just remember that no one ever really changes...ever...
I'm not saying that I haven't enjoyed the ride, and the cinematography and the scenery of my childhood...but I'm glad its over. Lets move on.

Big Love is back on Monday...the surge continues and no plans to pull out are forthcoming, I get the watch the entire Tudors season on DVD, and Big Brother is starting soon.
Not only that, the bird store is brimming with babies...pin feathered, half naked, squawking, screaming babies...(and Todd there at midnight feeding them, ...and hearing the squawking on the phone....and I can only equate it to having an infant human, in the exhaustion and circle running that goes on every spring in that world....)
And I need someone to come here and build me a little chicken coop (if you know of a carpenter who needs some work!) I want a couple of chickens.
And just now, in the supermarket parkign lot, a man with a "Jesus Saves" cap on came over to tell me that he could tell from my "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker that I would understnad about the chemical trails in the sky and the unmarked planes dumping chemicals over us...how the sky was trying so hard to rain...how he could see that I believed in the rapture and he was glad I did....and I just said that none of it mattered except that we have to end the war(s) and bring the troops home...sort the rest out later.
And he said, "you know, the first time I voted for Bush it was because I was convinced that he was a man of faith...it was completely about his religion...then I realized that he is not a religious guy. Who was it that said that when you get to heaven in the rapture the people there are not going to be who you thought would be there at all...?" I told him that I didnt believe in the rapture and that if there was any chance of any of these people being there that I will take my chances with the alternative...but that no God that I could ever imagine, determines the afterlife fortunes of one or another person based on some earthly ideal made up by...um...man!
something like that...I dunno...
The sky is full of chemicals and the internets have been down all day...and finally Dell and Cablevision have BOTH taken responsibility for the insane amount of tech problems that Ive been having here...so maybe the end times are near! I'll know when my network finally works smoothly that its time to prepare for the rapture...Until then, its just goona have to be some sort of backing up of that sucker until youre sure that its not goning to the big garbage can in the ether....(where it maybe belongs anyway...yeah!)