There Is No Oz

Ripples of outrage layered with disgust are passing through my body right now. Ripples that look just like a whole lot of other ugly ripples I've witnessed vibrating across the whole country in recent years. All in full view of anyone who bothered to be looking. The hologram theory begins to make sense to me now. Every tiny piece of the picture is exactly the same as every other piece. That's the game. That's the game that we're not supposed to be able to see. But just like Dorothy ripping aside the curtain and seeing some little schmuck standing there instead of some great and mighty godlike being, I see the game, just like she did.

I can't help but recall with disgust the way that little lying sonofabitch, seeing her standing there glaring at him, STILL grabbed for his microphone and STILL tried to use "the voice", "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Yeah, right.

It's over. You pathetic little weasel. Literally caught red handed and still trying to lie, thinking his lies are going to work, because they always work. Every word out of his lying mouth was a lie. Every one of them. Every single time he opened his mouth from behind that little curtain, every sentence he spoke into that voice transforming microphone was a lie. He was pretending to be something he never was and never could be. He sold an illusion. And he played it for everything he could get. And he was able to walk around scott free because no one would ever know who he was, or that they lived in fear of an illusion, of something that did not even exist.

There is no such thing as the great and mighty Oz. Why did we ever think so? It's such crap. I've met thousands of people in my lifetime and not a one of them was anything but human and mortal. None of them were special. None of them were of some finer quality flesh, what bullshit. Do you want to know the truth of it? The most decent people I've ever met were amongst the poorest people I've ever known. But for all of the rich people I've met, and I've met plenty of them, I can't think of any who gave a damn about anyone but themselves. That's the disease of greed and selfishness. You think your life is all about finding a million ways to masturbate, to get off, and that you deserve to be useless and self-obsessed. You tell yourself lies about being too good to have to think about all the people you're using to get yourself off. You know why? Because deep inside you know what you are. You're desperate for an illusion to excuse the fact that you're addicted to getting yourself off and that in order to do it, people have to die. You're so wasted that you can't even care that you're a monster. You think being a monster makes you better than everyone else.

It doesn't.

All it takes is one person forgetting to be afraid and demanding that the great and mighty Oz explain himself because he's so clearly an asshole that there is no excuse for him anymore. Nothing justifies him. That's what all monsters fear the most because they know that's all it takes. Everyone may be asleep but everyone can wake up, just like that. It's like one of those optical illusions, the Rorschach looking picture of a lamp. You see a lamp, that's all you see. It takes someone else to say, don't you also see the faces? Then you see the faces. Then it's all over. That's how easy it is to wake up. That's what they fear.

That's why the media is a bubbling caldron of shit and lies and putrefaction. It's the disease spreader, the manure spreader, the magic microphone of the great and mighty phony Oz that sells the illusion. That's why we get a new batch of liars every four years but their voices never change. They're all speaking with the same voice through the same tunnel of lies that transforms ordinary, less than ordinary, literally stupid, corrupt, cowardly, self serving assholes into "honorable" "dignified" "respected" LEADERS. OH!! It makes me sick to my stomach. What a thinly veiled scam. What a sack of crap it all is.

I guess you can tell I'm pissed. I am so pissed off. The filth is everywhere, it's everywhere. It's in your house. It's in my house. We're soaking in it. We're breathing it and eating it and drinking it. We can't get away from it. We're just so used to being used, and lied to, and treated like we don't rate, we don't count, we don't matter, we don't get any, like we need permission to exist, that it feels normal. We're proud of it. It's gone on so long that we can't even see ourselves being prostituted to ugly old men with liver spots and nasty breath who make us do all the work as they lay back in their jaundiced cheap euphoria and fantasize about even more depraved ways to get off, because all these other ways just don't cut it anymore. The thrill is gone. It's too easy. Everyone has bought into the illusion that leaders are our superiors instead of our servants and so they stole the mansion and all of the property and cleaned out the bank accounts and snatched up title to all of the land and everyone's houses and now they're selling us off, selling our flesh, eating our flesh, using our children's flesh to get off, and they're just not having as much fun as they used to. They're dying to up the ante.

Let me tell you what I see. I see a basic system that repeats over and again through every walk of life. You're either a thug or you're not. The thugs use violence to kill people and take their stuff. Everybody else is their prey. These thugs wear suits and ties and they drink champagne and they eat five star meals every single day and don't know there's anything else. Marie Antoinettes, all of them. Thugs lie. That's their vehicle. They use fear. They use force. Physical, emotional, intellectual, whatever it takes. Thugs need eunuchs to propagate their control mechanism. They pay their eunuchs a lot of money because people will do anything for a lot of money. They'll teach what you tell them to teach. They'll report what you tell them to report. They'll shoot who you tell them to shoot. They'll do whatever you tell them to do and they'll never ask why. They'll never treat you as their equal because they want that gravy train to keep on rolling. They'll live on their knees to you and in return you'll let them have their own little pond to be big fish in. They can be as despicable and tyrannical as they want, and you'll cover for them. But if they get so much as one inch out of line, you'll take them out. You'll destroy them. They're all afraid of you instead of being afraid of turning into weak, pathetic, useless, cowardly, comfort addicts who live in the cloud cities where no one is poor or suffering. The cloud cities of Donna Reed and Peyton Place and Dallas. They're not responsible for the starving masses or the oppression or the ignorance or the poverty or the wasted potential and lives, no not them. Not the people of the cloud cities who have very nice lives. It's somebody else's fault. It always is. Blame the victims. Yeah, that's it. The victims are the bad people.

Earlier this year, sometime during the summer I met a homeless lady around the corner from my house. She was someone who mattered to me. It's an awfully long story but I can tell you some basic things so you understand why I'm so angry. This lady was someone who worked for the county for over 20 years, and retired. She did all the things you're "supposed" to do. She went to school, got a job, got married, bought a house, had kids, and eventually retired. She paid her taxes and worked hard. She got divorced. Her kids grew up and went off to live their own lives. They were a clean cut family, the kids earned scholarships to college, she's very proud of them. Her two sons are both over in Iraq serving their scum bag in chief. They cared about doing something for their country.

Her daughter, her pride and joy, her talented, beautiful girl got breast cancer. It ate her. She died. She left two little children behind. This homeless lady is their grandmother. She can't get one penny of assistance from the government machine and has been living on the street for over a year and has been knocking herself out to make sure those two kids are taken care of. She's a decent human being and she's found out that when you lose everything through no fault of your own, doing the right things for the right reasons and terrible things happen to you and rip your heart out, that nobody really gives a damn.

I tried to find some thing, some place, some organization, some charity, anything to help this woman. There is NOTHING out here. It is beyond shameful. The government is playing tricks like the ones they play to wipe people off the registered voters lists, any lame excuse to deny people what they deserve. Anything to deprive them of a voice, of a choice, of a chance. Anything to cheat more money into your own pocket at their expense. Anything.

With all of the money out here, and there is major money out here, I guess these folks are just too well fed to give a shit about people who end up on the street. Someone like this grandmother is a 100% ideal candidate to get back up and running if just for a little help. She's not a drug banger, doesn't drink, is not a criminal, is a bible reading Christian, someone of morals and principles who can't stand to be a burden on anyone, someone like this is exactly the type of person who can be helped. This is someone who wants nothing more than to have a job and have a place of her own to live and have a normal life again. What excuse is there really for the Governor to slash what crumbs there are in the so called budget for helping people? What excuse? You tell me. When the friggen corporations are given corporate welfare in staggering chunks, why is this woman living on the street for a whole year with two little children to take care of? Somebody has to explain it to me because I do not understand.

Oh and by the way, I contacted all the churches in this city who bragged on their "outreach" programs. I wrote letters to them all, Dear Pastor so and so. Let me tell you about someone who needs your help. NOT ONE OF THEM responded to me. Don't be shocked now, but not one of them bothered to even check on this woman either. They're all full of crap. Lots of pretty talk without any of that yucky get real walk. Just keep the money coming in folks. Keep the parishioners singing their little songs on Sunday. Everything is beautiful, Christ is the Lord.

Listen for the ripples, as above so below. The fed is the state is the city. It's all corrupt. We'll hear it again because they'll say it again and again. "We have to cut the budget! We need fiscal responsibility!" So they get huge increases for more weapons, more violence, more death, more prisons, more cops, more thugs, more control, more DHS concentration camps, more "intelligence" agencies (i.e. their legalized private anything goes criminals who don't take a salary, they get offered jobs for serious money.) Nothing costs us more than all that control and death crap. Nothing. What we're paying and what we've got along those lines is literally insane. And there's no end in sight. So when it's time to cut the budget where would you look? Would you not look for waste and fraud and maybe negotiate lower prices and all the usual stuff? Wouldn't you go where the most money is being spent and take a long hard look there? If you weren't corrupt you would. But when you're corrupt you go to where the least money is, to the social programs, to welfare, to assistance, to food stamps. FOOD STAMPS for crying out loud. This is not massive amounts of money and if you think it is you'd better look at the "defense" budget. Then don't bother coming around because I don't want to hear it if you're going to support the death machine and stand against the lives of your own fellow man. Something's wrong there bucko. Keep your distance. Fair warning.

What these thugs do, what all the thugs do, is go to the poorest people who have the least money, who get the least money, and take it from them. Leave them to die. There you go, good job. Was it worth it Madeline Albright? Was it worth half a million dead children to get your political rocks off? Indeed it was, she said. Reader, what exactly did we get that was so worth it? You must know right off the top of your head for that price. You don't know. Neither do I.

Yes by treating the most desperate needy people, like you deserve to be treated, you saved us all so much money, supposedly. In spite of all your budget slashing we've never been more in debt. And billionaire bankers have never had it so good before. They've always basked in the oceans of parasitic profits they bilk from every living human being, but free trillions, that's beyond even their wildest wet dreams. That's okay though, it's all those welfare queens living high on the hog on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and trying to decide between taking their sick kids to the doctor or feeding them a highly processed genetically modified chemical laden dinner. Yeah, it's a big party living on welfare, you jerks. Does this even make sense? No it doesn't. It isn't about cutting the budget, it's about killing people who can't defend themselves. It's about being depraved and getting away with it and using the whore media to give your voice a monopoly on the public mind. It's about brute force, selfishness, despicable filthiness, hypocrisy, and just being assholes. It gets them off. They love the stench of death, smoke and handcuffs in the poor parts of town.

Remember how they flocked to New Orleans in the wake of Katrina's floods? They sent out thugs with guns to shoot people in crisis for their lives! That's who the great and mighty Oz is. That's what our government machine is. Oz. There's your great and mighty godlike people. That's who they are. LOOK AT IT. That's who they are. They said, "We finally got rid of them. We couldn't do it but God did". THAT'S WHO THEY ARE. See it. It's reality.

They bussed people out of the state to all over the country and dumped them there. Meanwhile they built Casinos and got them up and running while survivors were traumatized, sick, they'd lost everything. You know the FEMA office in New Orleans was closed a year or so ago. Just closed. Not because people aren't still in crisis, they are. But FEMA's job was to not help. They did a good job. The government rushed in to save the oil companies, and they blew off the people and treated them in ways they wouldn't treat a dog. SEE IT. It's reality.

Back to this homeless lady, this grandmother, I was so upset that I couldn't find her anything. It blew me away that there was no help for her. She'd already been living on the street for a year. She's not stupid, she'd tried everything. She did a very thorough job. She tried hard to find work and couldn't get a job. What's she supposed to do? She has to beg to survive. So that's what she did, every day, every single day, no days off because she had to eat and those children had to eat. That was her life in the great US of A, in filthy rich Silicon Valley with Google's HQ so close by you could throw a rock and hit their building. I guess they can't see homeless people from their picture windows. I guess they can't see them when they go to get their Starbucks everyday, because they didn't see her standing there. For a year.

After a couple of months of going by to talk with her once in a while and give her some money whenever I had some and even when I didn't, I got a feel of this person, and I really liked her. I really admired her. It's too much to tell you about in any depth. It would take too long to really impress upon you how decent and great this lady is. She's had a hard time. A horrible time. No rest. No help. No end in sight. She's been through it and frankly I don't know how she was holding herself together. She's truly brave.

One time when I went to say hello to her, as I got out of my car I saw fifty bucks laying on the ground right in front of me. It was just laying there. I gave it to her and she about came unglued. It really meant so much to her. It wasn't any big deal to me, it's just a wad of paper that some twit was probably going to use to buy lottery tickets or booze. I figured it was better spent on her. Besides, how do you find out who lost their money? Everyone you ask is going to say it was them. Finders keepers in this situation I'm afraid. That's just how it went.

That day I noticed the grocery store she sat outside of had put up a big sign that said something like, "Don't feed the animals". It said "this establishment does not condone poor people begging for chump change so they won't die, at least not in front of our food market. Fuck poor people. We recommend that you ignore them and do not give them any money. We think they suck". That's what it said, regardless of how they phrased it. It was insulting as hell. It blew me away that the management of that piece of crap store couldn't figure out how easy it would have been for them to do so much kindness for this lady. How much food do you think they throw away each day? Yeah. I guess they couldn't bring themselves to help someone perishing for want on their doorstep. Like it would have hurt them. Idiots.

Anyway... that day I asked her if she'd want to come stay with me. I couldn't stand her being out on the street. I just couldn't accept it. So I opened my home to her and said come on in. She was shocked and joyous for about 10 seconds, then she got very quiet. I told her to think it over, no pressure. The offer is there. She naturally had things to think about, questions to ask. I didn't want to push it or make her feel uncomfortable. But I know what she was feeling. Fear. Too good to be true. People don't just ask homeless people to come home with them. It doesn't happen. So we're told. I think she was just too afraid to believe anyone could care enough to open their home to her. No one had cared for a year. What price would it come at, she probably wondered. I don't know what she thought, I'm only guessing. But I know fear when I see it. It was just too scary to trust someone.

I decided to give her time. The weather would be getting cold pretty soon. It might make her more amenable to at least coming by and seeing the place and finding out what a lousy housekeeper I am. I gave her my phone number. She called a couple times. Once when her grandson was taken to the hospital. She needed some moral support. Again a few weeks later when he had a relapse and she was so scared. She was coming apart. I told her it was okay to come apart. She cried. A lot.

Then last week I went by to see her and she wasn't there. I went by again and she wasn't there. I went by today again, and she wasn't there and I got a bad feeling in my gut. I started asking around and eventually was told by someone else out in front of the grocery store, some guy with a radio, and a table, and a big jar filled with dollars, obviously not a homeless person, but doing quite well from the look of it... he said she'd been arrested for shoplifting. That's all he would say.

I have to say this. The government couldn't figure out any way to give this lady a few hundred dollars a month to help her get back on her feet. They just couldn't find a way. It costs too much. It's too much of a burden. But they have no problem spending thousands of dollars a month to incarcerate her. They can pay cops in brand new cars with all the latest tech garbage and loud ass sirens winding out all night to come get her. They can pay the private corporations who operate the prisons. They can pay the fat ass salaries to the thugs that run those places and they can turn their heads when the guards beat the snot out of people. They can afford that. They just can't afford to HELP anyone. You can see it in their faces, the thought of helping anyone disgusts them. It makes them want to puke. But throwing people into cages where they can be kicked and starved and fed poison and be used for medical experimentation and free labor, where they can strip away their human rights, forget American rights, what a joke, there's plenty of money and lust to do that.

Does the punishment even fit the crime? What do you rip off from the supermarket that should cost taxpayers 50 grand a year to keep that person in a cage? What did she supposedly steal? Food? Give me a break.

But here's the thing that I believe is the truth of the matter. This woman didn't shoplift anything. It's not who she is. She had too much at stake to take such a stupid risk for some small little thing from the store. It's not her style. She'd been making it the hard way for a year and was proud of it. It's who she is. She's not a thief. But right after Thanksgiving the supermarket had a truckload of Christmas trees delivered. I don't know what those are going for these days, I haven't bought one for well over a decade. I'm sure they're very profitable. They wanted to set up their little Christmas Tree lot out front and not make their customers see a nice, warm, decent homeless human being out front, during the time of year for charity and caring and kindness, that's just too depressing. It might cut down on profits. The Christmas trees are nicely arranged right where she used to sit every day. They're selling quite well too. Hardly any left. Good for them. That's what it's all about, right?

Excuse me for putting two and two together but I see what's going on here. The store management called the cops and accused her of shoplifting. The cops were all too happy to take her away and destroy her life and let the state finally get their filthy, pedophile hands on those two little kids. They threw her into a cage knowing she had no one to come help her, and no one who would even care. She can't even make bail. It's nothing personal, it's just business. Whatever they said she took, it isn't even worth a night in jail. They destroyed three lives and feel good about it. They got rid of their own little New Orleans riffraff, so they could make some serious profits and keep their customers in the Christmas spirit, spending as much as they possibly can.


Keep up the illusion that this is the best country in the world. Just drag the losers out of the view of spending customers. We don't want them to get upset seeing reality. Let's keep them focused on phoniness and hypocrisy and let them get lost in the despicable insult of celebrating their God's birthday by shopping until they drop. If you don't count the bodies, there is no body count. If you don't see the homeless people, there aren't any homeless people. We must never let hard core reality interfere with our illusions of how swell and upright and happy we are. Quick test to find out how swell you are: count the money in your pocket. That's it. Nothing else matters. If you don't have any, you don't even deserve human dignity, much less justice. Sorry, I'm not all that proud to be an American today. We've got some serious problems when we don't see any value in human life because it means we don't even care about ourselves. That's just stupid.

Happy Holidays one and all, sincerely. I hope everyone gets some rest and a break from all of this shit for a while. Eat good food, reconnect with family and friends, only this year, appreciate it. Not everyone even has a chance to have anything as normal and wonderful as that. See you next year or whenever we meet again. Take care.

The Three Questions

Coming to understand something has a metaphor found in nature. As we realize comprehension of something we say it is dawning on us, in the same way the sun coming up sheds light for us to be able to see. These are two totally unrelated things, human and cosmic, and yet somehow the analogy makes sense. The external world mirrors our internal world quite naturally. It is amazing, when you stop to notice it, how many ways the universe is our mirror.

It's interesting too the way we can get things totally wrong but they still become deeply embedded in our minds and without giving them a thought we never notice they don't make sense. Take for example the idea of the sun coming up. The sun doesn't come up. The sun doesn't do anything except sit there doing what it does. It does not flit about the solar system. It does not circle the earth. What happens is the exact opposite, the solar system circles the sun. Earth spins in circles as it circles the sun, facing each section of the planet toward the sun and then away from it again, giving us the sensation of the sun coming up and going down. We're living inside a moving circle inside a moving circle, providing us with two of the most basic elements of time, a year and a day.

I wouldn't bet that many of us sit around and think much about the fact that these great external forces of the universe directly affect and infuse our lives and how much we depend on them in order to sustain life and health and even a healthy frame of mind. This they do, and in no small way. Day and night is our most basic cycle. In a detached sense, the idea of a planet spinning in a 360 degree circle doesn't mean anything in particular but to us it means a day has gone by. A day. A unit of time that begins in absolute darkness, changes to absolute light, and then back to absolute darkness. This rhythm of life is so essential to us that if it ever stopped we would die. Our crops would fail and the systems of weather and atmosphere would be profoundly changed. It would be very strange and everything about life as we know it would be different.

How many people ever stop long enough to even notice how tied into the universe we are or seem to care much about how its workings directly affect and command our lives? Watching the great out there is about much more than awe and beauty. It's about the fact that because that's out there, we are here. Without it there would be no us.

There comes a time when we each experience our own internal sunrise for the first time, we suddenly exist when we did not before. Like becoming aware in a dark cave, we cannot see anything, but we are conscious and then suddenly we realize we exist. "I am conscious". I am here. It's a mind blower, such a seemingly small thing. But no sooner do we realize that we are here, that we are conscious, do we have three questions. "Who am I?" "How did I get here?" and "Why am I here?" The essential three primordial questions are with us to this day. They have been pondered, expounded upon and argued over for millennia. Still no one has "the" absolute answers to any of them.

These are the unbearable questions, the ones that plague us and eat at us because if we don't know who we are or how we got here or why we are here, how can we know what to do? The answers feel critical to locate, but they don't seem to be out there to be found.

When we arrive, we all have those questions but the answers are not provided, at least not in any sense as tangible and observable as the sun coming up. Answers are offered, and seem to have been offered for as long as there has been mankind on this planet. But all of the answers are theories, regardless of how deeply they are believed and accepted as answers. In the midst of so many answers to choose from, the questions still exist, lingering on as they always have. This would seem to make it clear that nobody has the answers because everyone is still asking the questions. Such a basic truth, and yet the cause of so much unwillingness and inability to get along.

It's enough to kill over. That's how insecure mankind is, and why we so strongly cleave to our illusions. They comfort us. Without that comfort we would be forced to look directly at the questions and take them very seriously. We would have to come to grips with the fact that we have no answers and here we are anyway. We would have to figure out by ourselves who we are and where we are and why we are here. We would have to supply the meanings and find the truths and make the observations and do the tests ourselves. We would have to define ourselves and not be defined by outside sources. We would have to communicate and share ideas, come to agreement, shake hands and choose to either be in this together or to value other lives differently than our own. We could either be sane or insane. We could make sense or we could make no sense at all. We could make it up as we go because we're too afraid to be still long enough to experience the agony of not knowing, until the insecurity dissolved and changed to feeling okay. We are here regardless of the questions, regardless of whether we have the answers or not, and we are fine.

There are more questions than answers no matter how much we think we know. And considering how little pure, unbiased thought we give any of it, its only honest to say we don't really know much at all, beyond handfuls of glimpses and tidbits. Answers or not, the need to know is outweighed by the reality that we must eat and have shelter to stay alive. We must busy ourselves with this thing called life, carried out in repeating cycles of day and night. We live repetitive cycles of activities which become our norm. Too much variance from the norm is unsettling, we desire the normalcy of both the greater cycles and our own personal ones. It is the repetition of cycles, of circles inside circles inside circles that makes us feel secure. The quality of those cycles seems less important than the cycles themselves. The same old unsatisfying routine is preferable to time being filled up creatively without set routines. We need the security of expected outcomes too much to push the envelope for something better. We don't like change. The trouble is that when we become habituated to destructive lifestyles we stay stuck in them, and it takes gargantuan effort, a miracle, or a complete disaster to upset the routine and allow a new one to take its place. While we know all of this at some subconscious level, we pay it little mind. Even though it's possibly the most important truth we need to face, it is as irrelevant to us as the sun coming up each day. Our deep connection to the world we live in and the universe around us is forgotten in the rush of living out our routine lives.

I wonder what it was like for the earliest humans, who did not have any awareness of the simple reasons that night changed to day, to experience the sunrise. It would have been a mysterious daily event, an inexplicable occurrence that they after a while would come to think of as the most reliable thing in their world.

What would it have been like to be among the first people to see a sun rise?

Imagine being awakened from your sleep. There is nothing but blackness. You stare into the darkness until your eyes adjust, until you are able to make out the rough shapes and outlines of your surroundings. Your senses are fully engaged and you now perceive something curious, or perhaps you sense it more than see it. You are coaxed out of the rocky cold darkness of your sleeping place at the notice of some compelling, irresistible, small but detectable change in the color of the darkness around you.

Stepping out into the chilly black of night, all is dark. The black above is the same as the black below, except for the stunning vision of millions of brilliant stars spread out across the sky. They are like some illuminated web hanging there, twinkling, shooting streaks of light silently above you and the whole of it is slowly traversing the horizon as if it were going somewhere.

What is happening? You are certain the color of the darkness is different. It is changing. You stand in utter silence, nearly holding your breath, calling upon all of your senses to discern the truth. Is it changing? It is. Incrementally, indistinguishably, soundlessly, the darkness is changing. It is dissolving, or lifting, or something. All you know is that you are beginning to make out many shapes around you, things that you'll soon see as trees and mountains and plants. The darkness is changing to colors and the genesis of the change seems to be coming from over there, a spot on the horizon that stands out as brightness and light, and it begins to paint the world in colors. What is causing it? Why is it happening?

It seems to happen so slowly and yet it is happening very fast. It is almost too much to take in all at once. First there is the illuminated spot on the horizon growing brighter and larger, the sky is changing from black to red to purple to blue, and there is also an entire world coming into view, in distinct crisp detail, in colors, and sounds, with dew forming on green leaves, and amazing clouds of tiny white swirls exuding forth from your own nostrils and mouth every time you exhale. It is magic! Taking all of this in on so many levels, fully engaging the mind and the senses, allowing the emotions you feel to come on unobstructed, the curiosity, the fear, the awe and the mystery fill up the entirety of your being, as you silently stand there watching it all happen.

All at once the bright spot on the horizon lifts into the sky. The darkness you stood in only moments ago is completely gone! Everything is bathed in glorious light and color. And the spot on the horizon is a thing. It is an orb of light so powerful it lights the whole of your world! It is glowing and warm and bringing the world to life. You cannot look directly at it for too long, it is simply too bright, but you are filled with reverence for it. It is utterly amazing and instinctively you know that this bright orb, heading steadily upward and remaining above you all the day, is the reason you are alive. It is the giver of life to the world.

You wonder if it has consciousness like you do. If it is some kind of being, aware and alive. You wonder if it can see you like you can see it. It is benign and gentle and warming. It is non threatening. It brings color and light to everything. You feel you've found a friend, your friend, it belongs to you, it knows you, it is there for you. The following morning when it comes back again, you greet it with joy. Soon you are greeting it with all of your friends.

My guess is that the people back then, if this were somehow a true scenario, would develop an all out love affair with the sun. They would spend entire days together doing nothing but watching the way the sun walked across the sky and the way it eventually disappeared, letting the darkness come rushing back in like some mysterious ocean of dark and light, the sun as the land and the dark as the water. This daily cycle became one filled with meaning and mystery. More so as they paid attention in the course of passing years, making note of the seasons changing, along with the patterns of the lights in the sky at night. They saw how in the spring the baby bunnies and birds appeared and the foliage burst into blossom. They were ready to take advantage of the summers abundance, the varieties of fruits and edibles that came forth in great plenty. For them it was the best time of the year. They had enough to eat and resources to build their living places and to make their tools and dishes and clothes. With the long hours of daylight and bellies full and nothing threatening them, they had time to be creative and to think.

They would celebrate the spring and the summer, feeling compelled to do so out of gratitude, out of knowing these things were dependable and fleeting, a temporary but absolute necessity to stay alive. They would perform small gestures of giving back, leaving some food out for the sun to eat, knowing it would not be eaten but it was the thought that counted. They believed their friend in the sky would see their gratitude, their gesture of returning a favor in kind, and they hoped it would feel thanked and appreciated. Over time those gestures became rituals and those rituals were performed regularly. The children born into their world would have taken these rituals as a given, and would have joined in their performance, no doubt with full understanding of their meaning. These were not things done mindlessly.

In the grateful celebration of the end of cold hungry winters, no doubt people wanted to dance. No doubt they discovered the magic of rhythm, of beating the drums, of blowing into a hollowed out reed flute, of singing and chanting around the fire at night. This too became a ritual, albeit a more casual one. It would be fascinating to know the cumulative number of hours mankind has spent sitting around the warmth of an evening fire, cooking food and telling stories. Stories that turned into myths, scary ones, traditional ones that explained the three questions in suitable ways that matched their reality, favorite ones oft repeated, passed down to new generations. We're still doing it today, though in very small numbers and only occasionally at that; we still cook over those fires, still tell our favorite stories, still ponder the lights in the midnight sky, still sleep close to the warmth and the protection the fire gives us from the night and the animals surrounding us. Out there a meal and a night's sleep mean something, unlike today's 7 minute microwaved TV dinner in front of the 6 o'clock news, and another restless night sleep we are jarred out of in the morning in order to report to our work stations. This modern ritual is completely meaningless and totally forgettable.

Back then, they knew better than we do, that we are food as much as the next creature. Wrong place wrong time was serious business. No doubt they got very good at ensuring their safety, they figured it all out, just by knowing and observing the nature they lived in and with and on, like all other living things. They perceived themselves as a part of nature, not as something above it with nature as an afterthought or as something external that existed only for them to plunder. It's a shame that ever changed, mostly because it has changed for the absolute worst.

We are disconnected from the world that gives us life, not even comprehending what our food is or where it comes from. We would be hard pressed to live off the abundance of the land with no modern conveniences, even with the sophisticated knowledge that is available to us to learn, if we only cared to learn it. But we don't think it important enough to bother with. Nor do we think it important enough to ponder our connection to the planet we live on, that we depend on for every single thing we need to sustain us.

We have cut ourselves off from nature and treat it with contempt and disrespect. We waste it, and kill its inhabitants with an attitude of entitlement. We exist to enrich ourselves with material things. It is no longer good enough to live in balance with nature. We must accumulate more than we could ever need or want. Things that have no meaning or true value beyond being technological trinkets and symbols that rank us amongst each other. Unlike in nature where everyone is equally entitled to take what they need and want, in this society, people suffer for lack of life's necessities because these things have all been commodified.

Nature is critically essential but it is not profitable. Unnatural is profitable. Unnatural is what matters most. Unnatural is what consumes us and it is what we consume. We don't need profits and unnatural things to sustain our lives, we need the natural world, but we reject and destroy nature and believe commodities and profits are more important and more real. Very little time is given to think about any of it or what it means or where it is all headed. We no longer seek answers to the three basic questions ourselves, preferring to simply shop for a pre-made package of off the shelf answers that may or may not serve our shriveled spiritual selves. Once we make our choices we are certain we know better than the rest, regardless of what we've decided those answers are. We're no longer even capable of respecting the reality that all anyone can have is a theory. No one stops to notice how geographical location determines one's dominant belief system. We're just sure that no matter where we lived we'd still have our chosen answer system because ours is the true one. We're defying nature there too. Our attitudes are ignorant and arrogant, and we have replaced gratitude and celebration with selfish entitlement and brutality. We are at war with each other, with nature, and with the very nature of life itself. We have elevated ourselves above the sun, believing it is we who bring life to the world instead of the other way around.

Perhaps we're not that smart. Perhaps we're simply stuck in a cycle of believing we know everything, just as they did 500 years ago, and 5,000 years ago, just as we still do today, always certain we know it all. No humility. No time to waste. No time to ponder and wonder and observe. No time to be human on earth.

No one greets the sun anymore, in fact doing so would be frowned upon. To revel in nature, to be in harmony with nature, to appreciate nature is deviant behavior and probably evil. Nature must be conquered and subjugated not respected, not left alone. Nor is there much sitting around open fires at night, talking and singing songs and telling stories. That's kid stuff today, considered childish and of little value or relevance to respectable thinking adults. It's for the little ones who, in this modern version of human existence, are given irrelevancies and illusions to occupy their minds, and toxic artificial substances to eat as they grow up. Somehow we think we love them as we fill their minds with nonsense and their bodies with poison. We think TV sets replace parents well enough and that consuming products makes us real men and women. We're sicker than ever before in both body and mind, working harder and paying more for ever less. We believe that whoever dies with the most stuff wins. We're kind of retarded.

The questions in the depths of our souls are still with us. The answers we've accepted and believe have changed and evolved over time. They live along side of us, around us, mirroring back to us who we think we are at the time, where we think we are at the time and why we think we are here, according to beliefs of the time. The answers are, and have always been a mirror of how well we're doing, not a secret to be withheld from all but a chosen few. It is our own beliefs and the actions we take as a result of those beliefs that directly reflect back to us who we really are and where we are and perhaps if we really paid attention they would also make clear why we're here. Perhaps the answers are for us to decide and can be evaluated based on how we're living and where we're taking the world, ourselves and each other. But, it is easier to not have to take responsibility for ourselves, or our beliefs or our world and instead, leave such personal responsibility to someone else so that we can settle into the comfortable security of the status quo routines of the day. We may think that any answer is good enough because it provides a framework to exist in, and we may believe because there is belief consensus that our beliefs elevate us to higher and better realms, but it is crystal clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps living a life of routines is a luxury we cannot afford. It has not yet been earned.

Maybe because we no longer greet the sun when it rises, or dance around the fire on the night of the full moon, or make gestures of gratitude for our abundance, because we no longer understand our connection to nature and don't even relate to it anymore, we can't see the answers we are creating with our actions and theories and demands to be perceived as "right" by might. Perhaps we're having an orgy of idiocy, blind gluttony, obsessed with the sensations of transient personal pleasure in absolute contradiction to nature and common sense and with total disregard to everything and anything real around us. We've made ourselves the center of the universe and our personal pleasure fulfillment the reason we are here.

I don't think we've gotten it right just yet. I only hope that this current batch of morally inept pleasure seeking, material obsessed psychopaths leading us down their preferred paths of modern illusion and delusion, don't end the party for us all, making the entire exercise of humanity a wasted, pointless one. Going up in a blaze of glory is highly overrated. At least it is as I see it. I'd like to think we'll be around long enough to eventually get our answers, because we'll finally have earned them. Not contrived them, not forced them on each other with knives and bullets even while they're wrong, not by consensus or by vote, but by living them and knowing them to be true for all. We are inevitably bound to get answers, right or wrong, we can see them all around us every day in how we live our lives. What we see are things going very wrong. Doesn't it seem obvious that we will only get the right answers if we're asking the right questions?

Because of our disconnection from nature combined with our pleasure seeking arrogance and ignorance, for the first time in known history, we are running out of time. The time to ask the most important questions in the world is now. If we don't do that, or if we wait too long to begin this process, we will get the answers anyway. They just won't be the ones we've been hoping for.

Nibbled Away

Being nibbled away slowly. Bit by bit. Not imperceptibly but relentlessly. Unceasingly. Parasitically consumed by external entities who possess greater size, strength and ability to exert will, to extend will, to deliver will, blindly, without recognition of the lives they affect.

Lives at the individual level don't count. Too bad for you if you're getting screwed. It's the way we do things. Too bad for you if it's killing you. It's the way we do things. Too bad for you if it infuriates you and insults you to the depth of your soul. It's the way we do things. Individual lives don't register as legitimate things. The concerns of individuals, struggling for survival in this sick, commodified, elite formulated shit hole society, equate to precisely nothing. It's the way we do things.

One has to ask. If it is not about life at the individual level, the only level there is, then what is it for? If what those with power and state blessings do serves no one but themselves, what is it all for? When the police are not a part of us but raise themselves above us, placing themselves on pedestals where they talk about their own, their self preservation, about being unwilling to risk their lives to save the lives of others, about all the rabble out there being the enemy, then what are they for? When the military sees itself as our superior, when it sees itself as the future of the world, when it has aims and goals and delusions of righteousness and grandeur and entitlement to use its force to achieve its own ends, to ensure its own continued existence at the price of denying us ours, all in defiance of public will, then what is it for?

When the state can't be bothered to acknowledge individual lives, when the sheer weight of humanity exceeds their capacity to dole out their ideas of justice and order, when they are forced to put forth every demand from the perspective of only one kind of citizen with one kind of life, when they negate the teeming and endless un-sameness of every person they encounter, then what are they for? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? And more so, why do we no longer expect or believe that we all deserve to be given the time and the common sense and the justice of being dealt with fairly and honestly and reasonably? They don't have to love us, it has nothing to do with love. It has everything to do with common respect, with decency, with bottom line morality, the most obvious things in the world. They don't get to ignore masses of people simply because it is inconvenient to have to give them their due. But they do. And we on the receiving end settle for it while those on the giving end demand it.

Which means that slowly over time we accept less and less and get less and less until all of a sudden we realize our own voices are no longer to be heard, by official decree. It is the norm. It is the daily, usual and expected standard of excellence we measure things by. No one is being served, but the machine is running smoothly. The machine is well oiled and expertly maintained, fussed over, fanned with enormous fern fronds by slave girls, fed grapes from between the pointed Ninja fingers of blindly devoted eunuchs, the machine is happy. That's all that counts. That is the acceptable status quo. The machine has no other goal or purpose than to serve itself, because it can't do anything else.

Because we cannot, at the individual level, take on the greater wrongs of the machine, it makes clear the critical necessity of taking on the smallest wrongs personally, every time we see them. But we dismiss the wrongs we can do something about for not seeming important enough to make a scene over. And we are fools for it. We get what we settle for. What else would we get?

Go ahead and tell 'em what they've won Bob! Let them see what's behind door number three! Drum roll! Tension builds! "What is it? Is it freedom?" (Audience groans). "Ooh! No, sorry, not this time kids. But we do have a nice consolation prize for you. You've won the right to petition the government with your grievances. Offer void where prohibited, satisfaction not guaranteed, we make no claims as to the validity or delivery of this offer, offer may end at any time, depending on whether or not the government feels like hearing your grievances. That's just like freedom, isn't it kids?" "Heck yeah! Thanks Bob, that's totally good enough! If that's all we can get, we'll take it! We're going to Disneyland now! Buh-bye everyone!" (Applause. Cue music...and... cut! That's a wrap. Thanks everybody).

No, you may not presume to have the rights you were born with. Your rights are bothersome to the state. Your rights are bothersome to the corporations. The right to be left alone by relentless marketers does not exist. Their right to relentlessly market is all that exists. The Entitled Ones are confused by the stupid humans among us who do not comprehend they are parasites meals, being parasitically eaten away, layer by layer, day by day, who so mistakenly believe it is wonderful and it is good and that this is the best country in the world. The Entitled Ones think we like it. They look at us and see us fighting each other to be eaten and they say, we are beneficent and perfect.

Do people have no brains? They cannot think for themselves. They cannot see with their own eyes, they must be told what they are looking at. They have no ability to frame the world themselves, based on their own values, on their own morality, on their own needs and abilities to recognize justice and decency and simple common sense. They must be told everything else they cannot comprehend it. It is beyond them. It freezes them in the headlights of reality and they will stand there until told what to think and what to do. It is no wonder they are told then to SHOP as the ashes continue to fall where twin towers once stood. It is no wonder at all that answers are given to us in the form of stimulus checks we are told to take to the store and spend. This is our American dream. Good citizenship is shopping. We can buy our way to hallelujah, to health, to happiness, to perfection and Godliness and self fulfillment and love, and to a perfect version of the great and mighty US of A. It is all there to be bought. Walk don't run down to your local retailer and say, I love my country! I want a flat screen TV! I am saved and I am a true patriot. I am good and decent and kind. I have a seat reserved in heaven by the side of the Lord for I have shopped until I dropped! Every penny has been spent. Am I wonderful yet?

They are hopeless. They are told by the warmongers/bankers/political whores to send their sons and now their daughters far away to kill and be killed. Can they see it for what it means to them personally? Are they capable of understanding what grief will befall them when their sons and fathers and brothers and uncles, sisters and mothers and daughters and aunts and best friends in the world, don't come back? Do they grasp what that will mean? Do they grasp what it will mean when they do come back? Have they any concept of the ultimate price that is paid either way? Has it ever once occurred to them to ask, "Who is this who presumes to ask me for my life? For my family's lives? For the literal future of our lives? What arrogance exists to make such a demand?" No. They refuse to acknowledge how unbelievably much they are being told to donate of their lives to strangers who don't deserve or need their families, or their prosperity, what little they have. They are told to cheer and wave a piece of cloth in the air and hoot and holler for our "side". Whoever "our" is, and whatever "side" means. If you are not on your own common sense side, then what the hell side are you on? If you don't even respect your own happiness and freedom and joy and family, then who will? Certainly not they who do your thinking for you. Certainly not they. Have they ever claimed to care about you? Not once. But you don't notice it, or care. It feels normal to you. You would die to protect your right to be parasitically used and consumed. You're dead, you don't even exist. Your life is an illusion, and you are but a generic dish of parasite chow.

When you don't have a frame of your own, when your brain has never learned the exercise of working for itself, for your benefit, for your higher good, then I guess you're just going to be screwed. And you'll keep being screwed, over and over and over again, with new entities stepping up every five minutes wanting to get a piece of you. And like a retarded school child, you will sit and grin at them as they take your dignity and your life. You will pull up your shirt when they tell you to, and you will laugh as they take turns mounting you and when they are done they will despise you and humiliate you. And do you even have the sense to understand what's just been done to you? No. You don't. You strut around in your abject mental poverty proudly, essentially bragging about how you can be raped and abused by the scum who molest you, and because they are satisfied, you think you're satisfied too. We don't know whether to feel sorry for you, or roll our eyes.

But the fact is you are dangerous. When you demand to receive your own victim hood you are a danger not only to yourself but all others who your life affects. And when you spread your mental poverty throughout your town, your city, your church, and when you dutifully pass it on to your offspring, you are dangerous. Stupidity is dangerous.

Is this the world you want? Is it really? Is the whole of the world what goes on in your little day? As long as you have yours, the world is fine?

Because of you I cannot demand to be left alone by the armies of stalkers who exist to shove their demands for a piece of me down my throat. I cannot tell them to fuck off and leave me alone. I cannot pull out my shotgun and pepper their homely farquard backsides with stinging pellets of my irritation. They will never leave me alone. Not any more. Because too many people have consented to being nibbled away by parasites, day after day, bit by bit, until the concepts they most claim to stand for become hollowed out shells that represent nothing at all. So today the parasites are commissioned by God and by Country and by Corporations and by greedy selfish elite parasites, by warmongers and bankers, and psychopaths of all ages and callings and colors and belief systems, and it is they who possess the sole right to parasitically exist in over abundant comfort and plenty. They have the right to demand steady streams of your plenty, and you will provide it. You will erode yourself in the spirit, in the soul, in the dignity and honor of life, until you no longer recognize yourself as worthy of consideration or respect or rights, and you will be damned proud of it.

Help yourself to your sad delusion.

If I am the sole entity in this city who refuses to sacrifice myself to mindless slavery, so be it. I will hold my tattered useless shield and I will bark and growl and stand my ground. But there is no one to confront, the abuse systems are all on auto. The machine is running smoothly, the soul eaters are all out on their yachts. My enemy can't even be bothered to show up to drive its parasitic straw into my flesh.

Lives at the individual level don't count. Like peas on a dinner plate, they're all the same. They are there to be eaten. "For thine is the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen." Napkin please.

One Great Big Private Idaho

If I had to choose one word that best describes the times, the word I'd choose is conflict. Disagreement rules the day. It seems as though we're in perpetual battle against others who see things differently than we do. Everyone has different values and different priorities.

That's not a deviation from the norm. People have always seen things differently and they always will. In a reasonable world this is understood and perceived as non threatening. It's alright to see things differently. It is normal and expected. What is abnormal is the idea that it could be or should be any different.

It is quite unreasonable to think that we all have to be on the same page in every way in order to be okay. We don't. Expecting no differences between us would be so unreasonable as to border on a failure to grasp reality. It's simply not possible for all people to be the same.

The reason is obvious, we don't all live an identical experience. Beyond sharing life support needs and a basic human experience, everything else is unique. At the most basic level the physical terrain where people live is different depending on where it is in the world. People who live in the ice and snow of polar regions will wear fur and eat blubber and will have culture, traditions and beliefs that are completely different from people who live in the arid Middle East. It would be unreasonable for polar dwellers to perceive the desert living peoples as bad, wrong and evil for wearing different clothes and eating different foods. It would be unreasonable for polar living people to hate desert living peoples for not eating blubber, or not sharing the exact same traditions, culture, beliefs and values that they do. It's a physical impossibility for the desert dwellers to do those things, so the expectation would not make sense. It would not be rational or reasonable in any case to hate people on the basis of where they are born.

At some level we should all know this as it's self evident. Where we have run into trouble is in a breakdown and failure of basic reason and simple common sense that has spawned diverse demands on others to see and do things according to the beliefs and value systems of ourselves, outsiders. Outsiders have no business determining anyone else's life for them, especially when they do so unasked. We're all born equipped to do that for ourselves and not surprisingly nobody likes having someone else barge in and proceed to do it for them.

There is a complete absence of mutual respect when we expect and demand that others come around to seeing things and doing things our way. Garnering an attitude so adverse to simple common sense is incredibly offensive and understandably it ticks people off who are on the receiving end of such obnoxious, unreasonable attitudes and demands.

Our sad excuse for leadership comprising all the wrong stuff has built it's entire world view on ignoring this reality. They are offensive jerks lacking common sense who have no interest in being reasonable. They just take what they want by any means necessary. Their means are no more sophisticated than they are, usually amounting to blunt force and weapons. Their arsenal includes many things that go beyond bullets and bombs, such as laws and lies and authority and the abuse thereof. They claim entitlement to be jerks on the high authority of our nation's lost credibility and if that doesn't work they send out armed thugs. It's a criminal operation that is see-through beyond our borders while it remains just plain invisible to a great number of people living inside them.

Because our so called leaders set the tone of the nation to a large extent, it follows that their obnoxious unreasonableness has tainted all of our lives, filtered around the world, and is causing predictable and serious adverse effects down to the level of individual lives. What they have created can no longer be escaped.

Our "leadership" embraces the principles of criminality, dishonesty, greed and corruption along with a depraved indifference to others and have very much poisoned all aspects of life here on the good ship America. Where those holding any form of power were once obligated to use it wisely and for the benefit of all it is now the status quo to use that power to benefit oneself alone and whatever harm it causes others is dismissed as irrelevant.

It's little wonder that our daily excursions into the institutional, commercial and business sectors of society are increasingly unsatisfying, unfair, insulting and unconcerned with mistreatment of the public. Indeed, many of these places are arrogantly proud of their bad behavior. They can point to the leadership of this country who set the example of putting personal greed above common decency, and because they're sanctified by their positions of authority, it not only makes it okay, it makes it the right thing to do.

Well, at least technically. It is not the right thing to do, ever, to abuse one's power, authority or upper hand and use these things for personal gain at the expense of those who are victimized. It is not okay to shove ones own agenda and beliefs down somebody else's throat against their will. Everyone has agendas and beliefs of their own that have nothing to do with us, and they have an inalienable right to them.

Those who control and dominate our society disagree with that. They would deny it if confronted and would claim the rights of others are important and are respected by them. But the way they act has no relation to what they say. The truth is borne out in their actions. And because theirs is the prevailing attitude of the day, comprised of so much self righteous entitlement to interfere with, to disturb, to insult and threaten, to annihilate both differences and the people who have them, the result is conflict, and plenty of it.

It's no surprise that the country is coming apart at the seams, it's perfectly predictable based on cause and effect. It is stunning how many people are unable to see this for what it is. I've often sat genuinely confounded by the inability so many people have to correctly perceive what's right in front of their faces. What's going on is a going out of business rape and pillage sale, we're just not being told about it. It isn't hidden, something like this can't be hidden, but we are being systematically lied to about it by the official purveyors of bullshit, the enabling arm of the powers that be. Even as they burn your house down the broadcast media will either ignore it which means it never happened, or they'll spin it and tell the audience that your tears are tears of joy and gratitude because burning down your house saved your whole family and you all found God. The reality that they burned down your house out of spite and vengeance because you failed to sufficiently prostrate yourself before them in some way will never be known. And even though you were there at the time and it happened directly to you, no one you tell the truth to will believe you because that's not what they heard on the news.

A line from a song I don't otherwise remember said it so well it stuck, and became a familiar expression. Living in your own private Idaho doesn't have anything to do with living in Idaho. But it does have everything to do with living in a self generated, private reality which by definition means it is not reality. A self generated private reality is an illusion that the person possessing believes to be real. It's a lonely place when there's no one but you there, so it's no surprise that birds of this feather feel a very strong need to recruit others to join them in their artificial version of make it up as you go reality. What's so surprising is how brisk the recruitment figures are.

Another well known expression is the one about not seeing the elephant in the living room. Again, this has nothing to do with elephants or living rooms. It's a metaphor for a glaring reality that's impossible to miss. It's hard not to notice that even people deeply immersed in the act of not seeing the elephants in their own living rooms are perfectly aware of this saying and also understand its meaning. They just don't think it applies to them. And why would they? They believe the self constructed reality inside their own heads is real reality. To them, it's everyone else who's got the problem.

Living in your own private Idaho doesn't need to be a problem, and in and of itself it shouldn't be one. But in our culture it's a huge problem. It is the additional element of blunt force self entitlement that has taken living in your own private Idaho to whole new levels that are no less than assaults on everyone else who doesn't live in there with them. More than nine out of ten times it turns out, those who are assaulted have no desire to live in there with them. And therein lies the problem that is very effectively tearing this nation to shreds and racing us into terrible times ahead.

Private Idaho dwellers plus blunt force self entitlement creates groups of people who live in a self-constructed self-authorized fantasy world in which they are the embodiments of human perfection on this earth.

This is a self serving, pompous, delusional load of crap of such magnitude it should have a respected place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Anything that smells that bad is something we recognize as meant to be avoided at all costs. We would naturally go out of our way to not step in it, and that should be enough to avoid it. But it's never enough when the offensive entity relentlessly throws itself under your feet with every step you take making it impossible to avoid it or to make any headway of your own desire. This prevents us from living in freedom and peace and from building a common sense world. It's an unnatural problem that should not exist, which is further evidence of it's invalidity. Not that any further evidence is needed.

It becomes a matter of self defense and survival when you can't get away from something that offends you and which, for all intents and purposes, seeks to destroy you. That is the intent, whether they see it that way or not. Using any form of force, intellectual or physical, to make someone else do things your way, is always a criminal act because it directly threatens the free will and lives of others, and there is no such thing as a right to perpetrate your own will on someone else.

The only claim in existence of possessing the right to behave otherwise lies in the form of another private Idaho, a belief in a God being who selectively bestows that entitlement to his chosen faithful. The fact that anyone can make that up, and the glaring fact that there is no proof of either their version of God or any generous gift of permission to be raging psychopaths, does not prevent any but the rational thinkers among us from accepting their claim as valid. It has been bought into and given the status it possibly could have if it were true. Believers in God, each having their own versions of God which may or may not resemble those of the claimants or of any actual God, do not show any surprise or alarm at the thought of having a psychopathic God. Under the circumstances it would not seem unreasonable to need proof of the validity of this claim, but the claim itself is apparently all the proof required.

In light of that unfortunate state of affairs, and because it's such obvious crap, it's not much of a leap to see the claim for what it really is: a strategy that is used to excuse inexcusable behavior. The claim resembles a tool far more than it resembles a fact. And the need for such a tool is self evident. Because it is perfectly well understood that no one wants to hear someone else's crap or be bothered by demands to conform, or give over, or to cease to exist so they can have your stuff or just feel good about the fact that you're gone, the offenders asserting this claim know perfectly well they will not be welcomed or accepted. They understand after centuries of collective first hand experience that their obnoxious destructive obsessive/compulsive behavior becomes so increasingly irritating to others that they invariably get their lights punched out, or worse. Historically they were often run out of town, sometimes they were run out of entire countries, and many times they were killed. It's not a joke to mess with other people's rights to have their own versions of reality, even if it has nothing to do with yours and even if you think yours is better than theirs and even if your version of God allegedly said so.

Isn't it time to stop allowing the elevation of ordinary men to heights that should only be reserved for God? Does anyone "need" another mere mortal to be their interface to God or truth or justice? Do we need equals claiming to be specially qualified self proclaimed intermediaries telling us we have to do things their way because they're more special than the rest of us? I don't think we need this. I know I don't need it. I can't even respect it as once again, there is no proof. Whether we're talking growing the economy, which has become a religion, in spite of it's overwhelming inadequacies, failures, and utter lack of concern for the welfare of the people, or whether we're talking organized religion, or bureaucracies of status quo anywhere, those who presume to demand special rights to do their will regardless of the harm it does to others, deserve to be cut down to size and told to take a number like everyone else, not be submitted to as some above mortal special persons.

I have to admit I have a lot of trouble understanding why vast portions of humanity have so much difficulty understanding something so simple and obvious. This is nothing new, history is chock full of obnoxious people who want to tell everyone else what to do and people who don't feel like doing it. Whoever said those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, knew what he was talking about. All manner of trauma, bloodshed, destruction and gore is the guaranteed result of one group of people trying to control another group of people, every single time without fail. But we continue to not notice that, or not care about it, I'm not sure why. Sadly, too many people around here don't even seem to be aware of it.

The control addicts of the world have versions of history in mind that not surprisingly are every bit as self-generated, hand-picked and reconstructed as their self-generated versions of reality. What's very interesting to notice is how often groups of control addicts can be identified by cries of persecution and fear for their lives. It is quite unusual for people to persecute anyone who hasn't worn out their welcome, generally speaking, so one must always take the time to find context and to look a bit deeper at self-proclaimed victim populations, specifically the ones who show no signs of going extinct. Actual victim populations have a hell of a short life span so if there really is an overwhelming threat to their continued existence underway, the evidence should be equally overwhelming. With the eternally persecuted there is often little evidence that their existence is being overwhelmingly threatened. In fact any existing overwhelming threats quite often seem to be ones that they themselves are generating against others.

I'm not suggesting that horrors have not always been perpetrated against innocents throughout all time and are ongoing with more violence, injustice and death than ever before. Clearly that's reality. But the cries of persecution, the self-pitying diatribes delivered by people who suffer for nothing and in fact enjoy a quality of life far in excess of their general audiences, telling stories of the monsters of today in far away lands, or the monsters from decades ago and centuries gone by, who populate the endlessly repeated legends and claims of the eternally persecuted and fearful, these can fairly well be pinpointed to exact sources which remain very well intact in spite of their claims of ceaseless persecution from all sides. In fact, the eternally persecuted appear to be some of the best off people on the planet, one can't help but notice. The genuinely persecuted normally don't get a voice, they're usually too busy trying to find food or social justice or are just trying to stay alive, dodging bullets and bombs and tanks, to have any chance of telling their real-time stories of terror and persecution. It often turns out that those bullets and bombs and tanks belong to the parties claiming eternal persecution from others.

Claiming impossible hyper entitlements due to innate specialness is a self delusion that deserves no respect or patience. Another example of this which affects all life on Earth is the worship of economics. The highly lauded princes of finance and economics insist in one tireless repeating voice that their way is the best way for all. Their closed door meetings determine the fate of nations. Yet, one can't help but notice that vast proportions of humanity have no representation in their circles. None are included in the overall planning who can speak to the obvious downsides or repercussions their fiscal plans will wreak on millions of innocent lives. The result is an unbroken record of elites profiting themselves through violence and viciously protected inequities, literally at the expense of the prosperity of billions of other human beings. What's so brilliant about this? What deserves to be worshiped as some form of higher truth here? It's a selfish, destructive criminal system that serves very few at the expense of the whole world. Does that deserve respect? I don't see how it could.

To anyone possessed of reason and common sense, these incongruities should stick out like a sore thumb. It is plain as day that things are not in reality as they are being told in the official and larger national media whorehouses. It is stomach turning to follow up on the claims of the better recognized hyper-entitled self-proclaimed special people among us, and to check the facts only to find that what is being marketed as best for all or as self defense in the highest causes of good and truth and nobility and light, are in fact nothing less than blatant and despicable crimes against humanity.

This is the fruit that comes forth from the private Idaho of special privilege and self-entitlement to use force on others in order to have things your way. It is not fruit worth partaking of. It is poisonous fruit grown on manure piles of lies and delusions of grandeur that cannot pass any objective sniff test.

The delusional lives and beliefs of others, if kept to themselves where they rightfully belong, are rarely a problem to anyone else. To some degree or another we all have a personal version of reality inside our own heads, it's probably unavoidable, so it's reasonable to assume that this is a normal part of having a head. It must serve us in some naturally occurring way. But like everything else it can be done right or it can be done wrong. It can help or it can harm.

When any individual perpetrates harm on another without just cause we can easily and correctly interpret their acts as criminal. It is no less criminal when groups perpetrate harm on others, it is exponentially more criminal. When a nation is led by people whose self generated version of reality is so out of touch with actual reality, reality that all can see and agree is there, that they claim they possess the impossible right to shove their will down the throats of others, it is even more criminal than anything else this writer can think of. The fact that as a nation we are unable to discern such obvious truths about our own political, industrial, economic, religious and military leadership, particularly those who blindly support these things as something above merely mortal and in constant peril of being inflicted with fraud and error of innumerable kinds, leads to the suspicion that far too many of us are unable to see the legions of elephants in our own living rooms due to the very strong likelihood that we are living in one great big gigantic private Idaho, no matter what states we physically live in.

We cannot claim to be good and upright, decent people if we do not believe in the extant obligation to check ourselves regularly to make sure we're not lost in our own delusions of perfection and entitlement, and in the process are causing terrible harm not only to others but in the end, to ourselves. As pleasing as self delusion may be, the pleasure it brings us does not equate to truth or success or anything else but delusional pleasure. If things are so badly wrong, and they are, hanging on to self delusion is an option and a choice but reality is not a choice, it is inescapable. Refusing to see external reality brings on ultimate failure that no amount of self delusion can deny.