Politics

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out why folks seem to have a problem caring (i.e., paying) for the welfare of other people. As in health care. As in water quality. As in clean air. As in education and housing and transportation taking people to work, to school, to grocery stores and back home again.

I get why they want these things for themselves. We all want these things for ourselves. The problem comes when folks start thinking of our welfare as a good, and the welfare of others as, well, Welfare. Read more about House Buddies

I have never wanted to get a job.

I have needed a job, applied for a job, gotten a job, been fired from a job, walked off a job – even loved a job - but I have never ever wanted a job.

And up until two, maybe three hundred years ago, nobody had a job. Most people worked their fingers to the bone, but they didn’t have jobs. They had “stations in life.” Few, if any, people had ever gone out looking for a job.

The industrial revolution created jobs. Read more about Finishing the Job

I woke up to a little squib on Book TV this morning, wherein a thoughtful writer, Peter Hayes, speaking on the Impact of Power, contended that power enhances the ideas of those who hold it. Which does not bode well for the future.

The future landed with a thud on January 20th, with (President) DJT referring to our country as a place of carnage and sending the message throughout the land(s) that from now on it would be “America First.” Read more about What Now?

Remember when President Obama poked gentle fun at Mitt Romney for citing Russia as a serious threat? Remember how we all laughed?

I didn’t. I winced. Nothing good ever came from poking a bear. But the moment passed, and I couldn’t help but be happy that Obama had gotten another one over on Romney. Read more about To Russia with … It’s Complicated

Soon after the election, someone messaged me asking how I was doing in light of Trump’s triumph. After thinking about it for a while (I think there was a moment on election night when tears had threatened, but never materialized), I said that, to my horror, I was finding myself more comfortable with despair than I would have been with hope.

Despair, I said, has never let me down.

But don’t think despair has made me all mopey. In fact, it’s energized me. Politics has become a horror movie, an apocalyptic adventure, a zoo of fantastic beasts. Read more about The Monster Mash

I have often boasted that my very first vote for President was for a woman. It was in the Illinois primary of 1964, and I registered Republican in order to vote for Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who had challenged Senator Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination. I voted for Lyndon Baines Johnson in the general, and I’ve never had cause to regret either vote.

It has since become my belief that you vote your heart, your conscience, or your protest in the primaries, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. Read more about A Vote for the Country

Tulpa is a concept in mysticism of a being or object which is created through sheer spiritual or mental discipline alone. Indian Buddhist texts call it an unreal, illusory, or mind-created apparition. Read more about Beware the Wild Tulpa

…if the Great War had shown one thing, was it not that European civilization, once hailed as the most progressive and most advanced in the world, was really nothing more than a thin veneer for barbarism? Read more about Civilization and Its Discontents

Yesterday morning I had a conversation with a Mexican-American friend of mine. He was born, 40-some years ago, and raised in what I’ll call the backside of Dallas. We were talking about the gunman who took it upon himself to answer in kind for the many black men killed for little reason by law enforcement agents. I was depressed, because I felt that in so many ways that man’s actions might derail the powerful Black Lives Matter movement, which seemed to be gaining a lot of headway across the country. Read more about A Perspective

Most folks reading this blog will have a fairly good idea of what we mean when we talk about an “under-class.” We picture inner city ghettos and barrios, sometimes Native American reservations. Sometimes we think about women or gays or anyone black, brown or tan. Read more about Redneck Revolution