thoughts…rants…irony…fiction…observation…
we eat a credit card’s weight in plastic
for every week we live our lives;
we’re told we have microplastics in our brains
so skulls are molding plastic hives;
Industry is surprised and troubled,
says let’s see what we can manage–
we’ll make you comfy plastic bubbles
to soothe cerebral damage
Special VA APPROVED Loans to help Veterans keep their houses help Veterans, and America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
Subsidies to hire teachers for Poor areas in the USA helped America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
Cyberwarfare defense programs protected America from Putin and other enemies
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
DOJ programs to stop massive tax fraud helped America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
Programs to help feed children of working families were good for America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
Programs to subsidize training of nurses and health professionals are desperately needed for America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
USAID helped save the lives of children worldwide, and improved America’s standing
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE SHUT THEM DOWN
The Dept of Labor helps protect workers
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
The Dept of Education helped keep high standards of education in America
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
The Food and Drug Administration is helping protect American lives
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
The Federal Trade Commission helps protect Americans finances
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
The Environmental Protection Agency protects Americans from toxins and pollution of many kinds
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
Social Security helps millions of Elderly Americans who paid into it.
SO DONALD TRUMP, MUSK AND DOGE ARE DESTROYING IT
He shares the crowded house that is my skull
The only guest who does not dissipate
The others fade as if a daydreamed trull
But he sojourns and always watching, waits
He nods and smiles when I lash out at you
With pleasure he rewards my worst instincts
He dizzies truth so falsehood seems more true
He covers up dark sources of the links
Not guest and not a stranger now is he
I’ve known him always and a fading night
From trauma nurtured I, my enmity
Laughed bitterly when hope grayed from my sight
Then one hot night I breathe my final rasp
I see him use the doorway of my gasp
People who basically live on their phones get most of their input about the world as memes, and misinformation. If you live on your phone a bit, you’re a bit stupider; if you live on your phone somewhat, you’re somewhat stupider; if you live on your phone a lot, you’re a lot stupider.
(one verse of it anyhow)
America the Dismantled
O beautiful for racist lies,
(For MAGA craves a brain),
For pointless emigrant enmities
Above the fruit-picked plain!
America! America!
Putin plans a grave for thee,
And shoot the guns of incel hoods
From sea to plastic sea!
The daily dismantling of America; the laboratory of the American experiment sold, its apparatus in landfills, to make room for vast AI data centers; armed drones fly over the streets, using behavior assessment programs, shooting outliers alongside the violent sufferers of microplastic dementia.
Consciousness is 3D; the brain and the lower mind–2D. It’s as if those who insist “it’s just the brain” are like Flat Earthers. Like our planet, consciousness is a globe. Literally, it is a globe shaped field. It’s part of something bigger, but also self-contained in itself. Sort of like a bubble in a sea, but not so fragile.
I just used the term mind-bending casually today, as if bending minds is a good thing, and I asked myself: How bent do I want my mind to be? I picture my mind as stainless steel, and use input to bend it this way and that, to try to get it into a certain shape. Someday I’ll do it. It’s a pronged shape.
What is conscience, really? Is it just an uncomfortable feeling you get, a twinge when you do something selfish? That kind of “conscience” is fallible, and subject to your social conditioning, to the fears imprinted on us in childhood, and to biases.
In esoteric spirituality schools, especially those influenced by Plotinus and Gurdjieff, conscience is something we don’t have–despite the occasional twinge–until we gather enough authentic selfhood through self-observation, non-identification with automatic mental processes, self-knowledge, and an increase of consciousness itself. Then, it’s possible step back, within oneself; to open one’s attention, to tune into a higher mind that is part of the overmind of the cosmos. The higher mind adds its intellect to ours, so we have a real and infallible guide. It’s us and it’s more than us. It’s real conscience–arising from real consciousness.
…This prominent hominid ancestral species, self-styled ‘humanity’ or ‘homo sapiens’, was somewhat successful in terms of mechanical construction of civilizations, and notable for occasional bursts of artistic creativity. Nonetheless, its tragic flaws brought about the destructive Anthropocene and a collapse of its fragile social systems and infrastructure. Essentially ‘homo sapiens’ was neurologically boxed-in by a crude cerebral system alternating reward and negative input, inevitably producing addictive and desperate behavior, complicated by wired-in xenophobic pathways cascading to the collapse of its feeble capability for empathy and self awareness. This self-numbing, self-destructive complex was egregiously magnified by the dominant media systems of the time…Our currently dominant mutation, humanitas quartus dimensio, optimized 3rd and 4th dimensions of cognitive self-awareness, enabling objectivity interlaced by empathy…And so HQD emerged from the ruins of the anthropocene and cultivated a new, diverse planetary biome and, thus far, a sustainable civilization…
–from, The Child’s Book of Human Developmental History, circa 3010 CE [translated from the period’s dominant philological form]
Jesus, most scholars agree, existed–in the sense that Yeshua the Nazarene wandered around, said some of the things attributed to him; Jesus made an impression, locally; drew some followers, was crucified. (As for what he really said, see, the “Book of Q” for some sayings they feel certain of, and see also, in my opinion, the Gospel of Thomas.) He may not have died during crucifixion, according to one story, which is more believable than resurrection–he simply looked dead. The Bible, as I recall, does say they got permission to take “his body down early”. But dead on the cross or not, he was likely just a “wisdom teacher” of the time, perhaps a bit mad, in some ways, but brilliant, quite possibly a genius. And well meaning. He was likely not nearly so apocalyptic in his oracular sayings as later evangelists, pissed off at their persecutors, liked to make him out. And it is those later evangelists we can likely blame for the fabrication of most of the fantastic elements of the Jesus mythology.
I believe Jesus was likely more of an Essene-flavored gnostic than a teacher of what people now think of as Christianity, and likely never claimed he was the son of God. He called himself the son of man. He seems to have had deep insights into man’s nature, a philosophy of life that was rather like Lao Tzu, and not far from Buddha, and may have had enlightenment experiences.
He did believe, apparently, that he had a divinely ordained mission. He may well have been the bastard son of a Roman soldier, whom Mary explained as a miraculous birth. Joseph had to tolerate him but probably never accepted him as his own child, leading to Jesus having a neurotic attachment to his “divine father”, a projection on the supposed father of the universe, the only one he could psychologically accept.
Jesus seemed to like children, the poor and oppressed–and Mary Magdalen. A gnostic text mentions him kissing her on the mouth and in another he defends her worthiness to his male followers.
Jesus was called “the annointed” by his followers–that is, Cristos–and the Romans (Tacitus) record him as having been executed for insurrection. “…Christus, from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus…”
Sometime after the execution of Jesus, elderly Jewish writers rolled their eyes at the recollections of him, saying they remembered him well, as a “sorceror”, a trickster, and the bastard son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Essentially saying: “Him? We remember, already–he was a schmuck!” (Okay, so I’m paraphrasing).
There are two references to him found in some versions of “Antiquities”, attributed to the Jewish historian Josephus, but the more enthusiastic one was clearly interpolated–-an out and out fraud, simply inserted in the text–-by a later Christian copyist.
However there was one text, likely authentic, attributed to Josephus, that has the ring of authenticity:
“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous.”
“If you think this universe is bad, you should see some of the others.” — Philip K. Dick
Took a nap, what a bad dream! Trump got elected, and the Senate was taken over by GOP! Like an alternate world! I mean, a rapist felon in the WH, a Senate that would work with Trump to make sure they can’t be voted out–that could never happen.
What? No. Come on. No don’t tell me that. I said no.
But yes. Remember 2016, when Trump was elected and we all looked dazedly at one another and said, “What alternate universe have we slipped into?”
We clawed our way back to our native universe, and stayed for four years. Now we’ve slipped into a worse universe. It’s worse because disinformation and voter shallowness has led to the GOP taking over the Senate too. And from here it looks like they’ll also get control of the House. With those tools–and yes they’re tools, aren’t they–Trump can remake America from the ground up, for Project 2025 and for the benefit of Big Oil and Big Chemical and for the evangelical-theocratic far-right.
Let’s get real. Not only will women’s rights continued to be suppressed…not only will our aid to Ukraine be halted, leading to Trump’s sugar-daddy Putin taking Ukraine and becoming emboldened to take more of Europe…not only will they repeal the Affordable Care Act–Obamacare–and whittle away at Social Security, and Medicare, and quite possibly entirely end Medicaid…not only will they end federal projects and treaties to deal with climate change, accelerating its damage to the world as we know it…Not only will Trump install RFKjr in a post that will enable the crippling or ending of federal support for vaccines, inevitably leading to a wave of pandemics…Not only will protections for gays and trans be erased…Not only will immigrants be targeted–some legal as well as illegal, especially the brown skinned ones; they’ll be rounded up, put into camps where misery and sickness will proliferate, then dumped across the border willy-nilly if they live that long…
But also–the erosion of civilized standards will extend into every federal bureau:
We can expect the privatization of the US Post Office, IRS, the FAA, and FEMA. As extreme weather will only get more extreme (especially as the new Senate and White House will end efforts to ease climate change), FEMA will be constantly challenged. You’ll have to subscribe to the new FEMA corporation: Gold memberships, silver memberships, basic memberships in FEMA. Basic memberships mean they’ll toss you some paper towels as they drive past your house. (Only slightly joking about that last.)
The new regime will radically weaken the FDA and HHS, and eliminate the EPA. Toxins in your food will proliferate and so will bacteria. Many chemicals, found to be extra dangerous, were banned. None will be banned hereafter. Ingredient listings on foods will go away. Protect yourself accordingly.
The act creating the EPA will be repealed. So will the Clean Air and Clean Water acts–inconvenient to the billionaire oligarchy. Air pollution will visibly increase; you’ll smell it more often, and it’ll burn in your lungs. Banned pesticides will be allowed, new pesticides and herbicides and other materials, normally checked for toxicity, will be no longer vetted. Expect a consequent generational increase in cancer and neurological disorders in the general population, but especially in areas already known for exposing minorities to industrial waste.
In a year or two, the Senate/House GOP and WH will create a bureau to monitor media, and eliminate “antiChristian” and “unpatriotic” media, “False characterizations of US history” (which means actual history), and media that “promotes homosexuality and trans lifestyles”. Real censorship. Maoist levels. Stalinist levels. Orwellian in scope. Hard-right “Christian” in its fixations.
With the Senate and House working with Trump, federal oversight of public schools will end, and evangelical Christianity will be imposed on public schools. Many public schools will shutter, to be replaced by private schools run by corporations and megachurches. The sciences, of course, will be largely cast aside–except for the ones useful to the corporations: chemistry, engineering, physics…But evolution? Gone. Astronomy? How does that make the multinationals any money? Gone. Zoology? Ditto–makes them no money, so…gone. NASA will be cut back to military usages and whatever profits Elon Musk. He may well be put entirely in control of it–it’d just be a sort of subdivision of his holdings.
And speaking of zoology, endangered animals won’t be endangered anymore–all protections will be removed. They won’t be endangered, they’ll be doomed.
States rights? The west coast being a refuge for progressive life? No. The new federalization–completely ignoring the previous postulates of conservatives–will be imposed over California, Oregon, Washington.
Unions? The GOP Senate and House and Trump will extend so-called “right to work” conditions to the entire nation. From there, unions will be weakened–and it’s possible they’ll be banned entirely, after the “right to work” stage. Unions being famously combative, Trump’s regime may have a military round-up of union leaders on the same day the ban is implemented.
What about the military? It’ll take some time for Trump to remove all the disloyal top brass. But he’ll install his own people. Then the purges can begin. Then come the special new federal prisons–privatized, profitable for some, of course–you can expect around 2028. It’s likely Trump will set up a special militia or branch of the Secret Service that is hardcore loyal to him alone.
You’re thinking, perhaps, that we’ll all see what’s happening and we’ll vote these people out. Why suppose that will be allowed? Consider the steady drumbeat, for years now, of Republican gerrymandering and other schemes for suppressing inconvenient voters. If they’ll do that, why wouldn’t they take this opportunity to change the Constitution? Trump has said he would like a third term. Why stop there? Voting will likely come to resemble what it’s become in Putin’s Russia. And Trump will have his third term–or President Vance will have his first and second, and third and fourth. All this in a world now diving deeper into the existential threat of climate change repercussions…
All that and more–I’ve only described the fetid scum at the top of the bubbling cauldron of societal toxins 52% of American voters have given us…