https://articleshubspot.com/surajit-khanna-stop-child-trafficking/

This blog seems like such a puerile exercise really.

The news would have us think the country is collapsing, while most of the markers of my experience remain the same, if only slightly askew.(My Church runs a lottery to decides who goes to Mass. Kind of reminds me of the Roman legionnaires who cast lots for the robe of Our Lord, as He died in agony on the cross.) Other than that rather odd state of affairs and the Y’s reduced schedule, it’s all pretty much the same.

My street is safe and quiet. The multiracial community where I live is not roiling in tension. The stores and restaurants are open now. Today I walked around my neighbourhood just as I have done for the past ninety days. Not much different than March.

But the media depicts America as ready to explode into fragments, the way some academics talked about the “balkanization” of America a few decades ago. As if some intellectual will get a big bonus and bragging rights at the Faculty Club for predicting this goat screw.

“I told you so, didn’t I? Now I get first dibs on the soft serve!”

So there is this disconnect. Do I call the “Cash For Your House” people, take what ever they offer us, sell the rest of our stuff and high tail it out of America before there is a stampede to the border? Where is it safe? Canada? Ireland? The UK? Austria? Hungary? Russia?

Or do I stick it out? Hunker down. Buy a shotgun, and a pistol, Get freeze dried food, store water, ammunition. A suburban townhouse is a hopeless position to defend, for a 69 year old man, a 65 year old woman, no automatic weapons, or any other military resources. Check off the Steven Seagall fantasy as any sort of a viable solution.

Or do I have faith in my neighbours that this madness shall pass and we can resolve this crisis together? I say we can. This is still a country run by adults.

Nothing seems to matter any more. I am watching The Daily Woo on YouTube. Adam is at Foster’s Freeze in Inglewood, eating a hamburger. This is as good as entertainment gets these days.

That’s all.

I keep thinking of Madame LaFarge and her knitting from A Tale Of Two Cities, making note of her enemies in the stitches, for when the day of vengeance would come.

Yeah. It’s paranoid as all get out, but apropos for our time. Right now each and every one of us who has a presence in the cyber world is being followed. The books we read are duly noted. Somebody at Amazon knows that I’m reading about organized crime, but I’m also interested in the Kennedy assassination. They know what kind of pornography I read and watch, what kind I write. That’s very useful information if ever I need to be coerced into silence.

Think your particular kinks are mainstream, you’re bullet proof? That it’s ok to be whoever you are in this day and age? Think again. They will find something.

Is this a new world? Maybe. We are not moving into a new world of anything, I would counter.

And our “myths”? They were never myths. Just lies. Myths are our profound truths, our literature, our insights into the human condition.The Odyssey goes beyond the story of a soldier trying to get home to Ithaca, or Bloom on a day in Dublin. We can’t distinguish truth from propaganda. The propaganda, buttressed by video, and pictures, still works on our feelings. Nurse Cavell and the Lusitania victims were the first of many.

Trading the Lie of Confederate Heroes for The Lie of The Evil White Race is just more of what people do, like spit, jerk off or wipe their asses. They want power at the expense of others. They want to belittle and oppress. We think revenge is justice. Jesus had something to say about that. Look where that got him.

Make a note of that, however you wish to do it, on line or in yarn.

I have been scrolling through my newsfeed on my Smartphone and blocking everything, from Salon to Breitbart.

Why, you ask? Or maybe you don’t. It is all propaganda, public relations, for one point of view or the other. The promulgators care more about their point of view, than they do the facts or the truth. If a fact fits their message, we see it.

I would liken the crisis in media today to, say, hypothetically in the 1930’s, reading Правда (Pravda, English translation “truth”) the Soviet Communist Newspaper, to get a “balanced” viewpoint after reading Völkische Beobachter, (Peoples’ Observer), the newspaper of the NSDAP(German Nazi Party).

It is particularly bothersome in that some algorithm at Google is responsible for the information that I see. And if I ignore these cyber-demons, I am ignorant or bigoted or narrow minded

It’s all a scam. Your political, religious, philosophical values mean nothing to them. It is a question of manipulation. The most important thing you can do is click so you stay “engaged”, so the media monsters can collect your data and sell it. SELL YOUR DATA.

That’s it.

Here I am, back sooner than I thought. I found a bunch of TV introductions from the 1940’s. Television didn’t quite know what to do with itself back then. Comedies. Westerns. Lots of variety shows. Uncle Miltie (Milton Berle). TV seemed to be interested in selling itself. I think they operated on the premise that somebody would watch whatever it was the network put on.

I’m up because I’m hurting again.( I just saw a commercial featuring frost free refrigerators.) My back is hurting again.

Nothing like pain and sadness to take one’s mind off other sources of pain and sadness. ( Here are the Budweiser Clydesdales!)

Lots of this crap from the Fifties I remember. Time for my decaf coffee. Things I haven’t seen in 63 years I remember, even the sponsors.

“For General Electric, here’s Ronald Reagan.”

Just saw the guests for Perry Como. They were Nat “King” Cole,The McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. Dorothy McGuire was the girl friend of gangster Sam Giancana.

Guns, lots of guns, cigarettes, cars,appliances were all part of the experience. The guns were part of the persona of the Western hero. Chuck Connors had a rifle, Steve McQueen , sawed-off Winchester, Nick Adams a sawed-off shotgun, Hugh O’Brien (Wyatt Earp) a .45 calibre Buntline Colt revolver.

.

Some of the comedies like Green Acres, Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies are as funny today as when they first were broadcast.

Now I’m tired and I can’t see straight.

My head is messed up around women. What else is new ?

After writing a few good posts, I’m going dark again. Maybe just a few days. I’m worn out again and sad.

There is so much that can’t be fixed Systemic corruption in American states and cities. Leave it at that

Apparently because I am white, I have no right to exist in this country, the United States of America. I am going to have to leave because of the sins of Christopher Columbus, John Rolfe, Andrew Jackson ,Buffalo Bill Cody, just for starters .

I am going to have to sell my house and give away the proceeds to a Native American or person of colour.

I hope they will let me keep enough money to emigrate to a country that will accept an old white man. Do any of you foreign readers know if your country will take me?

I take full responsibility for my exploitative ways..

I may or may not be back.

“Where they have burned books, they will end in  burning human beings.”-Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) I have been reluctant to compare what is happening in Richmond to Kristallnacht, the orgy of antisemitic violence in Germany in November, 1938. After all, only one synagogue has been vandalized. So far. The Black Hand Coffee Shop had its plate glass window broken out because the owner stated on social media that obeying and enforcing the curfew were good ideas. So much for The First Amendment. People put “Black Lives Matter” signs in the windows of their homes either out of agreement or fear. My money is on fear. The statues to Columbus and Jefferson Davis have been toppled by mobs. The citizenry and the government had no voice in those actions. The situation in Richmond has about as much to do with protests over the death of George Floyd as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand did to the Battle of Verdun. My son lives in a gentrified area of Church Hill. He purchased a pistol and an ammo load that has real “stopping power.” Gentrified areas could well be the next targets, because gentrification is racism. A life long friend thinks buying a pistol and a shotgun would be a good use for his stimulus check. The situation here is no longer a fervent debate over lattes´at Starbucks. It is one or two steps removed from insurrection.

“It’s not a lie, if you believe it.” George Costanza, Seinfeld.

In these times I am always brought back to Edward Bernays, the “father” of modern public relations. He was responsible for mainstreaming cigarette smoking, particularly among women. By the time the Fifties and television had arrived, cigarette commercials were ubiquitous, and tobacco companies, more or less, dictated programming content on the three television networks.. (Yes, there were only three.)

When the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was released to the public in the Spring of 1964, Americans were pretty much steeped in the lies from the tobacco companies. For example:

“Four out of five doctors recommend Camels to their patients who smoke.“

I am not kidding. That claim was actually made. And if you think the tech giants are different from the cigarette companies or the auto companies, you are naïve. They use media to pursue their interests, to make you their witting or unwitting supporters. The intention is for you to conflate your interests and theirs.

It took nearly thirty years for the shift in attitude around smoking to come about. The Tobacco Settlement was a product of the Nineties, if I’m not mistaken. We are still involved in damage control from the ravages of tobacco use seventy years ago.

It may take years to unpack the lies and half-truths of our time. As of now, the high level of near-hysterical rhetoric clouds all of our thinking in contemporary American politics.

This is why history is important. What once were bitter arguments can now be viewed dispassionately. A good example I can think of is the John F. Kennedy assassination of 22 November 1963. In the mid-sixties, I was perfectly willing to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, as the Warren Commission Report maintained.

Now I believe the Warren Report was a well crafted lie.  But it served the purpose of ” contaminating”  the debate field. It also reassured the public that a coup d’État had not taken place. Those who challenged the result were the original “conspiracy theorists”. But who was  responsible for the killing,  V-P Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, embittered by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or The Mob? Or all three? The Kennedy murder may never be solved.

Today  bold statements like “systemic racism” are repeated all over the news outlets. When will dispassionate individuals be in a position to evaluate that claim? If your gorge rises at the thought of dispassionate analysis on questions of race, that these are settled matters, then you perhaps are a captive of your prejudices. It has happened before to well-intentioned people. Like you.

Just sayin’.