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’.

My days go up and down. Vandals are destroying my beautiful city. Our statue to Cristobal Colon (Columbus) was thrown into a lake. If I’ve learned anything from history, it’s that allowing unruly crowds to wantonly destroy property, usually creates serious problems graver than the act of vandalism.

I’m being blamed for things that happened 401 years ago, as if I, or anyone else alive today, for that matter, can change things.

A billionaire Robert Johnson, owner of Black Entertainment Television (BET)wants the descendents of slaves to be paid fourteen trillion dollars in reparations for slavery.. This is an absurd amount of money. The National Debt is around $20 trillion and it has taken about 230 years to accumulate that.

One hundred years ago the victorious Allied Powers put the demand for reparations from Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, ending The Great War,1914-18. The reparations demand set off a destabilizing round of inflation in the Getman Weimar Republic, successor to Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Hohenzollern Dynasty. Ultimately, who benefitted were Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Remember him?

I have to give Mr Johnson money because BET is in my FIOS package. I do not watch BET, don’t care to watch BET, and can’t understand why I have to pay for a channel I don’t watch. So I’m trying to have it removed from my services.

To be fair, there is a lot of stuff on FIOS I don’t watch but have to pay for, same as you.

But why I have to enrich a billionaire whose solution to ameliorate the race issue is to destroy the dollar and the economy is beyond me.

A billionaire. Mind you.

Oh well. Go figure.

Human trafficking is a $125 billion industry. 100,000 children are trafficked each year. It is the modern version of the international slave trade. Grant you, there is no horrific Middle Passage, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t morally repugnant

The human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein socialized with high profile celebrities and politicians,like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, even Donald Trump, before Trump severed all ties with him in the early 2000’s.. Epstein supported all the A List.politicians (mostly Democratic) and causes, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton. He was pro-choice. But then Jeffrey Epstein was last year’s outrage.We forget how the same politicians and celebrities who today are decrying exploitation and racism would readily have their pictures taken with Bill Clinton. Clinton looked the other way at Epstein’s criminality, if not actually and directly benefiting from it. One Degree of Seperation, Politician -Clinton-Epstein..

Human Traffickers used to be called ” white slavers”. There was a law called The Mann Act which made it a federal crime to transport a person across a state line for “immoral purposes”..Black Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson was convicted in 1913 on a dubious charge of violating the Mann Act. He would be pardoned posthumously in the Twenty First Century, by President…..Donald Trump.

Human trafficking is a global industry; but not all of human trafficking involves sexual exploitation. Christian Filipino women are lured to the Muslim Middle East, where they are employed as domestic workers. Their “employers” hold their passports, in order to keep them in country and under their control. Involuntary servitude is the term for that practice.

Even The Catholic Church trafficked young men from Colombia to attend seminary in the USA, where they were groomed as sexual partners for gay members of the clergy.

This is all unseemly, disgusting, shocking and an outrage. And we haven’t even talked about exploitative sweat shops in the developing world and China. These shops do contract work for Nike, Apple, Amazon, and others. You know, the businesses that proclaim Black Lives Matter.

Tom Wolfe wrote two essays in the late sicties, early sevrnties, Radical Chic and Mau-mauing The Flak Catchers, about how affluent leftists latched on to political radicalism to embellish their reputations as “good people.” , similar to what we see todsy.

Some argue that theatre is a moribund art. Actually, it merely morphed into modern politics.

Remember, racism is wrong. Profiting from other modern forms of exploitation is OK, as long as one doesn’t get caught.

I received a letter from the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and at the head was shown my Constituent ID#. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Is that how The Most Holy Triune God thinks of my wife and me?

 “And the two shall become one flesh and one Constituent  ID#”.

Needless to say that little morsel of depersonalization was rather difficult to digest. This might partially explain why The Church is bleeding out members like a hog’s carcass at an abattoir. 

One day,, I might be able to return to Mass without social distancing restrictions, age restrictions or without entering a lottery to attend the Mass.

Pressing on.

I am back.

Leave it at that for right now. 

My depression isn’t getting any better. 

The light has gone out. My creativity has been impaired.

The ideologues have staged a figurative coup d’etat.

What happened in St Petersburg, Beijing, Pyongyang, Hanoi, Havana, and Caracas is happening here.

So I’m leaving the blogosphere. For good. My reflexive visits to Word Press are over. I know that I am not welcome anymore.

So I will leave you all to your puny, sour, and vindictive rants, your gaslighting, your exhortations to self-hatred.

Good Bye.

Tired.

Depressed.

Discouraged.

Suspicious.

Cynical.

They aren’t going away.

So I guess I will.

For a while anyway.