Dear Dad

My Dad’s opinions about current politics bother me. Some of it is because his opinions are different than mine, but also because they seem to lack any analysis of the current political trends. My Dad doesn’t criticize the current administration as he did the last one. He couldn’t stop admonishing Clinton for lying, but he’s mute on Bush’s many lies or Rumsfeld’s duplicity. Assgrafts, assaults on the constitution, Halliburton, Enron, Bechtel, amicus briefs filed by Bush against the expansion of the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA).

SUVs are the bane of our existence. They create an imbalance between the have and have nots. They are the clearest demonstration of America’s financial and environmental irresponsibility.

We cling to California despite the fires, mudslides, earthquakes, and politics for the weather, the stars, and the industry and because whence we’ve come offer so little in comparison.

All of these things are swept under the rug of fear.

My Dad also studies and references the civil war constantly, but can’t see how were’ sewing the seeds for one right now. Can he really be happy giving $90K tax breaks to the rich?

I grew up seeking my Dad's advice and thoughts on all matters. Even when I disagreed, I always respected his opinion. When people complained that people who voted for Nadar cost Gore the election, he said that those people had a right to vote for whomever they wanted. It angered me. He was right.

However, over the last couple of years, his views have become increasingly right-wing and by extension so have my Mom's. While arguing about the Iraq war last Christmas, he blurted out, "I'm sorry that you don't have any use for this country" and walked off to bed.

I try to prod gently, but he categorically cannot comprehend what he sees because what he hears is blinding him.

Observations

Will the world ever become so wretched that a pretty woman would starve? It doesn't appear so living in the United States.

"There is and never has been a shortage of wingnuts, never a shortage of shills for the rich and powerful, never a shortage of grasping, lying, power-mad psychopaths at the top."

A sure sign of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting to get a different result like going to war or driving cars around ovals.

NASCAR is a joke. The president says we should cut our foreign dependence on oil, yet NASCAR celebrates burning through fuels as if they are heros. They're death shills.

The Irony of Tragedy and Story Telling

Good stories are born of horrible experiences. Murder, war, adultery, disease are the prime ingredients for these stories. On the surface, we claim to despise them. However, all our hero stories celebrate these themes.

After the murder, we follow the detectives. But would we follow a bunch of otherwise average, cantankerous middle-age men around if they weren't trying to solve a murder?

The "glory" of war is like the early morning dew that glistens and shines. But when that same dew becomes slick young men discover that the dew is the warning light reflecting from the cold hard pavement.

"The first casualty of war is the truth." How many times has that been written? How many times have history lessons been forgotten or re-written? Is it impossible to remove these barriers to progress no matter how painfully slow? Some could certainly point out that without wars we wouldn't have some of our advancements. But does that justify killing another human being in the first instant?

How did I get to this line of thinking? I've been watching crime dramas like "Cold Case Files" lately. I love them. But the more I watch them, the more I'm sickened by own fascination at others' suffering and death after the fact. Is compassion only a convenient emotion while the ambulance rushes another victim to the hospital? Where is that same compassion ahead of time?

Why is it that when we tell these murder stories much of the focus is on the murderer? If it's so sinful to murder, then why do we elevate murderers' status by making them antagonists in some many of these shows? What about the victim?

Are the stories tellers (networks and producers) so blind that they can't see how they elevate violence to an elegant pedestal while simply daily acts of survival or god-forbid -- sex -- are disgraced as lesser human events?

I do have the choice to change the channel. I can watch the latest propaganda from Fox, CNN, or NBC. I can watch possibly rigged-sports. I can watch an obnoxious shopping channel, banal Spanish-language programming, materialistic Asian, serene and stiff Deutsche Welle, obsessive Latin American soccer, or another stupid sitcom starring the young and restless of West Los Angeles. And everyone knows how reflective people from West Los Angeles are of the rest of the world.

Tsunami's a drink. Hurricane's is a football team. Human rights are boring.

Where are the stories that make a difference? GOP. Go away. You've raped and pillaged enough. Go tell your story. Give me 30 years off until you start your next war and tell old lies dressed in pretty clothing ("Pretty Hate Machine.")

By that time, maybe the world wise protests will stop you before you kill more innocents in the name of greed, greed, greed.

Katrina, Media, Christ, Baseball, Iraq

The media, like a pack of hungry dogs, is predictably going after the one-year anniversary of the Katrina disaster as if it were the last piece of rotten meat on the block. This comes on the heel of flicking John Mark Karr, the confessing killer of someone else with three names Jon Benet Ramsey, into surly, sordid and soiled ashbin of American media. When will this cycle of media bulimia and anorexia fasting ever end? “Let’s chew on this beef jerky, call it filet mignon, and regurgitate it ‘till it forms acid ulcers in our stomachs before we discharge it for the next piece of rotten flesh.”

There are real stories. They are the elephants that nobody wants to speak of. That’s true of an Ohio couple I sat next to last night at a Dodger’s game. They were nice folks. But then they began name dropping. “Oh, the Vice President has visited our town twice.” “Our friend works for President Bush.” I guess these are some of the people that represent that 10% of people who still think Bush is a good guy.

In their middle-America way, they did ask about things that many Angelinos don’t utter. “They’re aren’t a lot of white people in Los Angeles.” “What do think about the immigrant problem?”

At least they asked real questions, but gushing about Bush is like gushing about John Mark Karr being a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. You might as well just fly over the desert called the regurgitating media who amplifies lies so that you can’t hear the truth or just fly over the Katrina disaster that Bush did. The GOP are idiots. Invading Iraq was stupid. I’d venture to say that by now everyone has seen an Iraq vet who’s begging for food on the streets and if you haven’t, you will soon. How many of those vets will end up being on America’s most wanted? How many of them will go on to commit murder? Oh well, at least it’s good business for the people who build prisons (Halliburton) because after all that’s really a Christ-like business to be involved with, isn’t?

Speaking of Christ, the Colorado Rockies are seeking only Christ-like players. (Not) coincidentally Colorado is one of the six teams as of July 16, 2006 that “had no black players on their active rosters.” It’s doubtful if that trend will change by looking at the Little League teams from the United States over the past week. While ESPN was displaying the exclusion of blacks from baseball, it was also exploiting the same Little Leaguers.

It seems that the little league or more apropos the little estate may be the name for the media. Terri Schiavo and Jeff Gannon are the mice we digest while up to 45,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the start of the war. Osama bin Laden is still free. Personal bankruptcies, poverty, the price of gas, the cost of education is up, the standard of living is down and we are just now sitting down at the table to start to rebuild Katrina?

Municipal Error Watch

I'm all for fighting the bad guys, but in our current political climate, everyone is assumed guilty before innocent.

The Dennis Miller types would scream, "Yeah, man, but we're like fighting a war on terror, don't you get it?"

Lovely. For those of you who grew up in the world before you destroyed it and enjoyed unfettered youth, narcisism, and sarcasim, you pass on your backwash to us.

Take back your Super Sized Big Gulps and make sure to gulp before you gurgle.

What prompts my annoyance?

In order to enjoy the "Great Outdoors" -- Los Angeles style today -- my companion and I decided to see "Lake Hollywood."

We started off on a nice walk and came upon the bridge the crosses one of the reservoirs. The bridge itself looked like a fence tunnel as a fence encompassed us as we walked across. I thought, "Wow, what a great place to take a picture" with the backdrop of the Hollywood Hills.

Just as I said that a local municipal water police guy asserted his authority as he is helping "fight terrorism."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's doing his job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's 'just' doing his job. But where is our sense of humanity? Are we really all Pavlov dogs or do we have a choice how we want to fight the bad guys of the time?

Post, politics

Post post politics.

Post post prisions.

Post post poverty.

Post post virtual assisted suicide by a hoodwinked electorate, brainwashed by a corporate monobot.