OUR NEW DICKENSIAN WORLD

It's April 10, 2011. I talked to my son, Gene, this morning. He's in the same occupation that supported both of us so well for so long. He's a carpet technician who had to move from Prescott, Arizona to Houston over two years ago just to have any work at all, after losing his home and 401K. (He's 48. So much for his retirement security!) He had to go to work for an installation company that services Home Depot.

He was hired for wages less than what we charged customers when we worked together 15 and 20 years ago. (You know what inflation has done since then!) He told me that his compensation has been cut again and that the $40 trip charge he was getting for long distances has been cut to $15. I don't know what is being put on his table for meals – I'm afraid to ask. Retirement? That's a joke!

Yea, for capitalism. You're seeing the glories of a “trickle-down” economy. The cliches we all bought are now the buzzards coming home to roost. Capitalism and uncontrolled free enterprise are running their predictable course. There's an article on Huffington Post this morning about soaring executive pay and record corporate profits: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html?_r=2&ref=business

Every destructive weapon imaginable is being zeroed in on the middle and laboring classes. Unions are being savaged and destroyed. Every legal safeguard that protected people from unfairness is being attacked and obliterated. Regulation is demonized. We are becoming a carbon copy of the society that existed in Dickensian England and Czarist Russia, as well as in the age of the American “robber barons.” We seem determined to return to poor houses, company stores and pestilence ridden slums where the common people are expendable fodder for corporate machines.

As far as I can see, the “American dream” has become the “American nightmare.” It certainly is for my son and his family. It's even worse for many others.

We still have it pretty good. My wife and I both have Social Security coming in and my wife gets a moderate state retirement check every month. I do a few small carpet service jobs and an occasional wedding ceremony, and we manage to survive. Don't count on that being the case for my son or anyone else of his generation, if the aristocrats of today have their way. They have the famous “Let them eat cake” snotty attitude (think Boehner here).

Socialism is almost universally badmouthed in this country, and most of the badmouthers don't have a clue what they are talking about. Their ignorance is appalling.

Total socialism has never worked. The fate of Communist Russia vouches for that fact.

What people don't realize is that total capitalism is just as bad, or worse than, total socialism. Both lead to a super rich ruling class that lords it over everyone else. Communism was really just state run capitalism dreamed up by Stalin, not by Lenin. Both, in their ultimate form, lead to feudalism. You see it every time you enter one of these giant corporate run franchises. Over the whole thing sits the corporate “Lords” raking off enormous profits from the “vassals” in the local operations supervising armies of clone-like “serfs” running around in their dopey little uniforms, lucky to be paid “minimum wage.”

I'm not dumb enough to believe that all that has happened has happened by accident. It's been carefully planned by the faceless super wealthy overlords who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes ever since they engineered the election of “trickle down” Reagan with his “voodoo economics,” the haughty elitist who wouldn't think of “demeaning” his office by taking off his coat and getting down to business in his exalted oval office. He was a great “acting” president. He was guided, like the clueless puppet he was, into giving us the original savings and loan crisis. That was just step one in the steady parade of maneuvers that have never ceased and have brought one society changing (and destroying) crisis after another, all intended to accomplish the same goal.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence should be able to figure out what the real goal is.

SLAVERY! A FEUDAL, AND LIKELY THEOCRATIC, AMERICA!

Nothing, absolutely nothing, controls a population as well as a theocracy.

Wake up, my fellow Americans! Quit being led around by the nose and swallowing every stupid story you are fed!

MORE ON AMAZING ANIMALS

To go along with my recent post about dogs, I want to refer readers to this recent article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/09/lucky-paws-blind-dog_n_846938.html.

This story of a seeing-eye companion to another dog warmed my heart.  It also points out the almost human-like responses animals often show.  The more I see and read about the subject, the more I realize that we humans, though certainly special, aren't all that unique.  If you read the account, you'll probably agree.

THE ARROGANCE OF HUMAN ASCENDANCY

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THE SOURCE OF MORALITY

Most Christian ministers will staunchly maintain that the Bible and biblical principles are the foundation of morality.  Anyone without that foundation is, according to them, doomed to an amoral life governed by situation ethics and their own lusts.

P. Z. Myers, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has written an article which thoroughly debunks this stance.  It is available here:  http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/why_i_am_an_amoral_family-hati.php

I can honestly say that I never really accepted the old Worldwide stance that a man was to be the dictating ruler over his spouse.  That was partially due to the example engrained in me by my own father.  Although my mother always respected him and thought he should run the family ranching business, my father never made a major decision without first talking it over thoroughly with my mother and considering her input.  I'm sure he never struck my mother and doubly sure he never "cheated" on her.

My father and mother did not attend a church while I was growing up.  They followed me and my sister into Worldwide later.  But, they always did their own thinking, and I'm sure several of the ministers of their local congregation were not pleased that they didn't "jump" to obey some of the authoritarian advice they were given in their fifties and sixties, such as, "Sell out and move to Bismarck so you'll be closer to church."  They would have been left destitute in their old age (they lived into their mid and late nineties) if they had blindly obeyed.

There was, of course, the predominantly "christian" influence of the society around them, but they were very sceptical about religious doctrines, and my mother often said that a lot of people only went to church to hide their meanness.

When I married, I didn't have the attitude many other men in the organization had.  I viewed my wife as an equal and that caused her to disrespect me and tell me, especially toward the end of our relationship and after, that I wasn't a man.  By that time, I was becoming very sceptical and disillusioned, so her biting comments only served to anger me, not make me feel inadequate.

She divorced me when the organization loosened up in that area.  When she filed for divorce, I had begun to see that governments and religions took authority to themselves for purposes of control, proclaimed myself divorced, figured the court would eventually catch up and began the search for a compatible partner.  I have been married twice since and widowered once.  In none of those relationships have I been a controlling dictator.  Nor, have I cheated on either of those wives.  I was faithful to my second wife even while being geographically separated from her for more than eight years prior to her death from cancer.

My faithfulness while in the voluntarily married state was not based on religious strictures.  It was based on human ethics and decency.  I no longer look to a god for authority over my life, since I'm convinced no such entity exists.  Unlike Gingrich, I feel no need to apologize or justify anything. 

YOU CAN'T CURE STUPID

As usual, I went to Huffington Post as one of the first things I do in the morning to keep abreast of what is happening in the world.  It's my home page.  I clicked on the following article:

"Unlike many other states, Texas does not ban workplace discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or marital status. But don't be alarmed; the Lone Star State is working on that whole civil liberties thing. Last week, Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler introduced HB 2454, a bill that would establish new workplace protections for proponents of intelligent design. Here's the key part:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

And you thought Berkeley was crazy. On the upside, maybe the University of Texas will be able to help a few of the folks who are falling through Texas' fraying social safety net. Out of a job? Come up with an elaborate theory about how a flying spaghetti monster created the universe. A tenured professorship awaits."

Don't get me wrong.  I like most Texans, just like I like most other people.  But there is an element of ignorance and denial of reality among them that makes them, and by implication, the whole United States of America, the laughing stock of the educated and enlightened world.  It pains me no end that my son had to move to Houston to find work and that my little and brilliant grand daughter has to be subjected to that kind of irrational educational system.

My other blogs make it abundantly clear how ridiculous this kind of statute is.  Therefore, I'll just let it go at what has already been said.

 

 

LIFE IS A PILE OF S++T FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY ONCE IN AWHILE

I woke up this morning to a facebook entry by my daughter, Nancy, now nearly 40, that she wrote in the wee hours of the morning.  It detailed her lifetime struggle with depression and how thankful she is to finally begin finding her way out through proper professional counsel and the right medication.

I had been unaware of how deeply set and serious her problem was.  I knew she had a problem, and her serious overweight should have indicated how deep the problem was, but we just don't see into the depths of another person's struggle, and we all tend to keep such embarrassing details to ourslves.  So, those around us don't realize what we are personally struggling against and probably wouldn't be able to really help much if they did.  Few have the professional training needed and couldn't legally prescribe any chemical help if they did.

Nancy is now on her way to a semblance of a normal, successful and rewarding life.  Yes, it's later than she would want, but I didn't start my recovery from cultic Armstrongism until I was the same age as she.  The important thing is the recovery has begun.

She is steadily losing weight.  She has a happier outlook on life and has begun the shooling she always let her depression dissuade her from in the past.

Yesterday, we participated in a used eyeglass sorting party for my local Lion's Club.  During the social part, we learned of the heartbreak one member couple went through in losing one of their children to a degenerative disease.   Unless that had been shared with us, we never would have guessed.

It is normal to think that other people have a breeze with life and nothing but blessings.  The longer I live, the more I learn, I realize that nobody escapes trial and heartbreak.  No matter how much money and apparent success people have, there are always things somewhere in their life that hang heavily from their psyches.  Nobody escapes this life unscathed.  It just isn't possible with all the vagaries of happenstance.

SAME OLD SAME OLD

There is a new article out this morning on Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/a-reasonable-argument-for_b_831185.html.

In this article, Rabbi Adam Jacobs claims to present a reasonable argument for the existence of God.  I thought maybe he'd have something new, so I brought up the article, only to find that it's the same old drivel I and others have thoroughly repudiated over and over.

Basically, its the old saw about life being too complicated to have arisen by chance, so a god had to have done it. 

He totally ignores the obvious fact that, if life is too complicated to have originated by chance, where in heaven or hell or whatever did a vastly more complicated form of life he calls "god" just happen to magically appear?

It's only about 150 years since we began to have the tools and awareness to start our search for the true origins.  In that time, we've made marvelous strides toward ultimate answers and the faith based pronouncements of religion have come out on the losing end time after time. 

They've had thousands of years to provide clear and demonstrable proofs and all they have to offer is the same old blatherings of priests, scribes and prophets who well may have been suffering from frontal lobe epilepsy of some sort, certainly motivated by a desire to preserve their exalted status among the population.  All they can retort is something like:  "Ok, we were wrong on that but how do you answer this, Mr. smarty pants evolutionist?"  Then, they bring up something scientists are still investigating that their religion purports to answer -- conveniently without any scientific proof whatsoever.

Nice try, Rabbi.  However, there are a few of us who demand real meat on those weathered old bones.