Things have most certainly and drastically changed since those Halcyon days that our dedicated schoolma'am so fondly reminisced about in her memoirs. Almost over night we have went from a productive, life sustaining agrarian life-style to an absurdly fast paced, hi-tech, movers and shakers bizarre which is all abuzz and swarming with aloof and beautiful people hailing from all four corners of the earth. The few remaninig local yokel die-hards, those not wigged out of their mind on pharmaceutical drugs and strapped with a large mortgage, wife and four or five kids along with a three car garage to contain all those highly cherished toys--- you know what I'm talking about, those sexually addictive, morally depleting, libido enhancing, New Age Ozzie and Harriet fixes that are threatening all life on this planet but that are a must to keep a workaholic work force at the beck and call of those in the driver's seat and who peddle getting hitched and the ensuing debt to marauding wannabes like it was heaven-sent or like there was no tomorrow---, have about a snowball's chance in hell, Eden, of having some sort of relevant revelation revealing that the status quo for your standard uppity up--- their unbecoming and incorrigible trait of looking down their noses at the less fortunate or worse, trying to convert and save them into servitude, must be congenital--- is definately and defiantly not for the betterment of the human race as a whole nor will it help preserve this earth as a viable, liveable place to live and raise a family. Unless your some kind of an "Odd Fellow" with your head buried in the sand, one of those seventh heaven books, how can you not notice that mankind is treading on thin ice, global warming, and is the culprit behind fast disappearing open spaces and agricultural land; shouldn't this shake all of those concerned, loving and conniving parents to the quick? What's even more obscene is that everything feminine and intangible is intellectualized to death or pepper sprayed with a never ending siege of highly esteemed, university oriented quips. Oh how my own heart aches for a Longfellow type to step up to bat with his fountain pen, the pen is after all mightier than the sword, in just one of those prestigious and highly worshipped authoritive positions at either the church or state level--- no poets and oh how they blow it. "The Good Fight" needn't be waged over crude oil or ruthless, terroristic killers, but against an even more adept adversary; that ugly, inhuman and unforgiving nature that is beneath even animalistic drives and overtly yet connivingly clothes itself in avarice and an air of superiority and which is the breeding ground for all God's holy men, busybodies, who are constantly up to no good doing all God's unholy work. Blaringly missing is the commonality, the common folk, the natural elements as in this valley's own primitive and savage beginnings--- all beginnings. At stake is the very fabric of all civilizations, the community, which the powers to be through a religiose guise and a hell-bent hegemony mandate are now literally ripping to shreds.
What is the root--- would you give up your chance, longshot, at sitting at the right hand of God for some kind, any kind of a grass roots movement right here, right now--- and thus, existentially, the building blocks of this omnificent and life sustaining edifice, The Community, from which an endless, swirling stream of primary, human emotions flow? The late great Christian activist Soren Kierkegard reiterates very succinctly: 'The individual' is the category through which, in a religious respect, this age, all history, the human race as a whole, must pass... for a 'crowd' is the untruth. In a godly sense it is true, eternally, Christianly, as St. Paul says, that 'only one attains the goal'." Figuratively speaking, even a man and a woman joined together in holy matrimony was too plural and self-serving for this Born Again zealot according to him as scripturalized in the Gospels.
One's words, one's thoughts, one's life, are, in themselves, either intrinsically one's own or are just infinitesimal pieces of a now universal bombardment of intrigue that moves one and all to calculated acts of love and compassion or when all else fails and all hell breaks loose, which it inevitably does, hate and retaliation. Without a natural cause there can be no natural effect so what are we left with: affectations and accusations. Without individuals there is no community, only a vacuous emptiness where more is never enough and a horde of grasping, abhoring elitists vie for supremacy.
Now, as if all this jockeying around isn't arduous enough for Ogden Valley natives to try and ride out, comes the coup de grace: And to honor every man, absolutely every man, is the truth, and this is what it is to fear God and love one's 'neighbor'." Even more trying for global, denominational religionists is Soren's reemphasis in his very next breath: But from an ethico-religious point of view, to recognize the 'crowd' as the court of last resort is to deny God, and it cannot exactly mean to love the 'neighbor'." But who amongst us in the deepest recesses of their innermost being can lay claim to sainthood? So here I stand, naked as a jaybird and as big a fool as is any man, entreating you for some indulgence and a little open-mindedness as you weigh out this provincial, most feeble and ignoble attempt at regaining a foothold in what was once my very own close-knit community.
As much as I hate to label people and all too familiar with the stigma associated with mental illness, dis-ease--- isn't it bewildering, ironic, how in more Godfearing (adhering) times, dreams and hallucinations were a rite of passage into the spiritual realm as it was for the Native Americans---, I still have to concur that I have been diagnosed as having a mental liability known in clinical circles as a bipolar disorder. For this purview to have rang true and to be meaningful enough to have gained some credibility, brings with it renewed hope for continued lucidity and ammunition to arm and armor myself against what I perceive is effrontery and largess that has gone mad; pell-mell to hell and back.
Everyone, EVERYONE, has the inalienable right to be heard; needs a place to grow and God willing to flourish; needs that sense of community; needs that place to call home and these needs need to be met. How we are ever going to go about fulfilling this monumental undertaking on a larger more global scale has boggled the most sophisticated minds and endearing hearts from the beginning of time. But the calling beckons and looms before us; moves us like a phantom breeze stirring the oxygenating trees. Out of this fear of the unknown, man's destiny and destituteness in a seemingly uncarring world, comes the all to real possibility of finding in ourselves what we so vehemently detest in others; failure or "missing the mark". Never the less you have to start somewhere and one's home and country is as personal as it can get. All the corruption at the top of the food chain--- some scatterbrains and corporate execs call it democracy--- is effecting, cause and effect, my little world and those in it and making me awfully damned perturbed. I have a confession; I'm fast becoming a maddened, mentally ill misfit who nevertheless has to make a stand, a splash, a ripple, that miraculously might reach distant shores and other likewise stranded souls, isles--- no man is an island. Jimney Crickets no; jimjams and gimmickry, that would never do; better to heavily sedate the un-compliants and let the big honchos bombard our airwaves like a sunami; oh dear Lord, a presidential race on a fast sinking continent once known to the original inhabitants as Turtle Island. Where's the conquistadors, someone to get bullish on America, to take the bull by the horns, to stop the bull, to conquer them all; the finagling, stock market spin-offs getting away with highway robbery, grand larceny, and unspeculative stockjobbing. They had better be stopped soon before they get it in their walleyed heads that they're doing God's bidding even though God doesn't role dice. That they have the biggest guns backing them up is a very, very scary thought when you consider that we have a dupe of a president calling the kettle black with his idiosyncratic cry that was heard around the world... "Bring'em On". And bring them on they will until our own Tower of Babel, like the Twin Towers, will fall for the second time. As for the confusion of tongues, our babbling president could never pass as a linguist for who can understand a single word that escapes from his quivering and lying lips? What irks the crap out of me is that I have been told by more than just one shrink, even my own family, that I'm a bit on the paranoid and grandiose side. I say send all the know it all head shrinks, pharmaceuticalists and pill counters and your prophets, seers and revelators to the oval office to confer with Bush and his cronies. But I can save the boys in the White House all the headache and bother if they'll, the gurus, will pay me just a smidgen of their usual going rate for my two cents worth and as for the churches, I would be more than flabbergasted if they could all finally eat crow and come to the agreement that none of them really know the gospel truth or are anywheres in the ball park and will face up to the fact that they are just in it for the short haul. Let me let you in on a little secret that is as apparent as the nose on your face: its not about saving the world, its about quieting our worried little minds that we overstuff with so much garbage; about so much identity; about being nosey and yet a no-see-um... Indian lingo. Such a truism: sometimes the many can't see the forest for the trees; witness the bulldozers bulldozing them down to put in a parking lot for the suburbans that we need to take our large families to church in to learn about God while our gardens, if we can afford the time and the luxuary, go to weeds. The bible story, censure, about Christians getting a handle on all them nature worshipers, pagans, doing all that ghastly and dastardly stuff up in the mountains comes to mind. Irony of ironies... their is a holy war be waged to swamp us with the gas, swamp gas, to get us to work to pay our tithes to be worthy of supporting the church we need to go to, to pray to God to, to forgive us of our sins in, so we can do it all over again. Sweet Jesus, even Christ way back when was smart enough, humble enough, not to form a church--- resurrect that! Absolutely, I would be more than happy to clue them, the think tankers, in on their present mental state; in a nutshell, their biggest infirmity, all them, especially Bush and all his myriad of puppeteers: greed and power, largess and effrontery, spreading like a cancer, romping like a hurricane, racing from their cold,cold hearts to their befuddled and boggled minds. But in their minds they're making a grave sacrifice, doing it for mankind, are all martyrs and most grandiose of all: are a much better, purer, breed; sons of Abraham; capitalists. Sweet Mother of Jesus, Where Have All The Flowers Gone--- the naturalists?
Getting back to the rat race for President; with the stratification and ratification of this nation's, the world's, once proud work force, from those at the bottom pulling themselves up to put food on the table to those at the top sinking so low as to justify making a living feeding off a never ending reservoir of underlings now about settled, a little agitation, if only out of principle, could lure and net us a predatory shark the likes of which we have never seen before. Heck even Huck, the diverse Twain himself was an "outspoken anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist" who called a spade a spade in his speech to his fellow Knights of Labor, a powerful labor union... "Who are oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents--- who are oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat." The best way to see through and breakup the drone and redundancy of the present made-for-TV singsong called a presidential race is to not get too caught up in it; to use a little hindsight and then to fess up to the fact that this nation's current bottom-feeder suckered a vast, swirling school of minnows into believing he was a Kingfish.
George W. Bush, 2003, just days before Labor Day, single handedly, through a stroke of his pen, did irrevocable damage to the time-honored man-hour by changing the Wage and Hour Law. Even more incredible, nothing short of a miracle, is how a wannabe Naval Aviator was able to rise up in the ranks to do more for the salvation of mankind than any other glorified being save our Savior and Joseph Smith. For a flighty turnabout, jumped in bed with Big Oil, to have successfully pinned the tail on the proverbial donkey without first getting kicked in the teeth took some doing. Nothing but a half cocked aberrant could ward off the devil's own advocate, bin Laden, who, because of former U.S. policy, the removal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, is on the straight and narrow path to martyrdom.
Now it is 2004, going down the home stretch running neck and neck with democratic incumbent John Kerry. Tipped off by an insider, CBS's Dan Rather attempted to rein in the heavily backed, tried and trued republican, corporate ringer by soiling his illustrious track record. Following a photo finish, the gilded New York Times squashed overwhelming evidence that the race was fixed with it front-page headline: Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried; end of story--- it was also the end of Rather. The axe came down swift and hard under the guidance and heavy-handedness of media giant Viacom Corp; CBS had no other choice but to fire their former star.
Here was the rub: going back to the beginning when our Commander-In-Chief was still a fledgling, his daddy, the Gov, nudged his delinquent son out of the nest and into a "coveted pilot spot" in the Texas Air Guard ahead of thousands of others in the ghastly Vietnam War; some of those he aced out were not quite so fortunate; they came home in a box. Then, as if all this wasn't bad enough, rumors began to surface to the effect that to show his appreciation for having successfully dodged the draft, our belated beatnik would simply fail to show up for duty. Not to worry, through another stroke of luck, the missing in inaction, prodigal son's waywardness couldn't be substantiated because his Air Guard duty records had incredibly vanished into thin air; flew off into the wild blue yonder. When asked point-blank if he had in fact gone AWOL during the war, a cocksure President crowed "ask my Commander", another fluke, his Commander had long been deceased; of all the cockamamie, low-down, no-good, asinine, p- - - poor, blankety blank excuses.
But pay no heed, the running of a country, one's own livelihood, party line, religious affiliation, all those ill conceived notions, you name it, all can come before human dignity and integrity--- honor. Why didn't those with firsthand knowledge, like Rather, of the Bush duos' illegal activities come forward and maybe thwarted a second term of presidential charades? Never mind, the Class War with all of its preeminent distractions, who's better than who, will continue on until the cows come home. Banners will be waved, a fly-by-night fly-boy will get paid big money to give inspirational speeches at our Universities to hone the wealthy's kids who unfortunately will never know the true meaning of a honost day's work. Today's President, warmonger, will go down in history for having gone above and beyond the call of duty, for having done his duty with a heart full of song and for having made the rich filthy rich. And the poor, who will always be looked down and frowned upon as being feebleminded and lazy, have their own rallying cry despite there being obsequiously disregarded: "We all have work let no one shirk put your shoulder to the wheel." "Onward Christian Soldiers marching off to war with the [hex of oil] going on before." And what will ever become of a strident "War President" once the white flag has been raised and onward Christian soldiers put an end to their marching: somebody has to wheel all of those barrels of crude to the bank--- hee-haw giddy up you stubborn old mule.
It has been a coon's age, clear back when I was only knee-high to an elder since I've belted out the hymn Put your Shoulder to the Wheel; there were those times that I thought for sure we were going to raise the roof off of our little church. Those lyrics with their powerful motif have now come back to haunt me. Having accepted once-and-for-all the reality that I wasn't cut out to be a wheeler-dealer and now over the hill physically and disturbed mentally, what's left? How long will my social insecurity last; how long can mind altering miracle pills hold off those loquacious and dreaded demons of the night; how long can anyone go on kidding themselves--- how long?
I raise such remorseful and ponderous subjections not looking for any sympathy but so that readers likewise inclined and predisposed to a strong work ethic through church and song and knowing right from wrong can hopefully identify and empathize; see for themselves that I and oh so many others are not just a bunch of undisciplined nitwits in need of constant supervision and attention. And hell yes there is swearing and cursing, even rage, but look at it this way, even a pussycat when backed into a corner quickly turns into a wildcat capable of clawing its adversary's eyes out just because it stands so ominously between it and freedom. Mr. Bush's eyes were opened on 9-11 when his White House of cards folded in upon itself. How did it ever come to this, why did our once amenable cave dweller suddenly turn into a "Frankenstein"? I submit that this betrayal was the straw that broke the elephant's back; with his own back against the wall and presidential butt on th line, a superimposed Neanderthal lunged out instinctively trying to club, tear and blow to bits our evil, Christian defiler. But here's the anomaly, once free, a wildcat quickly comes to it senses but not this monster; once backed by his coconspirators and military might, an otherwordly dictator taunted menacingly--- BRING'EM ON.
I'm really sorry to burst all you good Republicans' bubble, but in my mind your draft dodging pipsqueak of a leader is noway nohow a cold and calculated killer--- a "War President". It has become increasingly clear to me that this Christian pretender is not playing with a full deck, takes one to know one, a crazy, and is more than capable of going off the deep end with the least bit of provocation. Excuse me for having to say it but your main man is not only a shark that shirked his duty, but is also a jerk that has no qualms about jerking the less fortunate around like a rag doll. So say what you will, there can be no denying that Franklin D. gave us The New Deal and America got rich; Bush bushwhacked us with his Raw Deals and the poor keep getting poorer while the Natiional Treasury, also bankrupted, is in dire need of foreign oil deposits. It's a double whammy; corrupted, Corporate America has both the funds and the clout to lambaste global free enterprise and then mercilessly bring it to its knees. Social Security, forget it, your in good hands with Wall Street; afraid of falling through cracks, you will, the only safety net is for millionaires. Thank the good Lord we live in a democracy where even mentioning doing away with our dog-eat-dog food chain for something as wimpy as sociality could get your hinny in a jam; you could end up working for minimum wage which is no better than a bunch of hoodlums working on a chain gang. No, socialism will never do; where would the vaingloriously rich be if there was a Marxist "unequal distribution of goods and pay according to [actual] work done"?
Oh well, I guess your boy, George senior's boy, that you all voted into office twice, is giving you a run for your hard earned money. As for myself, all is not a total loss; I now have an ally here in Ogden Valley; a well schooled, well-to-do newcomer who like all the influential, probably drives a new Hummer. Just like that show I used to watch on TV; my very own, up close, in my face, impersonal, Marcus Welby MD who was called in at the last minute for his esteemed second opinion. He is to be congratulated for his skills and powers of discernment in diagnosing my mental dis-ease and the underlying possibility of my being a "threat to myself [a very ugly self] and others [the system]." I must say though, he is dead wrong in believing that I fail to "recognize the seriousness of my illness [circumstances]" and I find it more than a little daunting that his recommendation was to increase and experiment with a more powerful cocktail of depressants to be taken religiously.
In the words of the "immortalized" Fyodor Dostoevsky in a jeering rebuttal to the mathematicians, the "statisticians, sages, and lovers of humanity" and their demeaning "mere logical exercises" in Notes From Underground: One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy--- is that 'most advantageous advantage' which we have overlooked, which come under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important--- that is, our personality, our individuality."
