Friendly Rant: Voting FOR Jill Stein NOT Wielding “Privilege”

November 4th, 2016 Filed under: Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Oddly, with the presidential candidates from the two dominant and domineering political parties setting new records for low approval, voting for anyone else is met with bafflingly high contempt. My friend, local activist, and Green Party Jill Stein supporter, Shannon Frye, nailed it with this recent facebook post:

Facebook friends, I don’t think I’ve been shy expressing my views on our current election cycle, but I have tried very hard to remain respectful of the decisions you might make when you step into the ballot box. Even if we have sparred, I have still maintained your ability to elect the candidate of your choice. Know that this prerogative is not born of some feigned Victorian politeness, but rather out of desire to see each of you better articulate your realpolitik and claim your stake in the building of a better future for us all.

That being said, I have not, nor will I ever, tolerate the erasure of my person, my experiences or my conviction in order to capitulate to terror, be it tangible or intangible. I will not bend my moral arc in order that you may rest easy. And if you attack my position based on any difference between us under the false assertion that in that difference lies weakness, I will turn your blunt argument into a pointy reckoning.

One such example lies below. A person, who shall henceforth be known as Mr. Charlie, asserted on Jill Stein’s Dank Meme Stash that white privilege was the driver behind her surge in popularity and would be thusly responsible should Drumpf win the presidency. He erroneously held that the Green Party was the enemy, luring POCs, LGBTQ people and the socioeconomically disadvantaged away from their true salvation, Hillary Clinton.

I lost my cool…

“Mr. Charlie, what particular variety of White Savior Complex do you suffer from to make such an ignorant and ill-informed statement?

I am a queer feminist of color and I fully endorse Jill Stein for president precisely because self-righteous idealogues like yourself have absolutely no clue as to the remedy my people desperately need in order to set in motion our uplift.

It boggles my mind how the ONLY political party willing to stand up for racial, gender, socioeconomic and environmental justice has been so maligned by white neoliberalism under the supposed banner of care. How dare you attempt to whitewash the contributions of Green POCs motivated by the grassroots organizing and solution-oriented policies that would bring us into a new era of justice based not on our social capital – of which we have very little – but upon the mettle of our conviction?

You are speaking from a place of fear. Fear of a mango-faced minstrel who shouts deplorable things. Fear of an imagined confrontation with the rage born of over 400 years of oppression reigning. Fear of losing the mask of white indignation that threatens to reveal the fragility of your baseless, store-bought identity. Fear that causes a paralysis of logic and compassion. Fear.

On the social justice platform alone I’d vote Green for life.

The Green Party advocates for the continual challenging of racism, sexism, Homo/bi/transphobia, ableism, ageism, classism and religious persecution. The DNC has at no point in this election cycle or in its history committed itself to fighting inequality on every front in the manner in which the Green Party has fearlessly undertaken. What we, the underrepresented and oft voiceless, have instead received is a piecemeal equality, which is no equality at all. Hillary Clinton and the current incarnation of the DNC has done nothing but pay lip service to creating a level playing field. Clinton’s support for her husband’s 1996 Crime Bill, which contributed to the largest surge in prison populations since the Reagan Administration , has done nothing but ensure the institutionalization and disenfranchisement of scores of POCs – this did us no favor. Clinton’s silence during her tenure as senator amid the growing body of research that proved the inherent bias and disparate impact of stop-and-frisk police tactics on communities of color perfectly ensconced her ambivalence toward the further destruction of the Black and Latinx family. Had she desired more than the occasional Harlem photo op, she would have used her considerable privilege in service to the people she so shamelessly panders to every few years.

On the subject of LGBTQ people, Clinton supported the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as First Lady; as a senator, Clinton could have been the alky she pretends to be and challenged her fellow New Yorkers to expand their definition of marriage, or at least advocate for the inclusion of domestic partnerships in benefit programs for state employees. She didn’t do this. In fact, as recently as April 2013, Clinton went onto CNN with Wolf Blitzer to assert her belief that marriage was an institution between a man and a woman; she didn’t throw her support behind marriage equality until the conclusion of several SCOTUS cases were completely forgone.

As for sexism, which the Clinton campaign loves to cry each time a reasonable critique of her ability to govern justly occurs, there is no better political organization than the Greens to address the systemic oppression of women in the US and beyond. Why would I support a white feminism that capitalizes on the rape of our natural resources, a gross, self-indulgent imposition of Western cultural norms across the globe, and the plundering of our social security net budget in order to fund an imperialist military force that does nothing but wreak havoc in Black and Brown nations in service not to democracy or liberation, but rather in service the corporate master class? Either your feminism is intersectional or its shit: And straight up, if you’re running for office and posturing aggressively against 2 nuclear powers and continuing to take money from and politically ally yourself with nations we know have direct ties to ISIS, then you are not a feminist.

Mr. Charlie, have you any idea what war DOES to women?

1. It kills the civilian population, namely women and children

2. War increases the aggressive violence against women: gang rape, genital mutilation & forced childbirth are all methods used by occupying forces to demoralize a people .

3. War restricts women’s freedom of movement: women, who wind up bearing the burden of being the sole provider for their families and often are hindered by curfews and checkpoints from gaining access to food, medicine, work opportunities and building effective social supports.

4. War forces civilian populations to flee from their homes: this displacement causes refugee surges all over the world, which only seems to respond with more aggression to those already traumatized. For the unwelcome refugee, war continues, as their labor and sexuality are often exploited due to lack of legal protections. Yes, war is a huge contributor to sex trafficking and modern human slavery.

6. War and imperialistic culture prioritizes weaponry over human services:The war machine makes victims all around. Me? I’ve gotten kicked off of Medicaid 4 times this year. But at least our military can afford to bomb the hell out of brown people in 7 nations right now.

As a feminist, I have no country. As a feminist, I want no country. As a feminist, my country is the world and I will do everything in my power to protect her. My question is, how can any woman look at Clinton’s trigger happy approach to foreign policy, her dogged pursuit of profit over the safety and well-being of our planet, and the furtherance of the destabilization of the 3rd world and actually vote to keep it going?

So again I ask, who in this conversation is wielding privilege? Certainly not my brothers and sisters in Green, who care enough about me and my continued existence to vote for the one candidate, the one party, that could help free me from this state of perpetual subjugation. Surely not Dr. Stein, whose mettle has been tested time and again and stills shines brilliantly, compassionately and with the strength of truth on her side. Surely it is not me.

Must be you.

Now take several seats, STFU, and let the grown folks discuss strategy. Your petty semantic games and sanctimonious neoliberal lies will not stop our revolution or my liberation.”

THIS. Enough said.

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Chris Hedges’ Interviews Noam Chomsky on Precarious State of America

October 19th, 2016 Filed under: News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Once again, Chris Hedges nails it in his article, Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This,’ discussing the precarious state of the current American political landscape and bringing to bear Chomsky’s rigorous and insightful analysis over the last several generations:

Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”

Chomsky has, more than any other American intellectual, charted the downward spiral of the American political and economic system, in works such as “On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures,” “Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture,” “A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West,” “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” “Manufacturing Consent” and “Letters From Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.” He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.

Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered.

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

Chomsky, because he steps outside of every group and eschews all ideologies, has been crucial to American discourse for decades, from his work on the Vietnam War to his criticisms of the Obama administration. He stubbornly maintains his position as an iconoclast, one who distrusts power in any form.

“Most intellectuals have a self-understanding of themselves as the conscience of humanity,” said the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein. “They revel in and admire someone like Vaclav Havel. Chomsky is contemptuous of Havel. Chomsky embraces the Julien Benda view of the world. There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice. Benda says that the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Chomsky exposes the pretenses of those who claim to be the bearers of truth and justice. He shows that in fact these intellectuals are the bearers of power and privilege and all the evil that attends it.”

“Some of Chomsky’s books will consist of things like analyzing the misrepresentations of the Arias plan in Central America, and he will devote 200 pages to it,” Finkelstein said. “And two years later, who will have heard of Oscar Arias? It causes you to wonder would Chomsky have been wiser to write things on a grander scale, things with a more enduring quality so that you read them forty or sixty years later. This is what Russell did in books like ‘Marriage and Morals.’ Can you even read any longer what Chomsky wrote on Vietnam and Central America? The answer has to often be no. This tells you something about him. He is not writing for ego. If he were writing for ego he would have written in a grand style that would have buttressed his legacy. He is writing because he wants to effect political change. He cares about the lives of people and there the details count. He is trying to refute the daily lies spewed out by the establishment media. He could have devoted his time to writing philosophical treatises that would have endured like Kant or Russell. But he invested in the tiny details which make a difference to win a political battle.”

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”

Chomsky’s courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.

“I cannot tell you how many people, myself included, and this is not hyperbole, whose lives were changed by him,” said Finkelstein, who has been driven out of several university posts for his intellectual courage and independence. “Were it not for Chomsky I would have long ago succumbed. I was beaten and battered in my professional life. It was only the knowledge that one of the greatest minds in human history has faith in me that compensates for this constant, relentless and vicious battering. There are many people who are considered nonentities, the so-called little people of this world, who suddenly get an e-mail from Noam Chomsky. It breathes new life into you. Chomsky has stirred many, many people to realize a level of their potential that would forever be lost.”

May we have enough hope and faith in one another to act courageously for a bold new world.

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Human Rights are Universal and Inalienable, Interdependent and Indivisible, Equal and Nondiscriminatory

August 10th, 2016 Filed under: Health, Peace, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. PERIOD.

Human rights are universal and inalienable, meaning that such rights cannot be taken away based on what people do. Human rights are interdependent and indivisible, meaning that they work together as a whole, where the deprivation of anyone’s human right deprives us all, and the enhancement of anyone’s human rights enhances us all. Human rights are equal and nondiscriminatory, meaning that they apply equally regardless of whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, gender, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. Finally, human rights give rise to a fundamental responsibility to protect and promote human rights both for humans and their governments.

In 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration had been drafted by representatives from around the world, coming from many different legal and cultural perspectives. Since then, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set the world record for the document translated into the most languages: 477.

The declaration has stood up quite well across its eight decades spanning two millennia, though I would better incorporate LGBTQ rights and change the document’s pronouns to gender neutral.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

May we each individually and collectively cherish our human rights as the foundation from which our humanity is ever more fully manifest. One humanity. One planet. One love.

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POEM: Until Hell Frees Us

March 24th, 2016 Filed under: Anti-War, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Be very frayed
Terrorism comes
From know where
Deep in the recesses
Of kindergarten bullying
Capital vocations
And martial lawlessness
Awe rapped up in won’s highest I deal
Those unspeakable prophets
In security
Detained indefinitely
Until hell frees us
Ever more reckoning
The other
Who war like
A mirror reflection
Knot of won self
But a puerile of grate wisdom
Selling all
Having bought it
With bigger barns
Taking life easy

This is my third published poem in a row on the theme of terrorism. You might say that I’m on a role in combating hypocritical fearmongering and conveniently overlooked accountability for vicious cycles of violence plaguing our whirled. The prison of necessary evil is the bedrock upon which militarism is built. Of coarse, the jailbirds sing oft-repeated jingles of in-group unmistakable righteousness and the presumptively incomprehensible evil descending upon their already worrisome state. Fear is the only effective tool to fuel such jingoism and blind obedience to longstanding systems of oppression that conveniently turn justice into just us. That such fear can swirl in a sea of privilege is the fundamental disconnect that makes chronic injustice passable. Pointing out profound privilege and hyperbolic fears is heretical to the god of war. Not surprisingly, the god of war, Nike, is well characterized by the slogan, “Just do it!” which has a singular ring to rule all idioms. The inescapable prison of the permanent war on terrorism, with violence begetting violence begetting violence, based on the damnable logic of necessary evil, can only end with the absurdity “When hell frees us.” As Dante, in Inferno, signaled in his sign at the entrance of hell, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” How can we free ourselves from this parent prison of necessary evil that infantilizes our moral development, and stultifies children of God into spawn of the devil? How burden some is at the crux of this issue. What must we sacrifice? What must we cede? What must we feed?

Bringing about peace and justice to the whirled is formidable work that takes a lot of time to cede itself and seed itself. In the mean time, there is a need to endure sum violence, as an existing reality with its own inertia. This brakes the cycle of violence. As well, we need to address the causes and grievances powering violence and dis-empowering nonviolence. This is required to prevent violence from seeding itself, and to feed nonviolent alternatives. This breaks the cycle of violence. This is not easy.

That violence can save us is as owed as life and death itself. The myth of redemptive violence is deep-seated in human history and culture. Walter Wink put it best: “The myth of redemptive violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has even known.”

This poem ends with a tip of the hat to two of Jesus’ parables. First, the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) who has so much that he tears down his barns to build even bigger barns, only to have his “eat, drink, and be merry” life on earth end precipitously. Next, the parable of the hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, for which we will trade all we possess for it (Mathew 13:44-45). That pearl of great price is peace. May each of us be barnstormers for peace, not barn-storers fore violence.

Our lives can begin the long weigh to peace when we get beyond the myth of redemptive violence. May we each critically examine our own privilege and personal hurts that prompt us to take the low road of violence. May we each meditate and daily work on awe the things that make for peace and a whole, new world.

Tags: Absurdity, Accountability, Awe, Children, Culture, Death, Evil, Fear, God, Hell, History, Hope, Hypocritical, Idioms, Injustice, Jesus, Justice, Life, Logic, Militarism, Moral, Necessary Evil, Nonviolence, Nonviolent, Obedience, Oppression, Poems, Poetry, Prison, Privilege, Reality, Rich, Sacrifice, Security, State, Terrorism, Time, Violence, War, Wisdom, Work

POEM: Flocking Boss Leaves Behind Their Helm

February 17th, 2016 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

He new
Not the least bit sheepishly
Just saying
I am not the boss of ewes
And ewes not the boss of me

This is perhaps my first poem that might be best read with a New Jersey accent. This poem may very well be a tribute to a budding anarchist, one who newly recognizes that life is best lived as neither the boss of others nor the subject of bosses. Such a way of living springs from a humility and holistic perspective that bossing others around is an insult to the fullness of life of all. Plus, throwing off the rule of bosses demands courage and fortitude, perhaps not a little bit ironically, “like a boss” — though channeled to being the boss of one’s own life, not a boss lording over others. This poem also accents the boss-like oppression of sheepishly following other sheep, where cowardly complicity in the face of bosses diminishes us all. If you should seek to master such boss-less living, may you find ever new ways to live as equal partners with other people and all living beings, neither lording over or shrinking below.

Tags: Anarchism, Courage, Egalitarian, Equality, Humility, Ironic, Life, Oppression, Perspective

POEM: Brew Aha

July 16th, 2015 Filed under: Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

In the mettle of this
Brew aha
Beside myself
I took a stand
In countering
Such ponderous courting
How civil this obedience
Wear black
And white lies
Segregated
Only spotted
As if
Sent out to posture
Presumptuous in a sense
Hankering and pining
For a lessen in manors
A peace of cake
Where there cannot be
Moor to see
From the grate beyond
Beyond boarders
Is it sow untoward
A peace of meet
Only Abel
Too illicit
Just a position
In a neighborly weigh
Only taken in
Buy such con text
The privilege of preaching to a pact crowd
Per chased by background checks
Belting out promissory notes
Not worth a single digit
Nor circling the wagons
In a parent blackface
Falling off
Won’s bluff
Of unending figuring
For a fraction of pi
Her ratio
Of protracted circumference
Over the shortest distance between points
Ever present friend
Over cunning counsel
More than subject
To this hamlet
Their I stood
Quiet a seeing
As others
Might due
The riot thing
For wanton reason
And only if
My silence aloud
My batter judgment
Too get the best of me
Admitted to a transcendent hospitality
As dumb found patients
For which we stand
The qualm before the storm
Overcoming that which is
Fast fooled
Bringing order to the unrule he
Untold smiles to go
For better than even
As they crack me up
Or split my side
I live
For that aha moment
Heart and neck stretching
All the wile
Rapping accord
That can’t be broken
So I’m tolled

This is a poem about white privilege and racism, social justice and civil disobedience, and quite literally, putting some skin into the game. The brew aha theme offers a lighter, more ethereal tone to the poem. This poem addresses the immanent dangers of being deeply rooted in both transcendent realities and harsh physical and social realities. Race is the species argument driving this narrative. White privilege is the real dope here. Only such unmerited advantage can inspire such twisted rationalizations for ongoing supremacy and gross injustices. The challenges are great for both those to renounce unmerited advantage and for those to swim upstream against deep-seated oppression. Though there is no doubt that the ultimate accountability for justice rests with those who hold unmerited advantage over others.

From a literary point of view, I am quite enamored with the blending of mathematical pi with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Horatio in:

Falling off
Won’s bluff
Of unending figuring
For a fraction of pi
Her ratio
Of protracted circumference
Over the shortest distance between points
Ever present friend
Over cunning counsel
More than subject
To this hamlet

Amidst the endless, fruitless scheming in Hamlet (Falling off/Won’s bluff/Of unending figuring/For a fraction of pi), Horatio (Her ratio) defines the whole of pie fully in his loyal and unpretentious friendship with Hamlet (Of protracted circumference/Over the shortest distance between points). And with that last phrase, perhaps I’ve even invented a new poetical form: die a meter. Of course, Horatio (mathematically) proves his loyalty, offering a true home for Hamlet, more than mere pandering to royalty (Ever present friend/Over cunning counsel/More than subject/To this hamlet).

As recounted elsewhere:

At the end of the play, Horatio proposes to finish off the poisoned drink which was intended for Hamlet, saying that he is ‘more an antique Roman than a Dane’, but the dying prince implores Horatio not to drink from the cup and bids his friend to live and help put things right in Denmark; “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, / Absent thee from felicity a while, / And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story.” Hamlet, speaking of death as “felicity”, commands Horatio to wait “a while” to tell the story; perhaps Hamlet dies expecting his friend to follow as soon as the complete story has been told.

Perhaps one of the greatest honors we have in life is to witness and re-tell the stories of others. May we each live lives worth re-telling…

Tags: Accountability, Argument, Civil Disobedience, Death, Heart, Hospitality, Justice, Life, Obedience, Oppression, Pi, Play, Poet, Present, Privilege, Racism, Rationalization, Shakespeare, Silence, Social Justice, Transcendent

POEM: We Won’t Be Food Again

March 28th, 2014 Filed under: About Top Pun, News, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I would rather
Be Job
Less than
Renounce
A living wager
And know place to lie
My head
My heart
Made homeless
In loo of
A fast fooled nation
For going
The beast
Wee
Can due
Hitched to number one
Number too
As on the line
For given debts
In place of
Solemn assemblies
And last riots
As wreck we him
For the masses
Left too
Starve
As a full groan man
Eschewing
A distended belly
And infantile grimace
Dis gorging
To which I object
A single finger
And vomiting
A sour second
Relative to the toil it evacuates
As vying a bowel inconsonance
And those who are but in
Fringe benefits over doo
Be rated by privilege takers
Of a hollowed hire power
Pro claim
There is no Black day for employment
The unanswered trump it
As if
Falling flat to some honky
Reveres discrimination
As dark daze per severe
The fecund material bound
Now a mushrooming clerical class
Beaten too
A bully pulp it
Copious crumbs and the blest whines
Offering salivation
Like no me
Biblically
Throwing the book at me
Showing me the works
As if in some fooled court
Taking out
On me
Sum type
Of contract
Know labor
No food
Nor time travel to
’79 sense
For every dollared earn
Or as a payday loan
Cash here
Slipping through my fingers
Each day
For another till
My dreams standing still
Idoling money changers
On short order
Cooking the books
Serving as sum batterer
Or fry guy
Who is just
Greased
At the end of the day
Pain
You less
Than what
You learned
With respect to
Meat grate people
Seriously toying
“Be the happy meal”
As if
I whir
To halve a cow
And go to town
Drug by sum ferry tale
A bout
Worshipping some magic beings
Stalking skyward
As some giant rumble
To expose my hide
Wont to grind my bones
For their bred
My blood smelt
As iron away
From their golden cuffs
Razing my shackles once again
I will only ax once
As you know not jack
Weather the heavens fall
Either I am
Udderly fed up
Or my last words herd
Eat me
As I will only be
Food once
It’s just
Awe in a daze work

I wrote this poem today, all in a days work! This poem was triggered by my experience last night at a community meeting, “Faith Conversations on Income Inequality.” I was somewhat disappointed that of the two hours, less than 15 minutes was conversation. The meeting was mostly didactic, with two detailed presentations, a short film well documenting the existence of actual poor working people in our very state of Ohio, and a short small group exercise (where some conversation occurred).

The kicker for the evening was after the meeting when conversing with a woman who I had never met proclaimed the disproportionately too-often cited and familiar, “If a person doesn’t work, then they don’t deserve to eat” (see 2 Thessalonians 3:10). Of course, the key word and concept in this passage is an unwillingness to work. I might add dignified and humane work. Either way, it certainly doesn’t apply to people who can’t find work. Further, in the previous verse, the apostles speaking about their own self-support when visiting the Thessalonians, say, “We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. This seems to state that they did claim a right to such help (food), but were modeling an additional value of not being a burden on others. If the apostles accepted help, when they were able to pay their own way, and this caused a burden to another, then they shouldn’t take such a necessary resource from another. The higher way modeled by the apostles seems more apt as a critique of people unjustly benefiting from paying poverty wages, thus causing a burden to others, than as a critique of food as a human right. Perhaps a less sophisticated yet more easily understood response to worrying about hungry people getting too much food is Uggghhh!

I had really hoped for an opportunity to share personal experiences and perspectives on faith and poverty, or income inequality. For better or worse, I’ve thought about such things my whole life. Still, I am actually eager to learn more, as I continue on my journey. The story of dealing with poverty seems to me to be full of good news-bad news. In my case, the bad news is that technically, I have lived in poverty most of the last decade — technically, meaning that my average income has been under the federal poverty guidelines. The good news is that I am the wealthiest person I know — of course, I don’t get out much! Such a conundrum has provided much experience and raw material upon which to meditate regarding what is true wealth.

One main point that I believe could help bring a more balanced perspective in our dealing with poverty is this: from a spiritual perspective, we must give equal time to spiritual poverty. This is perhaps most succinctly captured by Mother Teresa, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” I see Jesus as quite clearly spelling out the dividing line: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24) And, of course, serving God is inextricably linked with serving our neighbors: ” ‘The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’ ‘What should we do then?’ the crowd asked. John answered, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.’ ” (Luke 3:9-11)

A corollary of this spiritual view of poverty is that we must not stigmatize the poor, or dishonor God’s special relationship with them. I half-jokingly put this under the moniker of: “You say poverty like it’s a bad thing!” A couple of generations ago, Latin American theologians developed the concept of God’s “preferential option for the poor.” In part, this refers to the special relationship that the poor, disenfranchised, and marginalized have with God. Their vulnerability manifest by oppression in the world creates an openness to God’s way. This openness fosters a greater intimacy, deeper understanding, and easier access to living in harmony with God’s laws (ultimate reality). Of course, harmony with God’s laws is counter-cultural to the status quo and the powers that be. Intriguingly though, the oppressed already stare down the brutal realities of the powers that be every day; so, being counter-cultural is much less of a leap “of faith” than those who benefit from the status quo. This is perhaps the most simple reason why top down change rarely, if ever, benefits the poor more than the rich. Thus, the poor are already primed to adopt God’s ways, as the world’s ways sure as hell aren’t working for them. Jesus is a striking example of acting in accordance with this reality. Jesus spent the vast majority of his time with the dispossessed, and “regular” folks, the 99% if you will. In a stroke of spiritual genius, Jesus planted his message among people who were both most open to God’s message and had their material interests aligned to move in a direction parallel to God’s ways, including, of course, justice. No doubt, Jesus played a prophetic role, in directly confronting the powers that be, whether religious, political, or economic elites. Such confrontations were likely inevitable. Even so, Jesus brought an unwavering dignity, intimacy, and authority (street cred) to such encounters. Jesus did not shy from his fully humanizing ways, even in the face of dehumanizing forces. This was a palpable measure of how Jesus loved his enemies. This is God’s ways manifest. The poor have fewer barriers to accessing such ways. Let’s learn from the poor!

I have lived among affluent people of faith most of my life. For the affluent, the vast majority of us in the so-called developed world, I am convinced that voluntary poverty and simplicity is the most powerful tool to transform our world, God’s creation, into ways friendly to abundant life. I have drawn this conclusion from my profound failure to convince rich westerners to truly care about the world’s poorest. I am a formidable debater, both informed and with heart. Still, the misery of my failure to convince others with words is exceeded only, and greatly, by the misery of the world’s poorest. I cannot escape the weight of my experience that the affluence of westerners, including myself, and the material conflicts of interest we are embedded in, is the single most important factor preventing such a conversion. Better aligning our material interests with the poor, through voluntary poverty and simplicity, can unleash a cascading journey where the soul’s force begins to flow more freely, as water invites gravity to do its work — and the most grave law unbroken, that of love. This poem of mine alludes to the freedom gained by simple living:

Dining with Kings and Queens
Courtly balls
Knightly duels
And priestly indulgences
You can avoid it all
If only you are happy
Eating beans

Probably the greatest illusion humans face is seeing wealth (and its companions, status and power) as an answer to all of their problems. Surely, people have material needs, and those needs going unmet is a tragedy. However, once one’s basic material needs are met, wealth becomes a disability to the individual and a disease to society. There is a great body of psychological and sociological evidence that increasing wealth makes us less compassionate and less generous. In short, wealth serves as a wedge between people and God. Science confirms the truth of not being able to serve two masters. People can, and do, argue about the role of material scarcity in the problems of poverty — just witness political wranglings about budget-busting social programs in the richest nation the world has ever known. Nonetheless, there is one pervasive and undeniable fact: there is, and has been for at least centuries, enough physical resources to more than meet the material needs of every human on the planet. In this light, spiritual poverty is exposed. We can solve material want; we choose not. It is not a close call!

Poverty worldwide is endemic. Billions of people live on $2 per day or less. Those most likely to be the poorest are women and children — so much for family values. People of color are also at much greater risk. Those most likely to go hungry are those who grow food, our farmers. The only way this can happen is to literally steal food from their hands. The rich claim a hugely disproportional share of the world’s resources, including the productive labors of billions. All the wile, pawning sham scarcity as an excuse for their hoarding and ravenous ways. Gandhi captured it well when asked what he thought of Western civilization. He responded, “I think it would be a great idea.” I concur.

With untrammeled globalization, poverty can only be adequately viewed as a global problem. The causes of poverty cannot be isolated within one country. We, as a world, are in the same boat — though, undoubtedly, there is an increasing chasm between the accommodations of first and third class. Debt, just as in biblical times, is used to enslave people. We are told that the world is in great debt, accepting it as gospel truth. Yet, to whom exactly are we are in debt? Pay no attention to the money changers behind the curtain. Exploitation and robbing of natural resources unjustly enriches the wealthier. Such profitable cleverness is called business. Meanwhile, non-prophet organizations stand by impotent to counter this unseemly necessity. And governments suffer from electile dysfunction. The good news is that the cancerous idol of endless economic “growth” may not destroy creation, with such abundance and ingenuity. Praise be to God! If only, God forbid, the dream of a worldwide “middle class” can be averted. Work. Buy. Consume. Die.

Less poetically put, the “powers that be” work on a global scale. This juggernaut of globalization reduces humans to economic beings in a consumer culture. People become means to ends, not being of sacred worth and inherent dignity. To enforce this state of affairs, wars are waged as “needed.” These wars, unsurprisingly, do not serve the interests of the dispossessed. This global reality is rooted in a distinct worldview: poverty is not the problem; poverty is the solution. While a tsunami of rhetoric speaks of jobs, unemployment serves to lower wages, not just of the unfortunate unskilled, but of skilled labor too. More unemployment is good for (someone else’s) business. And if you missed that memo, perhaps the desperation of unemployment and wage slavery has you occupied. Such desperation can serve as a distraction and thwart a healthy, functioning civil society (see electile dysfunction).

There is an African proverb which says: where there is no wealth there is no poverty. This ancient wisdom emanates from the experience of humans over many generations and cultures that concentrated wealth creates poverty, that is, depends on poverty. There is a powerful illusion that wealth brings wisdom, that the rich must really know something that we don’t. Well, if they do, it’s most likely occult or a cult. I cite the incisive lyrics of “If I were a rich man” from the play, Fiddler on the Roof:

Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes!
And it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you’re rich, they think you really know!

The truth is much simpler, and more stark: the rich need the poor; the poor don’t need the rich. For those who might cite the droll biblical retort, “the poor will always be with us,” have you pondered this: if you think the poor are hard to get rid of, try the rich!

The diseased worldview of consumerism and capitalism has at least on Achilles’ heel. This rests on the utter inability to answer a fundamental question in life: how much is enough? Capitalism thrives on convincing you that you never have enough, you are perpetually lacking something (which we happen to be selling), and by extension: you are lacking. This turns the Gospel’s worldview upside down. The good news is that you are enough; God made you that way. Return to this truth, and capitalism recedes to a perfunctory process describing the nominal exchange of goods — and the goods are actually good!

The meeting on faith conversations about income inequality focused on the United States. While poverty extends far beyond, and is rooted in, the larger world, the U.S. can serve as an enlightening case study. The U.S. just recently observed the 50th anniversary of the “war on poverty” as declared in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson. [For poetic versions of lessons learned from the “war on poverty,” see my poems, Hungering for Answers, and War on Poverty] The “war on poverty” is about the same age as me. During my lifetime, the U.S. has grown about three times wealthier in material wealth. Nevertheless, more Americans work, and they work longer hours. Some gains were made in reducing poverty in the early years. However, the overall trend since the late 1970’s has been stagnating or declining wages, especially when compared to skyrocketing worker productivity. Income inequality is higher now in America than in the last hundred years.

For those with biblical commitments, we are long overdue for a Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25). The year of Jubilee is a Sabbath of Sabbaths. It prescribed forgiveness of debt every seven years. In the fiftieth year — after seven cycles of seven years, not only was all debt forgiven, but all slaves were freed and all land returned to its original owners land. This is the biblical prescription for preventing large concentrations of wealth and persons from being permanently dispossessed from their land and/or forced into servitude through debt. Let’s make it so!

Tags: Abundance, America, Ancient, Authority, Awe, Balance, Business, Capitalism, Change, Children, Community, Compassion, Consumerism, Conundrum, Counter-Cultural, Creation, Culture, Debt, Dehumanizing, Discrimination, Disease, Disenfranchised, Dream, Dreams, Economic, Elite, Employment, Enemies, Equality, Experience, Failure, Faith, Family, Food, Forgiveness, Freedom, Gandhi, Genius, God, government, Harmony, Hate, Heart, Heaven, Hell, Hope, Income, Inequality, Intimacy, Jesus, Job, Jobs, Journey, Justice, Labor, Law, Life, Living Wage, Love, Meaning, Money, Oppression, Perspective, Play, Poems, Poet, Poetry, Political, Poor, Poverty, Power, Powers that be, Preferential Option for the Poor, President, Privilege, Productivity, Prophet, Proverb, Reality, Religious, Respect, Rhetoric, Rich, Risk, Sabbath, Sacred, Scarcity, Science, Simplicity, Slavery, Society, Soul, Spiritual, State, Status, Status Quo, Time, Truth, Values, Vulnerability, War, Wealth, Western Civilization, Willingness, Wisdom, Women, Work, Worldview, Worship

POEM: Jumping From The Ledger

February 4th, 2014 Filed under: Health, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Rejoin the rat race
And all that chasten
Daring to make
A rodent in the machine
Which is all the rage
The bounty on your ahead
A golden hamster wheel
Retard after 50 years
Left dumb
Lips pursed
For so many years
Metering out your daily pillage
From shallow pools
Having waded for your due appointments
Not with standing
That grim reaper having
Sacrificed so much
For what
Spoils
As prophet in titles
Epitaphs
Ridden in stone
Forcing loved ones loanly
To visit what you once were
Suckling on memories
Dreams stoned
Starving
To full
Fill awe that is hollowed
Having
Lived once
Now never more knew
Daze passed
And by what means recaptured
How sew frayed
Of day’s passion
And once with
In is capable rejoinder
To finish this sentience
And not mirror animation
A resounding echo
No longer revere berating
In empty chambers
Wanton listless solutions
Having dropped the bawl
Bored stiff of what lame meant
Drawling on passed experience
Yakking on a bout
Scaling steep mountains
Out of mole hills
Trying
To get your goat and make you want to yacht
And in the end unmoved
Buy the blubbering of beached wails
Strewn by brown shirts and matching knows
Muted lives
Sullen everything
You can possibly think
Trading marks
And in proprietary secrets
May clinch some laconic inc.
Be rift of checks and balances
And should you withdraw
The hush of money
Prepare for it getting even
Silencer
Yet before your time
Sing
Like just
Another grammy
Inexplicably quite
Never herd again
A spoke in word
Unburden some
To pronounce
In that speakeasy of freedom
Drunk with poise in abating
From a salutary utter
After which you could hear a heart murmur
That could with stand a beating:
You can have your bigger cages
And longer chains
Be damned the shareholder value
of Cages and Chains, Inc.
I will jump from the ledger
Even if you won’t
Searching for the perfect pitch
Surpassing everlusting sirens
Till a gentler rock
Finding my voice
In a free Fall
Fallowing a summer
Fueled by that eternal spring
Hoping for more than allege
And giving know pause
To winters and losers
Sharing the good news
Freely
Never put out
To pastor

This poem is a reflection on the rat race of state-of-the-art employment, where even winning the rat race probably signifies that you are just a rat more than anything else. Even though the productivity evangelists tout great success, the more than tripling of material wealth during my lifespan, has done little net good (mostly trapped people in nets) for workers. With the wealth of experience and history, it doesn’t take a prophet to understand that ever-growing profits spells a cancerous existence in America.

Fortunately, since I quit my “regular” or “real” job, almost a decade ago, I’ve been able to live on less than what the average American would make with unemployment benefits (though I didn’t receive unemployment benefits because I quit). I haven’t received food stamps or other government “welfare” assistance. I have not been a very successful taker, with my frugal leanings and pride in autonomy. Though Republicans have tried hard in Ohio, under Obamacare, I may not be able to keep my uninsurance, ending a decade without health insurance.

At best, it seems that this increased material wealth has little to do with increased happiness. In fact, Americans work more hours and are no more happy. Even having to point out that working more hours doesn’t make you happier is perhaps the best illustration that the productivity police can quite effectively rely on self-enforcement! Our minds have been so effectively colonized that other options seem barely even thinkable. The notion that your life can actually be profoundly better living with less is heretical in capitalistic America — if such a crazy notion were even given the time of day!

It seems that Western civilization has reached a point in its existence, where workers are functionally illiterate in life, meaning that they cannot adequately articulate and effectively navigate life outside of money/wealth as their measure of value. Newsflash potential illiterates: money isn’t everything! As the saying goes: you can’t buy love. And, if you can’t tell the difference between love and a comfortable home with a trophy wife, then you might be an illiterate! Worse yet, most workplaces are better characterized as places where we sell ourselves than places where we come together for our mutual betterment. And if you can’t tell the difference between love and selling ourselves, then you are definitely an illiterate!

In the great exchange debate of values, circulates the notion that time is money. Capitalists have effectively dominated this debate, demanding perpetual focus on the centrality of money. Now, you may be able to exchange your time for money. However, money can’t really buy time, otherwise the rich would live forever! More to the point, money can’t buy life. Money may be able to carve out more “leisure” time — that time when you are not selling yourself — or even buy some edge of health compared to others, and perhaps increasing your lifespan. However, no matter how effectively we manipulate our material environment, through the proxy of money, this, at best, only offers the opportunity to live, not life itself. Our time represents this opportunity for living. While money has an interplay with how we experience our time, the very quality of our life, it is subordinate to time. In youthful, or just plain oblivious, denial of our limited time, i.e., eventual death, we may convince ourselves that we have more time than money. This perception influences our judgments about the time-money exchange rate. I suspect that the best way to reflect on this is to ask yourself which is better: to have more money than time? or, to have more time than money? In the end, ultimately, time will win this debate. Nonetheless, many, if not most people waste a lot of time before realizing this, that time is more important than money.

Of course, living with a lot of money or very little money may confound this realization that time is more important than money; the rich thinking that their time is founded on money because they have it, and the poor thinking that their time is dependent on money because they have very little. This is one aspect of the destructive reality of huge income inequalities, of greed and poverty. This confounding of reality serves well neither the rich or the poor. Wealth and poverty are conjoined twins, seemingly destined to believe that their life is best served by the machinations of material existence, to the deficit of a more full and complete life. Both excess and lack, especially when conjoined, can lead to fearful and alienating lives. The rich can become disconnected, unempathetic with lack, even paranoid of losing their excess (sic). The poor can become discouraged and desperate, lacking in the face of plenty.

The apostle John offered the simplest, though apparently quite difficult, solution to the conjoined twin fates of excess and lack, by proclaiming: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same” (Luke 3:11). This would put a lot of liberal think tanks out of business. This would put a lot of conservative think tanks out of business. In the end, thinking about such things, particularly if you are the well-clothed one with a full belly, does little to address our lack, our common fate: poverty. Of course, this is America, so there is more than one brand of poverty: material or spiritual. For the particularly unfortunate, you can have both brands. Fortunately, God has the preferential option for the poor, the central tenet of liberation theology, founded by Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez:

“The preferential option for the poor is much more than a way of showing our concern about poverty and the establishment of justice. At its very heart, it contains a spiritual, mystical element, an experience of gratuitousness that gives it depth and fruitfulness. This is not to deny the social concern expressed in this solidarity, the rejection of injustice and oppression that it implies, but to see that in the last resort it is anchored in our faith in the God of Jesus Christ. It is therefore not surprising that this option has been adorned by the martyr’s witness of so many, as it has by the daily generous self-sacrifice of so many more who by coming close to the poor set foot on the path to holiness.”

The preferential option for the poor is a perspective God’s grace giving special favor to the poor. The way that God has created reality actually favors the poor more than the rich. This doesn’t glorify material poverty, but it recognizes that the experiences of poverty more directly connect us and open us up to the deep importance of mutual aid and genuine, caring relationships. The poor’s very survival depends on it. The rich are insulated from this palpable, ever-present reality of the poor. The rich can “afford” to make the mistake of buying their way out of this deeper and more difficult (yet rewarding) way of being. The rich are more easily fooled into thinking that they don’t need others. The injustice maintained by the rich is that as conjoined twins, the rich twin foolishly acts as if they can do whatever they want without the other, even when faced with the heart-wrenching realities of material poverty wracking his world. Such heartlessness is a failure at intimacy with other human beings and reality writ large. Perhaps a better formulation of a universal constant of metaphysics for the betterment of humankind would be the directly inversely proportional relationship of material and spiritual poverty. Of course, this would turn capitalism, and its reliance on endless greed and profit, upside down, or more aptly, right side up! Skeptics might ask if it is possible for the rich to spiritually prosper. This is an ancient question:

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’” (Matthew 19: 23-24)

I love the common interpretation of this passage as a reference to a gate into Jerusalem called “the eye of the needle” that was opened a night after the main gate was closed, and this gate was so small that the camel (the rich) would have to unload all of their baggage and crawl through on their knees. Yep, Jesus was one of the greatest poets I ever metaphor!

May you live into the reality that spiritual wealth is more directly accessed with less rather than more material wealth.

Tags: America, Ancient, Art, Awe, Balance, Business, Capitalism, Change, Character, Conservative, Courage, Crazy, Death, Deficit, Denial, Dream, Dreams, Employment, Environment, Experience, Failure, Faith, Fear, Food, Foolish, Freedom, God, government, Grace, Greed, Happiness, Hate, Health Insurance, Heart, Heaven, History, Illiterate, Income, Injustice, Intimacy, Jerusalem, Jesus, Job, Justice, Liberal, Liberation Theology, Life, Literate, Love, Martyr, Meaning, Metaphysics, Mind, Money, Mystic, Mystical, Obama, Oppression, Paranoid, Passion, Pastor, Perspective, Physics, Poems, Poet, Poetry, Police, Poor, Poverty, Preferential Option for the Poor, Present, Pride, Productivity, Prophet, Proprietary, Rage, Rat Race, Reality, Relationships, Republican, Rich, Sacrifice, Secrets, Shareholder, Silence, Solidarity, Spiritual, State, Success, Theology, Time, Values, War, Wealth, Welfare, Western Civilization, Work

POEM: Chapter 58 – Isaiah

November 10th, 2013 Filed under: Peace, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Chapter 58 – Isaiah

Isaiah was a man
A kind of a man
More generous than his wealth
Untouchable by another’s profits
With a frugality beyond any poverty
He was a gentle man
With a purposefulness typically beyond words
Speaking with a clarity too spirited for some
In jail for disturbing the peace
Though he would have said
“I am disturbing the war”
He was a headstrong man
Though less determined than unshakable
His single-mindedness
Exceeded only by a purity of heart
In that instant where mourning breaks
In the face of a rising dawn
Awaking
Following that first night
With an irrepressible smile
On his face
Realizing he is the freest person
He knows
Simply saying
“I really need to get out more”
Fast becoming hungry
Thirst things thirst
In spite of being
Like naked
For I’s guarded
Surrounded by men of this stripe
Wholly innumerable
Ever-present in the passed
His work was before him
A long line of just us
All the same, some lost
Some merely on their way
To share some food with his mates
Then off to work
For there is
No such thing as
Free room and board
From some anonymous uncle
After all the feds
Reckon the rest
As what will follow
When expecting to be herd
As well as something more

This poem is a tribute and extremely loose paraphrase or interpretation of Isaiah 58 in the Bible. This Old Testament chapter is a classic among lovers of justice. In this poem, the title alludes to a chapter in the biography of a man. This modern-day take is inspired by those faithful and devoted workers for justice who commit civil disobedience in the course of their work for social justice. The setting is a free man who finds himself in prison. Barring all irony, he is still free!

The only truly obscure reference that I would elucidate springs from the lines: In spite being/Like naked/For I’s guarded. It’s more easily accessible meaning is a reference to being vulnerable, particularly when at the hands of someone who, like a prison guard, literally oversees your every movement, peering into the bowels of your very being! The obscurity is in that “Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than on the person viewing or causing the nakedness (Gen 9:20-27).” In Matthew 5:40, Jesus says, “if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” The theologian and author Walter Wink explains how Jesus instructed his audience, the poor, how to fight back using creative nonviolence, taking advantage of the cultural fact that viewing nakedness is more shameful than being naked:

“…so the debtor parades his nakedness in prophetic protest against a system that has deliberately rendered him destitute. Imagine him leaving the court, naked: his friends and neighbors, aghast, inquire what happened. He explains. They join his growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness, destitution, and abasement. This unmasking is not simply punitive, therefore; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause, and to repent.
The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing depotentiates them faster than deft lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seize the initiative, even where structural change is not immediately possible. This message, far from being a counsel to perfection unattainable in this life, is a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed, and it is being lived out all over the world today by powerless people ready to take their history into their own hands.
Jesus provides here a hint of how to take on the entire system by unmasking its essential cruelty and burlesquing its pretensions to justice. Here is a poor man who will no longer be treated as a sponge to be squeezed dry by the rich. He accepts the laws as they stand, pushes them to absurdity, and reveals them for what they have become. He strips naked, walks out before his fellows, and leaves this creditor, and the whole economic edifice which he represents, stark naked.”

I encourage you read the full article by Walter Wink, Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus’ Nonviolent Way, where Dr. Wink outlines three of methods of creative nonviolent disobedience that Jesus taught, from Mathew 5:38-41 (NIV): “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” One of the truly magnificent revelations in this article is how it illustrates the extent to which Jesus’ teachings are commonly misunderstood; or perhaps more to the point, often understood as the exact opposite of what Jesus meant!

The spirit of Jesus is manifest in the scripture inspiring this poem, Isaiah 58 (NIV). It is no accident that Jesus quotes Isaiah to kick off his public ministry! The heading for this chapter is usually rendered, “True Fasting;”

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Tags: Absurdity, Ancient, Bible, Change, Civil Disobedience, Courage, Cruelty, Economic, Evil, Faith, Food, Freedom, God, Healing, Heart, History, Holy, Injustice, Irony, Jesus, Joy, Justice, Law, Life, Love, Meaning, Modern, Mourning, Nonviolence, Nonviolent, Ode, Oppression, Pacifism, Poems, Poetry, Poor, Poverty, Power, Powers that be, Present, Prison, Quotes, Rebellion, Rich, Sabbath, Social Justice, Time, Violence, War, Wealth, Work

POEM: As We Press Release

July 20th, 2013 Filed under: News, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

As We Press Release

The defense department denies killing civilians
The state department denies human rights abuses by trade partners
The department of energy denies that nuclear power is anything but safe
The criminal justice system denies institutional racism
The department of departments denies that it exists
There is no news here
An anonymous spokesman representing an undisclosed list of clients
Could neither confirm nor deny their uselessness
Beholden to flights of fancy
Carry on
Pink elephants trampling conspiracy theorists
Straw men unable to eat crow
Permitting no one to fly straight
Barring exceptional pork
The fun is over
A barrel
Of monkeys denying evolution
Where GOP is a measle-y typo
Read “take things literally”
A premeditated shot in the dark
Where there is no higher power
Emanating from the chamber of commerce
Pinko pachyderms never herd from
Any rarer would be bloody
Hell, the stakes are high
Raised by vampires
Unable to reflect on their own
Fratricide from dawn to dust
Sucking out the life
Granting only that
They feel our payin’
Attention
Exacting compensation for every notice
Dispatching captives with unmanned missives
Droning on
In their priest-like duties
Until the masses are free
Like a cancer
An endless growth
Of pulp fiction
And mind-numbing doublespeak
As we press release
From labor camps
Yet another
Birth of a nation
And its following deportments:
REDACTED
Censors monitoring your every move
So your posterity is theirs
And the war on terror
Only coming to an end
When know more
Freedom to deny

Corporate Wall Falls

May 7th, 2012 Filed under: News, Political Action Add Comment

Yesterday, as the closing ceremony of Occupy Toledo’s May Day Fest, between two and 2,000 people gathered to tear down “The Wall,” symbolizing corporate mis-rule and oppression. This wall was cut to shreds to symbolize freeing ourselves from corporate rule.The inanimate corporate logos, appropriately symbolizing the incorporeal non-persons that are American corporations, didn’t stand a chance against the real live human persons wielding the cutting edge of direct democracy.The shell game of avoiding accountability comes to an end as the shell of a corporation, “Shell,” (pictured below) is shell-shocked in one shell of a show.In the end, all of the corporate papers are invoked, provoked and revoked.Looks like this round goes to the human persons! Corporate non-persons beware!

Tags: Accountability, Anti-Corporate, Corporate Personhood, Democracy, Direct Democracy, Events, May Day, Occupy Toledo, Oppression, Protests, Toledo

May Day Street Theater – Corporate Zombies vs. Village People

April 30th, 2012 Filed under: Health, News, Political Action Add Comment

This is the script for the street theater production that was performed tonight to kick off Occupy Toledo‘s May Day Fest week’s worth of events:

May Day Eve Celebration

Occupy Toledo

April 30, 2012

“The Corporate Zombies vs. The Village People”

Gather around, friends, and hear a story as old as humankind; or rather, hear a story as old as human unkind. The story is of the many versus the few. The players names may change, but the plot is the same. The few have grabbed power for themselves, while the many suffer. Sometimes it is the peasants versus the Lords of the land. Other times it is simply the 99% versus the 1%.

In today’s scene, in this land called the United States of America, once again, the land is divided, and power is not shared equally. The few, the 1%, have shielded themselves from accountability, by hiding behind non-living corporate entities, a phantom called “corporate personhood.” The few, the 1%, have become corporate zombies themselves, disconnected from humanity, unable to act justly and with compassion. In this pathetic state, the corporate zombies have managed to distract, divide, and simply overrun the will of the people. The corporate zombies have even managed to infect many of the people into believing that rampant injustice, economic slavery, and environmental destruction is the best that we can do. The corporate zombies have convinced many that corporate rule is too big to fail. The corporate zombies have convinced many that we the people are too small to make a difference.

The corporate zombies mock economic fairness.

The corporate zombies mock democracy.

The corporate zombies mock equal justice.

The corporate zombies mock environmental stewardship.

The corporate zombies mock human rights of all kinds.

The corporate zombies mock accountability, responsibility for their own actions.

But, alas, there is always a plot twist. Every time that the few, the 1%, grab power for themselves and bring suffering to the many, people arise to expose the absurdities of rampant injustice, to throw off the chains of economic slavery, and reclaim the earth as the home of all, not a place to be raped for the wealth of a few. In today’s scene, a group of villagers arise (that would be us). This group of villagers can see past the propaganda of the few, and boldly declare, “The Emperor has no clothes!”

The corporate zombies may mock economic fairness; they may mock democracy; they may mock equal justice; they may mock environmental stewardship; they may mock human rights of all kinds; they may mock accountability. BUT, the people of this village, Toledo, Ohio; the people of this village, the United States of America; the people of this village, planet Earth, will arise and declare, at first softly, but then, louder and louder:

We will, we will mock you. Mock you.

We will, we will mock you.

We will, we will mock you!

Let the games begin!

But first, a message from our un-corporate sponsors:

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from Corporatitis, an inflammation of corporate power in your life? Do you, or someone you know, suffer from low wages, poor working conditions, and crappy benefits? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from lack of health insurance, access to needed health care, and an over-exposure to for-profit health care? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from trillion dollar corporate bailouts, costing trillions of dollars, destroying the economy and mortgaging your future? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from greedy money changers, taking kick-backs on every economic transaction you make, and then reducing your life to a credit score? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from greed-induced environmental destruction, having to live with poisoned air, water, land, homes and bodies? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from dependency on energy and utility companies who are the most profitable companies in human history, yet cry poverty when asked to invest in alternative and renewable energy sources? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from greed-induced wars destroying countless lives around the globe? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from an industrial agricultural food system that produces less and less nutritious foods, while destroying local farmers and our environment? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from a political system where so-called democracy is bought and sold to the highest bidder, and you are left with false choices, where true change is not an option. If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from a small cabal of media conglomerates who spoon-feed you crap, hoping to convince you, or at least scare you, that you can’t afford justice, economic fairness, or a livable planet, so you had better just get yours while you can? If so, you may have Corporatitis.

Corporatitis, an inflammation of corporate power, affects tens of millions of people, and it can be debilitating. However, most people suffer from Corporatitis Minor. While Corporatitis Minor is a serious condition, and should never be left untreated, Corporatitis Minor is much more treatable than the dreaded Corporatitis Major. Corporatitis in its worst form, Corporatitis Major, can consume one’s very soul, leaving only a shell of a human being, unable to accept accountability for one’s actions, or to demonstrate compassion to others. These ghoulish creatures become known by many titles, sometimes “CEO”, “Public Relations Manager”, or “Security Trader.”

These ghoulish creatures are doomed to walk the earth in a non-living state, like zombies, walking the earth, mindlessly and heartlessly feeding on the flesh of the living, in their vain attempts to satisfy their endless need for more and more profits. Entombed within the phantom of “corporate personhood”, their only hope is to be stripped of the mythical powers that imprison them, which are typically represented by “Logos.” We the people will strip these corporate “logos,” these “marks of the beast,” from these corporate zombies. By stripping these corporate logos, we will help free those suffering from Corporatitis Minor, and offer some hope, some possibility, that those suffering from Corporatitis Major can return to the land of the living, and reclaim their place in humanity.

To all those suffering from Corporatitis, there is something we can do about it. First, we start with a week of daily occupy movements, to purge ourselves of these corporate parasites and phantom persons. Occupy Toledo’s May Day Fest is just such a remedy. Though, be warned: treatment for Corporatitis may result in an increase in economic fairness, blossoming democracy, a return to equal justice, a reclamation of environmental health, burgeoning human rights, and a natural inclination to take responsibility for one’s own actions.

Do not be afraid, surround these corporate zombies with the power of the people. Without their corporate bank accounts; without their league of lawyers and lobbyists; without their private security and control over the security state, they are really quite helpless — even pathetic.

Feel free to run circles around them if you like!

And what do we say in response to the Corporate Zombies mocking justice and democracy for real persons:

We will, we will mock you. Mock you.

We will, we will mock you.

So, let us begin by stripping these corporate zombies of their corporate logos.

Let us line up and take turns, one by one, take a logo, strip it from the corporate zombie, and place the logo in the dustbin of history.

First up, we have The Banking and Finance Industry, aka, “The Money Changers”

The Money Changers mock economic fairness.

The Money Changers insist on reaping huge profits on financial transactions while producing little of real value.

The Money Changers have created a casino economy where they are the house that doesn’t lose, taking their cut whether their gambles with other people’s money wins or loses.

The Money Changers drain off hundreds of billions of tax dollars as a reward for crashing our economy and creating the largest recession since the Great Depression.

The Money Changers then have the nerve to try to reduce the meaning of human life down to a credit score.

And what do we say in response to the Money Changers mocking economic fairness:

We will, we will mock you, mock you.

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We the people will take back our economy.

Next up, we have the Military-Industrial Complex, aka “The War Profiteers”

The War Profiteers represent one of the most profitable businesses on Earth.

The War Profiteers literally make a killing, and people are dying for their business.

In our most recent wars, tens of thousands of Americans have been killed and maimed; and over one million Iraqis and Afghanis have been killed.

This corporate zombie feeds off the flesh of the dead.

The War Profiteers mock the value of human life.

And what do we say in response to The War Profiteers mocking the value of human life:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We will inspire human life, not kill it.

Next up, we have the Energy Industry Profiteers, a.k.a., The Billionaire Polluters

The Billionaire Polluters are addicted to petroleum, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy sources which cannot be sustained, and are destroying the planet.

The Billionaire Polluters resist alternative and renewable energy sources, willing to sell their Mother Earth for a buck.

And what do we say in response to The Billionaire Polluters who mock Mother Earth:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

You may have the energy, but we have the power!

Next up, we have the Media and Communications Moguls, aka “The Propaganda Profiteers”

The Propaganda Profiteers dominate the news industry, silencing diverse voices, and silencing dissent.

The Propaganda Profiteers sellout democracy by pandering to unlimited corporate campaign contributions.

The Propaganda Profiteers dominate our entertainment industry, distracting us with inane entertainment, and cramming advertisements down our throats any time and any place they can, gladly taking the hugely profitable role of shill for consumerism.

The Propaganda Profiteers sell a cheap imitation of the truth while justice is denied.

And what do we say in response to The Propaganda Profiteers mocking truth and justice:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We the people are the medium for change.

Next up, we have the Industrial Food Profiteers

The Industrial Food Profiteers are much more interested in producing food products that can be genetically modified, recombined, packaged, and marketed for maximum profit than they are interested in nourishing humankind.

The Industrial Food Profiteers destroy the livelihoods of small, local, and family-owned farms.

The Industrial Food Profiteers erode topsoil like crack from a crack pipe, and pollute our environment and food with toxins.

And what do we say in response to the Industrial Food Profiteers for making a mockery of one of the most basic human needs — the need for nutritious food:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We will nourish a food system that nourishes people.

Next up, we have The Health Care Profiteers

The Health Care Profiteers purport to run a health-care system. However, we know that this so-called health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

Each year The Health Care Profiteers kill over 20,000 Americans each year because of the lack of health insurance.

This Corporate Zombie literally feeds on the sick and injured, the most vulnerable in society.

The Health Care Profiteers mock health care as a human right, denying sick and injured people help that they need, all in the name of profit.

And what do we say in response to The Health Care Profiteers mocking health care as a human right:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We the people demand universal health care now.

Last but not least, we have a potpourri of purveyors of personhood of corporations over human personhood — enough corporate misrule to piss off real persons of most any variety. This is a cabal of Sweat Shop Operators, Environment Destroyers, Labor Rights abusers.

These corporate mis-rulers mock labor rights.

These corporate mis-rulers mock making a decent, honest living.

These corporate mis-rulers mock environmental responsibility.

These corporate mis-rulers mock human values, in order to make a buck.

And what do we say in response to these Corporate Mis-Rulers mocking laborers and mocking the planet in which we all must all live:

We will, we will mock you.

Strip a logo, read the corporate name, place it in the dustbin of history, and declare:

We the people will end corporate mis-rule.

Now that we have stripped these corporate zombies of their “logos” and placed them in the dustbin of history, we offer these logos up as symbols of the oppression of the people.

[Take DUSTBIN OF HISTORY and place in front of wall (with flame symbols)]

During May Day Fest Week, we will add to this wall symbols representing oppression and barriers to justice and democracy.

[Phoenix egg piñata arises from behind wall.]

We the people, though beaten down, will rise from the ashes, like a phoenix.

We the people will rise above the forces of oppression and the barriers to justice and democracy.

We the people, will end corporate mis-rule!

Let us break open the Phoenix egg piñata to launch Occupy Toledo’s May Day Fest, as we join millions of people around the world in celebrating where true value comes from in our economy, that is, from the honest labors of real people, not from corporate shenanigans, accounting tricks, money changing, or raping Mother Earth. Let the people rule! Let May Day Fest begin!

[The Village People take turns hitting piñata until it breaks open, spilling goodies for all]

Tags: Accountability, America, Anti-Corporate, Business, Capitalism, Change, Choices, Compassion, Consumerism, Control, Corporate Personhood, Democracy, Depression, Economic, Economy, Environment, Environmental, Events, Family, Farce, Food, Funny, Future, Greed, Health Care, Health Insurance, History, Hope, Human Rights, Humanity, Inane, Injustice, Justice, Labor, Life, May Day, Meaning, Media, Military, Mock, Money, Mother Earth, Occupy Toledo, Occupy Wall Street, Oppression, Pi, Political, Poor, Possibility, Poverty, Power, Propaganda, Recession, Responsibility, Security, Slavery, Society, Soul, State, Stewardship, Suffering, Time, Toledo, Truth, Values, War, Wealth, zombie

POLITICAL CARTOON: CEO Jesus – Birthers

April 8th, 2012 Filed under: Political Cartoons Add Comment

CEO Jesus Arises to the Occasion!

Jesus Cartoon: CEO Jesus - Re-Birthers Press Conference

CEO Jesus really rises to the occasion this week of Easter! What could be tougher than answering the difficult and often inane questions put forth at a press conference? In his first go around, Jesus’ public relations department really had a big gaffe by sending two women to witness the resurrection. In Jesus’ day, women were not considered reliable or viable witnesses. What was he thinking? Of course, the modern-day CEO Jesus understands the complexities of oppression in Western civilization. These days, proper paperwork and avoiding getting bogged down in innuendo are the armor and shield of modern management. There’s no question that many modern folks doubt the actual physical resurrection of Jesus. For me, that’s less the point than addressing truth in an upfront and Jesus like manner — actually living a life that witnesses to the profound truth that life is stronger than death. In these modern times, with all of our science and technological sophistication, obfuscation of the truth is as old school as ever! This week’s parody is on the birthers. Who needs facts when simple doubt will do? Why accept evidence when such realities don’t suit one’s biases and bigotries? When Jesus appeared before Pilate, Pilate mocked the irrelevancy of truth, with his classic rhetorical question, “What is truth?” In the end, Pilate just tested the political winds and gave the mob what they wanted. Some things never change.

Interestingly, modern day evangelical Christians seem more interested in proper documentation through theological litmus tests and dogmas of belief in whether one should receive the proper credentials of being “born again” than the incarnate power of Jesus boldly witnessing to the reality that life is stronger than death, and good is stronger than evil. Rather than exchanging résumés of belief, I would suggest that they will know we are Christians by our love, not our doctrine. Unfortunately, for human control freaks, the way of love is way too wild and free. By reducing deep spiritual truths to belief and dogmas, institutional religion is born, again, and competition for brand control become the preeminent reality. Jesus rocks, quite literally on Easter, but I find that Christianity often gets in the way of following Jesus. Wherever you are entombed in your life, come out! Hmm…is that Jesus calling?

Tags: Cartoon, Change, Christianity, Comics, Competition, Control, Death, Doctrine, Dogma, Evil, Facts, Funny, Inane, Jesus, Life, Love, Modern, Oppression, Political, Power, Questioning, Questions, Reality, Religion, Resurrection, Science, Spiritual, Truth, Western Civilization, Women

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Oppressor or Heretic

February 21st, 2012 Filed under: Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Oppressor or Heretic–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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For those of you who aspire to being a revolutionary, or wake up one day and learn that you are revolutionary, this Albert Camus quote is for you. Camus presages the results of revolutionary means by pointing out that all revolutionaries either end up as oppressors or heretics. I don’t know about you but I’m a proud member of the national heretics society. In terms of means and ends, I believe that this quote speaks to the issue of violence versus nonviolence. Violent revolutionaries may change or even upgrade the oppressors, but ultimately, they do not defeat oppression, just other oppressors. I believe that violence is inherently oppressive. Now, I am willing to argue what constitutes violence, particularly since I define violence and nonviolence quite broadly. In fact, it may be better to say that I believe that oppression is violence and that nonviolence is liberation. In the end, I see violence is reinforcing the status quo, the powers that be. Thus, violence is not really revolutionary, even though it may bring a lot of outward change. To be truly revolutionary I believe that there must be an inward change that is consistent with any outward change. I think that this is where the heretics come in. Most people will settle for an outward world that advantages themselves, even if it means disadvantaging others. For violent revolutionaries, this typically means disadvantaging one’s defeated foes as some sort of punishment or retributive justice. This is generally accepted as a practical reality, the conventional wisdom and practice of our world. I believe that this type of approach is extremely dangerous since history seems to prove that the turning of the tables simply means new oppressors. However, if one wishes to overthrow conventional wisdom, it is likely necessary to practice unconventional wisdom. If the endgame is equality, an egalitarian society for all of its members, then treating former oppressors punitively becomes a poor foundation for egalitarianism. I think that this gets to the heretical nature of nonviolence. Nonviolence is a way of life, not just a tactic or a means. It means and the ends are inextricably intertwined. More simply put, the means determine the ends. How could it be otherwise? I find it quite ironic that hard-nosed revolutionaries advocating violence somehow think that violence will lead to nonviolence, or perhaps more depressingly, cynically accept that violence is unavoidable. Perhaps Camus recognized the intractable nature of the struggle between violence and nonviolence, thus he laid out the dichotomy of either becoming an oppressor or becoming a heretic. I find myself attracted to the iconoclastic, because it seems the most apt attitude to create revolutionary change. This may be simply tied to the definition of what revolution is: a paradigm shift from the status quo, a change in the nature of the powers that be. You can’t defeat the status quo by the means of the status quo. You can’t defeat the powers that be, by simply wielding authority over others in some better fashion. I think the point is that we should not even be wielding authority over others, and this never quite seems fashionable. As long as people want to lord over one another, then nonviolence will be unfashionable. So, join the unfashionable heretics. Be free to ignore conventional wisdom when it seeks to enslave us, and when it asks us to enslave others. Be free, because being free is the best way to teach others about being free. Be the change. This is a revolutionary.

Tags: Attitude, Authority, Camus, Change, Conventional Wisdom, cool design, Egalitarian, Equality, Freedom, Heretics, History, Ironic, Justice, Life, Nature, Nonviolence, Oppression, Paradigm Shift, Philosophical, Politics, Poor, Power, Powers that be, Punishment, Reality, Revolution, Revolutionary, Society, Status, Status Quo, Top Pun, Violence, Wisdom

Homosexual Agenda

February 16th, 2012 Filed under: Gay, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Homosexual Agenda – Spend Time with Family – Be Treated Equally – Buy Milk

Homosexual Agenda – Spend Time with Family – Be Treated Equally – Buy Milk–Gay
Pride Rainbow Store FUNNY BUTTON

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T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker
sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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Gay Civil Rights Buttons.

This gay civil rights design is a parody of the right-wing fixation on some nefarious homosexual agenda. If you want to get right-wing religious conservatives all hyped up, talk about homosexuality. Somehow, the idea that LGBTQA persons are normal people who desire the same civil rights as everyone else is a foreign concept to them. This long-standing religious bigotry is hugely disproportional even if you were to buy the Scriptural reasoning by religious conservatives. Homosexuality is one of those touchstone issues that acts as a lightning rod for many darker aspects of religious conservatism. Of course, they are plenty of issues with sexuality itself. Role in issues of controlling moralism and imperial exclusivism, and the oppression train is ready to roll! While you may hear language about welcoming and loving the sinner not the sin from the more moderate bigots, the bottom line is always that homosexuality is always viewed as wrong and deviant. So much for that grand diversity. The Bible talks very little about homosexuality, though, granted, what it would seem to say about homosexuality is not very good. This strikes me as eerily similar to the biblical basis for racism. Back to the issue of disproportionality. When religious folks overwhelm and overlook other obviously more important issues like poverty and violence with less clear issues, I don’t think this represents some kind of cutting-edge discernment; rather, an honest reading of church history, shows that this is people hanging onto an age-old bigotry not some eternal truth. While racism is present in the Church, just like it is present in most institutions to some degree, the Church has at least agreed that racism is wrong. While there is much of the Christian church that does not view women as equals, most prominently, the Roman Catholic Church, the overall social norm has tipped to female equality. If you think that the Roman Catholic Church is that they hold out, just speak to a lot of Catholics; but times are changing. I believe that homosexuality is in the inevitable queue for growing awarenesses around age-old bigotries that will fall when true religion is manifest. Our sexuality, including sexual orientation, is a gift from God. This should be celebrated, not despised.

The other thing I really like about this design is that it focuses on the normality of gay aspirations. Of course LGBTQA people want to be treated equally – duh! But this equality is a prerequisite for going about living a normal life. I will pray and work for the day when discrimination against LGBTQA persons is only a subject in the history books that baffles people why it ever happened in the first place. Let’s make it so!

Tags: Bible, Bigotry, Catholic, Christian, Church, Civil Rights, Conservative, cool design, Discrimination, Diversity, Equality, Family, Female, Funny, Gift, God, History, Homosexuality, Institutions, LGBT, Life, Morality, Normal, Oppression, Poverty, Present, Pride, Queer, Racism, Religion, Religious, Right-Wing, Sexuality, Time, Top Pun, Truth, Violence, Women, Work

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