Up Against the Wall

There are some days when I think about the roots of the situation of the world today.  Maybe it was the 1970s children who having avoiding being drafted dropped into about a decade of total self focus.  Maybe we the children of the late 1950s, who came of age as the Vietnam war was winding down,  needed to continue the activism of the 1960s.  Maybe as opposed to drinking, fucking ad smoking dope we should have been watching out for what the tired, wrinkled old white man were doing next..  Maybe we should have been focused on the three card monte game these tired old white men with power were playing.  Navel gazing was fun but it sure has left us in dire straits today.

As we sat there self satisfied at the end of the Vietnam era, with Nixon booted from office, as we were  lifting our celebratory beers at age 18, the invisible merchants of power were already planning to steal our  job security, steal our good paying work, and steal the quality of life from each and everyone from us.  They did not give a flaming fuck about America or American lives or the American middle class.  They were the greediest of bastards wanting more, more money for them, more power for them, more of a legacy for their families and the public welfare be damned.

Without us, we who are now early 60 somethings, being out in the street calling for a focus on improving the life of our people when we were in our 20s and 30s and 40s, it all vanished.  The jobs vanished going off to Bangladesh and Pakistan and Mexico.  Those high paying jobs that didn’t require a college education, well they evaporated.  And as we moved on from pot to coke and from rabbit ears to 157 channels (all QVC) we lost a place that was a good place to live, a good place for families..  We moved on from community and free love to a libertine’s path of decadence.  We had our heads up our collective  selfish asses.

And what can we do now?  The Supreme Court has cloaked corporations with personhood and allowed these “people’s”  unfettered funds to be funneled silently and anonymously into ever political race and ballot question that is out there.  The consolidation of media that Regan okayed has denied us an outlet to speak our views.  The rich own the newspapers, the television stations and are rapidly consolidating their control over the web.  I note there is a move afoot to deal with the troll farms and fake story mongers out there.  But my fear is that in trying to clean up this Wild West quagmire the rich will impose rules that will stifle authentic voices form being heard.  We are fucked.

I am almost back to to point where in the late 1960s where people were talking about revolution.  I am not one to believe in violence, and blowing up government buildings and the like, but I do believe in civil disobedience to the maximum.

Last night I had an extended conversation with my son about the three biggest issues facing us and how we have to focus on them in sequence.  My list was basically, 1. Global warming, 2. Nuclear weapons, 3. And the status of women and the myriad attempts in the name of religious concepts to claw back and strip them of their independence.  If we don’t deal with our warming overpopulated and increasing poisoned world, we are shit out of luck.

Why are we not addressing this?  Our politicians are bought and sold by the money of the polluters, those who want to hold onto to their cash streams.  Even if you don’t believe in global warming you have got to consider how befouled the environment is becoming and how little margin we have before the food wars come.  Shouldn’t we rethink what we are doing and change how our world works? Or die trying?.  Things like reducing the negative effects of beef production and consumption need our attention.  Things like the gyre of floating plastic that is choking our seas and our sea life has to be dealt with.

Wells nukes, uh, if any  of those dicks Trump or, Modi, Putin or some Ayatollah decide to throw down we are totally screwed.  “Nuff said.

The women thing got a bit of argument out of my son.  He was arguing we should be fighting for all those that have been subjected to the retrograde policies that Trump and his ilk have been pushing and enacting.  Blacks, Jews, the LGBTQ community are all taking their hits.  Good people on all side of Charlottesville my flaming asshole.  But I disagreed saying that women stand to lose the most with any rollback of Roe v Wade.  When women lose control of their bodies, they lose their ability to be considered full equals.  IF YOU DON’T WANT AN ABORTION BECAUSE GOD TELLS YOU IT IS WRONG DON’T GET ONE BUT LEAVE EVERYONE ELSE THE FUCK ALONE.  We need women in the majority in the state houses and in the halls of the United States Congress.  They make up more than half our population, fuck this paternalistic shit, let us place them deep into the mix of deciding our priorities.

Yeah I am talking about a revolution.  I refuse to acknowledge that Donald Trump and all that he and his corrupt minions have done is legitimate.  I am not sure have to get the flames of this revolution started but it is time.  Up against the wall you reactionary motherfuckers. Yeah we silver haired children who made love to the blue lights of pioneer amplifiers and the music of Glen Frey and Don Henley need to stand up and say, stop the madness.  We may not have done what we should have done in the 1970s but we need to do it now.  Organize, vote, march, …..you know the drill