Wow.

Surprise!  Don't get cocky or shout what you plan - YOU ARE NOT IN POWER YET. And DJT as a lame duck may make some awful moves and his cabinet enable him as a last ditch stab. Do not relax your vigilance. Expect subterfuge!

Existential dread

 Well, it's US election day, 2026. Today I am struck by the morose thought that no matter what the outcome, and no matter what is said (on and on) about the outcome -- we will NEVER NEVER be the same. 

The near world and the greater world have been irrevocably broken in a way that cannot be repaired in 2 years, four years, eight years, even ten years. We have, or our leader has essentially played an international game of 52 pickup -- thrown all the known processes & alliances into the air and where they will land is anyone's guess. 

Though a quite a few have been slipped into someone's suit pocket.  

If you voted for a shake up a while back, babe you got it. Maybe not the way you wanted... 

If Dems ride the wave today - they will be full of optimism. What is the expression -"many a slip twixt the cup and the lip"!! Will the prez Jan 6 it again? Possibly with Military assistance. Even if by some miracle a new Dem congress is seated. How will that work with the current administration still in place - one which pays little attention to what the law is, who makes the law, or who supposedly controls the purse. I suspect things will go on and get messier still: wars and purges AI SNAFUS, as the planet seems to dry and drown, freeze and burn in equal measure. 

The next decade may consist of constant accusation, name calling, prurient projection and endless threats and court cases, requests for injunction, defamation suits and bullshit contributions by corporations, upstarts and billionaires trying to own us or replace us with weird looking robots. Or get rid of us in South American gulags or mass graves -- the secretary of "war" is forcing the troops to practice digging huge trenches with giant earth-moving machines. All the while we are thinking that's for Iran. Sure it is.

I might be in a bad mood or maybe it's the Covid shot I had yesterday, or I just might be wrong or underestimating the coming generations ability to creatively find a way to persist at living.  Fingers crossed.

And yes I voted, first day of early voting. You have to try. Whoever you are -find some joy and hold on to it...

Describing the world is not either-or

 

Typically, "approved mind-sets" are limited and they consider a limited set of "facts."

Their othodoxys are entirely contained inside a "thought box." To really see a situation, it is necessary to climb out of that box, stand outside it in order evaluate the possibilities.

Our Systemic Blindness

Our systemic blindness

original post date 5/9/2011 to a Facebook profile that I deleted

Fascinated by the improbable potential of events as they unfold? Me too.

Complex system failure often involves multiple failures in multiple systems, followed by human error and denial, hysteria, indifference and angst. 

It’s odd - the curious way the status quo comports itself and how it is often not telling the truth, or has actually deceived itself. Think stock market crash, or Fukushima.

Often it's a harvest of weeds gone out of control, the unanticipated grown up through the cracks in everything. Yet things continue, helter skelter. Things change over time, how much they will change is open to speculation.

In general, everyone - individuals, countries and corporations - anticipate and prepare for only what is in their experience to imagine. 

(The faces -I made of Sculpy and later painted. They look a bit like they can't see out of their polymer eyes...)

Danger Will Robinson!

Remember that old show? Boy these are the times! Best to stay alert. Listen to what is being said. Keep your ears up like this fawn!

New ads on the dot gov site for that big ole white dwelling pump up the faithful for the end times. The ads talk of the “Final Battle” this midterm. Kind of echos Final Sol ution doesn't it? 

And how will he get rid of “communists” and "deepstate"rs “once and for all” ????  REMEMBER JAN 6, PEOPLE.…. 

The problem isn’t that the ads (paid for by tax payer dollars) break the LAW (they do).  The problem is that they foreshadow a purge! Don't put it past him!!! He’s telling us what he’s planning.  

 WAKE UP! 

Who supplies the context - you or your audience?

 You have the novel of your life in your head. War and Peace - hundreds of pages. On a given day you recall and relate a few short bits to others.  But these vignettes are entirely without context to some listeners and they could conclude things you didn't intend. 

You know the whole of it. It's hard for you relate to the few statements you've made without the context of your self-knowledge. However other people may reach  conclusions that are inaccurate projections relating to their experiences, their imaginings, their hopes or fears. 

They say the devil is in the details.... The ones you forget to say and the ones listeners supply......

DO NOT TRUST "VOTESAFE" -DOT -ORG

 It's NOT a voter registration site  -- It's a data collection site. Not only does it sell the info you enter into it  - it hoovers up your browser history, location history and device data, past purchases, interests AND SELLS YOUR DATA to its associated businesses -- but doesn't actually register you to vote.

LET ME REPEAT --- IT DOES NOT REGISTER YOU TO VOTE.

It's designed to look like vote.org which is a voter registration site. The guy with the chainsaw from doge created it. He has motives alright.

BE CAREFUL PEOPLE. 

POEM: Ashes to Ashes into brick - on coalitions of the formerly powerless

 Ashes to Ashes*

Dust has no tongue,

hasn't a song,
wields no pen,
no tools for building or carving,
scumbles no brushes
in maddening rhythms.

Dust does not long for nor aspire.
Dust lies in random arrangement,

drifts will-less though the cracks under doors,
accumulates behind the tassels of bedspreads,
in the dim beneath of things.

Dampened  with a measure of tears,

pressed by hardship to a mold,
dust becomes brick,
paves the way,
shoulders a roof,
shatters plate glass with aplomb.

                    - Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

* published in heck I forget where

Club America, Members Only

One of the consequences of 9/11 is the extended backlash against immigrants, even visitors or folks on work or student visas. Even citizens who display evidence of "otherness."  Some of us have gone back to Joe McCarthy's ways.

 

There is such irony that people whose ancestors came here to flee oppression, seek opportunity, find freedom, find home - they don't want to pass it on. While I don't believe in open borders -- I do believe in the melting pot, in asylum and a pathway to entry and to citizenship. There once was a long negotiated bipartisan immigration bill passed that 45|47 squashed because he wanted to run on the issue. That's bad form. 

This poem dates from 2005 published in A First Tuesday in Wilton an anthology, edited by Rose Drew and Alan Gillot and printed by Stairwell Press. It was then titled The Get Away. 

Club America, Members Only

Outside
=========
a locked gate waiting.
Socked-in, Statue of Liberty's
harbor gone grey.
Ellis Island, your sentimental
push-button displays,
sepia-toned icons, a memory
of distance and desperation,
clutched burlap bundles, dented
suitcases, hand-written name tags,
befuddled seekers. almost home.

Now you welcome

only tourists. Neon bloodies

your halls of remembrance:

"No Vacancy * No Vacancy * No Vacancy"

Close the airports!

Close the Brooklyn Bridge!

The children of the children

of the formerly oppressed

want to seal the borders

with invisible force fields

with infallible alien detection devices

and declare

"CLUB AMERICA -  MEMBERS ONLY!"

So take back your tired, and your

poor, your huddled masses yearning....

Give them a cell

with room service, limited menu,

meticulously kept steel bunks.

STOP - PACK UP!

Fold your love of FREEDOM,

tuck it in.

Fold your sweat up with your dreams,

Forget about your son in Cinncinati.

Do not pass. Do not collect. Go directly. Go back

================

Outside

Enough said. Or never enough said.

 This is a photo of a poster from years ago.....