C.J.Sellers

I saw a 30second commercial for the National Guard on Hulu.com recently that’s like Starship Troopers without the bugs. Found it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5pQW-k43is

It’s revolting to watch them start out with benignly helping folks and quickly lead into to tanks and killing, given the recent history of military propaganda and the climate of fear fomented by politicians in league with the corporate media post 9/11. I remember the lip service given to freedom and our fine ideals and the insistence by those who voted for more warfare that we were going there to help and do good. I remember the justification of liberating the people, most especially the women who, in reality, had a greater likelihood of being starved, killed, raped, or now may have children with birth defects due to the “Happy Liberation” gift we left of Radioactive Uranium Dust, making Saddam Hussein’s exploits look small by comparison.

Shiny buttons and fancy swords (as shown in the recruiting video) can’t hide the shame brought on the uniform by engaging in illegal preemptive warfare on premise of lies wrought through means of torture to jumpstart the Bush Dynasty Wars, Part Deux. Military service is no longer an honorable profession so long as war follows a corporate profit motive. Some of the idiots that signed up for a paycheck, while claiming to be patriots, were too dense to catch on even when the neocons spelled it out for them in an acronym: Operation Iraqi Liberation= OIL. For years they still denied the stupidity. Years. Even after watching the military stand over the oil field while Iraqs museums were ransacked and the women were raped…er, “liberated”. Even after the Abu-Ghraib documented evils, even after finding out how much Halliburton profited.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=544476389136766337#
But hardly anyone denies the stupidity of Iraq now. Yet people still sign up to go over there and kill people in some other area nearby and continue to fuel the military industrial complex chasing a boogieman Al Queda that didn’t even exist before we called it that? We can’t kill the idea that is morally reprehensible to some Muslims, we’re only giving it fuel by attacking them and occupying their lands. http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

If we’re going to blow money over there instead of at home, common sense says forgo weapons, invest, and give the Iraqis jobs that don’t involve killing Americans. But that would be *common* sense, which serves the commoner. The military is not serving the common person by going over there, they’re serving (albeit indirectly) profiteering corporations that are milking the taxpayers…and they’re consigning us, our children, and grandchildren in a national debt to foreign interests.

Corporations are amoral. By and large, they exist, bottom-line, for profit. That’s why we must resist their influence in politics and pop culture and public opinion if we wish to preserve some semblance of morality. Even now, with Bush & Co. out of the picture, the corporations continue to gain ground. The problem is much bigger than punishing a guilty figurehead such as Bush or Cheney (though that would be a welcome start). The corruption is firmly entrenched in America but who can and will root it out? What’s it going to take when corporations own nearly everything, have the most money and power, and will get each other’s back but not the average American’s? Who’s looking out for the poor chump that’s lured to his/her death by this video?

RESOURCES FOR RESISTERS:

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Resources_resisters.vp.html

George Lakoff asks us, “Where’s the Movement?” Then he goes on with a lot of the same material.

I like Lakoff, don’t get me wrong. He’s been helpful in understanding the need to frame political issues to appeal to a large audience.

The problem I have with Lakoff is that what he has to say about what language moves conservatives is much more insightful than what he suggests will move liberals. IMO, he’s not much help in crafting effective jargon. The conservative selling points work because they only aspire to sell to their base. Liberals try to be everything to everyone. They try to appeal to the heart and intellect as it applies to government. Conservatives appeal to the gut. The gut reaction is always more powerful than appeals to compassion or thoughtfulness.

I mean think about it, when you see someone begging in the street, do you rush up and see what you can do to help? Do you offer them the shirt off your back? Do you offer to take them anywhere they want to go or let them stay in your place? Someone somewhere probably does but it’s far from the norm. This is the image that the empathy message implies and it ends where it runs up against the hard reality that we’re NOT all in it together and that’s just bullshit.

Liberals need to come up with some new material and don’t look to Lakoff, he just doesn’t get human nature, he’s projecting his personality type onto the rest of us. Not all liberals respond to the touchy-feely response. Look at how effective Obama was, was it because he was making appeals for empathy? No, he proposed fairness and direct action. He promised results. Action is what liberals want to see. They’re sick of being sold out by lame-ass stand-for-nothing Democrats. Liberals want justice. They want results.

Don’t wait for something worthwhile to happen, liberals. Be it now, make it happen. Learn from Obama’s failure and the conservative’s success. Don’t play to the middle, speak to the gut, shoot from the hip, shoot straight, pitch in and lend a hand. These cliches are about action and they still pay out. Craft your message about action and integrity, that will appeal to liberals at this point, IMO. And maybe even some centrists and conservatives too but don’t count on it and don’t aim for them, they are not your audience.

by C.J. Sellers

“Josmar Trujillo is trying to cross the bridge
from Reactionary to Revolutionary.” –Facebook

What of those rarefied American Elms
Ulmus americana, the White Elms
clustered and towering, condemning their young
with damning shade after all those many years
of enjoying their wealth of sun?

And see how in winter they don’t mind
the young fodder or whatever’s down there
as it serves to cover their roots.
Do the saps warm from obligation
or is it fate where the progeny fell and when?

And so Josmar Trojillo asks,
“What of this old forest?  Good firewood?
Surely these young sprouts will be lost
but when the smoke clears, there at the base,
generations freed to live amid the blessed sun!”

So say we all,  as Josmar echoes Che, “Vive la Revolución!”
Come lightning, come wind, spark! Bring it all down in flames
so the young leaves of the cultivar,  American Liberty
will dance amid the ash and in the sun again.

Just when you think things are starting to shape up a little, Ireland goes and declares blasphemy illegal, and now “Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/01/irish-atheists-challenge-blasphemy-law

by C.J. Sellers

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
~Kurt Vonnegut

He was born in November in that senate win.
What he won no corn fritter had ever had before.
In the city in the garden, you might say he found a plan;
You might say he even found his campaign therein.

Come from Honolulu to join the inner beltway loop.
He was on his way, fueled by waves of corn.
If promises are broken, the corn won’t really care.
Better popcorn than Republican.

But Manhattan’s Smoky Mountain lie
will bring a rain of fire in the sky.
Our stalks will be outlines against what walls remain.
Smoky Mountain lies,
Smoky Mountain lies.

He soon climbed the polls, saw his sea of fans below
spread wider than his eyes could even see.
To elect him might be crazy cuz he said we’d touch the sun.
We were glad to lose our minds and memories.

Now he stands at the podium, wondering if he’s wise.
Fine words replaced the corn and they’d won.
History tells if POTUS transcends or hides the corn.
Like once Moses did, clear words divide our field.

But back that old Smoky Mountain lie,
someone somewhere gets a mushroom in the sky.
Talk to POTUS in the town hall, this one might again reply
Smoky Mountain lies.

His rise was a wonder but our hearts still know some fear.
Of a simple thing we cannot comprehend–
They build bombs at the mountains and now want to make some more,
more bombs as a means toward our end.

But Y-12’s Smoky Mountain lies
will billow a bright fire in the sky.
He’d be just a corn nugget to believe that he could fly
Smoky Mountain lies.

Its believin’ Hocus-pocus lies
that feeds us this ol’ pie in the sky.
Roll us/smoke us, prize or POTUS, use us to fuel your car…
Smoky Mountain lies.
Smoky Mountain lies.
Smoky Mountain lies.

“A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.” ~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

by C.J.Sellers

White hair, blue suits and red lips
ruled the decorous front line.

She wandered up like a silly duck
about to squawk at lions.

She stood tall for a child,
at the podium, as all the rest had,
even those two, three times her age.

She’d walked up there to protest,
but to their surprise, she talked about
the voice itself in a sing-song way.

She let her voice go high
and then very low and swung her arms wide
and up as if she really would just give up

And one leg pitched out to the side.
She might have even flapped.
I don’t recall what all she said
amid this circus act.

The whole room was confused smiles
and silence before she walked away.

Defying sense,
the old folks spent millions on a new
nuclear weapons plant that day.

It occurs to me that I am a preacher and so are you. Everyone is biased and we wear our bias/colors like plumage, some of us to bond us to a group out of defense or to better attack, which may still be some sort of defense.

On my pulpit, as an ex-patriot of the herd, I wear no colors in particular. Mine are a kaleidoscope of holograms reflecting the whole of creation, just what I can see from my vantage, this little spot here that I own, I own all that I survey, you included. In my ex-patriotism, I’m for no one in particular and everyone in general.

I just want to tell you, from my soapbox, that the sting you feel from the preacher man/woman on the corner is not from what is said or from accusing silence, but at the implication that you are not of the same ilk, that you, one or the other, are an alien object, not you both the integral subject. What stings you is the sense of disunion that comes from the absence of love.

Three quotes on love that illustrate my meaning:

“Love is not just looking at each other; it’s looking in the same direction.”
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.”
~Anais Nin

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
~ Oscar Wilde

You can ignore the man on the corner but you can’t escape him in your heart. And you will never reach your enemy if you call him the enemy. You will never know his love if you tell yourself he is not capable or worthy of yours. Never love the lie that we, as individuals, are separate from the whole of creation and from each other, it has been proven untrue, not just in our hearts but by modern science! When I’m dead, I hope they put that on my tombstone so I can keep preaching love from the grave.

Cheers!

by C.J.Sellers

Woman is a jar of untold jellybeans.
Who keeps a jar of jellybeans? Why?
Who wants a jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Who knows the jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Who owns the jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Answer: Just the woman. I say it oughtta be the law.

“Her Welsh Testament” by C.J. Sellers

“As promised, the illustrious Mrs. Woosnam,” claims the patron, her great-grandson, grandly ushering. She enters, garbed in a proud, violet gown, her gait, somewhat unsteady and wrong, like worn, bleached wood that’s been afloat too long, that now I’ve found on this foreign land. And around she brings her island’s home, Wales, dragging its proud veil, affixed like a net in tow.  Her presence bends the New  World back ’til it succumbs. Elbow gently mugged by the young man’s dutiful hand, she’s sat down, put in a chair in the good light.

He whispers, “Paint her young. It’s a gift. Don’t bother chatting. Doesn’t know a word of English.” He turns and speaks her native tongue; a wild strangeness he domesticates with,”Mum”. She nods,  smiling, and lets him kiss an ashen hand, then holds his, tight at first, as if she won’t let go. The feather falls, the moment’s warmed.

Now alone, I turn my canvas to her still frame and the easel legs scrape, resounding, confounding the awkward day Now follows smiles and blushes and quickly on to choosing paints, brushes… So I’m gazing, mixing, dabbing at the pallet… Paining for some momentum and hours later, still not painting. I look to her. I’m searching and I can see the light has plait parched lines across her arms that press deeper down the hour hand. Light pervades the icy blue globe of her farthest eye that must want to squint to see the street below or look inward or want to sleep or so I imagine her. The neatly up-swept crown is haloed with a disarray of fine, white hair, counterweight by sulky shadows in the standing hollows of the nape below. That sweet face that must have once held charm. Nothing smooth now but all fair. Just as I am to press my brush down, I despair and want to speak but she’s been wise. She knows English. I don’t know Welsh. I’m no Brit, no need to gloat, but I’m American. My television has never once mentioned her home. What do I know? I cannot know the stubborn place of root there. She comes and sits politely for her grandson in silent testament but can’t expect much from a blind, American painter, this inviolate Welshman, Mrs. Woosnam.

[Author's note: inspired by,"A Welsh Testament" by by R. S. Thomas and "Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009).]

"Safety Net" by Pulizer-Prize-winning political cartoonist, Tom Toles @ Washington Post.

I’m a patriot and I have declared war on the American poor.  No American should be poor, period. America is too good for poverty. We’re better than China, India and all the rest who treat their people like parts easily replaced daily like dirty socks. I LOVE AMERICA, my family, my neighbors… I love everyone, in theory…I can also demonstrate TOUGH LOVE for the whole world by not giving in to the temptation to lower our American standard of living just to compete with the Third World. Let them fight for our scraps if they won’t raise their own standard for their people. Let them be the ones who keep giving up and giving in. Let them be the slaves but not Americans. We are the land of the free, home of the brave and that’s not a cliche if we truly are free. It’s a joke if we’re not. I’m brave enough to admit I’m a Hater. God how I detest poverty. Do the poor dress nice? Do they smell good? Do they talk about anything fun? Are they ever having fun? Admit you do too; own up; every American hates poor people and poverty. Even the American poor hate their own poverty, they hate themselves when they take a handout because America is too good for charity. We Americans are all too good for it, without exception.

By raising the stakes at home, we declare war on the poor everywhere. To hell with poverty and anyone who wants poverty to continue to exist here. To hell with anyone who thinks it’s part and parcel to American Capitalism. The only corporations who want Americans to be poor are the ones feeding off their sick and dessicated, walking corpses. Those corporations need to die out and quick. Yes, we need to send them to the hell they would make us remain in, the hell where America continues to suck majorly: the bizarro world of the broken system, insanity, failure, and obsolescence.

After years of sitting on the fence regarding health care, I’ve finally settled in favor of single payer healthcare to salvage our broken system (though it would be better, IMO, to scrap the system and start over,  I’m being practical. This is a fairly quick fix.) In fact, I find now that due to the changing needs of the marketplace that favor flexibility and innovation, I’m in favor of a number of socialist improvements that would strengthen the American workforce.

The deciding factor was my realization that technological advancement and market demand for innovation will render jobs obsolete faster than Americans can adapt for some time to come (it may eventually level out but not for the foreseeable future). Innovation means regularly dispensing with the old. That equates to jobs and people. And I’m not talking about COBOL people trying to compete in our present marketplace, I’m talking about everything changing on a dime and suddenly they’re singing, “Brother, can you spare a dime?“. We’re in a technological boom comparable to the Industrial Revolution. This is our Technological Revolution. The market demands we respond quickly with highly specialized and skilled labor. If we don’t take care of our people, there will evolve a new poor, not just what strict authoritarians have traditionally considered as those who fail. Telling them to man up is tantamount to declaring, “Let them eat cake!” We’ve seen how well that went over. Share the cake Americans. There’s enough for everyone. If we don’t, America gets a major FAIL.

Conservative arguments against measures to ensure the general welfare always have a moral flavor. But their attitudes were traditionally against rewarding the lazy or stupid. They favor education but are strongly against free handouts. “Nobody gets a free lunch!” In theory, with Capitalism, the cream is supposed to rise to the top and the dregs to the bottom. That’s no longer the norm. The new paradigm is more like Russian Roulette. Some win, some lose, and it’s remarkably random. This new random poor will contain some of our smartest and best who were simply just unlucky if luck fell in favor of innovation in a different direction. We still need them sound of body and mind and stable enough to respond to new demands.  We can’t afford to let anyone fail.  Especially not Americans who can adapt and learn new skills and continue to make a contribution to the betterment of society.

As it stands, you go to school, do well, get a great job, do great on the job working for a great company but still, you may be quickly rendered obsolete if new technology emerges that matches public demand. We need a safety net to allow people time to learn and adapt, ESPECIALLY people from rural areas who have less access to jobs and higher education. We need solidarity across the board, coast to coast, rural to urban, across all sectors. As it stands, a safety net only exists for people who already have economic security going into the job force and throughout OR people who are already poor. What good are they to progress and innovation as they are, unskilled and uncouth? The “safety net” for the poor is not such that adequately lifts them from poverty so they can keep America on top. You know the saying, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime”. This is NO LONGER TRUE if it’s a one-time opportunity. That man or woman is going to need to learn to fish differently maybe two or three times in their life and they will need time to adapt. As for the poor, the poor don’t get the chance to learn to fish for the good jobs, no matter how smart or capable they are. If they don’t have the education, they are eliminated from fishing. They are useless. So I hate the poor. Let’s get rid of them by assimilating them into the comfort of the middle. There’s a reason there’s less crime and violence in the suburbs. If everyone had their basic needs met, we’d be restored to a more idyllic era on the social level. So long as some flourish at the expense of others, there will be violence and crime. Eliminate violence and crime by eliminating poverty. Go on and hate it if such violence of emotion may motivate you to action on behalf of the common good.

In the diversity of America, we have a significant class disparity. I’m not against the rich, just the poor! We are not so diverse, we are mostly moderately poor. Very few people are actually rich and even fewer own corporations. If the cream actually rose to the top, wouldn’t there be more rich people in America, assuming America is so “great”? Problem is, coming from money doesn’t make people smarter or better at their jobs. If we commit to classism, we’ll be less competitive. Classism is not a moral viewpoint, it’s based in greed, selfishness, and bigotry. The old fallback arguments about taxes being a theft of labor are just lazy thinking in our present world when no one is actually free from risk of the bullet of poverty that hits at random. Conservatives and libertarians need to catch up to the present now, before they become victims of their retrograde thinking. The poor are no longer just “junkies, welfare moms, and drunk, deadbeat dads”. They are potentially anyone at all at any time.

From poet, Kenneth Patchen’s “Journal of Albion Moonlight”:

“I hate the poor. Once again: I hate the poor. Oh yes, the kingdom of heaven – through the eye of the needle; but I have no use for their heaven, I could invent fifty better ones in a single day. I was born of the poor. I never had enough to eat. I never had decent clothes. I couldn’t stomach it. I said: I won’t be poor. I go hungry often enough now, but I am not ‘of the poor.’ I am richer than the richest banker. Because: I hate the poor out of my love for them. Until all men unite in hating the poor, there can be no new society. Stalin loves the poor – without them he could not exist. The revolutions of the future must be directed not against the rich but against the poor. To be poor means to be blind, demoralized, debased. The poor have been the slop-pails of capitalism, repositories for all the filth and brutality of a filthy, brutal world. Do not liberate the poor: destroy them – and with them all the jackal-Stalins that feast on their hideous, shrunken bodies. How the Church and the false revolutionaries draw together: love the poor – for they are humble. I say hate the poor for the humility which keeps their faces pressed into the mud. The poor are the product of cruel and false society. Lift them to the stars; tell them to walk proudly on this earth: the cathedrals and broad roads were made by the labor of their hands; it is the duty of all true revolutionists not only to restore these things into their hands but also – and this is the key – to put them into their heads. Empty stomachs, empty heads: fill both with good food. Don’t shove Peter the Great back into their throats.”

Get sick once without insurance and it can ruin your whole family’s ability to adapt for a long time to come. That hurts America’s pride. Morality aside, that’s not good for this country’s work force. Having a cowboy attitude for Lady Luck bestowing wealth at whim is stupid when you have to gamble with four to six years of expensive schooling beforehand. What a waste of money. What a waste of time. What a bore.

Our educational system needs updating as well. Education is too expensive and brief.  Education must be ongoing. A college degree in our present system saddles our children with debt at the outset. What’s the purpose of that? Is the piece of paper really necessary? Is that an impressive reward if it’s a degree in some obsolete programming language? Who cares? Like that will win you a job in three years when your shiny cool fresh-out-of-college-job disappears. In the spirit of Web 2.o Socialism like Wikipedia, all classes should be broadcast online for free and Internet access to educational materials, lectures, and syllabus should be free to all. Some are already. It’s time to end the impediments to Americans who want to gain the skills necessary to compete on the international technological market. People who are sick or eating out of dumpsters are not going to be able to adapt and compete intellectually. Employers should not expect people to come with a degree. If they’re not going to offer on the job training, they should just offer an interview and competency test to demonstrate proficiency. Anything else is discrimination. Requiring people to pay for their right to compete for a job is discrimination based on class.

To think of a new model for the job marketplace, use the success of Wikipedia for an example. If Wikipedia came in editions that were only available for purchase, that would be like the old encyclopedias that have, like print in general, become increasingly obsolete. If people don’t like that edition of Wikipedia and it’s fixed in that state, unable to be corrected until the next version arrives on the market, that edition having failed could mean the failure of Wikipedia in toto and would mean the end of future Wikipedias. A more flexible and adaptive type of information matrix would take it’s place. Wikipedia is the success that it is today for the very reason that jobs are being rendered obsolete. Wikipedia’s success would mean that Encyclopedia Brittanica would fail. All those smart people at Brittanica lose their jobs. Are they out on the street? Or should they log on and help to continue to improve the new, adaptive Wikipedia or Linux or provide open-source software? Well, there’s no job and paycheck in doing so, however, it’s an activity that’s in the interest of the common good. It’s volunteerism that is nowadays, more or less taken for granted. It’s labor expended for one’s fellow humans with no pat on the back. You never get to see these gift laborers who share their wealth of knowledge and expertise for good. How can we ensure they don’t die of starvation or illness for continuing to improve a system that rendered their livelihood obsolete? With a new safety net provided in favor of innovation.   Socialist Capitalism 2.o.

I honestly think that most corporations will be in favor of this improvement of the American workforce. They are presently looked at to provide benefits but if everyone has benefits, their competitive incentives will be of a different kind. Instead of people competing for the best job to get fringe benefits like comprehensive health care, now how about the best corporations offer Lasik surgery or physical therapy or a newly beautiful set of teeth? Or a company credit card? Sure, some have this already but in general, I think this type of improvement (eliminating the bottom) could lead to a shift in quality of life all the way to the top. America’s new “American Dream” will once again, inspire emulation rather than revulsion from the world for being fascist and outmoded. If our present tactic was working out we would be more competitive than we are. Don’t tell me Americans in general aren’t motivated by the finer things and that this method won’t make America a better place to live and work! That aside, the sad fact is, unless America provides a better package to working people, America will not compete with China or elsewhere. We’re going to have to address the fact that Americans are not motivated to excellence by the promise of their basic needs being covered if they do well.  We’re motivated by our individual affinities. This will not change. From a moral and free-market standpoint, rewarding Americans with something they actually want, not just need, is win/win.