So, yeah... I got off of Facebook last week, but in a larger sense, I feel like I've been doing this kind of thing for my entire life... going along with the flow... trying to find my place in group action... working towards what I hope and believe will be positive... running into something that seems to be a contradiction to the general flow... attempting to point out the seeming discrepancy... having cursory agreement from others, but usually in service of saying, "Huh... well, I guess that's the exception that proves the rule." *... then noticing that, especially if the discrepancy keeps cropping up, either folks ignore it, or they get disgusted and walk away from the entire premise, and still... I find that if I'm interested but want to find out why the discrepancy popped up and continues to, and also, what the quality and indication of that discrepancy might be, I get a great wave of resistance among my fellow travelers.... usually indicating to me that we've moved from one cloying mode of dogmatic "orthodoxy" to another emerging form of what is also becoming its own form of dogmatic "orthodoxy". And then the alarms start going off in my head.
And, then I get sick in my soul, disillusioned, angry, turn into a tale eating Ouroboros, and then I either become mute or explode. Then I go to the wilderness.... not always literally, although often so.... this is the Australian Aboriginal "Walk-About", the time of Jesus in the Desert, Prince Siddhartha's time under the Bo Tree, Rip Van Winkle's nap time........
It's been going on with me for over a half a century this cycle. Observation. Examination. Participation. Testing and Questioning. Discord. Disillusion. A loud or quiet exit, not from the premises, but from the club. From the fashion. From the fad. From the rationalization. From hypocrisy, both in others in that which I find has set in and is taking root in myself.
And, I don't regret any of these.... I do re-run them in my head, over and over and over.... I'm observing it in myself. It also goes on in the world over and over and over. Catholics become Protestants become Methodists become Wesleyans become....??? Jazz kids become Beat kids, become Hippies, become Punks, become Post-Punks, become Emo kids.... ???
It goes on and on and on... and every time someone becomes a disciple, he seeks, finds, loses, finds, loses... builds a franchise... builds a power structure..... Jesus rejects Pharisaic Judaism.... gives his life... Paul gloms onto the teachings of Jesus... builds the church... church is persecuted by Roman Empire... Roman Empire accepts the religion... becomes the religion... the religion is a fun-house mirror version of Pharisaic Judaism writ HUGE. Some individual followers get mute or scream at the top of their lungs. Again, and again, and again... and...
I think that the point of the story is the telling of the tale. This is the Buddha's joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. It's just that when the "joyful" part is gone, the trick is getting it back... the joy... not the sorrow... the sorrow always takes care of itself.
These excerpts from Alan Parker's "Midnight Express" illustrate the universal this process perfectly. And, I recognize that sometimes I'm the Brad Davis Bad Machine in this scenario, and sometimes I'm the yammering skinny British Bad Machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9DxqYtvmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shlBZZ-IQYY
I'm not saying that everything in existence is like this... but, I often find myself in this abstract... and then I know I need to get off the wheel for a while. So I have the energy to walk again.
*Which, by the way, is an utter pile of bullshit: There are nearly always exceptions to rules. Granted. Of course. However, those exceptions in no way EVER prove the rule. They may not invalidate the rule... that needs to be further explored... but, go into a scientific lab, perform an experiment, and when one instance doesn't go in the same direction of the rest, then tell your fellow scientists that the "Exception proves the rule." They'll laugh you right out the door. Because, in no way does the Exception Ever Prove The Rule. Period.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Respite, Repose, Reset
So, I unceremoniously left Facebook last week. I had become addicted to its most damaging aspects. I found myself incessantly checking it. Giving hours of my day to scrolling my Feed. It was the behaviour of an addict. My compositions, I discovered, were geared more and more towards trying, in some way, to sway people who I ultimately don't need in my life. Some are family members, and some are not. But, I have wasted far, far too much energy and too much time on caring what they think, or if I can or should try to influence them. The political climate of the last few years has exacerbated this, but I can't lay this exit all on that sorry state of affairs. I'm gonna own that I got addicted to tangles that weren't worth the portions of my soul that I am coming to realize that I gave to them.
Also, I find that I really, really despise what Facebook and Twitter are doing. We all have walked into a vicious social experiment that we didn't fully realize the implications of, back over a decade ago. It is not healthy to constantly converse with all the remote tangents of the history of your life. Some ghosts ought to remain ghosts. Some family only need be seen and nodded to at the annual reunion, if at all. And finally, having algorithms applied to one's self to help one more easily enter hate-filled echo chambers is an action of pure evil and self-eating abuse.
I don't know if this leave-taking will prove to be permanent, as I do a fair amount of work-related stuff there, and also have a couple of hobby sites there that I miss. There's a hiking page I like, and an old movies page, and an iceberg watching page. And, I enjoyed several years long Scrabble marathons with friends.... but there was also a fair amount of bile, and poison there, too. I injected a fair amount of it, myself. Sometimes I fancied myself in some grand ethical battle of epic proportions... and, I guess sometimes I was engaging in something like that... but, also, sometimes I was guilty of walking into the elevator and punching all the buttons to see what might light up.
Not healthy.
There's also quite a few folks there with whom I'd like to stay in touch, but I'm hoping that returning to this blog, which I haven't touched in over six years, will prove to be a more reciprocally sustaining and helpful outlet, and also will be a nice way to share stuff with friends. There's a few of you already here, and I really don't need "thousands of friends". Does anyone really actually have thousands of friends? I doubt that is actually possible. Maybe some of those folks on Facebook will join me. Who knows?
I have kept written journals for many years now, but I find that they ultimately serve a different function for me than online composition. As I read through them, I realize that they are really kind of a stream of consciousness mental spew.... there's no small amount of poison expelled in that writing, and ultimately, I'm going to burn them. They serve a purpose for me, but really, not for anyone else.
So, I'm gonna try this again. We'll see what happens. If you're out there, cool. I hope you enjoy this. That's what I wanna try to do, as well.
Also, I find that I really, really despise what Facebook and Twitter are doing. We all have walked into a vicious social experiment that we didn't fully realize the implications of, back over a decade ago. It is not healthy to constantly converse with all the remote tangents of the history of your life. Some ghosts ought to remain ghosts. Some family only need be seen and nodded to at the annual reunion, if at all. And finally, having algorithms applied to one's self to help one more easily enter hate-filled echo chambers is an action of pure evil and self-eating abuse.
I don't know if this leave-taking will prove to be permanent, as I do a fair amount of work-related stuff there, and also have a couple of hobby sites there that I miss. There's a hiking page I like, and an old movies page, and an iceberg watching page. And, I enjoyed several years long Scrabble marathons with friends.... but there was also a fair amount of bile, and poison there, too. I injected a fair amount of it, myself. Sometimes I fancied myself in some grand ethical battle of epic proportions... and, I guess sometimes I was engaging in something like that... but, also, sometimes I was guilty of walking into the elevator and punching all the buttons to see what might light up.
Not healthy.
There's also quite a few folks there with whom I'd like to stay in touch, but I'm hoping that returning to this blog, which I haven't touched in over six years, will prove to be a more reciprocally sustaining and helpful outlet, and also will be a nice way to share stuff with friends. There's a few of you already here, and I really don't need "thousands of friends". Does anyone really actually have thousands of friends? I doubt that is actually possible. Maybe some of those folks on Facebook will join me. Who knows?
I have kept written journals for many years now, but I find that they ultimately serve a different function for me than online composition. As I read through them, I realize that they are really kind of a stream of consciousness mental spew.... there's no small amount of poison expelled in that writing, and ultimately, I'm going to burn them. They serve a purpose for me, but really, not for anyone else.
So, I'm gonna try this again. We'll see what happens. If you're out there, cool. I hope you enjoy this. That's what I wanna try to do, as well.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Consilience - Or, everything I know about something came from everything, and vice versa........
Consilience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
I read Edwin O. Wilson's book on this subject some years ago, and though it was not an easy read, it was an eye opening one for me. I'd often felt that disparate avenues of knowledge and expertise could benefit and inform one another (ie.: auto-mechanics could possibly learn much from Philosophy and vice-versa ; poets could learn from astro-physicists; plumbers could teach Art historians) but, I never realized that this was actually a burgeoning philosophy of learning and gathering knowledge. I thought this phenomenon was just a weird, random way of looking at things that I'd stumbled upon. And, I'd only really moved past the novelty of the idea to an actually methodology when I'd reached mid-Life and found this approach to feed me and edify me far more than it let me down. I came to believe, the elements of the Universe (not just the physical ones, mind you) largely are what they are... it is now only their combinations that are the nearly infinite and abundant..... and which stand to teach us much and move us forward.
There is a natural tendency in the expansion of knowledge over time for that knowledge to branch and specialize. This is not a bad thing, of itself, but can tend to lead to a situation where current specialization over-values itself to the denigration and dismissal of general knowledge. This is the nut of the problem. It leads folks to come up with absurd abstractions to try to open their eyes to the immensely variegated phenomenon of temporal and spacial existence: abstractions like "Let's think outside the box." As though there were a box in the first place. There is no box. The box is an artificial construct built by the natural inclination of Specialization to value itself over Generalization, because Specialization eventually finds the focus of the "Micro" of itself to be over-whelming and ultimately exclusive of the "Macro" of all other potential avenues of exploration and inquiry. The "box" is a self imposed, and ultimately false construct; that is if its validity is purported to be concrete and naturally manifest in and of itself. It may have its usefulness, this cordoning and grouping, such as facilitating the making of incisive inquiry that is not sullied by a background noise of irrelevancies... but, ultimately, it is important to remember that that "box" is no more real or naturally evident than a set of subset brackets.
This is ultimately why I don't try to learn too much about my pursuit, Theatre, by watching Theatre. Not that I completely eschew that activity... I love Theatre, not just as a practitioner, but as an appreciator, as an audience member. But, I go with the Danish Prince's pontification on what the purpose of Theatre is: "To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature". This is important. If I am to truly to pursue a reflection of value, then what I am charged to reflect is the myriad of aspects of temporal and spacial existence. If I do not... if I only watch Theatre to help me do Theatre.... then I am holding the mirror up to the mirror. And if you've ever been to a barber shop or hair salon and sat between two large mirrors, you know the situation created: an ultimately false infinitude of infinite digression. Fascinating to contemplate, but ultimately an exercise in limiting, not expanding observation.
"To see the World in a grain of sand" is what the Buddhists say... and that is my hope. And, on those rare occasions of an awareness of concilience; the unity in the diversity; the macro in the micro... and vice versa... in those moments, I find immortality in the temporal and boundlessness within spacial dimensions.
Consilience: Here's to it.
I read Edwin O. Wilson's book on this subject some years ago, and though it was not an easy read, it was an eye opening one for me. I'd often felt that disparate avenues of knowledge and expertise could benefit and inform one another (ie.: auto-mechanics could possibly learn much from Philosophy and vice-versa ; poets could learn from astro-physicists; plumbers could teach Art historians) but, I never realized that this was actually a burgeoning philosophy of learning and gathering knowledge. I thought this phenomenon was just a weird, random way of looking at things that I'd stumbled upon. And, I'd only really moved past the novelty of the idea to an actually methodology when I'd reached mid-Life and found this approach to feed me and edify me far more than it let me down. I came to believe, the elements of the Universe (not just the physical ones, mind you) largely are what they are... it is now only their combinations that are the nearly infinite and abundant..... and which stand to teach us much and move us forward.
There is a natural tendency in the expansion of knowledge over time for that knowledge to branch and specialize. This is not a bad thing, of itself, but can tend to lead to a situation where current specialization over-values itself to the denigration and dismissal of general knowledge. This is the nut of the problem. It leads folks to come up with absurd abstractions to try to open their eyes to the immensely variegated phenomenon of temporal and spacial existence: abstractions like "Let's think outside the box." As though there were a box in the first place. There is no box. The box is an artificial construct built by the natural inclination of Specialization to value itself over Generalization, because Specialization eventually finds the focus of the "Micro" of itself to be over-whelming and ultimately exclusive of the "Macro" of all other potential avenues of exploration and inquiry. The "box" is a self imposed, and ultimately false construct; that is if its validity is purported to be concrete and naturally manifest in and of itself. It may have its usefulness, this cordoning and grouping, such as facilitating the making of incisive inquiry that is not sullied by a background noise of irrelevancies... but, ultimately, it is important to remember that that "box" is no more real or naturally evident than a set of subset brackets.
This is ultimately why I don't try to learn too much about my pursuit, Theatre, by watching Theatre. Not that I completely eschew that activity... I love Theatre, not just as a practitioner, but as an appreciator, as an audience member. But, I go with the Danish Prince's pontification on what the purpose of Theatre is: "To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature". This is important. If I am to truly to pursue a reflection of value, then what I am charged to reflect is the myriad of aspects of temporal and spacial existence. If I do not... if I only watch Theatre to help me do Theatre.... then I am holding the mirror up to the mirror. And if you've ever been to a barber shop or hair salon and sat between two large mirrors, you know the situation created: an ultimately false infinitude of infinite digression. Fascinating to contemplate, but ultimately an exercise in limiting, not expanding observation.
"To see the World in a grain of sand" is what the Buddhists say... and that is my hope. And, on those rare occasions of an awareness of concilience; the unity in the diversity; the macro in the micro... and vice versa... in those moments, I find immortality in the temporal and boundlessness within spacial dimensions.
Consilience: Here's to it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
and he bent to it again.............
Clark Nicholson:
'via Blog this'
So, when I'm not nuts... like I have been for the past year or so, I like to try to adhere daily to something I call "The Four Things". I feel like if I do these four things every day... or if I at least try to get these four things done every day, then I'll make positive gains in the quality of my life and I'll more easily be able to do the things that are important to me and that give me pleasure. So, I try each day to:
1. Read: it can be for work, but ideally, it should be something that I enjoy. Like a novel, a selection of poetry, some good comics, a play that I've always wanted to read. It can't just be obligatory reading.
2. Write: it can be in a private journal. In blog form. In a well thought out exchange on social media... it doesn't matter what form it takes as long as it is of a length and depth that requires some mental and stylistic investment. It can't just be the answer to work emails. Although, a long and heartfelt email to a friend or family member will meet the bill, as well.
3. Exercise: It can be at the gym, hiking on a mountain, doing stretches on a picnic table in a park, it doesn't matter... but just saying "I've had a busy day." doesn't count.
4. Play guitar: Not just noodling, but I need to do some scale work, and I need to practice actual songs. It's my hope to play in front of folks by the end of the year, and I'd like to have at least 20 or so songs well practiced by my birthday on Nov. 4th.
And, I'd like to add
5. Welsh: I'm trying to learn this language and I need to spend at least a half an hour a day in vocab drills.
And, once a week I want to work with Gamut's Improv Troupe, "TMI" as well as participating in some Duo work once a week.
Aaaaaand.... I've got little excuse not to do this. I'm through with mainstage work at the theater for a bit. Just finished a very satisfying run of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser", which I really enjoyed, but was quite exhausting. I know that in the past I've tried to do The Four Things (Now 5) and rarely accomplished all of it. But, I'm going to really concentrate on this for the next 9 months or so... I don't have to worry about the Park Show, as I have delegated that to Karen Ruch and I know that that will be in good hands... so, outside of a few things here and there, and a real need to get back down to SC to check on Mom and Dad.. well, I should be able to focus.
I need to. I do not want to roll into my Fifties in the midst of a down-hill slide. So.... here's to new directions. If I don't get it absolutely right each day, I can't let it de-rail me.
Here we go... chugging out of the station........
'via Blog this'
So, when I'm not nuts... like I have been for the past year or so, I like to try to adhere daily to something I call "The Four Things". I feel like if I do these four things every day... or if I at least try to get these four things done every day, then I'll make positive gains in the quality of my life and I'll more easily be able to do the things that are important to me and that give me pleasure. So, I try each day to:
1. Read: it can be for work, but ideally, it should be something that I enjoy. Like a novel, a selection of poetry, some good comics, a play that I've always wanted to read. It can't just be obligatory reading.
2. Write: it can be in a private journal. In blog form. In a well thought out exchange on social media... it doesn't matter what form it takes as long as it is of a length and depth that requires some mental and stylistic investment. It can't just be the answer to work emails. Although, a long and heartfelt email to a friend or family member will meet the bill, as well.
3. Exercise: It can be at the gym, hiking on a mountain, doing stretches on a picnic table in a park, it doesn't matter... but just saying "I've had a busy day." doesn't count.
4. Play guitar: Not just noodling, but I need to do some scale work, and I need to practice actual songs. It's my hope to play in front of folks by the end of the year, and I'd like to have at least 20 or so songs well practiced by my birthday on Nov. 4th.
And, I'd like to add
5. Welsh: I'm trying to learn this language and I need to spend at least a half an hour a day in vocab drills.
And, once a week I want to work with Gamut's Improv Troupe, "TMI" as well as participating in some Duo work once a week.
Aaaaaand.... I've got little excuse not to do this. I'm through with mainstage work at the theater for a bit. Just finished a very satisfying run of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser", which I really enjoyed, but was quite exhausting. I know that in the past I've tried to do The Four Things (Now 5) and rarely accomplished all of it. But, I'm going to really concentrate on this for the next 9 months or so... I don't have to worry about the Park Show, as I have delegated that to Karen Ruch and I know that that will be in good hands... so, outside of a few things here and there, and a real need to get back down to SC to check on Mom and Dad.. well, I should be able to focus.
I need to. I do not want to roll into my Fifties in the midst of a down-hill slide. So.... here's to new directions. If I don't get it absolutely right each day, I can't let it de-rail me.
Here we go... chugging out of the station........
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Windy Verbal Superfluity in Praise of a Fish and Life
(A Facebook Reply)
Emily II (the Emily after Emily I, but before Emily III, and long before Jimmy Shimmers) was a lovely goldfish that lived in a bowl on our kitchen table. She'd been a carnival fish in early life, but when the ping-pong ball of fortune chanced to fall into her bowl one day, she became a Nicholson.
She was a joy filled fish who dashed around her bowl anytime someone walked past the table. She had a gift for living life to the utmost. She sucked the marrow from the bones of the corpus of mundane existence. She was Nietzche's Over-Fish. She was Plato's ideal of a goldfish, of which, it is said, all corporeal fish are but pale reflections. Her lineaments where such as to humble sculptors and architects.
Over the passing months, as she reveled in the abundant joy of admittedly confined yet seemingly boundary-less life, there on our kitchen table, her tail grew substantially more diaphanous and extremely full, owing more in appearance to the wing of an arch angel than that of the fins of any mere carnival fish to come before her. She was a marvel of abundant living and an inspiration to embrace each day with unsullied passion.
Sadly, as with many souls possessed of a lion's heart and an eagle's lofty vision, she was fated to be tendered a life which was lived twice as brightly as the norm, only to yield to a final accounting that was half as long.
In the throes of her joy and rapture one fell evening, after those of us to whom the normal rigors of temporal existence require the solace and rejuvenation of nature's second course, sleep, and had temporarily sought sweet morphean oblivion to shuffle off the effects of random and often brutal reality, Emily II had, in contrast,set about a dervish dance of fishy terpsichor-y that would constitute the summation and all too immediate conclusion of a Roman Candle life lived amidst the dull and smoldering glow of punk that had surrounded her.
What the performance entailed could only be speculated upon the next morning by the prodigious residue of the splash and the sated and somehow wise visual echo of Emily II's deeply dead eye. She lay there on the table, consumed by the fires which had been the essence of her life, as one who had now passed into the ranks achieved by few, save Isadora Duncan, Duse', and Najinsky. She had, quite simply, lept for sheer " joie de vivre" out of the milieu of her own life into the ether of the outer world. She jumped out of her bowl.
It was I who had the misfortune to discover her, and having not yet ushered my daughter toward knowledge of the mysterious existential abyss of mortality, scooped this embodiment of ichthyan transcendence onto the burial bier of a nearby spatula and hurried with her little body, devoid of its divine essence to the bathroom.
Pausing at the Porcelain Altar of the Void, I reflected on the symbol-logy of what was about to occur. I rationalized that this end was as good as any, was it not? Her life, as all lives, was a temporal thing, and to fetishize the vessel after it had been rendered void of its living essence was actually to glorify that which was, finally, but the trappings of the sacred light of life.
But, remembrance of the horrible Charybdian sucking that attends the plunge of the chrome lever of elimination ceased my philosophical self-equivocation. Action must be taken, and taken decisively. My child would shortly waken, and she must not see me full in the flush, so to speak, of this act's commission.
Then, to my brain it came, and I feel certain, not wholly birthed in conception by my own methods of invention. It was, I am convinced, an extension conveyed to me by the still lingering life force of Emily II, and it would serve to both confirm and conclude the shape and scope of that life.
I proceeded to our plant corner in the sunny portion of our living room and using a handy spoon left nearby after the last night's repast of Hamburger Helper, fashioned a tomb suitable for the repose of a fish of such boundless vitality and fathomless appreciation for the gifts to be realized only in the fields of time and space. She now lives on in the strong stem and defiant leaves of a towering rubber plant.
A living poem to the power of the force of life fully lived.
(A Facebook Reply)
Emily II (the Emily after Emily I, but before Emily III, and long before Jimmy Shimmers) was a lovely goldfish that lived in a bowl on our kitchen table. She'd been a carnival fish in early life, but when the ping-pong ball of fortune chanced to fall into her bowl one day, she became a Nicholson.
She was a joy filled fish who dashed around her bowl anytime someone walked past the table. She had a gift for living life to the utmost. She sucked the marrow from the bones of the corpus of mundane existence. She was Nietzche's Over-Fish. She was Plato's ideal of a goldfish, of which, it is said, all corporeal fish are but pale reflections. Her lineaments where such as to humble sculptors and architects.
Over the passing months, as she reveled in the abundant joy of admittedly confined yet seemingly boundary-less life, there on our kitchen table, her tail grew substantially more diaphanous and extremely full, owing more in appearance to the wing of an arch angel than that of the fins of any mere carnival fish to come before her. She was a marvel of abundant living and an inspiration to embrace each day with unsullied passion.
Sadly, as with many souls possessed of a lion's heart and an eagle's lofty vision, she was fated to be tendered a life which was lived twice as brightly as the norm, only to yield to a final accounting that was half as long.
In the throes of her joy and rapture one fell evening, after those of us to whom the normal rigors of temporal existence require the solace and rejuvenation of nature's second course, sleep, and had temporarily sought sweet morphean oblivion to shuffle off the effects of random and often brutal reality, Emily II had, in contrast,set about a dervish dance of fishy terpsichor-y that would constitute the summation and all too immediate conclusion of a Roman Candle life lived amidst the dull and smoldering glow of punk that had surrounded her.
What the performance entailed could only be speculated upon the next morning by the prodigious residue of the splash and the sated and somehow wise visual echo of Emily II's deeply dead eye. She lay there on the table, consumed by the fires which had been the essence of her life, as one who had now passed into the ranks achieved by few, save Isadora Duncan, Duse', and Najinsky. She had, quite simply, lept for sheer " joie de vivre" out of the milieu of her own life into the ether of the outer world. She jumped out of her bowl.
It was I who had the misfortune to discover her, and having not yet ushered my daughter toward knowledge of the mysterious existential abyss of mortality, scooped this embodiment of ichthyan transcendence onto the burial bier of a nearby spatula and hurried with her little body, devoid of its divine essence to the bathroom.
Pausing at the Porcelain Altar of the Void, I reflected on the symbol-logy of what was about to occur. I rationalized that this end was as good as any, was it not? Her life, as all lives, was a temporal thing, and to fetishize the vessel after it had been rendered void of its living essence was actually to glorify that which was, finally, but the trappings of the sacred light of life.
But, remembrance of the horrible Charybdian sucking that attends the plunge of the chrome lever of elimination ceased my philosophical self-equivocation. Action must be taken, and taken decisively. My child would shortly waken, and she must not see me full in the flush, so to speak, of this act's commission.
Then, to my brain it came, and I feel certain, not wholly birthed in conception by my own methods of invention. It was, I am convinced, an extension conveyed to me by the still lingering life force of Emily II, and it would serve to both confirm and conclude the shape and scope of that life.
I proceeded to our plant corner in the sunny portion of our living room and using a handy spoon left nearby after the last night's repast of Hamburger Helper, fashioned a tomb suitable for the repose of a fish of such boundless vitality and fathomless appreciation for the gifts to be realized only in the fields of time and space. She now lives on in the strong stem and defiant leaves of a towering rubber plant.
A living poem to the power of the force of life fully lived.
Friday, December 7, 2012
I never got a job from a poor person....... Really?
Y'know, I heard today for the umpteenth time this rationalization against returning to Clinton era tax rates with higher levels on folks making over $250,000 a year: "Well, I never got a job from a poor person." and it hit me..... "Really? you never got a job from someone who made less than $250,000 a year?"
There are tons and tons of folks who make less than that a year who run businesses and hire people. I got no problem with rich folks; they are folks: some good, some bad. But they are not the only people who contribute to this economy as bosses and business owners. Not by a long shot.
I've got much more respect for a guy who runs the butcher shop around the corner, busts his butt and manages to pay his bills as well as the salaries of his few employees, and DOES IT, than I do someone who trades in shady investment "products", busts the entire economy, takes billions in bailouts, and then gives himself a bonus. Of those two examples, I'm gonna call the smart businessman the first guy. I'll take small stability over monolithic volatility any day. And of those two, the second one can and should be the one we look to help with a proportionally small increase in public revenue generation.
Rich people are very important factors in this economy, but they are not the only factors.
There are tons and tons of folks who make less than that a year who run businesses and hire people. I got no problem with rich folks; they are folks: some good, some bad. But they are not the only people who contribute to this economy as bosses and business owners. Not by a long shot.
I've got much more respect for a guy who runs the butcher shop around the corner, busts his butt and manages to pay his bills as well as the salaries of his few employees, and DOES IT, than I do someone who trades in shady investment "products", busts the entire economy, takes billions in bailouts, and then gives himself a bonus. Of those two examples, I'm gonna call the smart businessman the first guy. I'll take small stability over monolithic volatility any day. And of those two, the second one can and should be the one we look to help with a proportionally small increase in public revenue generation.
Rich people are very important factors in this economy, but they are not the only factors.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Notes Based on a Conservative Repudiation of Karl Rove
The best thing that I've read since the election last night?
This:
Conservative activist Richard Viguerie said in a statement Wednesday that "in any logical universe," Rove "would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again and no one would give a dime to their ineffective Super PACs, such as American Crossroads."
So much for you, troll. You built your entire adult life on making a fortune off of dirty tricks. The public believes NOTHING that you say. Nothing. Even Megan Kelley called you for looking like a pathetic fool on FOX last night. Go away, now Karl. You have done enough damage.
Now.......... Republican Party.........consider what voices like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and Savage have done for you.... have done to you. And realize that this is your chance. This is your chance to get those cancerous tumors off of you. I know that there are many of you who don't consider yourselves followers of those yahoos, but in the past they all just had too much popularity and power, so that if you spoke up and said what you thought of them, then you knew others would brand you as a RINO.
Well, those guys can't really do that right now. The Bullshit Avalanche has just slid. And the yahoos and the wingnuts can bellow and moan, but they all took a serious gut punch last night. So, take your chance, now: Dump those guys. Do it before they get back up with a fresh lungful of billowing BS fumes. Do it now.
Rupert Murdoch is not you. Charles and David Koch are not you. The crazed religious zealots are not you. You are the Party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of Eisenhauer, of Goldwater. Founded on ntellects like those of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, of modern thinkers like William F. Buckely. All of these, your old friends, would likely get drummed out of the current incarnation of the Republican Party by the usurping voices who tell you that they are "The Right". But they aren't "The Right", those yammering yahoos. They are the bullies on the playground field. And this is a grown-up world. Time to tell them where to go. They are "The Wrong". They are not you.
Get your voice back, Republicans. Get your party back. Stop worrying about "taking back your country." Take back your party. Come back to us.
Signed,
Your friend in the Middle.
This:
Conservative activist Richard Viguerie said in a statement Wednesday that "in any logical universe," Rove "would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again and no one would give a dime to their ineffective Super PACs, such as American Crossroads."
So much for you, troll. You built your entire adult life on making a fortune off of dirty tricks. The public believes NOTHING that you say. Nothing. Even Megan Kelley called you for looking like a pathetic fool on FOX last night. Go away, now Karl. You have done enough damage.
Now.......... Republican Party.........consider what voices like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and Savage have done for you.... have done to you. And realize that this is your chance. This is your chance to get those cancerous tumors off of you. I know that there are many of you who don't consider yourselves followers of those yahoos, but in the past they all just had too much popularity and power, so that if you spoke up and said what you thought of them, then you knew others would brand you as a RINO.
Well, those guys can't really do that right now. The Bullshit Avalanche has just slid. And the yahoos and the wingnuts can bellow and moan, but they all took a serious gut punch last night. So, take your chance, now: Dump those guys. Do it before they get back up with a fresh lungful of billowing BS fumes. Do it now.
Rupert Murdoch is not you. Charles and David Koch are not you. The crazed religious zealots are not you. You are the Party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of Eisenhauer, of Goldwater. Founded on ntellects like those of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, of modern thinkers like William F. Buckely. All of these, your old friends, would likely get drummed out of the current incarnation of the Republican Party by the usurping voices who tell you that they are "The Right". But they aren't "The Right", those yammering yahoos. They are the bullies on the playground field. And this is a grown-up world. Time to tell them where to go. They are "The Wrong". They are not you.
Get your voice back, Republicans. Get your party back. Stop worrying about "taking back your country." Take back your party. Come back to us.
Signed,
Your friend in the Middle.
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