Uh, Mayor, This Is Partly About You

I've been out of touch—moving, house hunting, steeling myself for a new job— and barely even catching the newspapers, let alone maintaining moment to moment awareness of what's going on in the world of Occupy. But I have read the daily here in Albuquerque two days straight and already the trend is clear: Cities are getting tired of "hosting" the Occupy encampments and have decided to try to get rid of them by maligning the Occupy camps for resembling the cities in which they grew.

Fantastic as it seems, the mayor of Oakland says Occupy Oakland has to go because there have been two murders in the area the protesters are staying. And in Portland, Ore. the mayor says Occupy Portland must be shut down because there have been two (nonfatal) drug overdoses among those handing around the protest. Well, goodness gracious golly gee I guess!

I can only assume that Oakland had seen no homicides prior to September 27. And that Portland, Ore. has had no other overdoses, nonfatal or otherwise, in years and years. But then these damned demonstrators set up shot and the next thing you know the good citizens of Oakland are killing each other and Portland goes all dope stupid.

The Chamber of Commerce lackeys who pose as civic leaders around this Great Nation of Ours need to bear in mind that Occupy is a protest movement. It's not a Lion's Club Pancake Breakfast and it's not a Boy Scout Jamboree. These good citizens aren't squatting in their public spaces because they were invited by their cities. They are, in fact, where they are precisely because the WERE NOT invited to participate in the public sphere. Occupy Wall Street and its myriad expressions elsewhere in the world sprang full blown from shared resentment at systemic, endemic commercial-political incest.

Mayor? The 99% isn't a tea party it's a locomotive. Get on the train or get out of the way.

Land a Job and Lose Mr. Death

Just in case either of the people who read my blog mistake me for a sad, dour and bitter man, I have a shocking disclosure.

First, I do NOT have lung cancer! The ominous shadow on my chest x-rays has faded away. Don't know why it was there twice and gone the third, but I ain't complaining.

Second, I finally got a job. I won't shame the organization by naming it here, but I will be producing, editing and managing web content for a large post-secondary institution.

So ... happy happy joy joy! Also, now that I am employed again, perhaps I can be a little more free with my political opinions.

We look for meaning, we find it

"Every human being has to be his own resistance movement. We can never wait for others to act. This frightful world needs every single one of us to make an effort. When there's a fire, no one asks where the water is going to come from. The fire simply has to be put out." — Henning Mankell

The #Occupy Experience Is In Tents

Occupy Wall Street might just make a difference.

“The problem with protests and the political process is that it is very easy, no matter how big the protest is, for the politicians to simply wait until the people go home,” financial blogger (and Tea Party co-founder) Karl Denninger observed. “And then they can ignore you.” *

“Well, Occupy Wall Street was a little different,” he continued. “And back in 2008, I wrote that when we will actually see change is when the people come, they set up camp, and they refuse to go home. That appears to be happening now.”

In any case, Honorable Occupyers, here are a couple pictures of your valiant forebears. 1932:

I can't think of many other instances in the US when people massed to demonstrate and just stayed. There is one, though: The Bonus Army. That one didn't turn out so well. Now that we have the relative protection of ubiquitous video documentarians and the internet, though, it is very unlikely that live ammunition will be turned on the #occupy armies. We hope.

*   Tea Party co-founder expresses support for Occupy Wall Street, by Muriel Kane for The Raw Story, October 14, 2011

On this we can agree

We are not alone.

I'm not talking about visitors from outer space here, I refer to "friends" responding positively to the many #occupy, #ows, #occupyetc links I've been posting to my Facebook account.

Having grown up in deep East Texas, quite a large number of the people I am networked with through Facebook are pretty damned conservative. Unlike my "friends" from the quarter-century I spent in the big city, the East Texas contingent seems heavily Christian—and I mean, obnoxiously, patronizingly, evangelistically Christian. Even more commonly, the people I was raised among are political conservatives—and I mean, obnoxiously, patronizingly, evangelistically conservative.

I am always pleased when anyone "likes" or comments favorably on my political posts and links. (And I even enjoy Facebook dialogues with the benighted, by the way.) Generally, which acquaintances past and present who respond favorably are unsurprising. Occupy Wall Street, though, has revealed a remarkable confluence of political opinion.

Perhaps the best example is a splendid piece written by that socialist Bernie Sanders published on Huffington Post. The article consisted of Senator Sanders explaining that the Occupy-ers do have an agenda. A list of grievances, certainly; but a list of grievances that clearly transmits a list of demands, a set of proposals.

In addition to posting the link to the article, I excerpted a slimmed down version of Sanders' main points. So even my Facebook "friends" who did not follow the link would still get the message. This is what my visitors saw:

1. ‎ If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
2. Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury. When credit card companies charge 25- or 30-percent interest rates they are involved in extortion and loan-sharking.
3. The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.
4. Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices.
5. Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives. The "heads, bankers win; tails, everyone else loses" financial system must end.
6. Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.

I am delighted to say that people is never expect to agree with me "liked" or even posted favorable comments ... approving the opinions of the depraved socialist Bernie Sanders!

This remarkable development reveals, in my opinion, a broad and general acceptance of the #occupy movement. Doubtless there will be some bitter disagreements when—or if—our government starts translating the pervading anger into policy specifics. But the fact remains, this spontaneous eruption of protest reflects the feelings of a national majority: Big business and its political representatives are screwing the poor, impoverishing the middle class and destroying the economy. The game is rigged.

President Obama is already channeling the #occupy anger in his speeches. And not a moment too soon, let me stress. Other Democratic politicians are also showing some spine, now that the unwashed masses have given them some cover. Republican politicians too are sensing that something large has shifted in the American polity. Outrageous injustice and unconscionable crony capitalism are bad things. Wall Street and investment banking have driven this country not just into the ditch but clear over to the other side of the ditch. And we're fed up. Enough.

When even the Obama haters start agreeing with me, politicians will ignore our anger at their own peril.

I said yes, dear. By the way, I hate that tie.

Back during the 18 years or so we think of now as The Sixties, a particular form of avant garde theater was briefly all the the rage. It consisted of people living their "real" lives onstage. Sitting around, reading, watching TV, eating, sleeping, fucking, bathing, even taking a dump. All before an audience, usually small, drifting in and out of the hall. I am reminded of this by the GOP debates. The sheer boringness — and boorishness — of them is overshadowed by their granularity. We seeing these people up close, and pretty close to naked.

Probably a better analogy for these debates than theatrical naturalism, though, is one most people can relate to directly. Few of us have ever fucked or farted on stage but most of us have probably had a bitter, vicious argument with our significant other while getting dressed to go out. Then, raging thoughts of divorce or homicide ebb slowly in the car on the way to the restaurant or party. Faces that short minutes before were set in a rictus of fury soften into bland friendliness as we greet our hosts at their door. So yeah, that.

Watching these GOPeople bashing each other on stage, slipping knives between ribs, all while struggling to maintain a friendly, alert and interested face for the audience ... well, it's just a pleasure to see them smiling and shaking hands among the audience after the show. Surely, surely these candidates were just asking themselves, "Is she really that bat-shit crazy?" or "That's a preposterous claim — I'd like to see him slip that past the Supreme Court!"

As their devotees subsequently see these people behaving themselves on down the campaign trail, smiling and gracious before the microphones, won't they remember them empurpled by stifled hostility? Or will they see the transient cloak of civility as a virtue and the knife fights of the past as a sign of strength. Probably, the latter.

Except for Rick Perry sputtering about the option of having options regarding the options. That is a memory with legs.

Death Comes for Young Bertram

Hypochondria Gratified at Last

Sooo ... my new doctor doesn't like the sound of my cough. I get the smoking lecture and a lab order for an x-ray. I go back to see the doctor and he says there's a shadow on the x-ray of my left lung; he's worried I might have a touch of pneumonia, wants me to take two antibiotics til the bottles are empty. I go to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist says, "Whatever your doctor thinks you have, he wants to get rid of it fast." So I go home, take the pills faithfully til they're all gone, 12 days, just as instructed.

Again as instructed, I wait two weeks after completing the antibiotic regimen and go back for another chest x-ray. That was Friday. Monday morning at 8:05 the doctor calls me and tells me there is still a "spot" on my x-rays. He says I have two options. 1) Get a CT Scan immediately to determine exactly what is throwing a shadow on my chest x-rays. 2) Wait a while--say, two months, get another x-ray and see if the spot has grown. The doc knows I have no health insurance and that I am unemployed; knows, in fact, that I am as broke as an orphan's heart. So he is not surprised when I respond, It looks like option 2.

Now, I am not a hypochondriac in the strictest sense of the word but I do have a rather suggestible nature in that area. And I am dead certain I have lung cancer. There's not a doubt in my mind. And I'm just about obsessing on this. All week I've been thinking about putting my affairs in order. Updating my will; drawing up an advance directive; pondering where I want my ashes spread. And like that.

My bride is still driving me to take immediate actions to structure a future I just don't foresee. But here I am, sending out resumes, applying for grad school. It's all pretty strange. After a lifetime of mordant humor, morbid musing and tempting fate with the certitude that I am immortal, well, gee ...

The good news of course is that I have made a lot of mistakes in my life—been wrong about just about everything except politics. So I'll probably be wrong about this too. Come late November I'll be happily embarrassed when it turns out I ain't dying anytime soon.

Adventures in Representative Democracy

In solidarity with the public employees of Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere in this great land of ours ...

Joe Hill, alive

Joe Hill, dead