Vintage Violence

Since the trouncing the Republican party received in the 2012 election, all these TV political pundits keep doing is saying the party needs to do this or that to regain their diminishing support.  They have to embrace minorities (um, ick!), they have to learn to compromise, they have to be responsive to women's concerns, et cetera.  I say to these pundits, stop!  Let them commit their political suicide!  But then again, the more you suggest they need to change, the less they will change.  That's just their nature, so maybe I'm wrong.  Keep it up, pundits.

This debate over gun control is a prime example.  They will not budge, and the more they are asked to budge, the more loony they get.  Wayne LaPierre is Asshole of the Year, as far as I'm concerned.  This jerk had barely any respect for the pain the people of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut have experienced, living through the most horrifying damage a community can face, when La Pierre appeared on Meet the Press with David Gregory.  Gregory is not even the most left-leaning of the press he could have talked with, but on this day Gregory was grilling LaPierre pretty good, trying to get him to admit that if Lanza had been unable to obtain large capacity magazines, he might not have been able to butcher as many people.  He would not concede it.  In fact, I don't know if anybody else caught it, but he even, in a subtle way, threatened Gregory's life.  He started saying that the solution was to have armed guards at the schools, which is ridiculous but predictable, and in a quick aside mentioned that he noticed that they don't have armed guards at the NBC studios.  Do you think that agitated gun owners, afraid that the Black President is going to take away their firearms, might become unhinged seeing their gun mentor being treated in this way by the "evil, liberal media", and now knowing that there are no guards at 30 Rock, might possibly decide to start shooting up "the problem"?  This is the caliber (pun intended) of person we have to deal with all across the board in this country now, and all of those Republicans are in lock-step.

They've done it to themselves, though they try to blame "the Liberal Media", which is anything but.  The Media, in case there is any doubt, is owned by people and corporations with lots of money.  Unfortunately it is not in the best interest of their profit margin to be all that "Liberal".  Yes, Republicans have done it to themselves by screeching the "Liberal Media" myth for so many years through Fox News and all that talk radio.  Case in point: Glenn Beck.  It is well-known to people in Conneticut that in his earlier days in local Connecticut radio that Beck was a notorious coke-head.  An addict.  Addicts are known to do or say anything to get what they want.  Is it a stretch to believe he is the way he is because he is beholden to be by some rich entity who may have helped him out of the mess he made of his life?  Or Limbaugh.  It has always mystified me how intelligent people on TV could knowingly say wrong things.  What's their motivation?  Who are they protecting?  Themselves in some sick way, I suppose.

So the way it has gone is that through the screeching of these Right-Wingers in the Media and their willing cheerleaders in the Republican Party, all other Media has been forced, to try to avoid being labelled biased, to always offer the most crazy, unpalatable viewpoints as balance, no matter how wrong they may be, even often leaving it as the last word on many segments on the news.  What this has done is make the debate so UNBALANCED that as many Democrats get more conservative, the Republicans have to oppose things that they may have supported years ago.  If a Democrat supports it, they MUST oppose it, to the ridiculous extent that we see Mitch McConnell filibustering his own bill!

That's right, Republicans, keep on digging in.  That pile of detritus so conveniently placed right next to the hole you're in is looking awfully inviting...

It's The End Of The World As We Know It, And We're Still Here...

New Year's Day, in the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Thirteen, A. D.

It seemed to me that Terrence McKenna really had something there with his Temporal Resonance Theory, at least from my own perspective.  Indeed, things really seemed to be accelerating toward some kind of Cosmic Collision at least in terms of my own life.  All things would be hyper-interconnected at the Zero point of the Time-Wave Continuum, December 21st, 2012, and passing that point would be a transformation so profound, it would mean "the end of History" according to McKenna.  He didn't say "End Of The World", which made it more believable to me.  So there was no massive Earthquake/Tsunami causing "The Earth Changes".  No collapse of the US Economy (not yet, anyway).   No Rogue Nation setting off a nuclear device and World War Three. No revelation that Aliens have been engineering our Evolution and our Society for Millennia. No implosion of The Milky Way.  No Zombie Apocalypse.  No Apocalypse...

From my standpoint, I almost wished for one or more of these things to happen--to shake things up.  I was locked in a lot of waiting, a lot of "riding it out" as the day approached, and some kind of massive change might have been a welcome thing in my book.  Let's see, I was nineteen in seniority away from being laid off from my job.  This scenario caused extreme anxiety as I grappled with the prospect of a very uncertain 2013, and the choice of taking a severance package that might have led to a nice winter off from working outside in the elements, followed by the very real uncertainty of finding a new job.  When I considered leaving this Hell-Hole, I was filled with inner Peace and optimism of finding a real career that I would (Heaven forbid) actually enjoy, but it always came back to the fact that it was very risky and I have a family to support.  It felt like being denied parole.

Pediddleville is not far from Newtown, Connecticut, where one of the most awful things in History just recently occurred.  That one certainly played into the sinking feeling, as if the psycho killer was trying to accelerate his own twisted version of End-Times.  It certainly doesn't at this point seem like it will enact positive change, just more debate and obfuscation leading to an impasse...

Let's not forget the extremely weird Presidential race we endured this year.  This shameful spectacle we had to witness only reinforced the notion that we were heading toward Doom, especially if Romney was going to be elected.  I've said before that a CEO is no more trustworthy than your garden-variety junkie street hustler, and with the machinations at hand--Fox News Propaganda Machine, Super-PAC money, The Koch Brothers and other sinister tycoons, Gerrymandering and Karl Rove, and knowing of past voting machine shenanigans--I was convinced that Romney was going to win.  Even though the campaign the Republicans ran on was offensive to the extreme for most people regardless of Race or economics, I was convinced he was going to win.  It was very discouraging, because Greed and Racism, in my book, are always, ultimately, supposed to be defeated.

Even Obama's win has not been uplifting, as the Nation now battles this "fiscal cliff" debate.  It's the same old cluster-fuck that plagued the Election cycle.   A good old Tabula Rasa might have been better.

On other fronts, I have been plagued by car problems, money problems, motivational problems, Time-management problems, to the point that I have felt debilitated by it. Christmas didn't and doesn't ever, help.  I have the same old New Year's resolutions, left over from last year to try to tackle, and right about now, I'm just not feeling it.  What I feel now, after the Zero date, is not so much inspiration or a sense of something new beginning, but a very flat, stagnant feeling.  Fuck it.  Just move on.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  That great new career will just drop into your lap.  Or the bastards will have a change of heart and suddenly start being nice to you.   Oh Yes...

So, far from the 2012 thing being a new start, it feels like the most nothing of nothings has actually happened.  Salmon River flowing nicely now as my fish enjoy another easy winter.  Pediddleville 2013.