Covid 19, Viral Democracy, and Idol Worship

Well. We are living in a different world since my last post about three years ago. So I have decided to resurrect my blog, because there is a lot I want to say about our situation as we begin our journey down the dark path of the present pandemic. My use of the word begin was deliberate. More at the end about where I think we can end.

I am appalled by two things. One is our governments impotence, lack of alacrity, and amateurish approach to a crisis that is turned into what looks like the new normal. The other is, of course, closely connected. It is our worship of money which has spawned what I call viral capitalism.

Viral capitalism is when a useful tool turns into an end into itself. Viral capitalism has reached it’s most obscene and dangerous stage. Viral capitalism spreads, and kills or sickens its hosts. Just as our current systems kills and sickens the majority of the American people. Virus are opportunistic parasites. Why do we lack universal health care, why does about one percent of the population in America control around forty percent of our wealth ? These are the people who make the deals, who see that the rules are written in their favor. These are our high priest, gurus, and false prophets of finance and commerce. These are the people that control and manipulate our democracy, and it has to stop. Even our elected officials are in on the gravy train.

Power is of course the ability to have your own way even if it means a system that caters to the elite. Money and politics is an intoxicating potion. According to CBS News, and this was in 2012, “while just 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, 66 percent of senators are millionaires, as are 41 percent of House members.” There is nothing wrong with being a millionaire, but what does a millionaire have to do with MY life, and the life I lead. Not much. It doesn’t matter if they started out poor, because money changes a persons view of the world.

During the current crisis too much emphasis has been placed on businesses. Of courses businesses are crucial. Of courses businesses are important, and money is too. It is no sin to be rich, but it is a sin to manipulate and warp the system to the advantage of such a few. And what about people? Money is only a tool, and it is people that matter although many industries are working as hard as they can to replace people with robotics or artificial intelligence. Our sin is that as a society we have bowed to materialism, and worship the false good of money.

Viral capitalism has robbed us of a system that could not only have acted more efficiently with a pandemic, it could have even prevented it or mitigated it’s damage. This was something Bill Gates saw FIVE years ago. Just watch the TedTalk! But, we had better things to do. Like spend trillions on a wasted effort in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like give tax breaks to corporations and rich people. Wake up America. I posit that the current system is an antithesis to the ethos of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So why aren’t more believers speaking out against it? Why has, for example, evangelical Christianity had such a love affair with Trump?!

Then there is the Lt. Governor of Texas who is literally willing to give up his life as a sacrifice to capitalism. Only a befuddled fool would say something like that. I am a grandparent and I say to hell with the economy and up with people. If people are freed from their burdensome debts and treated like the humans they are I think the economy will do just fine thank you. There is really not much more I need to say about that.

So here we are. The B team is on the floor, against a wily and insidious opponent. An opponent that we knew was coming, and yet we did nothing. Now we think it will be over by Easter and we can all hold hands and, with tears in our eyes, thank our president for delivering us from evil. Even though it isn’t true, if we believe it is true then it is. Isn’t it? I saw it on Facebook.

However there is hope. I see the signs of it. There is hope that this teaches us a lesson about what is really important. How about it? Let’s make America great again. See you at the polls.

Time Travel, Letters, and a Poem

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This week I found three brown plastic file boxes. Inside my garage, and unopened for years. A literal treasure chest of stuff. Much of which I had forgotten about, or thought I had lost.

I found my press pass from when Ronald Reagan came to town, Kodachrome slides, my discharge certificates from the Army and the Navy, and letters. A huge pile of letters I had written to my Grandfather at P. O. Box 261, Sturgeon Missouri. I am actually thinking about writing and seeing who answers.

The letters were unbelievable. Evidently while stationed at Ft. Riley, and living in Manhattan, Ks., I was dating a “cute girl,” named Debbie who was under five foot tall, and we went to a Buddy Rich concert.

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I went to a Buddy Rich concert?

I don’t remember her or the concert. I do remember watching Buddy Rich play the drums on the Johnny Carson show. The letters cover all three years from my first days in basic training at Ft. Dix, to medical training at Ft. Sam, to my permanent duty station at Ft. Riley, Kansas. There are even some letters from Germany when I went there for training. There were also some letters to my uncle Bruce who lived with them. As you can see they were written on the stationary they used to sell at the PX.

In honor of my Grandfather, and all of my family members that have passed – especially my father. I offer it as a tribute to those “working class” people who lived decent lives and worked harder than they should have, for less than they should have made. A tribute to the struggle of the working person. I offer up this poem written in August of 2013 and published by The Poet’s Haven in December of that year along with another poem called Flight.

All My Relatives

I see them
in the small
secluded places
outside of office buildings
alone or
in small groups
smoking
listening to music
on their phone
or even reading a book
taking a break
whatever it takes
to escape
from their waged
slave labor
where they must
comply
with a smile
and a thank you
to the humiliation
of being
captured
and incarcerated
in a system
where they are used
and then discarded
at will
when they are
bent and broken
but before that
they stand
they stand on
the small corner
of the tiny
nation state
of their existence
where they can
enjoy
the diluted freedom
allotted to them
I see them
in the still small
secluded places
outside of office buildings
all my relatives
living on the reservations
of capitalism

It is sad that nobody writes letters anymore. Or reads poetry. When my two youngest girls went to camp I wrote them, but they never wrote back except to ask for money.

A poem, perhaps a dirge, for our times.

The Children of Hegel

Whoa...

I need to catch my breath
as I look out the window of an ancient childhood
take inventory of the moment ponder the question:
what is this world we have become?
as we wound our way through
the serpentine flow of history
which started as a clear stream, with direction
only to slow to a trickle
then halt in a moribund morass of sludge
which has ground we the people to a halt, and history no longer flows free
but threatens to backup like a sewer
and we the children of Hegel are stranded stuck
stuck
in an eternal synthesis
in a fused bipolar cycle which is the
worst of both worlds
no thesis, and no antithesis
Marx, Hegel, and Fukuyama never saw it coming
the sucker punch of technology - Heidegger’s enfolding
and we have become the slave of it
what we failed to envision
is the possibility that good might fail
and that in the end, before the end of times
that evil would prevail
fed fat on the cancer of malignant capitalism
we descend anew into the Dark Ages
the questions remains...

Will we emerge or destroy the very foundation 
of the earth we stand upon?

Two issues. Heidegger warned that technology might not be what it seems. He sensed something sinister in it, and wrote about it in The Question Concerning Technology. He called it an enfolding. I hope to have a lot to say about that later in future posts.

The second issue. A nation of vision, strength, and no little amount of moral integrity has become a debauchery of greed and indulgence, and we are ruled by a plutocracy. Reagan’s light on a hill (say what you want at least he was no cynic and believed the rhetoric) is now a dim, and flickering, flame. We are fading, and the grand experiment in democracy is in peril. Oh, I know, we were never perfect. Far from it. But we thought we could be. We had that audacity. God bless us for that. We believed we could become something good, and better all humankind.

I must say a word about capitalism. Note I used the term malignant capitalism which I want to define rather narrowly. The one lesson America has not learned is moderation. Everything is supersized, everything is breaking news, everything is over the top. Capitalism in and of itself is not malignant. But, when it becomes the focus, and when the business of America is business (or making money – there is a difference and that is our present state) something bad happens. Unchecked, and monitored it becomes grotesque, and the traits of it that were virtuous become a vice. Just like the hunting rifle of old has turned into a weapon, and dangerous parody of what it once was.