The beat of a very different drum...

I have grown used to being on the outside looking in...  As an only child, I learned about a persistent isolation from my fellow man, which was heightened by my being a child actor/singer and, thus, an object of ridicule and exclusion by my peer group.  Luckily for me, I have found, throughout my life, kindred spirits to make this bumpy journey more tolerable.

But now I feel a terrible isolation from my fellow countrymen.

I was shooting a small film last weekend on the campus of a faith-based Christian university...an isolating enough experience for a lapsed-Catholic agnostic like myself...  What made the experience particularly chilling was an event being held in a neighboring classroom.  A large group of Hispanic Evangelicals were gathered for a lecture.  The subject of that lecture:  Los Cuatros Caballeros des Los Apocalypse... These earnest Latinos had gathered together, taking time from their campaigning for the ultra-Right Wing right-to-life candidates they support, to swoon over the coming Rapture...

I left that shoot with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have watched this country be infested, like roaches overrunning a tenement kitchen, by a hate-mongering, pseudo-Christian Right Wing mentality with all of its attendant self-fulfilling prophecies...among them the inexorable march towards the apocalyptic vision of Nostradamus, with armies flooding the plains of the Tigris in their final battle...  I have watched, like a stunned motorist going the opposite way on a freeway, the inexplicable high-speed frenzy with which the Red State Tea Party supporters have created a pile-up of obstructionist legislation in Congress, and have deluged our airways with their 501C(4) junk "issue" commercials, filled with lies--and watched a hungry populace eat those lies like candy...

I have watched the navy of plutocracy seal our harbors and shell us into submission...

I will vote my conscience on November 7, but I fear that this will be a futile gesture...like a wounded animal rearing on its hind legs...which will do little more than feed my delusion that I still live in a democracy filled with other than self-centered, self-delusional automatons who never fact-check, never think outside their own box, and never question "authority", as long as it is Caucasian, regardless of its lies...  Imagine their shock when and if they ever awaken from their anesthesia, and find themselves in a fascist state, with a puppet Supreme Court pledged--like the Republican Congress--to the will of Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and all the other grey-faced functionaries who are so effectively delivering this country to the special interests of the uber-wealthy.

Once again, the beat of that drum is asynchronous with my march, and I cannot follow that parade. 

"That's Federalism!!"...er, no, actually, it's not...

Watching "Morning Joe" yesterday, waiting to fully wake up, I heard Joe Scarborough huffing and puffing about how things like healthcare shouldn't be the venue of the Federal government, but should be left to the states.. "Let the states do what they want...they know what's best for them...that's FEDERALISM!"

Actually, no, Joe, it's not.  It's Anti-Federalism, a movement which plagued the Founding Fathers (which Joe and his fellow Conservatives are so fond of identifying with) during the drafting of the Constitution.  The anti-federalists wanted all power to remain with the states, so that they (the wealthy plantation-owners) could control the matters in their own areas.  That argument may have been more attractive in the days when everyone's life centered around one locale--most people never traveled more than 10 miles from their homes--and when they basically mistrusted the folks from the next village, let alone the neighboring state.  It is not remotely feasible in this era of extreme mobility, when many people make a daily commute to work across state lines.

This is supposed to be a nation of Americans devoted to a common cause, and regardless of how the pseudo-intellectual factions of the Conservative movement want to pervert and misrepresent that fact, this is a simple and long-held belief.  This is why men and women from Alabama fought alongside men and women from Illinois on the battlefields of the Argonne, or the jungles of Viet Nam, or the deserts of Iraq.  It is the reason why these same men and women deserve a national system of healthcare which extends beyond parochial state lines and has national scope.

I, for one, am sick to death of the perversions of truth which have been vomited from the Right during this campaign, whether it is the "60% growth of the national debt during Obama's term" (how the hell does 3.3 billion equal 60% of 16.5 billion???) or the Socialist labels plastered on this President's efforts...  I expect this kind of crap on Fox News, but can't tolerate it on MSNBC,

Christmas in July...?...

My new puppy has kennel cough...so I stayed up with her in our casita (read garage converted into studio) so my wife and other dog could sleep undisturbed through the night...  The point is:  my resulting insomnia led to an all-night-into-early-morning sojurn through old movies on TCM...pre-war comedies, wartime musicals...all great stuff...leading to this morning's showing of the Preston Sturges film CHRISTMAS IN JULY...made in 1940, when this country was still struggling to remove itself from the Great Depression...

In one of the opening scenes, Dick Powell (playing a guy with big dreams but a dead-end, low paying accountancy job) is daydreaming at his desk, and his supervisor (played by wonderful character actor Harry Hayden) calls him into his office.  Hayden's character gives Powell a pep talk.  The gist of it is that Powell has to think of himself as a success, or he never will be one.  The gem of this speech is as follows (with apologies to Sturges, who says it a little differently and a lot better):

"No system can succeed if only one-half of 1% of the parts are a success, while the rest of the parts are failures!  All parts must be successful for the system to succeed!"

I sat there dumbstruck.

Here, coming off the screen in a film made 72 years ago, reflective of a time where economic struggle and the fear which accompanies it were spread across all classes in this country, was a razor-sharp and cogent message for our time.

If ever there was a message for the Democrats and Progressives to adopt in this fight against the Right-Wing, class-warfare mongers who want to see more wealth distributed to the wealthiest while the rest of us are left to scramble for the crumbs, this is it!

Please, Lord, let somebody on the DNC have been watching TNC this morning, and take this message to President Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and all the other warriors in this battle, and let their speechwriters and ad campaign managers get the soundbite of Harry Hayden's speech from this film, and play that 10-15 seconds over and over and over again on every station in this country.

Then, it would turn out that the title CHRISTMAS IN JULY would be particularly meaningful, if it turned out that Preston Sturges' words gave a great gift to the Progressive cause in the defeat of the Republicans in the upcoming election.

At the risk of pissing of the NRA...

Twelve dead, 52 wounded...  Anyone who has ever handled a weapon, let alone been faced by someone shooting at them, knows the kind of massive firepower required to accomplish this kind of damage in a matter of less than three minutes...  That's what some psychotic, worthless coward did to a movie audience in Aurora, CO at midnight tonight...and then--as one would expect from a coward--didn't even have the balls to shoot it out with arresting officers.  Just surrendered meekly...so now we have to feed and house this little weasel bastard for the next God-knows-how-many years, while his defense will probably be paid for by the National Rifle Association...

When the hell are we going to stop pussyfooting around the goddamned NRA (No Rational Association) and stop defending the "constitutional right" to own assault weapons?  Screw the "Second Amendment"!  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the right to go to a sleazebag death merchant at a "gun show", or a "sporting goods' shop, and purchase an AR-15 with a 100-round magazine and all the necessary hardware to modify it to full automatic, and to go online and purchase body armor which should be reserved to SWAT officers!!  The purchase of the items should be, if not totally illegal, red flags to all law enforcement agencies (including Homeland Security) and put the purchaser on a close-watch list. 

I am so damned sick and tired of the American Public--even more so of American politicians--rolling over and playing dead, like possums, in the face of hate and death mongers like the NRA, and Ted Nugent, and all the other right-wing-facist-motherf**kers who are puking their vitriol all over Fox, and their badly-written blogs, and everywhere else they can get access.  Take their frigging assault rifles, shove them up their butts and pull the trigger, and see if they still defend your right to bear arms.

In the interim, stay home--  Malls, theatres, parks...any place of public assembly...are the hunting grounds for all the psychofreaks with their AR-15s, Uzis, AK-47s and whatever other "arms" they can "bear" as part of their "constitutional right" under the Second Amendment.   Just don't expect them to fulfill the true meaning of that amendment:  the right to be part of a militia, in defense of their country.  That would require actual balls, something that all of them seem to lack.

Aaron, we have missed you...

Just viewed, courtesy of a friend's post (thank you Betsy Scholl) the opening of the new
Aaron Sorkin show NEWSROOM....

I don't get HBO, so can't view the show as it airs, but seeing this piece makes me want to call
DIRECT TV and change my subscription.  This is writing at its best, with ensemble acting
to match.  Not since WEST WING have I seen this kind of quality--which makes me believe
that the public, in its predictable reality-tv-soaked stupor, will reject both the message and the
messenger and the show will be canceled after one season.

I wish I wasn't such a pessimist... more than that I wish I could have a shot at being part of
this ensemble, even in the smallest of roles.  It would be an honor to work with these people
--and that, at this point in my life, might just be enough to change my attitude and outlook on life.
Slim shot, but who knows?

At all events, kudos to all involved in this groundbreaking show.

Remembering...?...

It's another Memorial Day...   A few parades (fewer each year) attended by a dwindling group of
survivors, men and women who served in this country's military sojurns across the globe and across the decades...a salute to their nobility and sacrifice, and to those who were left on the battlefields...

My wife Lisa called her Uncle Al in Albuquerque to thank him for his service...he was a colonel in WWII and Korea in the Army Air Corps and, like my father, survived those conflicts to return to a grateful America rife with parades and waving flags and cheering crowds.  She thanked him for his sacrifice for our nation, and  remembered her adoptive dad who served in the Pacific on board naval ships during Iwo Jima and Saipan, and mentioned me for my service during Viet Nam.  Uncle Al was deeply touched, and then fell very silent.  When he was finally able to speak again, he said "nobody thanks us anymore...they don't seem to care anymore..."

Lisa came to me and said she was shocked and troubled by this lack of gratitude.  I, however, was
only too aware of this trend.   I returned to a nation which spit on me and my comrades in airports,
and  looked upon us (especially post-My Lai) as "baby-killers."  But then, in the 80's (almost two decades after my service), they staged a massive celebration for us with a parade down Wall Street (we were--mostly--still young enough then to make the route on foot) and crowds and streamers and marching bands.  It was gratifying, if late in coming.

There was one great difference between then and now: namely, the demographics of those serving in the military.  Viet Nam was the end of the draft and, hence, the end of the era of the citizen soldier.  Men of every walk of life and every strata of economic class served together in that, and preceding, conflict.  This is no longer the case.

Today, our army, navy and air forces are peopled by "volunteers", a pseudonym for people who--due to their lack of access to economic or educational opportunity--are facing such limited options that they have no choice but to enter the military.  Once there, they are further enslaved by a system which does not--as it did in my day--release them from their service obligation after 2, 4 or 6 years of active duty, but rather keeps them in a loop of continuous service in the "reserves"...sending them back into war zone peril for second, third, fourth and fifth tours.

Unless and until the draft is reinstated, and the burden of sending their progeny into 
harm's way  is shared equally by all American families--regardless of their economic status--there will never be enough people saying "thank you" on Memorial Day.   Defending this nation will be "someone else's job" and, like the maintenance crew which cleans your office bathrooms, will go mainly ignored.

God bless us all, and rest well all those who did not return.

Give you a break?....

Where would you like it, Mr. Speaker?  Your arm, leg?  Your head?  Your ass (where I would find your head)?

You accuse House Democrats of politicizing the "war on women", when you and your I-was-a-car-salesman-but-now-I'm-a-Congressman Tea Party morons are clearly and openly and proudly waging that war, right out in the open, and on C-Span to boot????

By all means, you Red State Jackoffs, let's cut more money from cancer and STD screenings for women and poor people of both genders, then lets sit back and watch as the uninsured overrun the already flooded ERs for their medical treatment, and lets watch healthcare costs really skyrocket.  Great idea.

I know I'm just another (mostly ignored) voice screaming in the forest, but if there is a woman who
sincerely thinks the Republican Party holds anything but disdain for women, the poor, and yes--
the future of this nation, I wish she would respond to this writing and enlighten me.  I am at a loss to see it.

It's bad enough that the poor have had to bear the burden of manning our military in this era of
global deployment, and re-deployment, and re-re-deployment.  The sin of poor women
disproportionately mourning the deaths of their sons and daughters lost in this nation's military
follies is bad enough; to ask them to bear this pain while dying of ovarian cancer or
heart disease--maladies made treatable by early detection--is a sin of cardinal proportion.

"May you all rot in hell" is the phrase that comes to mind...but I fear that such karmic justice just
may not be in the cards for the evildoers.  In the meantime, they want our poor men and women to
rot here on earth, from corrosive disease.

Oh, if only what went around did, indeed, come around...