Of Vets and Valor and Hypocrisy

The recent event in Washington honoring vets and their valor reflected all that has gone wrong in this country.  Let me state at outset that I am veteran.  I served in the military.  That doesn’t give me any special dispensation about what I am about to say.  It does, however, allow me to express my opinions without condemnation from anyone who hasn’t served.  Patriotism, in this country, has become little more than a label attached to harebrained positions that in the extreme are jingoistic rants serving an agenda of bias and hate.  Let me state, that the men and women who have served in the armed forces have given much, some their lives, others limbs, even more of them their minds to actions that have done more to serve special interests and neo cons who profess freedom while feeding a machinery that seeks to profit on misfortune and human tragedies.

The political leaders who have sent young men to war have been to a one blinded by ill-conceived beliefs that some nefarious force was attacking our system of government and was a threat to our national security.  That all of these wars were fought in lands many thousands of miles away from America with large bodies of waters separating us from them negates the national security issue. Certainly 911 was cause for concern but the fools in charge were asleep at the wheel and intelligent sources were tripping over one another.  As for the threat to our democracy, no force has eroded the foundation of our democracy more than our own Supreme Court.  Local and state hacks who created barriers to voting strike death blows to the very foundation of a democratic form of government.  So if we are really going to protect our way of life let’s start addressing our real threats as opposed to bogeymen.

Hypocrisy is all I could hear as the pleas went out to phone your donation to various and sundry organizations that help the vets.  Let us be reminded that every vet that needs help is a product of a misadventure.  The very politicians who endorsed the deployment of troops, who heartily passed legislation to spend vast amount of treasure to support military action fight like hell any attempt at a fair and balance tax code.  While vets have to wait for services, these chicken hawks feed their faces on graft from corporations who benefit most from these excursions into madness.

Most disturbing was the fact not a whisper was uttered calling out the buffoons and nefarious bastards who recklessly sent so many youngsters to their heart rendering fate and who set the stage for all of the mess that we now face.  How can we ever expect to truly honor these men and women if we don’t bring to justice those who wantonly dispatched so many in the pursuit of folly?  At the very least while honoring those who served, there should have been a condemnation of those who advocated war by wrapping themselves in flags while turning a blind eye to the needs of the citizenry.  What is truly ironic is that Osama was taken out with three choppers and a Seal team.   The guilty parties who created the mess in the Middle East now pontificate about what to do.  Rumsfeld who arrogantly condemned so many young men with the flippant response, “You go to war with army you have” still can’t see the error of his ways.  Smug and confident he ignores any question of blame.  His leader, Bush, still can’t see how wrong he was.  Of course, one can only conjecture what lurks in the evil of mind of Dick Cheney.

So here we are facing another threat, certainly a more serious and real threat than Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or chemical stockpile.  We have squandered billions in Iraq only to have another tyrant abuse his power and create a truly heinous force which is a real threat.  Funny that most of ISIL’s equipment was gotten by deserters of an army more concerned with petty corruption rather than their national security.   As for the other hell hole, Afghanistan will revert back to the same prehistoric state it was when we arrive oh so many years ago.  Of course its corrupt leaders will be found enjoying the luxury of their ill-gotten gains. 

It is fitting to honor our men and women who gave so much, but it is equally fitting to call out every scoundrel who has put those folk in harm’s way.  Without equal measure of blame and praise, we will eventually fall into the same cycle propelled by ignorance and greed.  Above all else, we must ensure that the vets who gave so much receive their just due.  We must demand that corporations and individuals pony up for the freedom and opportunities they enjoy.  Wearing a pin and waving a flag will never replace action. 

  

Poor Me No Invite to George's Wedding

Oh the disappointment

So there was this big wedding in Venice this weekend. Perhaps you heard about it. Clooney got hitched, and I didn't get an invite. Did I expect one? Not really, but then again, in this crazy voyeuristic world, I am constantly encouraged to peer into the private lives of my celebrity icons. My most basic instincts are constantly stimulated by a steady diet of personal stories, some real, some fiction, (thought it really doesn't matter) about those who dominate the pop world. After all, I know a lot about Georgie. For instance, he once was the most eligible bachelor and each and every bade he squired I got to see and to be honest harbored some less than gentlemanly phantasies. George has been in my world for so long that it is hard for me to feel that I am not intimate with his life. Hell I was compelled to see every movie he made even the less than entertaining “Monument Men.” I know a lot about George and while many of these "A Listers" like to complain about the paparazzi, we all know that much of pop coverage is actually the work of the “PR” folks who are paid handsomely to constantly feed the beast of popularity.

The fact George can command 8 figures for a role, or allowed to spend bundles of money on producing or directing is directly related to my spending and viewing habits. To think that and not get an invite, well, I figured it was downright rude of him. An aside, I once bought a chance to attend a red carpet event with him through Omaze. Now I knew entering that it was pure chance to get that opportunity. But the wedding? Hell, I am sure the great pop icon could afford another plate of food, but then again I realize it would have played hell with the seating arrangement. Kinda of like the awful decision as to who is going to sit at the table with the drunken uncle who is a leech and is wont to slobber on to every female especially those within reach and to be hit by his spittle as he attempts to talk.

But hell I have follow George through all his liberal endeavors. Where he went, I followed with my contribution. When he was in Africa for one thing or another, I was with him in spirit. As I mentioned I was with him through every movie. It was me the fan who made him what he was. An invite would have shown that the more than larger than life star was really with the common guy. But alas, rather than a first hand account, I was reduced to seeing the reports on Facebook. I was compelled to see Matt Damon on the water taxi all duded up in his tux with a big smile on his puss. It was almost like the bubble over his head would have read, “Yeah you suck, I am here, and you are not.” Oh well, such is the life of us little folks. We can look but not touch. We can imagine, but we can never truly appreciate what is like to be in that rarefied air where you can actually hear the icons fart, and excuse themselves to empty their bladders. I am left on my lonely isthmus. Left on the shores of smallness while those who are larger than life, my life, dance on clouds of popularity. I now will have to wait and read about how scrumptious the meal was, how embarrassing it was when Bill Murray tried to do the twist and his back gave out, how the wedding party got together to pull a prank on George, but failed when he learned of it and came up with counter that set the whole room laughing. All of that fun and frivolity unfolded while I spent the day in my small world. And then, again, it is Autumn in New York and nature filled me with so many colors that it was easy to let my mind wander, let my eyes feasts on the vibrant leaves and vines. There are the larger than life personalities and their doings, but none larger than the world in which I exist. Congratulations guys. I know you too were filled with all the splendor of living as was I.

A View

From “selfies” to endless self promotion, the ego has never seen a period such as this. Facebook has rocketed the individual to a self-proclaimed celebrity as banal and self serving as any camera hog especially the no talent ones who have profited on the most vacuous of human proclivities to stare at anything. No one is exempt. The “see me now” personality is exhibiting the ego being egged on by the id, the base aspect of our personality that Freud saw in the most direst of human psychological pathologies. Given evolution rather than falling into a psychotic state or living with some neurotic tendency, we merely sit about promoting our selves in the form of posts.

Self-absorption has permeated every nook and cranny of human existence. From the crazed Jihadist spouting praise to god while sawing off a head to the self proclaimed ignoramus explaining creationist theory on the origin of life, each cocksure that their paths are the sacred paths we were all destined to follow or be damned. That astronomers have discovered that even where we exist in the cosmos is vastly larger than previous thought cannot penetrate the skulls of those who revel in knowing all there is to know. In the meantime, the gap between knowing and believing grows larger and larger. How can the cycle of inhumanity be broken if the very condition that bring it about continue to flourish. That people would leave a somewhat civilized world to fill the ranks of armies looking to establish a barbaric and primitive society speaks to a most chilling dimension of the human intellect. While science has taken us beyond the cave, it seems the cave is the place where humans find a sense of belonging. It is not stars that capture the hearts of humans, it is the knowledge of certainty.

This idea that god has cast our fate is a fatal flaw in human destiny. That we can do all that we wish given the authority of some entity that has created us from dust and breathed life into our being is at the heart of all our greatest failures to exist in harmony with this place we find ourselves. That the mind cannot get beyond the reality of our condition, that a vast majority needs to cling to some insane notion that all of what we are and what we see and what we experience can be tied to texts written so long ago that their words do not even reflect what we know to be real is a testament to the fact that we cannot leave our past behind and venture into a dimension defined by reason.

From a twelve step groups that gathers at the end to give allegiance to some concocted being to nearly every state leader uttering a blessing from above, we are doomed because it seems we cannot accept our responsibility to do the right thing. We need to allude to something greater than ourselves for it would appear we are too feeble to act without this grace. The most appalling aspect of this delusion is that charity and hatred can be substituted for one another without a scintilla of rationality. Thus the recovered drunk gives praise, the madman severs a head, a believer can blow up a clinic, a priest can abuse a child, a race can be slaughtered, a greedy bastards can exploit, and on and on – all in the name of a creator who has given life to this madness for its own justification.

The Sorry State of Movies

I love movies.  I love to enter a dark cave and get lost in a good story.  Though I would never admit it, I even like sentimental movies, Capraesque tear jerkers filled with enough emotional tugs as to dissolve testosterone into a pool of salty tears.  I do not have very high standards all I ask is that the two hours or so spent in this pursuit doesn't cause a migraine or insult my intelligence.  Yet even with my low standards for entertainment, I find I am unable to go to many movies.  Why?  Well, here is the reason.  The money grubbing investors have brought their collective idiocy to the entertainment industry.  That’s right, it is an industry, and the tycoons have shown that money can buy influence; unfortunately, it can’t buy taste.

               Seduced and Abandoned, a movie by James Toback, delved into the shallow world of the financiers of movies who have the wherewithal to fund projects.  Unfortunately, rather than just investing, they add their two cents to the project.  The result is artistry has been jettison.  Art is not the theme but how they can turn a dollar.  They, like their counterparts in the food industry, are not concerned with quality just crap that sells. The fact that these titans of capital can dictate what is produced reduces movies to the equivalent of commercial junk food.  Their productions lay on the mind like a double bacon cheese burger.

               Torback does an excellent job of exposing these two bit capitalists for what they are.  They are junk peddlers who haven’t a clue what a good movie is.  They throw out the names of stars that they will back not even comprehending that the names they are spewing are folks who learned a craft and got their name through their talent in solid pieces.  They haven’t a clue of how to be innovative or impactful.  They look at balance sheets and deduce opportunities.  Thus good actors, in need of work and a payday, are reduced to roles that defy even the basic standards of art.  I often wondered about that.   How a star would accept a role that is clearly little more than nonsense?  Yet the money is there because some bloated financier sees a way of exploiting talent and filling his pockets.  Does he care about movies?  I doubt it.  He is too shallow to appreciate anything beyond his limited imagination and his ability to make more money.

               Then when you think about what it takes to actually make a movie, you can see all the folks forced into productions to make a movie.  Scripts must be generated by gnomes with little or no idea of what to say.  Clichés spew forth from their pens and packaged in a fashion that a pea brained backer can relate to.  Of course, these titans are looking at demographics and seeing how computer generated scenes can enhance their movies without the expense of building sets, and bam, every movie has computer generated scenes.  Let’s not forget the noise and the fights and the car chases and deaths and bullets, and car crashes and pedestrians scurrying about.  It is a formula destined to repeat over and over again without a scintilla of creativity.  So release after release come forward with the same old crap.

               Yes, art has been taken over by the money people.  From porn to big budget movies, from records to television shows, we live in an era of moneyed people, people who are dictating entertainment.  They dominated with their money and produce crap.  Their sick and pathetic ideas dominate mass media.  They are small people who possess no morals, no principles, and no ideas.  They are profiteers who crowd out talent, bastardized it, reduce it to simplistic perceptions.  Capitalists have taken control of entertainment and just like they did with the government they are running it into the ground.

               So, rather than running off to the movies, I sift through the fare choosing to not enrich those who have zero interest in the product their backing only looking for the ticket I purchase.  I have discovered frame for frame, the indies are the place to look for entertainment.

               

The Age of Bull

               To really appreciate the absolute bullshit world we live in, one need only watch a football game.  That the activity unfolding before one is both contrived and violent is one thing but to be bombarded with one inane commercial after another is testament to a system designed to cajole and to entice one into buying useless shit.  The great American pastime is a testament to violence and excess.  That underlying our world is subtle reminders how far we have digressed overtime, or how we haven’t progressed at all. 

               Let us take the Bud Light commercial that ends with the tag, “it’s only weird if it doesn't work. “ Isn't that a great argument for superstition?  So in the 21^st Century we have some brain trust informing us that if you act like a total asshole and your team happens to score that it is best if you continue that behavior because that may just be deciding factor in the game.  It is amazing that this asinine proposition actually made it through commonsense editing, and making the absurd ridiculous is to witness how many times it is actually repeated.  It is hard to believe that any moron would actually believe it would work, so why air it at all.  That some advertising ass can present some logical if not cute explanation and defense of this spot does not diminish the fact that it is only an ignoramus who would judge it to be effective, not withstanding the focus group of Neanderthals who judge it effective.

               That there should be some law to make these gnomes of public persuasion conform to some standards is far from becoming a reality given the idiots who are in the majority in Congress who feel any curtailment of stupidity in society smacks of socialism.  Yet, there should be some common sense approach to advertising to at least limit the promotion of illegal behavior.  At the top of the list of advertisers that should be reined in are car companies and their devious promoters.  There is hardly a car company that doesn't promote reckless and irresponsible driving.  While one might see these spots as some goofy representation of a particular car, we must not discount the absolute idiocy of the viewership.  Take the beer commercial and superstition or the erection commercials and the subtle messages that stupid works and age has nothing to do with physical attraction.  In the former case, anyone believing that throwing cheese doodles in the air helps a team or if he thinks it cute might be susceptible to trying to race his small car to a stop and execute an one-eighty degree turn especially if he has consumed a half bottle of vodka so that he might attract a bevy of fashionable models.  The medium is the message and the message is that a great majority either enjoys or tolerates countless minutes of bullshit.

               That these mind numbing messages are repeated with such frequency as to permanently scar our brain tissue demonstrates that those who produce and buy this crap understand the human psyche.  That they would use this knowledge for no other purpose than to promote that which is, in the short and long run, detrimental to the human condition signals the direction the 21^st century has taken.  Two of the major conditions facing this nation are diet related diseases and alcoholism, add to that violence and you have a society in a precipitous decline.  Our national pastime glorifies all of that.  I am no saint nor am I immune from the national pastime.  I am but one among the millions, yet I refuse to endorse this never ending stream of bullshit.  I refuse to think that a pill and an erection, a can of beer and some stupid ritual, produces anything positive in my life.  I think all this tells me that progress and evolution have not eliminated the more deleterious characteristics of a species.  That advertising agencies continue to apply their knowledge of our behavior to our base instincts, that a sixty minutes game is expanded to three hours so the mind shapers can bombard us with their subtle and devious messages tells us that the forces that govern our world are designed for purposes that are as base and raw as the televised event.  The unreal world of bullshit engulfs our humanity and renders us as little more than fools.  One need only to look at the crowds in the stadiums to confirm that observation.