In her recent diary Stunning Newsweek story “Palace Revolt”, the obviously well meaning alohaleezy opened up with these perfect words.
“It seems to me that just about the time I begin to lose hope something stunning happens.”
Which is EXACTLY what the mass media…and BushCo, if they are not indeed one and the same… WANT you to feel.
Bingo!!!
GOTCHA!!!
Once again.
And I replied.
Read on…
“It seems to me that just about the time I begin to lose hope something stunning happens.”
Sigh.
Don’t you get it yet, alohaleezy?
They WANT you to keep your hopes up.
They WANT people to think that they are getting something done.
This is the same Newsweak that has kowtowed and bowed and scraped to BushCo…
What?
Eighty times in the last several years alone?
The same magazine that was right there in the front of the pack with all of the other scavengers when this administration threw them the “Let’s invade Iraq” meat. The same one that backed off at the faintest growl from inside the White House cave about Falujah.
Had they REALLY meant to make a point, the editors of Newsweak might well have titled this piece of fluff “Losers in the White House Wars” or “Failed and Ineffectual Palace Revolt”, because that would have been much more accurate.
But they want you to keep your hopes up.
That’s how they sell advertising.
That’s how they pay for their million dollar homes in the suburbs.
You.
Buying their mag and the products that are advertised therein.
Rove and Cheney and the rest DESPISE you, alohaleezy, as they despise the people who oppose them and the Pekininese of the Press that they use to lead you around like they were minature seeing eye dogs. They create “new realities” the way a good cook creates Christmas cookies. Bip, bap, into the oven, out of the oven. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, another group of potentially serious opponents once more reduced to the role of saying “Let’s sit around and wait just a TEENSY bit more, Harry. Look. It says RIGHT HERE IN NEWSWEAK that there were people opposing this administration RIGHT IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Why…there MUST be MORE!!!”
While these ineffectual “opposition” people slide safely off into and through the revolving doors of the military/media/academic/financial/industrial complex.
Harvard my ASS!!!
Rumpled intellectual.
Shy of photographs.
Give me a BREAK!!!
He’s a loser.
Except for his tenure and his $200K/year, of course…
Please remember…HE SIGNED ON TO WORK FOR THESE MURDERERS. Either he is too goddamned stupid to see the blood on their lapels or he doesn’t really GIVE a shit. Until it gets too hot in the kitchen, at which point he commits establishment hara-kiri, gets himself fired and goes to work for some OTHER group of liars.
The liars for the loyal opposition.
And worse yet…you FALL for it.
Once again.
200 times the magicians slip their THIRD hand through the fly in their pants and give you the stiff salami salute while you once again watch benumbed and entranced as their prosthetic device…the mass media…gives yet ANOTHER bravura performance of “America the Hopeful” on their digerido.
Their digeri-don’t.
Wake the fuck up.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
NOT Newsweak.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
They have once again lulled you to sleep.
The American sleeple.
And they are LAUGHING at you.
When George W. Butch stands up and gives his so-called “State of the Union” speech…
When he stumbles over words, when those strange elisions and mumbling speech patterns come out…YOU know, the ones we all laugh about?
Do you know why that happens?
So consistently?
BECAUSE HE IS TRYING SO HARD NOT TO LAUGH RIGHT IN YOUR FACE THAT HE CAN BARELY KEEP HIS FRONT UP.
That nasty spirited frat boy preznit motherfucker front man that he is.
Like any crooked used car salesman, HE knows what’s up. And it affects his speech.
“”There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Remember? We laughed so hard? (I didn’t, actually…)
You know why he couldn’t get it straight?
Because somewhere inside that fucked up limbic system he calls a brain, he was thinking “Shit. We done fooled ’em THOUSANDS ‘a times already!!! Assholes!!!” and he could barely keep a straight face.
Think about this. Remember it when you are watching that farce, that speechifying State of the Con Game dumbshow. (Which I definitely will NOT be watching. There are so many better things to do in life. Like sleep or play solitaire with a marked deck. If I were to see one more group of front runner assholes stand up and applaud that cur, I am not entirely sure that I could keep myself off of the street with the first blunt weapon that came to hand.)
He DESPISES you. Just like ANY crooked salesman.
You are nothing but a mark.
Time for some demarcation points here, people.
Turn this shit the fuck OFF and let’s try to get down to some REAL business.
Alito?
More dumbshow.
I will publicly march down Broadway at midday on a sunny afternoon with a sign around my neck saying “I was wrong. This country DOES work” if this piece of prevaricating, lawyerly, racist shit is not eventually OVERWEHELMINGLY approved by the frontrunners in the Congress of the Untied Stasis of Nomerica.
Filibuster?
We’d be better off with a BUNKER buster if we REALLY wanted to get something done.
Please…wise up here.
It’s all a dumbshow unless overwhelming, undeniable, smoking gun PROOF OF CRIMINAL ACTIVITY BY THESE PEOPLE IS PUBLICLY PRESENTED IN THE MAJOR MEDIA OF THIS COUNTRY.
Until then…and don’t hold you breath for THAT happening anytime soon unless you are simply trying to keep the virus-ridden jism out of your mouth…it’s just one long, continuing circle jerk.
With the American public right there in the center of the circle, waiting once again to receive their rightful load.
Disgusting.
Wake the fuck up.
Before it’s too goddamned late.
Wake the fuck up.
Or go down hard.
SOON.
BET on it.
AG
Look Arthur…you made your point in my diary with this diary as a comment.
I do not mean to hold you up to ridicule here, alohaleezy. I really do not.
We are all to blame.
I posted this as a diary simply because I wanted to reach more people than those who are reading the original one.
Sorry…no offense intended.
But I believe that this HAS to be said, and said loudly and often.
Sorry…
AG
The usual. recs, comments, etc.
Once again…let’s talk, here.
This game has GOT to end, and only YOU can prevent forest fires.
First us, then the rest of America.
Let’s sign off on these people.
ALL of them.
AG
Arthur,
I’m with you on this and with most if not all that you convey, but I just have to ask you. What are you doing personally? You have a superior ranting ability. You point out the obvious in a brutal way. That’s whats needed. But what are you doing personally Arthur besides publically stringing good people like Aloha up on your flagpole?
Give me one actionable piece of advice besides turning off the tv.
You said let’s talk. Ok. Let’s talk. But let’s remember who our enemies are and who our allies are. There is a way to make your point here without humiliating the very people I think you’re trying to reach.
I was so stunned by this that I just have had the hardest time trying to respond. Too much outrage for one day. Thank you for saying what I wanted to say. That way I didn’t have to come here a blow a gasket. I love you my frind. You said what I felt, like I had been strungup on a flagpole of riducule and that hurt me more deeply than anyone could know.
Again…I am sorry that you feel this way, Alohaleezy. We are all in imminent danger of being strung up on a flagpole of sheer destruction, in my view, and individual feelings must be disregarded in favor of dealing with the emergency.
Forgive me, if you can.
If not…so be it.
It’ll hurt a lot more when we finally come to our Kristallnacht here, I will guarantee.
And it’s on the way. if we do not do something.
Now.
AG
Oh Arthur, I appreciate your apology, really I do dear. Tonight I am turning off the computer and the news and taking a long hot soak in the tub. I have had enough for one day.
And one more thing and then I promise to shut up. Super asked you a very good question and you have not responded to him. Why not? AM interested In what YOU are doing besides turning off your tv. I will check back in the morning for your response.
I am publicly trying to string ALL of us up on a flagpole, Supersoling, because we are ALL at fault here. It was just alohaleezy’s turn on the string.
I woke up to what is happening a little early, maybe…I don’t know.
I used to read the Times and rooted for the good guys for a while…until I realized that as far as this media and this establishment are concerned there are no “good guys”.
Very few, anyway, and when they do appear…Dean, for example… they are strung up on the nearest flagpole as fast as the media can string them.
Media assassination.
So much neater than the ’60s + ’70s version.
What am I doing personally?
Besides spending hours writing wherever I can, trying to tell Paul Revere what I see as a perfectly evident truth that almost ALL of the so-called left seem to be missing?
Hours that could quite certainly be put to moire profitable short-term use doing any NUMBER of other things?
I am a creative artist. THAT is what I DO. Music division. And when I teach my art…which is increasingly a large part of my job, in major conservatories and in workshops and masterclasses…I say the same goddamned things that I say here, only music-intensive. BESIDES teaching what I know as a performer, composer and music director. I say that the culture itself is in denial and in a state of decay; that the making of new and creative music (or art of ANY kind) is opposed at every turn, from many of the schools right on through the grant committees, the arts establishment, the recording companies and the media-financed critics.
That we are being Britney Speared right into extinction.
And that my students must be ready to fight for their right to make serious art.
Perhaps fight harder than any group of artists in any culture since Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
And people listen, because I can play and I have a resumé three blocks long and a mile wide.
Here it’s a little harder.
Am I some nasty sprited nut who gets off on singling people out for some sort of derision?
A schizoid, voice-driven ranter who drops a couple of prescription pills and goes to work letting his shit out?
Could be…
But if you have the ears to hear…you know better.
As one teacher once said to me and a few other students of…of something a little else, I guess would be the best way to describe what he was teaching…
“Do you hear voices? No? Who said that?”
We ALL hear voices.
Once you get your head out of the media…the voices speak more truly.
That’s what I have found, anyway.
And now I am trying to share these “findings” with you.
Take it or leave it, as you must.
No hard feelings, either way.
And DEFINITELY no harm intended.
Just making omelets.
Some eggs get hurt.
But unlike Humpty Dumpty, they CAN be put back together again.
No harm intended…long term.
Later…
AG
You let this sentence get past your internal censor, which in general hasn’t been working well:
“And people listen, because I can play and I have a resumé three blocks long and a mile wide.”
Putting one accent (instead of two) on the word resume is a good example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. It is an affectation. It’s kind of like announcing that you’re a member of Mensa. Really smart people think that only middlebrows would ever join Mensa, which they tend to call Densa. Apologies if there are any earnest Mensa members here, but I always think of this when I see that kind of precious error.
So your resume is three blocks long and a MILE wide. Goodness. You must be the most important member of this entire community! I have over 100 legal articles, speaking engagements and so forth on my c.v., but I’m not fit to quibble with you. After all, my c.v. is only about five feet long in HTML pages, MUCH less than blocks and miles.
I’m sorry to be so darned sharp, and I hope I’m not violating the Booman rule of not being a prick. But gosh, it’s just not right for you to insult and condescend to alohaleezy like that.
I think you owe all of us an apology. The median age in this community is late 40s or early 50s and there isn’t a single person here who isn’t extremely intelligent and accomplished. I’m sorry, bud, but I’m not convinced that you have the inner pathway to truth. I went out looking for the inner pathway to truth long and hard for many years. And I ended up deciding that the best I can do in this life is to help individual human beings with complicated problems, not all of society, and I have indeed saved hundreds of lives and families. I hope to keep doing that for many years, God willing. I really don’t like being condescended to, even by a jazzman.
Yes.
The small holes in my self education show once in a while.
So WHAT?
And yes, I DO have an impressive resume. If yours in your profession is anything like mine in my profession, you have worked with the absolute best and brightest all of your life.
Which means SHIT on this blog. True or false. Which is what I was saying. People listen to me in music schools because of my resume. And because they can hear with their own ears when I play that I know something they might like to know. It’s not that way on a blog. Everyone has a clever pseudonym, and for all any of us know, NONE of us are what we claim to be.
For example…you get all picky about a misplaced accent but show no signs whatsoever of overall reading comprehension if you do not recognize the reason that I mentioned my resume in the first place.
I’ll take the misplaced accent, myself.
You say that “The median age in this community is late 40s or early 50s and there isn’t a single person here who isn’t extremely intelligent and accomplished.”
#1-Is that “late 40s or early 50s” supposed to mean that the people here are somehow more intelligent than people in say their late 20s or early 30s? Because I do not see it that way. In life. It is the YOUNG who are seeing through this bullshit first, and it is the young who by and are are turning away from the ongoing mass media circle jerk. When I mention these ideas to my college age son and his friends it’s like “So? You just figured that out?” But try to talk to middle aged liberals about it, and their NY Times addiction kicks in immediately.
Much shaking of jowls and grey beards, much “Harrumph!! Well.,..we must WATCH THESE PEOPLE!!! yes. THAT’S it. WATCH them!!!” And then “ZZZZzzzz….” as they fall jnto their post-brunch Meet the Press Sunday trance nap.
#2-I am sure that there ARE people here who are “intelligent and accomplished.” Just not very many if the general acceptance of the media rigamarole that I see is any indication.
WHICH media rigamarole? The one that holds a carrot of hope out in front of the left in situation after situation. A carrot that turns out to be totally artificial. Every time. And then they lay out another, and the left goes galumphing along in pursuit of that one. Will we never learn?
You say that you “went out looking for the inner pathway to truth long and hard for many years.”
Keep looking.
I am glad that you are “individual human beings with complicated problems.” That’s a noble profession. I have done much the same thing for most of my life. Stayed out of the general and into the specific. One note at a time, o0ne solo at a time,. one gig at a time, in the belief that the magic of music woul;d conquer all, that one person reached by attempt at artistic communication is the highest goal to which I can personally aspire. But if this country falls to some sort of media-enforced dictatorship (if in fact it has not already done so as Gaiaane points out in a comment here), their “complicated problems” are going to begin to look pretty simple compared to what is gong to go down here, and my attempts at art are going to be even harder to finance than they are now.
So here I am, rattling tin pots and blowing horns trying to get through to people.
And there is NO WAY ON EARTH that I am going to apologize for that.
Later…
AG
P.S. MSN Encarta Dictionary
ré·su·mé (plural ré·su·més) or re·su·mé (plural re·su·més) or re·su·me (plural re·su·mes)
Didn’t even have to search much for THAT one. One advantage of the autodidact is that he only learns what is being used.
P.P.S.
“Three blocks long and a mile wide.”
I just wrote that. Didn’t censor it at all. Because I do not really BELIEVE in censorship. External or otherwise. That’s the jazz soloists’ strength, Arminius. We realize that if you can open up and let it flow, everything will work out just fine. The analyses come later.
“I don’t pursue anything. The only thing I always answer is my own impulse.” Duke Ellington.
Yup.
So…here’s my (poetic) analysis.
Three blocks long…sounded better than four. (I play be ear.) And I have been a top flight professional for nearly 4 decades.
A mile wide….in more different idioms than any other musician I know.
Am I bragging?
No.
I do not believe that “achievement” is much more than genetic predestination combined with the luck of how you are brought up and educated.
About NEITHER of which do we have a damned thing to say.
Later…
AG
P.S. A few more choice quotes from Duke Ellington, a man who had a resume that stretched for miles in EVERY direction.
“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don’t want it.”
“By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.”
“It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.”
“My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.”
Sound familiar?
He taught us well.
I repost from another thread:
If you don’t think the US could go nazi the way Germany did in the 1930’s think again: You are wrong twice. Because it could and it has. You are watching the result play out now.
Don’t forget that Grandfather Prescott Bush was a staunch Nazi supporter. He invested a great deal of money in Germany in support of Nazi enterprises. Count on the Bush’s having learned Nazi techniques: They have!–with an eye to “getting it right” this time.
It is a given to have grown up in America with the idea of a free press. Both because free and honest communication really is necessary to democracy, and because it is what we were taught. But times change and the facts are otherwise: The free press has been bought out. Long ago. It’s gone! We cannot succeed by believing in and depending on a reality which does not exist.
It hurts to be singled out for criticism. I am not sure what to say, because that hurt has one and only one possible justification–that it leads to correct thoughts. If it does, cheap at the price! But if not?
Perhaps Arthur Gilroy has not spoken properly. I sense that he is very angry, and this may be bending his words. But he is not angry at anyone. He is angry that so many of us–far too many of us–fall for the same clumsy con, over and over. That so many of us are doing it, that is the reason for moving this from a comment to a diary–whether rightly or not.
And there may be a reason we are suckered. If we don’t look at history, including the history of the Bush family, it seems just impossible that these people could be as relentlessly evil as they are. We think of ourselves, and our family and friends and the people we know, and just cannot imagine folk whose identity depends on the suffering of others.
Trust those who have had the misfortune to live among psychopaths at some time in their lives: You really don’t want that experience. And when it befalls you, you have to watch what they do, not what they say, and when you have seen the scene, you have seen it. Bush will never tell the truth, not once, not ever, except to set you up to fall for the next lie. And the media never will either.
Cold words, meant in love. If I hated America, I would become Republican. If I hated you, I would shut my mouth, and let you fall for the next con. I do neither.
“Cold words, meant in love. If I hated America, I would become Republican. If I hated you, I would shut my mouth, and let you fall for the next con. I do neither.”
Heavy, Gaianne.
And right on the money.
I’m with you.
“Perhaps Arthur Gilroy has not spoken properly. I sense that he is very angry, and this may be bending his words. But he is not angry at anyone. He is angry that so many of us–far too many of us–fall for the same clumsy con, over and over. That so many of us are doing it, that is the reason for moving this from a comment to a diary–whether rightly or not. “
My “anger” is NOT bending my words. In point of fact, I am not “angry”. Any more than a true hunter or warrior cannot be truly angry at his adversary and still fight a good fight.
It is a different emotion.
The emotion of survival.
Stronger than anger.
Love.
Love can be fierce.
Do not forget this.
Love can be fierce.
Muhammed knew…so did David.
Love can be fierce.
Do not forget this.
Forget it at your peril.
AG
And thanks for your thoughts.
I will trust this is for the best.
We’ll see.