Driving the Herd

 It's the small things that matter.  At the ripe age of 62, I reinforce to myself that adolescent love is not an option.  There is zero chance that another human being will ever consider me a love interest.  There are several reasons, and these reasons are reasonable.  We get old.  Our bodies go through a transformation, and we turn into different people.  I may be the same inside, but the stark changes and challenges to our bodies are inescapable.  It is more wise to understand from a younger person's vantage point.  You are a fat old man.  Without being both sexist and discriminatory, I can say without a doubt that women are not attracted to the inner man.  They are not attracted to your intellect, your wit, your humor, or your talent.  These can contribute to the overall package, but when it comes to love or lust animal desire driven by a visual image is what stirs women.  Women are not interested in fat men.  They require the beef.  It is the way you look to which women are attracted.  The gym should be your friend, because if you are looking for love a geometrically balanced physique is your ticket.  In my experience the only thing that can counteract this primal urge of Freud's ID is money.  If you have money, and you are willing to spend it on women they will manipulate you.  It seems to be what they do, at least around here.  Before they will consent to let you express a carnal thought about them, they will require a life long commitment of financial support.  They want your house, your car, and your money.  The sex will disappear quickly, and if you resign yourself to marry a man-eater, you will be stuck in a loveless marriage with no physical release.  It is not worth it.  It is best to move on, and the world outside  America understands this.  More intelligent countries would not let their political leaders by toppled by simple infidelity.  Everyone needs love and sex, but to make it paramount in life is ridiculous.  In most European countries you visit legal houses of ill repute and purchase what you need.  It is a mature and satisfying experience, because the parties involved are mature enough not to trip on love.  America uses sex and love for control and monetary success, and the strip club is the perfect metaphor.  Why would any man choose to spend hundreds of dollars in a strip club, when in any other country simply you purchase exactly what you want and need.  It is a callous, shallow, unfulfilling exploitation of human desire.  Trying to earn the affection of someone is a complete waste of time.  You fare better ignoring them.  Better yet your hold them in contempt and build self esteem by excelling in the other areas of American life.  Otherwise you will sit around crying in your own beer lonely and forlorn.  Recent circumstances in human existence make this more difficult.  We were assaulted by a deadly virus that wreaked havoc on the human race.  Not since the Black Plague have we seen a more disruptive pathogen.  Multiple infections and organ failures.  Covid was devastating and the world has not recovered.  Human health is the most challenged in our own lifetimes.  It would seem there is a tangible force trying to thin out the human race.  We must fight for our existence, and it is a huge challenge.  When we rise each day we confront an unbalanced playing field.  Things have become stacked against us.  Almost everything is more difficult than it once was.  Perhaps Covid caused this, a weakening of the world's food supply.  In my point of view a shift away from humanity is the answer.  The digital age or our new reliance upon streaming digital images and information has undermined human accomplishment.  The things that a human can do no longer are important.  The economy has shifted to this technology driven dynamic, but average humans have little to contribute.  We cannot build and launch satellites and rockets.  We cannot build weapons.  We cannot form networks of wireless information.  While digital visual imaging is becoming more accessible to the common man via AI and smart phones, these concepts are icing.  The substance of art representing the human condition largely is absent, because we have forgotten how to achieve it.  You can't use AI.  The human element is what is necessary to achieve art, and the process is as old as this earth.  Humanity has been reduced to a herd of cattle, and Donald Trump is driving this herd. 

The Midnight Special

As I listen to Leadbelly sing the "Midnight Special," I realize that song writing once was a valued commodity in America.  Songs were the voice of the people, and the styles varied according to the cultures they represented.  This is what makes the history of American popular music interesting and complex.  Harry Belafonte sings "Midnight Special."  It was a hit album for him, and interestingly the songs on it represented the pirating of Roots Music in America.  The chord progressions of the songs he sings are exact replicas of traditional Old Timey, Gospel, and Country songs in the public domain.  Good composers borrow, great composers steal!  Imitation is the highest form of flattery!  As you listen to Harry Belafonte sing, you are singing along with him; you all ready know the melodies from having heard and sung them in your youth.  It was the era of Stephen Foster and his song "Old Folks at Home."  The Black Church had a strong influence on American popular songs, and that has continued through the decades.  Khruanbin's guitarist and drummer played at Beyonce's church in Houston, Texas.  The Black Church has been a cornerstone of American music.  Black influences on American popular music are syncopation, improvisation, and The Blues.  Pundits suggest the The Blues spawned in the American South during and after slavery are the sole source of this emotionally moving music.  If suffering and sorrow are the overt traits expressed in The Blues, then everyone will understand all cultures throughout time have faced equal adversity.  It is not just enslaved and trafficked African-Americans.  Scot-Irish, German, Italian, and Jewish cultures all are infused with The Blues.  The Ballads in particular of the Appalachians not only express hardship, but impart wisdom to their offspring.  Any music in minor mode going back to Gregorian Chant expressed piety and sorrow at the crucifying of Jesus.  Sadness and hardship are nothing new, but perhaps the prospect of riches in the Wild West of America usurped these trials and tribulations.  All cultures have vehicles to express grief and sadness, and they are important.  One listen to aria and recitative by George Frederick Handel, and you will hear bereavement personified.  What America did do was exploit The Blues, and that is okay.  The vehicle of The Blues, its chord progression in varied forms, was a worthy foundation for the creation of American Rock 'n' Roll.  Early Rock 'n' Roll was race music or Rhythm and Blues, and largely its chord progressions were from The Blues.  This feeling of The Blues is what is appealing, and always it does not have to be lamenting.  Quickly Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and many others discovered you could superimpose overt sexuality onto the vehicle of The Blues.  The tempos went up, and energy, vitality, and physical showmanship became paramount.  I concur.  If you want to end a party early, have the band play, "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone."  With no disrespect to Bill Withers, that song will depress anyone.  Baby's love it.  It is common to exploit the poor and down and out.  "Them that's got shall get.  Them that not shall lose."  

King to King Level Zero

Often when one speaks the truth or does a good deed, they are punished by the masses.  When I am compelled to write about life, it is because a force greater than me insists upon it.  Whether this is called conscience, soul, or God I don't question.  When I compose music I listen.  I have discovered in the throes of survival often there is nothing to which to listen.  That which we do have to listen is manipulative, inciting, or antagonistic.  I feel this way about television commercials.  In their inception like many things, advertising sought to be honest, clever, and entertaining.  As a nation and culture America has moved backwards.  Solidarity which is needed to bind a nation together has been replaced with tribalism.  Because  we cannot get along as adults, we seek to manipulative each other.  The Capitalist socioeconomic construct is not helpful, because it pits us against ourselves for monetary survival.  I would not say I am a Democratic Socialist, but Capitalism has succumbed to corporate corruption in such a way that the American people's system of governance has been discarded.  The essence of the United States Constitution is being mocked by our elected leaders.  I cannot remember in my lifetime such an event.  Usually we elect and believe in our leaders, because our lives and livelihoods are dependent upon them.  When they turn against us, it is nothing more than treason.  When the entire government turns treasonous, who is left to charge and prosecute them?  America's judicial system now is tasked with policing our elected leaders as well as corporate and civilian criminals.  The precedent was set in 2000 with Bush vs. Gore, when the Supreme Court ultimately decided who became President.  It was a low point in American history, and it is upon what Donald Trump has trusted his dictatorial ambitions.  The fight for the survival of American democracy now is in the courts, but are they strong enough to save us?  Again I will ask the question, "What body is responsible for charging and prosecuting a criminal government?"  If the entire government and its civil branch are under the control of the President, who is immune from prosecution, who will police them.  Will the police step up and accept this responsibility?  This did not fare well at the Capital on January 6, 2021.  The Capital Police are under control of the President, and he purposely held them back from the attack on Congress, so they could not confirm what the Electoral College decided.  America has re-elected a criminal President, so it should be no surprise when he turns against the people.  A spiritual catalyst is needed in and by America, because a greater force is needed to defeat evil.  We it would seem are not capable.  When I compose I listen.  Although I understand theoretically how and what I am composing, I must listen.  Later in life I have come to understand more often there is nothing to which to listen.  This is true of mundane American life.  Film, television, radio, and the American music industry once provided this sonic stimulation for our souls.  Covid drove a stake through most truly American virtues.  The things that have made America great, such as the commercial arts, have been hobbled by the smart phone.  Our entire culture has been hobbled by the smart phone.  Seeing or hearing artistic endeavors rife with emotion and spirituality now make me weep.  This has become so foreign to America, we have dated ourselves.  What is being offered as our future is conquest.  America has not asked for or chosen leaders whose task is to change the charter of our country.  In good faith we have elected leaders to follow the  United States Constitution.  Unfortunately the precedent was set with the Supreme Court's selection of George W. Bush.  His Vice President, Dick Cheney, pushed the boundaries of the authority of his office ascribing new power to the Supreme Court.  Two decades later Donald Trump is continuing this pattern further separating the American people from self-governance.  His administration has begun moving backwards towards the monarchy against which America fought and was founded.  "We don't want no King." 

Wearing a Tin Foil Hat

Purposely I have chosen NOT to blog about our current political strife.  The ramifications of the President's ill actions in tandem with an American oligarch will reap the repercussions of the people.  It is the people who must demand justice and take back their Constitutional right to self-govern.  This right has been hijacked under our noses, but it is no different than other nations.  The pattern is well understood, and this is Donald Trump's life's work.  Is it possible for one man to accomplish such a goal, the deconstruction of the democracy of what once was the world's superpower?  I don't think so.  There are so many losing their jobs, how can any of Trump's words be taken seriously.  This is why I have chosen NOT to blog about it.  It does not merit my attention except there is treason, a high crime.  The jury will be the millions of Americans who may be cast onto the street, and the tables of January 6 may turn.  The revolution may be original Americans, with a well-armed militia, decide not.  What is more concerning to me is that a malady unlike Covid, a nebulous and invisible nemesis is causing serious harm to specific individuals in the public forum.  A covert, seemingly invisible, nonlethal weapon has debilitated thousands of civil servants, diplomats, and others.  The intelligence agencies and the medical establishment can't find a cause.  That is because the cause is the intelligence agencies.  We could be so gullible to elect Donald Trump again and to believe his accomplice is using his 30,000 low earth orbit satellites only for internet service.  IRS or Intelligence, Reconnaissance, and Surveillance is the new cornerstone of the United States military.  Thank Bill Clinton and Dr. Ross McNutt.  President Clinton auctioned off dangerous microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum which did balance the budget.  Also it created America's newest economy.  We have yet to transition away from it, although it is warming the earth and causing physical harm to everything.  Millimeter waves are not our friend, and while corporate America once had oversight and federal agencies provided protection, they now have been stripped like the millions of jobs held by civil servants.  It is the Wild West, and it is happening before our very eyes.  Microwave use is off the hook.  It erroneously has become the core of human existence, and it is not necessary.  Wires are better.  It was too easy for microwave surveillance to become a nonlethal weapon.  Probably it happened by accident like Covid.  Beam microwaves at Russian government offices for long enough, and the ill effects on humans will make themselves known.  the same is true for the Apache helicopter.  It is a metaphor of the Cold War.  It is braggadocio.  It says, "Look how powerful we are!"  With all of the armaments that can be fashioned to a Sikorsky helicopter from the l970's, we don't need to fire a single round.  The radiation coming from this attack helicopter's onboard targeting and acquisition systems are enough to humble any human being.  The same is true for what is under the radome in the front of every aircraft flying.  Carbon emissions are problematic, but radiation from the upper frequency microwaves are baking our brains.  All of the symptoms of the Havana Syndrome are those of electromagnetic radiation.  When the CIA or FBI are surveilling a person of interest, they discover that with their gathered intel also the person begins to suffer from unknown maladies slowing their activity.  Effectively these individuals can be accosted invisibly without effecting those around them.  A highly steerable wave of microwave energy has become the modern nonlethal weapon, and we don't know it. 

Where is Steve Bannon?

 When asked what the Trump Administration's number one priority would be if again they came into power, Steve Bannon's response was, "To go after the Deep State."  Upon hearing this term for the first time from a childhood friend, I was perplexed.  It elicited images of a long gone era of Jim Crow segregation, the Cold War, espionage, and Fascism.  Little did I know it was the Civil Service.  Fayetteville, North Carolina is no stranger to the Civil Service.  There are hundreds if not thousands of workers gainfully employed at what was  Fort Bragg.  Although like most Americans I am aware of the heinous atrocities of the Confederacy against freed slaves and their offspring before, during, and after the Civil War, my sentiment is keeping abreast of one's past, no matter how grievous, is important.  If we sweep criminal behavior under the rug, like the actions of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, we shall forget.  This is the plan.  All ready this has begun to happen in America.  Not only are American's not being educated properly, we are being "gaslighted" into believing falsehoods.  Keeping Fort Bragg named Fort Bragg is a good idea to me, because the name retains memories of the post's history.  Championing the Confederacy, like some modern Southerners do, is not prudent.  Racial discrimination and White Supremacy are evil concepts.  It must be difficult for most to understand such small-minded behavior.  We must.  Donald Trump got re-elected.  White Supremacy and discrimination of all kinds have been a covert trait of America since her inception.  Like many historical precepts America has done her best to navigate the minefield of slavery.  Whether Trump was a catalyst for this new, misguided, and mostly ignorant tribal warring, reparations a century and a half later are not the answer.  America was doing well until now.  Most of us know that immigrants seeking a better life often will do work Americans frown upon, but watching America's core get decimated and replaced with non vetted illegal immigrants is problematic.  It seems like every conceivable attack on mainstream Americans becomes a priority.  All war is simple genocide of the pure blood of a nation.  That includes the Civil War and Viet Nam.  Watching pure blooded, wholesome, hard working Americans dies fruitlessly has become commonplace to the point that there is no America.  We are scattered bands of mutts easily controlled and manipulated.  Well educated, intelligent, thinking individuals who can see through corruption, imperialism, and Fascism almost are extinct.  It would seem a present day "Lord of the Flies" has transpired.  The tenants which built democracy including opportunity, public education, and justice have been replaced with nepotism, greed, and quest for power.  One only has to look to the White House, again, to see.  Using America's military to enforce immigration laws is not that far fetched, but it is risky.  For soldiers to embrace helpless civilians as the enemy, American or not, is wrong.  As history has proven it is far too easy to make this mistake.  An overzealous dictator usually is at the helm.  Eventually it will be the military against the populace, and this is why our Founding Fathers penned the Second Amendment.  While assault weapons are not a good choice for home use, they are being made available for this reason.  North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore, Phil Berger, feels every adult over the age of eighteen should be able to carry a concealed weapon.  Only can we ask why?  Misguided millennials who lack crucial life experiences and wisdom should not be carrying concealed weapons.  In North Carolina anyone can walk into a gun store and buy a hand gun with no permit.  It is the wrong approach to a civilization, and only can we think that the entangling tentacles of Southern fascism bred in the Era of Jim Crow are strangling our common sense.  War, oppression, and the pursuit of power are not the pinnacles of human existence.  Art, romance, and creativity, or the Liberal Arts are a more prudent model of life.  These disciplines glorify, inspire, and empower the human heart, soul, and intellect.  We have lost them. 

Can We Be Saved?

It is disheartening to hear that North Carolina has the most expensive health care in the nation in addition to paying its teachers the lowest salaries.  A state legislature that creates a super majority of Republicans to undermine the powers of the Governor.  What is one to think?  As a continuing red state and what has become the new norm for America, the rich are looking out for their own interests.  Stealing from the taxpayers is the new economy.  Using Fayetteville as an example may not be accurate, because it is a host for the world's largest military facility.  While diversity is present and evident, the population has grown more segregated.  There are few things left that bind citizens together.  Imported soldiers, proponents of the LGBT movement, Hispanics, and now other foreign ethnicities have subjugated the previous generation of Old Money which recently has become extinct.  Much of this money has been donated to the arts, and that is a worthy cause.  The mainstream is suffering from the same lack of leadership plaguing America.  Difficult policy decisions simply have been abandoned creating seeming lawless void.  Why are cyber currency proponents allowed to deplete the common power grid serving the people?  It is well known that these factions find the cheapest power and set up shop to mine bitcoin.  Its the newest "thing," although its guru was convicted and jailed for the Ponzi scheme he implemented.  It has not proven to be an effective investment, but still the facilities tool on depleting America's supply of electricity.  Elected representatives are responsible for making value judgements, and the Republican philosophy of free reign is a mistake.  Piedmont Embraer jets have been flying through Fort Liberty airspace for years, and no one bats an eye.  The misuse and exploitation of the skies is but one blatant example.  Fayetteville never had much of a problem with air pollution until Ground Forces Command established themselves at Fort Liberty.  This evening on the local television news, I can't believe I heard the news anchors hoping for 80 degree weather in February.  They are gaslighting us into thinking it is normal rather than destructive Climate Change.  The unseasonable warm weather that will ensue presently directly is caused by Operation Rolling Thunder, a large military exercise that takes place in February.  We are being lied to and mislead.  The majority of ads on television are criminal.  Oversight has disappeared in America, and no one is at the helm.  Most adverse health effects in humans are man created, and so they lie about it.  It would seem prophecy is coming true. 

America's Current Predicament

I have refrained from blogging for a reason, so I won't use the words genocide and Fauci in the same sentence.  We had to be patient until the former CDC Director, Robert Redfield M.D. decided to sing.  Perhaps a trained medical doctor with decades of professional leadership experience merits credible opinion on the Covid pandemic.  It was no surprise to me what he said, but clearly he felt the outbreak was an accident.  The pathogen had been developed, engineered, and manufactured for use as a weapon.  Repeat.  If that was the purpose of the virus, then America cannot hide from the truth.  We are hiding now.  I won't read the news or take it seriously, because it is inciting political rhetoric.  The newly elected President does not merit anyone taking him seriously.  Yes, he is the leader of the free world and the Commander in Chief of America's fighting forces, so the capability for the destruction of democracy is tangible.  The virus exists, and those involved with making it have perished.  A convenient alibi for the manufacturing of a deadly virus that killed hundreds of thousands of people exists.  If only by reading the news in the last few years, we know who sanctions such activity, poisoning your political enemies or malcontents in your country's populace.  Who does this?  Until now the United States has honored the Geneva Convention, and many non-lethal weapons have been discontinued.  The pattern that has emerged with a convicted felon at the helm of America's military is concerning.  The overall prospectus of this returning administration is eliminating oversight of all corporate activity.  Businesses, companies, or industries have become graven images given free reign to operate as they please with no concern for the health and well being of the American people.  American history is rife with such examples, and the tobacco industry became the step child of sheer greed and wealth.  Lacing tobacco with addictive chemicals is not dissimilar than over prescribing opioids, nor is it different from polluting America's water shed with PFAS.  America has not had an example of good-hearted Christian behavior in years.  On the contrary our nation has tried diligently to eliminate the presence of God altogether.  We are a changed nation, and not for the better.  Previously when I become vocal about America's issues, often I am punished.  This is possible because of the prospectus about which I am writing.  Businesses, companies, and manufacturers are treated like gods, although their moral and ethical policies have waned.  While I do not feel America's government has been "weaponized" in any way, I do see blatant and glaring examples that corporate America has been.  It is too easy.  For government agencies created to help and protect the American people to somehow inflict harm on them instead is ridiculous.  Instead these agencies get "unfunded" through government lead by unethical leaders.  Because of the Covid, the proliferation of PFAS in America's water, the opioid epidemic, and the massive and growing amount of electromagnetic radiation surrounding our homes oversight is crucial.  It has been proven again and again corporate America is not capable of operating ethically.  Our food supply has become the most urgent of these problems.  "Soylent Green is people!"  With this trend of immunity and the hijacking of America's courts, truly we should be alarmed.  If other countries are examples the military easily can be converted to a private security force for use against the people.  I am not sure if the mission statement of America's fighting forces is so clear anymore.  We do not know who the enemy is, and we are being coerced or badgered into fighting among ourselves because of our racial and cultural differences.  There is a plan in play with the second Trump administration, and how tiresome it is for the legal system to have to be the police of democracy?  Every executive order will be met with a lawsuit challenging its Constitutionality.  It is a recipe for political disaster and a catalyst for assassination. 

The American (and Global) Establishment

 After an intensely dark and slanderous Presidential campaign, the election results arrived in nauseating and insipid fashion.  Despite the predictions of contesting the results (if Kamala Harris won) and ensuing violence, an immediate and seeming miraculous Trump victory immediately tempered a previously vitriolic and hateful campaign.  The snow job by American media was meant to quell dissatisfaction or reaction to Trump's win.  "There there little child.  Take your medicine.  It was meant to be."  It must be the paradox of all paradoxes.  (and as I write this a menacing and intended to be intimidating Apache attack helicopter flies directly over my house)  It is a concrete metaphor for the Trump campaign.  Intimidation but mostly hot air.  A U.S. Army attack helicopter cannot fire on civilians, but it can practice its craft of warfare on American civilians.  We know nothing of the force that commands these war birds, and with a starkly divided nation the American people cannot be assured the United States military has not pledged their allegiance to the traitor emeritus.  If the federal government has become weaponized, in true Trump fashion his organization would be the first to use it but blaming it on the other side.  This has been their strategy all along.  The sickeningly pallid media declaration that Trump has become a living American martyr fighting his way back to the White House is at odds with reality.  It is a smothering blanket meant to quell resistance to the electing of an aspiring dictator.  There are a handful of postulates resulting from this uncanny turn of events.  When Trump lost he incited a riot that stormed the Capital and attempted to thwart the confirmation of the vote.  People died.  As Trump won (if that is the case) Johnny is urged to be quiet and take his medicine.  Because Electoral votes were manipulated in both previous elections, we are to assume the bribing of state governments didn't happen again?  Shut up and take the money.  What are the postulates?  It takes a specific point of view to understand.  The "Establishment" will not allow a black woman President.  That is too real.  With the history of suffrage and other women's rights, a strong woman President could effect change in America.  Jim Crow Jr. could not allow that.  White America, ignoring our true diverse history, won't allow a black woman President.  Social media and the internet have destroyed a once economically viable print media.  It has destroyed constructive, thoughtful, tangible, print media upon which the world has relied for centuries.  In the swipe of an iPhone screen, newspapers, periodicals, and other printed news have vanished into the digital domain (including movies) allowing third party assailants to hijack, manipulate, and redistribute information.  It is called "Big Brother," and the author George Orwell predicted this decades ago.  It was called "1984."  We are overdue, but it is here.  Without printed material, internet media has become desperate for fodder.  They need stories, and Donald Trump winning the White House for a second time is too good to pass up.  The sheer breadth of his evil musings have created novels of plots to be exploited in the next four years.  Kamala Harris in the White House would have been to real for America's  now television existence.  America always has been shaped by the entertainment industry, but for film and television largely it was a product of the misplaced Jewish community escaping the Holocaust.  They recreated their dreams in Hollywood through film and television.  Their vision helped shape the American dream, and it was positive.  A bigoted, White Supremacist, mostly Southern and Confederate faction has decided they have no interest in the historically accurate origins of America.  This includes Critical Race Theory.  My own personal study of American Roots music, Jazz, Gospel, and other racially diverse musical forms and habits staunchly were being discouraged during this presidential election.  It was a covert war on African-American influence in America, and now it will continue.  Do we remember Black Lives Matter?  Effectively it was quelled by a murdering pandemic that took the place of more specific single killings carried out by a corrupt police force.  The Establishment can not have a black woman President, nor do they want any recollection of American Roots Music.  Jazz, Gospel, and other art forms driven by human suffering at the hands of racially discriminatory white supremacists no longer are welcome.  Instead they created a political skirmish driven by stolen confidential documents sold to Iran and Hamas, attacking Israel.  Their immediate and decisive military response will effect the same change as a cataclysmic hurricane or flood rendering valuable real estate available devoid of its original indigenous inhabitants.  It is Wounded Knee on a grand scale, nothing more than genocide.  America now has suffered the same grievous atrocities of other third world nations.  It is incumbent upon the American people to insure that a Trump dictatorship does not ensue.  What would have happened if Kamala Harris won?  Would the Extreme Right have revolted again inciting violence and political unrest?  Perhaps it is best that Trump won circumventing a second American civil war.  The story line is too rich and economically viable to bypass.  It's drama!  The health and longevity of America on the other hand is not assured.  We are well on our way to becoming a Third World nation with the chasm between the elite rich and poor growing at the same rate as Global Warming.  Before the poor die of starvation or lack of food, probably we will perish in the remnants of a ruined planet Earth suffocating from lack of viable oxygen and growing fungus from the heat and humidity of Climate Change.  America always has been shaped by the entertainment industry, but the shift to the digital domain, promulgated by foreign interests, has undermined patriotic solidarity.  We have no main stream.  We do not know who we are, and there is nothing in the future without the vision of the creative minds of American artists and laymen.  The commercial music industry should remain a shining example of America's successes.  Jazz is crucial.  Sitting on a plantation porch, sipping lemonade, and collecting a fortune in rice assets earned on the backs of laboring enslaved Africans isn't the answer.  Only diversity, honesty, and forward thinking can save America.