Heart and Soul

It seems the era of Obama increasingly is becoming one of non-convention. While an era attempts to define itself looking back at many periods in history, what will determine its major defining characteristics? The entertainment industry traditionally has had a sizable impact on pop culture, but will the current roster of artists stand any chance of influencing today’s America? Justin Biber? Lady Gaga? Katy Perry? Do any of these adolescent appealing performers stand a chance of usurping both the 60’s and 70’s monumental power of molding America’s social, political, and cultural habits? The answer is no and for one simple reason. America’s popular music once was focused on more substantial humanistic issues. There is a parallel between the current trend of popular music and America’s fallen economic leaders. Neither was concerned with anything other than immediate human gratification. Because of Napster, American record companies lost their power. Consequently artists have had to rely on the internet to market their music. Politically the last decade has seen a campaign of “Fear and Intimidation” fostered by Bush Jr. Political Correctness and Gay Rights have squeezed any remaining rebelliousness out of the American populace. We have become a generation of couch potato gamers concerned with nothing. Luckily with Egypt and Libya’s example Wisconsin has returned to something tangible in the history of America. They have resurrected the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa, protesting in the streets for union labor rights. Unfortunately with a swift slash of the pen Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly, even with the picketing absence of democratic leaders, forced a vote in the wee hours of the morning passing legislation severely limiting workers rights. The process was a success, but much like the resulting Presidential election decided in the state of Florida by the Supreme Court, savvy lawmakers used their legal knowledge and political prowess to succeed in the vote. All the moxy in the world, while necessary in garnering spiritual support for truly American issues, cannot defeat lawyers. Still as a nation we are not sure whether to embrace them and their system or continue to spurn them like the Wall Street traders that led is into the current crisis. The quintessential battle between heart and mind, soul and reason, and logic and emotion continues. Maybe we need a few more lessons from Spock and Captain Kirk.

Tax the Rich

Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post now represents a trend made viable by corporate deregulation under the George W. Bush administration. In the face of a continually decreasing American economy, the rich continue to try to acquire equity in products themselves are not able to create. This is the antithesis of the core philosophy of Capitalism, although in recent decades with a swell in Wall Street trading it is being perceived as the real McKoy. The Grass Roots movement in America best viewed in the lineage of the Gilded Age represents a viable model of economic prosperity in America. The buying and selling of companies on Wall Street is not. While it is obvious the chasm between the poor and the rich has grown since the Bush presidency, the disparity between the working class and affluent America always has been present. One only must turn on the tube or watch a spate of emerging retro 80’s flicks at the theatre to see this tenacious disparity continue. Memories of the Reagan Era are creating a sentiment that seems to be ever increasing in Hollywood. Likewise re-emergent mall landscapes are an eerie physical incantation attempting to raise the ghost of trickle down economics. It will be interesting to see if mainstream America bites. More realistically the creative and artistic mall scenarios probably will bite it themselves, because the pocket change America carried in the decade of the 80’s no longer exists. This dichotomy, an elitist economy on top of the real economy, is the fatal illusion that is impeding progress in America. While fiscal progress because of the government’s huge accruing debt is foremost in most people’s minds, jump-starting the economy via Capitalism is the only way to revitalize America. The corporate pattern of the last decade engineered by Bush Jr. is not the right model. It was an elitist model devised for those all ready possessing money. Reagan was more successful in his administration, because culture and education were at a high point in American history. Reducing tax rates for the rich for the first time from 70% to that akin of middle class America worked, because the rich invested their money back in the infrastructure of America. Unlike Wall Street cronies of this decade, they did not pocket the cash. This first emerging class of wealth saw the need to re-invest their monies in the system that was creating their lifestyles. We have seen an unparalleled greed in the American economy in the Bush and post Bush years favoring an earthly presence of the anti-Christ. Could this symbolically be the sign that the second coming of Jesus Christ is near, and the epic significance of 2012 is credible? Judging by media’s depiction of the crisis it seems otherworldly in nature. Could it be the quintessential battle between rich and poor has surfaced again as the metaphor for the battle between evil and good? Will we ever recover from this human-induced drama, or is some kind of spiritual intervention being summoned? Solutions to the economic crisis, while not intangible, seem to bathe themselves in the hypocrisy America has sported since its inception. For America’s economy to resurrect, the real philosophy of the America Dream must be reestablished, aid for the middle and lower classes must be provided, and the rich must be taxed.

Current State of Affairs

A few thoughts after a long respite from blogging. Leaving a ship always is difficult. The average working person in America knows nothing about living at sea for six months at a time, in a small room, with a same-gendered roommate of your non-choosing. Then acquaintances and your familiar working environment in the blink of an eye are all gone. After laborious travels you arrive at a different place (the cruise lines call “vacation”) and attempt to reorient your life. Many people experience an extreme depression at the sudden loss, or at least seeming loss and drastic change. Only with discipline and the power of mind are you able to integrate once again into American society. The memories are the luck of the draw, sometimes sentimental, sometime melancholic. You must decide what to remember and what to leave behind. It seems the lower southern half of the eastern seaboard is drastically polluted with what must be diesel micro-dust.

Even in Nassau the air was fowl with aroma of the burning of fossil fuels. To a cruise guest this must not seem like a vacation, only a re-visiting of what has become the stark reality in America. Also the violence seems to increase proportionately as you drive south with Miami being the sole destination. Did not Florida used to be a tourist state? Only American musicians have any real grasp of American music. What must cruise lines continue to fill their bands with Europeans with no interest or ability in Motown, Jazz, or R&B music? Television has become trite propaganda produced for what must be attention deprived idiots. Corporate merging has dispensed with any system of Checks and Balances simply in the attempt to earn the coveted quarterly revenue for which prostrate shareholders desire. Wall Street once again has cursed the real economy of Capitalism and mainstream America. Soon, as predictions would have, a giant computer will rule the earth. Those without God will be left fighting on the deteriorating earth until their deaths. Many historic cultures believe the world will end in 2012. Y2K was pigeon poop compared to what is to come. Multi-Culturalism voraciously was murdered by Globalization furthering the economic and social gap between the rich and the poor. How can the rich perceive skating and bicycling as threatening in any way? They used to be methods chosen to ambulate to businesses. Now they are perceived as a grievous threats to elitist society. Gas prices again are rising. It has become apparent an evil dictator is on the take solely from the U.S. After being forced from power by effective but deadly public protests instigated by Facebook posts, he makes off with billions received for exercising sovereignty strengthening the rights of the U.S. to use the Suez Canal for transportation of black gold. The U.S. is experiencing the highest budget deficit in history, and that even with President Obama’s budget proposal, seems never to be fulfilled. Is a coup imminent?