Climate Change

We should get one thing clear.  Our citizenry today is in the dark.  It is wonderful that protests are beginning to take place, people are getting angry and emphatic, and we are trying to take control of our own lives.  This is the way of democrats, not republicans.  Republicans are rich, stuffy, snobby assholes who choose only to interact with their own kind.  It's called snobbery.  The emerging democratic movement needs a clue.  They can protest the United Nations.  They can protest state governments.  They can protest Washington, D.C.  If we lift the veil that has been placed over our eyes by these conniving republicans, then we must see the roots of climate change.  We must see the true causes.  It is not enough to protest the Trump administration.  It is not enough to protest the United Nations.  These administrations have proven themselves impotent, negligent, and evil.  They do not care if we are burning the planet.  They do not care if we are polluting the earth's air and water.  They cannot see past a few years from now, their own immediate gratification, and their own selfish needs.  A moral conscience, a heart, and an acknowledgement of God are necessary to save the Earth.  The true causes of climate change are not the controlling factions of government.  They are the real life businesses which churn for humanity.  Being such it could be difficult to protest them.  If we protest a railroad, whence will our energy come?  If there is no one to haul the coal out of the mountains?  If we protest a cruise line, how will we take our economical vacations?  If we protest an airline, how will we get across the country to visit with our relatives?  It is difficult seeing truth.  The truth is government is not all responsible for climate change.  As the governing power of the military, its Commander and Chief, its Joints Chief of Staff, and the Pentagon they are responsible for global warming caused by an expansion of technology in the military.  If you protest Boeing it is a double edged sword.  They make our passenger jets, but they also make war machines which fly and heat the earth's atmosphere.  Perhaps it is not possible to protest the military.  That will require a responsible president, cabinet, and Pentagon.  Otherwise they will continue to cater to the largest monetary handouts.  The country during the Viet Nam war was not afraid to show their disdain for soldiers killing women and children in the heat of battle.  An entire cultural revolution was born out of this protest, and America needs such a thing now.  We are in the dark.  We have a veil placed over our eyes with an iPhone dangling on a string in front of us.  If we put them down long enough to look around, maybe we will see.  Cruise ships are warming our oceans.  There is no other explanation.  Huge prime movers lodged in the hulls of super liners create heat.  Huge azipods, alternating current drives submerged beneath the surface, create heat.  Exhaust from cruise ships exponentially creates more hydrofluorocarbons than cars on land.  Worse of all the recently expanded rail industry, of which Warren Buffet bought in, largely is responsible for producing heat and forcing it around the globe like a huge convection oven.  Citizens would be reluctant to criticize such powerful entities and men, because we are worried about our own survival.  We are reliant upon their services or are we?  Man proved that he is incapable of running a large scale nuclear power plant.  Too many corners were cut.  Too many short cuts were taken at the eventual expense of humanity.  Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were great disasters, and as such we lost an invaluable resource.  Cheap electricity.  I don't know what these railroads are hauling, but I know the GE ES44AC is an enemy of the environment not only because they produce heat and force it around the globe, but because they leak electricity.  If anyone were to walk up to one and hit it with a digital thermometer the jig would be up.  The rumor is in Chicago if you live by the tracks, you can stick a fluorescent bulb out the window and it will light up when one of these locomotives comes by.  This is not good, airborne alternating current.  Airborne AC creates heat and vibration, especially in the low frequency range.  Low frequency, this is the problem.  This is a problem not only for its effects on climate change, but for its effects on psychology.  The brain operates in this range, alpha, beta, and theta waves.  If these waves are interrupted or bombarded with extraneous energy, they will respond.  That is what we have now, minds being controlled by machines which are being controlled by an unknowing and uncaring contingency.  They know not what they do.  These are the entities tangibly which are creating climate change or global warming.  Lift the veil of hallucinogenics and stare directly into the void.  It will be obvious.  Our responsibility as a concerned populace is to do something. 

Deconstruction

What is it about Fayetteville other than Fort Bragg that deserves the pseudonym "Fayettenam?"  In proceeding decades of my lifetime (from 1962)  there have been moments of calm on the home front.  The obvious time period is after Richard Nixon got us out of Viet Nam for good.  We pulled out of Viet Nam around 1975.  While the late 70's were wrought with strife for me, because I was bused across town to a predominantly black junior high school, war time activities were coming to a close.  Then Ronald Reagan was elected president.  He was a Hollywood film actor.  A film actor became the American president.  Whether you agree with Reaganomics or not, during his tenure as president things were calm in America.  Until Bush Senior decided to start the first television war defending Kuwait against Saddam Hussein's hostile invasion, things were relatively calm.  There I said it.  W. did want to get back at Saddam Hussein, although he had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York city's twin towers.  It was opportunism.  Rumsfeld, whom they dumped, and Dick Cheney were part of one of the most egregious political acts in American history.  They convinced George W. Bush to destroy a middle eastern country, and single handedly created ISIS or ISIL.  There was a Taliban.  There was Jihad.  There was the ayatollah.  Jimmy Carter was humiliated as he left office freeing the Iran hostages, so Iran is a trouble maker.  Did they attack Saudi Arabia?  I think not.  Ask the simple question, "Who has drones?"  If they have drones, then we sold them to them.  Who comes to mind?  Israel.  Bibi who also seems to be leaving office in a pattern for Donald Trump.  Corruption charges after they leave office.  Is there any way possible with what has transpired in America that the Donald could win re-election?  If he does, it will prove the system is corrupt to the core and is being manipulated in some way.  Voting machines.  Bribing electors.  All we can hope is that he is on the way out.  Before BRAC, Base Realignment and Closure, Fort Bragg had a sizeable military footprint.  It increased during Desert Storm.  What were twenty thousand troops became fifty, what we have now in addition to thousands of contractors.  Their imprint is sizeable, because Ground Forces command came because of BRAC.  Those high paid high ranking military generals didn't want to come to 'Nam, because Fayetteville is lacking in the most basic human amenities.  There are no jazz clubs.  There is not much up scale activity in a small southern town that would be lost without Fort Bragg soldiers dollars.  On what did they once spend those dollars?  Drugs, alcohol, and prostitution on Hay St.  There is a real question if Fayettenam is now better or worse because of Bill Hurley's clean up of downtown.  I don't really understand it.  Instead of catering to the needs of the military, which whether we like it or not may be drugs, alcohol, and prostitution, instead the far right has implemented their influence on American society mostly eliminating most of the great strides of American freedoms.  We are not hip.  We are not cool.  We are so conservative that a fart can barely emerge from our tight white asses.  "Watch whitey try to dance."  The rule of chaos.  If people feel good, you can't control them.  They have independence.  They have serenity.  I have been watching Eminem videos recently produced by Dr. Dre, and never have I seen a more candid, sardonic, needed social American discourse.  These videos have more insight, wisdom, and entertainment value than anything available today, and somebody just decided that it was over.  Music videos, these pioneering small vignettes of musical expression, overnight were extinguished because somebody wanted it.  They just said, "Let's nuke Hollywood and start over."  Fight Club.  What filled that vacuum of creativity was insipid, contrived, and conformist fodder.  We still have it.  Counter culture dug its head in the sand.  Dave and Craig quit network TV at the same time.  What a void!  Jon Stewart is scurrying madly to try to make Colbert seem palatable.  While they are eager to Trump bash at the onset, no one can replace the talent of former late night show hosts David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, and the rest.  Like the death of music television overnight, late night suffered from the same plight.  Like American jazz music these idioms reached their peaks and then just disappeared.  America is struggling for any replacement.  It is because we are not hip.  We are a sterilized, unfeeling, damaged lot of third world Americans who have been abandoned by Republica.  This scourge of money men, Mitch included, need to defend their views and policies on the chopping block of angered and disillusioned poor Americans.  It has happened before in many other countries.  How has Fayettenam changed as a result of BRAC?  It has not been good.  The affluent always have traveled to the beach or the mountains on the weekends leaving Fayettenam to its own devices.  What are they?  The military industrial complex which is supported by private contractors.  They have not interest in or support for the local populace.  They are vultures gobbling up a town for their own perseverance.  What do we have on weekends?  We have rail activity.  This rail activity seems to be watched over by aviation activity in various forms.  Yesterday for the very first time I actually saw the Compass Call aircraft with its 360 fuselage born radar.  It has the ability to monitor and scramble all kinds of electronic activity by its enemy, but who is that?  Usually it is an FBI shell plane with a muffler which beginning on Saturday mornings drones incessantly over the tree tops in Fayettenam.  To this day we still do not know what it is doing.  I assume it is related to CSX Corp.  It used to badger me pretty well as does the Gulfstream jet that takes a shit over my yard a few times every day.  I just wave.  It is like no man's land, and that my friends is why America is on drugs.  Rail traffic is at an unprecedented level, and CSX posted first quarter earnings of over eight hundred million dollars.  That is almost a billion dollars in only three months, and the major interest in that company is a hedge fund owner.  We know who controls what in America, and our quality of life never will be the same.  We may be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but the invisible pollution in our atmosphere would kill the holy Roman empire.  No one will acknowledge it both sound and electricity.  It is destructive.  The man expunged good sounds and vibrations and replaced them with manipulative, murderous, mind altering chaos.  Deconstruction has begun. 

The Fall of Trump

If it seems like I always am complaining about Fayettenam, then there is a reason for her pseudonym.  Fayettenam.  Old school Fayettevillians are really offended by this term.  In a capitalist society like America people always are concerned about income.  Income is earned in various ways, but in the system of capitalism it would seem people are looking for ways to sell.  By selling there is the potential to earn a profit.  They always want to buy our house.  Why?  The answer is because instead of benefiting the homeowner with equity and income savings, it will earn someone else a profit.  This is not the best methodology, always selling something.  Things were different in previous decades in America.  There was a time when democrats were in control, and as such they could make decisions concerning their quality of life.  They would not necessarily be trying to sell everything to make a profit, because money is not the root of happiness.  It helps, but you can be rich and unhappy.  Happiness comes from security, a sense that your needs are taken care of.  When your needs are provided for then you have the time to nurture your own happiness building relationships, developing interests, and indulging in spirituality.  It is possible to be happy without security, and some are quite adebt at capitalizing upon the vagabond lifestyle.  No security, no real responsibilities to demand your time.  Carefree.  The "Hippy" movement which originated in the 1970's mostly as a reaction to the Viet Nam war could be an example of this freedom.  Freedom from constraint.  Freedom from "the man."  Freedom from tyranny.  Security is good, and we all need a bit of it.  With security and an understanding of security comes a more relaxed and slow paced lifestyle.  One is not forced into the rat race each day to earn his keep.  Sink or swim.  Exist.  Isn't that nice, not having to be desperate for one's survival?  Isn't that when artistic things emerge?  Not necessarily.  Some great art is a direct result of strife and angst.  It is an outlet and a therapy such as the music the blues.  The bottom line is there must be enough time to focus on things other than one's survival.  Enter Fayettenam.  Security means most likely owning your own home, and interesting enough Bill Clinton ran under this campaign promise.  Even more interestingly this small campaign promise was the root of the housing crisis which peaked with the recession of 2008.  When he, as a presidential candidate, suggested everyone in America should be able to own their own home, the real estate and banking industries checked their consciences and began handing out mortgages and loans to mostly non vetted recipients.  They doled out mortgages by the boatload to unqualified candidates getting Americans into debt.  At that particular time money was plentiful, and India and China were selling us money at a reasonable cost.  Credit was plentiful and it was offered to the most financially undeserving citizens.  To boot the mortgages were written so the payments would escalate at a later date.  Not more payments but the amounts of the monthly payments increased.  Most of these mortgage holders defaulted on their loans, and thus you had "The Big Short."  Wall Street created financial instruments which pooled and sold their mortgages, and the hedge fund was born.  A few savvy Wall Street brokers knew what was going to happen having read these mortgages, and bet against the American economy.  There wasn't even a financial instrument available to do such a thing, but eagerly the bankers obliged.  All they had to do was ride the wave until it happened.  The stock market collapsed having been based upon false speculation rather than sound investment.  The snake oil salesmen of Wall Street were responsible.  What  happened?  George W. Bush created the Troubled Assets Relief Program.  Hank Paulson urged the president not to let Wall Street banks absorb the loss.  He claimed millions of Americans would lose faith in the American capitalist system and the nation would fail.  Instead W. reached his hand into America's till, and paid off this prudent investors who knew what was coming.  That is when all of America's money disappeared almost overnight.  It has been gone ever since sheltered in overseas banks in Switzerland or in Grand Camen.  Capitalism cannot function when there is no money to circulate.  It has to cycle for capitalism to work.  Earn.  Spend.  Make money.  Spend money.  Because the holders of this money fail to reinvest it back into America, we have become a third world country.  When is life good in America?  When we have security, opportunity, and money.  It is a good lifestyle, and we no longer have it.  Instead people in America are struggling to make ends meet, because Republicans who have risen to power in Washington do not care about the middle and lower class.  They have crippled the socio-economic system of Capitalism by separatism and elitism.  Hence we have a third world country, a county of elite wealthy leaders and the rest of us, the impoverished.  Apartheid in South Africa is a good example of this failed permutation.  Without knowing it America has become the same.  Our jobs are menial, strenuous, and low paying.  Hence our lifestyles reflect this dynamic.  There is no time for enlightenment, art, or spirituality.  Instead we have magnified violence, and this is the way Republica wants it.  Keep the people in chaos, so you can control them.  Does anyone really believe that ordinary America teenagers are committing genocide?  They are being coached by whichever covert agency is responsible, the same one that was responsible for murdering John Lennon.  He was a thorn in Nixon's side for a long time, a peaceful, successful, spiritual public figure who was accruing too much public influence.  They decided to kill him.  This pattern of coached behavior is terrorism, and it is being instigated by the same jihadists who have infiltrated America from the inside.  They are in the television industry.  They are in media.  They, the extremists, are waging a campaign to keep America insecure, because when we are secure, the rich cannot become richer.  Although Eisenhower fervently did not want America to become an economy of war, it gets the system moving like Hammond organ oil.  Without our original system, the system which created and provided jobs through manufacturing, services, and farming, tangible money making processes, we can never be the same.  There simply are not enough jobs for America at Walmart.  Back in the day when the system was working for us, life was better.  Fayettenam was rolling in the money from Fort Bragg.  The media would have you believe that still it is happening, a billion dollars a day or even more from these military dollars.  America cannot survive on war and the preparation for war.  There has to be more.  There has to be a higher cause, a higher power, and a higher goal.  There must be a God.  Fayettenam is called this because living here feels like the Viet Nam war.  The 82nd Airborne, Americas go to fighting force which can deploy in less than 48 hours to anywhere in the world, this is their junk yard.  Perhaps Desert Storm was a good thing, although it defies all logic and morality.  We destroyed Iraq with a made up premise, because Dick Cheney wanted Saddam Hussein's oil.  Never will the world recover from such an aggressive and evil act.  There were no weapons of mass destruction, and at the moment our current president is in the process of providing our troops to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, the lower Saudi royals.  These people should not be our allies.  They are our enemies, and the little games that are being played to raise oil prices are like a juvenile board game.  It is time for the adults to take control and discipline the children beginning with the impeachment of Donald Trump. 

Things That Never Change

Where shall I begin?  McCready lost.  He couldn't overcome the influence of Gump in Hicksville, U.S.A, people with such a deep denial and ignoring of truth they prefer to revel in their own patriotic naivete.  Will these people inherit the earth?  They are not meek.  They are aggressive in their own self worth like high school quarterbacks and cheerleaders.  "Rah rah!"  The problem is they know nothing.  You can't argue with stupid.  Let's reflect for a moment on the total ineptitude of our federal government.  Not only has the deficit reached epic record breaking proportions, our current Republican biased caucus seems to thing that regulation or oversight or protection are processes better left to?  Not parents.  Not teachers.  Not doctors.  Not insurance executives.  State governments?  Is it there responsibility to address the vaping crisis?  State versus federal watchdog programs that are supposed to ensure the security and safety of Americans.  Instead teens are dying of something as insipid as sucking on a nicotine nebulizer.  This is immediate.  It is not lung cancer developing over many years.  It is immediate death from a commercially available and marketed product, which needs to be prohibited.  Prohibition.  If ever a case was in your face for prohibition of something, it is the vaping crisis.  Opioid addiction is a crisis, and people are overdosing from it.  It has taken a few years to develop.  Vaping is now.  It is immediate, and the CDC and Congress need to do their jobs.  Republicans would argue that the federal government's role is to stay out of the lives of capitalists.  What is the FDA?  What is the FCC?  What is the EPA.  Are they shell companies registered to fake users taking bribes to allow children to die?  When Congress allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to expire in 2004, they became responsible for the deaths of all of those killed by such weapons.  Congress is responsible.  If it is the state governments role to oversee, regulate, and protect citizenry then what do the feds do?  They create a record-breaking national debt by outsourcing American goods and services, taking advantage of legal loopholes, and keeping themselves in power.  Sound familiar?  Sound like North Korea?  Sound like Red China?  Talk about a bacchanal.  Let's have a rally and talk shit and enjoy our own company and then watch our planet burn into nothingness.  It is for these people Christians were created. 

Unsatisfying Orgasms.

Things are not much different than the way there were back in the day, say 1985 except that B.S. has taken over the music industry.  There was a contingency then, the frat boys who thought they could play music.  I didn't know it then, but they were playing pop.  To this day in America we are so ignorant, there is no recognized definition of the word "pop" in music except that it is fluffy, light, and appealing. Is "pop" short for popular, or like the word "Bop," is it onomatopoeia?  "Pop."  Pee pop.  I used to think it was short for the word popular.  What makes music popular anyway?  It is so vague.  After working on cruise ships (and this seems to be my common thread tonight) I learned first hand that pop music isn't just a title.  It is a musical style markedly different than anything I ever had been exposed to.  That is because it comes from the strumming of a guitar.  It belies the traditional musical training of Kodaly, Suzuki, the orchestra, or jazz.  Certainly it is not taught by classical piano teacher, but pop seemingly has infiltrated mainstream music.  In fact it has taken over what is left of our airwaves.  I remember when it came in.  I was studying music composition at OSU.  Rob Taylor, Dr. Robert Taylor that is, was the head of the music library's media center.  Being in charge of buying recording media for the library, he scowled at the new onset of crappy music.  Classical music sales dropped overnight like the extinction of skateboarding in the 1960's.  Suddenly New Country became Pop/Country and Garth Brooks morphed into sexualized images of hunky, dirty, hillbilly men.  This image has persevered.  The reality of "Pop" is that it is an actual musical style, and that can be witnessed by the body language of those playing it.  It has been exploited to the Nth degree with cartoons bobbing up and down to this inane rhythm.  I did believe for a while that Motown was guilty of creating the mainstream version of pop music, but when you hear Motown it does not groove in the same pocket.  Pop can be played well, and usually it it fused with rock.  When it is not played well it simply is that.  Its rhythm or feel is not genuine.  It is created by the repetitive and stupid rhythm of strumming on a guitar.  That isn't much of a groove.  In fact it is no groove at all, and that is dance is dead in America.  People can't dance to pop.  There is nothing there for them to dance to.  For dance to occur there has to be a discernible pattern mostly in the the bass that their foot movements will mimic.  Steps they are called.  America has lost this connection, therefore it is understandable that our youth have become a soulless, unfeeling, unsatisfied, incapable flock of sheep.  In most probability they do not want to remain this way, but until we apply the proper punishment for that horrible strumming pattern ignorance will prevail.  It takes more to make good music.  It takes engagement, emotional commitment, and masculinity.  Highly I recommend we make the strum, the up and down bobbing of hillbilly men the new hell.  Instead of a bevy of accordian players, or fiddle players, or lawyers it will be hillbilly men strumming their guitars in dire angst but without the knowledge of how to get off.  Thank you. 

Scratching Our Heads at American Ingenuity

When you work on a cruise ship most people think you live a life of leisure.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Nothing could be further from the truth that cruise ships, the ever-expanding cruise ship multi billion dollar industry, largely is not responsible for Hurricane Dorian.  I do not mean to make enemies of my former employers, but it must be said.  When President Donald Trump repeatedly says he never has heard of a category five hurricane, it doesn't take a boatload of logic to understand what is super heating our oceans.  It is why the coral reefs are dying.  Just say it!  Cruise ships largely are responsible for this ocean warming.  The super heated water fuels these newly created super storms.  Super super.  Marsha.  Marsha.  What would a well schooled, prudent, and intelligent Congress do?  They would enact not a carbon tax, but an oxygen tax.  Each diesel prime mover which burns our precious Amazon created oxygen will be monitored and not taxed, but simply according to the rules of Capitalism CHARGED for their use of the earth's oxygen.  Why is this not the case now?  A car engine is a bit different, and possibly we pay this fee when we purchase the vehicle.  Large diesel prime movers which burn tons of oxygen and replace it with carbon, why are they not paying?  It's a loophole.  Simple laws for simple living.  The point of this entry was not to shed light on who is warming out oceans.  Once it was the military.  The huge hole in the ozone of which we hear nothing anymore....  Navy transmitter communicating with submarines.  HAARP.  High altitude whatever...  Figuring out how to build and use a phased array radar but in the microwave or infrared frequencies.  Figuring out how to carry your music collection around while living on a ship.  My first solution was to put CD's in sleeves in a notebook.  I had two large notebooks, and this worked well.  Then iPods came into vogue.  Audio quality became moot but portability made up for it.  I slid every single CD into the multi-drive of my Mac laptop and imported it into iTunes.  It was convenient.  I listened this way for a long time, and it was satisfactory.  Then I became landlocked.  My ship born ways took a long time to correct themselves.  I am not even sure they have become correct, but they have reverted back to a proceeding time.  It is difficult to take a decade of musical growth, accomplishment, and transformation and put it into the closet.  I have done this before.  When I was working on the DMA degree at The OSU, and this was before they decided they wanted to become "The" Ohio State University, I had to shelve my jazz proclivities and focus on 20th century art music.  It was not that difficult, because ironically enough jazz music rose up and bit me in the arse.  So many years of submersion in the jazz aesthetic brainwashed me into believing that jazz was the only music.  Thus its lifestyle, its dynamic, and its rewards were the only musical gifts.  Sadly I was disappointed.  After a successful tenure at the University of South Carolina as a Graduate Teaching Associate and an adjunct faculty member I fell from grace.  I am not really sure what happened, but music was not all of it.  Jazz upchucked as did Columbia, and I was spewed out in an orangy mass back to Fayettenam trying to recreate myself.  It didn't work, and I bailed on the military hot spot.  This was a point I meant to write about earlier, the history of Fayettenam before it became only a military town.  "Once Upon a Time in America" in a small southern town Fayetteville hosted its own plantation elite.  There was big money in 'Nam and it was had by a few families.  They congregated at Highland Country Club.  They lived on Skye Drive with an "e." Before BRAC, Base Realignment and Closure, decided to make Fayetteville the new Baghdad there was a quality of life in Fayetteville that was akin to southern Texas.  We had our coastline, the outer banks, and the Intercoastal Waterway.  We had fresh seafood, Myrtle Beach, and shag music.  There was everything you needed for a high quality of life, at least for yuppies.  You could drink beer out of a keg in a plastic cup, dance with your wife, and listen to beach music in the safe confines of a gated golf club.  No more.  Those families have died out and along with them most of their earned wealth.  Luckily much of it has gone to entitlements for the arts in Cumberland County.  That lifestyle, that 80's epic soap opera existence laced with mall hair and pop fashion died in the fuel tanks of CSX's diesel prime movers.  Thirst quenching, bubbly, intoxicating spirits were replaced with the fumes of diesel fuel.  The mammoth machines rolled into 'Nam and raped and pillaged everything in their paths.  CSX consumed Fayetteville with a well produced belch.  Anyone will be hard pressed to take away their daily diet of carbs.  Their Candida Albicans will find you either through the air, the earth, or water and use your body parts for fuel.  Chemours will continue to genetically modify your existing DNA with cancerous mutations and all the while notifying the EPA of their irresponsibility.  What has this world come to? 

The Second American Revolution

America is so different.  I didn't pay attention much, but there was some reason why I choose to accept a cruise ship piano job.  I needed musical employment, and lo and behold a cruise ship job was just the ticket.  It was a ticket out, not that I was looking for that.  To find rare commercial piano work one must travel.  Perhaps at one time, "Once Upon a Time in America," the better days, the days of yore.... there were more opportunities.  Today there are few.  The prolific studio orchestras of Hollywood have been put on Defcon 4.  These studio musicians are scampering to and from their clandestine work in tunnels not unlike the tunnels at Disney World for its employees.  With their heads down and their instruments under their arms they scurry to their sessions trying their best not to bring attention to themselves.  This is the musical way.  The music industry in America never has been fair.  At one time it was honest, and then in the great model of capitalism a team of businessmen came along and turned it into what it became, a financial powerhouse.  They created an image, an aesthetic, which tapped into the soul of burgeoning America.  This was a good thing.  What was their tool?  What was the watershed, record setting, groundbreaking tool which transformed America?  We all have but forgotten.  It was radio.  Not internet radio.  I can't believe I am speaking about radio like it was a thing of the past, an antiquated dinosaur, a turn of the century invention made from string and chewing gum that unified the country and created a mainstream that made America great.  It was this unification, this camaraderie, this commonly felt sentiment which constructed the heart of America.  Now we have an orange colored snake oil salesman, who has no clue how to do anything on the level.  Maybe he can earn a few bucks from declaring bankruptcy, but certainly he has nary a skill or an idea of how to implement any change for America except to kill us.  It is like putting a toddler in control of an assembly line.  The sooner Gump is removed from the presidency the sooner America will start to recover from his violence provoking, racist, separatist agenda.  It is unbelievable really.  It is unbelievable how grass roots ideas, well thought ideas with solutions in mind can achieve success.  America could save the planet, but for some reason it is not in vogue to do so.  Instead an executive board of demons sit in Wall Street and Washington offices breathing fire onto America because they can.  The utter destruction of America is their agenda.  These demons are not from around here.  They are not local yokels.  They are Russians, and Japs, and Chinese.  They are the once enemies of America, those who have attacked us not that long ago in attempted siege of the free world.  It was not that long ago that real storm troopers ravaged the countryside killing innocent citizens in the name of the Third Reich.  In America we do not remember this.  It was not that long ago hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens were slaughtered in a mass genocide by the German military.  It was not that long ago that Great Britain decided they would not accept the sovereignty of the emerging colonies in North America.  They sent their storm troopers here on ships in red coats to rape and pillage Americans.  We decided otherwise, and what was our last line of defense against the invading British army?  The answer was a well-armed militia but with powder and ball muskets, horse sense, and determination.  Newly emerging America did not have assault rifles with high capacity clips.  Instead they had themselves and their families and the support of the Almighty to defeat the imperial rule of the British.  England has never been the same.  What are we now?  We are a flock of sheep with no direction, no plan, and no understanding.  We subsist day to day, from moment to moment, staring into our iPhones hoping for completion.  It is far too difficult to fathom revolution, again. 

The AR-15

As hurricane Dorian looms in the distance, Gump clips on Colbert repeatedly prosecute the case for climate change.  Catagory 5?  "I've never even heard of a catagory 5 hurricane."  It is infuriating.  Ineptitude.  The worst lame duck presidency possibly in the history of this nation, and he has yet to be voted out of office.  Also prosecuting the case for the demise of Christianity, a media and populace which engage passively while spectator politics rules the ratings at the expense of humanity.  Humans are dying in mass quantities.  Every day another searing and antagonistic blow to American sensibility, and passively Congress collects their pay.  You have two choices.  Really understand the direness of the Trump charade, the threatening of the planet and Christianity, or hide our heads in our iPhones.  It is obvious what the majority of America has chosen to do.  The only more potent satire I can recall is the news broadcasts in the film Robocop.  It is infuriating.  The Assault Weapons ban of 1994 never should have been let to expire.  Even with constitutional guarantees no American needs to own an assault weapons or high capacity magazines.  The only reason we we do is because of capitalism.  Possibly a handful of old school American survivalists want to own them.  They build their own underground bunkers and practice nuclear war.  The rest of America, addicted to substances and brainwashed by a lackluster public education system and tainted media, own AR styled rifles simply because they think their rights to own such a weapon are in jeopardy.  It is a common ploy, and American capitalism is rife with similar selling schemes.  We are being manipulated on a grand scale by Big Brother himself.  No one truly thinks about their existence, what is right and appropriate, and how we should live.  We react to the bombardment of frenetically-paced media meant to scare us.  Turn off the tube, the wire, or others and you will find yourself in a different universe, except in Fayettenam.  A different thread.  A small southern town which at one time was not just another Jacksonville, a boulevard lined with strip malls and strip clubs.  The history of Fayettenam is unique.  Given an opportunity to comment on Fayetteville those outside of Fayetteville old money will tell the truth.  What is the truth?  The truth has changed and not that long ago.  Bill Hurley decided to clean up Fayetteville, and with that colloquial cleansing came a vacuum.  The vacuum was downtown.  Cross Creek Mall successfully killed the shopping district of downtown, and that was okay.  When it was built Cross Creek Mall was the pinnacle human achievement and expression.  It was a metaphor of the 1980's.  Gump is the metaphor of the 2000's.  Cross Creek Mall offered an upscale, rewarding, and fun shopping experience.  Whether pundits want to critique Reaganomics or not, businesses back then did invest back into their companies.  Unlike today they took a portion of their profits and shored up their businesses by reinvesting in infrastructure and labor.  By labor I mean subsidizing a financially sustainable work force.  This is the major tenet America has discarded in lieu of corporate wealth.  For some reason the controlling oligarchy of America erroneously feels compelled to collect, store, and control all of the money.  Capitalism cannot work this way.  With no money to flow through the system of goods and services, no one can purchase any goods and services.  It is questionable if America even has any goods and services anymore.  Manufacturing has been bused overseas to migrant labor camps.  Skilled professions have been replaced by laptop computers.  Our food is imported from foreign green houses.  If one were to scrutinize American ports, it is said there if very little going out.  Everything is coming in, and evidently with Gump's latest tariffs, it is coming from Red China.  This is not news.  We have watched globalization come to fruition under the ruse of economic opportunity.  When Americans do not have enough money to buy goods, we should sell to other countries.  When Facebook and Google can't seem to earn revenue from its American users they sell political ad's to Russian shell user accounts.  It is opportunism at its best and worst.  The problem is without conservation and oversight, we could hunt and fish Alaska into ruin.  America is on the brink of the same phenomenon.  We have been picked clean to the bone, and the only way to survive is to begin again with a reorganization of socioeconomic priorities with human beings at the center.  We are far from that now.  Instead we are an army of androids with a small amount of expendable capital.  The oligarchy takes it, and in a few short decades the American landscape will be littered with homeless, derelict, angry mutants.  The rich will be living in the air or underground creating the clean air and water they need to survive.  Creating anarchy in the sake of profit is nothing new.  The AR-15 sales boom was a direct result of mass shootings.  How can we rationalize such a reaction?  When the government threatens to take away a particular constitutional rights, America reacts aggressively.  The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 never should have been allowed to expire, and those who allowed that to happen largely are responsible for the deaths of the hundreds of innocents souls murdered in recent American mass shootings.  If those AR-styled rifles were not available, then it would not have been possible to kill as many people at one fell swoop.  Period.  America does not need and never needed assault weapons, and there is only one reason why we have them.  It is because they make someone a profit. 

The Age of Electricty

Since I have not been drinking hard liquor after the dinner hour, I have had a notable but not cathartic change in psyche.  Evidently it is true what they say about recovering from addictive substances.  There is way more to it than just the physical addiction.  Never have I had the physical addiction to alcohol.  I can stop imbibing alcohol at the drop of a hat, and usually my body has no serious repercussions.  It has been a blessing not being a category alcoholic.  In actuality liquor has saved my mental psyche more than once.  When I ran into depression the first time, when I left Columbia, South Carolina with my tail between my legs in shame for a failed relationship, alcohol did not present itself as an anodyne.  All it did was make me more tired.  All it ever really does it accentuate your given mood.  If you are up and happy, it augments this mood.  If you are down, well I don't remember.  Alcohol is a depressant, so you figure it out.  What I do know from a jazz musician's perspective is that alcohol is very effective at canceling the anxiety created by our environment.  Of what do I speak?  Life no more is like the 1980's when America in particular was the human's support group.  Everything about life in the 80's was about humanity.  Maybe the 80's were the real "Me" decade.  It hasn't been said really.  When I use the word humanity I mean concerning human expression, and during that time humanity as a whole still was Christian.  America had just emerged from the long decade of Viet Nam, and this country was ready for some humanity.  No more baby killing.  No more napalm.  No more war rallies.  Somehow the space time continuum aligned, Reaganomics took hold, and what some people call excess in the human condition flourished.  Everything about the 80's was human.  Our entire existence spiraled around human vision, artistry, and accomplishment.  Film, music, and television grew wings.  Fashion never has found a more receptive niche.  Things were beautiful.  Beauty was all around us.  Beautiful images.  Beautiful sounds.  Beautiful people.  As far as I recall good was preeminent.  Things were good.  No, things were great, at least for me anyway.  They were not easy, but I was in school working towards my goal of becoming an accomplished musician.  Today often I find myself returning to the aesthetic of the 80's out of desperation, because there is nothing out there today to feed our human inclinations.  The Summer of 2019 was an epic failure in film.  Music is at an all time ignorance.  Fashion up and left America a long time ago.  What is left is a shell of wannabe posers including our patron saint, The Donald.  If we had to create a metaphor of today for America, it would be Donald Trump, the biggest poser in America's history.  Luckily people are catching on.  When civilization is faced with extinction, B.S. doesn't walk.  No matter how much Wall Street fags move American debt around using hedge funds, and no matter how much hedge fund owners own in stock options, never will they take the place of real human artistry.  Artistry in music, film, television, and the rest.  America has been riding on the coat tails of the pseudo tech boom for too long, and it never really has been a tech boom at all.  It was an internet boom, and it was inevitable.  The taking of radio and television by the rogue free wire was inevitable, and Congress has yet to catch up with it.  It is yet another issue which demands dire legislative action, scrutiny, organization and regulation like so many other issues which have masterminded the demise of the American Dream.  We are living in a cesspool of the rich's feces, and they are laughing as the planet earth sinks into it.  Truly you could not define evil more aptly than a contingency of rule and power that cares naught for its populace.  Instead like Sodom and Gomorrah they will die in flames as our planet flails madly to survive.  This is when it become clear what our challenge is.  Like the LGBT community, while deserving in the eyes of Christianity, humanity cannot create its own universe.  The universe was created for us by God.  The rules are His.  It is blasphemous to suggest a new human order championing homosexuality.  It is wrong, but like past president Bill Clinton suggested, "Don't ask, don't tell."  Keep it to yourself, because it is private.  Using only your sexuality as a basis for your existence is shallow and cheap.  Get over it.  The God given dynamic of love, physical, psychological, and spiritual is found in the dynamic between man and woman, and that has been lost in America.  The LGBT community, man haters, women haters, and the rest covertly have created possibly the greatest diversion in American history.  Instead of trying to unify America, they like so many other factions are guilty of separatism.  They are attempting to separate American values in an all ready separated nation.  We have so little holding us together, we can only ask we are we a nation?  Mass killings each day?  Only small men see only past their own needs.  Our Congress is the most castrated, effeminate, incapable collection of old white men in existence.  It should have become clear much sooner that this body of evil is and will be the downfall of America.  As I grow older and do not have alcohol to dim reality, things are become starkly realistic.  I find myself wanting to understand all of American history, because it explains the human condition which so carefully was planned and prepared by our forefathers.  Their work was successful until Y2K.  This seems to be the turning point for the demise of America.  The tech boom or rather the "Electronic Age," an age of rampant airborne electricity will be the death of us.