Losing it All

As I sit here on this rainy night as Hurricane Ian winds down, my past depressed chapters in life are pushing their way up.  I know what depression is, because I have been through it.  I survived, and it took over four years.  I told my mother you must change yourself.  I'm not sure if that is possible at the age of 90.  If I allowed myself to wax sentimental, I could be sad about many things.  Usually sadness is about what you have lost, and there comes a time when you must survive and look forward.  Your past, whether laden with toil and trouble or happiness, is a part of you.  As an adult you learn to leave the sadness behind.  You must become independent, and some may have difficulty with that.  Traditional marriage is a booby trap for loss.  If you come to rely on someone else for your happiness, then you will be miserable without them.  I went though this, codependency.  Isn't that what a marriage is?  Now it is easy to be independent, because I have not been successful finding many friends, lovers, or colleagues who augment my life.  Maybe the older you get, the more poorly people behave toward you.   Maybe the aging process breeds bad behavior as the brain deteriorates.  Whatever the case I have a standard for how I treat myself, because you must love yourself first before you can love anyone.  I don't enjoy being patronized.  I don't enjoy arguing, because it is a waste of your valuable time.  I don't care to waste time complaining about someone else's behavior.  No one is worth that.  Complaining about civil injustice, lack of civility, or corruption is necessary, because these things are rife in our society.  After so many years of healing and redirection, why would my past depressed chapters force themselves to the surface?  It is because my mother is feeling these things.  She experienced some of these things, so they are also a part of her memory.  What we don't need, want, or deserve is someone dredging up muck about you the way the Trump Organization does.  It is so destructive.  It is destructive when you need rest.  When you need time to refuel, regroup, organize, or plan you can't be actualizing your own life.  This is when the fleas fester on you.  It will be a minute percentage of time, when anyone will actually augment your life.  Depending upon where you live and its percentage of ghetto, most times you are battling life out in the trenches.  This is so tiring.  It is tiring not because you have not planned, but because everyone around you is in dire straights and struggling.  They bring down your existence.  Ignorance cannot see resolution, and depression cannot find a cure for itself, because there is no clear solution in sight for your sadness.  You must have a plan, but sometimes they don't come easily especially if you are in hostile territory.  Life in Fayetteville is like trying to fix your car in the driveway with bombs dropping around you.  There is so much distraction, it makes concentration much more difficult.  Then assault your senses. What you hear, what you can see, and eventually what you feel emotionally.  Everything is working against you.  To keep the past depressed chapters in the past, you have to think of new things.  It has been twenty-eight years since I attended Ohio State as a doctoral student in music composition.  It seems like yesterday.  Many of those I knew have died in the music community.  Now there is a new music building.  The music I wrote there is my soul, and it was the solution to my depression.  I needed to heal myself with my own medicine.  I have forgotten those things, because eventually you can exorcise the sadness.  Depression does not occur for no reason.  When it manifests itself, it is for good reason.   My mother has it, and with it comes my old depression.  I am not feeling those things anymore, and I don't want to.  You must be strong and forthright, and you must refuse to return to those dark crevices of your psyche.  I had disappointments, but the music profession isn't forgiving.  It is ruthless, and no longer is it worth it to pine for musical success.  There is no such thing.  Look at television.  Listen to modern popular music.  The trappings of my generation have disappeared, but they are not worthless.  They have more integrity than anything today, and it is best to remember these things, not disappointments and sadness related to codependency.  It is much more helpful to toughen your skin and say, "What the fuck."  What have we got to lose, because we all ready lost most of it.    

A Few Words About North Carolina

 Once North Carolina was perceived as a beautiful tourist destination hosting both the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains.  It is one of few states which offers a summer beach season and a winter ski season within a five hour drive.  The beaches of North and South Carolina once were white sand enclaves with varied lighthouses once protecting sailors and their ships from The Graveyard of the Atlantic.  The Outer Banks, while exerting this watery danger, also became a haven for ecology.  Its rugged Atlantic demeanor truly gave an unforgettable vacation experience.  There were seashells, crabs, and sea oats.  There were sand dunes and breaking waves and often a steady breeze to anesthetize summer heat.  This summer heat has become worse, and solely it is a product of man.  It is a product of the military industrial complex and corporate America.  Common men who work for a living have not caused North Carolina temperatures to rise to one hundred degrees for three months in the summer.  This is new.  This is man made, and this is a threat to the survival of planet Earth.  Asked which season of the year is your favorite, and you would hard pressed to answer, "Summer."  Summer in the Carolinas has been transformed into three months of a boiling seafood chowder.  Who profits from this transformation?  The answer is energy companies.  Man has sacrificed Mother Nature, the great riches of healing, catharsis, and relaxation.  Directly humankind is the metaphor for this loss.  We are taxed with anxiety, inability to focus, and loss of creativity.  This addicted population has been the plan.  The freedom once America provided, these things, have been robbed from us by both the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate America.  North Carolina is no different.  It dawned on me a few days ago.  Governor Roy Cooper, a democrat, feigns democratic ideals but operates within Phil Berger's Republican politics.  North Carolina is at the bottom of the heap in many realms.  Most recently we are last of fifty states in support of our workers.  That is because our corrupt, right-leaning, Republican State House couldn't give a shit about anyone except to whom they cater for state money.  Whether it be supersonic flight, electric automobiles, or Apple computers, the average struggling North Carolinian is like a New Yorker trying to survive beneath those towering skyscrapers in Manhattan.  They felt that a distant and controlling contingency moved into these isolated office buildings and created a chasm with the common city dweller.  North Carolina has become the same, and the corporate and military installations have nothing to do with North Carolina life.  Our state is a huge whore, and her monies go elsewhere.  Roy Cooper has morphed himself into an admirable pimp, and the quality of life for the rest of us is choking on jet fumes and the smell of manure.  The Cape Fear River Valley has become the largest gaping vagina, and in all of its glory hosts the John's and the diseases they bring.  Fayetteville has become the worst, and weekends now are a toxic waste dump for the military.  Once weekends and summers were tolerable for citizens.  The Sabbath was respected, and Sundays were meant for rest.  Now the rail industry chooses to fill this once quiet and restful time assembling trains.  They toil all weekend twenty-four hours a day making money for themselves.  None of the revenue goes back into the local kitty.  It goes to shareholders who own stock in these now publicly traded companies.  Wall Street over time has proven to be the pariah of America.  Moving money around is much easier than earning it from the ground up.  A ghetto is a place where the "vibe," the feeling of the geography, is so off putting no one feels good living there.  If you are not spending money surrounding yourself with pretty anodynes, then you feel like a bum on the street.  That is what downtown has become after the millions for a baseball stadium, luxury townhouses, and urban renewal.  There are people living in tents.  That Fort Bragg has forsaken Cumberland County treating her as a sewer is unforgivable.  Look up at the late afternoon sky and watch this toilet bowl fill up with shit.  Try to breathe after they have gassed downtown with noxious fumes.  Certainly we don't need another devastating hurricane to stimulate gentrification.  All of us will be dead pretty soon and replaced with zombies.  Zombies don't have to breathe.  That is becoming more difficult each day in Fayettenam.  DEQ only is an acronym until the Republican lead Statehouse decides otherwise.  Come take of whiff of this air.  You couldn't live here. 

Agent Orange Was a Mistake (and so was Covid)

As of late many things about which I write are showing up in the news.  This is a good thing.  While I didn't verbally complain about Amazon's avid campaign to sell you Amazon Prime, another subscription service that requires your unwavering monthly payment, evidently it has become an issue.  Microsoft took this to an extreme and paved the way for antitrust legislation that broke up this company.  When companies get to big and establish a monopoly on a market and your business, often they get cocky.  Amazon has been pitching "Prime" for a long time, and I have refused to bite on this hook.  I don't need it, and I don't want it.  I don't want it for the same reason why I never wanted a cell phone.  Any service that requires a contract and obligatory monthly payments is not for me.  I have chosen to travel light, and my monthly storage fee is down to $25.00 a month.  Air quality in North Carolina varies greatly, with Wilmington being cited as a destination for some of America's best breathable air.  The ocean, the lowlands, and the wetlands have something to do with that.  When a state chooses to destroy these ecosystems like they have in Florida, filling in wetlands and farming them instead, all kinds of environmental problems ensue.  They have huge problems now with their fresh water supply.  In Houston it is the same.  They choose to pave over the marshland and are surprised when it floods.  America has lost sight of most things, and environmental issues were the first to go.  If as a nation we had paid attention to attempting to live conservatively preserving our geological offerings, we would not be in the dire straights we are in now.  You can't just rape Mother Nature and expect no consequences.  When I watch this Piedmont run, American Eagle flight, owned by American Airlines, this Brazilian-built Embraer 145 twin jet leisurely cruise just above the treeline making its turn to destination Charlotte  directly over my house, I am both perplexed and incensed.  I know the underlying reason they choose this route.  It is simple.  It saves them fuel.  I watched this jet today in full view from an able vantage point.  I was going to see my mother at her assisted living facility, and so appeared this silver sliver in the sky just above the trees traveling slowly.  At first I thought this might be a drone from Fort Bragg, but after pulling over and watching it became more clear.  It was that American Eagle plane with the American flag on the tail I have been watching for several years blast over the top of our house.  There was no mistake.  I noted the time, and when I got home later I opened the Flightaware website and searched for this departing flight from the Fayetteville Regional Airport.  Sure enough it was listed as the Piedmont flight direct to Charlotte, where Piedmont now has a hub.  If anyone cares to remember Piedmont back in the day was the bobo flight of the times.  It was cheap.  Even Johnny Carson made jokes about Piedmont on his late night television show.  "You just jump out when they get over your town."  Recently after Covid 19 the name Piedmont has returned, but it is confusing.  There are many "groups" associated with regional jet travel.  The name on the side of this plane is American Eagle.  The jet is an Embraer 145, a sleek-looking, fast, Brazilian-built rocket.  They must pride themselves on getting places quick, and today speeds seems of essence to everyone addicted to an iPhone and its services via the internet.  What is the difference between fifteen minutes?  I have been watching these planes for years now continue to fly over our house, and they are a product of gas lighting.  If you do it so often and for so long, people forget it is not okay.  Low flying jet aircraft are hazardous to human beings for many reasons.  This is not just me.  They are cited as number two only after heart disease.  That is high on the list of dangerous hazards in American society.  As Josh Stein, the Attorney General of North Carolina recently has discovered, the states cannot regulate air traffic.  What?  This is a Trumpism.  This is Mitch and his crew calculating their billions at the expense of everyday Americans.  They say what they are doing isn't dangerous or harmful, and we are supposed to believe it.  There is no science.  There is no conspiracy.  It is the rich getting richer.  I opened the FlightAware graphic for this particular flight, zoomed in, and replayed its path.  With its great need for speed, this express flight lallygagged after take off lumbering over the treetops directly above the Gold Coast, Highland Country Club gold course, historic Haymount, and Van Story Hills.  It was like they were giving a tour of Fayetteville.  I guess it was entertainment, but it was suspect to me.  How and why have these pilots or air traffic controllers chosen to use my house as a place to make their turn to fly to Charlotte?  Twenty years ago illicit foreign terrorists flew jets into the World Trade Center skyscrapers and the Pentagon.  They infiltrated America through the commercial aviation industry, and it was easy.  Slowly and surely they have been changing flight paths allowing access to all corners of urban, suburban, and rural America.  We are an easy pick, and I don't like the notion that planes we know nothing about have access to the skies above our homes.  It is not right.  Is nothing sacred?  Covid was no accident, and the most likely method of dispersion of this pathogen was?  You guess.  

Policing Our Enemy

I have been cast a complainer before.  People who demand to keep the cheery perspective all the time, despite enveloping turmoil are in denial.  Ignoring injustice, social inequality, and corruption may allow you to survive, but sooner or later it will catch up to you.  I would choose not to have to save the world.  It is not what I had in mind for the last few chapters of my life.  When the shit gets so deep, and you don't have the time for lawsuits then complaining is about all we can do.  You can expose injustice.  You can bring attention to wrong-doing.  Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.  With the Trump circus still on tour, the more dire and substantial issue is man-created climate change.  More specifically climate change is the blanket result of the more specific types of pollution that continually are being cloaked by lobby money.  It is nothing new, but it is reaching critical mass.  Mitch's crew in Washington, DC have so changed regulation, policy, and protective legislation it nearly is impossible to do anything.  How long has North Carolina known about Chemours' wrong-doing?  Again it is Republican, right-leaning, extremist sentiments which are cloaking the real assault.  While the extreme antics demand the limelight, Republican legislators have sacked the system from within.  Trump affected this change with his appointing of so many Republican judges he hopes will defend him.  The best example is when home owners in Colorado sued for offending aircraft, who began flying over their once quiet subdivisions.  This large class action suit was dismissed with the quick flash of a crony's pen.  Evidence was never heard, because some minute technicality thwarted the lawsuit.  This is the tactic being parlayed all over the country to protect corporate America and their zealous unwillingness to do the right thing.  It has come to such a head that people are dying.  About what am I talking?  Fayetteville is the metaphor for this injustice.  The people here, the citizens of Cumberland Country, have been forsaken for profit.  The way Alaska was raped and pillaged of all wildlife and natural resources for shallow greed, so has Fayetteville been sacrificed for the sustenance of a few.  The sacrificial populace are those who live in the historic areas of Fayetteville.  The real estate industry is quick and eager to cast these properties as desirable for obvious reasons.  They offer the most convenient locations for Fayetteville life.  There is a housing crisis, and affordable living is sparse.  This drives up the prices of these historic areas, but something else is happening that is familiar in the real estate industry.  There is a pattern for selling property which later becomes laden with problems.  Flooding emerges when housing is built in inappropriate flood plains.  This has happened often in the last twenty years.  The watershed or geological infrastructure of running water is well established in Fayetteville.  The city has been constructed around it.  There are a myriad of creeks and branches that flow to Cross Creek or into the Cape Fear River Basin.  There are "bottoms" where these streams lie, and there are hills such as Haymount.  Investors have stepped over the boundaries of these properties building in dangerous places.  Intense lobbying and politics forge this pattern.  Every nook and cranny of available land is being bought and developed with no overlying plan or city consideration.  Fayetteville has become the Wild West, and the irony is the flip side of this coin.  The quality of life in the historical areas has become compromised.  They will promote and sell you one of these homes, but you will find a different reality when you being to live there.  About what am I talking, again?  I'll lay it out.  Fayetteville has been forsaken.  Gen X has not only been found down river of the Chemours plant, it has been found all the way up to the Haw River and into Jordan Lake.  It is everywhere.  Our drinking water is and has been a toxic brew of forever chemicals.  Those believing and understanding this anomaly have been buying bottle water for a long time.  The larger problem is we bathe in this water, and this water is in direct contact with our bodies every day.  It is in our eyes, in our mouths as we brush our teeth, and it is on our skin.  Gen X also is in the air.  So much for our water supply.  It is poison.  Add air pollution to this problem.  Before Ground Forces Command came to Fort Bragg, our air quality was better.  The combination of their presence with the accompanying change in flight paths at the Fayetteville Regional Airport has compromised our air.  It now is filthy.  All ready we have issues with pine pollen, humidity, and other allergens.  We are in a river valley which notoriously is known for high humidity and stagnant air.  The water in the Cape Fear River is polluted.  Now the air is polluted as well, and this is because of freight rail activity from Cargill, Fayetteville Block, Goodyear, Hexion, and others.  Train activity begins at 5:00 am and extends well into late night.  Really it occurs 24 hours a day with little respite.  Heat they do produce, but the real culprits of air pollution of which no one seems to notice, are the commercial jets using Grannis Field.  For reasons not explained to those living underneath their new flight path, these commercial jets no longer adhere to the traditional pattern of flight used for so many years.  They tried to blame it on the change to GPS-based guidance, but that is fake.  It saves them fuel not to have to climb up and away from those living underneath.  This is what they used to do.  Now these Maverick pilots fly wherever they want, and there are zero guidelines for Fayetteville air traffic.  It seems with Mr. Grannis' passing, so passed integrity for local airlines.  It took me a long time to figure out why I wake violently at sunrise.  It is because a commercial jet is flying directly over my house at low altitude.  Why is this?  They think we are asleep so we won't smell the jet exhaust?  They think we won't notice the intense pressure wave created by exhaust from jet turbines?  It creates such pain in my body I am forced from bed to escape it.  Chem trails from these jets constantly criss cross the Fayetteville sky causing your eyes to burn and allergens to swirl like demons.  They seem to think this white and often black soot is some sort of advertisement for air travel, when in fact is has degraded the air quality in Fayetteville to an unacceptable level.  I assume they are trying to kill the vagrant and homeless population who live in tents under the overpasses.  What is the explanation for those living in middle and upper class neighborhoods?  How can they condone consuming our air and replacing it with noxious fumes?  It's like they are asking for a fight.  I never have been so insulted in my entire life.  What is so special about the airline industry?  They got a lot of Covid relief, and it went straight to the top in that grand Wall Street fashion.  All that bail out money went for CEO bonuses, trips to Cancun, and luxury apartments.  This is a Trump-induced thing, and the damage to American society is catastrophic.  How can a group become so extreme they feel they can steal your air?  That is exactly what they are doing and replacing it with poison.  We are being attacked by those who are supposed to be our friends.  It is exhausting policing the enemy.  

The Sky is a Toilet

 The pain in my right eye is searing like a commercial jet screaming over the tree tops of our neighborhood.  There are well known destinations which have airports within their boundaries.  San Diego is one, where the runway borders the water.  Perhaps the best known is Nassau in the Bahamas, where as you try to relax on the beach of the bluest water jets also scream over the top of your head destroying any chance of relaxation.  Modern American society, our current society has changed to accommodate Attention Deficit Disorder.  We hear no mention of this physical, psychological, and emotional malady anymore.  The medical establishment has chosen to treat symptoms.  This is a grievous mistake, and grievously hath Cesar answered it.  The American medical establishment sold out when they were commandeered by insurance and Big Pharma.  It began with a simple HMO, and the wealth began to accrue.  Now insurance is the primary focus of health care providers.  They don't spend much time addressing your concerns.  They find out if you have insurance, and if you do their money is guaranteed.  You are secondary.  America's health care is secondary to their income.  It is a club of sorts.  The reasons for ADD are important, but we decided to ignore them and instead treat their symptoms.  Our health system is doing that for most things.  I don't think it would be possible to survive in modern American society without drugs of some sort.  You can jump on the wagon, go cold turkey, or straighten up and fly right but you will not feel better.  Most times I feel worse, that is without exercise.  You need some form of activity, vibration, or noise to keep the negative funk off of you.  If you go Zen then you will suffer.  All of us are suffering from ADD, and with the help of the immediate gratification of the internet we have adapted to this frenetic pace of life.  It best can be seen within the structure and discipline of the United States military.  They are pulled tight as a drum, and they are expected to jump when the man says jump.  ADD to me manifests itself like psychosis or neurosis.  I was blamed, because working on ships was an escape from the dire American reality.  It is the leisure industry.  It is rest and relaxation.  That translates to keeping crisis minimal.  It is unwanted.  Drama is unwanted.  People cruising and working in the cruise industry want peace, serenity, and escape from the harshness of American life.  It does not easily reflect the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder.  As a society I feel we have lost touch with a workable, effective, pleasing pace of life.  With the Trump onslaught the American free market has begun to resemble plantation life with low wages and few benefits.  Corporate America was quick to jump ship and capitalize on almost free labor in China and India.  We sold out America with a snap of fingers.  Only now after three years of Covid lock down is the labor market beginning to demand more.  It has to right itself or America will not survive.  We will become another third world country with one percent of elite rich and the rest forgotten.  We are that now.  The rest of use are fighting it out in the trenches of what is left.  What is left?  America is rife with heinous aural pollution, environmental pollution, and an unhealthy infrastructure.  If we do sober up, it does not help.  It just points out how polluted America has become.  I am not one to embrace anger in any capacity, but I feel anger when I see our sky get filled up like a toilet.  Blue skies become a holding cell for jet turds.  They shit out this pollution like clockwork right on top of the trees, and my eyes burn.  My right eye only sears with pain when my left ear rings, and tinnitus is caused by low frequency and high frequency sound.  The frequencies you have lost ring or buzz in response to this unwanted stimulus.  It affects my productivity and my quality of life everyday.  Your corporate presence determines when you become a ghetto, and Fayetteville now has become a ghetto.  Who decided that Fayetteville was not worth consideration in diverting offensive aircraft is who we should address.  Josh Stein has found out that Mitch and his crew control most things.  States cannot regulate air traffic.  It has to come from the boys club in Washington.  Their buddies can fly over the tops of your heads and drop Covid 19 whenever they want.  The title of my first novel is "Otis Drops Covid."  Just watch the military planes and the commercial jets and try to find logic.  Of course they seek to operate incognito, but honest it is not.  These little private planes with creative LLC names most likely are hauling drugs.  Thank goodness the direct line of Afghanistan poppies has been curtailed.  Capitalism has been neutered, so America has been forced to operate in the mob zone.  That is where we are now.  Before Volodymyr Zelenskyy there was mobsters in Ukraine.  Rudy was scrutinized for rubbing shoulders with these men.  Suddenly Putin invades the Ukraine, and we are sending them billions of dollars.  Pick your poison.  Watching our blue sky fill up like a toilet is unusually infuriating.  Trump turds don't look good, they don't smell good, and they help no one but Trump.  Why does he get to shit in our sky? 

The Second Holocaust

The transgressions of America are great.  Firmly they are ensconced in local, state, and federal government.  Millions of dollars in relief money from Covid have been embezzled.  It was  a calculated response.  Covid is nothing more than a financial instrument of evil, and it continues.  The lives sacrificed by Covid are the same as the lives sacrificed at Auschwitz.  They were taken by a ruthless, maniacal, sociopath keen to control the global economy.  The War of Covid still is upon us, but like Ukraine with the covert munitions of Joe Biden, we have mounted an able defense.  Who profited from this defense?  Who were the war profiteers buying stock and investing in the remedy of a man made disease?  These are the evil minions of Satan.  Fayetteville, North Carolina is an appropriate metaphor for the sacrifice.  As the United States military practices biological warfare with the tools of the defense industry, unnecessary and unknowing citizens of Cumberland County suffer and die.  We are sacrificial for the greater good of national defense.  Is this fair?  Is it fair to use the peripheral population of Fort Bragg for target practice?  This includes Raeford, Aberdeen, Southern Pines, Spring Lake, and Fayetteville.  The emergence of Ground Forces Command was the catalyst for the neglect of the civilian population of Cumberland Country.  Those within the borders of the base are considered, but those who provide culture, religion, and commerce for troops systematically are neglected and abused.  How.  Cross Creek Mall once was a pillar of enlightenment filled with hope, inspiration, and fellowship.  Now it is a desolate warehouse underneath the flight path of outgoing war.  Once affluent merchants performed public relations with the base.  They knew it was necessary to quell the unpleasant strains of battle.  Concerts were scheduled, events were held, and the public and Fort Bragg populations were integrated.  That has changed.  After 9/11 they buttoned up Fort Bragg, built new entrance gates, increased security, and conceptualized a self-contained military complex immune from outside attack.  The surrounding population is left in the lurch.  President Obama sanctioned open homosexuality in the military, increased pay, and set the armed forces back decades.  One result was militant lesbians, a new and challenging addition to society.  This did not improve discrimination.  It complicated it by blurring the boundary between man and woman.  Androgyny may be a desired trait in a soldier, but it is not in a human being.  The relationship between man and woman is a crux of humanity.  Eliminating it changes the world in ways we yet understand.  Why should we spend this time?  Because military officials desire the perfect fighting soldier?  It was a mistake, and now America is paying the consequences.  The needs of the military take precedence.  When the Marines come our houses shake.  Our nerves fray.  When practicing in the field they use their advanced radar targeting systems, we suffer like their proposed enemy.  They are firing at us.  They use us as guinea pigs.  Fayetteville has become the sewer of Fort Bragg rather than the grocery store.  The airborne soot Ground Forces Command brought to Cumberland County was not here before.  Commercial jets from the Fayetteville Regional Airport never turned and flew over downtown Fayetteville and surrounding neighborhoods leaving behind toxic sheets  of black soot on the tops of our trees.  This egregious act is the metaphor for American Republican transgression.  They do not care about the people.  They only care about themselves.  Collateral damage has been the lives lost from Covid 19, murdered by the men who created and unleashed this deadly pathogen in the name of corporate profit.  It is the second Holocaust.  

The Bonnie Situation

The farce had remained fringe until now.  I began studying the dangers of AC traction, its heat, and its electromagnetic radiation, when I encountered it in 1997.  The modus operandi of the Republican Party was smoke and mirrors.  Their far-right leaning extremist bent not yet was evident.  Time and the unfolding of peripheral foreign extremist events began to point the finger back at The Grand Old Party.   Over time Red tendencies rekindled from within.   That is whence the infiltration began.  Other than the bold attack on the Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan, they knew a siege in America on her home soul was pointless.  They began buying American businesses, lobbied changes in corporate law to disguise their takeover, and then masterminded a full blown coup led by an elected American President.  This dissident attempted over-turning of the election was the Chapter 2 of the manipulation of our electoral college.  How did  Donald Trump win the Presidency, when Hillary Clinton received two million more popular votes?  The Trump machine performed the same covert operation to bribe and change state electors' votes during their election.  When the President lost his marbles and began to believe his own rhetoric, it began to wreak of conspiracy.  His loss of ability to discern reality has spread like the plague in America.  I am surrounded by many who are incapable.  It is like Covid 19 implanted Communist bots into our cerebral cortex rendering us incapable of honesty, freedom, and integrity.  We have regressed into violent, unthinking, selfish tribalism in a frightening example of the story of "The Lord of the Flies."  Who will maintain dignity and intelligence, and who will spiral into the abyss of psychosis?  Today the fight has escalated, as Donald Trump and his machine are encroached upon by the United States Department of Justice.  It's getting hot in their kitchens, and the remaining Republicans are fleeing.  Because the bottom line of truth and honesty continues to be manipulated by Big Brother, the fight has become legal.  Tactics being used to manipulate politics and America have become legalities.  The Republicans are using shallow legal tactics to accomplish their goals.  Once local newspapers would publish Letters to the Editor reinforcing public freedom of opinion.  These papers have been gobbled up by the same hungry whale and are being controlled and manipulated by America's enemy.  Once legal on paper corporations, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical conglomerates  lie openly and deceive the public.  There is no one left to trust except your own instincts.  My recent dive into the world of senior care has exposed me to corruption.  Your friends are you enemies, because getting the money is the most important thing.  The glaring reality American Capitalism has failed is irrefutable.  The United States Congress is an example.  Diligently we continue to try to find vestiges of our love of democracy and freedom, but it is naught.  When you try to express your personal opinion, a slew of legal slights-of-hand swing into action to delay or divert your concern.  The United States Post Office is the most substantial victim of this trickery with its slowing down of our mail.  The appointment of a Postmaster "the Hun" with vested interests in his own delivery business has seen an internal decimation of our American postal system.  This harms Americans and their right to expression.  If you handicap the mail, then the nation suffers on multiple levels simultaneously and quietly like a quality legal defense.  Civil protests and grassroots programs to gain justice and equality cannot win on this tilted playing field.  The  system is rigged, and it was rigged by a dishonestly elected American President who manipulated the Electoral College without our knowledge.  We cried when Hillary Clinton lost, but in our American sanctimonious patriotism believed "The Donald" must won honestly.  It was too early to understand the system was rigged.  Corruption  has been present in American politics and corporations, but the electing of Donald Trump was the firing of Elon Musk's rocket.  He performed the role of President with impunity while inflicting damage to the free market, democratic, Capitalist system.  He began dismantling oversight, regulation, and fairness by infiltrating the judicial system.  His damage to America came from within, and only now are we understanding the breadth of his assault.  This continues every day, every minute, and every second, and all Americans are fighting for survival in this now compromised nation.  It is exhausting being at war and not really knowing it. 

Red Fayettenam

It has been a difficult week.  Some watershed financial issues eked into the limelight, and I had to solve them.  My college degree from UNC-Chapel Hill is useful in these situations.  No emotion is involved except possibly anger.  Anger is a potent motivator, and it is what I have been feeling most of this week.  With the separation of of useless emotion in these situations, patience is all that is needed.  You must solve the problem.  You must go through the steps to satisfy the requirements of your task.  Again, patience is required.  You know you will succeed, but you must wait for the amendment.  Patiently we have been waiting through the ninety days of my mother's long term care insurance policy's "Elimination Period."  You must pay out of pocket for these ninety days and prove to the insurance company your claim is not fraudulent.  In many cases a hospital visit and accompanying "Rehab" will suffice for a portion of this three month period.  That was our case, but it seemed like a long haul.  Patiently we are waiting for her first monthly benefit.  She doubts my touted success with her claim, and with her traditional pessimism it has been a dark week not just for me.   I am confident we will see this money, and I need this reimbursement to pay this month's bill.  I have until the tenth.  The other issues at hand were a suspect charge showed up on our credit card statement.  I questioned this online not knowing the charge's source, and First Citizen's froze the card.  I use this card often to pay my mother's bills, so this was a headache.  It also showed me I didn't have a PIN for our bank card.  Scuffle.  Dance.  Shuck and jive.  They like to watch the white boy do the dance at her facility, and I do it often.  I kiss a lot of ass to keep her safe.  This blog entry has a deep inspiration, and it is my first experience with "Big Pharma" and insurance.  Insurance has not been problematic, but getting her med's straightened out still is a challenge.  I am too tired to go into it at the moment.  Why do I feel attacked and like my neighbors see me as a threat?  It is not a comforting feeling.  When you are "on task" and are determined to solve your problems and move forward, the world tries to knock you down.  Flying solo is the lonely situation.  To get what you want and need, you must be an asshole.  I am tiring of it, but you must look out for number one.  You must "plan your work and work your plan."  As for politics I have not been following it much.  There is a lot going on.  Capitalism has been knocked on its ass, and I am not sure if it will survive.  Many don't want it to, and simply they are Communists.  Communism is not American freedom, the one ideal most people in this world desire.  There must be a free market for Capitalism to function.  Our market is not free.  Never has it been, but it has been closer to this ideal than now.  For Capitalism to be successful it takes a tremendous amount of work.  We threw that out the window long ago in favor of cheap foreign labor.  Why not just use slaves?  Now that the two year free market assault called Covid is waning, suddenly and necessarily it becomes apparent how much work Capitalism is.  When I was talking with my mother this afternoon about the workings of her assisted living facility, several points arose.  These things are not isolated to Fayetteville and Cumberland County, but they are stark, real, and difficult for small businesses.  Why do elder care facilities have trouble with staffing?  A two bedroom apartment in Cumberland County costs upwards of $1500.00.  That is price gouging.  When I went to graduate school in Columbia, South Carolina in 1985, it was $400.00 a month.  Affordable housing has been run out of town, and this has been accomplished by the hearty and determined real estate community.  They created a bubble, and it made them a lot of money.  Houses in my neighborhood were selling for way over their realistic values, and some unsuspecting buyers were taken advantage of.  If you did want to work in Fayetteville or Cumberland County, you must commute.  There is little affordable housing left for low and middle wage workers.  There is on the other hand a plethora of expensive properties, some over a million dollars.  When I drive around I wonder to myself, "Who could afford to buy these huge houses?"  Fayetteville always has been like this, but always there has been an adept and competitive middle class.  My family fell into this category.  Gentrification has come to Fayetteville, and I have no problem with realtors claiming vagrant properties and flipping them for profit.  This is happening in the historic district of Haymount, and Ralph Huff has capitalized on this area.  Sadly New Orleans' Ninth Ward, with its fatal blow from Hurricane Katrina, was recast as lucrative resort property in the teeming minds of real estate investors.  The sadness of this gentrification is necessary culture such as iconic buildings and surrounding geography are destroyed.  This is happening in Fayetteville at an alarming rate.  The resulting urban sprawl has none of the character of it proceeding architecture.  Suffering at the hands of this phenomenon are The Haymont Grill, the former Putt Putt property on Bragg Blvd, and many others.  Especially on Raeford Rd. near Harris Teeter older structures have been razed and replaced with generic and ugly commercial buildings.  Where is their soul?  How can a low-paid CNA afford to get to work?  Fayetteville no longer is supporting its own.  Instead they are exploiting the naive minds of the military, enticing them to purchase expensive homes with VA loans sealing their fate as military lifers.  Their monthly housing stipends are an apt temptation to purchase an overpriced aging home that affords quick and easy access to the base.  Are they worth it?  It was not that long ago pre-Obama that soldiers were poor.  They have recovered, and with a quick look a civilian job openings at soon-to-be Fort Liberty, money is flowing to everyone.  There are medical jobs available that pay $300,000.00. I guess that answers my question of who could afford these luxurious homes in Fayetteville.  Fort Bragg is their cash cow.  It is not surprising why a vocal critic of inefficient Pentagon spending is not popular 'round these here parts.  The defense contractors have swept up, but that is changing since President's Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan.  When the money and poppies are not flowing, it is a far different story.  Maybe when we escape the inebriating narcotic smog of smuggled drugs, Fayetteville could level its compass.  We could and should call it the "Afghan Bubble," and now Afghan refugees are bringing polio back to America.  Inasmuch as I am not a Republican or a supporter of Donald Trump, I do believe the foreign influx into America in recent years has weakened our solidarity.  We don't know what an American looks like anymore.  In Fayetteville the population resembles circus animals rather than real men and women.  Not only that they don't know if they are men or women.  Always Fayetteville has been a challenging city, and still it is.  I don't support the telecom industry.  I don't feel a cell phone is a necessity of American or any other life.  Our land line works perfectly well.  Running the security of your home on a personal entertainment device is not wise.  Never has America been this close to Communism.  Two years of Covid forged the model.  Keep your kids at home, naive, sheltered, and ignorant.  Rely upon "The Man" for your needs aka Jeff Bezos.  Mail order your groceries.  Never leave the house.  Become addicted to many things.  It has been a successful campaign of Trump-supported Communism.  How can you deny it?  He loves Putin and Kim.  We should have listened to rather than laughed at  Donald's rhetoric.  It was too extreme to believe it could be true, but it was.  Fayetteville has become a red megalopolis of manipulative, conniving, and hungry kittens sucking on the teat of Uncle Sam.