Turn the Tables

 The phenomenon of the "estate sale" remains a volatile force in the lives of any family with aging parents.  I have received the butt end of the estate sales I have frequented, because I knew the families and often their histories.  I would be difficult to say that the circumstances demanding an estate sale were benign .  Emptying out a family home with no family present is the tragedy.  There is no escaping that someone died unexpectedly or that the people who lived in that dwelling have become ill or incapacitated.  An estate sale is a ruthless, sobering, capitalist entity, but it does serve its purpose.  That purpose I was able to experience this weekend, because I chose participate from the outside.  I did not know whose home this was, and I didn't think much about it.  The photos were posted online, so I perused them and found some desirable memorabilia which motivated me to attend.  I was efficient in my search, went at a good time, asked about my items, found them, bought them, and left.  I returned two days later when the prices are cut in half and found some similar items that I found pleasing.  I purchased these at a fair price and even returned at the last minute to buy an antique hard wood vanity.  They were happy to sell me the items, and I was happy to get them.  There was no mention of who the family was, what were their circumstances, or any other strife.  It in actuality was a happy occasion, where people were pleased to buy the items they found.  They weren't cheap, but the merchandise (if we should call it that) was above average.  I got two lighthouse lamps and two oil burning lamps I have wanted for a long time.  If the power goes out, strike a match and you have light the old fashioned way.  (As I age I am preferring this more)  I don't have a cell phone, and I don't want one.  America is making it more difficult for you not to have one, and I suspect at some point we will be stuck buying an over-priced electric car.  Now people are ordering fast food with a smart phone, so the walk in customer has become a dinosaur.  We are passe, but like any good manufacturer they must produce replacement parts for at least ten years.  My Maytag washer lasted seven years, although it had a ten year warranty for parts.  It was five for labor, and I ditched it after having to fix it three different times.  (the motor was going)  I am happier with my new GE, and it matches the dryer.  It washes a run of clothes in one quarter the time saving water and electricity.  Shopping at this estate sale purposely infused me with the other perspective sans the family tragedy.  It can be a joyous process to pass on one's belongings and make a little coin.  They don't really make much money, but it certainly aids in emptying the house.  The irony is the estate sale workers get their free pick of what is left, and that is okay.  That is why I went back and bought my $62.50 walnut bathroom vanity.  It was for me.  The bad news is one of my attic fans is not running, so I will have to crawl up into this incredibly hot attic and trouble shoot the thermostat and fan motor.  I put it in, and it is a chore.  (I don't think I installed an On/Off switch for the AC power)  That means finding the right breaker in the fuse box to kill that circuit.  When I installed the replacement ventilation fan, I also put lights in this attic and flooring for storage.  It is the hottest time of the year, so either the motor is burned out or the thermostat.  How does one trouble shoot?  First adjust the temperature knob with a screwdriver to try to get the fan to come on.  (That means down)  If that doesn't work you have to test the AC.  Eventually you will have to deal with live AC, and since the fan is on the same circuit with the attic lights, I will have to run a trouble light into the attic.  Okay.  The fan is necessary, because it really keeps the attic cool.  There is R-38 cellulose in that attic now, so you have have to step over it to get to the fan.  A wooden walkway placed over the insulation would suffice.  Cellulose is dusty and is bad to breathe and bad for your eyes.  Oy vey!  Later.  Fayetteville is the only city that gets hotter at night, because that is when the CSX freight trains run.  It doesn't stop until 4:30 a.m.  So early morning is your best time to be in an attic.  I boiled fresh shrimp for my mother today and took her fresh flowers.  She said she was going to give blood today, because a blood test was the only way you could get alcohol.  But she was happy and content. 

Olga Bo Thorp

 The hits they keep coming.  I didn't realize the breadth and scope of painting the upstairs of our home.  I made a firm decision to do what I could before entertaining the idea of selling the house.  If I made it turnkey first, then I would appreciate it later.  The hassle of having to go through your family's things, decide what stays and what goes is an intellectually and emotionally draining undertaking.  You accomplish it in waves a little at a time.  If you wait then the inevitability of an estate sale looms.  I have been to a handful of these events, and there is one this weekend beginning tomorrow.  The most significant of these was the home of the founder of the Cape Fear Regional Theater, Olga Bo Thorp.  I was friends with her son, and we played in a band together throughout college at UNC.  This friendship began in high school, when I spent time at the Thorp home.  Herbert Thorp died of throat cancer many years ago, but I also became friends with him as well.  I did a myriad of musical theater shows at the Cape Fear Regional Theater, more than I even remember.  Needless to say this musical experience was a seminal part of my growth as human being.  After embarking on cruise ship work, this relationship with CFRT became more distant.  Bo retired and Tom Quaintance took her place as full time artistic director.  His five year tenure was notable, and the shows remained stellar.  He moved on and Mary Kate Burke took over.  Bo died last year.  She disappeared from public life during Covid and stopped attending the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra concerts.  I wondered what had happened to her.  As it turns out she was the same age as my mother, 90.  I never knew, because she never lost an ounce of spunk.  Bo was highly independent and lived in her own home until the end.  Her passing was abrupt to me.  She got Covid so they say and then had a heart attack.  She never made it to The Carolina Inn where my mother is now.  They moved some of her things over, but she decided not to go.  Instead she took a taxi to the promised land.  I attended her funeral where Holden eulogized her passing.  Like always it was an insightful, witty, and humorous elegy, but it was not enough for closure for me.  A few brief and hurried moments are not enough to commemorate a lifetime of theatrical achievement.  I knew if I did not attend the estate sale I would be angry with myself, so I went.  It was as horrid as usual.  I can think of no more upsetting, grievous, and cold practice than that of an estate sale.  It is a full life of grief wrapped up in cabbage roll and sold for twenty-five cents.  The theory is you can and should find a few items that will remind you of the good times, and I was successful at that.  I found what I needed, but the rest of it is just pure loss, looking at an empty house with everyone gone.  It is brutal, horrid, and sad.  I said in our family an estate sale was not on the docket, and it won't be.  Strangers rifling through your personal effects is like the IRS auditing your accounts.  But, and I don't usually begin a sentence with a conjunction, but not having an estate sale squarely puts the burden of that responsibility on my shoulders.  Make the house turnkey, as much as you can, while you are still living there.  Take your time, be thoughtful, and try to enjoy the work.  The reality is you must grieve before you lose your family member, because you are doing the same task preemptively before it should happen.  I fully did not realize the breadth, scope, and emotional strain of this process.  You are regressing in time to chapters that may not be pleasurable, because as an adult it is not healthy to live in your childhood.  All kinds of foibles and pitfalls lie waiting for you to help you fail in your endeavor.  The emotional commitment is necessary, but also is is laden with the sorrow of loss.  The decisions in what stays and what goes is fragile and perilous.  I have been successful with the things.  The house on the other hand is proving more challenging, because to paint you must disassemble your things, and they are not there to remind you of yourself.  It is just a bare empty room like it was when you first moved in.  This is not pleasant, but growth is painful.  Growing pangs.  I am not reliant upon things, but the reality of today is as soon as you step out of your house you are in the wilderness, and this wilderness is not supportive or forgiving.  The American environment has become a brutal test of survival, and Fayetteville with Fort Liberty in close proximity is a continued war training zone.  Who wants to live like that?  Your home and your things are all you have to reinforce your philosophy of life.  When I define out home with my musical things, it makes perfect sense and serves its purpose well.  When I lose touch with my musical side, the house is a viable nemesis full of self doubt, seeming failure, loneliness, and depression.  A gift is an outward sign of an inward spiritual grace, and your things are metaphors for your ideas, ideals, and accomplishments.  Bo's empty house is a tomb that never can be filled again, and the most fitting memorial to the Thorp family would be to gather and bulldoze that reminder into the ground.  It would be the most appropriate, heartfelt, and beneficial act for Fayetteville, because then those memories will remain good memories, not reminders of loss. 

Old School Confederate Money

 Fayetteville, North Carolina's ante-Covid slogan was "History, Heroes, and a Hometown Feeling."  The city is named for the Marquis de La Fayette, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, a French nobleman whose chose to fight for the American Continental Army.  Fayetteville has deep cultural roots, and five decades ago this Southern town had a social and cultural hierarchy not unlike Charleston, SC or and Savannah, GA.  There is old money, and this Wealth was the fabric of a military-influenced town.  Society made sure that Uncle Sam, with his quest for conformity, did not consume Fayetteville.  It does serve the post of Fort Liberty, but fifty years ago the influence of old money had more sway than the Pentagon.  That has changed, and Fayetteville has been absorbed by the Borg.  The old money gathering dust in the Cumberland Community Foundation has few remaining purveyors.  This generation in the last decade, and partially because of the fatalities of Covid 19, has waned.  It is on the brink of extinction, and its influence cannot be replaced.  I have spent the last decade as a care-giver for my aging parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the loss of their generation is severe.  It almost is too expansive to grieve at one time.  I have experienced this kind of loss before.  In my twenties I was ejected from Columbia, South Carolina, a reject of academia.  Thirty years later these controlling politics have not changed, but this should not be surprising.  (Lindsey Graham still is a South Carolina senator).  It is disappointing.  On the fringe I continue to be accosted by the reality of these politics, and I don't deserve it.  I gave my heart and soul in teaching commercial music at USC, and I fell from grace.  After spending two years as a Graduate Teaching Associate and earning a Masters degree, I was hired as an adjunct faculty member to take Dr. John Emche's duties.  John was the coordinator of jazz studies, and he died of a brain tumor over the summer.  I was paid a stipend with no benefits, but I had the distinction of being a college professor.  It was a small taste of the good life.  After the music department completed their national search over the course of the next year, they chose an Eastman graduate to assume the full time teaching position.  The cause and roots of my depression were tangible, unchangeable, and daunting.  After seven years in higher education (including UNC-Chapel Hill) the height of my academic achievement was playing in a wedding band.  The respect of being a college professor was gone, and the brutality, drug use, and evil of real world music were upon me.  There was the FBI sting of the state house in Columbia, where most law makers accepted bribes.  These politics were rife challenging.  You would not succeed unless you befriended the right people.  Academic competition it would seem is more concerned with keeping you out than bettering the craft.  To acknowledge that someone has something to offer more than what is there is to have to swallow pride and lose notoriety.  In academia in particular there is little room for insecurity or weakness.  It is winner take all, and academics by nature are ruthless passive aggressive narcissists who stop at nothing to prevail.  It is the holy grail.  That is what academia is and I am sure today is the same.  If your community will not allow you to excel, than effectively you are dead at the choosing of others.  This not chosen death manifests itself as depression.  It seeks to control you and largely is a product of your external environment, not your own foibles.  I have been depressed before, and the cause of that depression was and is the same, because nothing has changed.   You can not see a solution for your obstacles because of the outside world.  Others, operating in America's so-called free market capitalist construct, have no choice but to quell competition.  It is winner take all, and that is what America capitalism has become.  I cannot watch prime time television, because the human maladjustment is too severe.  Lottery tickets worth 800 million dollars.  It makes no sense in any possible life scenario.  If America had an ounce of God-like sensibility, we would provide for everyone, not the individual.  In North and South Carolina the jazz hierarchy is small and controlled.  John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk knew this, and it is by white men in politics.  Southern old money has kept its hands on the puppet strings.  Never have I been remorseful of my musical accomplishments, because never have I stopped working.  Never have I been lazy or unmotivated or dissuaded by competition.  The only way you can survive a mediocre world is to make it better.  You must create your own reality, because the reality that America now offers is a pittance.  If ever were there a time to consider living abroad, it would be now.  It is a shite state of affairs, and there is no denying it.  The reason why our GOP has no plan, is because they are happy as the recipients in an antiquated system that can't adapt to change.  The world has become too complex for Washington to consider solving our problems.  They are too old, too sheltered, and too selfish.  A value meal at a fast food restaurant in America costs $10.00.  America no longer serves the populace, she antagonizes it.  This McCarthy fellow, this black sheep hesitantly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, is the metaphor for utter failure of the world's superpower.  What is it exactly they can hate about the democrats and Joe Biden?  The answer is because the GOP is Jim Crow, and still they are sitting on their plantation porches, drinking lemonade, and making Golliwogs. What possibly could be so demonic that instead of governing a nation they are waging civil war?  The incredible childishness of such an out-of-touch contingency is shockingly wrong.  Barack Obama said it recently.  "The accumulation of wealth is so lopsided, its gravitational pull has distorted space time. We are stuck in a black hole with no flowing money and social and economic oppression."  Recently I made peace with myself and am happy with my life's work.  It will not be appreciated for decades, but I have made a substantial contribution to the evolution of the language of music as personal expression.  The appropriation of my will nearly is impossible, because I trust no one.   No one in America will swallow their pride long enough to allow progression.  This is the archetype of the GOP.  "Slavery was a fruitful time.  Why can't we go back to that?"  My solution to this depression long ago was to move, and it sufficed.  You must step around your detractors.  You must leave them in the stagnation of their own appreciation of themselves.  Coming back to North Carolina has resurrected the same ugly nightmare.  Nothing has changed.  I have changed.  I have grown.  I have matured, and I no longer care about myself. I would rather help others and instill a sense of urgency in the importance of music.  That is not the lay of the land below the Mason Dixon line.  Jim Crow never died, and his newest generation is the same bigoted, discriminatory, racist ideas now calling themselves LGBT.  Only is it different faces.  They do not seek solidarity in America.  They do not seek community.  They do no want to help others.  They want recognition and spoils for rejecting their God given biology and playing drag queen.  Is this something America should celebrate?  The degree to which they play this show in Fayetteville is as violent and intimidating as gang warfare.  I have experienced nothing so disturbing in all of my life.  Nazi lesbians and sniveling fags whose only purpose is to distort God's hierarchy.  Tell us a plan.  GOP, give us your plan, but there is none other than selfishness.  Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty, and Uncle Sam is now Jim Crow.  

Dancing to the Beat of the Wrong Drummer

 I have been waging the war on infrasound, since I discovered it in Columbus, Ohio at the behest of "rail."  (I am dispensing with the use of the terms, "railroads" and "rail industry," because I sound like a broken record blaring the prophecy of the Apocalypse.  If we care to remember there have been a number of predicted calamities in our lifetimes.  Y2K was one, and the notion was the binary languages of computers would not be able to handle the roll over date of the twentieth century.  The year 2000 was going to shut down the world, because the computers would glitch and freeze.  There was 2012, and this was more serious, because many ancient cultures from different continents predicted the end of the world in 2012.  We are only eleven years off, and by the reporting of media our current disposition is beginning to reflect these dire predictions.  The oceans are boiling.  Super storms are ravaging the earth.  The polar ice caps are melting, and sea levels are rising.  There have been many films that have drawn their inspiration and plot lines from these predictions.  The trouble is most of these Hollywood blockbuster films no longer are in wide distribution.  Like most things, the corporate monopoly of information is being controlled by a few.  Indeed Cancel Culture is in full effect.  We have dumbed down the population to the point that if I mention infrasound, I am though a conspirator or crackpot.  Sound waves below the threshold of human hearing?  Could this be possible?  Of course it is, and if we did choose to pay attention to something other than the most recent entertaining "app," we could begin to make sense of what is happening in the world.  It isn't rocket science.  What it is is corporate malfeasance by the way of massive environmental pollution.  Evidently we are so addicted to our phones, and they provide us with such pleasure, if someone suggests their operation could be harming us and the planet Earth, we will choose our phones.  This is the current Conditions of America, and it is absurd.  It is addiction, but it is addiction in a more abstract sense.  People addicted to substances exhibit specific personality traits generated from biological changes in the body.  An addiction to digital media via an iPhone exhibits personality traits generated from the subconscious mind.  Because it is addiction, we fully are not in control of our actions.  Our entire psychological profile is being manipulated against us.  Try talking reason to an army of Zombies, and like many of these great Hollywood films depict, there are great examples of this drama.  Casually we accept these things and revel in the absurdity of our inability to control our own behaviors.  It is too great a burden to believe the world has gone awry, so we just accept it to postpone the reality of the predicted Apocalypse.  It is a video game, something for which we are more prepared than reality.  Acknowledging that man has strayed asunder and has no interest in solidarity is extreme.  For the time being we will continue to fight with one another until we die.  Reconciliation is too much a task for the small and addicted minds of 2023.  The biggest evidence of any of this is the debacle of Covid 19.  The advice we were given by Dr. Anthony Fauci (who has disappeared from the face of the earth) was, "Wear a mask."  He didn't tell us that our eyes, with their exposed mucous membranes, were more prone to the transmission of infection than breathing in particles.  He also didn't tell us, like the United States military knows, is hair carries particles.  Allergens, dirt, dust, and disease all are capable of being carried and stored in human hair.  Wearing a simple thin mask over our nose and mouth was an inept prescription for the ensuing calamity of Covid 19.  It in retrospect was a huge joke, and millions died.  If we are having trouble with revamping the priorities of the human race, then preventing this type of outbreak in the future would be important.  We need smart leaders to be able to make these kinds of decisions, not extreme politicians in Congress with a shopping list of science fiction.  Everyday when I watch the Apache helicopters fly at Fort Liberty and to RDU Airport with the code name Zeus, I wonder when are these machines going to be used?  Does anyone believe we ever will engage in a fighting war again, especially on our home soil?  Why do we need tank buster helicopters?  The answer is the Cold War, and it still is alive an well.  We are fighting it in and for Ukraine, a proxy war more properly labeled World War lll.  I say send these most powerful fighting machines where they are needed.  In the real world most of us are not privy to hypothetical and nonthreatening training.  You learn in combat doing your job.  Because Fort Liberty is a training facility, all of those who live in close proximity are at war most of the time.  This dynamic of war is inescapable, but America officially is not at war.  We are, and everyone knows it.  It is this charade and the lunacy of Donald Trump who are causing psychological devastation in America.  Our minds are addicted, we don't know it, and we are being led astray.  My ears scream from the tinnitus created from Apache helicopters.  There is only one thing that can place a standing wave in my bedroom at will, and it is an Apache helicopter operating in stealth mode.  This standing wave is a mixture of infrasound and electromagnetic radiation that dances little circles in space like a malicious pixie.  My body in particular remains exhausted from spending the majority of its energy trying to change the beat.   

With a Little Help From the Creator

The job of the artist is to synthesize life's experiences and their human reactions and to make sense of them.  American popular culture always has been the stage for this process, and luckily we as a nation valued and funded this important and necessary outlet.  American popular culture through music, television, film, and theater gave life to the American experience.  As a populace we were experiencing the trials and tribulations of survival along with the more infrequent spoils of the freedom democracy provides.  It was a balanced equation, a core component of human existence.  We work hard and we reap the reward.  This was the beauty of freedom and the social and economic mobility a free market seeks to provide for everyone.  Over time and in recent decades this "American Dream" has diminished.  Globalization has not been fruitful for mainstream America.  President Obama would call it "Main Street."  The push for Globalization came from corporate America, not the American people.  American citizens who value their country, their freedoms, and their opportunities come to America for these opportunities.  Corporate America sold us out for their own quest for wealth, power, and world clout.  We would be hard pressed to find any evidence that Globalization has helped the American people.  Contrarily I contend it is the one single most damaging policy enacted through federal politics in Washington, DC.  (second only to the legalization of microwave wireless communication)  NAFTA failed and decimated many economies in South America in the process.  Without blinking American companies outsourced their jobs in manufacturing to markets in Asia that would pay pennies on the American dollar.  America was robbed in one fell swoop, and never have we recovered.  The power of the American economy, our ability to build a worthy product, pay laborers a fair wage, and provide peace and security for our people is gone.  We have become a Third World nation.  Is is possible for entrepreneurial savvy still to achieve the American Dream?  This continued to happen in America, but the focus went from real products, products people actually use in their everyday lives such as clothing, furniture, and appliances to software-based "App's.'  (An "App" is an application engineered and coded for a desk top computer, but with the advent and marketing of the smart phone, the term application became passe.)  A new operating system was developed for the smart phone, and this became and still is the majority of the American economy.  That is not much to offer when someone asks you the value of your country.  What do you produce?  What are your products?  What do you make?  What value does your currency have as a result of their worth?  The stark and bleak answer is not much.  The American dollar never has been weaker, and one only pays ten dollars for a value meal at McDonald to realize how little the American dollar is worth.  Perhaps inflation accounts for some of this, but I think not.  America is not worth much, and what we do is try to sell weapons to minors for profit.  We have lost our mind as a nation.  When I sit down to blog I don't choose to spew negativity.  The truth is the integrity of American life is a pittance.  One makes decisions and choices from one's environment, and Fayetteville, North Carolina is no shining star of progress.  Contrary to what anyone will try to tell you, Fayetteville has disintegrated into chaos.  I thought I may understand what life in the ghetto meant, but never was I afraid for my life.  I am not fearful of my life now, but it is unmistakable that most of society is impoverished, desperate, and on the verge of psychological despair.  It is difficult to see day in and day out, and there is no immediate solution in sight.  In reality the disparity or distance between the wealthy and the poor is great with no way in sight of changing the balance.  The streets offer no salvation or living, because most everything in America is controlled by the rich including the drug trade.  They want and do control everything and much of the manipulation is through city hall with local legislation.  How is it possible a federal half way house is being built within existing middle-class homes in a neighborhood in Fayetteville?  No one wanted this, and concerned citizens and proponent groups sued.  They lost, and some local business will reap its benefits with slave labor for their business.  The name Wesley Meridith comes to mind.  When government, elected officials, and city employees odiously disregard the will of the people, democracy has been lost.  When America was functioning at her best popular culture at its best.  Music, television, film, and theater were valued and had market value because they reflected the sentiments of the people.  Popular culture is the voice of the people, and this voice is mute.  There is no replacing the influence of radio and television, when there was no distraction from the internet.  If we do look we will find that before streaming and wireless technology America substantially was better in knowledge, sensibility about the arts and their representation of our life struggles, and human relationships.  Covid and the internet turned us into androids governed by our palms.  I struggle with this everyday, because unfortunately I am an artist.  I can exist on a plane without the artistic process but not for long.  My soul dries up, and I turn into a shell of a man.  When I do indulge in social and moral conscience, I am overwhelmed with grief.  The reality of my existence in perspective is emotionally suicidal.  There is no solution present for America's failings, and what is the point in spending time on traditional humanities?  Of course these always has been nothing but the great abyss unless you choose something.  You have to choose something, and for me it is the vocation of music, but the place of music as America's soul has been exorcised.  The controlling rich do not want thinking, feeling, compassionate citizens, because they are the ultimate threat.  The story remains the same.  Christians were hated for the good they sought to do.  Jesus was loathed, because he sought to provide love in the world.  Evil has found a foot hold in the world, and especially in America.  It is difficult to revel in the rewards of God's kingdom, when we are at war with Satan.  Life has gotten tough, and little by little our supportive infrastructure is disappearing.  In a short time we will be down to hand to hand combat devolving to cretins.  Sometimes we need the help of the creator.  

Presidential Cleansing

Often I accuse American media for having become a broken record, an endlessly-spinning, frenetically-paced, blaring, weather report of bad news.  Before Donald Trump was elected President in 2016, this was not the case.  America more resembled the America with which we are familiar.  The six o'clock local murder report is a new thing.  Violent crime in America steadily increased during Donald Trump's presidency.  He would brag about that the same way openly he professed to want to eliminate "burdens" on the American economic system.  Those burdens were old people, immigrants, and others unfavorable to the elite, who didn't deserve to live on the same planet.  Donald Trump openly campaigned with this philosophy.  Get rid of the pork of America, not the pork barbecuing in the Swamp, but the pork of the American people.  Us.  We thought he was joking or being flip, because how could someone running for the American presidency say such things with candor?  He did.  Several years later a pandemic beset the world and killed millions of people.  Many of them were old, sick, and immigrants. 

Moving to Mars

Before it widely was understood PFAS or the chemical C8 has been in our water supply for decades, I had my own bout with it.  The bottom of my bathtub, a sixty year old, cast iron, porcelain covered affair began to become discolored with black.  Everyone has problems with mildew in their homes, and this slimy black residue is no stranger to us.  This black discoloration would not go away.  I tried the myriad of chemicals recommended on the internet to no avail.  I even broke out the drill and wire brush.  It remained.  Over time a white chalky film mixed with the black residue of which I thought it must be soap scum.  (I did change from Safeguard to Dial soap, and this is when this happened.)  Several years went by and the overall health of my feet suffered to the point where I ended up with "Covid Toes" or vasculitis.  Three different medical professionals within the FirstHealth system were unable to help.  The infectious disease doctor told me emphatically it was not infection.  A few months later an M.D. diagnosed my toes as psoriasis, not eczema.  I think it is a Staph infection, because the upper layer of skin on my toes just peels off from the exotoxin secreted by Staphylococcus Haemolyticus.  A culture done on my raw feet discovered this bacteria, which is a normal part of the skin flora.  The antibiotic Keflex marginally was helpful with healing.  I don't know how I contracted this bacterial infection, but it has ravaged the right side of my body for three years.  We have our own personal demons with which to contend.  A bathtub with black goo on the bottom is not helpful.  As I was driving yesterday I began to think about chemistry, a science that has been downplayed in American importance.  While not immediately apparent to us when we are in the classroom, some things taught in our public schools are meant to be helpful.  Applying them to real life is the challenge.  I thought about Teflon, and it purpose as a non-stick cooking surface.  I thought about silver electro-plating, when an electrical charge chemically bonds metals together.  My Bach Stradivarius trumpet is silver, and unlike laquer it has stood the test of time protecting its raw brass.  The film in my tub exhibited the characteristics of chemical bonding.  A by product of the manufacturing of Teflon, a non-stick cooking surface, categorized as a "forever chemical" should not be in water supply.  After the new director of the EPA from North Carolina showed interest in PFAS, things began to happen.  Chemours, which had been sold by DuPont to the Chinese, announced they would build a multi-story retaining wall between their plant and the Cape Fear River.  This is long after my mother began complaining about a white film which gets on her glasses when driving and shopping.  This experience with a stubborn nemesis, which has it origins in chemical properties not conducive to human health, has shaped my opinion about the origins of Covid 19.  If DuPont knowingly has been releasing this substance into the American water shed for seventy years, even after a thorough multi-year medical study showed its potential for harm and death to human beings, then anything is possible, and we are not safe.  How is a human being able to compete with an industrial-level chemical process gone awry?  This is why American government developed regulatory agencies to ensure our health and well being.  Covid has been found in our meat supplies.  With every passing day the prophecies of the national evening news become more grim.  The oceans are boiling.  The hottest temperatures in history are being recorded.  Our water supply is poison.  Mother Nature can correct these problems, but we need to stop the ill work of man.  If we do cause the extinction of the human race, then the planet can regenerate.  How long will this vacation on planet Mars be?   

Poltergeist and Sheets of Sound

I dare not play music in my den at night, because it upsets the poltergeist.  Not everyone in a now-becoming predominantly military influenced town revels in the 5:00 a.m. bugle.  That includes the long dead, Russian/Jewish immigrant, American composer Irving Berlin.  He did not enjoy his short stint the army, but he made the best of it by writing songs and eventually penning a full length musical replete with a cameo singing, "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning!"  It included the annoying bugle call, "Reveille."  Not everyone in a military town works for the government.  Most of the people in America now work for that government, and that is called Socialism.  There is not a publicly-owned means of production.  Mostly the lives of Americans have been reduced to modern slavery.  I say this because most of us aren't breaking even.  We, as a nation and middle and lower classes, are going into the hole.  The elite rich are disconnected from this reality and continue to live in their billionaire bubbles robbing the poor of just a meager existence.  Inasmuch as it feels necessary I do not relish the thought of playing Robin Hood or becoming a terrorist the last chapters in my life.  It would seem it is needed.  Corporations and the rich need to pay their fair share of income taxes.  If they did the exorbitant tax on alcohol and gasoline could be lowered.  We are funding Washington with half of the price for these precious liquids.  It is atrocious.  All of the wealth, from the words of Barack Obama, has been accumulated to an elite few.  Wasn't Covid convenient?  Mr. Bezos all ready was set up to supply most of our goods.  It didn't take a lot for him to shift his Amazon into overdrive.  Then the delivery services emerged charging us high surcharges to deliver cooked food to our homes.  Both things almost decimated the tradition and efficiency of brick and mortar stores.  American retail has not recovered, and it is unpleasant as ever.  We have lost faith in America and our fellow man, and life is hell.  Why is it that we can hear each other?  Everyone is connected together by huge sheets of sound, and they are not spilling from John Coltrane's bell.  They come from rail.  They come from afar.  They are near.  They are transient.  They are intertwined in the American infrastructure like the root network of a bamboo forest.  I would say this network in its anonymity and stealth is the perfect medium for smuggling contraband.  No one knows what's on the trains, and they relish their noncompliance with any type of regulation.  They are free, free to ship fentanyl in containers all over the country.  Sheets of sound produced from locomotives connect us all together against our will.  What could be more unconstitutional than that?  Shattering the concept of personal privacy for everyone, so rail can pay shareholders?  Rail is like Amazon.  It has become a corporate monopoly, but Washington looks the other way.  If they paid their fair share of taxes, America would not be in this state.  We might live again. 

The Smooth-Talking Snake

The recent events of the Covid outbreak have misshapen our collective awareness and understanding of American sensibilities.  The dots must be connected if our democracy is to survive.  Donald Trump is not the first president to go rogue.  It is a routine pattern in other unfortunate third world nations.  Economic and thus political instability allow attempts at autocratic governance.  The elected president uses his new military to oppress the people.  This is the beginning of communism.  Cancel Culture has distorted the meaning of many traditional words, so these words no longer may be appropriate.  I will use "dictatorship."  No one any longer can agree on the meanings of descriptions such as Communist and Socialist, because the American GOP has adopted a campaign which simply shouts the opposite of whatever is parlayed to them.  Now Donald Trump extrapolates his criminal depictions back to the Democratic Party including Joe Biden.  "It's not me!  It's you!"  It's too bad life isn't a humorous and entertaining episode of "Seinfeld."  Before Trump, terrorism was an issue.  After President Biden ended the Afghan War, the concept of terrorism was shelved.  I think of Covid as terrorism, but that is not a common consensus.  There are those that believe Covid, like AIDS, was a natural evolution of disease.  I disagree.  After experiencing the dire effects of Covid again and again, I can say with certainty that its method of attack is ruthless and unmerciful.  In the year two thousand and twenty and with decades of positive medical achievement, it is difficult to believe a disease this lethal evolved naturally.  There is tangible proof the United States government contracted with the Wuhan Lab in China for millions of dollars to study and manipulate coronaviruses.  These lab workers mysteriously disappeared probably resultant of their own research.  The product they created was so potent, that it killed them.  China is concealing this like most countries would.  Did Covid 19 spread from the lab in Wuhan?  It would be impossible to prove, because their government's ultimate objective would be to hide this initial investment in biological warfare.  We must assume that while their product killed its makers (which in fiction is normal), someone has the pathogen.  Who?  Donald Trump is emerging a fallen president, someone once thought to be good but now is evil.  We can assume from his legally-proven pattern of malfeasance he was involved or aware.  Trump knew about Covid 19.  The Chairman of the Joints Chief of Stuff General Mark Milley himself said he felt over half of the American military might follow Donald Trump.  That is large potential for error, and with the facade of normal day to day military training it would be easy to implement such an attack.  He could have, as the Commander and Chief, ordered the dispersion of this pathogen.  His behaviors since are a metaphor for this strategy.  Smoke and mirrors.  Hem and haw.  Lie.  Distract.  Divert.  It would be difficult to find the source of this domestic terror, because it is cloaked in community and effective anonymity.  Covid could have been a domestic terror attack, because Donald Trump is being proven a traitor.  His minions still are active and proving this case against him.  When Marjorie Taylor Green distributes images of herself with an assault weapon in front of the United States Capital,  we need to assume that although she is an elected official, she may be a traitor.  Domestic terrorists are in Congress, and they were ushered in by our past president, Donald Trump.  Luckily he was not been successful, but his evil seeds have sprouted and are overtaking the garden.  Donald Trump is no different than Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Noriega, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin.  He just had a smooth Southern drawl.  

Apaches from Sakohachees

If your city wants to renovate its downtown and invigorate nightlife, then don't bring a United States Army Apache helicopter firing range to you county.  BRAC or Base Realignment and Closure sealed the fate of Fayetteville, North Carolina.  They painted it as a wonderful economic steroid shot, homosexual army generals, nuclear weapons, underground rail loading docks, field exercises, and the like.  Two decades later the proof is in the pudding.  The ruse of Covid was the final nail in the coffin.  Ending the war in Afghanistan was necessary, but it cut off the money supply.  Those ravenous military contractors dried up like dead flies, and those chosen privileged few became elite.  Fayetteville is secondary, and other than off base housing it isn't really necessary.  The plan was to make Fort Liberty self sufficient.  Shopping, entertainment, and education all on the base, but the base isn't very appealing.  There is a lot of crime, and there is a lot of death.  The deaths come in all packages.  Bacterial infections.  Training accidents.  Drug-related murders.  Like any war training facility, it feels like war.  The world's most lethal killing machine loitering in Fayetteville is a mistake, and Fort Liberty training has over-stepped its boundaries.  Robin Sage quarterly.  Operation Rolling Thunder.  Blah blah blah.  They don't need to fire a shot, because those sensor pods have their own harming effects on the human body.  Just their presence is threatening, the way they want it.  "We don't need no stinking Apaches."  

America Ad Nauseam

 The broken record of America blares tirelessly from the tube.  Once popular jargon was coined in the ghetto from Hip Hop, and it was cool.  Now modern American sound bytes are Apocalyptic.  "Heat Dome."  "Cancel Culture."  "Woke."  "Global Warming."  "Climate Change."  "Stolen Election."  "Fake News."  "Insurrection."  What has happened?  The total destruction of the security and happiness of Americans was the electing of Donald Trump as President.  Before Trump things were different.  This civil unrest, economic volatility, and racial warring are products of Donald Trump's covert agenda.  The changes in the American landscape, television, radio, and print news are under the blade of Big Tech.  America was greater before Donald Trump, but the most tried and true method to success is creating a problem and having the solution to this problem.  Donald Trump himself, covertly and a traitor, implemented this destruction while capitalizing in the back room.  Make America Great Again, because he created the failure of democracy and the free market.  Offer yourself as the solution to the problem, but now his offer has been proven false.  Fake.  It was a fake offer to solve your problems, while he would continue to rise in wealth and power.  His method is what got him.  His approach, his nonchalant, affable, charismatic dogma tripped him up.  He stumbled on his on spinelessness, and now he must pay the price.  The problem is, who and how are we going to solve his campaign of destruction?  This deceptively effective assault on the middle and lower class has happened before in America.  They were called Trusts.  Too much accumulation of wealth and power.  Antitrust.  America saw clearly it was important to break up these conglomerations who dominate the economy.  First it was the Baby Bells,  telecommunications with wires!  Then Microsoft.  Washington punted on Big Tech, and we won't recover.  All of the dystopian predictions we have seen in the movies for decades are true.  It is eerie.  Machines in the sky that control the population.  We think they are good, but they are not.  It is a scam.  It is Donald Trump.  The broken record of America is blaring.  "We never have seen the temperatures in the oceans this hot."  Mega-sized cruise chips rolling out of the ship yards, azipods destroying the coral reefs with heat, magnetism, electricity, and vibration.  What could survive that?  If you want to decimate a planet, subject it to this.  Nothing could survive, but AC drives are our fossil fuel salvation.  They aren't.  They need batteries made from precious metals, and we are destroying the earth mining these metals.  Why are the oceans hot?  The answer is cruise ships.  Too many cruise ships with huge rotating AC drives beneath the surface disturbing marine life, killing the coral reefs, and heating the oceans.  Does anyone care?  The simple answers to whence the heat comes, but no one will say.  Microwaves.  Cell phones.  Wireless.  AC Traction.  Jet exhaust.  Elon Musk himself wants to punt on the Earth?  That is one insincere brother. 

The Deep State

 I had never heard this term before, but after observing America's political debacle of the year 2000 I now have an idea.  High ranking government officials and military officers engaged in conspiratorial activity to promote their own power and wealth.  Ho hum.  I do not believe in conspiracy and chasing such a concept does not interest me.  Conspiracy is a word coined to provide cover for criminal behavior often labeled "white collar."  To some degree everyone is a conspirator, because living within the construct of Capitalism people are pitted against one another.  We all are plotting our own success and ascent in society.  I can't imagine getting up each day and saying, "I want to be a junky bum."  There are times, and they are increasing, where I feel overwhelmed by the Conditions of America.  Conspiracy is a diversion meant to spin criminal corporate and government corruption.  "They are plotting!"  It is a word best used in fiction and for entertainment purposes.  America has succumbed to such evil, malfeasance at all levels is expected.  We would wonder if they weren't conspiring.  A word that is more appropriate is needed to explain that there is very little good left.  Perhaps it is dystopian.  When the Sackler family peddles narcotics and bribes doctors to over-prescribe their drug which kills many Americans, this is when the term conspiracy loses it sting.  There is very little good left, and the reason is that a conscious campaign has been waged to eradicate it.  Good is in God, and God's word is Christianity.  Christianity only seeks to provide love in the world instead of murder.  Christians it seems never have been popular, but like everything today we don't remember the real meaning of the word.  Fundamentalist Christian.  Cancel Culture and the Woke movement are extremely destructive, and they would like for us to forget.  To be more specific it is easier to define this movement by our lack of humanity.  Humanity encompasses romance, and it has all but disappeared.  Throughout history romanticism as a movement has ebbed and flowed, and in America today it is at a historic low.  What do I mean by "Romanticism?"  It is simple.  Romanticism can only exist when emotion within the human race is considered important.  Before Big Tech and the frenetic pace of television, once there was a time when things naturally unfolded in society.  Society, instead of being defined by products in a parallel existence such as cyber space, was defined by social climbing.  Court is an antiquated example, but it suffices.  Somehow and for some reason America has lost interest in society.  All ready we have become androids consuming what we need and striving for what is next.  Life is what happens in between conversation says Robert Redford in the film, "Havana."  Big Tech is the Black Plague of the 21st century.  We no longer value human thought, inclination, and expression, and we seek only to make money from selling cheap tawdry products.  The entire history of the world, Western Civilization, is presented to us for our future benefit.  All of life's great toils have been experienced, synthesized, documented, and represented in art. All of this knowledge is there for our enrichment, when we choose to acknowledge it.  Cancel Culture does not, and the "Woke" movement is trying to recast America's better achievements.  Yes, we should teach about slavery, but we should not wallow in its ills.  The only way any man or civilization survives is by envisioning what is possible, and it takes work.  You have to imagine a better existence.  I imagine Fort Liberty without an Apache helicopter gun range. 

A.I. is B.S.

What do I mean when I say AI all ready has failed?  Music is a shadow of its former self, because Big Tech thought music was disposable.  Freely if you can exchange music like marbles but with no tangible physical product, of course eventually it will be devalued.  I value my iTune music collection, but its contents are high fidelity AIFF audio files gingerly uploaded from my own CD collection.  They are not paltry MP3 files which are small enough to exchange like marbles.  If you want quality in your life, convenience does not always take precedence.  The blood, sweat, and tears once it took to produce lasting music has been forgotten.  Computer plug ins have replaced vintage instruments, and America's acoustical environment is a vast barren wasteland of sonic pollution, most of it in inaudible ranges such as ultra and infrasound.  If you are trying to find an earthy natural place to record your project such as Muscle Shoals, good luck.  The rail industry single handedly has ruined the music industry.  A few years back when I traveled to Nashville to record a friends jazz project, we had to stop recorded late in the evening, because the studio became plagued with an electrical arc.  I explained to them a train was passing with AC locomotives, and we would have to wait until it passed.  The refuse from AC traction is tangible, not monitored, unregulated and harmful to human health.  It continues to plague human existence in many ways including producing inciting infrasound which is responsible for violent tendencies in people susceptible to emotional influence.  Back to AI.  What is AI?  If you want to know the answer, then listen to any track produced by a novice music producer who fails to employ professionally trained musicians who actually play.  The Casio parlor organ probably was the first best example of AI trying to create humanistic rhythm.  Many of us know how square that sounds, because music is not metronomic.  Groove or time feel is a learned craft, and it has nothing to do with a computer sequencer.  If you want music to sound natural or to resemble music produced the hundreds of years before now, AI is not the way to go.  There is no way Artificial Intelligence can recreate an emotional and expressive musical performance.  Talented producers get closer than others, because they know the musical parameters.  For those with no musical training or sensibility, tracks basically are unlistenable.  We tired of them in a few seconds, because there is nothing to engage us.  It is noise.  Likewise expecting a camera to see with human perspective is ludicrous.  Everything on television to one extent or another suffers from this same ill.  Television directors don't even try to emulate human communication.  They think video game programming is the human model.  Kill, kill, kill.  Emulating human reaction to visual stimulus takes boatloads of technique and gear.  If you watch an old school television episode or film, the camera work is stellar, and every shot is understood and calculated down to the most minute detail.  Often there are dozens of different camera shots in just a few seconds of filming.  There is no substitute for this depth of understanding.  Anyone who thinks they can produce a show without studying the craft of film making is deluded.  Herky jerky camera movement and stiff artificial tracks is what AI produces, and we have lost touch with human communication, so there is no model.  Cancel Culture has seen to that.  If AI has failed to recreate live music and provide a natural rendering of human interaction on screen, then what do we believe it will do for us now?  

The Baseline of Survival

The exact juncture in time when America went "jive" coincides with the electing of Donald Trump as President.  Previously when Barack Obama was President, and the first African-American President, "jive" had not been downloaded and installed in America's operating system.  I'm sure that Big Tech and the rest of corporate America were caddying in The Swamp for decades, but honesty and integrity kept them at bay.  With Trump these things flew out the window.  Now the bullshit is so deep aging out-of-touch Congressmen couldn't possibly make sense of the charade of Big Tech.  If one were to acknowledge and credit America's academic system, Big Tech is nothing more than wireless technology.  Technological advancements cannot compare to the strides all ready made in the Industrial Revolution.  These advancement were made in the real world with real elements and real science.  There was no metaverse, no fictional gaming retreat, and no short cuts provided by Silicone Valley.  Real technological innovation came from elbow grease, brass tacks, and sweat.  The fantasy world that has taken over at the behest of Big Tech and AI will fail.  All ready it has failed, and the examples of its failure have been with us since the year two thousand.  Integrity and artistry persevered for a while, but with no tangible monetary reward because of NAPSTER they were lost in the surf.  Singing or mouthing lyrics to a track is far easier, and today's generation is shallow and gullible enough to consume it as real.  The idea of performing a song on live instruments with a degree of talent in real time is extinct.  It is extinct because Big Tech has decided live music has no value, and NAPSTER set the example for free music.  Hence no one will pay live musicians any longer, and more ludicrously venues are asking musicians to "pay to play."  America has become fish in a pond, and no one knows what reality is.  The childish ads on Youtube suggesting young college geniuses have dismantled traditional industries such as air conditioning, cooking, and security, and also suggest these lifelong challenges somehow have been solved with a smartphone are inane.  If you stop actually to look at the product they are offering, it is a plastic piece of garbage manufactured in China for a few dollars that will break in a month.  Perhaps the idea is valid and grounded in reality, but if you could cool a room with a pint-sized plastic box, then our worries about global warming are over.  I am tired of hearing about Big Tech and AI, because again it is all based on wireless communication that should be illegal.  The majority of problems America has today are being created by the same companies pitching us their products.  The economy has grown lopsided, deceptive, and harmful to human existence.  The truth is being disguised, and we are living the small, little, black box depicted by David Lynch in his film Mulholland Drive.  The box has gotten smaller, and our own addictions are shrinking this box.  AI is and will be a failure, because its offerings all ready have failed.  Film, television, and music today all are offerings of AI.  The day that reality TV was implemented, refusing to pay professional actors and filming real life with a smart phone, is the day AI failed.  Without human perspective, without emotional and artistic intent, and without technique the product we are absorbing is nothing more than artificial intelligence, and it isn't intelligent at all.  It is a derivative, superficial, useless passing of time.  It has no wisdom, no soul, and no spirituality.  It is the epitome of "jive," what has overtaken America.  One only has to view a vintage television episode or Hollywood film to see the stark difference.  AI generated "content" is soulless fodder.  It accomplishes nothing.  In reality it is destructive to the human and Christian condition.  This is why violence has escalated in America.  We have lost track humanity, because we no longer know what it is.  AI all ready has won, and it has failed miserably.  Nothing can and ever will replace the synthesizer of the human soul and its vehicle, the human body.  Much of this all ready has been predicted in a slew of science fiction films, but cancel culture continues to try to erase America's cultural history in lieu of some alien species that violently wants to consume America.  It probably is Satan, but we have lost track of him as well.  It has become difficult to know your opponent, because pure ignorance has tilted the playing field.  The campaign being administered is so low-brow intelligence has a small role.  We had better use the intelligence generated from our instincts, because this always has been the base line for survival. 

Trump's Domestic Terrorism

 Now that enough time has elapsed, it has become more plausible for America to begin to understand not all Presidents are honorable.  The majority of people living today may not remember Richard Nixon and his Watergate scandal.  We have a lapse in public education to thank for this and the vast profound ignorance of our youth.  Two years of play time at home with mild lottery jackpots provided by Uncle Sam also didn't help.  The dismantling of American society through the Covid outbreak was a cold, calculated, terrorist attack.  The problem is still we do not know who the instigator was.  Certainly they have not vanished, but America is getting wiser.  The Washington Post reported many of the untraceable aircraft registered behind shell companies and highly suspect LLCs were Russian.  It now is common knowledge the United States paid the Wuhan lab ten million dollars to play with Covid.  Someone has it, and it still remains a lethal threat to humanity.  While cruise ships are a likely culprit for carrying disease from one continent to another, aircraft are more likely.  Many warring nations have deep histories of biological and chemical warfare, and most attacks are from aircraft with large tanks.  Large tanks?  Perhaps a C-130J Super Hercules?  Who operates such an aircraft?  The answer is the United States Air Force's Air Mobility Command.  Often they are in Fayetteville doing "touch and goes" at the Fayetteville Municipal Airport. (or Grannis Field)  Why are they using a civilian airport to practice military maneuvers when Pope Field is a few miles away?  An aircraft with four turboprop engines still produces exhaust, but the exhaust gases spin a turbine that powers a drive shaft with a transmission that turns a propeller.  The exhaust gases do not propel the aircraft like a jet engine.  Turboprop aircraft operates more efficiently at slower speeds and can even run in reverse.  If such an aircraft like a C-130 is practicing maneuverability by doing "touch and goes" at a regional airport, then its emissions are substantial.  What exactly is in their tanks?  I follow the route of this particular C-130 Super Tanker, and it is interesting.  Bermuda?  Cherry Point?  Ohio?  It makes the rounds.  America's most recent past President is a terrorist.  He orchestrated and implemented a vicious attack on our Capital in Washington, DC and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power from him to Joe Biden.  Two years later it has become evident that it is he and his collaborators (unknown) who are launching violent attacks on America.  Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist and although under indictment for crimes is still walking free staging rallies for his potential future candidacy for the United States Presidency.  Can there be anything more absurd in our recent history than this?  America was a relatively peaceful nation until Donald Trump was elected President.  With his inauguration came widespread, substantial, and continued violence among the American population.  What caused this?  Through his Presidency Donald Trump attacked America and purposely tried to illicit division and hatred among the people.  He succeeded, and his complicit GOP has done everything in their power to continue this attack.  It belies explanation the weakening of gun laws in response to increasing mass shootings.  After a period of time one must conclude that the GOP is practicing domestic terrorism in a myriad of ways.  Loosening environmental regulations, weakening regulatory agencies, and passing unethical legislation.  If we wonder why America is discontent, this is the reason.  Half of our political voice has sanctioned lynching as a means of asserting power.  Back to Jim Crow we go.  Perhaps seeing the GOP in black face it would make more sense.  America is humoring Mr. Trump out of respect, but no others would be allowed to incite such vitriol to the American public.  He needs to be quelled, before America ever can return to her normal self. 

America's Miniscule Penis

SCOTUS is hammering away at our civil liberties.  I read recently a post on FB that said our Supreme Court had sanctioned discrimination, because a business could choose not to create a product for a specific LGBT entity.  Otherwise the business somehow would have been required to do the work against their beliefs.  Forced to create a website for an LGBT cause.  This usurps the freedom for which America stands.  If we the people are ensured the right to choose and express freely by the U.S. Constitution, then we can choose not to engage in such a personal and alternative lifestyle.  That is what freedom of choice is.  Forcing a business to be a slave to personal beliefs at odds with our own is not American.  It is autocratic.  Thanks very much for this skewed and erroneous dogma.  Our Supreme Court was correct on this decision, and it took courage to make this decision.  Student debt relief is a prickly pear.  College and university student have been exploited financially like the rest of America.  The entirety of the American population is being exploited by the insurance industry for sheer profit.  Our health no longer matters, because how did insurance become a part of the health equation?  The insurance industry has become a root of American evil, and they need to be exorcised.  The entire medical profession is tainted by this off color machine.  A Fayetteville cardiologist settled insurance fraud charges against him to the tune of five million dollars.  Carolina Heart and Leg over prescribed Atherectomy and performed hundreds of unneeded surgical procedures for personal financial gain.  Dr. Hari Saini was the highest charging cardiologist in the state of North Carolina, and he was charged federally for Medicare and Medicaid fraud.  After six years of discovery and litigation Dr. Saini agreed to settle.  He purports his innocence.  Tim Moore, the North Carolina House Speaker, also purports his innocence in a lawsuit by Scott Lassiter who claims the Speaker had an affair with his wife and ruined their marriage.  Quickly the Speaker was exonerated by local media saying simply that the lawsuit was dropped.  Money talks, and the unjust walk.  Tim Moore settled the lawsuit by paying off Scott Lassiter.  A medical doctor who prescribes then performs hundreds of unnecessary surgeries should lose his medical license and go to jail, but five million dollars buys a lot of country club memberships.  Should race be considered in college admissions?  It is true that America is discriminatory from her birth, because of slavery.  Considering this discrimination it is logical to conclude that ethnicity could be a hindrance to social, civic, and economic progress.  Should standards be lessened to accommodate this bias, or does doing so lessen overall academic standards?  Considering the ignorance of America today compared to other decades, we need to up the bar in many respects.  Token offerings in response to anachronistic woke realizations are not a formula for domestic productivity.  We are handing it out on plates.  We are sending checks as an anodyne for being attacked by Covid.  A check to say, "I'm sorry" for a deadly outbreak that was not an accident.  That is about the size of America today.  

America's Cultural Revolution

 America's history is spattered with revolution.  Like the evolution of American jazz, this lineage is a maelstrom of tension and release often which does not imply logic.  One must use an extremely wide brushstroke to paint the cultural tendencies of America.  Throughout this history education and academia have been tasked with studying and purveying the logic of human existence in America.  Modern times, post Covid, may prove be one of the most confusing eras, because it is a unique time when human beings are questioning their God-given gender.  It is likely this questioning of gender is not all that unique and has been active since the birth of man, but something in the 21st century, post the year two thousand, has escalated this confusion.  The birth of a movement, a sanctioned and publicly supported cultural tendency demanding recognition via the description "LGBTQ," has blindsided much of America's traditional past.  This cultural change quietly and covertly has undermined God's obvious plan.  Several things are important in this movement.  One is procreation is not possible within the homosexual construct.  If the entire world were gay and only chose to have sex within their gender, humankind would cease to exist.  There is no disputing this fact, although Donald Trump and our GOP may try.  Another characteristic of "LGBTQ" is that in actuality it is a separatist entity.  Those within this subdivision of humankind are actually suggesting men and women do not or should not relate to one another.  They are professing an aversion to heterosexuality or the ability to interact with those of the opposite sex.  Inasmuch as it may be nice to want recognition or accolades for such an opinion, the reality is this view itself is discriminatory, sexist, and not Christian.  It borders on fascist, because to vilify one complete sex ignoring thousands of years of human interaction is to declare civil war within the human race itself.  This is extremely harmful to the health of our species, because it is suggesting and promoting human civil war, not for tangible property but for basic human survival.  It is attempting to unravel man from the roots up.  While homosexual tendencies probably always have been hidden in man's behavior, it only is now that these cultural habits are seeking recognition on a national scale and suggesting somehow they are healthy for our children.  It is best that they stay hidden in moderation and humility, because their detrimental effect on society subtly is taking a toll to a point of demonizing heterosexual behaviors.  Mainstream society is beginning to think male female relationships are wrong and sinful.  In fact the man woman construct was and is God's plan for human health and happiness.  It is a deep, emotive, meaningful, highly spiritual, but biological system, where temperaments or humors in the human vessel are at play.  Within the human body and soul are tendencies which are stimulated by reaction to other external human sources.  It can be called biology or chemistry.  More precisely it usually is determined by emotional profile meaning you jive with someone with similar feelings to your own.  Miles Davis put it most aptly when he said, "You fall in love with the first woman you feel."  In short you feel the same types of things.  There is more to it than that, and this is what we have forgotten.  Sexual desire and arousal are a core ramification of this human expression.  Today it seems as though this thousands-year-old pattern suddenly has mutated into something else, and change isn't necessarily always good.  I suggest that factors in our modern environment are causing this change.  Attention Deficit Disorder has been a major nemesis to our children also, so an external stimulus is at work.  Something is disguising the once desired physical difference in the sexes, causing people to retreat to their own detailed physicality.  As a man I cannot relate to this idea, as I continue to search for a hole for my peg.  Is this wrong or unnatural?  What is it that would cause two holes to shy together to two pegs to seek solace?  Surely this is a psychological adjustment, because the physiology doesn't make sense.  This sexual decision in my opinion is a rebellion against society and is being used to express social maladjustment, thus using human sexual choice as a weapon for empowerment.   Using sexuality as a tool or weapon is not new.  Women have been doing it for centuries.  Perhaps a lopsided, white, male power structure has necessitated such behavior. Perhaps LGBTQ  is just a reaction to recent criminal cases where men have been convicted of sordid, depraved, sexual hostilities against women.  We have Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and many others to thank for this reaction.  Women have been so harassed in the names of their careers, it was difficult to discern criminal behavior.  Men have been hiding under the disguise of authority, especially in America.  Fortunately sexual favors are not a part of the accepted work protocol.  At one time they might have been, and probably this is most true in Hollywood, California, where the film and television industries reside.  Sleeping your way to the top was one way to advance your career.  The joke is on you when you participate in such submission, and it gets you nowhere.  LGBTQ could be just another support group seeking acceptance, but why should it be any different than heterosexual acceptance?  When I drive through downtown and see men dressed in drag promoting their homosexuality, then I ask myself why can't a straight man assert his sexuality also?  Alas recently in America in this movement we have demonized straight men, and this mostly is from the lesbian society.  How can anyone use hatred of anyone as a platform for anything?  It is wrong, and lesbians who are discriminatory toward straight men are not worth recognizing much less applauding.  To be an adult one has to learn to step outside of one's self, because the world is not just about you.