Congratulations CSX - You Beat Santa Claus

My best writing comes after I have had a nice nap.  Restful sleep is a thing of the past.  This year on Christmas Eve CSX chose to run freight trains continuously all through the night.  It was not St. Nick in his sleigh with Rudolph guiding them with his glowing red nose.  It was CSX exploiting the recent resolution of an impending rail strike marshaled by the White House.  I am a Biden supporter, but respectfully I disagree with the sentiments of "Amtrack Joe."  Amtrack may be special to the Bidens, but south of the Mason/Dixon line America becomes the "Rust Belt."  We don't have catenary stretched above the "Spaghetti Bowl."  We have rumbling, turbo-charged, two-stroke, sixteen cylinder GP locomotives grandfathered in evading the Tier standards of the recently neutered EPA.  SCOTUS decided the Environmental Protection Agency in actuality shouldn't be able to protect American citizens.  That breech of trust began with George W. Bush, but it was predicated by Bill Clinton who licensed our currently used wireless microwave frequencies.  These frequencies were deemed harmful to humans, and the FCC rightly cordoned them off for commercial use.  Bill changed that, and in one fell swoop airborne electricity became the American economy.  Smartphones.  Apps.  (formerly known as applications)  Applepay.  Every conceivable thing you can imagine to accomplish with a smartphone.  I don't have one, and I don't want one.  Control my home's security with a phone?  Please.  There is so much electricity flying around our heads, it is surprising our brains haven't melted.  Or have they?  Melting brain, shooting up a school.  That is farfetched, but I'll put it this way.  The list of personal networks showing up in my computer preferences in my home is long.  I am not happy with all of this airborne energy, because it or something causes interference with amenities I use for enlightenment.  FM radio?  Who even knows what this is?  Fayetteville has a translator for the Classical Station WCPE only a few miles away, and yet radio reception of this indispensable aural pleasure is poor most of the time.  Although my Alexa reception has been acceptable recently, it will drop its signal when she gets angry.  There are all kinds of electrical phenomena happening in our homes.  Batteries run down.  Lights flicker.  The audio from my vintage musical instruments is modulated and distorted.  Their amplitude is quelled.  What is supposed to be stereo sound inexplicably moves from side to side.  These are common occurrences of which I have become familiar over the years.  They are a product of both low frequency sound (infrasound) and airborne electricity of many frequencies.  Some is RF energy, radio frequency energy now mostly in the microwave range, and some is alternating current from AC traction locomotives, the pride and joy of America's rail industry.  This must be the worst, but there is more.  Helicopters, commercial jets, and small private planes all have their own aural and electrical skyprints.  None of it is healthy to human beings, but no one seems to care.  When an ice or wind storm roars knocking out the power, a sudden calm besets our homes.  In the great American way instead of trying to cure disease, we chose to treat symptoms.  It pays better.  Get rid of dangerous antagonists in our environment?  Better to devise some novel way to scrub electricity from the air.  Bueller?  Anyone?  The rail industry likes to tell us our lives would fall apart without them, but my instincts tell me the majority of what they haul isn't for us.  Coal they supply.  If we decided to take a look into some of those thousands of containers stacked on flatcars, it would be surprising.  It's hard to imagine earning 700 million in revenue for one quarter hauling veggies.  And the drug problem persists.  Was it the military using Christmas as a training exercise, or was it corporate America doing its best to upstage the anniversary of the birth of the Baby Jesus?  In any case it was rude, callous, and sacrilegious.  There is no way Santa could compete with that maelstrom.  So congratulations CSX.  You beat Santa Claus. 

Our Commericial American Christmas sans Jesus

 If anyone had the time or inclination to pontificate something during our seeming, short-lived, American, Christmas season, what was it?  I'll start.  I used to admonish those who decorated for Christmas before Thanksgiving.  Since I have aged and time goes more quickly, I need two months to prep for true Christmas spirit.  I got it right after Thanksgiving, and then retail's blatant commercialism quashed it.  Whence does this spirit come?  Maybe an odd question, but it's not.  If it is not created by decorating our neighborhoods and downtown, whence does this Christmas spirit come?  Does it come from our schools?  Large clusters of children is fertile soil for the hopes of Christmas gifts brought by Santa Claus.  These gifts have become epicenter of American Christmas spirit, but with the slow death of brick and mortar retail in America and an outbreak of Covid 19 our gift illusions have been tattered.  Gifts or toys are lame or moot if they have no substance; that substance is created by the conception, planning, making, and marketing of Christmas gifts.  There has to be something to them, because a gift is an outward sign of an inward spiritual grace.  American society has become shallow, because the substance upon which we have relied has been sold out.  Sold out!  What does this mean?  Not "sold out" in the sense of a product selling so well there is none left.  "Sold Out" like selling out "to the man."  Anytime I use this phrase, "the man," I am admonished.  I refer back to the 1960's and 70's, when much was amiss in American society.  There is much amiss today, but we have lost our ability or desire to voice our feelings much less actively do something about them.  Perhaps I am speaking only of white America.  Perhaps a brutal war in Viet Nam halfway around the world was enough to spur this anxiety and expression in an emerging "Hippie" movement.  Our soldiers were returning in coffins or missing limbs.  Viet Nam  decimated a large percentage of our young and vital youth.  This could have been the goal.  The War in Viet Nam, not unlike the 9/11 attacks, could have been a ruse, or conspiracy, or plan for ulterior purposes.  Why didn't then President George W. Bush respond  immediately, when officials informed him at the school he was visiting planes had flown into the World Trade Center?  He continued with his lesson to the children ignoring a national emergency which ultimately killed hundreds of innocent Americans.  Could it have been that he knew it was going to happen?  His administration needed some cataclysmic event to boost his political image, so why not stage a tragic event about which he could become America's savior?  Now we have a new bureaucratic agency, his "Department of Homeland Security" and the NSA.  Efficiently Congress passed the Patriot Act and suddenly Washingtonian politics could invade every aspect of our private lives in the name of finding terrorists.  After Ross McNutt pitched his airborne surveillance packages, essentially 360 degree cameras mounted on the underside of a Cessna, no aspect of your life would be private again.  Eventually they would discover that while there always are a few pockets of malcontents, most Americans are law abiding citizens who desire freedom and happiness.  America is not communist, so most Americans are not concerned with conspiracy, political coups, or party tactics.  We just want our MTV, Coca Cola, pornography, and fast food.  This is an exaggeration, so I should include bubble gum as a metaphor for how the Russians have stereotyped America.  If we could acquit the white man from his demonic moniker, we will find that America has a substantial success record including traveling to the moon, creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, and devising jazz music.  Yes, white men were involved in the evolution of this art form mostly created by African-Americans.  While recently affluent white men in positions of authority have proven themselves immature, selfish, depraved, and criminal especially in the area of sexual aggression, these men should not be the representatives of American ingenuity.  We should attribute that to our Founding Fathers, those who penned the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution.   In this age of misinformation and cancel culture,  we want to ignore the Constitution completely.  For a nation to exist in all of its complexity, foundations are needed.  For a socioeconomic system to function and remain viable, it must be supported.  Somehow since the emergence of Donald Trump as president, a contingency has emerged which has chosen to "sell out" America.  "Sell Out" in the cheapest sense of the phrase.  "Sell Out" meaning discard your ideals and your integrity and suck up for the easiest possible reward.  "Be bought."  "Can be bought."  Washington unfortunately has become "bought."  We can can talk about "woke,"  but American has been "bought."  Our entire lifestyle and our social, educational, religious, and philosophical ideology has been "sold out" to a shallow cast of radical horn blowers who only wish to feign power and control the kitty.  They are not qualified or capable of doing much of anything except inciting violence by screaming.  Because we have been protected from this zealot behavior previously by our own systems of checks and balances, we were not ready for this deluge of B.S. that came raining down with the election of Donald Trump.  His electing was fraudulent anyway understanding Hillary Clinton received over two million more popular votes.  Our system is dead, so how were we able to concoct Christmas spirit when our social infrastructure has been dismantled.  It began when the media began trying to eradicate God from our consciousness.  There was an assault on God, and for the most part it has been successful.  With no presence of God humans  can do whatever they want including selling out America.  Honesty, integrity, and selflessness are not natural traits to loudmouth zealots.  These are tenets of Christianity learned in church from the lessons of Jesus Christ.  Because largely we have undermined public education and organized religion, good luck finding your Christmas spirit.  Cheap Chinese trash does not suffice for American ingenuity. 

To Live in a War Zone at Christmas

 The proof is in the pudding.  You can gas light.  You can misdirect.  You can lie.  You can spread rampant misinformation.  Eventually like the economy the situation will correct itself.  Humanity must survive, and survival instincts are strong enough to cut through most B.S.  Take a look around your town or city.  Is it thriving?  Are there people?  Is it clean?  Or are there homeless people?  Are there indigent, desperate, drug-addicted criminals scouring the streets?  Have properties become vacant and dilapidated?  Does the air smell of diesel exhaust or jet fuel?  In short, is there life, human life?  What is human life?  America seems confused on this topic.  If I guessed I would say Americans are addicted to the internet.  They are at home, inside, on their couches streaming or gaming.  They order with Uber Eats or Grub Hub.  The kitchen is not used to cook dinner.  The yard is meager and neglected, and the kids bikes are in disrepair.  Very simple events can give life or kill a community.  This has been well known over the centuries, but with Trump's divergence from sanity and reality we have lost sight of what things are important to humanity.  It is not money, but money helps.  What is important is human health, and human health requires stringent and intense defense from the Borg.  The Borg has overrun America using her as a cheap whore.  This is what America has become, and even the world's richest man wants off.  We have raped and pillaged our environment and natural resources, and now we are tossing Mother Nature to the dogs.  This predicament is not complicated, and it is a matter of integrity, respect, and empathy.  If you want a community to thrive, and in our socioeconomic construct members must earn and spend, these members must be healthy.  We cannot work and earn money to spend if we do not remain healthy.  Health once was a simple matter.  Throughout American history a myriad of obstacles have plagued our survival, but we knew the foundation of healthy living was clean living.  Clean air.  Clean water in which to bathe, with which to cook and to drink.  It is our responsibility to manage the land and coax it to serve our purposes.  Conservation is important.  Frugality is helpful.  Wisdom in necessary.  If I look around the community in which I live, the obstacles have become daunting.  Most of these obstacles have been created by the need for revenue and a desire to pay shareholders.  Shareholders and investors seem to be controlling our lives.  This contingency has lost sight of the people they are supposed to serve, the American population.  It is not a select few of high brow society elite.  America once was for America.  When I see commercial flights carelessly using communities as runways, it incenses me.  Low flying aircraft are an imminent threat to human health only usurped by heart disease.  I'll repeat.  Low flying aircraft whether military, commercial, or personal are a serious threat to human health.  The aeronautical community seems to have forgotten this, and their convenience now takes precedence.  If they can save a little fuel or cut a few minutes off a commuter flight, then they feel it is okay to alter their traditionally regulated flight paths and pollute an entire community.  As I watch the planes do this daily in Fayetteville, it reinforces that the balance of authority, governance, and leadership are askew.  It has become our sentimentalized depiction of America's Wild West.  Anything goes.  The businesses rationalize their irresponsible behavior by quoting figures and protocols.  Often they do the wrong thing like Piedmont Airlines.  CSX has been doing the wrong thing since John Snow built this railroad into a financial powerhouse capable of exerting influence over most of our government.  If you provide the motive power for the Strategic Rail Corridor and coal for out power plants, "Embargo on, Master Blaster!"  The reality for humanity trying to survive in these communities is it is becoming difficult to survive.  The odds have risen above our abilities to compensate.  When our health is being assaulted, when financial opportunity wanes, and when violence becomes prevalent our circumstances become dire.  (Evidently President Biden brokered a rail agreement, because we haven't had a moments peace.)  The trains have sprung to life and are running continuously making up for lost time.  Rumbling freight trains and exhaust spewing jets do not provide the necessary infrastructure for healthy human living.  Instead they emulate the dynamic of war.  Because Ground Forces Command and Fort Liberty train for this, this may be their scenario of choice.  What about the rest of us?  Listening to bomb blasts preparing for the anniversary of the birth of Christ is contradictory.  There isn't much Christianity in fighting.  The enemy has become ourselves. 

News Desk Editor At Large - Vacancy, Needed, Urgent!

 Our local newspaper's subscription rate has risen to almost $600.00 a year.  We are canceling not because we don't want the almost daily paper, but because it is too expensive.  I don't believe it is too expensive in light of our recent Covid epidemic.  If you calculated the cost of running a small local newspaper the old fashioned way - hiring personnel, running a printing press, and gathering and managing news, it would be exorbitant.  It would be exorbitant in light of the discovery that the smart phone has predicated the extinction of many American businesses.  The best metaphor is iTunes which single-handedly crippled the American music industry.  If you chose to replace thriving, democratic, capitalist businesses with one machine, then you must suffer the consequences.  Enter "The Borg."  We will be absorbed by the Borg.  We have been absorbed by the Borg, and Covid helped.  My point is I don't feel $4.00 for a dozen eggs is exorbitant.  It seems that way, but if you calculated the value of one dozen fresh hen-laid eggs and the infrastructure it needs to provide these eggs, then they would be worth it.  Instead America has opted to devalue most things that should be paramount to our health and happiness.  These are grassroots processes, local traditions, and small family businesses which once were a mainstay of the American economy.  Then the Borg arrived, Big Business, which always has been around.  Then George W. Bush, under the pressure of lobbyists, began to deregulate most American corporate entities.  This means there is no oversight of their processes, and pretty much they can do whatever they want like dump PFAS into our rivers and streams.  The best metaphor for today is the rail industry.  I was happy they were on the cusp of a strike, because this industry has been operating out of the bounds of American decency for quite a while.  All you have to do is stick your head outside your house and listen.  When Hunter Harrison was hired to pilot CSX, he brought Precision Railroading with him.  Their trains got longer, and locomotive emissions instead of only being at the front of the train moved to the front, middle, and back.  Now thanks to their new CEO America has a two mile long cell of thundering, vibrating, radiating funk.  If you thought the train was going to disappear into the horizon, surprise!  At the middle of the train are two or three running locomotives, and surprise again.  At the end where a caboose once sat carrying able and viable railroad workers earning them salaries and making a living, now there is another locomotive.  The "consist" now is spread out over the length of the train.  When the stampede comes, truly now it is an overwhelming and omnipresent event.  It has become constant.  The emissions from these locomotives, while the greenhouse gases may seem less, are great.  Now they are different.  With the huge DC to AC conversion of the Norfolk and Southern, airborne alternating current is rampant.  Add G5, Wifi, satellite, and military microwaves to the stew, and America is being electrocuted.  We may not catch on fire from "Old Sparky," but the effects of this R/F and EMF energy are wreaking havoc on our society.  Why has violent crime escalated?  Why are zealots shooting up schools?  Why are we killing each other?  Perhaps it has something to do with our bodies using and needing electricity to control our behavior.  Our nerves send electrical impulses, and compared to what is in our air today, we don't have a chance.  Change of subject.  From now on when you hear the name Trump, think of slave labor.  Trump/Slave Labor.  That is what he is.  His philosophy is and always has been you should work for free while he gets rich.  Donald Trump was a return to plantation America reliant and dependent upon slave labor.  We watched as his four years of a failed presidency preached this mantra to gullible, needy, and willing disciples.  A return to slave labor and plantation America?  When did a regressive political movement become vogue?  It is called Deconstructionism.  Screw things up so royally that mayhem ensures.  Get the masses fighting themselves.  America's number one problem is the abandonment of the notion of a free, ladder climbing, mobile America.  The idea that in America there are enough jobs in small businesses and corporate structures to keep people working and earning a living.  The idea that we can earn a LIVING WAGE with respect, dignity, and happiness.  Trump's ideology has ruined this philosophy.  Instead he wants an authoritarian dictatorship.  The fight against Communism never has waned; it was just disguised and repackaged.  When you disenfranchise most of America by eliminating them with disease, with lack of opportunity, and creating tribal war the only thing left is corporate America.  Corporate America is those who sit in their ivory towers sipping brandy and moving money via the internet.  They don't really labor.  They are not real people.  They have no grassroots inclinations.  They are selfish self-proclaimed gods living in their own narcissism.  What built America was not corporate America.  Corporate America, the handful of prominent immigrating families who knew how to capitalize on fresh resources, used American labor to achieve their success.  They provided an infrastructure for what we understand as a free market system.  They employed Americans at all educational levels and provided sustenance for human life.  The government had to police their activity and provide assurances for these workers.  Temptation always is at play.  The best metaphor for this is the Jazz Age and the ensuing Great Depression.  Checks and balances are necessary to keep things honest.  I am no economist, but I know America can work.  We have tossed our values into the wind and forsaken the majority of the population of America.  The elite 1% need no more money.  They are just in it for the entertainment. 

Time to Perform

I talked to my Aunt Glenda today, the good witch of Shelby, NC, and she told me the whole world was falling apart.  No one wants to work, and they are getting everything from the government.  Businesses are closing and inflation is at a record high, although I remember the days of Ronald Reagan.  Inflation was a problem then too.  Crap was expensive.  Four dollars for a dozen eggs?  Four dollars for a loaf of bread.  This is fallout from two years of Covid lock down.  Those who perpetrated this crime got it right.  They hammered a severe blow to American democracy and civilization as we once knew it.  "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" in the immortal music and words of Mercer Ellington and Ted Persons.  I wanted to begin my blog entry by having read, "Trumps tax returns now will be available to Congress."  It is a broken record.  How many times all ready have we, the American people, heard this nonsense?  Every month the headline reads, "Past president Donald  Trump must make his tax returns public," as most sitting presidents do.  (unless they have something to hide)  It has been six long years since this man connived his way to the American Presidency by bribing specifically targeted state legislators whose states don't require them to take the popular vote.  If they dissent for some reason, they can opt to discard the popular vote and send their own nominee.  How else could he have won?  We are in purgatory, and we can't get on with  American life until he gets his due.  Only six years ago before Donald Trump became president seemingly defeating Hillary Clinton (who had two million more votes) life in America was calm.  It was normal.  There was no Radical Right.  There was not so much racial violence, although police shootings of black men always have been problematic in America.  Jim Crow is responsible for this.  Six years later, even after democrat Joe Biden has won the presidency, all hell is breaking loose.  Imagine four covert years in the American presidency appointing judges, dismantling regulatory legislation and their accompanying agencies, and setting the stage for a violent overthrow of Congress at the Capital in Washington.  The damage this man did to America is far reaching and substantial.  It is he, Donald Trump, who is responsible for our pain.  Flip on the G5 network, and now there is a shooting every day, not just every week.  It is not a coincidence.  Start a Space Force.  Did anyone stop to ask what this is?  It was a sanction for Elon Musk to build Dr. No's evil network of low orbiting surveillance satellites.  Was it another James Bond villain?  That is the scope of this crisis.   "Anything Goes" in the immortal words and music of Cole Porter.  America's leadership has failed.  Any nation knowingly that allows children to drive while holding a smart phone is negligent and responsible for their deaths.  Children cannot discipline themselves.  They need structure, guidance, and mentoring.  If we said, "No driving with a smartphone," then they wouldn't do it.  Yet we allow them to do it recklessly, and for what reason?  We are inhibiting their personal freedom?  A nation cannot be a nation unless there is a main street.  Bill Clinton used to speak about Main Street, meaning the common ground among most Americans.  No longer do we have this.  We have been splintered, diverted, assaulted, and disrespected like no other American generation.  We are expected to disregard gender and allow humanity to devolve into single celled organisms incapable of understanding the beautiful difference between the sexes.  I don't want to marry myself.  Why would I?  An ugly mob of haters, inciters, and posers has descended from space and inhabited our bodies.  Sound familiar?  (The Walking Dead)  It is real.  We are being programmed to accept the zombies, but I am on to them.  You're going to have to do more than pose.  You're going to have to do something.    

Six Years of Hell

 Because I cut the cord my access to news has dwindled.  Staunchly I believed cable television was not worth the prices providers are charging.  Many times I watched, and even upon surfing through many channels, only commercials were on.  No matter what channel to which I navigated, commercials.  With the competition of internet streaming, the restrictions of Covid, and the real cost of quality production television has deteriorated.  Tim Cooke may want you to believe an iPhone can produce a sitcom or a feature movie, but in comparison to a bona fide "Golden Age of Hollywood" studio your product will pale.  If you have true talent or a ground-breaking concept, an iPhone will provide an introductory vehicle for your producing sentiments.  If anyone cares to studio film and television production at university, quickly they will realize "Things Ain't What They Used to Be."  Recently a Facebook friend posted about the attributes of the television comedy "Hogan's Heroes."  I agreed with his opinion that it was an almost revolutionary show.  The Germans were played by Jews in a parody not unlike the musical mounted in Mel Brookes "The Producers."  Hollywood as defined by many was a mecca created by the same Jews who sought to create a utopia in stark contrast to the Nazi atrocities.  Jews and the Jewish faith have a marked influence in the creative development of America, a newly emerging and burgeoning free nation.  "The Big Lie" was not just about the presidential election.  Donald Trump's "Big Lie" is a campaign which has undermined and degraded the core of American democratic, sociocultural, and academic postulates.  Everything in American life has been assaulted, dismantled, or disguised for simple economic and autocratic gain.  Like January 6th it is a coup d'etat.  It has been implemented from within with the slow eroding of our food, health, media, education, and government standard of practices.  Probably there are more.  Nothing has escaped unharmed.  Insurance ruined our health care, and the establishment was quick to comply.  Food has been Benedict Arnold since the 1920's.  Public education was fed to the dogs, and higher academia fell prey to the dollar.  As such "The Swamp" was created.  This siege upon American ideology was a result of "The Big Lie" implemented in other disciplines and aesthetics.  Complain about infrasonic pollution from the rail industry, and the GOP decries science.  Point out the dangers of climate change, and they lie.  Understand the importance of teachers in advancing society, and they cut funding.  Keep the minimum wage an unlivable, paltry, pittance of sustenance.  There are so many things gone awry in our country, it could be difficult to swim to the surface.  The disguising of the truth through gas lighting, the spread of misinformation, and flat out lying is a low point in American history, and subsequently our nation is in peril of extinction, war, or domination.  American ideals are what built America, and these extreme truths have kept us alive, proud, and free.  Democracy does work, but you must believe in and support it.  We have been sold out, and the salesmen are in Washington, DC. 

Buckabee the Hun

The voting process in North America has undergone a test.  We discovered voting rights are individual to each state.  Moreover our electoral college was open to corrupt manipulation.  The Trump machine went to states and tried to convince them their election results for some reason were inaccurate.  In many states there is a provision that allows the statehouse the option of rejecting electors choices and simply replacing them with their own.  This is how Donald Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton.  It happened, and the nation did not catch it.  We just gasped at how a candidate could win receiving two million less popular votes.  Certainly it was not fair or representative, and it was not because this win was achieved by the method stated above.  Trump was one step ahead of us, and his "Big Lie" merely was what his campaign did in 2018.  They manipulated states' electoral colleges by bribery.  Superimpose President Trump or Senator Lindsey Graham calling the Secretary of State of a contested state and asking them to "find enough votes for him to win."  No matter how hard you spin this truth, it cannot be discounted.  The Trump machine slickly applied shrewd business practices to our Constitutional  processes eliminating moral and ethical ethos from America.  America became free range, and still we are stampeding like a herd of bison not knowing where we are headed.  Luckily Democratic wins in our recent midterm election has staved off some of the remnants of "The Big Lie."  Americans are ready to get back to their own lives.  The "Razzle Dazzle" has fizzled out, and America needs back her democracy and her local economy.  Inflation has set in, and when food prices become unreasonably high people become desperate.  This increases crime.  Our inequality of wealth is bursting at the seams, and eventually all of that money will have to escape finding its ways back into the hands of normal Americans.  The money has slowed to a drizzle, and it needs to flow.  Not hustle and flow but flow in a normal process of work and wage.  Our cost of living continues to increase, and our wages remain stagnant.  They have been for a long time.  Only a ludicrous longing for the free labor of slavery could condone our almost inhumane wages.  Certainly they are not livable.  If you did listen to Elizabeth Warren, she would tell you she supported a family on one paycheck back in the good old days.  Clearly I remember the "Soccer Mom," the metaphor for two working parents hauling their children in a minivan.  What was that date, when in America both parents had to work to earn enough money to live comfortably?  We are worse off today living pay check to pay check with very little security.  This is what America seeks, and this is why a "Red Wave" was diverted in the wake of a corrupt president.  The people are speaking again, and they spoke in this midterm election.  Now only if we can get Washington to listen.  It is disheartening the choices North Carolina has made.  The Honorable Senator from North Carolina...  a gun shop owner, a supporter of the Big Lie, and a right leaning zealot for Trump.  This is who the constituents of North Carolina chose to send to Washington, DC to represent us.  Thom Tillis and Ted Budd.  The reason was North Carolinians are so red, they just cannot elect a black woman to congress.  There was little publicity about this choice unlike the elections in Georgia which democrats flipped with the electing of Raphael Warnock.  It was not a matter of credentials, ability, or experience in legislative procedures.  We elected Ted Budd, because he is a white man.  We are ignorant enough to believe because he is a white man somehow he will do the right thing in Washington.  He won't.  Mitch doesn't, and neither do any of the GOP officials we have elected.  They do for themselves, not for the people.  We could have had an attorney and a judge with a lifetime of judicial experience speak for the people of North Carolina.  Instead we chose a gun store owner with a history of wrong-doing.  The only thing more improper is electing a mediocre past White House press secretary to the governorship of Arkansas.  The only reason she won is the same reason Ted Budd won.  They are not electing a professional to do a job, they are electing allegiance to Red.  At least now clearly we can see our mistakes and the level of intelligence in the country.  

American Adolescence

 One's traditions are the only thing they have.  If we were to base our existence on what we experience each day via the internet, television, and human interaction, I would be a walking basket case.  It would seem few of the things traditionally we have embraced in America as mainstream and meriting our loyalty are at play.  Truly we are on our own in terms of our values.  When push comes to shove one's traditions are the only thing we have.  What is religion?  What is philosophy?  What are the arts?  What is philanthropy?  What is fellowship?  I have no reason to doubt or question my upbringing.  For me it was a mix of Christian reverence, musical competitiveness, spirit, love, and devotion.  Somehow I learned to work hard at and for what I believed in.  It stuck with me all of my life.  Today I am faced with a predicament, and that predicament is much of what I believe and consider integral to a happy and healthy life no longer is in the majority.  If I take the time to look around, America has become more diverse in ethnicity.  The Left without asking would tout this as a good thing.  Our Left today unfortunately blindly is ascribing to things they feel should be good, but with further study could yield serious threats to American solidarity.  Not all nationalities agree with or adhere to American principles of governance or behavior.  The huge posse of Afghans who were welcomed into the United States largely not vetted by any arbitrary body could pose a significant threat to American security.  Who are these people, and why were they welcomed here with a red carpet, when the GOP only screams about building a wall to keep foreigners out?  There are some unsavory politics going on in Washington concerning foreign policy, espionage, and balance of power.  The enemy having emerged in America is foreign, and they have immigrated legally.  These legal aliens have brought with them their disdain for democracy, and slowly from within they have mounted an attack on our country from the inside.  I see it every day.  The true fabric of American philosophy has been infiltrated and convoluted developing into a disparate and unwieldy conglomeration of extreme and selfish behavior.  Covid did not help.  Two years of isolation with only the internet as our teacher has proven disastrous to our youth intelligence.  All schools are under-performing, because we have lost sight of how to work.  Working for American youth is playing video games on the internet.  It is immediate gratification with minimal physical exertion, concentration, or dedication.  The more alarming aspect of this two year isolation was lack of socialization coupled with a burgeoning LGBT community.  Again the Left in America supports many things they think are liberal, but upon closer scrutiny have no value at all.  The LGBT movement is a good example.  It is far from a gay rights movement.  It has become a radicalized, extreme, separatist cult better kept hidden in pop culture.  That is where it belongs, because the behavior exhibited in this movement is far from adult.  It it more like a costume party for those with thin skins.  Life in America is difficult, and it is difficult for everyone.  Not everyone declares themselves "Special Needs" and asks for special treatment.  As an educator with an education degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I can find little favorable or supportive philosophy in this choice.  Instead what I see are extremely confused, androgynous, asexual organisms who are not able to understand a sexual identity other than their own.  They are missing the entire challenge rendered by our Creator and the subsequent rewards of its mitigation.  Physical, emotional, and spiritual love fully cannot be actualized without an understanding of two sexes.  Perhaps homosexuals can fabricate physical love through various means, but only God's intended methodology will yield that possible and probable ecstatic relationship yielded by two sexes which were meant to coincide and recreate human life.  Procreation once was a metaphor for human love, but now it just is a tool for life.  This bothers me.  This bothers me, because what I see most days is a rejection of heterosexuality.  Not only is it rejected, it is shunned and demonized like shallow Baptiste doctrine.  Southerners in their naivety fear teaching their children how wholly and healthily to love one another responsibly and resort to abstinence.  Consequently the possible and probably sexual titillation so necessary for adolescent development becomes absent.  Eventually the sexes become desensitized to one another and eventually sexual identity is lost all together.  What do you get?  The answer is androgyny, and it is ugly.  Ask a painter to paint an androgynous form, and it will be ameba or an earthworm.  What fascination does this hold for romance?  The stark result of this American trend is the loss of sexual feeling between women and men, and without it much of the traditional human experience is lost.  No wonder we have become F-I-N-E.  Freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.  Our environment is not helping.  There is little in our daily lives that presents examples of healthy human living.  Instead it is hard core pornography on the internet, LGBT perversion, or cult-like divisiveness.  Few places offer a safe and nurturing environment for Christian sexual love.  How are youth to learn how to live this life without instruction or models?  Ignoring burgeoning adolescent sexuality in the home will be a disaster, and it should be embraced, respected, and nurtured with care.  How else can we become loving human adults?  In the old days wealthy families had special rooms in their mansions for this activity.  Instead of resorting to cul-de-sacs, movie houses, and nightclubs, teenagers were encouraged to mingle and socialize within the family structure.  What is so threatening about your child becoming an adult, if you help them? 

North Carolina

It never had been my intention to criticize my home state.  After moving elsewhere to pursue academia, North Carolina's idiosyncrasies  emerged.  I lived in the Midwest, Columbus, Ohio, and  in Columbia, South Carolina.  Each destination proved themselves to be better than North Carolina.  Adjusting to the humble modesty of Ohio took a few years, but once I became acclimated to this behavior I became a Midwesterner.  I lost my southern drawl, became more forthright and passionate about my interests, and left the false security of Southern Gentility behind.  The people of Cowtown would not recognize this of faux romanticism.  You had to earn your keep in Ohio, and so I started over.  As it turned out the almost decade I lived in Columbus became some of the most fruitful years of my life.  It was a fantasy strapped onto a rusty pick up truck.  Life there was benevolent, so it was easy to flourish.  North Carolina does not treat her people this way.  The common folks of North Carolina are a second thought to the corrupt and ruling General Assembly.  This boys club is the same as Donald Trump, and only the rich Republicans rape and pillage Raleigh politics picking clean the bones of federal and state monies.  Fort Bragg is no different in Cumberland Country.  The surrounding community are vultures using the army as their Communist provider.  Most of America is provided for by our government, and those who are on the receiving side of this agreement cast blame on everyone else.  It is the Republican "In Crowd" who falsely criticize President Joe Biden and the Democrats.  Never have I had less faith in the power of good until now, the post Donald Trump attempted coup, who still has not been made accountable.  He is  clever but no less evil and criminal.  His unethical, narcissistic, petty corruption has set an example of ruthless dominance in a declining and unsupported Capitalist socioeconomic system.  America abandoned our own unique system in lieu of shallow legislative and judicial manipulation.  It is far easier to tilt the pinball machine or slant the field than do the actual work to make Capitalism work again.  The reason why it is not happening, is because the Republicans don't want it to happen.  They want Capitalism to fail in favor of an authoritarian regime with them in control.  This is why they are doing everything in their power to maintain control, even undermining our representative model of freedom and democracy.  Capitalism takes work, and to make it work it takes intense savvy, intelligence, and cunning.  It is a wonderful model of human existence yielding social mobility, probable financial security, and mental challenge.  All of these things that built America and are America have been shoved under the rug so a motley crew of tepid Greek gods can have their fun.  The war that will ensue will not so much be civil as revolutionary.  Fighting one another because we disagree is one thing, and slavery is no longer.  Fighting for freedom from tyranny, oppression, and injustice is the issue, and it is coming.  Whence the body snatchers came, I don't know.  I don't understand the radical points of view, because they don't make sense.  It seems more like deconstructionism if anything, just stirring up the pot.  Logic exited the room six years ago.  It is disheartening to live in such a backward state, a state in which Wile E. Coyote and Bo Diddly vie for public office.  Are their any honest politicians left?  To further exaggerate our ignorance, popular culture has been pushed also in the wrong direction.  The tenants of Christianity say, "Love they neighbor as thyself."  The United States Constitution says, "All men are created equal."  When I look at television the modern aesthetic is, "Have no pride in your lifestyle."  If we are using abortion as birth control, we are unable to exercise and eat a healthy diet, and we cannot define our own gender, what responsibility as adult human beings can we discard next?  It is as if we have devolved into the simplest and nonthinking species in modern times.  "Accept us."  We are not required to live with discipline, diligence, and pride as the Protestant Work Ethic taught our parents and grandparents.  We could blame the food system, and now like our state government it is not there to help us.  It is there to make us fat and stupid, and that comes from poison.  There are few things in our lives actually helping us do anything.  Our children go to school to receive an education to offer them a better life, and they risk hate crimes and lynching.  The lynchings now come from an AR-15 assault rifle.  It is not wrong to recognize and engage our physicality.  The human body once was a temple of study and investment.  When I look at the Eighties, our hair was so beautiful.  Our bodies were ripped.  We were intelligent, loving, compassionate, and mature.  We were not driven by our bodies and ruled with our hormones, but we understood the relationship of our mind with our vessels.  Our vessels are a fundamental factor in the equation of love.  Our physicality is a metaphor for spiritual love, and it is a reward for sincerity, honesty, and passion.  Christian love is immersed in and preened from physical and emotional altercation.  Without this intimate experience with and resultant understanding of our personal sexuality, we are naive and weak.  Sex gives us these things, and it is not sinful.  I don't like the newly chosen mainstream of American popular culture.  It has missed the boat.  There is more integrity in the Broadway musical Carousel with its hard knock lessons than any of the camp and drag being performed today.  These lessons, these rules of life purposely are being disguised simply so our American gods and accumulate money.  They never will see the Kingdom of God or experience the eternal life of heaven.  They will eat their cake on earth and burn in hell. 

A Model of Mother Nature

 If I sit down to post in this blog, it is because I have something on my mind.  Sometimes writing is necessary, because it allows you to verbalize your thoughts without talking.  Recognizing, listening to, and understanding your thoughts and feelings can be a daunting process.  Why is this?  Flip on the television.  What is thrust at you is a hyper-accelerated, contrived, poorly produced stream of consciousness created where?  Who is producing what is on television, and what is its merit?  Television has taken a major hit with the rise of streaming services.  What's the difference?  When I cut the cord and began to explore alternate media sources via the internet, it was clear this wire was no different from the other.  Two wires, two vehicles to deliver your media and entertainment.  The question is in their taxation and regulation.  President Obama signed a "Net Neutrality" law.  What does it do?  I am not sure, but if he passed it it was for a reason.  The reasons behind most legislation passed in the last twenty years have nothing to do with the well being of American consumers.  Only do they benefit corporate America offering us our products.  Consequently one to two percent of Americans hold the wealth.  The rest of us are spiraling downward into oblivion.  I cannot recall in my lifetime more difficult times, and I knew they were coming.  It is as if we are at war without being at war.  Covid was no different from the Holocaust, it just was covert.  We didn't know it was a full frontal assault.  Knowing that people are trying to kill us is disconcerting.  Knowing your enemy is key to victory, but also when you know not what you do neither does your enemy.  It is a state of stasis, and that is not acceptable.  Limbo.  What does "Net Neutrality" provide?  I think in a nutshell it allowed corporate America or telecommunications to monetize the internet.  Largely before Obama passed this law, the internet was an underground academic counterculture.  Things were groovy and cheap, and no one paid state sales tax for item purchased on eBay.  Mitch and his crew changed that, and Jeff Bezos for a time became the richest man in the world.  Covid made that happen.  The population was shopping online prior to the Covid outbreak, but Covid sealed the deal for Amazon's wealth.  Is this coincidental, or was it created?  When I went shopping for an internet-based television-like experience, nothing was different.  It was X amount of dollars for so many channels.  The vehicle of distribution didn't matter, except that streaming taxes your devices graphics processor and uses a lot of electricity.  If I stream just a short Youtube video, I can feel the heat of my laptop processor on my thighs.  Computer processors can run hot, but it makes me wonder of streaming is the right choice.  It's not for technical reasons.  If we think back to its inception when audio streaming still was new, its delivery was erratic.  They had to design better modems to handle more speed of delivery.  Evidently they have solved that problem, and herein we have the G5 network.  I don't know how much faster it is, but what I do know is its transmitting equipment is much more powerful than traditional cell networks.  They use "phased array" transmitters, which are many transmitters in a grid which can be modulated electronically to steer their beam without moving the hardware.  It is much more powerful microwave energy, and it is the same equipment on Elon Musk's Starlink satellites.  When they flipped this on, the Earth got hotter.  Why would this wireless transmission be better than a big thick cable wire with insulation?  It's not, but because airborne radio frequency energy manifests itself on existing wiring our previous electrical grid has taken a hit.  Cable now exhibits transmission interference that was not there before.  Likewise traditional radio has become a sacrificial lamb for wireless telecom.  It is politics.  Who wants what.  I feel what we have ended up with is inferior to America's virgin offerings in technology.  Look at any "vintage" electronic product from America's hey day, and you will see quality hand-made components that are built to last.  Today products are built to fail.  The engineers know exactly how to build products that will fail shortly out of warranty.  It is shallow capitalism.  I was offered sixty dollars a month as an introduction to online streaming TV, but I have no interest in sacrificing my devices for this labor.  That is what a TV is for.  In a comparison of cable television to satellite TV, satellite was better.  How is this possible?  The reason is cable has run amuck.  There are too many channels, too many networks, and not enough quality programming.  It should be every individual show should have their own channel, and in certain cases this is true.  They run marathons of episodes called "binge watching."  I miss traditional television where three major networks competed at a high level for America's attention.  Now we are a diluted, disparate, infighting population with no available solidarity.  Television once provided this.  Lack of regulation is a major cause of this maelstrom.  Corporate America has proven they are incapable of policing themselves.  DuPont is still murdering citizens sixty years later, and our elected officials are allowing this to happen.  They are "on the take."  No one is looking out for the little guy.  This is not really what was on my mind tonight when I sat down to write in this blog.  What is on my mind is how our lack of solidarity has lessened America and made us weak and vulnerable.  When the Supreme Court of the United States begins to exhibit extreme opinion, unity of our nation has been lost.  It is replaced with warring polar opposite opinions of tribal brutality.  We have lost the ability to reason, mediate, and negotiate.  We no longer seek to love but to brutalize and conquer.  These behaviors have been predicted in the Bible, and they are irrefutable.  They are happening now mostly as a result of Donald Trump.  If we were to seek solidarity, it would be difficult.  Why?  The answer that no one seems to want to hear is that radicalized factions of Americans have skewed reality.  First and foremost the identity of gender has been defamed.  Lesbian women want to be men, and consequently they hate their enemy to becoming men.  Men.  It is rampant, and it is disturbing.  I don't think gay men have changed much, but feminism fueled by angry homosexuality in women has created something that before was fringe.  On television today on the Kelly Clarkson show, I heard a woman openly say she tells her husband  what to do.  She sleeps with other women, and he does as he is told like a subservient child.  The definition of gender and their roles has become so skewed, love between the sexes has become disguised and difficult.  Traditional depictions of male female relationships have become almost criminal, because a handful of deceiving, depraved, manipulative men have exploited many women.  We are experiencing a counter reaction to white male dominance, and it has exceeded its boundaries.  If certain cross sections of American population are adopting radical ideology, it is because they feel threatened by this movement.  Believe me it is not Communism that offers relief from this straying.   We have become so simple minded, it would seem only an authoritarian dictatorship can keep us in line.  It is not Republicans in the swamp.  The cast of candidates on the upcoming election is like a roster of cartoon characters drawn and supported by corporate interests through lobbying.  Bo Hines?  Ted Budd?  Please.  The undermining of the male/female dynamic will be the demise of the human race as we know it.  Even the animal kingdom understands this concept.  Perhaps we approach Mother Nature empirically and learn from her model.  We as human beings have lost our way. 

Too Much Electricity, and It's Not in Wire

Someone needs to step up to the plate, stand on a soap box, and scream at the top of their lungs, "It's all fake!"  The trouble is what is fake is the opposite of what really is fake.  Everything that Donald Trump stands for is fake, and what they have been pitching at us since the January 6th siege is "Big Brother."  It took thirty-eight years for George Orwell's prophesy to come true, and 2012 is a decade late.  The shite is hitting the fan now.  It's time to reflect, because most of what is out there heinously is false.  An entire generation of Americans cannot discern truth from lie, because Covid struck a severe blow to the concept of democracy.  History now is so well disguised and misreported, only those old enough actually to remember have an idea of reality.  The entire "Woke" debacle.... We need to wake up now and smell the manure as it builds up around our lives.  If we need to be woke to anything, it is not what they suggest.  It is not about discrimination.  Discrimination still exists.  It has just shifted from one group to another.  LGBT and Black Lives Matter have made the white man the devil.  Defunding the police is an absurdity paving the way for anarchy and chaos, an impending tribal war instigating by "Red" himself, the Donald.  He is the root of the destruction of American democracy and the rise of his own military dictatorship.  Half of the American military chose not to follow his coup, although they still support him over Joe Biden.  What does this say about America?  We need to wake to the concept that our environment is filled to the lip with airborne electricity and electromagnetic radiation.  Not only do we have alternating current of all frequencies spewing out of diesel "electric" locomotives, we have every imaginable wireless network infiltrating our homes.  Here is the list of Wi-Fi networks alive and operating in my own home:  ARRIS-392D.  DWIFI.  Howie Router.  FBI Surveillance TM2.  MySpectrumWifiC9-2C.  RedDoor-2G.  SciFi.  SpectrumSetup-30.  SpectrumSetup-43.  Memenet.  This excludes the printers.  Too bad I can't use their networks for my personal use, seeing as they are in my private space.  Is this right?  What does one do to scrub this unnecessary radiation from our homes?  Does it take reflective solar shielding, or does it take thousands of dollars of technology to seal ourselves up in our own holes?  Built into the walls?  The floors, like CIA offices?  Should I have to do this in this "Age of Electricity?"  It all has been predicted.  If no one cares about this airborne nuisance, then might I suggest its tangible results?  First your personal wireless network is susceptible to interference.  My wireless radio broadcasts from Jazz24 drop out often.  When I use my Panasonic microwave with an inverter, the music horribly becomes distorted.  My once pristine WCPE classical music signal, while the translator is only a miles away, most often is weak and distorted.  My vintage electronic musical gear suffers the most as the AC manifests itself in the audio signal.  Certain frequencies, mostly in the bass range, are useless as cross-modulation distorts the instrument signals.  My Hammond organ suffers greatly as airborne electricity finds and inhabits its sixty year old components.  I have add power filters to most of these instruments, but when the electricity is in the air?  How can you escape?  Is this why people want to flee to Mars?   

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.