American Insanity

Hi there, friends and neighbors, and let me welcome you to the show that never ends, America in this weird year of madness. I have been around a long time and been through a lot of extreme weirdness, but nothing like this.

We recently had a guy in NY and NJ who seemed determined to show his anger at America by blowing up dumpsters. The man's own father had told the FBI that his son was a radicalized lunatic and they had decided that he wasn't. Turns out Papa was right which makes me ask, 'Why are we paying all those over trained and highly paid profilers?' The shootout scenario that led to his capture makes no sense, but we have seen that before. To this day, no one has explained the equally bizarre San Bernardino shootout, but, I guess we are supposed to just sit back and believe everything we're told, so. okay, let's move on.

We have a guy shot in Tulsa and are told that he had his hands up. If that were so, this would be a heinous police shooting. However, video shows that while he did have his hands up, he kept walking toward his car and started to reach into that car for something. By the time I was 10, I would have known better. But, still we have protests of racist police brutality. Let everyone investigate and find out just what happened before spouting off, like Hillary did.

Then we have a cop shooting someone in North Carolina and citizens are doing the usual thing, They are protesting something that they know no details about by throwing rocks at cops, setting fires in the street and looting Walmart. I am fairly sure the Walmart manager did not shoot the guy, so why loot Walmart. Again, let investigations proceed. I know that police sometimes act badly, but get the facts before you act like idiots.

In politics, The GOP elephant, as represented by The Donald, is trumpeting and the Democratic donkey, that would be Hillary, is braying and I am beginning to wax Shakespearean when thinking a pox on both their houses. It is really a question of who is less disgusting. I will vote Trump for 2 reasons. 1. I loathe the Clintons and 2. Trump seems to be surrounding himself with some bright, sane people and I am sure that they, not he, will really be running things. However, we must get through the debates. Debates should be reasonable, rational discourses by competent people representing opposing sides of an argument. A Fox News commentator slipped yesterday and said. 'this ought to be quite a spectacle.' That's all this will be a show, where everyone sits around and hopes the 2 start screaming insults at each other. The debate is on TV opposite Monday Night Football  and may well be a better show. It might even get better ratings. But it will not advance our political dialogue or help voters reach a better informed decision, which is supposedly its purpose. Maybe we are about to admit that we, as a Nation, just want a good show.

Ah well, I have to go and I leave you with the words of PT Barnum. "No one has ever gone broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I'll even throw in these words from Bob Dylan's song, Idiot Wind. "We're all idiots. It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." Bye for now. Have fun watching Trump and Clinton hurl abuse at each other.

America - The Media Just Keep Picking at Scabs

We have all done it, especially when we were kids. We would get a cut or a scrape and, once it scabbed over, we would start picking at it. It looked ugly, sometimes it itched and we would just start picking at it, Generally, when we got it off, it would just scab over again, we would pick it some more, and eventually, it would heal. Every once and awhile, we would succeed in getting it infected, then the folks would carry on a bit, and sometimes, it would leave a scar.

The News Media in Country are like kids picking at a scab. We have long been scarred by racial tension. I'll not enumerate the causes and history. Most of us know at least the basics and, really, what good does it do to drag it all back up again. But, they pick and pick, until everyone is on edge, then something happens and we find that old scar ripped open. It scabs over, and they rip it open, until now it's infected. And they will keep at it again and again.

I am not saying that these tensions should be ignored but what the hell good does it do to go on and on with it, dragging out all of these experts and community leaders and sociologist and psychologists, the same ones over and over again.

Einstein said that if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results, you are, by definition, insane, psychotic. Yet, they trot out the experts and politicians and old film footage and, it would seem that they expect that somehow, magically, this time it will work.

It won't and really all they are doing is preying on people's fears and old prejudices in a never ending search for a bigger audience. They are vultures preying on the dead flesh of those poor souls, both police and those the police have needlessly and stupidly shot. The National Media should be ashamed of their behavior.

The only way any of this will change is if we, as individuals, can learn tolerance. We are all different and we must learn to accept this and allow each other to be different. Neither the media, nor the government, nor the churches nor the so-called experts can solve this. Only we, individual human beings can do this. It will be slow and painful, but it is the only way. Individual human beings must take responsibility for their own behaviors and stop looking for some authority to step in and fix things. I'll let you in on a secret; the folks really running things don't give a damn if we kill each other off, as long as they keep the cash rolling in. We are the ones suffering and we must fix things.