60 Years of (R)age: Revenge Writing as Personal Salvation

Preface

Ever get sick of reading peppy blogs and pseudo-inspirational FB memes by 19-year-old wannabe mentors who claim to have “figured it out”? Ever want to tell the lot of them to Fuck Off? Join me.

Until recently, I had never closely examined my life, but the years I lived between 59 and 61 sucked hard. I endured something resembling a colposcopy performed with a leaky fire hose pumping nitric acid, without sedation. I suddenly realized my ersatz collection of deep life philosophies can be summed up in a few short, pithy essays, for which I need no “experts” to comment, no interviews, no research of any kind. I am living this. This is my story.

Essay #7: On Karma

Apparently I was a BASTARD in a former life. Otherwise why am I made to suffer this way? Some people skate through with easy money, stable relationships, a satisfying career, nice family. When the good Lord calls them, I assume they’ll just fade quietly away, smiling stonily in their caskets as their bodies tenderly slide into the grave. I envy those people, sometimes. Mostly not, I mean, we can only be who we are, we can only try to be better. But why should we bother? What’s in it for me, to be a good human being? Just proposing the question no doubt sets me a notch closer to rebirth as a skink.

If Karma is real, then the Universe is like a calculator grinding in the background, tallying up all of our good and bad deeds, our positives and negatives, and at some point, assuming we have not achieved Nirvana upon death, we are sent tumbling back down to Earth, chagrinned, to try again. We wake up a screaming baby, born into — well we can’t know what kind of family will be waiting for our bundle of karma-kolored joy, can we? Our new folks could be billionaires, prison inmates, baboons, cockroaches. According to Karmic Law, Donald Trump will be reborn as a deformed, mutant shark, ingesting radioactive spawn from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster while living his entire lifespan inside the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But I digress.

Back to the person who has lived a long, full, healthy life with no regrets and simply drifts off in his sleep surrounded by a loving family. Who cares? That’s not going to be me. It’s far too late for me to reverse or even slightly ameliorate all of the shitty things I’ve said and done. I certainly didn’t bother to record all of them, although they haunt my waking dreams. Ever had a waking dream? When out of the blue, some awful image hijacks your immediate consciousness, causing you to break focus on whatever it was you were doing, jerk involuntarily, and release a sharp, fearful gasp? It happens to me all of the time. Then the bad images shuttle through my brain like a slideshow from hell, like a karmic laundry list, until I stop whatever I’m doing and sit quietly in meditation, waiting for the brain arrhythmia to subside.

Just mentioning this causes me to shudder at something I did years ago, when it seems like I must have been out of my mind, and I know that I would absolutely never ever make that same decision today. Do we out-grow carelessness, indifference, selfishness, meanness, temporary insanity? Do our misdeeds amount to personal lessons not to be repeated, and do our obsequious “never again” vows count for anything at all in Karmic terms? One thing’s for sure, we don’t forget our foibles, they torture our minds for eternity, or at least for as long as we exist. But is that punishment enough? How does Karma work, for real? Is it a tit-for-tat formula, like, we do one bad thing, then we do one equally good thing, and now our Karma is on even keel again, like replacing a dead battery in a car? Whose hands are at the scales? Can we pay that entity to mash a thumb on the conciliatory side? And even if we could, what currency is valid? I just know that being abjectly broke for years, and hurtling toward death now at warp speed, I don’t have nearly enough to save myself.

Some argue that if we are clearly, overwhelmingly bad, we go straight to hell. But what the hell is hell? What in heaven is heaven? Nobody’s ever written that best-seller, no physicist has ever postulated a formula for returning from the afterlife, because in fact nobody’s ever come back from that final event, at least not as the same physical being. Maybe people find out death is actually preferable to life, so they decide to stay dead. Those who come back from near-death spew weak stories about following a bright white light, or chatting up dead relatives. Maybe the real party’s at the end of that titillating tunnel.

I personally believe that hell, purgatory, and heaven are simply convenient concepts we employ in our incessant self-bargaining to be better. A few years ago I was knocked unconscious in a car accident, which is actually a good story published in a national magazine, but the part I didn’t tell was how at the moment I woke up bleeding to death on the back of that banana truck, I thought I had drifted to the Other Side and returned to Ecuador at the jolt of a farmer and his wife shoving me onto the raw planks of their flatbed. And the thing I took away from that experience was blackness. Nothingness. I have never forgotten my intense gratefulness for that weedy spark of life, blind from the blood pouring into my eyes, struggling for breath, wracked with chest pain from nine broken ribs, which later looked like a game of pic-up-sticks on the x-ray.

What are the definitions of “good” and “bad” anyway? What one person calls abortion, another calls murder. What one person calls imprisonment, another calls public safety. What one person calls abuse, another calls justified punishment. What one calls truth, another calls a lie. But it’s really not our call. Make no mistake, the Universe is a harsh task master. You’ll reap what you sow in the end, Karma be damned, so maybe just try to be as good to yourself and others as you can. And if you still suffer, don’t fancy yourself a victim, don’t be a flaming fucking narcissist. Watch cable news for five minutes and you’ll find millions of people who are much worse off than you, on top of those who don’t deserve half of what they have. I fully embrace Buddha’s basic precept that “Life is suffering”. It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in Karma, whether or not you believe anything your religion tells you to believe, whether you’re an atheist, whether you live to a happy, ripe 101 years or commit suicide at 30. Are the 9–11 terrorists still dancing with virgins in the sky? I really can’t say, but I suspect we’re all in for the same treatment.

Goodbye, Mr. Coffee. You made good brews for at least 20 years, yet I don't even recall where and how you came into my kitchen. Today you finally stopped working and based on the sounds you made, I thought you were about to explode. So in the short term I will bring out my old French press, finish off my tea cabinet, and consider what comes next. Mr. Coffee, as it turns out, you are an existential metaphor for my life right now. I'll say a prayer for you as I toss you unceremoniously into the garbage bin. Don't fret - we all wind up there eventually.

Hurricane Warning

As south Floridians settle back into daily work and school routines, as we try to put hurricane Irma behind us, feelings of relief will be short lived.  The next Big One is on the way.  It's not currently a mesmerizing, spinning red blob on a radar map, but it is nevertheless already in the works.

Those who deny that sea levels are rising and ocean temperatures are increasing ignore actual measurements, videos of melting glaciers, tides that regularly flood city streets on sunny days.  They don't believe meteorologists who claim these factors contribute to fiercer, more frequent hurricanes.  They don't think it is time to take action to reverse the impacts of global warming.  They feel it's fine to continue building high rise buildings inches from the water in vulnerable coastal cities.  Or maybe they feel it won't be our generation's concern, that our children or grandchildren will have to deal with climate change.  But it's abundantly clear now that it is our problem to address, in our own lifetimes.

People who live inland often think these monster storms don’t affect them, but how many of them can we as a nation afford to respond to with trillions of dollars in rebuilding and reinforcement of vulnerable structures?  At what point will people in non-hurricane states become weary of the yearly parade of horrifying destruction and loss?

The beautiful Keys are in ruins, Naples is a disaster zone.  If we rebuild them to their former stature, will they be wiped out again within a few years?  What happens when Miami and Fort Lauderdale take a direct cat 5 hit, which they almost did a few days ago?

This is not just a south Florida issue, not a future generation issue.  As citizens of Earth, now is the time to take actions to control mankind's negative effects on our planet's atmosphere, regardless of the opinions of so-called leaders.  The first step is to acknowledge the reality that a hurricane is more than a rare, tragic, costly event.  It is the worst kind of wake up call.

A Silent Call to Action

Before you slap the “old fogey” label on me, I beseech you to use your imagination to envision a time when the telephone was Communication King.  Just watch an episode of  “Mad Men” for examples of that gentler epoch before cell phones, email, GPS, Skype and a constellation of apps like Instagram and Snapchat.   Today, could Roger take clients for uninterrupted 8-martini lunches?  Could Don have kept his many affairs secret from his wives?

Such a peaceful time, when people could blithely and acceptably use the excuse, “I was away from the phone.”  When we could not be tracked and videotaped, 24/7.  But that’s not the subject of my blog today.  This is about a silent revolt, a desperate search for that nostalgic incommunicado era which has become a daily bone of contention for many, including myself.

As anyone who’s ever broken up with a lover knows, being ignored is worse than a verbal confrontation.  Silence is infinitely more painful than a firm ending.  The punishment of not knowing how the other person feels, what they’re thinking, wears on the psyche in interminable ways.  But haven’t you dealt the same to others, out of lethargy or uneasiness, without meaning to cause harm? 

I have friends and work associates who, in our many years of acquaintance, have never picked up the phone when I called them.  Not once.  A text or email gets a faster response, because that can be done at his or her own convenience.  I get it.   There are many recognized calls I let pass through to voice mail, secretly wishing they’d just text me instead.   On the other hand I have one friend, just one, who will only talk on the phone.  He doesn’t call just to say hello, he has a reason for calling.  He’ll answer texts and emails, but with a phone call.   So guess what?  I always pick up the phone when I see his name on the screen.   

But how should we regard the person to whom we have asked a legitimate question, or proposed a specific idea – but who chooses never to respond at all?  (Yes, it is a choice – your daily email and text barrage is no more aggressive than mine, and if it is – you should be managing it better!)  It eats away at us, this mysterious rebuke. 

No official protocol or Dear Abby rule applies here.  But we must realize that digitally ignoring someone communicates far more than the preposterous classic, “I’m far too busy to give you five seconds of my time.”  Actually, you’re telegraphing that you are a coward, afraid to have a personal conflict; or at the very least, you are rude and narcissistic.  Now that I have used the term “telegraphing” you may call me a curmudgeon.

If you're following me - you may know that I launched an Indiegogo campaign to try jumpstart my new and beloved environmental art project, "Fish Eyes".  Please do me the kind favor of taking a look at it:  https://igg.me/at/fisheyes/x/15009861
Your comments and smallest contribution will be sincerely appreciated.   Help this artist become more self-sufficient, and happy!  Also you'll be helping to spread a message about the urgent need for protection of our oceans, and the amazing creatures who live there...
On facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Fish-Eyes-682264301948364/
THANKS A LOT!

It's finally here - the launch of my "Fish Eyes" art project on Indiegogo.  Please take a look here
...and tell me what you think!  Thank you in advance for joining our project to save ocean creatures and their habitats.

Lotsa Luck 2016

I heartily agree with John Oliver's cleverly raucous "goodbye to 2016" rant - Fuck YOU 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ6WPo-oW5Q

But I wish to add a personal note:  "AND the horse you rode to town".  Because 2016 has been one of the shittiest years of my life for a number of reasons.  Of course, none of it is my fault.  Everyone should revere and idolize me, believe everything that spews from my pie-hole, no matter how outrageous, scary, and damaging to millions of people, no matter how many times I change my story... oh, wait, that's an excerpt I hacked from Trump's inauguration speech (thanks for changing teams, finally, Julian Assange!  Stay with what works - trashing whoever is in power in the hopes that one day the rape charges will be dropped and you can't be extradited for trial).  Which brings me to the one bright spot we have left this year - and alas, it's only for a day or two - Trump isn't president YET.  For now, we still have Obama, a space where life seems reasonable, fair, hopeful and clear.  Let us raise a final glass to this intelligent, passionate, caring man - and to Michelle as well (please oh please change your mind about 2020!).  I have to think 2017 will be better, because it simply has to be from my perspective, but it won't be because of Donald Trump.  (Can't bear to put the title with the name yet, "President Donald Trump" OMG this embarrassing, pussy-grabbing twitter twit will soon be anointed Leader of the Free World.)  I can only hope that as Washington is transformed into Clown Town, billionaires greedily engage in raping and pillaging our economy to line their greasy pockets, and Republicans run roughshod over environmental laws and human rights... oh crap.  Well at least we have the three weeks.

Spine Donors Needed!

Trump cabinet members and leading Republicans desperately need your help. 

These deserving citizens include Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Dick Cheney, Jon Huntsman, and so many others.  They have jellified their spines by repeatedly calling Donald Trump out as unqualified, narcissistic, racist, misogynistic, a white supremist, fraud, con man, liar, clown, and more, while being relentlessly humiliated and vilified by him; then doing a complete 180, trying to convince dupified Americans that instead he’s really awesome, and all of that “bad blood” has magically been transfused away.   

We’re also accepting donations to help poor Reince Priebus, who will eventually need knee

replacement surgery after being forced to follow Trump around for four years on his knees and repeatedly gag down his dick.   

Won’t you help these wretched, hapless wimps sit up straight again? Donate a spine, today!  Let’s get together and produce a “we are the world” kind of event for them, at least. 

Sing the following to that famous tune (here’s a video to follow along with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI)

There comes a time when we smell a certain smell

When the world must slum together as one
There are people lying
And it's time to lend a spine to them
For the greatest grift of all

We can go on pretending day by day
That Donald Trump will make a good change
Now we’re all part of Trump’s disgusting family
And in truth – you know lies are all we need

[Chorus:]
We are the world, we are Trump’s children
He is the one who’ll cause our shitty days
So let's start sniveling
There's a jerk we elected
We're hating our own lives
It's true his appalling ways
Will fuck you and me

Send them your spine so they'll know that someone cares
And Ivanka can go on a spending spree
As Trump has shown us, by turning lies to cred
We all can believe in Trump and Pence
[Chorus]

When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way Trump can fall
Well...well...well
Let's realize that change will only come
When we stand against the Orange one

[Chorus]

The Media Rant

Now that many people are in hindsight mode, let me weigh in on a subject that must be discussed far into the future: what has happened to “the media”. 

I don’t lump all media together in one pot.  There are fantastic reporters out there doing exemplary, fair-minded work for stalwart media organizations.  There are politically-charged, left-or-right leaning outlets from which you only get one side of the story, and all information not supporting those views is ignored or skewed with a pointed attitude.  There are completely false stories circulated by unscrupulous media with dangerous, libelous intentions.

But we can’t blame the media for holding our opinions hostage – because news is a two-way street.  It takes someone to produce a story, and someone to believe it is true.  Once that transaction is complete, the damage is done.  Minds are made up.  Thoughts and actions are controlled.  The cautionary “grain of salt” is often ignored.  Our first amendment is sacred, but we must employ open-mindedness, we must be willing to at least give opposing viewpoints a listen.   And we must dig deeper into the meaning of truth itself, because it is not a simple concept.

Otherwise we are simply mental slaves to whatever is printed, broadcast or posted, we become pawns to unscrupulous, fact-free rants.  And we fall victim to believing exclusively the viewpoints we already agree with, unwilling to acknowledge inconvenient realities.   

Specifically, I want to address the 2016 presidential campaign because what went on horrified me as a journalist.  Never has baseless rhetoric and hyped-up hyperbole ruled so relentlessly, and never have so many journalists avoided digging for story details that might have clarified the candidates’ statements, or even exposed them as lies.  Mr. Trump in particular was allowed to rave on and on at his endless rallies, making outrageous statements, often total lies that were rarely questioned, which provided him perhaps a billion dollars of unadulterated airtime.  In the follow-up panels, CNN’s moderators should have just brought a bowl of popcorn and watched the proceedings like a bad movie, since they rarely if ever asked a probing question.  

Look, I used to do media training for corporate officers, and I understand the rule that “when interviewed, no matter what they ask, your answer is always one of your policy statements”.    But if someone doesn’t provide a straight answer, a good journalist does not merely say “thank you for being on the show”, he or she goes to solid non-political and neutral sources to see if the facts add up.  

Today Mr. Trump tweeted that he won the election in spite of “millions of people who voted illegally.”  Many news organizations regurgitated this as if it was the truth; then, the tweet was immediately re-shared thousands of times.. The statement was a blatant lie, but you can see how Trump gets away with by-passing the media, appealing directly to millions of idiots who believe everything he says.  Those who say Facebook and Twitter had no bearing on the election results are simply not paying attention.  Moving forward, Trump’s tweets could have extreme consequences in controlling information about serious national issues.  It’s a potential dictatorship on steroids. 

I have written many times about the Russian connection with Wikileaks, and how it helped Trump win, but it bears repeating.  Trump kept telling us that “nobody knows” where all the stolen materials came from (which the media faithfully reported each day, never able to substantiate the actual source), even though the CIA told him directly that the hackers were working for the highest level of Russian intelligence, and that Putin clearly knew about them.  “I love Wikileaks!” he proclaimed at one rally, which is akin to encouraging illegal hacking and attempted control of our nation’s election by our enemies.  If the shoe had been on the other foot, I think his whining about a “rigged election” would have risen to a deafening crescendo.

In fact 70% of Trump’s statements, according to PolitiFact, were lies.  Some of the biggest whoppers: 

“I can’t release my tax returns.”

“Global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese.”

“Obama is not a U.S. citizen.”

“I was against the war in Iraq.”

“The unemployment rate is 42 percent.”

“30 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S.”

“Clinton was asleep during the Benghazi attack.”

“Inner City crime is at record levels.”

“I am a friend of the LGBT community.”

“I have never been a racist.”

“I will get all of the mining jobs back.”

“I will start an investigation and put Hillary Clinton in jail.”

There are scores more ridiculous half-lies and BS that he blurted out on a whim, often followed by the ironic plea “believe me”.  But instead of searching for truth, the media during the entire campaign was largely a mouthpiece for Russian intelligence and the unfiltered web of lies perpetrated by Trump.  To me, that is not the definition of “journalism” but of a reality show with scary real-life consequences, produced solely to grab ratings and readership.  In this case, the media played a significant role in electing Donald J. Trump, a guy who claims to “hate” the media unless he can control them.  He’s done a hell of a job so far. 

Weak-i-leaks

I have always strongly advocated for free speech and press, and I take my journalism degree seriously.  But we are entering a bizarre era when hacking and leaking are not only part of our daily lives – these activities are completely re-engineering global communications, and along with that, our society.

In past decades, journalists published information they got from trusted sources, and then sometimes refused to name those sources. Even if it brought down a powerful man like Richard Nixon, even if it landed them in jail (which it often did). But Watergate pales in comparison to what we’re seeing now.

The law on hacking and publishing illegally obtained media, known as CFAA, is muddy at best.  President Obama tried to strengthen it a couple years ago, but was completely shot down, ironically by Democrats.  Basically, if you steal media by illegally hacking somebody’s computer or server, you can do anything you want with it as long as you’re not physically located in the United States.  

This explains Wikileaks, located in Iceland.   They can leak absolutely anything, from any source, no matter if it causes harm to American political, defensive, economic or justice systems, whether it is real or false, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Wikileaks claims that they “check out” all of their sources before publishing these illegal hacks, but why should we trust them?  Most of them are said to be “anonymous”.  In any case, they don’t have to tell anyone who those sources are, and they can suppress any information that doesn’t support the Wiki agenda.  This begs a couple of questions:  one, why do our news organizations blindly publish anything Wikileaks releases as though it is gospel truth; and two, what’s the end game here – and who are the larger players?

Russia is already a proven major player (highly suspected in the recent Clinton and DNC hacks), and many claim China and North Korea regularly hack into sensitive U.S. servers, looking to cause even greater harm to our defenses and economy, perhaps planning to take over our nation, bits at a time.   

It starts with Wikileaks (which has numerous bones to pick with Obama) trying to get Donald Trump elected, apparently with Russian support.  Yet there is no talk of suing them, or those who repeat their illegally hacked information verbatim.  What about the Trump recording, you ask?   NBC obtained signed consent forms from the idiots, so they have no legal ground on which to stand.  In fact, there are said to be many, many more out-takes that the network is skittish to publish for fear it wouldn’t be legal.  The only way we’ll see more of them is if a Wikileaks competitor illegally obtains and releases them. 

Make no mistake, Wikileaks and their ilk are not patriots, not truth seekers, not journalists.  As their power and technical prowess grow, and they continue to link forces with super powers not friendly to the U.S., tough decisions will have to be made about extending and strengthening our First Amendment.  Free press, absolutely and forever.  But we can’t allow malicious, outside influences to control our media.