Abandon Hope and Change Course

I am a firm believer of mutual self construction.
By which I mean individuals
united in their seclusion.
Conjoined disjointed orphans
Erecting a Solace of Fortitude,
Asylums of Family Disunity
A harmonious cacophony of orchestrated solos
Instrumental temperamental
monumental chorus vocalizing
localizing
Individual vision

Alas
Feral sheep shepherded astray
by a Piper's dulcet atonement
Promissory sour notes called
due
Bald faced ideological ribaldry
Preselected elected offal, officious
Inhumane scentipede
Mentally ill dressed succession
of public servants self servicing

Disarmed armada of the disillusioned
flotilla of fools on the Hill
Come sale away with me, indeed
Flotsam jet setters presiding
Deciding
Die-er consequences
Pirated copies of declarations
of interdependence.
Anchors a weigh

My country-
 tis for me
Sweet land where things are free
Of me Im singing
Land where our fathers sighed
Land where their dreams have died
State of Ship of State, Sinking

The Economics of Blue Nail Polish.

  Did my nails the other day. Now, I don't do that often, but when I do, I lean towards blues, teals and other non traditional colors. I even have a lovely shade of olive drab I picked up a few months ago. I certainly don't need all these colors, ( honestly don't need any..). But isn't it nice that I have all of them to choose from

  That right there, is the beauty of a capitalist system, choice. I stroll along through a store, something shiny and bright catches my eye.  I may see one, two or three different colors I need ( don't), and plop they go in the buggy. To the counter I go with my money, and the deal is done.

  Someone somewhere in the nail polish factory decided to add new and different colors, and people bought them. They sold so well, they kept adding more and more colors. And now we have the wonder that is the cosmetics aisle. The more we buy the more they make. The more they make, the more we buy.  The market dries up, and production stops.

  Socialism is anti-choice. Socialism says you can have too many choices, that other things are more important than choosing nail color, the planet is boiling for Pete's sake. If you don't believe me, ask Bernie Sanders

  "You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don't think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on."

  Choice is bad, gosh darn it. Everyone should just use the approved scent, flavor, colors. Everyone should drink the prescribed amount of the approved beverage and be happy. Do it for the planet.

  It fascinates me, the people that would vote for Bernie and his anti choice rhetoric  are typically those with rainbow locks, who stand in line at a specialty coffee store for diverse beverages chosen from a varied menu, and ponder seriously over the wide range of free range tofu at the local organic market. People who proudly proclaim their individuality, clamor for forced conformity, in the name of social justice and income equality, never equating equality with sameness.

  Diversity happens when there are choices to be made. The permutations available in our capitalistic American society are limited only by our imaginations. What grand imaginations they are, too! Why anyone would want to limit us to centrally planned choices is beyond my comprehension. Why anyone would willingly vote for someone that proudly proclaims he would limit your choices, even more so.

Bernie's Minions Of Malicious Dim - Part 1

     It’s been close to 30 years since I departed high school. Departed, not graduated. After quickly and quietly obtaining my G.E.D, I loosed myself upon the world to make my way by hook or by crook. Spending a good number of years traveling the country, working various jobs – cabinet shops, laminate shops, furniture shops, frame shops, sheet metal shops, a few restaurants on the side. I took my first foreman position at 22. I took my first failed shot at self-employment at 24. It’s been a long, tumultuous trip from the beginning of the adventure that is my adult working life to now; I’ve been with one primary employer for ten years, I take private clients and contracts, not single, an average house, (with a nice hardwood floor) a wife, couple of cars and a yard. Pretty much you’re average American life at just above the median American income for a family of four, but without the financial draw of the two kids. 

     This is, in part why a screed by Mike Rowe struck a particularly resonant chord with me today, in his response to a…how shall I phrase this…complete shit head Tweet by the Sanders campaign today.

     The DNC and the self styled white knights of the hardscrabble, the great unwashed, are (and always have been) duplicitous, mealy mouthed, snake oil salesmen when it comes to their pandering to “the working class.” For votes, the language used when pushing legislation or public policy initiatives, when attempting to mollycoddle and stroke the sooty heads of the downtrodden. The party leaders and policy wonks draw the disenfranchised and susceptible into their mobile canvass chapels by preaching sermons of secular salvation from suffering in terms of envy, of inequity, of blame, of vengeance.

How does this claptrap, based upon a pseudo intellectual construct that without your benevolent aid and ethereal visions of what an appropriate level of post secondary education should or could be, (never mind that you, nor any of your toadies in the grievance mafia, ever come to the point of explaining the term “free,” be it in terms of education, healthcare, or social services of any and all flavors) how does any of this pabulum elevate or assist in the condition, spirit, or motivation of anyone? How does constructing a net of mutual and statutorily enforced dependence upon my neighbor and my neighbor upon me accomplish anything but guaranteeing that all boats stay moored to the dock?

     But I digress…

The thing that chaffs my ass is how you bigots of perceived (lack of) intellect impugn, malign, and attack the ways, the means, and abilities of the common man, the blue collar worker at each and every opportunity for three out of every four years (and half the time every fourth year) then anticipate that your castigations will be forgiven and forgotten when you hang piñatas filled with empty promises at the fundraiser. Worse yet are those partygoers that put on the blindfold and take that giggling swing in hopes of that sweet spill of payout. Elsewhere at the party; the chatter is the standard, glib, new urbanist, sustainable, socially just blather about the ills inflicted upon the environment and reason by the troglodyte flat Earth crowd.

     Suffice it to say that I'm approaching TL;DR territory. In part two, I shall deconstruct, exactly, how the disperate collection of allied authoritarians in waiting really do despise middle America, the working class and how the promise of "free" post secondary education is being used as a tool to attack and dismantle the American middle class.