THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT. / George Santayana

The Reichstag Fire

          

                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kfQiy0_6BIo

           THE SHADOW    I WAS THERE      

MAY YOU BE FOREVER YOUNG

It was years ago and the mores of the Eisenhower years were dropping away.  Topless dancing was the latest thing.  There was now a new hip Youngstud in the White House.  I had entered a bar on a sketchy street in a shady ---actually scary area of Capitol City.  There was an extremely fat black woman with her huge naked breasts laying on surface of a black formica table shiny wet with spilled beer.  She was very drunk but not as drunk as I wanted to be.  No one else in the place but a singer on a runway that extended out into the middle of the large room.  She had black hair and she was absolutely a class above everything else in the room, including me.  I could not to this day say what she was wearing, except it may have been blue.  I could only stare at her face and try to look blasé.  She looked right into my eyes and sang “Forever Young”

I turned and walked out into the humid night.  Another face in the train window.   Who knows how my life would have been had I stayed?

Only The Shadow Knows.         

GREAT SPIRITS HAVE ALWAYS ENCOUNTERED VIOLENT OPPOSITION FROM MEDIOCRE MINDS/Albert Einstein

THE SQUARE ROOT OF ANGER IS FEAR/ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Someone then got the idea of exercising his rights in a Democracy and started a peaceful protest.  After everybody didn’t go home after a couple of days and the protest movement spread, it scared the bejesus out of The Powers That Be.

The first tactic was for the media to demonize the people who were protesting.  When that didn’t work and when they were gaining support among the proletariat the next action was to print nothing.  What protest?  It just isn’t there.  It doesn’t exist.  There was news when something negative happened.  When the encampment was destroyed.  When hizzonor was rudely heckled speaking at a memorial service, one that I do not remember any Mayor of Mountain City ever attending until it became a media event.

Now let me present something for your consideration.  Was it a coincidence that the Occupy was violently and suddenly invaded in the middle of the night hours after the Mayor was shouted down?  In an operation that, by the size and scope of it, had involved a good bit of prior planning.  And after much uproar in the press over the disrespect to a man who reportedly has not stood in the way of allowing homeless people to sleep on the mall. 

The military and Civilian Information gathering Agencies are experts at infiltrating spies and creating embarrassing disruptions.  The police department is a paramilitary organization.  It is a sure bet that they work together.  A heckler can be bought and infiltrated, or frankly, was there from the start.  Someone like that is a mini Reichstag Fire creating an excuse for action.  Incited by a newspaper that has a lot to lose and that has never lost its taste for yellow journalism. 

This may or may not have been the case.  It was an embarrassing moment but Occupy's website acknowledged her and did not throw her under the bus.  (The RTD seems to do a fine job of that without outside help.)

Has it ever occurred to T.P.T.B. to seriously listen and negotiate and compromise with the protest?  Instead they react with force.  Just like we do in those countries that we bring democracy and human rights to.........

if they have oil.

But what do I know?  I’m just a cynical old man who has seen far too much for far too long.

 The Shadow

CIVIL SERVANTS ARE NEITHER.

                                                                                             

                                                                      Who knows what evil………

     

                                                                                                                                               

I started this blog in order to chronicle tales of an eventful life.  About my cat, LaTerminista.   Of my childhood in Bindweed County, Indiana.  Of 12 miserable years of Old School there.  But now, in retrospect, bad as it was, I learned things that have stayed with me.  They taught patriotism & how the government worked (I actually believed the party line that said it ran that way.)  But Ike was in the White House and all was well.  Make no mistake; the ‘50’s were never Happy Days for me.  I was told that policemen were your friends.  (I never did swallow that one.)  Of my career as an Undertaker and its occupational hazard, alcoholism.  Of triumph and loss, perseverance and endurance.  Of a community where children were not shut out of vacant lots by chain link.  One that instilled a love of country.  Of Great-Grandparents that fought at Gettysburg marched with Sherman and laid siege to Vicksburg, suffered in a Confederate

prison and were present at Appomattox. 

.  But now my stories may never be told.  I said in the beginning that this blog would morph several times.  I did not expect that to happen so soon.   Recent events have caused me to focus my attention to here & now and forgo reminiscing. I hope the present uglyness goes away and I can tell stories again.

   In the past several months’ history is being made right in front of our eyes. 

It is simply class warfare.  The same age old struggle of Capitol vs. Labor, Rich & Poor.  But on a much larger scale, it is a Democracy waking up to find out that it may no longer be a Democracy any more.

   Now, a Government that is of the people needs to watch what it is doing.  We have not done that.  We did not vote because our vote wouldn’t count anyway.  We have became cynical and complacent.  We have sent men to represent us and not held them accountable.  We sent men to make laws and they made too damned many and those laws are being used against us.  That is our fault.  We have enjoyed the spoils of the victory of the Second World War.  We were the greatest power on Earth.  It didn’t last long.  We no longer are, we merely think we are.  But we grew fat watching reality shows on our flat screens.  We fell for the old Roman “Bread & Circuses” or, in our case, Monday Night Football and a six pack of Bud while Flim Flam men filled their pockets.  No one thought much about it until pockets went dry.

   And now I see people I have come to know, bullied and arrested in the middle of the night by a government that is afraid of the people it governs and who send their police who are afraid of the people they are charged to protect with orders to break heads.  So many cops.  So few people.  I see those pictures of people silhouetted in the light of flames and it brings back memories of the early days of the Third Reich.  How far does repression go?  I hope not that far, but study your History.

   I hate bullies.  I am not finished.   There will be more.  Keep watch for more posts soon.

The Shadow knows…..

Freedoms Just Another Word for Nothin’ Left to Loose/ Janis Joplin/ Me and Bobby McGee/

Six months ago I moved out of a 2000 sq ft home into a 150 sq ft ‘studio’.  It is called downsizing.  I was forced by circumstance to throw a large portion of my possessions into the alley.  It is a brutal dose of the reality of the present housing market in Mountain City.  It has been a hard summer.  But then I am used to hard times.  They find me like a buzzard finds carrion. 

I allowed myself the luxury of self pity.  This is something every alcoholic loves but is a mortal danger because it feels so good.  Oh, poor me, will hurl me back down that long hard road into my alcoholic hell quicker than a woman.  The black curtain of loneliness enveloped me.  I, after all, deserved more than this.  I needed room to turn around without breaking something else.  I needed companionship.  I needed someone to share my miserable life with.  (Like anyone would volunteer.)

            Then I met an angel—they do walk among us---He sat in front of me on the bus.

Metrosexual.  Hip and Trendy.  I knew, just from looking at him, that that S.O.B. had an attitude.  On the sidewalk I saw his shoes.  Beautiful pair like the brown and tan wingtips I used to have before the feet went south.  I commented on them.  He was one of the nicest guys I ever met.  He introduced himself.  His name is Daniel.  He is a law student working with the ACLU.  So much for pre-judgment. He pointed me toward the Occupy movement and I found a cause I believed in and one that could occupy my mind.

At the Occupy village I met this guy.  He is one of the occupiers who sleep on the sidewalk and hold down the site during the night for the marchers on the weekend.  He proudly took me to see what he called his house.  It’s a fuckin’ cardboard box!!!!  The only part of it that was made in America is the piece of cardboard that serves as his front door.  And the Mountain City Police already had orders to demolish it at dawn.  Let me show up at the home of one of the 1% with a bulldozer some time and see what happens to me.  Suddenly my home---The Black Hole of Calcutta--- looked palatial. 

There is a growing number of disenfranchised people out there.  They are called homeless.  Homeless means that you don’t have a home.  If you don’t have a home you don’t have a bathroom and therefore cant wash, and make yourself presentable to apply for a job that went to China years ago.  You’re screwed.

The Shadow

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE!

Its Christmas time in the city!  Yes, once again, gentle reader, Cow City has outdone itself in a display of garish bad taste.  This, which has been described as an “Electrical Abortion”, may also be described as the premier winter tourist attraction to the Queen City of the Plains.  That is pathetic.  It is a gross violation of the separation of Church and State, which in spite of several lawsuits, has been conveniently ignored for years.  This Electronic Calliope must burn enough electricity to power a village in Africa for a year.  But here in America I am sure the disenfranchised  people who are sleeping in the streets are warmed by the sight of it as they invoke the name of Jesus.  All this in the name of commerce, which somehow justifies it’s being paid for by the city.  And where does the city get its money, dear hearts?  Where are its priorities?

The Holy Bible, The Book of John: Chapter 11 Verse 35

The Shadow

THE PEOPLE ARE REVOLTING!

“No real social change has ever been
brought about without a revolution -
Revolution is but thought carried into action.
Every effort for progress, for enlightenment,
for science, for religious, political, and
economic liberty, emanates from the minority,
and not from the mass.”
                             ---------Emma Goldman

Something is bad wrong in a Democracy when the police are ordered to use force by the Powers That Be in an attempt to destroy a peaceful protest.

The Shadow