Civil War Reenactor Death Cult

I don’t pretend to fully understand some things about human behavior. Why did tens of thousands of poor southern whites, men who benefited zero from slavery, enthusiastically enlist in the Slaveholder’s (the antebellum 1%) Insurrection, the American Civil War?

It was cast as the fight for freedom, to protect a cherished way of life from tyrannical encroachment, a glorious cause to die for, OK, but how does that actually work? How do thousands of men sign up to fight to the death (or dismemberment) for a cause they derive no benefit from? I have never been able to wrap my brain around that one.

The continued controversy over removing/not removing statutes of traitors to the United States, men who took up arms in a bloody rebellion against their country, for the sake of “home rule” is just as mysterious in its way. These statues were erected decades after the Civil War, during the height of xenophobia, white supremacism and what is quaintly called Jim Crow — the viciously racist Black Codes in all of the states of the defeated Confederacy.

These statues were monuments to a glorious lost cause that will never die: White Supremacy. Sometimes they were placed on pedestals near the sites of forgotten (by whites) atrocities against black citizens. What nation puts up statues honoring violent traitors who treated their countrymen as enemies to kill? What is the actual controversy about taking down these deliberate rewritings of history erected decades after the Confederacy lost the war to preserve its cherished autonomy?

Today’s events are giving me a tiny bit of insight, but not much. We are seeing that same “mentality” of irrational, heroic certainty in action, during a plague, a highly infectious, incurable, often deadly pandemic. The president has (while accusing his enemies of doing the same) politicized reasonable medical precautions, like the CDC-recommended wearing of masks — only faggots, douchebags and cowards wear masks, masks are for cucks, weak, loser men whose wives have sex with others because their cuckolded husbands are so lacking in virility. As for women? Who cares, grab ’em by their gullible husband’s pussies. If you’re the leader, they let you do it!

In every state that has reopened on a wide scale, cases of COVID-19 have reached new record levels. This is not spin, it’s not the result of better testing by a brilliant administration always one step ahead of the rest of the world. It’s data, verifiable numbers based on new reported infections. Florida — big increase in COVID-19 since reopening, the most cases ever so far in that state. Same unmistakable cause and effect in Texas, Georgia, Alabama, most, if not all, of the former Confederacy, in fact. Check the map. Jesus, it’s not all that hard to see the trend. If you trust your eyes, rather than the assurances of a compulsive liar.

I don’t know how to think of the president’s deliberate lying, in this case about the science, other than depraved indifference to human life, malignant narcissism or simply good old-fashioned evil. He’s hellbent on basking in the adoration of his people, a solid block of Americans who vociferously love him no matter what.

As one of his many lawyers insisted in federal court, somehow keeping a straight face, (in a case claiming absolute secrecy for everything the president or anyone he talks to says or does), the president could not be arrested or criminally investigated if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue. The point is clear, Mr. Trump could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, in the face, with a small caliber handgun, then skull-fuck the corpse, and not lose a single vote. Chant it with me: USA! USA!!!.

The man does have an undeniable talent for spinning things, to the delight of his unshakable base. Here’s his quick, witty take on the recent events on American streets, the plague, the ongoing mass protests against widespread police brutality against unarmed Americans, and radical Democratic tyranny (and of course, the media’s constant, shameless lies):


You can’t “Covid Shame” a leader like Trump– NO WAY. He’s determined to have live rallies. They are what he lives for, literally, vividly performing for adoring campaign rally crowds.

In spite of the way he often sounds, the man’s not completely stupid. He knows there could likely be a pandemic spike among those who attend his live, packed, freedom loving, maskless rallies. He truly doesn’t care. Plus– he’s taken a reasonable precaution. His lawyers have drawn up a waiver that everyone who attends his rally must sign before they will be admitted. Standard legal disclaimer of any and all liability, the kind you must click “Accept” at the bottom of to use virtually any on-line product.

If you catch this incurable Democrat HOAX disease, don’t try to blame us, numb nuts! We’ve got your electronic John Hancock right here on the waiver. The language, you can plainly see, is neither hortatory (as the president tweeted of something else recently) nor precatory, it is unambiguous and mandatory, binding and iron-clad. Read it and sign, chump. Then scream along with me: LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!!!


Now, let the wild rumpus begin! The South shall rise again!

Plague Mice

Had a cheerful greeting from this guy at Costco today, who, when I asked him to smile for the camera, went:



Here is a meditative little track for you: Plague Mice. A recent long-distance (over 10,000 mile) collaboration with guitarist Paul Greenstein [1].

We figured, since we were doing it during a worldwide plague, that those beautifully singing mice who solo along with Paul’s guitar could only be Plague Mice. We offer the tune as a hope for better times, and soon.





[1] Technical details: My parts were done on a Ditto looper, recorded on my phone, sent to Paul, Paul improvised that cool melody over the top, with the soulful chorus of digital mice singing over his guitar. Paul called dialing in that electronic, ethereal mouse chorus effect “putting eyebrows on it” , as Frank Zappa used to say.

I say nice eyebrows, man.

Music Lessons

My teacher of basic music theory and guitar harmony in high school was a talented, nasty, brutally superior classmate named Speed. (A member of his family was Abraham Lincoln’s close friend, Joshua Fry Speed, for you history bugs).  Speed, who started on harmonica (which he played incessantly in gym class, to the horror of the drill sergeant) and quickly taught himself guitar, was a prolific composer, one of the greatest musicians I’ve known, and a demanding prick.

When he played his complicated tunes, he’d grunt with genuine disgust every time he hit a wrong note or chord.  He was angry at himself for not being able to flawlessly play things nobody else at the time could play either.  After all, he’d already been playing for a few weeks!  A complicated and tormented fellow, and great musician and writer — also very funny, but also– quite brutal.

Unsurprisingly, the talented Mr. Speed was a merciless teacher. He showed me all the fancy chords he used, the 7-9 chord, the 7 raised nine, the flat nine, the eleventh, the thirteenth, the sus2 — or added nine, the seven flat fives, major and minor, the augmented chords (and I left out the beautiful sixth chords). He taught me why each one was named the way it was, demonstrated the many harmonic uses for each of these “jazz chords” (these chords are extensions of the essential major, minor, dominant seven and diminished chords that all guitarists learn).

It was a great bootcamp for someone with natural curiosity about music, though I was more drawn to Crosby, Stills and Nash tunes, much simpler, which were fun to play on guitar. Speed held me to a much higher standard, a standard I always disappointed him by failing to attain. I did learn a lot of chords, and how to play them smoothly in various positions, something that came in very handy, but eventually the brutality of the “lessons” just got to me and I finally had to tell Speed to fuck off.

What I’ve learned since, so elemental, took me many years to realize. What I love about music is the dialogue between the different parts, the way each voice adds an essential element, and the active listening and nuanced response required for good ensemble playing. Music is really a beautiful conversation, when it’s grooving. How did Speed miss teaching me this basic concept? Too mad, I guess.

You start from silence, then a nod, or a count, or somebody hitting something in time. Listen to any great arrangement, there’s a lot going on, but most of the parts are quite simple. One voice may be hitting one note over and over, a pedal tone this is sometimes called. But it is hitting that note in a crucial rhythmic spot, driving the music forward. That beat provides an anchor for a harmony instrument to spread some colors over, which in turn opens still more possibilities, rhythmic and melodic both. The way things interact musically, an endless mystery that does not perplex at all– it delights.

There are “infinite” harmonies to any melody, Speed once told me. Maybe so, but it is the beautiful ones that compel us to sing and nod and dance along. And, again, all music starts in silence — and the beats of silence in the music are very precious too.

The prerequisite to making good music is relaxation, grace is required to hit the notes calmly and strongly. The crucial element of generosity in your fellow musicians, and towards yourself, cannot be overstated. Relaxed, engaged listening is essential for creative, musical collaboration. It’s hard to be relaxed playing with a guy like Speed, perfectionistic, always demanding more than you can do, sometimes more than even he can do.

He had bands, with excellent, top-shelf jazz musicians, they played his stuff well, but still — there was often a joy missing, it felt to some in the audience.  It felt to me.  These great top musicians loved the challenge of his music, though sometimes it was just too damned challenging for the listener.  I remember in one club, dramatically, the dance floor emptied long before his first set was over.  The club owner suspected he had a genius on the bandstand, but he was openly perplexed about letting them come back on.

The best of Speed’s songs, there’s a darkly brilliant one called “I Can’t See You” that always comes to mind, although supremely difficult to play (on the only version I know Speed plays all the instruments) are full of soul, grace, space, cleverly interacting off-beats, and there is beautiful singing and clever wordplay among all that.   I remember this track (done on a 4 track tape recorder) before the vocals, it was gorgeous as an instrumental too, but that version had to be sacrificed due to the technology of the day, which required “bouncing” of tracks for any overdub beyond number three.   Anyway, you can hear all those things, the compelling dialogue between the different parts, in this song, as in any realized piece of arranged music.

I often think of this story, in relation to Speed, who always disparaged my guitar playing and musical naiveté.   More than a decade ago (2011, I see now, scrolling through gmail to find the track) I sent a basic track (two guitars and piano, against a drum patch) to a genius I knew in high school, Frank Burrows, the only guy alive, when we were in high school, who could play Speed’s compositions (he’d been playing guitar a year or so by then).

To my delight, Frank orchestrated the track, literally, he arranged an orchestra of instruments over my track.  He came up with many colorful, sometimes madcap, parts that made the simple ideas in my track blossom.  It was brilliant, as was his hauntingly evocative C part (at 3:40, below), which ends the tune.  It was as thrilling for me as sending a tune idea to Frank Zappa, or Jimi, or Django, and getting back a fully realized musical version, virtuosically played by an entire skilled band.    I emailed the finished track to Speed. Speed liked it, and confessed he couldn’t tell my playing on it from Frank’s.   Fucking A, I thought to meself, I finally graduated!

 


Aside from the ego gratification of playing music well, and having people admire your efforts, there is a much more fundamental benefit of playing music, it seems to me.  The beauty of the thing itself.   My playing, and Frank’s, are exactly the same in their intent and effect, whether Speed applauded them or disparaged them.   The notion of appreciation must lie in the heart of the player, as it does for anything we truly love.   

This is also a good life lesson — kindness, always, toward the self. That is the true and only root of kindness and generosity toward others.

Think of it like this — every note you faithfully play, or sing tunefully, once it fits into the larger scheme of music, becomes a living moment of grace.   There is no comparison, no consideration other than serving the music properly, making the thing you are playing sound better.   There is no greater reward for doing anything than a beautiful result.   With music, you have it at once, as you play it well.   No need for the dough to rise, the cake to bake, the critics to nod — it’s there, in the air, light and precious as the air, just as beautiful and almost as essential to life.

 

Write Every Day

Anything you care about, want to get better at, you need to do every day. This goes for music, learning languages, reciting poetry, improving your vocabulary, gaining flexibility in body or mind, mastering any skill. Daily practice is the best way to improve your skill.

More productive than a five hour session, followed by a week of inaction, are seven daily fifteen minute sessions. Constant, regular practice is the way we build better habits, better technique. This kind of daily practice helps us remember and internalize our advances and make steady improvement.

Take your 140 character tweet (I don’t use Twitter myself) and really look at it before you let it fly out into the world. Is there anything you wrote that can be written better? Fix it. Is there a phrase that could be read two ways? Turn it to the way you want it to be read.

You can say it really doesn’t matter if you write well, badly, clearly, muddily, that ignorance and sloppiness clearly rule already so what is the stinking point, Daddy-O? The point is not to lose the notion of craft, pride in your work, the pursuit of excellence, reinforcing the benefits of steady effort to make yourself better at what you love to do.

George Carlin had it right: think of how stupid the average American is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

That does not apply to your efforts, if you are dedicated to self-improvement in any field. It is never stupid to try to do better. Also, don’t forget that half of Americans are also smarter than the average– that’s 150,000,000 people. Also, stupid people deserve the best we have too.

My two cents: put in at least fifteen minutes toward the worthy goal of making yourself better every day. If you miss a day, don’t trouble yourself, just start a new streak the next day. The improvement you will begin to see will motivate you to continue. In your small way, you will be making the world a better place.

Police State, anyone?

In our polarized, black and white zero-sum culture there are, we are constantly told, only two choices. In the case of routine police violence against unarmed civilians the choice is presented this way: Law and Order OR anarchy and a tidal wave of violent crime. Police with a monopoly on legally sanctioned violence or turning the streets over to vicious criminals?

We know, as my father realized poignantly close to the moment of his death, that the world is almost never black and white (almost every non-Nazi would choose Mussolini over Hitler, given the choice, though few actually admire Benito). Presenting things as a simple either/or choice saves a lot of wear and tear on weary, anxious, angry souls, I suppose, but it comes at a price.

The phrase “Police State” popped into my head just now, as I listened to another interview about Attorney General Bagpiper Bill Barr mobilizing an array of armed forces never seen on the street– tactical forces like the Bureau of Prisons riot squad (used for putting down prisoner uprisings in prisons), for example — to violently put down a peaceful demonstration near the White House, clearing the way for his deeply religious boss’s somber photo op. Barr, of course, denies that his dispersal of the “riot” had anything to do with Trump’s desire to walk to a nearby church and silently hold a Bible in his inexplicably gloved hand.

We have come to expect lies from the unprincipled Mr. Barr, a pugnacious right-wing provocateur who relishes expanding and openly abusing the already vast powers of his powerful office, and those of the Unitary Executive, in this case Trump, the living embodiment of Barr’s fervently autocratic worldview, but the phrase Police State puts it into perspective.

Wonder why the term Police State is so ominous? It is a state where the police, with a monopoly on the use of deadly force, have the absolute power of life and death over citizens, where disobedience to police orders can mean instant, summary execution. If the authorities can unleash the full force of state violence on people exercising rights guaranteed by the Constitution (in our case the First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances) then we are reduced to arguing about whether pepper spray is the same as “tear gas” — and we live in a state where the unaccountable abuse of power is just the way it is.

Just the way it is, my friends. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The Status Quo Marches On

I know that it must be tiresome to some that I continue to drone on about social and political problems like some young Social Justice Warrior. I am at an age when friends encourage me to focus more on my own comfort, health and happiness. That old Serenity Prayer should be my mantra, you know, being wise enough not to wrestle with terrible, unjust things I am powerless to change.

Against that view, there is my right, for the moment, to freely express myself. To write about things that sit crosswise in my craw, set them down in a few words, rather than rant about them to Sekhnet who has less ability than usual, during this emotionally draining plague, to deal with frustrations about the larger things here in America that we have absolutely no power over.

The world is complicated, direct causes and effects are often not clearly visible, many forces are always at work, virtually nothing in human affairs is amenable to a simple, accurate explanation. It is impossible, most of the time, to point a finger at the demonstrable cause of a problem and have people band together to fix it.

We see this in the “debate” over whether climate catastrophe is being accelerated by massive human pollution (regardless of scientific consensus). We see it in the “debate” over whether unaccountable police violence is out of control in America, or just part of human nature and our culture of freedom. Opinions, as they say, are like assholes– everybody has one. At least one. The best we can do, as far as I can see, is start our opinionated conversation agreeing about what used to be called “facts”.

The question of what is a “fact” is now hotly debated in our culture of radicalized emotionalism. Many Americans rely on the New York Times for an objective view of what is going on around them, for indisputable “facts” they can cite. My father used to read it cover to cover every day, and always took what he read (and particularly what was not reported, which he got from other publications) with a certain skepticism. The daily examples of the need for this skepticism are constant.

From the passive voice to identify George Floyd as a man who “died during the course of an arrest” (true, but hardly the most accurate way to say it), rather than a man that witness video showed was slowly killed by policemen who’d eventually face murder charges, to today’s equally subtle, seemingly inconsequential but clearly false statement about the motivation for Trump’s recent tweet about the 75 year-old activist hospitalized in Buffalo after being seriously injured by riot police, floating the idea that the elder was a provocateur from Antifa:

Trump blames the “outside agitator”, “terrorist” group for “encouraging … demonstrations”? Did not both Trump and his Attorney General loudly and repeatedly blame Antifa for the violence and destruction of property, the claimed massive rioting in the streets, that they claim made violent police and military response necessary to save our nation from anarchy? Did Trump ever blame the loose affiliation of anti-fascist groups for “encouraging demonstrations”? Seriously, Grey Lady, don’t you have well-paid professional editors who read this stuff before it becomes “all the news that’s fit to print”?

Anyway, here’s a bit you can feel free to consider or dismiss as left-wing propaganda, though, to me, it shines a bright light on a large part of what ails this great nation. The undisputed right of the wealthy few to acquire virtually everything, while there is crying need among millions of their fellow citizens, millions of undernourished American children, Americans without homes, Third World infant and maternal mortality rates in our wealthy nation, a raging pandemic without adequate health care for millions. The right of the super-wealthy to accrue more wealth, no matter what, is never questioned. It is simply unAmerican to question an individual’s right to limitless reward for their greed.

Seriously? The entitlement of the world’s richest man to increase his wealth by $36,200,000,000 in less than three months, during a worldwide plague, while cutting non-unionized, largely unprotected essential warehouse worker “hazard pay” by $2/hour may not be questioned?

Is this unquestioning embrace of American aristocracy a sign of our Exceptionalism? More that half a trillion dollars in “profit” could not be better spent than on a record-shattering increase in the vast wealth of 630 American billionaires?

The $565,000,000,000 windfall to the richest, divided among the 40,000,000 recently unemployed, would be a mere $14,125 to each of these people and their families. What difference could brutally confiscating this money and giving tens of millions of challenged Americans barely over a thousand dollars a month possibly make to anybody during a national emergency? Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Of course, the ready critique of that immodest proposal is that any plan to redistribute American wealth is Communism, plain and simple. Plain as the nose on your smug fucking red face. Here you go:


You can read more about these numbers here, (Sanders, unprincipled class warrior sneak that he is, includes a “citation” for his claim). To allow you to dismiss this inflammatory claim (that billionaire wealth has increased by 19% since March) as pure, Commie propaganda, I provide a handy direct link to the original source of the information — a progressive think tank called the Institute for Policy Studies. Based on numbers from notorious Commie front Forbes and “vetted” by viciously Stalinist USA Today. [1]




[1] from the Common Dreams source cited by Sanders (which displays and links to the original article from the Institute for Policy Studies):

Editor Notes:

NOTE: IPS uses March 18 as a date for tracking wealth because that is the date tied to this year’s annual Forbes Global Billionaire survey, published on April 7. This year Forbes reported that total U.S. billionaire wealth had declined from its 2019 levels, from $3.111 trillion down to $2.947 trillion. But within weeks, IPS’s Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report found these losses were erased. As of May 28, total U.S. billionaire wealth is $3.439 trillion, not only a $485 billion increase from March 18, but a $328 billion increase over last year’s Forbes 2019 global billionaire survey.

Methodology: Original calculations are based on IPS analysis of data provided by Forbes’ Global Billionaires List. Forbes maintains a real-time assessment of billionaire wealth. Every Wednesday, after markets close, IPS consults that data set and calculates the total net worth of billionaires in the United States. Unemployment data are from the U.S. Dept of Labor.

Read more about IPS’s methodology in the report and in this FACT CHECK by USA Today.

From Just Before the Plague

Remember these carefree days before 110,000 of us died of a fake virus that was a Democrat HOAX? This was back in early February, right after the end of the Impeachment HOAX, following the witch hunt HOAX, the roots of which are now being strongly investigated by Barr’s DOJ so the architects of it can be severely punished!


Here’s the latest from the Lincoln Project, probably not the ad the thin-skinned president wants to see right now:


Plus, not for nothing, less than a month ago America’s 600 billionaires (people with at least one thousand million dollars) had made an additional $450,000,000,000 dollars (during the first two months of the pandemic quarantine). Today that number stands at $565,000,000,000 and counting. You can look it up. How’s that for USA! USA!!!!