Category Archives: Comment

When facts don’t matter

Reality becomes a toxic mess

It’s hard enough to find agreement on simple things like what color the sky is, or the grass. Image: Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory,” 1931.

by Stacey Warde

Much of what we believe—whether online, in social media, politics, family gatherings, travels, among friends or sitting alone on the toilet—is colored by our own peculiar blindness.

Nothing is quite what it seems. We make up worlds of our own, hoping they will survive the onslaught of life and reality. We build castles in the sand and, in time, they all come crashing down on our heads.

The world is much different from what we imagine, or claim, or fight and argue over, through all of our personal filters and belief systems. The way the world is and the way we see it are not the same—definitely not when rigged by our religious, political or personal beliefs.

All that, of course, can lead to discord with others, especially those who do not share these beliefs.

It’s hard enough to find agreement on simple things like what color the sky is, or the grass. But, unless delusional, contrary, or hurt in some way, no one would claim the sky is brown, not a clear sky anyway. One might say the grass is brown but that, at least, is debatable.

You can believe whatever you want, and I can do likewise, but that doesn’t make any of it true, or move us closer to agreement, and definitely won’t help us accomplish much.

Finding common ground with others can be a challenge simply by virtue of the fact that we all see things differently. Still, we try to connect, build tribes and communities. To do so, we find healthy ways to talk, disagree and grapple with our common interests without diminishing or destroying one another.

We find common ground through observation and reflection and conversation. Common ground is the place where ideas and action take shape because we can agree on something, even if we don’t share the same beliefs. We don’t have to believe the same thing to agree on simple, observable facts and from those accomplish amazing things.

It takes a civil society, able to reason, to make good things happen, not one that stays blindly devoted to fanciful beliefs and false ideas, which in turn encourage malignant behaviors and purposes. A civil society doesn’t scuttle facts to suit selfish or greedy aims, nor does it distort truths to reflect a reality of one’s own making. A civil society fosters reasoned discourse. When facts don’t matter, reason quickly slips away from the discourse and society collapses into discord and rancor.

When facts don’t matter, we risk falling into the dangerous habit of turning reality into a slippery unmanageable mess, a hazardous wasteland, in which we ignore truth, blind to observable phenomena, creating chaos and leaving scars everywhere we go, crashing and burning, making fools of ourselves.

When facts don’t matter, we have nothing to discuss. What matters is who can be the most brutal and the most clever, promoting lies and propaganda, claiming exclusive rights and privileges, including the right to violate and harm others.

When facts don’t matter, only two possibilities arise, it’s your way or my way.

Facts don’t matter when we cling to shrouds of prejudice, ignorance, and damaged egos. These shrouds—filters against reality—keep us from seeing clearly, the faces of others become threatening, and we embark on a path of destruction.

We inherited these shrouds from well-meaning but ill-informed elders, or we developed them as defenses to protect ourselves against brutes, or they were cultural standards we embraced that proved in the end to do more harm than good.

We maintain these shrouds through a stubborn refusal to accept things as they are, by seeing the world in only one way, the Archie Bunker way. “This is the way the world is…” Never to let ourselves see through the eyes of another, choosing in fact to scorn, mock or obliterate that person or that person’s vision. Lastly, we join others who share these views, complete falsehoods, clinging precariously to fictions we hope will protect us from ideas and truths and people we don’t like.

If we are to live peaceably, however, we have to find ground upon which we can agree, ground we share in common. The most basic common ground would be facts, observable phenomena, that we agree upon, that make progress possible. Without facts, we’re more likely to impede progress by fighting over who’s right and who gets to dominate.

I know how hard this is, but also how easy, to hold back prejudices and beliefs, and take a moment to listen, to attend the pertinent information and stories that come to us, and seek the deeper, darker, loamy truths about life, and learn to confront our common difficulties in a dignified way, creating a common ground in which most, if not all, of us can thrive, the sole purpose of a worthy tribe.

I know how difficult it is to remove the filters of my own blindness. Just when I imagine that I’ve got things figured out, and think that I shall remove the final shroud to reveal the “uncorrupted truth” of all things personal, human, otherworldly or otherwise—the unfiltered core, finally!—a blight, a corruption of the mind, say, a bruised ego, a past hurt or slight, throws itself into the mix. The shadow emerges and, like a Dali painting, reality once again turns into a slippery gooey toxic thing in which I lose and risk destroying myself.

Even with the best intentions, I have to fight hard to keep a clear picture before me, to set my focus on what is actual and real rather than imagined or believed.

I cannot see the pure light or truth without the correspondence and cooperation of another. I’m as blind as you, and anything that I might say can be perceived as simple nonsense or bullshit—unless there’s some way to observe and confirm and verify. With your help only, will that become a possibility.

So do not believe me when I say that I speak for truth, or know something that you don’t, or pretend that my mind has reached the heights, and that you should come along and see things my way. But please do consider the facts. Let’s discuss and agree on those for a start, and not diminish or destroy life’s possibilities by believing in or embracing a lie.

Falsehoods, lies and treachery lead to death. Even our meagre grasp on tiny bits of truth fail to rescue us from our mortal end, tainted as they are with what is false and misleading.

“There is a way that seems right to a person but it’s end is death.” That’s true for all of us.

I’ve traveled many roads, thinking that I had chosen the best course, only to wind up lost in a pretzel of circling around and around, going nowhere but getting confused and frustrated and angry, making a fool of myself, injuring others, my life spinning furiously out of control. Fortunately, I’ve had friends, family and a tribe to bring me back.

Have you heard of “death by GPS”? That’s where you get stranded in the desert and die because you trusted your cellphone’s map application more than your common sense and ability to observe facts and make well-informed choices. Through a failure of technology and belief, you observe the wrong data, believe a lie, make a bad decision, and get lost and die. It happens, even when your intentions are good.

The most well-meaning, the earthiest and most righteous among us, are prone to lose their way and stumble, missing the path that leads to a better, more secure life, if such a thing is possible. We end up in deep shit as much as as in the golden beam of bliss, all the more reason to enlist the support of our tribe and community, even those whose beliefs do not match our own.

Fortunately, my tribe and community have kept me on course, challenging me to maintain a clear vision, to think correctly and reason from a place of wisdom and strength rather than from foolhardy and fantastical versions of reality based on my prejudices and blindness.

To thrive and advance, we need a tribe and a common ground, a landscape observable by all, out of which come shared ideas, stories and practices that move us forward, where facts matter and can make all the difference in whether we live or die. §

In Election 2016, the media taught Americans how to love a dictator

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet. For a majority of Americans, feeling traumatized and terrified are reasonable responses to the words “President-elect Donald Trump.” But even if his inauguration marks the demise of the star-spangled mythos we grew up on, being catatonic is no way to spend the next four years, especially if we’re lucky enough to… Continue reading →

We Can Blame Others, or We Can Learn and Grow Ourselves

Viewpoint from a Progressive activist

comment-progressivesBy  Sean Shealy

We may not have much control of the present situation. But we can choose to learn from it.

It is easy to look at Trump voters and say, “These people are just idiots and racists!” But if you read any coverage of the exit polls, you know that it isn’t that simple. I did, because I want to understand their concerns, the reasoning behind their votes. I want to make sure that I hear their voices, so that next time we might appeal to them better. They give myriad legitimate reasons for voting for Trump: The bad economy, the hopeless corruption in DC, the fact that Hillary was seen as an insider. We should study these reasons in detail. We should do so to empower ourselves.

No one has power over Trump voters. No one has power over progressives who spurned Mrs. Clinton. The singular power we have is to learn.  Blaming anyone else is fruitless. It simply means that we won’t change anything — we’ll end up doing the same thing again, with the same result.

Progressive votes for Jill Stein cost Hillary Clinton nothing—she would have lost even if she’d gotten every Stein vote. But what did cost the Clinton campaign, dearly, was the absence of progressive activists, those who man the phone banks, walk precincts, and help organize marches and rallies. These activists multiply their votes many times over.

Progressive activists—for whom the value of justice is paramount—tend not to be party operatives. Their loyalties are not conveyed simply because a politician carries a party label. They’ve been burned far too many times for that.  And burned doesn’t mean not getting your favorite piece of feel-good legislation; burned means that people died. It means that people were maimed. Families were ripped apart. It means that these activists laid awake at night, driven to despair, to rage. This is why they work to multiply their votes, why they vigorously support candidates who actually reflect their values: Otherwise the injustice will go on forever. They will never sleep.

Party political operatives will say, “Well, Clinton voted for the war in Iraq because, in 2003, the intelligence we had and the geopolitical calculations necessary for the strategic….” And the progressive activist gives not a shit about any of that. The progressive activist sees instead an Iraqi mother cradling her dead child. This activist knew that the war was based on lies at the time, as anyone who was paying attention would have. The reason for the war was unjust, the vote for the war was unjust, the death of the child and the pain of the mother was unjust.  And now you ask these activists to campaign for someone who sponsored all of that? Injustice.

Some progressive activists might triangulate, and “vote for the lesser of evils.” But hold your nose and vote is not the same as campaigning. On myriad levels, they saw Bill Clinton’s policies as a continuation of Ronald Reagan’s — because, on myriad levels, they were.  If you do not know this, HERE IS YOUR POWER: Question it. Learn about neoconservatism, neoliberalism. Read Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser to witness the dovetailing of the two parties under Bill Clinton; read Fighting Words: How Liberals Created Neoconservatism by Ben Wattenberg. Don’t be afraid. Be curious. Learn.

Progressive activists saw Hillary Clinton’s policies as a continuation of her husband’s policies. And why wouldn’t they? She said that they would be. She touted her eight years in the White House as her guiding experience.  Many, having spent decades fighting Clinton’s unjust policies, decided that the Green Party had to be supported, if there were ever to be hope for justice. Stein’s vote tally did nothing to change the outcomes of the election—but Stein’s support did double from the last election. And that was the result of the efforts of those activists.

“Well, why didn’t they do that for Hillary?” you ask. “It would have saved us from Donald Trump!”

Because these activists, who have lain awake nights for years on end, tortured by the thought of the dead and maimed in Iraq, the endless shredding of families torn apart by Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies, by the economic devastation caused by Clinton’s deregulation of Wall Street, are not going to help paint a smiley face on any of that. They oppose all of it. They will oppose it to the grave, and into the bowels of Hell, if necessary.

They will not triangulate injustices. They will not trade two lives here for four over there; they will not be told that they should support Clinton because she will only kill thousands while Trump will kill tens of thousands.

They will not support lesser evils. They will not support evil at all.

And if you want to win next time, you will have to reject evil, as well. §

Sean Shealy is an activist and the author of Corruption & Cover-Ups of the Bush White House Unmasked and the novel Killing Limbaugh.

TRUMP THE PRIME PUSSY MONGER

comment-pussy-grabber

by Dell Franklin

As a rule, America men, with their avid appetite for pussy, idolize a successful pussy monger, and certainly the Donald fills that role, especially since he is a celebrity, or in his own words a “star,” and let’s face it, the stars get all the prime pussy in America, and possibly everywhere else.

As boys, all we could talk about was pussy, and it was everywhere to entice and torment us. We accumulated playing cards of naked women, and Playboy Magazine centerfolds, and hid them in places mothers could not find so we could worship the kind of gorgeous pussy the Donald claims he can paw and grope with impunity because he’s a star, a born star bred by his parents to be a star and quickly shooting to star status by becoming a self-publicized real estate tycoon fucking over anybody in his way, another trait to be idolized by American males.

Well, it used to be that the real stars in our realm copped the prime pussy, like say, movie stars, rock stars, like Mick Jagger and Tom Jones, and famous cocks-men like Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty and Richard Burton and Clark Gable and Errol Flynn, these Adonises playing romantic roles and getting to make out with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe….

The Dynamic Donald has an endorser in perhaps the greatest quarterback ever to play pro football, Tom Brady, who refused to go to the White House when the Patriots won the Super Bowl, a snub of our first black president, and perhaps an overture to his fellow conqueror of prime pussy, Donald Trump, to run for our nation’s highest office and lead the world.

Yeah, Brady married a world-famous supermodel, and they have beautiful children, and live in a modern castle, and he’s kind of an arrogant snotty asshole, but good lord, there is no evidence this deservedly heralded jock engages in the kind of so-called locker room boasting of the Donald, who claims that he can “paw up and grope prime pussy” anytime he wants because he’s a star.

Brady and most professional athletes, rock stars and movie idols, do not have to engage in this kind of talk or action because the pussy paws THEM up, waits for them like vultures in hotel lobbies and entertainment venues to throw themselves at these most beautiful of male hides. Meanwhile, the bloated, scowling Donald, with his mane of fluorescent straw and corpulent torso and sagging neck, foists his repulsive self upon prime pussy because he believes they, like everybody and everything else, owe him. He’s America’s foremost “taker,” rampaging through our prime pussy and institutions and laws like Attila the Hun.

To Donald and his ilk go the spoils of victory in America, where the rich and famous are transported in personal limos and jets, eat the most sumptuous gourmet food and sip uber-expensive bottles of wine, own castles here and there, and, most important, have an unwritten license to fuck the best pussy they can grab.

Looking back, as a kid, it was all about pussy—who and how much one could get—but there were always barriers as we grew up. As the gals became more accessible, you had to talk to them, charm and impress them, convince them you were witty and sexy and manly and important with your life and plans, and maybe you could get them drunk to further break down the barriers, but it was always up to them if they wanted to share their pussy with you, and maybe their hearts, and the game went on and on in our great organ-hounding grab-bags known as bars and pubs and nightclubs, but it was a wonderful, joyous though sometimes disappointing game, to be played among those desiring a kind of gratification with one another that goes beyond pussy mongering, beyond the groping and pawing by an entitled and feral criminal who essentially pays for his pussy like a rich vulture whose real satisfaction must be of conquest rather than the joy of having a delightful woman of substance and character sincerely wanting you for you. §

Dell Franklin once was blamed by a reader for the demise of the print version of The Rogue Voice because, she said, “He’s a pervert.” We know without a doubt she’s wrong, she has no proof, and is probably part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit him.

HILLARY DEFANGS THE DONALD

comment-donald-v-hillary

by Dell Franklin

The Donald waltzed into the presidential debate against Hillary Clinton with all the hubris of a man so exalted in his own mind that he didn’t even think he needed to cram or rehearse to destroy Hillary Clinton before around 84 million American viewers on live TV. The Donald is not used to women disagreeing with him, and he is not used to women smarter than he is who can think on their feet and give it right back with icy cold precision, deep-freezing one of your vital organs—the brain—and demoralizing your emotional center—pride. Instead, the Donald is used to trophy models admiring his money and power and ego and golf swing and the kingly presence of a tyrant intimidating and humiliating and axing pathetic climbers on a bogus reality TV program. The Donald tells women what to do and where to go, a throwback to an era where women were subservient house captives to masters of the clan and took care of all the slavishly untidy responsibilities while the ruler brought home the bacon.

Since the beginning of time, men have been trained to dominate, while women have had to slyly and often subtly work their ways around the bullying of the more physically powerful male. My own father, an intelligent man and a successful professional athlete and businessman hellbent on controlling and dominating all factions of his family, never in 37 years came close to winning an argument with my mother, and it was a sad and alarming spectacle to witness mother, an intellectual reader and logical thinker, take apart arguments he spent an entire day mulling over and rehearsing and she’d reduce it to ashes within minutes and turning him into a mindless, fulminating, incoherent madman.

“She twists things around, she speaks with a barbed tongue,” he insisted. “If it’s night out, and she says it’s day, she’s right! But I know I’m right.”

My sister and I just looked at each other, unwilling to tell him the truth—he was wrong and brutally defeated—and shrugged.

Hillary sucker-punched the Donald during this first debate. She set him up like an experienced boxer with less of a knockout punch than her bigger, stronger opponent, nibbling away at his weaknesses, and tore him apart with a well-timed flurry of counter punches that left him reeling and bleeding, the poor ogre helpless without handlers to consult as he sat on his stool, winded and out of gas from the onslaught.

During this blood-letting, the Donald blustered and roared, and while she eviscerated him he sniffled and snorted, frowned, grimaced and made sour, persecuted faces when he wasn’t guzzling water, the sure sign of dehydration caused by emotional damage and embarrassment, while Hillary, face arched in a bemused expression of the calm conqueror, waited for his exhausted rantings and returned to her harpooning of the fat, bloated clown.

Afterwards, his aides and handlers massaged his brittle ego, placed ice bags on his bruises and bandages on his cuts, told him he won despite his shameful ignorance on foreign policy as well as other issues, went on news shows spinning his wretched performance, some claiming Hillary was too rehearsed while the Donald “winged it,” a natural man in every way.

This was a different ball game, Donald, a foreign turf, this debate venue, without the intimidated Republican male hides who had no clue as how to deal with your bullying, but a woman armed with almost seven decades of dealing with the likes of your kind.

Moral of the story? A woman knows a man much better than a man will ever know a woman—because she has to. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He maintains a blog at his website: dellfranklin.com

TRUMP’S NEW BLACK BAMBOOZLER

comment-don-kingtrumpby Dell Franklin

Donald King, the other Donald who would never allow himself to be called a white man’s namby-pamby name title like Donald, or even Don, and especially not The Donald, but by his legion of admirers as THE Don King, a fight promoter who ripped off his fighters and fought them off with a team of lawyers and eventually admitted to fraud and paid off Mike Tyson (another of his corrupted victims), 14-million of a 100-million-dollar lawsuit, the very same Don King who shot to death one man on the street but escaped prison, possibly because in those days in the Cleveland ghetto if a black bookmaker, drug dealer and arsonist murdered a fellow black man who supposedly tried to rob him it was excused as self defense, though this very same Don King later pistol-whipped and stomped to death a man who owed him $600 and was tried for second-degree murder, which was reduced to manslaughter, so that he spent almost four years in prison before the governor of Ohio somehow pardoned him, and so later THE Donald King transformed himself into America’s most powerful boxing promoter—as corrupt an industry as there was in the country—and completely changed the image of his mug shot of a hard-eyed young thug/gangster to a wild-haired bombastic super patriotic zealous spouter of American greatness while browbeating and terrifying anybody who tried to interfere, and ended up making millions on some of the greatest fighters and fights in the great era of boxing in the 1970s and ‘80s, and stiffed and chiseled and stole from just about every fighter and commission he participated in, and while doing so shouted over and over at the top of his lungs, “ONLY IN AMERICA, ONLY IN AMERICA,” yes, this man who absolutely shafted everybody he ever dealt with, fairly oozing incarnate evil from every pore, his eyes gleaming with the joyous cunning of a psychopath sucking in an entire heedless boxing crowd, this bamboozler emerging from the very gutter of our world and floating to the top, this Don King is now backing a man he admires as an even richer more nefarious bamboozler, Donald trump for President!

comment-don-king-mug1Yes, there he was, 85 years old, as outrageous as ever, the previously stiffened high hair not quite as stiff, seemingly forgotten now that professional boxing in America has become a joke and second rate sport dwarfed by the savagery of cage fighting, on the soap box, bragging about his 30-year friendship with his fellow bamboozler and thief, who like Mr. King has also sued and been sued and paid off when caught and continued his profligate lying and conniving and bamboozling to become the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Ahhh,  THE Donald King will surely attract many black voters, possibly those with several rows of gold chains around their necks, or perhaps those carrying loaded shot guns and pistols, or those running ghetto scams, and possibly those tattooed, head-shaven, leather-clad white louts once snarling in the background at the real Donald’s rallies, though at this point they are no longer allowed in the background at the Donald’s rallies, and are replaced by an assembly of young wholesome silly smiling white teenagers or painted blondes or corrugated old white-haired lemmings told when to smile and when to cheer.

Yeah, THE Donald King is again shitting in high cotton, and instead of being in jail or surrounded by bodyguards, he’s back on a podium surrounded by cameras, on all the 24-hour supposed news stations, shouting into the heavens, outrageous, unintelligible, oozing evil, indulging in one more attempt to bamboozle the stupidest and most mindlessly macho countryman, once again wrapped in our beloved American flag.

God save us. Please. §

Dell Franklin has a low tolerance for hosers, especially in the worlds of sports and politics. He writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he also maintains his blog and website, dellfranklin.com.

DONALD TRUMP’S ‘REAL AMERICANS’

 

comment-trumps-real-americansby Dell Franklin

Donald Trump’s real Americans don’t play golf and would never under any circumstances be allowed on any of his courses and if they tried an armed security detail would throw them off and possibly shoot them.

Donald Trump’s real Americans would never be allowed to sit at his table for any meal because they never went to finishing school and possess atrocious manners, like talking with a mouthful of food and wanting to wash it down with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Donald Trump’s real Americans love the Constitution but never read it and just quote the gun lobby’s defense of an amendment they don’t understand.

Donald Trump’s real Americans would not get past the front door of Trump Tower before an armed security detail turned them back into the street because of their noxious apparel and tattoos.

Donald Trump’s real Americans will threaten and fight you if you dispute the Donald’s blatant lies that are documented as blatant lies by legitimate fact checkers.comment-trumps-real-ams-pbr

Donald Trump’s real Americans will threaten and fight you if you dispute the lies he made up about Hillary Clinton even if those lies have been proven untrue by legitimate fact checker.

Donald Trump’s real Americans are positive President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim who wants to take their guns away and let ISIS terrorists take over the country and impose Sharia law on defenseless white people like themselves.

Donald Trump’s real Americans will deny they’re racists because they approve of the frothing-at-the-mouth-lectern-pounding black pastors he digs up to defend him, and who are looking for more TV exposure and a possible talk radio show.

Donald Trump’s real Americans believe whoever can tell the biggest most outlandish outrageous lies will win the Presidency of the United States—and they’re fine with it.

Donald Trump’s real Americans hate out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities and Academic scholars who bad-mouth their Donald and would like to knuckle their heads like in the old days when sissies and faggots got their asses kicked simply for existing.

Donald Trump’s real Americans are some of the meanest and nastiest looking people on the face of the earth.

Donald Trump’s real Americans relish the role and identify with their Donald as the “Ugly American,” because they believe all Europeans are socialist pussies who play soccer instead of football.

Donald Trump’s real Americans wouldn’t mind the Donald nuking some of our enemies.

Donald Trump’s real Americans look at him as the latest and perhaps last white hope in a country taken over by suspicious black, brown and yellow people who want to keep them from making America great again and subject them to lower class status.

Donald Trump’s real Americans are some of the fattest people on the face of the earth.

Donald Trump’s real Americans are a lot of old Viet Nam veterans who wear those funny hats and medals and have to know that their Donald was a draft dodger with a rich dad who paid off a doctor and would have been given a blanket party in basic training as soon as they realized he was afraid to get his itty bitty under-sized hands dirty.

comment-trumpthatbitchDonald Trump’s real Americans drive monster trucks and those things resembling army half tracks with bumper stickers that read “Trump That Bitch” and “Put Her in Jail.”

Donald Trump’s real Americans include xenophobic, homophobic climate change denying ex-jocks like Curt Schilling who fears for his daughter if she walks into a restroom and has to face a transgender creature who will molest her.

Donald Trump’s real Americans don’t care if he refuses to show his income tax forms, nor if he’s a crook, because they feel everybody’s a crook and it’s best to have the biggest crook and liar in the country in the White House because he’ll out-crook all the crooks in the world trying to fuck us.

Donald Trump’s real Americans, from the look of them at rallies, need lobotomies, and those who haven’t look like they’ve already had lobotomies.

Donald Trump’s real Americans don’t care about his policies or qualifications to govern the country, they just want to sit on their asses and enjoy a reality show while the country goes to hell because their lives suck anyway. §

Dell Franklin is a real American but not one of those kind. He writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He posts stories and commentary at dellfranklin.com.