SHADOW HAS THE HABIT OF MAKING DEMONS GLOW

"A woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

They were interrupted by who stood at a distance and shouted, “Jesus, have pity on us.”

“NO!” shouted Pious Paul. “Jesus! You don’t have time. We have a cocktail party fund-raiser in the temple. And don’t worry about them — they’ve already got health care access.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul, puzzled.

“Why, they can pray for a cure,” Pious Paul explained. “I call that universal health care access.” "

~A new twist on an old bible parable 

from The NY TIMES

No rest for the wicked

Seek and you will find

Silence is the symphony

I trust and keep in mind

Shadows have the habit

Of making demons glow

And all these clouds are full of sin

And rain should know

Heaven keep the lonely

I am not the only...

     SORRY

          lyrics by Seinabo Sey

 Part 2

-continued from CINO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK TONS-O-EVIL ON HEALTHCARE

I just saw a play called THE ORIGINALIST where a white writer wrote in a gay black female character that was supposed to be clerking for Supreme Court Justice Scalia. That black character was flawed in exactly the places you would expect with someone white in charge. There were so many obvious things a black woman would have said to Justice Scalia that this character didn't. 

But the thing that really got me was the underlying message: "We on left and the right need to meet in the middle."

The politically ignorant don't seem to realize that the middle shifts. 

The middle doesn't always have to be at the fulcrum, at that point at the middle of the board. In the image above, the middle can be between the dogs front paws and its from paws. That is, the left and the right can both respond to societal pressures by sliding toward being more progressive -- only the left winds up being much further left than the right.

Or, the entire country can slide right, toward being more authoritarian due to cultural pressures, only the right is much further right. And that's kinda what's happening in France right now.

France may elect a shark-mouthed female version of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, in the few hours which, in turn, may break the European Union to smithereens --and it just so happens that the French dude on the left, Emmanuel Macron, his e-mail was hacked on the eve of France's election -- wikileaks and Russia are being mentioned as the culprits again.

Any adult should understand that "the middle" no matter what debate you're having -- political or not-- isn't always some moral high ground, the only location where compromise takes place.  Furthermore, sometimes compromise with those on the other side is totally inappropriate.
I'm guessing but at some point just before Nazi Germany, the left and the right and the space between them, the middle, had probably slid way, way, way right toward authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism For Dummies

I am the authority

Those people are subject to my authority

Why?

I am superior

Why

I am ________ (fill in the blank)

(White, Christian, Male, Heterosexual, Smarter)

As I understand it, the Germans were in pain after WWI. They were being punished for their role in that war. And they were poor.   

When the people of an entire country are feeling like their national pride is broken, feeling pain, and are poor they are looking for somebody to blame which is practically synonymous with they are looking for somebody to be superior to. 

The pre-Nazi Germans were probably digging deep for their inner-authoritarian before anybody even heard of Hitler.  

So in pre-Nazi Germany, the left and the right sides were probably BOTH moving toward some sort of authoritarianism to make things feel right again. But when the right side, that was always somewhat authoritarian, picked up pace in it's slide even further right, they started killing the Jews. 

At that point, it was absolutely correct maneuver for those who had no intention of  committing genocide to pull left, and pull hard. Trying to find the middle would have been a complete pseudo-intellectual bullsh** maneuver.

And I'm thinking that, in my imaginary pre-Nazi Germany, it would have been better for those furthest left to pull left BEFORE people started dying.

If I ever get my mail order time machine, I will bet you tons of money that there were a bunch of people in pre-Nazi Germany crying "Can't we all get along" as the Jews, and everybody else not considered WASPY-white were being forced into ghettos....just before they were carted off.

The United States in 2017 may not be looking like pre-Nazi Germany yet. But we're probably closer than we think we are.  

The right has come right out and said how dare you say BLACK LIVES MATTER when your lives clearly don't matter. The right has come right out and said, BUILD THAT WALL and SIGN THAT MUSLIM BAN. White people have their children screaming that crap at other children. The white right, which had 57% support from white people, are saying that they don't want anybody not-WASPY-white here -- no matter how pale category X's actual skin color is.

And now a CINO republican, Roger Marshall, has actually said some people don't want health insurance when he really means 'some people don't deserve' to be helped when they are sick or dying because they are poor; and they are poor because they are culturally inferior.

    These are reportedly Marshall's own words

The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are 

This CINO Marshall apparently has no recollection of Jesus helping the sick and dying without asking them one question about their how badly they'd conducted themselves in their immediate past. Jesus healed first and then told them what He hoped they would do in the future. He hoped. Jesus helped and hoped because we humans have free will. He didn't make demands beforehand or afterward in exchange for healing.

Be wise enough to wonder

Be brave and let it go 

Nothing’s everlasting

Have mercy on my soul

Wrong when told the right way

Might make you string your bow

When all these clouds are full of sin

And rain should know

Heaven keep the lonely

You are not the only

I heard you’re feeling sorry for yourself now

Like tears from a nice silence, 

I heard you’re feeling sorry for yourself now

Like tears from a nice silence...

SORRY

lyrics by Seinabo Sey

Sometimes I think it's appropriate for us to pray Jesus' prayer.  "Forgive them, Father for they know not what they do." I actually tried to pray that prayer right after the House vote. This attempt lasted seconds. But I did try.  Minutes later I was reading an article showed me that these dang republiKKKlansmen know exactly what they are doing; who the are doing it to; and how deadly it'll get for those they do not consider to be ME-AND-MINE 

Don't believe for a minute that the white dominated left doesn't have tons of  its own problems. Tons. But the white right should be considered to be actively attempting to kill people they don't see as worthy of breathing the same air they do.  

So forget the middle. Being middle of the road in pre-Nazi Germany was a horrible thing with horrible consequences -- for white people.  

Dear White People,  

Thousands and thousands of  "you people" died in WWII because you THOUGHT Hitler was just coming for various sets of "those people."

The Civil War in the U.S. fooled you to death too. That war was really a battle between two sets of white one-percenters. Your southern white ancestors who weren't eating as well as the black slaves (with scars on their backs) on extremely rich plantations went to war and died so that 1) the rich slave owner could keep HIS slaves and 2) the poor white soldier that came home in pieces could pass down feelingss of white superiority to generation after generation -- dummies.  

Don't let your one-percenters trick you again. Get on board the black and brown train. We need at least 1/3 of you to back up a black and brown led political party. 

And if you're not convinced, maybe this will convince you: Listen to quarterly stock reports on earnings. 

Even if you've never owned stock in your life, listen to the reports. These companies are not happy with making a profit. Their stock goes up if they're making more-profit. Corporations have to be growing.

So if these health insurance CEOs get away with over-charging Trumpcare people with pre-existing conditions, once they get used to lining their pockets with Trumpcare money these health insurance jackals are going to come for the rest of us with pre-existing conditions who have "regular" health insurance through our employers.  If self-interest is the only thing that moves your dial, here it is.  

It's time for us all to pull left hard and pray.   

Amen

The best thing about President Trump is that his shadow is huge. As Seinabo Sey sings, "Shadow has the habit of making demons glow."  And these glowing petty-evil demons standing behind Trump are showing us exactly how the levers of power work and how little laws actually mean if you don't have any political juice

So one of the first things we need to pray about his how we can replace the leadership on the left because they're damn near useless. And it's not just because their white either.

I would dearly love to believe that this entire mess was all white racism affliction, that all authoritarian grooves in brains are first dug with by a white supremacy river that creates a grand canyon in your head where a thousand other supremacy-s wind up flowing.

But those damn hoteps and their ring-in-the-nose hoteptresses have proven over and over again that the only thing they hate about the white capitalistic patriarchal hierarchy system is the "white" part. If those hotep jackals ever got to be in charge, we'd have to shoot them out of cannon big enough to send them to Mars.  

So just being black and brown isn't going to be the only thing we're looking for in our leaders, children. We have to be looking for intersectional feminists (female and male) who do not worship money because I'm thinking capitalism is a problem unto itself; it seems to create make money-worshiping devils out of men.

Whenever I hear these congressman talk about the healthcare industry's right to continue to make huge profits this year, and even more next year even if it means poor Americans dying of curable diseases, this line I heard at the end of a Michael Moore documentary  comes back to me:

"You can't regulate evil."

I'd already come to the same conclusion, believe it or not. It wasn't quite as eloquent in my head as "You can't regulate evil." But I had had this thought a while before I saw CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY. And I now I'm thinking that it could be that capitalism is the poison that we keep trying to stop-gap. 

Capitalism requires a new source of poor people all the time OR most of the country has to be standing on top of a permanent underclass  (like the U.S. is doing right now). 

In other words, capitalism requires exploitation. 

But in order for capitalism to look like its working for everyone, there has to be a hopeful exploitation. That is, the poor have to agree to be exploited. 

And the poor will agree to be exploited 

if while they are being exploited 

they think that they are being noble 

by working like dogs for very little money 

while doing the country's hardest ACTUAL work 

because they think that their children 

will have it so much better than they did.

That's the trade off that capitalism used to promise. If you let white folks tell it, that's how this country worked so well for the first 200 years (just let that genocide and slavery fall out of your mind for a moment)

If you let white folks tell it, the continuous influx of new white poor from Europe, who always had hopes of moving up, pushed everyone else upward economically speaking. The slaves and genocide-ed aside, it was kinda nirvana for every-white-body.

That's why I keep thinking that making sure the U.S. only lets poor immigrants in at the bottom is the key to truly "MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" for more than just white people.

If you only let poor people apply to come here, then they push the poor people already here upward to middle class; then some of those in the middle class get pushed up to affluent, and the affluent move up..etc. If you're only letting in poor people, you have space for refugees from various wars. You can live up to "give us your poor, your tired, your hungry..."

And if you're only importing poor people (who are not educated most of the time) then that would force some of foreigners with college and graduate degrees to stay in their own countries and fix them. No more brain-drain abroad.  

And if  the U.S. is not importing its brains from elsewhere, then the U.S. would have to fix its own public school system in order to create brains right here in the USA, the brains we need in expanding markets here.

And those same companies that got upset when the comparatively rich immigrants couldn't get back into the country due to Trump's MUSLIM BAN 1? If  FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, AND AMAZON can't import their talent from elsewhere, they'll have to work on making sure they subsidize college students now won't they?

This is an America first policy I could get behind.

However, even if you gradually realign immigration in this way over...say...5 years, you are still making a plan to maintain the capitalism by exploiting some group, at least temporarily.

I'm thinking maybe this means you really should not try to regulate evil.  But we've got what we've got for now. Maybe we can't eliminate the evil of capitalism. But we sure as heck should be able reign it in quite a bit. 

And removing our free-market (money) worshiping CINOs from government has got to be a good first step. Anybody who professes to believe in God but obviously believes in money first is too big a hypocrite to lead anybody anywhere.

If you are one to pray, then pray on taking action: Talk to everybody you can think of about how important voting is in big elections and small. Donate  $5 toward making an attempt to put ethical leaders in our government. There are millions of us -- that $5 is not nothing. Ask President Obama. Those little donations helped him jump his initial hurdles when he ran for president the first time.

Furthermore, black and brown folks need to start thinking of ways to get their children interested in being community leaders, then state congress women and congress men, then Senators....and then maybe President one day. If you're planning on remaining in this country then a better tomorrow (20 to 40 years from now) starts today.

I think pregnant women should be thinking of how to politically educate their children. The people with money work the levers of power for the most part. But the politicians ARE the levers. That's not nothing. As obstructed as President Obama was, the people (judges etc) that he and others put in place have slowed  Cheeto Satan and the Satanettes at multiple turns (Muslim Ban 1, Muslim Ban 2, Taking federal money from Sanctuary cities).

We need a black and brown led political party. That's what's next in my mind. I hope that's what's next in your mind too. We need to start making our moves now.



MUSIC

SORRY
by Seinabo Sey