News of the world

Astounding. The richest country on earth. Yet, in so many ways we have so much less compared to almost every other industrialized, modern nation as well as an alarming number of the impoverished third world variety.

I’m talking about things like healthcare, education, infant mortality rates and life expectancy.

Humanity. I’m talking about our humanity.

Why?

Incarceration of non-violent drug offenders swelling our prisons to the point where we jail more people per capita than any state on earth. An annual defense budget well north of half a trillion. An expenditure far more than twice that of the entire European Union. Ten times greater than that of any other individual country in the world. Our debt has surpassed the entire world’s gross domestic product, while people starve and die on every continent including our own.

Disgusting.

Our drug war rips Mexico and handfulls of South American countries asunder as I write.

The paradigm has changed. A United States of America bristling with rockets, missiles, guns and bombs is obsolete. The military might of another state is no longer any kind of legitimate threat. Red Dawn will not happen in our, or our children’s lifetime. America’s demise will knock at her door from inside her own house. That house is of eye popping contemporary design and constructed entirely of cheap playing cards, paper and children’s paste.

Eisenhower, a four star general and President of this once great country, warned us about the folly of an all powerful military industrial complex. He was beyond prescient and we failed, tragically, to heed.

We have embraced a sensibility replete with greed, excess and entitlement so pervasive and cancerous that we have lost sight of the important things so consumately, we no longer even understand what’s happening to us. We have done this to ourselves in as much as we’ve allowed it be done to us.

Have a Coke and a smile.

To this day, more than half of us believe creationism to be more plausible than evolution. We fear gay marriage more than pedophiles. We still can’t see God and religion as the medieval superstition it is.

Apathy and ignorance. Willfull ignorance. America is lost.

We are no longer a society with the grit to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and collectively forge ahead in order to better our circumstances and rise above despair and destitution. Our sense of ‘we’ has long since been replaced by the culture of ‘me’. We are not the same people we were in the post depression, WWII era. The Greatest Generation.

No longer respected, no longer revered. Nobody even likes us anymore. Most hate us. For years we’ve traveled abroad telling people we’re Canadian. We torture, and kill indiscriminately. You and me, it’s done in our name, we are complicit. The era of America taking what she wants because we’re the biggest kid on the block are at an end. We no longer have the resources. Broke, broken and morally bereft.

We are on the verge of losing at least one, maybe two wars. This, while we contemplate a third that will be more disasterous than than the previous two combined. I don’t care. Bring them home and stop the killing. The idea of victory in either of these conflicts is nonsense to me.

The chronic and archaic caterwauling of the evangelicals, born agains, rednecks and the far right have never been so dissonant. Their message at best, anachronistic. Fearful and stupid.

Things are going to get worse. The inevitability of it stinks like a sewage treatment plant on a brutal summer day. How much worse is anybody’s guess.

Worst case scenario, America wakes to find itself as an agrarian society again. Or is that best case scenario? Perhaps that will be the impetus for us to regain focus on what really matters.

Us. We. Not me. Not you. Not America. The world. All of us.

A homeless guy told me today that prostitutes can have their cake and eat it too. He also said he’s got nothing to sell. His dick ain’t long enough and he ain’t pretty.

Drinks for my friends.

3 Responses to “News of the world”

  • David Lee 3:

    1984 already happened & so did Red Dawn, although the transition was so subtle & so diabolically sublime that most of us did not notice until it was entirely too late.

    Not so overt as we expected, but just as malevolent. Walmart anyone? How about Walmerica? It’s close.

    Though I DO appreciate your efforts Winston.

    As far as the prison thing goes, Joe Rogan just elaborated far better than I can on this topic… never mind him getting people to eat bugs and shit themselves, the guy actually is on the ball as far as how insane our nations drug policy is concerned. Pardon that it’s slightly off topic, but I think the gist remains relevant.
    — Any staunch repugnicunt will most likely hate it, thus they need to read it even more.

    ———————————–

    An open letter to Kellog’s re: Michael Phelps

    Dear Kellogg’s,

    I’m writing this letter to express my disappointment in your company in firing Michael Phelps as a spokesperson for your products because he was photographed while enjoying some marijuana.

    I respectfully would like to communicate my opinion on this matter because I think it’s of great public interest.

    First of all, although it is true that Mr. Phelps broke the law, I think any reasonably intelligent person would admit that it’s one of the most fucked up and corrupt laws that we have today in this country. Marijuana is relatively harmless and certainly far less dangerous than a host of other things that are not only legal but also readily available, like alcohol and prescription drugs. The only reason it remains illegal to this day is because it’s a plant and you can’t patent it and control it’s sale, and because if it were legal it would greatly affect the demand for a host of prescription drugs that rake in billions of dollars each year for pharmaceutical companies.

    That’s it.

    Marijuana has never killed anyone EVER in over 10,000 years of use. We’re not protecting people from themselves, we’re not saving the children – it’s just a horribly illogical law that is in place because of corruption and propaganda.

    The fact that it’s against the law is just a disgusting reminder of how retarded our system is, not a reasonable reaction to a proven threat to society.

    I have to say, this whole thing saddens me, because I personally would like to think that as Americans we’re better than this. These television news anchors will shake their heads at the thoughtless mistake Mr. Phelps had made by “smoking dope,” and then without even the tiniest sense of irony they will cut to a beer commercial.

    This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? We’re not supposed to be a nation of little bitches giving in to the whims of corrupt politicians and the pharmaceutical companies who’s interests they’re representing.

    It’s 2009, and in this day and age with the incredible access to information that we have available there’s no fucking way that we should be allowing human beings to tell other human beings that they can’t do something that they enjoy that hurts no one including themselves.

    THAT is madness. THAT is ignorant, and THAT is completely fucking un-American.

    I don’t want to hear any of that, “he’s setting a bad example with the children” nonsense either, because we all know if he had a gin and tonic in his hand instead of a bong this would never have been an issue, even though every single study ever done has shown that marijuana is FAR less dangerous than alcohol.

    Marijuana laws are a horrible waste of resources and law enforcement, and especially in this day and age with our economy in such horrible shape I believe the last thing we need to be doing is wasting tax payers’ money on any of this victimless bullshit.

    I find your reactions to Mr. Phelps situation both ignorant and short sighted.

    I think what would have been a far better response from Kellogg’s would be to support Mr. Phelps, and perhaps point out that maybe we as a society should take a closer look at the evidence and possibly reconsider our position on this misunderstood plant that so many of our productive citizens find useful.

    Now, I’m sure if you really were running Kellogg’s and you were still reading my bullshit all the way down to this, you must be thinking, “Why the hell would we stick our necks out like that for pot smokers?”

    And of course the answer to that question would be, because we buy your shit, motherfucker.

    Do you guys even know your consumer statistics? Well, let me fill you in on some of my own personal scientific research on the subject, because I have been closely studying my own purchases for over 20 years, and I can tell you that I’ve been high 100% of the time I’ve bought your shit.

    I mean, do you guys ever think about what you sell?
    Pop tarts? Are you kidding me? I would be willing to bet that 50% of the people buying pop tarts are stoned out of their fucking minds.

    Just to be perfectly clear on my position, I would like you to know that I enjoy your products. I think many of them are quite tasty, but lets be honest; you guys sell sugar-drenched shit that’s horrible for your body – in fact, it’s actually way worse for your body than pot – and you market this shit specifically to children.

    You assholes go as far as putting lovable cartoon characters on the boxes just so that kids will beg their parents for it.

    Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand my point, because I in no way want anything bad to happen to your company. Like I said, I genuinely enjoy your products.

    There’s nothing quite like being stoned out of your mind at 2am watching a Chuck Norris movie and eating a bowl of fruit loops. Your company and its products have been a part of some very pleasurable moments in guilty eating, and I’m glad you’re around.

    All I’m saying is that it’s high time (no pun intended) that you motherfuckers respect the stoner dollar. There’s WAY more of us than you might think, and we tend to get upset about dumb shit like this. There are millions of us, and if we decide that we don’t like a company, they’re going to feel it.

    I think if you looked into it carefully, you would be surprised at how many undercover potheads there are out there. Pot smokers don’t all fit into the obvious, negative stereotypes; we come in all shapes and forms – including by the way, the form of the greatest fucking swimmer who ever lived, EVER.

    Think about THAT shit for a second..
    So in closing, I would like to ask you nice folks to please smarten the fuck up.

    I would request that you check the calendar and note that it’s 2000 and fucking 9, and next time you think about getting all uppity about pot you might want to do a quick google search on the facts.

    It’s 4:40am here in LA, and I’m going to wrap up this blog and to celebrate its completion I’m going to enjoy one of my personal favorite Kellogg products: Eggo waffles.

    I’m gonna pop 4 of them bitches into the toaster, and then I’m gonna stuff the bong with some fine, American grown “Train Wreck” and sacrifice the sacred plant to the fire gods in tribute to the unjustly persecuted 8 time Olympian hero. Then I’m gonna get some butter, and I’m gonna smear it on those Eggos, I’m gonna cover them with maple syrup, and I’m going to eat the ever loving fuck out of them.

    Good day, sirs.

    Yours truly,

    Joe Rogan.

    —————————-

    Me personally? I believe that HAD we an honest drug policy then I doubt we would have as many problems as we do.
    I think if our govt. was honest about pot being not as bad as narcotics, perhaps millions who tried pot & then said, “wait– if they lied about pot, then maybe the other ones aren’t so bad” would not have fell victim to these lies.

    Lies kill. Nearly always, maybe not a person but perhaps an ideal. & If a noble ideal is killed then so can many people be killed also.

    ..Now then, yes we spend approximately as much as all the other nations in the world combined on defense spending….Sounds like a personal problem to me. We need societal stethoscope to look up in our dirty places and suss out the painful areas.

    So now,..pile on supporting maybe half of our prison population (a million or so) or more due to our corrupt drug laws and all the money that goes to that.
    +++PLUS the trillion dollar defense budget (forget about black ops & trillions there) & I think we have very legitimate places to start looking at as far as cutting the B.S.

    But what do I know? All I REALLY KNOW, is that good class A guitar amps tickle my 3rd ear.

    That & I believe that everyone should get a small drum or harp or some other musical plucking/hitting thing when they come into this world…I believe this.

    I’ll have a Snake Bite please, it seems appropriately devious for this post.

  • admin:

    Thank’s Helmet. A lot, for time and for passion.

  • “Humanity. I’m talking about our humanity.”

    We have forsaken the very concept. Look around you at the intolerance. I don’t mean to say that tolerance is what is needed. Acceptance is what is needed—acceptance and understanding, the opposite of apathy and ignorance.

    Acceptance goes beyond tolerating and putting up with something, it is actively pursuing a higher consciousness—it leads us to understanding because it is a recognition that we are only one small part of the whole. The heart does not scorn the liver because of their differences, each has it’s part. True, the cancers – the destroyers – must be identified and removed in order for a body to survive, but the key concept is that those causing destruction must be identified.

    To single out an “undesirable” behavior that does not inflict bodily harm, but does suit one’s agenda, and call it a “mental illness” or to label a nonviolent vice that hurts nobody except the “offender” as a “crime” making criminals of everyday citizens – good, hardworking people – is a huge boorish blunder.

    Shame on us who dare to lay claim, with pride, to the title of the final link in the evolutionary chain. I have a feeling nature does not agree with that sentiment. As surely as we have come to be, a new species will evolve that knows how to use the incredible brain we as humans have been blessed with but have failed to recognize for all its glory.

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