Golden Echoes

To the Texas utility workers who drove on dangerous roads, dug through frozen ground and worked in buckets high in the air to fix what was broken and keep that which was working sound.

To the Texas truck drivers who delivered propane and gasoline and food and things we don’t even realize we need.

To the Texas emergency workers who responded even when response was impossibly difficult.

Thank you,

from the grateful hearts of 30 million Texans

How naive you were when you believed people were actually upset about the growing police state and the marginalization of large elements of our society.

You actually started to think people were wizening up to the injustice of the expanding influence of a very small element of our society, the increasing wealth gap and the onerous domination of large corporations.

Now you know. The people you thought were growing weary of injustice were just doing as they were told by the establishment elites and their corporate mouth pieces. Those same elites who, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, proclaimed outrage over the very types of actions they lauded just a few months prior.

And the people you thought were beginning to care responded with absolute obedience.

This past summer there were those who chose to villainize people who marched to be heard.  Some of the marchers burned and destroyed but most were peaceful and concerned with bringing attention to a social injustice.

This week there are those who are choosing to villainize people who marched to be heard. Some of the marchers forced their way into the Capital building but most were peaceful and concerned with brining attention to a social injustice.

It is a perilous thing to denigrate and ridicule those who feel marginalized.  It was folly this summer and it is folly now.

Blaming everything on Trump ignores a core issue.  There is a large portion of our country that feels left out and forgotten.  The mid to low wage earners that pay taxes but get few benefits, that fight our wars but get little recognition besides an occasional “thank you for your service”.  They don’t have the time or energy to ponder their gender identity or critical race theories because it takes two jobs to keep food on the table.  They finally felt they had a champion and, flawed though he is, he was working for them.  Wages among the most disenfranchised in our country, the working poor, rose for three years straight until the Chinese gifted us with a virus.

But they remember.  They remember the lies of the past.  The lies of the Republicans and the lies of Democrats so they upset the establishment by turning out to vote en masse for their champion.

Now they have been sent home, except for their daughter who lies dead in the morgue.  Continuing to focus on the evil orange man is a mistake.  Ignoring the forgotten men and women for whom he was their only hope is a mistake.  Continually insulting and ridiculing them for their choice of leader is a mistake.

This isn’t about Donald Trump, this is about the people who grow our food, truck it to market, package it and stock it on shelves for us.  The people who own and operate the small businesses where we get our clothes cleaned, have a cup of tea with a friend or have our car washed.  These people are not rich, not famous, not powerful.  But they are important.  But they are forgotten.

And Ashli Babbitt lies dead while politicians pretend to take the higher moral ground.

The forgotten
Feeling cheated yet again, they stormed the Capital
One of them, Ashli Babbitt, was killed by the police
No empathy
No compassion
No outrage
Not this time, not like this past summer.
This time it was an enemy of the elite who was killed
She will get no multiple memorials, no fancy funeral
No ‘A’ listers weeping over her loss.
She is the daughter of the deplorable, the common
the forgotten

“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs

It is now well known that the Chinese government lied, the World Health Organization lied, Dr Fauci lied, the media spins an endless array of lies, and of course, the politicians lie.
What is required of us is to pick the lies we like and to hate and ridicule those who pick other lies.  This way our overlords can have the freedom to build the utopia they envision, an entire world that serves their self-worship desires. A world like Epstein’s island.

“Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and consume us both and our children—but as before we still smile in a cowardly way and mumble with our tongues tied. But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength? …
When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.’ But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One need only compare news articles from early 2020 to those being published today to see that our information sources are feeding us a steady diet of lies. Compare politician’s statement in the past with statements and actions of the very same politicians today and we see that our public servants operate within a culture of lies. Consider how large corporations mislead and do great harm, and when they are in danger of being caught, lie. Meanwhile we are so manipulated by hate and violence toward one another that we willingly acquiesce our freedoms and become little more than serf to the very purveyors of these lies. The Lords of lies have become our Lords and masters.

“And if we get cold feet, even taking this step, then we are worthless and hopeless, and the scorn of Pushkin should be directed to us:
Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom?
Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash.”

Quotations are from the essay ‘Live Not by Lies’ by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

She’d labored 16 years to help build the company.  Then the lock down, then an accident, now only memories.

There were many memories, much shared laughter, many hard times, many victories, and some losses but in the ending heartbreak.  Such are the ways of building things and in the end, all things pass.

It is better when the end includes some recognition of what was done rather than just goodbye.

The roses were planted in the Spring as part of a larger planting, magnolia trees, a couple of tall hollies, some desert succulents, pomp pomp trees, salvia geggii and a number of small hedge and flowering plants.  It was a beautiful display when finished and, with her daily care, it flourished through the early summer.

Then, suddenly, she was no longer able to tend the garden, unable to care for herself really.  No one saw it coming, bicycling on a clear summer morning seems so ordinary, so wholesome, so right, no one saw it coming.  A four-inch drop from the pavement to the gravel is enough to change the course of a life, and the fate of a garden.

As she struggled to recover, the garden was left to the whims of the season.  The long dry summer days, encroaching weeds and ravenous insects did take their toll.  By the end of the summer the once beautiful garden looked haggard and neglected.  Some of the plants withered and died, others became infested by intrusive vines and weeds.  It was not just her family and friends who were missing her, the garden was, in its own way, groaning for her return.

The rains came, slow at first but steady.  It was the roses that shown first, bursting with bright color, seemingly overnight.  Then the salvia greggii with their bright purple blossoms.  Even without her care, or, most likely because of her earlier care, the garden’s beauty re-emerged.  Her healing came, slow at first but steady.  Then the light in her eyes returned and so the nous of her mind and joy in her heart as she plays with her grandchildren.

She’ll be out in the garden later today, tending to the roses.

In his farewell speech in 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex and the dangers of acquiring unwarranted influence due to the existence and, sometimes, actions of that complex. Arguably the nation paid little attention to that warning, tumbling through one military misadventures after another.

However, what did go noticed, and imitated, was the immense expansion of the military’s power over policy and the immense wealth accumulated by those who supplied and promoted the aforementioned complex. Over time other similar complexes arose. The healthservices-pharmaceutical complex is one example and the rise of the information-technology complex is another.

Those who led the charge for turning America from being a manufacturer of plow shares into a permanent manufacturer of swords railed against Eisenhower’s warning as a conspiracy theory.

40 years after Presidents Eisenhower’s warning our country finds itself involved in ongoing military actions, our people are deeply divided and have lost faith in government and basic social constructs. But those companies of the complexes, and the titans that run them, have amassed vast quantities of power and wealth.