I cry that it is a rainy day

Dear diary,

What if the Christian afterlife is true — I mean the one that was taught to me as a child — thus a literal heaven exists, a city in the sky made entirely of gold, where God awaits you, with Christ at his side. What if you show up and you’re the only soul there: so it’s just you, God, and Christ. Wouldn’t that be kinda scary and lonely? Scary because you’d immediately fear that God and Christ are planning to gang up on you; and lonely because you’re the only human soul, so there’s no one to relate to: you’re in the position of a heavenly pet; for Christ is a hybrid species, remember: he’s only half human; whereas God is 100% devil. So that’d be like if you put a giant squid in a cage with a dolphin and a monkey.

I wanna spend this post talking in the simplest terms possible about the major political questions of our time. Why? Because it sounds like a bad idea. I’m sick of good ideas: we’ve had a whole history of attempting to implement good ideas, and all it’s led to is violent chaos. It’s time to give bad ideas a shot.

First we have the problem of Memorial Day. That was yesterday. It’s a holiday, so everyone in my village is happy to have a 3-day weekend. We slaves are easily pleased. So the general feeling is one of relief, because it’s always nice to get away from the workplace; but no one dares express their mirth too freely, because the idea is that you’re supposed to be somber and respectful, for Memorial Day is defined as “a day on which those who died in active military service are remembered.”

Now the problem is manifold, because of course the highest act that a person can perform is to sacrifice herself for her friends. And that’s essentially what military service is supposed to be: When you join the military, you’re saying “I love my fellow countrywomen so much that I’m willing to give my own life to protect theirs.” And then we have this special holiday to honor the dead: those souls who truly died fighting THE ENEMY.

Yet who is this “ENEMY”? I know that I harp on this point all the time, but it seems to me to be the dilemma of our age. I think we modern humans can’t get over the fact that there are no more enemies out there. The reason we fight each other in wars now — and this goes for all the wars, up to and including the two World Wars: let’s just use the World Wars as an arbitrary starting line, since to go too far backwards in human history will suck us down into the ocean, where it’s too cold and slimy...

I say, the reason we fight each other in wars nowadays is that we cannot learn to share. It’s that simple. We’re like toddlers in a nursery, without any adult supervision: a couple infants have stockpiled all the supplies (the toys and the powdered milk and the pyjamas and cribs) in one corner of the room; and the rest of us just lie there and weep all day.

I know the idea is that there’s some terrible country out there that worships Evil and wants to enslave all of us, so we must join our nation’s army and fight back; but the truth is that we’ve already enslaved ourselves: nobody’s going to make our lives worse than how we’ve allowed them to become already.

And our own secret intelligence agencies, which naturally cannot allow us to know what they’re doing — for that would jeopardize national security, we are told — these intelligence agencies get involved in doing all sorts of ugly things in foreign countries: you hear about it all the time, from leaks and exposés that come out in the news, but you try to block out the information because it’s at once terrifying and beyond your control. So naturally when your country’s secret services have stirred up trouble in foreign realms, those foreign realms wanna retaliate in some way: that’s where the wars begin. So you join the army and fight and die, and then your family remembers you on this day near the tail end of May.

And everyone in my own family tells me to stop being critical. Stop being negative. I come off to them as someone who’s disgraceful, since I dare to question the worth of all this warfare. The polite, proper attitude is to assume that your own country can do no evil.

But I grew up in school learning about Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, and Italy under Mussolini. That trinity is where the three Big Bad Words come from: Hitler made “Nazi” a bad word; Stalin made “Communist” a bad word; and Mussolini made “Fascist” a bad word. No one really even understands what any of these terms originally meant: we now just throw them around as insults to each other, in lieu of fact-based arguments, because history is boring.

When the cashier at the supermarket puts too many soup cans in the bottom of one of your bags, thus causing its paper to rip and the foodstuffs to fall out onto the floor when you try to lift it, you turn in anger and shout at that cashier’s face: “You are a Nazi and a Commie and a Fascist, because you bagged my groceries foolhardily.”

Meanwhile, when your own leaders are performing the actions that Nazis and Fascists prescribed (I leave out Communists here, as the US has no interest in anything that helps its individual communities; the only element of Stalin’s nightmare that the US cares to emulate is his Authoritarianism: his Iron-Fist rule; for the software of Communism can be implemented either transparently, with full participation of the people, or stupidly; and Stalin ruined it for everyone by governing stupidly; that is: with secrecy & spying from a top-down hierarchy, much like the post-WW2 US gov't), I say, when your own leaders are embracing Authoritarian, Fascist, and Nazi tactics, you wholly condone these developments, because you call whatever your country does “Freedom and Democracy”, no matter what the actual results are.

And eventually these terms themselves will turn, repent of their etymology, and come to mean what the Powers that Be desire; for words are defined by usage. And this is fine (weirdly, this is a type of democracy in action).

Here’s what I’m trying to say: We can all understand how total and loving is the sacrifice made by our family members who’ve served and died in our country’s armed forces; so no one wants to blame an individual trooper for the badness of her nation's overarching ideas — nevertheless, one wants to ask: At what point does it become absurd to honor generally and credulously one’s country’s military? “Support our troops” we say; meanwhile our troops are fighting “Forever Wars” that everyone agrees are wrongheaded, and that international law decrees illegal, and the troops themselves decry as immoral.

Can we all agree that it sounds less than intelligent to say “Naziism is ugly, and I’m against it; but the individual Nazi soldiers deserve to be honored for their sacrifice.” Didn’t we already determine, collectively as humankind, that the defense of “I was only following orders” is no excuse for acting inhumanely?

It’s easy to see the ridiculousness of these points of view, when the focus is a foreign system that’s been defeated, from a country that “lost the war.” (I put this phrase in hooks to indicate that I question the idea of winning and losing, when it comes to entire nations and worldwide conflict: I think that everyone loses; or rather that 99% of us take the loss, and only that very small remaining 1% benefit: their victory is total and lasting; which is why you see this or that ex-Nazi show up in US history, time and again, in positions of power.)

But I realize, at this point, that I myself have lost the battle of my own entry here: I’m just rambling; and this is going nowhere, cuz I ain’t saying nothing that’s not already been said. So let me try to turn toward the personal:

I have family and loved ones who served in the military. My dad got drafted during the Vietnam era, but he didn’t get sent into combat: he lucked out and was stationed in Alaska, where he met a friendly moose. My uncle did serve in Vietnam and saw combat — of course, only he can speak for himself; but I suspect that that experience changed him utterly: I look at it as taking his life away from him, at least what it could have been: it makes me wonder if you can even participate in modern warfare and come out alive — either way, it seems that you die; for you are either slain physically, or you are slain spiritually. You can’t return from these money-power wars and maintain your full humanity, unless you dedicate the rest of your life to anti-war activism.

I specify that the wars are for money & power (never for defense) — & I could add “etc.” because there are many things that the bigwigs (who always avoid combat themselves) are willing to send poor people off to die for. But it would be different if we were actually fighting for our freedom: then the experience wouldn’t necessarily break one’s spirit. And it would be easier to honor slain soldiers if we knew that they gave their lives to, say, break the chains of peonage. Instead, their ultimate sacrifice helped oil corporations maintain an advantage in the marketplace.

Stating this plainly, at first glance, may seem insulting; but isn’t the actual insult the fact itself: that those who have the power to determine what the nation does with its soldiers chose to use them in this fashion? Anyone who sends a soldier to fight on behalf of a corporation rather than to protect her country has insulted that soldier.

& think about what corporations are: multinational, transnational. That means they have no allegiance to a particular country; instead, they wriggle between all countries. They’re universal anti-patriots, equal-opportunity traitors. Why don’t those US citizens who love the military hate corporations, at least the transnationals? Isn’t the mere idea of an entity that can span beyond while also penetrating within your nation’s borders exactly what ye despise, ye military advocates? Multinationals are super-parasites. They suck the blood from many hosts at once. Unlike regular parasites, which die when their host dies…

I’m tired of talking about this. Also I’m worried that, by criticizing transnationals, I’m coming off as a hyper-nationalist. So I feel the need to explain what I really want:

I want all nations to be like city-states in one global country. In my own tiny personal existence, I live near the towns of Burnsville and Rosemount: now, when I ride my bike from the former to the latter, there are no guards at the border who detain me and torment me with questions, sexually abuse me, disappear me and then steal my children and kill them — no, I probably wouldn’t even know where Burnsville ends and Rosemount begins, if it weren’t for the pretty wooden sign that says “Welcome to…” (& the birds all shat on the name so you can no longer read it). This is exactly how it should feel when you travel from any nation to any other nation.

I know that people will call me a naive utopian for saying this; for those who think that there should be a strong border between, say, the US and Mexico, believe that they are justified in this view on account of the impolite behavior that they presume will ooze usward if the border is removed. Let me answer this philosophy:

Human beings are only impolite if they’ve been treated impolitely; and our stupid intelligence agencies, which act in secret without our permission, have been doing impolite things for years to our beloved neighbors (especially the nations south of us), as we now know from declassified documents, leaks, and exposés; so I think that it’s our responsibility to amend the atrocities that our own reckless agencies brought about. We need to admit that secret warmongering doesn’t mix with democracy: you can’t have both; only one or the other — so let’s choose democracy: direct bottom-up control by the People, wholly transparent; then let us immediately address, via diplomacy and aid, the impoliteness that we’ve caused in foreign realms. Let us attain the point where the only incidents of violence anywhere on Earth are individual acts of passion: say, someone throws a water cooler in anger because their team made a bad play in volleyball. This is better than building yuge borders.

In other words, I have advanced political ideas. Don’t you think that I should be put in charge of the CIA and the FBI and the ATF and ICE and all the other acronyms? CNN and FOX news, too — sure, I’ll take on the extra responsibility. What I’d do with all these entities is dissolve them, but I’d be gentle about it: I’d make sure that all the very fine people who work for these places have even better careers doing even more important, equally distinguished work, when their present establishments fold: the difference is that henceforth they’d be operating transparently, so their good deeds can be overseen by the world’s citizenry: therefore everyone will honor these agents & directors & newscasters: they’ll be told “Thanks for your service,” anytime anyone meets them on the street, as their job is now improving the world, not stirring up trouble secretly everywhere on behalf of the ultra-rich.

Yeah, the problem is that too often, when regular folks find out about the bad things that their secret agencies and corporate propaganda outlets are doing, they wanna shout insults and terminate those people’s employment — but this only makes the secret groups and private corporations worried about their survival, and your anger justifies their paranoia; thus they ramp up the surveillance on their own populations and customers. We need to be nicer to them. If our revolution is violent & vindictive, we’ll only be mirroring the ugliness that made us wanna rebel in the first place. We’ll have become what we beheld, which should repulse us. I think this is what Jesus meant, in that part of Matthew’s gospel (5:38-48) where he goes up high on a mountain and teaches his disciples:

You’ve heard it’s been said, “Eye for eye! Tooth for tooth! Justice! Vengeance! They bombed us & knocked down our towers, now we need to go kill people and break things!!!” But I Jesus say to you: “NO, stop! Hold your horses; calm down. RESIST NOT EVIL: but whoever smacks your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And you can replace the word ‘cheek’ with ‘skyscraper’, and the word ‘smacks’ with ‘flies an airplane into’, if you like: it’s all the same idea. Retaliation is the problem, not the solution: it’s like waves in the sea; if you want a clear surface, yet a wave affronts it, the solution is not to splash your arms around and make more waves, but rather wait patiently for the current wave to subside — only then will the sea become as clear as a sheet of glass, and you can walk on its surface.”

And if any man sues you in the court of law, and takes away your cape, let him have the rest of your suit as well. It’s not the costume that affords you superpowers: it’s your inward strength — the Poetic Genius.

And if anyone asks you to go on a 500-meter bike ride, make it a full kilometer. “Underpromise and overdeliver,” as the FBI negotiator Gary Noesner, played by Michael Shannon, says in the six-part miniseries Waco (2018).

Give to whoever asks anything from you, and never turn away or deny anyone who needs to borrow anything from you. Do not impose sanctions on other nations!

O and here’s another thing you might have heard people say: “Love your country & support its troops; BUT HATE THE ENEMY!!!” Instead of this, I Jesus say unto you, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you (& that means the so-called terrorists), and pray for whoever despitefully persecutes you — even those pro-choice jerks who wanna legalize the termination of pregnancies: just pray for them, and let God change their mind: don’t bomb their abortion clinics, for then you’ve sunk to the level of the accursed terrorists, and we’ll all have to love you and give you a hug.”

My point is this: Don’t worry about righting wrongs and wronging rights: leave that all up to God, our heavenly guardian. We have no idea why God allows the sun to rise on the evil AND on the good (you’d think that he’d deny sunlight to all sinners, because they deserve nothing but coldness and sliminess: in fact, if I had my druthers, I’d send them all to an afterlife in the ocean; and I’d only allow you, me, and God to live forever after in heaven, up in the sky, extremely happily); likewise, nobody has any idea why God allows his raindrops to fall on the just AND on the unjust. He simply rains wherever he wants to rain; & usually it ruins a parade somewhere. That is all.

Cuz if you love ONLY those who love you, what reward can you expect? I mean, even Republicans love their own fellow party members.

And if you befriend ONLY your own fellow businesspeople in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, then what are you doing that any other fool wouldn’t do? Don’t even the Democrats herd together? Why don’t you try branching out a little? For there’s more to heaven and earth than is contained in your philosophy, Horatio.

& there is no history, there’s only biography; as Ralph Waldo Emerson always sez. Therefore, pay no mind to labels & groups: real Genius couldn’t care less about labels or groups. Instead, seek to emphasize what we all have in common; for what divides us is already painfully obvious.