The Walkabout: Part Deux und a halvensteugen

When last we left our heroes, they were about to be dipped in a vat of caramel by the evil villain McSnickers but luckily, Dustin who was the more "fabulous" of the pair, came up with a solution involving window treatments and dimmer switches...



Uh, wait. That's not what happened at all. It was throw pillows and dimmer switches. Gotta get this stuff right people. Sigh. Amateurs.

Anyway, we left off with T and I having escaped the deadly gangland of the Hood in Newburgh and eventually (and I mean eventually) got to our KOA destination. The Kabin (Get it? KOA? Kabin? Ahahahaaahaha...oh nevermind) reminded me a tad of Friday the 13th but the manager assured me that Jason was on vacation in Cabo so we were relatively safe. Now, time for a scheduled flashback (man I hate the regular flashbacks)...

Saturday, June 27
Okay. We slept in a little (*cough* noon *cough hack*) but the scariness of Newburgh took a lot outta us. Well, I got my typical morning manicure, pedicure, mud bath, massage and exfoliation. We were ready to roll around 6:00 in the morning. Ha! I kid. No, we left the Kabin at like 1:30 in the P.M. We had to follow Jenn, Dee and Jeane to Susan's house because apparently no one in NY state believes in road signs! It's like you need to be clairvoyant or something to find your way anywhere. Okay, we made it to Susan's for the BBQ (I always wanted to be redneck and say BBQ). What can I say about the BBQ? Hmmmmmm. We came, we saw, we left...yeah, that sums it. LOL I slay me. No, really the BBQ was nice and Susan's house is on a very nice plot'o land. There were pugs up the wazoo and a bunch of people I hadn't met before but ended up liking. Shout out to Bridge (read Jane Eyre), Lisa, Christine (and Otis), Felicia (wascawwy wabbit), Kater (watch out for the killer groundhog) and Susan/Joan for hosting. One of the purttier things was watching fireflies after sunset. It was like little stars flashing around you. It was grooooooovy, maaaaaaaaan. Then we followed peeps back to the deathtra...I mean Kabin. Pugs were seriously tired and snored alllll night.

Sunday, June 28
So, we had more ambition this day (i.e. got up at 2:00 in the afternoon) so we debated what to do. In the end, Susan, Lois, Joan, T and I went to Hyde Park and visited the FDR Presidential Library and their estate, Springwood. The mansion was dark and old and dark and cramped and did I mention it was dark? It was interesting though. FDR's and Eleanor's gravesite was in a pretty little rose garden. Plus there was an art piece made out of two sections of the Berlin Wall. Very cool but they had a bronze bust of FDR and Churchill's fat head. He was crashing the party I think. We then went to a seafood shanty (I've always wanted to say shanty) on the shore of the Hudson River. The outside patio where we ate was built right on the water. There was a flock of duckies and a gaggle of geeses. Jenn, Dee, Ian and Jeane joined us. I really wanted to order the duck breast but I had to get permission from the mama duck first. Here's how it went:
me: So, uh, hi.
mama: *waaack*
me: So, I was, uh, thinking of ordering one of you, er, one thing like you and I just don't want my, uh, head to get attacked. And don't tell me you wouldn't. I've seen The Birds!
mama: *waaack wonck*
me: So we have an agreement? Excellent! I'm gonna go, uh, eat one of, er, your disssstant relatives. You, um, take care. Watch your carb intake. It's important!
Well, it went well and the duck was yummy although I think one of them was eyeing me from the water. Anyway, we went back to Psychotic Murderer La...I mean the KOA and tried to fry marshmallows but the 308% humidity made that difficult. The ladies went to sleep and we went inside the wooden tomb, er, uh, kabin after leaving the pugs there alone for a time. Well, they tore stuff off our little desky thing and The Puppy (e.g. Sammy) learned a new trick. He peed on our bed and got up on T's pillow, while we were watching him, and let loose a gusher, then looked at us like Voila! The trick, she is done! Ohhhhh, we wanted to punt him like a football, but he just got spankins and to sleep on the floor that night. Puppies!

Monday, June 29
We had to wake up earlier because people were gonna cruise home and we had to say goodbye. It was tearful for me, mostly because T accidentally sprayed me with mosquito stuff. It tastes fruity actually. So we made our adieu's and left in the afternoon. We made our way by towns called Fishkill, Plattekill, Valkill and Wallkill. What in the hell haven't they killed there? It was a little creepy after a bit. Maybe Jason came back because his vacation days werw running out. That evening, we drove across Pennsylvania. What's it like there? One word: Scranton. Enough said. We stayed in Youngstown, OH that night. The place creeped T out. I thought it was because of the killer tumbleweeds just beyond the parking lot. Somehow, we survived the night.

Tuesday, June 30
Alrighty, having got the heck away from the Teenage Mutant Killer Tumbleweeds from Outer Spaaaaaaaaace, we drove the looooooong leg. We went through Ohio (all I have to say about Ohio is toll booth much? I mean, Good Lord) and Indiana (stopped at Notre Dame. woohoo!) and through Chicago (I mean through Chicago. Nothing like speeding through Chicagoland @ 70 MPH while little tiny cars dart around you. I was fine. T, on the other hand, needed Xanax. There was none. Oh well. We made it back to Rockford, IL and, well, we remained there.

Wednesday, July 1 & Thursday, July 2
So, we awaken on Wednesday and get ready to leave and we turn on the wheelchair and...nothing happens. I mean nothing! I could hear crickets. So, T goes through a cursory exam of my electric hell buggy and concludes that there's something wrong. Thank heaven for T...LMAO...ah, I love her. Well, we're in Illinois and my chair's broken and we have 0 good ideas. We hadda lotta bad ideas (most involving Tequila, a paintball gun and two small oranges) but no good ones. Once we realized how expensive oranges were, we started making calls. We phoned home (Missoula) and go nowhere. Then we called Rockford Orthotics and they had dudes who could, like, fix the cart. Righteous! Okay, no more surfer talk. T had to drive me in the van, had to drive south like 8.63 Million blocks and then drove me into their shop in this very neo-classical building downtown. We were there for 2 hours but they did get me running. Turns out it was the radiator. ROFLMAO...man, I kill me. Anyway, these guys were awesome and total shout out to them. Now, problem. We were supposed to be in Worthington, Minnesota that night. Instead, we stayed in Rockford which is a nice town. It just blew our extra day to visit Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Missing them sucked lemons. Wednesday was hard on T so she partook of Guinness and other liquified solid foods and we ate deepdish again. Thursday we actually left Rockford. I listened to my Ipod and we made it to Worthington. Worthington ended up being a story unto itself...

Thursday night, July 2 running over into 3
All the way on the trip, we made accommodations the day before we arrived. T checked that the establishments were puggy and that the beds in the hotel would work with the crane thingy I use to transfer. Basically, we needed a bed that the crane thingy could roll completely under or I couldn't get in bed. T was incredibly specific about asking about the bed and having people check the specific room before we reserved it. Worthington was no different...until we got there at 10:30 to find out that an old guy "misstated" the type of bed there. So, we couldn't stay there. Yippee! The desk lady made an arrangement with the Super 8 a few miles away, so we went there...and found out it wouldn't work either. By now it was 11:30 P.M. and had no room. Out of desperation, we called the Holiday Inn Express which had the correct bed but was totally unpuggy. We asked the Manager if he could make an exception under the circumstances. His answer was no! So, the Holiday Inn Express in Worthington, Minnesota is run by a jerk. Finally, sometime around 1:00 A.M., the original place offered a roll-away for me and we took it. It was not comfortable but it was literally our only option.

Friday, July 3
We checked that morning about our hotel for that night and discovered that it wasn't workable. We actually called the Holiday Inn Express in Wyoming and they were surprisingly puggy. Weird, I know. We drove accross South Dakota and ran into rain. I'm talking think-Noah-gave-us-the-finger-when-we-passed-him type rain. Ick. But we did take a picture of a giant dinosaur thing in South Dakota. Yea Ian! We finally floated outta SD and into Wyoming. Our night went normally there.

Saturday, July 4
We hit the road early and made it back into Montana. We drove and drove and drove. Puggies were tired, T was tired and I started talking in an odd Chinese accent. We arrived back home at roughly 11:30 P.M. and the pugs who we didn't take got very happy. Kari wheezed and stuck to T, Ripley gave T moochy moochy moochies. Harley barooed. All of them except the puppy slept with us. It was happy, comfy and puggy.

And we all pugged puggily after...
so far...:D

***fin***

The Walkabout

walk·a·bout (wôk'ə-bout')
n.
1. Australian: A temporary return to traditional Aboriginal life, taken especially between periods of work or residence in modern society and usually involving a period of travel through the bush.

Well, I'm not Aboriginal but the overall concept fits. Theresa and I recently returned from a twelve day journey from Montana to Upstate New York and back. We went to see dear friends of ours who live there. We took three of our SIX (yes I said six, 6, VI) pugs: Ugga the Commander, Daisy the Apparent Travelin' Pug and Sammy the Potentially Schizoid Force of Chaos and Entropy that is Called PUPPY! Five beings in sum, approximately 5,000 miles roundtrip and enough luggage to start a mercantile. I will refer to this trip as the walkabout.

Couple'a things you should know about me before I recount this:
A) I hate the "road" part of roadtrip. Being a passenger through farmland that surrounds me for miles and miles and miles and miles and mil...sorry, I dozed off momentarily. Let's just say that the 1500th cow you see looks exactly like cow numero uno except cow 1500 talks to you as you go by. (Moooo...uh, mooooo...yup, mooo-eroni...okay look, you gotta get me outta here silver van dude...they feed me GRASS and leave me outside ALWAYS and I think they might be plotting something BAD for my future...HEY, where you goin'? HEY, COME BACK. HEEEEYYYYY!)
B) I had to go without TV for THREE (3, III) days. THREE! I had a slight psychotic break after day two but the Methadone helped me with the shakes. Still, I lost track of whether Craig would stay with Carly even though Carly's Ex Jack hates Craig and Carly's sister Rosanna, who Craig tried to murder, thought it was bad for Carly and Craig to be together especially given Carly's RAGING alcoholism which Craig didn't know about which was happening on my soap while TV deprived.
C) I swear to God my IQ dropped instantly when we entered Wisconsin and Indiana. Suddenly, I wanted to say words like "feller" and "okie doke." I mean, WHAT THE HELL?! Oh and the entire radio dial layout was COUNTRY COUNTRY CHRISTIAN COUNTRY POLITICS CHRISTIAN and ONE STATION THAT PLAYED SHOWTUNES! Theresa had to strap me in the van to stop me from hurling myself out of the vehicle.

Well, here's we go. Monday, June 22 we left home. We made it to Glendive, Montana (565 miles) around 10:00 P.M. Notes? East Montana wasn't as scary as I thought. I was only chased by crazy sheepherders ONCE for like 50 miles. No biggie. Oh and the hotel we stayed in fronted as a DVD rental place.

Tuesday, June 23 is labeled NORTH DAKOTA cuz that's basically where we were the WHOLE day. I was dreading this part because it was flat and the freeway goes STRAIGHT across the whole state. You could attempt land speed records on the road because it was THAT straight. However, the western 1/10th of ND was palatable because of The Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt Natl. Park. Think of the Badlands as like the Grand Canyon except 20 feet deep or so. Still, it was scenic. We stayed in Alexandria, Minnesota (495 miles worth of driving) that night.

Wednesday, June 24 we had "fun" or so Theresa (T) tells me. We navigated through the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) without causing a major traffic incident. Minor one's don't count. Anyway, we entered Wisconsin on the lookout for red barns which were EVERYWHERE. Aside from that, Wisconsin kinda reminded me of the location of the movie Deliverance. I got concerned anytime we even got NEAR a stream. (Say, I gotta right purty face....) We exited Wisconsin unmolested and stayed in Rockford, Illinois (467 miles).

Thursday, June 25 started well because we got Chicago deepdish pizza (yummy). By the way, Rockford is an awesome town. Nice place to settle if not for the attack of the killer tornadoes occasionally. So, we start well...until we hit the labyrinth of Dante's hell also called CHICAGO! We went 50 miles in FOUR hours. Eventually I could've driven my WHEELCHAIR faster. After escaping the labyrinth (and Minotaur) we still had a ZILLION miles to go to make Cleveland where our accommodations were. It was like 7:00 P.M. when we entered Indiana. Now I can say this, if you want to go through a city QUICKLY, do it at 3 in the morning. We CRUISED through Cleveland. I'm talking 50 mph DOWNTOWN cruising. Awesome! Except for the 3:00 A.M. part, of course. We stayed in this creepy burb of Cleveland called East Lake (name's straight outta Friday the 13th) and in a creepy hotel that T and I SWEAR was a refurbished asylum. It had wards and a monolithic dining hall. Coming in at 3:30 in the morning made it so much more creepy that I think I just peed my pants. Before we went to sleep, I estimated a measly 58.3% chance of "disappearing mysteriously." Never happened. Rockford to East Lake was 458 miles.

Friday, June 26 we left "creep" lake ASAP. We went along Lake Erie through a sliver of Pennsylvania into New York where we rode the southern border of the state to near kinda close to our approximate destination. I'm describing it this succinctly because I, uh, kinda slept through the Pennsylvania part. I did awake to see Jamestown, NY with a beautiful view of a lake. Then we drove through a little town called Cuba, NY which had Ye Olde Cheese Shoppe which we procured cheese from. There were a couple cool lookin' churches there. Then we went by Corning where they make Corningware. Then the sun went down, the humidity went up and it rained earlier which equals FOG. Fog like in the movie The Mist type fog. Finally, at 1:00 A.M. we rolled into Newburgh which was still like a THOUSAND miles from where we were supposed to be. Well, we called our friends for guidance and they promptly told us to GET OUT OF NEWBURGH! Bad hood apparently although East Missoula was scarier than that place. Finally, they drove out and guided us to...some weird place cuz they lost us. Anyway, we figured it out and made it to camp alive kinda. Creep lake to camp=504 miles and 14 cents.

Apparently, this is gonna be a two parter. I be stopping now. I'm tired and well tired and uh tired. Yeah. That. Tired. Whew. Hard work.

Rebellion, Chapter 35, The Brothers Karamazov

"Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level -- but that's only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can't consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it? -- I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.""That's rebellion," murmered Alyosha, looking down."Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.""No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

Dostoevsky

The greater of evils

Why Misgovernment Was No Accident in George W. Bush’s Washington

by Thomas Frank

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past, that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.
I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president’s friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.
How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president’s former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president’s liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.
But the onrushing flow swamps all taxonomies. Mass firing of federal prosecutors; bribing of newspaper columnists; pallets of shrink-wrapped cash “misplaced” in Iraq; inexperienced kids running the Baghdad stock exchange; the discovery that many of Alaska’s leading politicians are apparently on the take — our heads swim. We climb to the rooftop, but we cannot find the heights of irony from which we might laugh off the blend of thug and Pharisee that was Tom DeLay — or dispel the nauseating suspicion, quickly becoming a certainty, that the government of our nation deliberately fibbed us into a pointless, catastrophic war.

Bad Apples All Around

So let us begin on the solid ground of these simple facts: this spectacular episode of misrule has coincided with both the political triumph of conservatism and with the rise of the Washington area to the richest rank of American metropolises. In the period I am describing, gentlemen of the right rolled through the capital like lords of creation. Every spigot was open, and every indulgence slopped out for their gleeful wallowing. All the clichés roared at full, unembarrassed volume: the wines gurgled, the T-bones roasted, the golf courses beckoned, the Learjets zoomed, the contractors’ glass buildings sprouted from the earth, and the lobbyists’ mansions grew like brick-colonial mushrooms on the hills of northern Virginia.
Democrats, for their part, have tried to explain the flood of misgovernment as part of a “culture of corruption,” a phrase at once obviously true and yet so amorphous as to be quite worthless. Republicans have an even simpler answer: government failed, they tell us, because it is the nature of government enterprises to fail. As for the great corruption cases of recent years, they cluck, each is merely a one-of-a-kind moral lapse unconnected to any particular ideology — an individual bad apple with no effect on the larger barrel.
Which leaves us to marvel helplessly at what appears to be a spectacular run of lousy luck. My, what a lot of bad apples they are growing these days!
Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system’s first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exists to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials. We Are the Government, insisted the title of a civics primer published in the earnest year of 1945. “The White House belongs to you,” its dust jacket told us. “So do all the other splendid buildings in Washington, D.C. For you are a citizen of the United States.” For you, young citizen, does the Post Office carry letters to every hamlet in the nation. For you does the Department of Agriculture research better plowing methods and the Bureau of Labor Statistics add up long columns of numbers.
The government and its vast workforce serve the people: The idea is so deep in the American grain that we can’t bring ourselves to question it, even in this disillusioned age. Republicans and Democrats may fight over how big government should be and exactly what it should do, but almost everyone shares those baseline good intentions, we believe, that devotion to the public interest.
We continue to believe this in even the most improbable circumstances. Take the worst apple of them all, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose astonishing career as a corruptionist has been unreeling in newspaper and congressional investigations since I came to Washington. Abramoff started out as a great political success story, a protégé and then a confidant of the leaders of the conservative faction of the Republican Party. But his career disintegrated on news of the inventive ways he ripped off his clients and the luxury meals and lavish trips with which he bribed legislators.
Journalistic coverage of the Abramoff affair has stuck closely to the “bad apple” thesis, always taking pains to separate the conservative movement from its onetime superstar. What Abramoff represented was “greed gone wild,” asserts the most authoritative account on the subject. He “went native,” say others. Above all, he was “sui generis,” a one-of-a-kind con man, “engaged in bizarre antics that your average Zegna-clad Washington lobbyist would never have dreamed of.”
In which case, we can all relax: Jack Abramoff’s in jail. The system worked; the bad apple has been plucked; the wild greed and the undreamed-of antics have ceased.

Misgovernment by Ideology

But the truth is almost exactly the opposite, whether we are discussing Abramoff or the wider tsunami of corruption. The truth is as obvious as a slab of sirloin and yet so obscured by decades of pettifoggery that we find it almost impossible to apprehend clearly. The truth slaps your face in every hotel lobby in town, but we still don’t get the message.
It is just this: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we’ve come to expect from Washington.
The correct diagnosis is the “bad apple” thesis turned upside down. There are plenty of good conservative individuals, honorable folks who would never participate in the sort of corruption we have watched unfold over the last few years. Hang around with grassroots conservative voters in Kansas, and in the main you will find them to be honest, hardworking people. Even our story’s worst villains can be personally virtuous. Jack Abramoff, for example, is known to his friends as a pious, polite, and generous fellow.
But put conservatism in charge of the state, and it behaves very differently. Now the “values” that rightist politicians eulogize on the stump disappear, and in their place we can discern an entirely different set of priorities — priorities that reveal more about the unchanging historical essence of American conservatism than do its fleeting campaigns against gay marriage or secular humanism. The conservatism that speaks to us through its actions in Washington is institutionally opposed to those baseline good intentions we learned about in elementary school.
Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job. Repairing it will require years of political action.
Conservatism-in-power is a very different beast from the conservatism we meet on the streets of Wichita or the conservatism we overhear talking to itself on the pages of Free Republic. For one thing, what conservatism has done in its decades at the seat of power is fundamentally unpopular, and a large percentage of its leaders have been men of eccentric ideas. While they believe things that would get them laughed out of the American Sociological Association, that only makes them more typical of the movement. And for all their peculiarity, these people — Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, and the whole troupe of activists, lobbyists, and corpora-trons who got their start back in the Reagan years — have for the last three decades been among the most powerful individuals in America. This wave of misgovernment has been brought to you by ideology, not incompetence.
Yes, today’s conservatives have disgraced themselves, but they have not strayed from the teaching of their forefathers or the great ideas of their movement. When conservatives appoint the opponents of government agencies to head those government agencies; when they auction their official services to the purveyor of the most lavish “golf weekend”; when they mulct millions from groups with business before Congress; when they dynamite the Treasury and sabotage the regulatory process and force government shutdowns — in short, when they treat government with contempt — they are running true to form. They have not done these awful things because they are bad conservatives; they have done them because they are good conservatives, because these unsavory deeds follow naturally from the core doctrines of the conservative tradition.
And, yes, there has been greed involved in the effort — a great deal of greed. Every tax cut, every cleverly engineered regulatory snafu saves industry millions and perhaps even billions of dollars, and so naturally securing those tax cuts and engineering those snafus has become a booming business here in Washington. Conservative rule has made the capital region rich, a showplace of the new plutocratic order. But this greed cannot be dismissed as some personal failing of lobbyist or congressman, some badness-of-apple that can be easily contained. Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about greed, about the “virtue of selfishness” when it acts in the marketplace. In rightwing Washington, you can be a man of principle and a boodler at the same time.

The Wrecking Crew in Full Swing

One of the instructive stories We Are the Government brought before generations of schoolkids was the tale of a smiling dime whose wanderings were meant to introduce us to the government and all that it does for us: the miner who digs the ore for the dime has his “health and safety” supervised by one branch of the government; the bank in which the dime is stored enjoys the protection of a different branch, which “sees that [banks] are safe places for people to keep their money”; the dime gets paid in tax on a gasoline sale; it then lands in the pocket of a Coast Guard lieutenant, who takes it overseas and spends it on a parrot, which is “quarantined for ninety days” when the lieutenant brings it home. All of which is related with the blithest innocence, as though taxes on gasoline and quarantines on parrots were so obviously beneficial that they required little further explanation.
Clearly, a more up-to-date version is required. So let us follow the dime as it wends its way through our present-day capital. Its story, we will find, is the reverse of what it was in 1945. That old dime was all about service, about the things government could do for us. But the new dime is about profit — about the superiority of private enterprise, about the huge sums that can be squeezed out of federal operations. Instead of symbolizing good government, the dime now shows us the wrecking crew in full swing.
Our modern dime first comes to Washington as part of some good citizen’s taxes, and it leaves the U.S. Treasury in a payment to a company that has been hired to do work on the nation’s ports. Back in 1945, the government would have done the work itself, but now it uses contractors for such things. This particular contractor knows how to win a bid, but it doesn’t know how to do the work, so it subcontracts the job to another outfit. The dime follows, and it eventually makes up a worker’s salary, who incorporates it into his monthly car payment. From there it travels into the coffers of an auto industry trade association, which happens to be very upset about a rule proposed by a federal agency that would require cars to notify drivers when their tire pressure is low.
So the trade association gives the dime to a Washington consultant who specializes in fighting federal agencies, and this man launches challenge after challenge to the studies that the agency is using in the tire-pressure matter. It takes many years for the agency to make its way through the flak thrown up by this clever fellow. Meanwhile, with his well-earned dime, he buys himself a big house with nice white columns in front.
But this is only the beginning of the story. As we make our rounds of conservative Washington, we glimpse something much greater than single acts of incompetence or obstruction. We see a vast machinery built for our protection reengineered into a device for our exploitation. We behold the majestic workings of the free market itself, boring ever deeper into the tissues of the state. Ultimately, we gaze upon one of the true marvels of history: democracy buried beneath an avalanche of money.

Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, is the founding editor of The Baffler, a contributing editor at Harper’s, and, most recently, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His WSJ columns can be read at his website. He lives, of course, in Washington D.C. and this essay has been adapted from his new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (Metropolitan Books, 2008).

Personal Jesus

EDITOR'S NOTE
Okay, ya got me. I haven't graced these screens for a time. Sometimes the dead have little to say. I allow them their silence. Besides, much has occurred since last I wrote. I ran a campaign to get elected to the Montana Legislature. I will admit defeat in the Primary but I admit NO SHAME! I am proud of our campaign and what fun we had doing it. I would do it again in a heartbeat if time machines were things of reality and not fiction. To any and all who read this, I recommend running for office once in your life. It opens your eyes to the process in both the good aspects...as well as the negative. I've been observing the national campaign from this perspective and a few things have tweaked me. Hence my note ends and my entry begins.

I've become one of those people. I used to watch news in the evening and feel up to date, but over the past few years that changed. Now I'm one of the people who gets deep information online and use the news as pure gloss of current happenings. I call it the Cliff's Notes approach to news: Summarize and I can pick what I want. I peruse many sites but I check out Slate.com a lot because they have waaaaaay too much time on their hands. They analyze things to nanobits. Some's good, some's not but an article popped out at me last week. It was in their Jurisprudence section which is about all things legal. The writer (and no, I don't remember the name) was writing about Obama's answer key to a test he'd administered as an Instructor in law school. The piece was okay but the whole angle of it annoyed me. The writer implied that many of the suggested answers didn't show Obama's legal positions on issues. They were too general and too supportive of varied viewpoints. Ummm, oookay. That's probably because this was an EXAM for EDUCATIONAL purposes, not some judicial examination for a Presidential candidate. What were they expecting for the love of god?

Media has its place, but the obsessive actions are becoming overwhelming. In the past (early to mid 20th Century) Presidents were viewed as important but they were allowed some distance from public eyes. FDR was in a wheelchair for years and the public was unaware, Kennedy had the rumors of close friendship with a Hollywood actress and god knows what Nixon kept hidden. Okay, the Nixon thing made Executive privacy a problem but I kinda think we overcompensated a bit. Now, we examine and re-examine and re-re-examine these people until we're exhausted and I don't see how this obsessive pursuit helps. People now have jobs that are nothing but watching and waiting for candidates to screw up. Isn't that kinda sick? Like waiting jackals, they fidget and fight behind garish grins to have the first chance to break some kind of garbage news, destroying campaigns and people and families. Why?

In essence, why the hell was someone at Slate combing through an Obama answer key from years and years ago? What would have satisfied that person? For that matter, what would satisfy us all? If we check and check and check into the candidate's opinions, personality and everything else, we may find things flawless and ordered. Yeaaaaaaa, we found a Saint...but have we found a President? Simply put, we've exploded these events into American Messiah. Maybe Simon Cowell should be involved and we could vote by touch tone phone.

The President's a person (imagine you with a better education and overexposed in the media) and yet we act like we CANNOT vote for someone unless they 100% agree with us, show Solomon-like wisdom and incidentally walk on water or heal by touch or banish the demons of inflation and Iran with a wave of his mighty suited arm. Delusion, anyone? Well, we've let the politicians and media convince us that, unless a candidate is on the level of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, Muhammad, the Buddha, Zoroaster or Confucius, we CANNOT possibly vote for them. These expectations are insane and we really need to take our head outta the high-def, latte sipping, multitasking, cell phone texting, fact-a-second oven we're in and recognize reality. The personage of the President is important, but Jesus ain't walking into the White House. So, QUIT looking for him and ACCEPT the VERY HUMAN candidates for who they are.

Red Sand: An Elegy

EDITOR'S NOTE: I really wanna thank many people for their messages of support after the passing of my Gram. Specifically, I want to thank the Boatmans, Jeri, Ruth, the ladies at Case Management, Carrie, the ladies of DPHHS, Barb and everybody else who really reached out. I really really appreciate the sentiments. It's taken a while to process this but it's time I laid to rest my erratic thoughts. So, I guess we'll see. :D

Okay, I don't know how many of you have scattered the ashes of cremation. When we laid my brother Michael to rest, I had an incidental chance to see the ashes his broken body became. I saw a sparkling shower of reddish sand floating downward through a shaft of afternoon sunlight that found its way through the pines. I swear it was red like martian soil or like a summer sunset. I could envision myself trying to hold the dust in my hands as it inevitably trickled through my fingers to be caught by the western wind. These ashes are never meant to be clutched onto no matter how much we wish it otherwise. I learned the meaning of impermanence that day. All beings should be valued as gifts of the earth. We should also remember that earth takes all things back...eventually.

Gram had been sick for a long time. Even though she appeared to bear illness with the same stoic resolve she displayed in everything she did, it wore on her. She so rarely complained that the toll on her wasn't ever truly expressed. I heard it in the undertones and subtleties that a lifetime of being her grandson provided. The things she enjoyed became more difficult. I guess any rational person in her place would reach a point where they would ask at what price was it worth remaining in this miraculously flawed gift of a world? At what price?

I can't look at Gram's passing as an unfair act by a being who would rip her from me. Michael on the other hand...well, that's my contention with the Other. I will speak only of Gram here. Her life was blessed and cursed in one, colored with joy and pain and triumph and retreat. It was a long and worthy life. She left behind all who called her mom, gram, teacher and angel. We are her legacy in this world and making her proud is the greatest achievement we can reach. I will always try for her. It's who she raised me to be.

Now, I can only envision her journey to that place built for her, perhaps with Michael awaiting her. Although I may somewhat lack in trust for the gatekeeper and his master, I know that Gram has earned her way. The pillar of faith has ascended and her rest is reward for her faith. She remains in my heart and pangs of yearning to talk to her do overtake me, but they are short. I know what is must be. The red sand and the lessons she taught me are what I have left. For now, it's got to be enough. I do love you always Gram. Always.

D

ANNOUNCEMENT OF IMPORT

On the heels of my last blog, I want to make a formal announcement. I am currently one of two Democrats running in HD 91 (East Missoula to Clearwater to beyond Clinton.) This is a chance to become a Representative in the Montana Legislature during the 2009 Legislative Session. It is a great opportunity to have a person with a disability sit on the Joint Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. It's a real chance to make major progress on DPHHS policy toward the disabled, elderly and children. Currently, I'm organizing my campaign. For those who are interested in supporting the campaign, two things are needed. A) We need word-of-mouth and publicity. For any who know someone who lives out here, please mention my name and any good things you can think to say about me. I'd appreciate it. B) We also need donations to raise funds. I will hold a formal fundraiser in the near future, but I really need financial support because I'm running in a Primary against another Democrat. The Primary is in June so I need a workable budget to compete this early. Any who want to contribute, the limit for an individual donation is $130 but anything would be greatly helpful. If you want to donate, message me by email and we can make proper arrangements. I need as much support as possible because my Primary opponent, Tim Furey from the Bonner area, is formidible. So, publicity and funding should make a good start. I will publish a campaign website within the week and post the link here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. This is quite a challenge but I'm sure we can accomplish this goal together. Thank you my friends.

Dustin Hankinson

We Must Go Beyond

Like Kryptonite for Superman, this society saps me of strength and will. It always seems as if I've been exactly here before. Sometimes edges are a little too sharp and the walls are seemingly made of eggshell. It's like nobody ever dug far enough to find a solid footing for the collective house we find ourselves in. Yet we mostly act as though we don't feel unsettled. We've grown entirely too comfortable with the Nihilism at our doorsteps. Is this the way the world ends? Is this the way the world ends? Is this the way the world ends and what exactly is it that's slouching to Bethlehem? Yet still we exist, floating through while the sand creeps in to stifle us. What's more, most of us would probably WELCOME the chance to be buried in existence. After all, we are a people of scraps and leftovers who beg for crumbs and are happy, HAPPY to settle. I say NO MORE!

Yes we're disabled. Yes we're marginalized. Yes we're told over and over again that we're lucky for the gift of life and we should accept that and that alone. Ultimately, what truly blocks attainment of the world we want? It's us and our self pity and our settling and our apathy. A movement culminated in the 1960's that had it's roots take hold a century before. The African American Civil Rights movement, which continues to this day, stands as a model and a warning to those in the Disability Rights movement. The model is the tireless work millions of African Americans put in to improving their lot. All over the country, people pitched in to achieve the end of systemized segregation and to gain the ability to vote without harassment. They cared and pushed and didn't SETTLE. We need to LEARN AND EMULATE this kind of dedication.

The warning lies in what happens when a group gets a taste of what they want. When Segregation fell and people could safely vote, the marches ended and the boycotts were canceled. From where they started, the plight of African Americans seemed to have improved by light years by 1969. They had stopped the most glaring discrimination and for some that was enough. Of course, having a frightened and uncertain white Establishment kill their leader didn't help the Civil Rights movement any but I digress. Nothing excuses the "we accomplished everything we needed to and can now sit in Lazyboys and watch the Jeffersons" attitude of many people. The warning is this: SOME IS NEVER ENOUGH. We need to push until the World's EQUAL AND JUST for EVERYBODY or until the ground takes us back. It is the only worthwhile path.

Now, every few years, persons with disabilities are rounded up, taken to Helena and essentially BEG for their programs and services. I've seen this and even done this myself a few times. Well, I say WE ARE NOT BEGGARS OR CHARITY CASES OR THE "LAST AND THE LEAST." True empowerment is understanding that we have ALWAYS had the power to live and fight. Nobody gives it to us. It just IS. While playing the MLK role is tempting because of how much I personally believe in his wisdom, I can no longer bite my tongue or turn cheeks. Therefore, I choose to speak in the voice of Malcolm X. We got a raw deal and I ain't talking about being disabled. I have never thought of myself as lesser than any man. If "created equal" is remotely true, then we are as American as anybody, disability or not. If a place at the Table of Decision will not be given to us, we must TAKE IT! We are equal therefore we will BE equal. We must go beyond the begging and pleading. It is high time we took our places on the other side of the Legislative podium or City Council desk or Congressional Office door. It is time that representatives arose from the disability community to truly look after their interest and the interest of their disabled brothers and sisters. I will take up the sword of candidacy and challenge others to do the same. We must go beyond.

Sugar Burn

Editor's Note

Okay. This one's tricky. There's one aspect of disability I speak on in public but haven't mentioned it here as of yet. It's sexuality. More specifically, relationships and sexuality. I'm a PWD (person with a disability) that believes that sex is good, healthy and is a visible (somewhat ;) part of my life. Disabled persons ARE NOT eunuchs, nuns, asexual or "safe" because they have a disability. No need for mental pictures here. I'm just STRONGLY refuting a belief held by most persons without disabilities (PWODs) and by many in the disability community itself. It's HIGH TIME that people got this concept. PWDs ARE RELATIONSHIP MATERIAL AND GENERALLY LOVE SEX AS MUCH AS ANYONE ELSE! There. Now it's tricky because my current dearest T doesn't like to hear about previous dearests. Women are funny that way. LOL I'm doing it anyway because this episode in my saga has many points worth stating. If y'all don't hear from me before January, assume I'm grounded from the computer. HaHa. By the way, everything in this post actually HAPPENED to a PWD, namely me. Oh and no sympathy for me either. This chapter's been long closed.



Post Proper

Once upon a time there was a little Dustin...ahhhhh never mind. Inside joke. Here's my opening. Gwenyth. That's what I called her. Gwendolyn is just too long to spell a lot and I didn't wanna have to say three syllables. Gwenyth=two syllables=more better. I was 23 and staying in a dormitory on the University of Montana campus in Missoula. My friend Eric (also a PWD) and I moved from an apartment out on Riverside to campus to make transportation a non-issue for our class schedule. We stayed in a dorm mostly with four person "suites" and four single rooms with a private, accessible bathroom. I was ground floor in the female wing (SCORE FOR ME!) Eric was on a higher floor. I hung out up there a lot because he had a video game console. 'Nuff said.



Now we pulled this whole thing off by sharing care hours through a PA (personal assistant) agency. We usually ate together in the cafeteria. Then a PA would aid one of us to bed followed up by the other's routine. It worked for roughly two months until we separated hours for the sake of the PAs. Then we finished semester with different people.



Well, I started primarily with guy PAs. One stayed the entire semester. The other became "reassigned" in mid-semester. The agency hired a new person to help take the slack of the other PA. She was a 26 year old, redhead nursing student with light brown eyes. Gwenyth. She was hired primarily for Eric's hours yet we magnetically drifted until she became "my" PA (This was around the time we stopped sharing hours.)



My relationship with her started out weird and got stranger. The second day working with us, we were hanging with Eric in his room. E and I joked around while we watched movies and played video games. Somehow, I incidentally mentioned how I should get a haircut. Suddenly, she was asking if she could and I kinda said okay and fifteen minutes later I had a haircut (she kinda used E's scissors). Yeah, that was weird. As days went, she started to volunteer for my hours until she was my primary PA. Then she started to hang with me outside of work hours. I did like her so I didn't mind so much.



Early Spring turned late and she and I were together almost all the time. I had learned some about her but not a lot. I learned her live-in boyfriend worked hospital hours and was rarely around. I learned she was putting together a modeling portfolio because her looks fit that. I also learned that she had a child who was not in her custody and her goal was to get custody of the child. Yep, that's about it but I was influenced by other processes that blinded me to the obvious red flags.



I remember once when she was untying my shoes by kneeling beside me. She flipped her straight, auburn hair aside revealing a peaches & cream neckline. My heart skipped because I would have given a Kingdom to place my lips upon that flesh. That was it. I fell for her then. I will admit to being awkward about this falling thing so I didn't just blurt things out. Instead I indicated fondness and waited. Eventually she asked if I'd seen the movie My Best Friend's Wedding. I hadn't and said so to which she says I should because I reminded her of a character in the movie. I never saw the movie but I leveraged the comment into her admitting she liked me...a lot. I, being stupid, asked what we did next to which an "affair" was offered. I yearned for her so I consented. I was granted my wish of being with her although clandestinely. There were a lotta issues requiring secrecy. Her boyfriend couldn't find out (I actually thought she'd separate eventually). The PA agency couldn't know because PA/client relationships were fireable offenses. E couldn't know because he could tell the agency. It was a giant freaking mess and I was blind to it.



I was blind to the truth of things because, for the first time in a physical relationship, I found someone who wasn't scared of me possibly being too fragile or too inept or that the equipment wouldn't work properly. In the heat of the moment, things kinda flowed naturally and adaptation was presumed. That was the first time in my life someone treated me that way and it seemed worth it to me.



So we had the physics of the physical part down but I began to see another entire part of the equation. Although we shared our bodies, her mind started to frazzle and I was too inexperienced to know what to do. She believed that her boyfriend was spying on us, she started losing sleep over it and we distanced. Final straw was when the agency called her for a "meeting." She was POSITIVE I told them about the relationship. Then she did what shattered the entire thing: She accused me of PLOTTING this all along to get her fired and "ruining her life." Yeah, I lost it. I yelled that the idea of such a thing was insane and that I tried more than anybody to "protect" her. Suddenly she tells me about domestic violence she's experienced and that she doesn't know if she can trust me as a man. I cry about this and that she couldn't trust me to tell me earlier. Then she is crying because of her stress and I tell her that if she can't trust me after all that had happened, she never would and that I could do no more than I had. She got up and slammed the door on her way out. After that, we didn't touch non professionally again. We did find out that the meeting was about her taking more hours on weekends, but the "relationship" had ruptured and there was no fixing it. As the end of semester came, she informed me that her boyfriend proposed and they were moving to flatland somewhere so he could take a job there. Outwardly I said I hoped things went well. Inside I was confused, bitter and angry. When I went home to Superior for the Summer, we never saw each other nor talked again.



The other part of the equation was trust. We didn't have it. Also I missed a thousand red flags about the nature of things. Plus starting a PA relationship is not something I would recommend to everyone. Anyway, I got me in the mess but I also got me out. I learned things and eventually I met T and we worked together to get through problems. I'm not an inexperienced idiot and we've been together seven years. Wherever she is, I want to thank Gwenyth for teaching me what to do and how to approach an adult relationship with maturity. It's great knowledge to have. Well, now I'm going to chain myself in the basement. I guess you won't be hearing from me for awhile. Ah well. Women are funny that way.



D

A Distant Mountain

My soul crackled like brittle paper yellowed by the sun
alone in the sandy wind braced by my shadow behind
my silhouette wavered like a flag in the stillness
My will overcome by silence
I breathed without exhale
A ghostly caress of searing heat
Air rising in waves
I glimpsed a stony dagger
Obscured by vision blurred
The peak shined brightly
As if dipped in white blood
My curled hand clawed the air before me
Reaching to touch this mirage
This illusion
A dream
My ancient body of living stone
Staggered through the serpentine sand
To find that mountain that called to me
From so faraway

Look Ma, No Brain (function)

Creepy title apologetics
Okay. The title's a little creepy but it's intended humorously as most things are with me. You'll see. Sorry I haven't posted lately but quality before quantity, right? Anyway, here's a heap'o blogginess.

I'm writing about a mysterious time in my life. Not just mysterious as in hidden from others but mysterious as in mysterious TO ME. The reasons for that will become apparent but first I must rant and then take a quick trip back in time. First...the rant.

The Rant
THERE IS NO LIVING BEING MORE ANNOYING, GENERALLY PUKE INDUCING AND WASTEFUL OF VALUABLE AIR FOR WORTHWHILE HUMANS THAN ANN COULTER. NOBODY! Alright, here's the deal. She says MONUMENTALLY STUPID things. Not just stupid but MONUMENTALLY stupid. It's the kind of stupidity that archaeologists 3000 years from now will wonder at. Strike one? She called widows of men who died in 911 "broads." I assume the word "whores" made an appearance somewhere in the film cuttings from the interview. Strike two? She actually BELIEVES that WE ALL would be happier as Conservative lockstep drones. She really really believes that. Strike three happened last week. She was on a CNBC show called "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch." (Why? God only knows.) Anyway, he was interviewing her (Why, God?! Whyyyyyyyyyyy???) and she said that EVERYBODY SHOULD BE CHRISTIAN AND THAT...wait for it...JEWS SHOULD CONVERT TO BE "PERFECTED." Her words. Donny Deutsch is Jewish and she said it TO HIS FACE. Oh, and she laughed off his indignation. Piece'a work does not BEGIN to describe this chickoid. Yes, she is a chickoid...and a whole buncha shorter words I don't wanna use. However, I will say that the term "too stupid to live" actually applies to someone. Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time Travel
2001. I was in College at U of Montana and heavily involved in student politics and disability advocacy. I'd met my dearest T a year ago and we lived together in a tiny apartment while we slowly moved to our current home in EMo (East Missoula to the non-THUGS in da hizzouse). Health wise, I was okay except for strange respiratory attacks that were asthma-ish but I didn't have asthma. As months progressed to a year and beyond, my attacks got worse. I could barely breath, went unconscious for long-ass periods of time (days), I was always freezing and literally couldn't recall anything from one day to the next. The Docs had me on Oxygen, nebulizers and a preliminary diagnosis of dying to death. Okay, okay, it was actually the idea that my breathing muscles were too weak to breath and I couldn't get enough O.

2003. My lost year. Out of 365 days and 6 hours in that year, I remember maybe 20 or 30. Basically, I remember maybe a day out of that year. I was passed out more than I was awake. I was skeletal because I couldn't stay awake to eat. I call this my "smurfy" phase cuz I was mostly blue. December of that year, I recall asking T to come lay with me in home/bed.

"How long have I been asleep?" I asked because last I remembered I was up in my chair and didn't remember being put in bed.

"Since Tuesday," she said while brushing my cheek with her fingers. Tuesday. It was Thursday. I'd slept 2 days straight without being aware of it. It was like an alien abduction story: I had missing time. It hit me how I'd been living, what I'd become and I broke. I cried, sobbed, babbled in confusion and fear. She cried with me, held me, feeling the same fear. Eventually, I calmed. I looked straight into her wide blue eyes and told her straight that the odds were against me surviving the winter. I said it amazingly calm for as terrified as I was inside. Saying you aren't afraid of death ain't the same as staring it in the gaping maw. I was scared. She was scared. We were both losing me and helpless to stop it.

I don't know how I lived through that winter. I stayed unconscious, got thinner but lived. I guess it's the steel inside, the core of pure will that makes me both a blessing and a rather stubborn curse. Ask T. Really. I couldn't leave her here without me but, also, my brother perished in July 2003 (naturally during the year I could remember least) and I wasn't letting anything take me that same year. It would've broken mom and my grandmas hearts to lose me too. I never ever wanna hurt anyone that badly. So, with will, T's love, Docs help, I survived.

I got better or I wouldn't be writing this. Long story super short, it wasn't lack of O killing me, it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much CO2 stuck in my system because I couldn't exhale it out. I was dying of Carbon Dioxide poisoning. DUH. Any idiot (especially this idiot) should have figured THAT out. April 2004 I got a non-invasive ventilator that helps pull O in and blow the other crap out. In three months I became me again just skinnier. I began to rebuild my life and bang-zoom, here I am writing this.

Dying was scary. Not knowing why was scarier. I now believe that the mindset of a dying person is vital to the legacy they leave and perhaps the experience they have. Our minds frame everything from how we process senses, to personality and choice, even how we shape the world. It absolutely effects how we die. We imagine death as a "known quantity" as if we truly understand what it means and how it happens. I now believe it's not "known" at all. If our mind frames our knowledge and experience of death then death is as wide and deep as the human mind. Though we all possess mind, do we really understand it? I say maybe on the very surface levels but there are entire UNIVERSES underneath that we glimpse and can never grasp. Our mind creates our life as well as our death. Therefore, I think that to ensure our peaceful passing we should learn to cultivate peaceful mindsets and apply them to our lives. From there, serenity would become a natural part of the daily flow (wolf) of our lives. How could we not carry that peace with us as we flow beyond into the Great Next? How could fear or pain ever truly intrude on the sacred space we'd create for ourselves?

D

The Echelon

Redux
I began this topic aeons ago. I gave a cursory picture of a modern master class: Capitalist, Revisionist and American. I promised a future entry to explain the Echelon in detail. This is that work.

There is no more dangerous group of people on Earth than the Echelon. In the long run, the actions and values of these elite "leaders" can and probably will be the downfall of civilization as we understand it. As a side note, the single most dangerous thought humanity can embrace is the idea that we can control or heavily influence nature or a part of the natural world. Simply put, if it's man versus nature, nature wins. Always. As a species, it is a matter of being a compliment to the world, fitting in as the part of nature that we are. We are not nature's masters. We NEVER were.

Now, back on topic. How can I say the Echelon is dangerous, you're asking yourselves. Hell, you're probably wondering what this Echelon thing is at all. Let me preface this. The Echelon IS NOT a political party or idealogy. It IS NOT an income bracket. It's not a club, government or religion. The Echelon is a mindset and perspective of the world. They are economically progress oriented above ALL else. They are microcosmic, short term thinkers of the highest order. They have unshakable belief, almost faith, in heirarchy and rational systems of large size. They also tend to be egocentric or at least highly self-involved. Status matters greatly to the Echelon and they tend to value themselves and others according to status. Another general characteristic I've noticed is the complete and utter CLUELESSNESS about what harm they can cause to others by actions or just lifestyle. The Echelon is also very enamored with their judgments (i.e. judgmental) and their vision for how others should live forward into a specific future that matches the aforementioned judgments. There is also a very pronounced elitism within this group. This is a basic profile of one who is Echelon.

Here I will point out some demographics of the Echelon. They are predominantly white males of middle age or older. They possess wealth (upper middle class and above), beauty (as defined by whatever currently sells the best), power (either gained through the political process or as figures of authority, often represented by self-important Plutocrats) and/or fame (sometimes gained by looks, entertainment talent or by some spectacle that casts a less than stellar light on people). Of course, another way to become Echelon is to flush your soul down the Corporate hole to become an insanely, ridiculously overpaid Executive wonk. Kind of difficult, that last one. 'Tis far easier to simply be close family to Echelon (spouse, child, grandchild or even pet, if so inclined). Another general demographic is that Echelon tend to be Judeo-christian in belief and are far and away Conservative.

So, what's the danger? Well, if they are Echelon, what does that make us, the non-Echelon? We are the poor, disabled, minority or female, slave...er employee, burdensome public. In a word, we are Biomass. We are tools to help the Echelon attain wealth or status (ask yourselves this: for all the time you've worked, have you gotten wealthy? If not, take a guess who has. You're CEO thanks you. Kinda.), we are a market/herd to buy their stuff, we are the excuse for every crooked politician ever (I did what I thought best for the American People...), we are expendable military units who die while they play their global game of Risk, but most of all we are frightening. Frightening not because we have any power in the Echelon's opinion, but because we are LESSER in their eyes. We're envious they think. Individually we're just rats but if the smelly, diseased vermin gather, they could soil those in the shining fortress. Their less-ness could infect. Plus, we place SUCH a BURDEN on the scarce resources that the Echelon are self-entitled to. Eventually, it ALWAYS comes down to us (Echelon, wealthy, powerful, entitled, clean) versus them (Biomass, poor, limited power, beggars, unwashed). That spells danger right there. However, there is a far greater danger. The Echelon represents a hoarding, use-it-and-toss-it attitude (after all, in the long run we're all dead, right?). They strip land, resources, food & water. They need it FAR more than we, after all. In the name of progress & lifestyle, the Echelon has destroyed forests and races, poisoned the rain and soil, perhaps sent the world into a death spiral of chaos and extinction. But why should this bother them? THEY won't have to deal with consequences. They get all they can now even though their descendants may be consigned to a hellish world. Such an irresponsible disregard for life. There, the Echelon defined. Disregard for life. Somewhere, in a paneled, windowless room, a white-haired man hunches over an exquisite mahogany desk and smirks as he signs a declaration of war. Should call the economists, he thinks. Things are looking up.

Dustin J. Hankinson
9/12/2007

Before the World went Crazy, A Man Poured his Soul onto the Sacred Ground

Authentic text of Chief Seattle's Treaty Oration - 1854[Originally published in the Seattle Sunday Star, Oct. 29 1887]

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume - good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old [men who stay] at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Our good father in Washington-for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north-our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward - the Haidas and Tsimshians - will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children.
But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moon, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land.

Society would be perfect if it weren't for "people"

Hello my faithful and benevolent friends. I know some of you are cringing at this expecting that this will be the continuation of my last post. Well, lucky for y'all, it's not. That's next time. This one is more of my patented ranting. I will, however, leave you with one fact I've learned since my last post. It seems that in the Signals Intelligence Community (SigInt), there's an International surveillance program called Project ECHELON. It's generally administered by the NSA and gathers data from ALL correspondence, both foreign and domestic. Essentially, we've been being spied on without implicit knowledge for years. Just an interesting piece of info I found. On with the show.

Why do stars, celebrities, athletes, politicians and public persons in general need "people"? There's always statements made like "his people must have had him retract his (usually stupid) remark." Okay. Who are "people"? Where does one get "people"? Did the Founding Fathers have "people"? Did Lincoln have "people"? I don't recall the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement being responsible to any "people" during their struggles. "People." It's short for P.R. people. All these P.R. people and personal injury lawyers and "handlers" and Press Secretaries and publicists and spokespersons. Good god. When did all these people become the lubricant for the engine of popular culture? Why are most of them necessary at all?

Here's what I see as the reason for this exponential propagation of "people": a complete free fall of responsibility in American culture. I'm not referring to the "responsibility" batted around and spewed out by (mostly conservative) politicians, plutocracy and the narrow-minded. That's a type of "responsibility" that's suggested solution is to "not be the problem," hence you should be able to handle anything with privatization or just die. It really doesn't matter what somebody does as long as they're NOT OUR PROBLEM. That kinda responsibility is just a cop-out and device to maintain an ideological position that is untenable in human terms. It's a viral perspective so don't be infected.

The responsibility I'm talking about is something far more vital. It's taking responsibility for one's life and the consequences it incurs on others and the world. It's also, more specific to this post, taking responsibility FOR WHAT YOU SAY AND/OR DO. The "people" are hired as a way to circumvent this responsibility. They are sentries who wait for statements or events and then rush in to spin them, revise them or deny them. They would probably erase the public's memory with the blinky thingy in Men in Black if they could. But they can't. (Can they?)

Basically, if you say it, stand by it. Or don't say it. Wow, isn't that complicated? What a unique concept. Don't hire fake people to bury a statement which makes you fake by association. Just think before you speak publicly. (Memo to Imus.) Just think. Then you won't need people to rescue you. Life is really NOT rocket science. Tread mindfully and all things are your ally.

Let us eat cake

**EDITOR'S NOTE**

Exciting news! Your favorite blog has become it's own page. Now you can access this blog at anytime by bookmarking http://www.speaking4thedead.com/ . I've also added content at the bottom. After reading the latest post, scroll down to learn interesting things. Just diversifying a bit. More changes to come. Hang with me.



Main Entry

Okay. It's been a while. I've been waiting for the muse to gently whisper in my ear. Well, apparently, she's on vacation in Cancun. I'm on my own while she's drinking Margaritas at the beach. Oy! Given this unfortunate circumstance, I have to improvise. Falling back on my motto of "when in doubt take a Jello shot" I'm going to...wait, silly me. I meant the OTHER motto: "Think globally, act globally." (There's also a third motto that's more esoteric than the others: Love is its own justification.) Anyway, I'm going to espouse a cultural critique of Capitalist America. Be aware that THIS IS NOT MARXIST! I repeat this is NOT Marxist. While I generally find Marx's critique of Capitalism accurate, his prescriptions for the negative aspects of Capitalism are horrendously problematic. As example, refer to the recent history of Russia. That's a failed Marxist system. I, in my brilliance or madness depending on how you choose to perceive it, have begun to develop my own critique and prescription for our Capitalist culture. This post is the first in a series I've titled the Neo Systema or "New System" roughly translated. This first entry lays out the primary problem with Capitalist America as I see it. I call it the Echelon.

Echelon

There is stratification in society. There always has been. From Ancient Egypt with the Pharaoh and attendants to Greece with the Publicans to Roman Emperors and Senators through Feudal Europe with Manor Lords all the way to the present day. Societies, like soil over time, settle into layers. The mechanisms that cause the "layering" of society are various and culturally dependent. India's caste system is deliberate and separated by societal function. Priests will always retain higher status than artists in India because religious function is prized more than artistic function. In the West--Europe specifically--people have been sorted by level of wealth. Landed Aristocracy are generally highest and the homeless (beggars in old language) fit the role of Chandala or "unfit to be touched" in Indian. I'm referring to Feudal Europe so that I can create a contrast to contemporary America because our class system has evolved into something different than anything that came before.

America (U.S.) emerged from England and Holland primarily. We began with the English Aristocratic system with Monarchy and all. We were colonized and at the mercy of the British Empire's legal, economic and governmental system. The Revolutionary War was about throwing off the shackles of England to determine our own fate. After the war, we created a society that was deliberately anti-England and anti-aristocracy. We could not, however, cast away the mindset that created Aristocracy in the first place. Slavery was still an American institution, people began to seize land to assure themselves of status and wealth still mattered as a deciding factor in one's place in society. We had, in essence, created a feudal system here. Plantations were like Manors, slaves were like serfs. Society was stratified into white overseers, poor or foreign white people, a handful of free colored people and enslaved people of color at the bottom. It was very similar to Feudal times.

America remained this way until the Civil War which was essentially another revolution. The Confederacy wanted to keep the societal structure that had worked for them for 200 years. The Union was becoming more industrialized and depended less and less on slave labor. The North wanted the South to "catch up" industrially and move ahead as a unified nation. Ultimately, the Confederates lost and the Union forced it's will upon the rebel South. Now, we could analyze this result as the victory of humanitarians who wanted blacks treated equally over the tyrannical Southern slavers. There was that aspect to the war and many had the best intentions while liberating the slaves and reworking the labor system. Yet, I submit that humanitarianism wasn't the primary driver in the Civil War. My conception is that, like all societies, the driving factor was economic. The northern industrialists needed workers for the scads of factories popping up and they saw the southern slavers as capping what was a lucrative labor market. My assertion is the slaves were freed from the fields to become impoverished factory workers. It's a sort of "freedom," I guess. Poor whites were treated much the same as people of color at this time.

The era of tycoon had dawned. Names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford and Roosevelt became iconic. Strangely enough, while these families built estates with more-money-than-God fortunes, the life of the average worker was a struggle. Their lives were short, cramped and generally hard. They survived and did their jobs, raised their children, so life really wasn't THAT bad. It's just in comparison to the tycoon and family that things get ridiculously disparate. By their example, the tycoons unleashed a trend of entrepreneurship and wealth building that the World had never seen before. This economic explosion was based on certain values that can be detrimental. One is the division of people into employers and employees, wealthy and poor or great and average. The tycoons became viewed as a better "stock" of people who deserved exceptional treatment because they had amassed huge fortunes. It's somewhat akin to "Divine Right" except instead of kings it became the rich. Another problematic value that helped form the Echelon is the Objectivist idea that the "Great" and creative (and wealthy incidentally) have no real responsibility to society as a whole because society consists of "the mob" as presented in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and "looters and moochers" as presented in Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Basically, Objectivism's message is that society impedes the liberty of "Great" people to be "Great." It also transvalues the great and wealthy into victims of society who give their greatness to the thieving mob intentionally, knowing that they must "sacrifice" themselves to their greatness. This concept is called the "Sanction of the Victim" and one Objectivist goal is for the great and wealthy to abandon this sanction and follow individualistic paths of collecting more wealth (hoarding) and looking after their interests and the interests of those like them. In this one philosophy, born out of literature, the Echelon as a practical concept emerges. The final detrimental value is a business term called "run to failure." This is a management style in which the equipment of a factory or the site of resource excavation or human capital (i.e. workers) are used until they fail. This is done to extract maximum profit from a business venture. When failure occurs, the business picks up and moves on to the next thing. It's almost viral. The "run to failure" methodology pairs nicely with the inherent short term vision of Capitalist economics. As long as one gets as much as one can in their lifetime, screw the future, or so goes the thinking. For examples of this mindset, all you have to do is look around modern life. Global climate change is OCCURRING and some factories keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere. CEO's keep gouging corporations for insane compensation packages while the corporation itself sinks into bankruptcy leaving shareholders out in the cold. We know that fossil fuels are running out but we don't care because it's the future's problem, which is okay, unless you're IN THE FUTURE. These values form the destructive foundation of the Echelon. If things continue as they have, the Echelon could kill off humanity because the future comes sooner or later.

This is my opening statement for the Neo Systema. I realize it's long and I greatly appreciate those of you who have read to this point. The next post will clearly define the Echelon and how it operates and what dangers we truly face. Until then, take a gander at the graph below. It shocked me. We spend nearly 500% more on the military as the next biggest military spender. We could cut military spending by $150 Billion and still be spending twice as much as the closest spender on military items. Priorities a TAD misplaced?