The Original Holiday

Am I the "bah, humbug!" type a friend asked. Oh, yes, indeed I am. I try not to rain on anyone's parade, but Christmas just does not melt my butter. I think the lies about Santa Claus were the beginning of my disaffection, and it grew, as the holiday was an annual disappointment. The music was awful, too.

When my doubts about the existence of the jolly old elf in red led me to ask my parents, they assured me he was real. I launched an energetic defense against my doubting peers, but when I discovered they were right, my parents had lied, and I had born the scorn of my friends for it, Christmas lost it's glow. Years later, my parents resented the grandparents honest answer to my sister, when she asked the same question. I was with the grandparents, because honesty saves embarrassment.

Later, I would discover Santa wasn't the only fraud linked to Christmas. History showed no evidence whatsoever that Jesus was born on that date, or even that time of year. Placing it on the calendar was a political act.

The solstice was the original holiday, and, for me, it is still the true holiday. The ancients studied the heavens, and they knew the movements of the sun and stars, the progression of the seasons and the faces of the moon. Their rituals were linked to those natural cycles.

The winter solstice merges reality and metaphor. It is the turning point of darkness and light. The sun, our primary source of light and warmth, seems to have moved away, and the nights are long. The solstice marks the time when the dark has grown to its greatest point. Now the sun will turn back to the northern hemisphere. Many ancients celebrated the birth or rebirth of their gods at or near that time. Apollo, Baal, and Sol Invictus were all dedicated to the return of the undying sun. The solstice also marked the resurrection of Osiris. Choosing December 25 as Christ's birthday made it easier to convert the worshipers of Mithra, whose birthday was being celebrated on that day, with just a simple name change.

The solstice signifies a turning point in an eternal cycle. It symbolizes revival, renewal, recovery and resurrection. The old is discarded; the new is introduced.

Everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning so that return leads to flowering. Hurry nothing artificially. The flowering of spring is still a distant hope, but we move towards it, and the ripening which will follow.

Ching says return is the stem of character, which leads to self-knowledge, as one turns from the confusion of external things and back towards the inner light. The oracle also says it is always wise to follow the examples of good people. Return leads to success.

I like that bit about turning away from external things. It is a counter-point to the yearly greed fest god's birthday has turned into. As I said, I celebrate the solstice. Darkness has peaked, the sun returns and spring is on the way. It is time to nurture small things and prepare for the new year.

Jesus was a Socialist; McCain is a Warmonger

Going beyond describing Democrats as "tax and spend," and liberals as Satan worshipers, the McCain camp has labeled Obama a Socialist, and Fox has trumpeted the news. So many of the people supporting the McCain/Palin ticket claim to be Christians. How can they ignore how the GOP has completely sold out to anti-Christian values? The current administration is up to their eyeballs in lies, greed and destruction.

There are a ton of videos online about McCain voters being terrified because Obama is an AMT (arab, muslim terrorist). What the fuck!

Where do they get that shit? OK, I know one place, in addition to GOP rallies, FOX (faux) News. I watched it regularly, because I liked to hear both sides of arguments, and, at first, O'Reilly seemed to be a crusty old independent, as I consider myself to be. Then I realized he's a lying sack of shit. Every time some one accuses Fox of being slanted to the right, the network claims to host more liberals than conservatives. That's just another falsehood, as the count goes four to one the other way. Fox employs the biggest liars in American media, except for Rush Limbaugh. That asshole is the biggest of all, but O'Really and Hannity are both in the top five.

How can intelligent people watch or listen to all that crap and believe it? I have to tell you it is blowing my mind. Have they been completely brain-washed, or are they brain dead?

I must confess I voted for McCain once. It was in the Arkansas primary of 2000. At that time, I still thought he lived up to the "maverick" label. He had won the New Hampshire primary and was looking good. Nobody liked that smug little prick from Texas, but then a funny thing happened in the South. Most people don't realize "THEY" swift-boated McCain, before they swift-boated Kerry. During the debate about flying the Confederate flag in public, a whisper campaign began about McCain fathering a black child. It was one of many lies used to make W the candidate, similar to those which helped him win re-election.

After W took office, and the "Maverick" began to kiss ass and comply to party wishes, I looked the other way. Now, he's trying to distance himself from this corrupt administration, after voting with them, as they trashed the constitution and lied their way around the world. He claims to be an economy saver, but he voted for the deregulation that caused the current mess and profited from it.

I was considering voting Nader (again), but then I chickened out, when McCain chose Palin. Some of you have seen me around town, with my "Worst President Ever" t-shirt, and there's a photo in a previous post on this blog. McCain could make that obsolete in no time, and Palin, as his successor, could drop W to third. It's a sobering thought.

McCain doesn't think we have enough war in the world. He's made it very plain he would be willing to start more. Suggesting we might bomb Iran was beyond stupid, and his bellicose stance towards Russia is alarming. Tortured as a POW, in Vietnam, he said he would never support torture and then reversed himself completely. Torture is only one of many crimes he has supported with his vote.

This asshole calls Obama elitist for being well-educated, well-read and well-informed, while he, himself, owns more property than he can count. He calls Obama a socialist for wanting to move some of the tax burden back to the rich. The Reagan revolution began the wholesale looting of the government to enrich corporations and their already rich owners and bosses. Tax cuts were among the shouted slogans (memes), but they only applied to the rich. Claiming they were going to shrink government, they began to systematically cut every public service they could, while increasing expenses for weapons and financing wars supplied by their corporate cronies.

The last good Republican president, Ike, warned about the military-industrial complex. Contemporary Republicans have completely sold out to it. They've developed one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in history. So many Christians think those crooks support Christian values.

Wake up! Smell the napalm!

Christians should read their Bibles without listening to a bunch of rich, greedy preachers telling them what the book means. They should start with the Sermon on the Mount, because it is the heart sutra of Christianity. Expand from there through all of Jesus' words, paying close attention to the parables. What a storyteller the man was, and his stories had deep, eternal meaning. He promoted peace, love and charity, not profit-making and war.

I personally don't believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing being who created everything, in six days, and told the Hebrews to kill every man, woman and child who blocked their migration to the promised land. If it was true, Jesus made it plain those days were over.

We are entering the season when Christians celebrate the birth of their savior and his life story. It is a story worth repeating with timeless meaning. Christ, he was born in a barn! He was apprenticed and raised a poor working man. When he began to speak publicly, he spoke to and for the poor. He offended the rich and powerful, by exposing their hypocrisy, and they had him put to death.

That's a different biography than W has, for example. Let's start with his silver-spoon birth, quickly move through his spoiled childhood and his cruelty to animals and humans, and emphasize his rich daddy and his rich daddy's friends. They gave him everything, got him into Yale, kept him out of Vietnam, helped him buy companies, bailed him out when those companies failed, put him in the Texas governor's mansion, made him their figure-head and bought him the White House. I must admit, I was prejudiced from the beginning against him because he belonged to so many peer groups I despised, including spoiled rich kids and drunken frat rats

Let us consider the government, which oversaw Jesus' execution. Occupying legions of the Roman Empire held power and Herod's puppet government followed their orders. Jesus could be born in similar circumstances today, in Iraq. We, of course, are the occupying force. Our W resembles, not only the king with no clothes, but the fiddling Roman emperor, Nero.

Voting their values has a host of people serving the rich as drones, workers and cannon fodder. Still they claim to follow the poor, compassionate man, whom the government executed, as a terrorist, 2000 years ago.

We are Empire! And, reading the Bible clearly shows empires always fall.

History does indeed repeat, and it is time to stop the merry-go-round.

I'm Pissed Again

And there is a fireplug to piss on, but what is it doing there?

And what am I pissed about this time? A little news crept through my screening system about McNut trying to blame the Democrats for the economic melt-down, while claiming it isn't really that bad, after voting for the neo-cons deregulation agenda for years. That pisses me off. They demand a "free" market, which means let them make all the money they can at everyone else's expense. They want everything deregulated and controlled by the "free" market. "Free market" is a meme, just as "democracy" is. Does everybody know what memes are? They are advanced advertising, mental viruses spreading with a false image plastered over a hideous reality. The people throwing these memes around are greedy enough to bring the whole system down. When they do, they hide their spoils and try to blame someone else for the situation.

While we're on the subject of hypocrites, I want to consider the disparity between what Christ taught and what Christians now believe. Jesus lost his temper when he discovered the money-changers in the temple. It is pretty plain people who sold religion for a profit and sought earthly wealth and power, while claiming to be holy were not his chosen people. The Bible said a few things about charity. It didn't say to cut charity to the bone, in order to get richer, quicker. Chogyam Trungpa wrote a book entitled "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, in which he discussed this problem in detail.

That's a couple of piss-offs for today, and I must be on my way. I can always add more here, or anywhere else on the blog. It's a basic that going to a blog and reading left-to-right, down the page reverses time as it goes from now to back then. With links, revisions and updates, it becomes more tangled.

Wishing all long life, health and happiness.

-30-

4th of July Speech/Sermon/Rant

Today is the fourth of July, a day dedicated to patriotism, BBQ and beer. Does everybody have a gun ready to fire into the air? Look, there are fires everywhere. Let's blast some fireworks. Who-ever is drunkest can aim the rockets.

People are still arguing over what the founding fathers meant, when they formed this country over two centuries ago. Were they deists or faithful Christians? What did they mean by a nation of the people? Rich and poor, slave-owner and slave all fought to free us from the reign of a mad king. Farmers fought against the finest troops in the world and kicked their asses. Flags featured snakes, stepped on, ready to strike back. Freedom was a real issue, as was democracy. They were not brand names thrown about to further political goals.

We fought the British empire and vowed to be a republic, never an empire, but our vows were for nothing. We inherited much of the British empire and expanded elsewhere. Now, we are the mightiest empire the earth as ever known. Our military bases circle the globe, and gunboats enforce our will on people everywhere.

My god! What a cynical view! For the counterpoint, let us go to O'really pontificating about how our country is nobly based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was our duty to bring democracy to Iraq, and we did.

No thanks. Bill raises my blood pressure. Anyone who hasn't realized by now he gets paid plenty to spout the party line has been completely brainwashed. First of all, the Iraqis do not have democracy, nor do they have running water, electricity, health services or any guarantee of safety. One million civilians have been killed. Two million are homeless, living in ruins, tents, fields and caves. More than that have fled the country as refugees, to live in poverty-stricken ghettos in surrounding countries. Other countries now dread the possibility of our bringing democracy to them.

Iran is next on the neo-con hit list. We certainly have the weaponry to devastate another country. The lion's share of our resources have gone to building weapons and using them for many years. Time out to voice the administration's fear tactics: Oh, my god, China has greatly increased its military spending. Therefore, we must increase ours. Horse biscuits! We spend more than all other nations combined for our military. The pundits tell us war is not the issue, it's the economy. War has wrecked our economy. All services and maintenance, across the board, have been cut to finance our invasion and occupation of a foreign country.

The oil fields were the goal, and the latest news from Iraq, is the oil companies get no-bid contracts similar to Halliburton's. This war has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Check how Cheney's stock portfolio has multiplied, since he helped lie us into this war. Look at the oil companies' profits setting new profit records every quarter. When they said the invasion would pay for itself, they meant it would pay them. "Let it be; its the free market. We need less regulation, not more!" Road apples! I've expressed my opinion of the trickle down theory before, and everyone understands just what is trickling down. We are literally pee-ons at this point.

This is not a party issue; this goes beyond Republican/Democrat. We are not only an empire, but a decadent one. Turning to the Oxford English Dictionary we find decadence defined as "luxurious self-indulgence." We in the United States are 5% of the world's population, and we devour 30% of the world's resources. That cannot continue.

Unfortunately, elections don't seem to make much difference. I've spoken against the Bush administration and Republicans, blaming them for this fine mess. However, Obama has already caved on the domestic spying issue and is courting the Christian Coalition. He'll be caving (I mean "compromising" on environmental issues next.) Does anyone really believe switching parties in the White House is going to end the corruption?

Our first priority cannot be to elect this bureaucrat or that one, but to end the war. Then we need to go beyond that, to dismantle the military-industrial complex. Ike warned us against it, but we didn't listen, and now it owns us lock-stock-and-barrel. During the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite went over there and saw U.S. soldiers wounded and dying. He came home and put the images on television. The ensuing outcry forced the end of that war. Those in power corrected the problem, this time around, by banning those images from the media.

When O'really refers to the Judeo-Christian tradition, he must be looking at the Old-Testament Jehovah ordering the chosen people to slaughter every man, woman and child, and occupy the promised land. The promised land must not be confused with the garden of Eden, which we are currently blasting to pieces.

I probably upset some Christians with my observations, but consider how Jesus met his end. They came for him in the dark of night, took him to jail, tortured him, put him up in front of a kangaroo court and sentenced him to die. Josephus said it was the rich and powerful who arranged his execution. So it has been in empires since: those who bought their position, instead of earning it, disappear those who challenge their authority. Our government routinely practices the same atrocities. When caught, they merely change the laws.

Superman has encountered kryptonite and can no longer fight for "truth, justice and the American way." Everyone must take up the banner and march forward to bring back the ideals this country was founded on.

Denying Dinosaurs at Badlander

An evening wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Badlander, where I checked-in on the early punk show. Later, in the evening, I made it a point to get back for Deny the Dinosaur, a trio with more sound than you can believe. They opened the Dead Hipsters' show at Dauphine's the previous week, and I arrived too late, hearing only half their last song. Friday, I made up for that by arriving early to witness the whole set. J.J. says, "Dyno-mite!"

It is time to throw music labels out the window. I remember when "alternative music" was really alternative, before it became just another marketing label. Some local music falls in the guidelines of metal, country, rock and more cross-pollinated strains(i.e. surf-punk and dub-funk). They are all being transformed by Missoula bands into trend-setting, cutting-edge genres. The old pagan comes out shouting, "Thank the powers that be and all the spirits of place for the creative energy here."

It's time to throw your damn television out, too. You don't need to go out and buy the latest giganta-screen, either. You need to get off your ass, get out of the house and see some live music. I respectfully refer to John Prine, who said, "Blow up your TV, throw away the paper, move to the country, build yourself a home, plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own."