Here's a panorama of issues and ideas served up piping hot, with seconds and thirds always welcome. Ring the bell, from A (Abortion) to Z (Zionism), and let's go!
They might be images passing through the mind during sleep. Possibly visions willingly indulged in while awake. Or simply people & places of surreal beauty and excellence.
Like love, though nowhere near the number, there's an abundance of songs, old and new, revolving on this theme. And often enough, songs commingle the two. For obvious reasons.
I'll bet you could call up the names of at least three or more dream ballads right now. You've sung, swayed, hummed, or perhaps shared them with an intimate someone.
One of the most sublime is the 1994 song "Dreams" by The Cranberries. The Irish band's lead vocalist Dolores O'Riordan has a stunning, ethereal voice, making this song all the more, shall we say, dreamy.
"Oh my life is changing everyday
Every possible way
Though my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems
I know I felt like this before
But now I’m feeling it even more
Because it came from you
Then I open up and see
The person fumbling here is me
A different way to be
I want more, impossible to ignore
Impossible to ignore
They’ll come true, impossible not to do
Impossible not to do.....
.....Now I tell you openly
You have my heart so don’t hurt me
For what I couldn’t find
Talk to me amazing mind
So understanding and so kind
You’re everything to me
Oh my life is changing everyday
Every possible way
Though my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems
’cause you’re a dream to me
Dream to me"
May tomorrow's election day bring out enough Americans--no matter how angry, scared, and fed up they are--who won't lose the sanity we restored last Saturday in Washington.
Make them realize that while the Democrats' frying pan sizzles, the Republicans' flame will incinerate us as it always has.
Open the eyes of this incensed electorate so they'll realize they've been poisoned by the GOP mouth organ all along to hand over the keys to our city to marauding Huns. Don't hand 'em over, please. There's just too much at stake.
Fear. Just say no. Again and again, loud as you can. Narrow-minded, hate-spewing bigots masquerading about in tricorn hats want you to surrender to their insanity. Transcend it.
Amen.
Someone asked recently what was on my backside--of my "Restore Sanity Rally" shirt. It was a message I delivered in the company of the 200,000 plus people flood in our nation's capital. Something strident enough to show my disgust with right-wing demagogues who try to pervert the American Dream. That includes the one voiced at the Lincoln Memorial, not by some crazed Christian Reich boss, but by an Atlanta preacher in 1963 .
There were so many, many stinging, uproarious slogans flying in all directions that day. I thought carefully and wrote one I could wear for years to come. Wanted to be sure from this day forward any and all star spangled yahoos swaggering across my path will be served notice.
There were some detractors, notably, from the far left side of the aisle. Journalist & socialist Chris Hedges was clearly not impressed and had this scathing, acid cynical take on the Big Rally:
"Politics in America has become spectacle. It is another form of show business. The crowd in Washington, well trained by television, was conditioned to play its role before the cameras. The signs —'The Rant is Too Damn High,' 'Real Patriots Can Handle a Difference of Opinion' or 'I Masturbate and I Vote'—reflected the hollowness of current political discourse and television’s perverse epistemology.
The rally spoke exclusively in the impoverished iconography and language of television. It was filled with meaningless political pieties, music and jokes. It was like any television variety program. Personalities were being sold, not political platforms. And this is what the society of spectacle is about.
The modern spectacle, as the theorist Guy Debord pointed out, is a potent tool for pacification and depoliticization. It is a “permanent opium war” which stupefies its viewers and disconnects them from the forces that control their lives. The spectacle diverts anger toward phantoms and away from the perpetrators of exploitation and injustice. It manufactures feelings of euphoria. It allows participants to confuse the spectacle itself with political action.
The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty, emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is entertainment. It is spectacle.
All national debate on the airwaves is driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge.
And in the end, for those who serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and advertising. Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And it is not us."
No question about it, Mr. Hedges was decidedly unimpressed with our noble attempt at sanity. And maybe all the theatrics just made him go ape.
His points, however, are well-taken and many quite valid. The grand corporate octopus has itself wrapped neatly around all of us in just about the same iron grip as a hundred years ago. It's just that the stranglehold is so much more subtle, thanks to the sophistication of high tech thought control---ahhmm, I mean mass media.
No matter, really, which party rules, since the overall status quo remains the same. But then it still always seems to turn out so much worse for civil liberties and working class conditions whenever the "smaller government/bigger business" Republicans call the shots.
Pollsters have already called it for tomorrow and the rage over the Bush-generated misery index is gonna get us tossed from fryer to the fire.
We gave it our best, however, and got in the last word. Stewart summed it up nicely at the finish Saturday.
"A miracle is an event which creates faith," observed George Bernard Shaw, "That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: Therefore it is not a fraud but a miracle."
Just imagine the prose this phenomenal writer might have produced witnessing today's astonishing of fetal photography or even the ultrasound images that came along in 1957, just seven years after he died.
Would the brilliant but quirky Shaw have reacted with mixed feelings? He reportedly had a pronounced aversion to the modern medicine of his day, calling it "quackery" and condemning the smallpox vaccine as a "particularly filthy piece of witchcraft."
On the other hand, this legendary poet was quite the photography buff and it's probably safe to say he watched (maybe enjoyed, too) cartoons in his senior years. That's why this mind-boggling six minute animation is all the more intriguing.
What kind of poem would Shaw have created had he lived to witness "Genesis"?
Maybe something even more endearing than his "Baby Eyes" ballad:
In just a little more than two weeks, a beleaguered country will go to the polls to decide whether the Grand Old Party Of The Plutocrats should be handed back control of Congress.
Because people are hurting so badly and the Democrats haven't been able yet to ease the pain created by Wall Street's robber barons, it's a good bet desperate, angry voters will do a throw-out-the-bums boogie.
And then we'll watch how things will be "so much better" when the legislative branch is delivered into the jaws of the Republicans.
Frying pan leap right into the fire -- THAT the idea?
How about a nice cheery review of the official "Things Republicans Believe" litany, posted anonymously on the world web -- sometime in the not too distant past? It sheds some light on the darkness that descends whenever the GOP seizes power:
"Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime,
unless you're a
conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and
you need our prayers for
your recovery.
The United States should get out of the United
Nations, and our highest
national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions
against Iraq.
Government should relax regulation of Big Business
and Big Money but crack
down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the
pain of illness.
"Standing Tall for America" means firing your
workers and moving their jobs
to India.
A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her
own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions
affecting all mankind without
regulation.
Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of
homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
The best way to improve military morale is to praise
the troops in speeches
while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless
you someday run for
governor of California as a Republican.
If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents
won't have sex.
A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our
long-time allies, then
demand their cooperation and money.
HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of
the public at heart.
Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy.
Providing health care
to all Americans is socialism.
Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk
science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.
Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad
guy when Bush's daddy
made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business
with him and a bad guy
when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden"
diversion.
A president lying about an extramarital affair is an
impeachable offense. A
president lying to enlist support for a war in which
thousands die is solid
defense policy.
Government should limit itself to the powers named
in the Constitution,
which include banning gay marriages and censoring
the Internet.
The public has a right to know about Hillary's
cattle trades, but George
Bush's driving record is none of our business.
You support states' rights, which means Attorney
General John Ashcroft can
tell states what local voter initiatives they have a
right to adopt.
What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital
national interest, but what
Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.
Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is
communist, but trade with
China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of
international harmony."
Adorning all this are the breath-taking
pearls of wisdom from those Republican Blathering
Heads. One of our very favorites, of course,
is Presidential wanna-be Mama Grizzly Palin's
declaration of foreign policy expertise.
Please, dear angry voters, try to remember all these deeds and voices before you decide pulling that Republican lever on election day.
Unless, of course, you seriously think we have nothin' to lose with this greater of the two evils.
He would have turned 70 today. Despite having lost him well before his time, his music, and the dream, endures. But the departure of this great friend is never forgotten.
Or always remembered.
"There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain......."
The journalism professor's opening remarks in the video report are not only true but extremely compelling.
Think about it. How many mainstream U.S. media groups really present a Palestinian as a suffering human being, rather than just a "unit" or some terrorist thug with face covered in Hamas green, holding AK-47 & RPG weapons?
And just how many images, streaming videos or simple pictures, do we see of the other terrorist thugs at work--those noble fellows garbed in Israeli military green, using U.S.-funded automatic weapons and chemical WMD's to deliberately slaughter civilians at will??
Not a whole lot, as it turns out. And there's a very significant reason for that.
Amazing things happen when one party in a conflict has a well-engineered stranglehold over the hearts & minds of the key targeted audience (which the U.S. military-industrial complex tried and failed miserably in Vietnam.) They get away with murder. Quite literally. War crimes pulled off on a grand scale, in fact.
How about disgraceful, appalling, and unreal too. But this little story should well serve as the flaming symbol of what ails us.
A official moment of silence, please, for all the right-wing Teabag cretins that screamed their reactionary heads off at last summer's hearings for universal public health care. That's that "diabolical socialism" our fellow industrialized nations have--Canada, Great Britain, Australia--because they give a damn enough to really protect the lives of their citizens. Not here, it seems. And now that "compassionate conservatism" rears another of its compassionate hydra heads into another realm, the traditional socialism we've had for protection from fiery destruction. Seems a county in Tennessee saw fit to demand a special fee to keep your house intact. And as The Mob might say, "You don't pay for protection......you pay."
The next thing will be monthly law enforcement insurance premiums. And if ya can't afford those, well, looks like your local police will just have to kick back in their patrol cars enjoying coffee and doughnuts while you're being robbed, raped, stabbed or shot by some violent criminal.
Is this where our "gloriously free enterprise" nation is sinking?
In that case, lets have the Teabaggers and the rest of the laissez faire imbeciles forever pay extra big fat monthly premiums on not just the health care they need but EVERY service, including fire, police, schools, libraries, roads, etc. The Republican Congressional dirt bags and their lobbyist masters will have five or ten times the monthly premiums, as a reward for their rabid opposition to all this Bogeyman Socialism.
And when their homes burn down to the ground, let 'em head to the nearest town hall and vent to their hearts' content.
I've lived on both coasts of the United States as well as Central America (where I became bilingual), and traveled to over two dozen countries. This afforded me an enriched perspective as a writer and teacher. "Incandescent Planet" and "Jonestown Apologists Alert" provide choice cuts from the human landscape, featuring politics, popular culture, and the senseless saga of a doomed cult.
I'm certain you'll find an abundance of well-seasoned food for thought. Let's eat.
