The Roman Empire, Version 2.0

(or, "The State Of The World: F. U. B. A. R.")

You don't get something for nothing,
You can't have freedom for free.
You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes,
No matter what your dreams might be.
-- Neil Peart, 1976.

"The time has come", the Walrus said, "to speak of many things..."

[This is going to be somewhat of a rambling rant, although I will try my best to put it into some semblence of order. Bear with me (I really gotta get rid of this damn bear!). Anyway...]

We are the Empire of Rome, Version 2.0. And we are going to go down in the same way unless we make a quick 180. Since I don't see that happening, all I can do is wait for the fires.

What do I plan to do about it? Nothing. My plate's full. I expect that everyone else's is, too, except for the robber-barons running the world's governments.

It's all about grabbing territory to further our own causes for our wealthiest people instead of working together to further everybody.

I was saddened to read about the book-burning going on in Iraq. Now, the library there may not be as diverse, but its fate is the same as the Great Library of Alexandria under EoR v1.

No matter how you slice it, it is Wrong. Censorship is Wrong. "Protected Speech" (i.e. the exceptions to Freedom of Speech) under the First Amendment to the Constitution is Wrong. The destruction of historic documents is so Wrong it makes Wrongness look almost Right.

However we may disagree with the religious doctrines in Iraq, we cannot accept those which we practice and preach (in a large sense) as being any more right.

I am dismayed to hear of the "Faith-based" Correctional CRAP that is happening in our country. There is a separation of Church and State which is GUARANTEED by our Constitution, and Congress shall make NO LAW abridging that.

I am also dismayed to note that the Oldest religion/spiritual practice is not recognized legally as a religion. I rather suspect that it has something to do with empowering women at the very least in their own right, if not in a larger scope. I think it also has something to do with the fact that it promotes cooperation with Nature and harmony, as opposed to pitting Man against Nature.

If you are a Christian, and you consider yourself a good person, you need to go research the missing books of the bible. They are there, they are just not published in a bible, for obvious reasons. You owe it to yourself, and if you have any faith whatsoever in your God, you will research it to the point that it will shake the very foundation of your Faith. It shouldn't destroy you spiritually, but it should open your eyes enough that you might think twice about abdicating your responsibilities to Man's interpretation and perversion of something which really had been started with good intentions before it turned into the most massive profitable non-profit non-taxable corporation on the face of the planet.

I'm an eclectic agnostic. I'm Pagan, by and large. Yes, I wear a pentacle. Proudly. Do I follow the Wiccan religion? Not precisely. It appears as though I do, to a degree, because my path just happens to match what they practice. I've never been too comfortable with ritual, and I should probably give more back to the world than I take, and certainly more than I have, but by and large their viewpoint just makes sense.

And if we are not careful, the Empire of Christendom is going to try and tromp it into the ground, just as they did with the Inca, Maya, Aztec, Celtic, Viking and Native American ways of spirituality.

You don't believe me? Look it all up.

What's the common theme? There are several. Among them:

• True Equity. Females had equality, if not power, and they were respected, if not revered. Some bunch of misogynistic apes got the idea that the women were a threat to their way of life, and so they stirred up the pot and subjugated the women to a demoralizing and dehumanizing extent. Thus was the Patriarchal society born.
• Unity with Nature. They respected their environment and worked with it in harmony in order to feed and protect their people and to ensure their continuity. They listened to the forces around them. They were in tune with what was happening, and they were better prepared to deal with any natural tragedies which came their way. We are not separate from Nature. We are a part of it, and it's time to re-recognize that fact.

• Social openness. They shared amongst themselves. There were still differences in wealth but they were not as extreme as we see today. If you chipped in to the best of your ability, you would be taken care of. If not, well, you learned that you weren't taken care of. Everyone looked after everyone else, because survival depended on it. This is not to say there wasn't conflict, but the closeness was much more pervasive than it is now. We are not an open society. We are very uptight, withdrawn, private, paranoid -- in short, we are an extremely and overtly hostile society.

• Absolute wrong. Maybe this is a large turn-off for most people, but the attitude that we have achieved from the forgiving of extreme wrong is that of, "Oh, well, I've killed someone or two, God will forgive me in the end, so who cares? I mean I'm sorry, but not really." Sin is one of those forgiven things. I think if we had a lot more Taboo -- a wrong which is NOT forgiven EVER -- than Sin, we would probably have a lot less which was egregiously considered to be morally Wrong, and we'd address the serious issues, and people could get on with their lives. As far as I am concerned, the government of this country has committed no sins but one LONG list of taboos, for which I do not think they should ever be forgiven, let alone forgotten.

• Sexual openness. This is the big one. Sex was treated as power not in the power-trip sense, but as in a necessary sense. The release and respect of energy, and the recognition of its ability -- not its certainty -- to create life. There were no moral issues hovering around polygamy if that was what you were in to (I'm not, for my own personal reasons), and there was nothing considered to be "borderline public lewdness" (i.e. "Oh, look. It's a topless lady. Nice day, isn't it?"), and the like. Exploration which is considered to be "perverted" or "kinky" in our views was looked on more as something by which a pair or so might establish a ritual, a stance; relative station by consent rather than by decree.

We are SO WRAPPED UP in ourselves as a society that we have completely forgotten where we came from, and thus cannot see where we are going. We constantly deny our nature, and we are doomed if we continue in this way.

We are the Empire of Rome, version 2.0. And even if it means the demise of a lifestyle to which I have become accustomed, so long as it will give us a means of reconstruction and an opportunity to build the future in a better way, I say: "Bring on the flames."

If You're Part Of The Solution, You're The Problem

(or, "There will always be bullies.")

A bumper sticker says it best: "It will be a great day on Earth when education has all the funding it needs and the military will need to hold bake sales to build a bomber."

"Heads, I win; tails, you lose." -- Anonymous

I am sitting here reflecting on the state of the world, the state of the union, the state of the state of California, the state of the San Francisco Bay Area, and, perhaps most importantly, the state of my own household, the last of which I will probably spare most of you the details.

We are destined for war. This country is about to be plunged directly into what I'm sure the Christians are wailing as the Apocalypse. The war to end all wars. It says so in the Bible that the war will be fought in the Middle East, where the "Holy Land" originated.

I think it's been subconsciously planned that way for the last dodecade. Mr. Bush, Jr., says that he does not want to go to war, and yet here we are, not backing down. He says that Saddam Hussein and Iraq represent a direct threat to the United States of America and we need to disarm them.

Now, the logic as I understand it regarding the approach to Iraq (i.e., "bomb the hell out of them") versus the approach to, oh, let's say North Korea for the moment (i.e. "Hey, let's talk.") is that Iraq has been asked to disarm for the last twelve years and Gen. Hussein has not been exactly what I would call compliant.

Normally, I think I'd object to this behaviour on our part except that we're stepping in to enforce a treaty which was signed at the UN in 1991. Had that treaty not been signed on by the majority of the UN, I would go so far as to say we really do have no business going after Saddam Hussein.

I'm disturbed, though, by our ****less leader's approach. He evaded the question regarding removing Hussein from his position. He doesn't want Hussein taken out as much as he wants Iraq disarmed. I disagree with this. No country should be disarmed, or all of them should. They have the right to defend their own country, more so once they get a saner government in place.

But Mr. Bush wants them to completely disarm, ousted Hussein or no.

I think we are losing sight of the issues. What is our goal in completely destabilising the region? What is the point?

Another approach was brought up to me regarding this whole thing: What right do we have to play Big Brother and Moral Dictator, Inc. to the entire world? Where do we get off stating what is uncivilised? Where do we get the right to decide what is right and what is wrong in the world? Of course it's wrong according to us. But we don't live there. We don't have our history steeped in that culture; in fact, one would look at us and say we've had our history steeped in oaken casks filled with various fermented liquids, of which most of us have probably had more than enough.

But I digress.

Yes, the treatment of the citizens in other countries (Iraq, just to pick one) is abhorrent BY MOST STANDARDS. The dominant figures of the country don't see that they are doing anything wrong, and until we can convince them that they are doing something truly wrong by means of logic and deduction, we don't have the right to march in and put our foot down and say "Stop that."

It is not our job.

In fact, doing so as we are trying to do is a direct violation of the Prime Directive. For people unacquainted with the Prime Directive, it is summed up as such: "There shall be no interference with the progress of other cultures in such a manner as to be completely disruptive to the flow of events." At least this is as I understand it. Educate them, show them why it is horrible. I think if we are to do something like that, perhaps we should at least invert the power pyramid and put the overlords in the position of the subjugated and give them something to think about. But that will take the effort of the subjugated, and it will take some thought and consideration on their part. That said, I think it would not be a bad idea to educate them. This will take probably ten generations of constant effort to get them out of that situation, and I think it's probably a good idea to start.

But bombing the hell out of them is not going to achieve this. It will be like kicking a hornet's nest. There are probably hundreds of nationals over here who are ready at the drop of the first bomb to take out our centers of communication, thus rendering most of us by and large cut off from each other. I guarantee it would not take much to cause mass chaos in the area. A couple of guys driving around in an SUV loaded with Molotov Cocktails at 3 in the morning and tossing them out the window in random wooded areas and places where we have built our homes in natural -- and highly flammable -- settings. It would only take a single catastrophically scaled fire in any given area to draw out most of the reserves in a region. Imagine what happens if there are MANY of them.

And there are not enough funds given to the states to cover this because it's all gone to war; what remains to be given is not given because the government is deciding to punish the states that did not elect them.

But I digress.

On to North Korea. Why are we not demanding that North Korea disarm? Why are we not using strong-arm tactics against them? Because they would kick our butt through the ceiling on the way down. They have nuclear weapons capable of a first strike on the left side of this country. What are our defenses? If we have a means of disarming them, perhaps we should, but it is very clear that we will not be able to do so by force.

The difference between North Korea and Iraq is pretty simple:

• Daddy didn't start a war with North Korea.
• North Korea doesn't have a heck of a lot of liquid petroleum investment fodder.

It is all about the money, folks. Wake up.

This brings me to the state of the union.

We're sitting here on the brink of war, with our economy in the toilet and the scum still clinging to the rim. We have NO reserves for our states. We were, at one point, in a true recovery, potentially able to keep ourselves from going into debt. We were able to begin to rebuild educational standards, and we were making some serious headway after a long ethical recession.

And now, thanks to all the money being sunk into this war, we the people are paying out of our lower intestines for something most of us do not want to pay for, and this is just the tip of the ice cube.

Why are we doing this? Is an oil field in the Middle East really that much of an answer to the energy woes of this country that it will prove to bail us out once we reclaim it? I seriously doubt it.

Speaking of energy and money (the two do, after all, seem to go hand in hand), get what's going on in Sunny California.

The state wants to surcharge customers who provide their own power, whether by the Sun or any other means.

They insist it is the duty of the customers to pay for the shortfalls and the mistakes and the federal screwovers (thank you, Enron and Govt.). What is up with this? The corporations cannot be made to be accountable for their own actions? It always gets passed down? This is horse hockey, folks. This is NOT the way it needs to work.

If anyone out there has a solar-assisted energy solution, and you find yourself with a surcharge, I would urge you to fight it. Take it as far into the system as you can. It is not right that we are researching ways to decrease our dependencies on the corporations, on the pollutant fuels, and ways to reduce our strain on the energy grid and still being penalized for it.

This has got to stop. (You have no idea of the restraint with which I am currently authoring this article.)

In the meantime, the Public Utilities Commission has voted that the public will not get relief from the higher rates, that the power companies will be bailed out at our expense. This comes as no surprise, really, considering that the Federal Energy Commission would not pay us restitution for the bilking that happened in 2000. Thank you, ****less leader, for your oh, so unprejudiced approach to government. Thank you, o administration, for your willingness to run the country instead of paying off your own self-interest.

Where does it stop?

More to the point, where can We The People start to make it stop?

There will always be the bullies, but it has been shown that sheer numbers of lesser beings can overpower them.

We're already in this war thing. Since we've already invested the money, we might as well go. Make it fast, take out the target, and get us back here in our respective individual pieces.

Oh, and without going into too much detail, the Total Information Awareness act and the Homeland Security Act can just take a long trip into a deep sewer.

To the soldiers fighting this war: Keep in mind that you are doing a job. I do not fault you, but I will remind you that you are no longer fighting for the America for which your forefathers fought. You are now fighting for an empire with a dubious lifespan unless we can seriously address the way in which we behave.

You are fighting for a dying way of life, but you are also fighting for the possibilities which come with a new way of life. This country must open its eyes and take care of its own before it can even consider taking care of anybody else.

Regime change begins at home.

The Game Needs To Be Called

(or, "Next, Please.")

By and large, life is good, except for this excuse of a shadow of the ghost of the dream which used to be America...

"If his reign goes unchallenged, then everything that is green and growing and good in this world will be destroyed. There won't BE a Shire anymore, Pippin!" -- J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers"

I may be a bit skittish. Perhaps I frighten easily. Either that or I'm one of the (apparent) twelve percent of the people who has some sense in his head.

May I ask, please, just what in the world the current government of this country thinks they are doing?

We were on the brink of an educational recovery which had the potential to get us back to being one of the best places in the world to get an education. Now we are facing federal fund shortages which are being diverted to a war over something of little consequence, and they will toss our educational potential into the toilet.

The President has issued such promises as money for the prevention of the spread of AIDS. Ordinarily I'd say this is laudable except that he is sending the money abroad to Africa instead of keeping it here, where it would be better put to use, oh, say, looking for a cure.

Our borders remain open to illegal aliens who are coming in through the national parks which hug the borders because we can not afford to staff them because of all the money being poured into the Military effort. And now we, the taxpayers, have to shoulder the brunt of their weight on our system with the multi-lingual invasion which has taken over California and threatens to undermine the rest of the nation.

Please don't mistake me as a cultural bigot, because I am not. But when you go to a foreign country, you HOPEFULLY have learned something about speaking their language, and something about their culture. And you typically don't intend to stay there and leech from them. If you're going to live here, please be prepared to learn to FLUENTLY read, write and speak ENGLISH!

But I digress.

The current total government scheme in place seeks to undermine everything this country was built upon. We are being rocketed back to the middle ages in terms of our rights concerning freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Our economy is in the tubes because all the available funding is being redirected to this War over the biggest oil field in the country. Instead of researching alternate energy, we are still fighting over oil. Instead of looking for ways to energise our people and make them into a nation of the most positive minds on the planet -- which would eventually find a way to reason their way through the BS borders which separate our nation from other people (not national borders or cultural ones, but other illogical ones) -- our Republic is keeping us all in the dark, inciting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt and Despair (FUDD).

Wow. Hi. Please keep all arms and legs inside the handbasket at all times.

I offer up a solution to this madness, and it is as such:

Mr. President, 

I call upon you to do the right thing for this country and resign your
office immediately.  Please remove your Vice President, as well as all
UNelected officials you have hand-chosen to serve as your Cabinet.

I am calling upon you to resign based on the lack of competence you have
demonstrated as the leader of the people of this country.  You have done
nothing to mitigate the influx of illegal aliens, nor to ease the minds
of the people of this country, nor anything worth a positive note regarding
domestic policy.  Indeed, you are treating the citizens of this country
-- SOME OF WHOM ELECTED YOU -- tantamount to criminals.

I and many others grew up in a time when Nuclear War was a threat to this
world for the third time and the fourth time.  We remember when the Cold
War was still going on.  I personally know someone who was one button-push
away from starting World War III while your father was running the country
through Ronald Reagan.

That was 20 years ago, and the threats were very real.  We do not forget
that easily.

Many others remember Viet Nam, and the Bay of Pigs is a documented
failure.  There is a common theme here:  These conflicts arise without the
true support of the people.  If you really believe that 88% of the people
out there really want a war, you are deluded beyond reason and are hence
incapable of running this country competently.  There is more to our
lifeblood than oil.  There is more to our existence than money and
conspicuous consumption.

We have had to continuously import talent from other countries because
we do not have the educational system present and sufficiently affordable
to produce this talent domestically.

And with everything which has happened to the economy in this country --
which your decisions and policies affect a great deal -- our companies are
not only reducing permanent work forces and forcing families to pay
astronomical health care out-of-pocket, but they are opening offices
abroad because they can recruit the talent locally to the company's new
office and not have to suffer the rigmarole of bringing them into this
country.  We are losing our hold on the world.

I and many others have watched this country slide from a country which
could have been recovered to greatness in perhaps half a lifetime to
one which will never again be great in my life.  We are but an excuse
of a shadow of the ghost of a memory of the dream which used to be
America.  We are no longer the America for which millions have fought
and died over the years.  Those millions did not set their lives forfeit
for this country as it stands now.  This administration is running this
country into the ground in an iron-fisted attempt to lay down the laws
in the name of God, and this makes us no better than any of the countries
we have attempted to destabilise, past or present.  In fact, we are
becoming very much like the Soviet Union we so much feared.

Unless you can prove that you are wise enough and mature enough to LET GO
of the hold we have on the world and retreat and rebuild internally, heal
and progress, I am of the opinion that you are no longer sufficiently of
sound mind to run this country, and I suggest that you step down from
office and let a more forward-thinking soul begin the true healing process
and rebuilding of this nation so that it can become the shining beacon it
once was.

It is the FUDD which will drive us down. One does not run a truly great nation through the ultimate control of the people. It is the people who make the nation great, through their own individual strengths, not vice versa. One cannot have a great nation without the people.

So if I'm a bit skittish, or a bit frightened, or a bit angry because I am skittish and frightened, over this issue, I am certain I am not the only one.

Fifty-five percent of our population support a war on Iraq? I don't think one can even take a poll of fifty-five percent of the population, considering that barely half of us vote, and that's in an important election.

And I can guarantee that the people who were polled -- and recorded -- were not a representative slice of the people of this country.

Next. Please!

State of the World

Hey, all, sorry it's been a while, but I've been incredibly busy as per usual. I know, I know -- I still have pictures to scan in and all sorts of other rigmarole.

Since I last wrote, I've become unemployed - again (anybody need a UNIX Man For All Seasons, a session keyboardist/guitarist/mandolin player/singer, a freelance artist?) and have spent weekends working down at Casa de Fruta, just north of Hollister, CA, as the manager of the Brass Rubbings booth. It's been my first interpersonal outlet in four years. Wow, I'd forgotten what social fresh air felt like!

In other news. Well, the world is a huge mess, which is something I'm going to attempt to address in this page. Perhaps I do complain and not act; I'm never sure what I can do to make this world a better place. Just being myself doesn't seem to be enough for the people who want to see the world change for the better, and it's too much for the people who are changing it for the worse. It seems I cannot win this one. Full speed ahead, then...as usual, comments and queries are accepted.

---

So, what are we doing?

Okay, clue me in here. Let me make sure I have my facts straight, first.

• The President wants to wage war, full-scale, on Iraq.
• The President wants to continue, indefinitely, a war on terrorism which will probably be ultimately as successful as the war on drugs, which has proven to cost untold sums of money and has only served to further the purpose and profit by the religious right.
• The economy in the tech industry continues to slump, and the job market in every other industry on the face of the planet has seen a glut of people who are eminently unqualified to enter any other industry, and so they are stuck, with no help forthcoming on cross-training for any occupations which will sustain them and their families. But I digress.

We're doing this why, exactly? Whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden? Whatever happened to focusing on the initial threat of terrorism which brought down the twin towers?

Hello? Anyone? Bueller? ...Bueller?

So, okay, we're preparing to engage in a full-scale assault on Iraq. Does anyone else find it suspicious that we're doing this in a mid-term election year?

...how about that the figurehead who is "initiating" the action happens to be the son of the last President who went after Iraq?

And what of Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda? What's up with them?

...and who's funding them?

I'm sure you're all familiar with the practice of arson by firemen who are out of work and have nothing to do to fill their time. They set fires in the hopes that they'll be called to help deal with it. These fires claim the homes and, in some form or other, the lives of the very people the firemen are supposed to be protecting. Untold damage is done. Materially, it's a drop in the bucket. 80% of everything is replaceable. The things that are not replaceable are the photographs taken years ago, the memories of growing up in their houses, or the memories of spending summer vacations in "the place that used to have trees".

By comparison, does anyone else find it so completely and totally out of the question that the Al-Qaeda is still alive and kicking and in our country and is probably turning into something of an inside operation?

Face it. Our government is a bored entity, for some stupid reason or other. If they can't get their jollies out of eroding our civil liberties, or of getting in the face of the Mommenpops who define the very character of our country, what we used to stand for, they're going to take us to war, like it or not.

I think Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened.

I think our current administration -- and its father's -- knew about 9/11/2001 before it happened.

Throwing a war is a dicey proposition. In Roosevelt's case, he threw us into the war, and it worked. We rebounded from the worst economic circumstance this country had ever seen to become the mover and shaker of the latter half of the 20th century.

Whomever decided to toss us into Viet Nam made a VERY poor choice. We had no public support for that war in the lower eschalons.

In Bush Sr.'s case, the net effect of us attacking Iraq was null, and the Cold War was over already by that time.

In Bush Jr.'s case, economically, it didn't work. Our economy was just seeing signs of possibly recovering and thriving again, and it wasn't 9/11 that kicked us down again. It was our declaration of war, that we were going to pursue the terrorists until we stopped them, regardless of the cost, I think, that has kicked us down again.

The fact that our current administration is technophobic isn't helping matters, either.

...so why, exactly, again, are we going after Iraq?

To gain a foothold "over there" and take over the planet, bit by bit by bit?

I'm going to say something that many people will not like to hear.

I hope we lose this war we're starting. I hope we lose it in a big way -- big enough to force us to close our doors and regroup internally. Big enough to show us that we're NOT the greatest nation on the planet, and big enough to show us that we need to take care of the things with this country which are seriously wrong on all levels.

Economically, we need to bring the costs of education, health care and livable housing back into line with reality. The minimum wage keeps going up, but the cost of living rises exponentially in comparison.

Ecologically, we need to start pursuing alternate forms of energy with a vengeance.

Spiritually, we need to stop exerting a Puritanical stranglehold on any beliefs which are non-conforming.

Morally, I think we need to practice what we preach.

Ethically, we need to stop promoting big business while squashing the little guy.

I'm going to digress. I may or may not return.

I saw something posted by a friend of mine recently. It had to do with a cross-talk of God in/out of public places and child discipline in/out of the hands of the parents and the people who have to raise them.

Personally, I think that the two have nothing to do with each other. God doesn't belong in our state-run places. Spirituality is a very personal thing. I won't fault you for believing in your God, or worshipping him or whatever, so long as you don't come around my house with an angry mob with pitchforks and torches "in the name of God". Take responsibility for your own actions, please.

Discipline is another matter. We've come to coddle our children, catering to their every whim. "Physical discipline is bad," we are told. Well, to a certain extent, sure. Getting rapped on the hand with a ruler isn't right at all -- that's seriously damaging. (Of course the insult is that it's because your child is evil for writing with the left hand!). On the other hand, a spanking or a very firm talking-to followed by a very firm placement into a time-out spot is not at all out of line.

The Government does not see things this way. They have taken all the teeth out of parental and community discipline. It's all well and good for us to say "Now, Johnny, don't punch Kevin," and "Now, Andrea, don't pull Katarina's hair", isn't it? But you can't give their butt a whack if they're really uncontrollably out of line to the point where nothing else will register. That's "child abuse" and can land you in hot water with Health and Human Services, the Child Protection division.

I have words for this, and I'm enough of a gentleman not to print them on this page, but the literal translation equates to "Feces from the Bovine of the Male persuasion".

Needless to clarify, but I will anyway, I'm not a big fan of "hands-off management" of children. We must be allowed to set some very hard guidelines for them that they must not cross. It seems hypocritical to say "Don't hurt someone" and then turn around and smack the kid, but we're not doing this to hurt them as much as we need to be able to get their attention and show them that this is not right. If you're spanking the kid to hurt them, to show you're stronger than they are, or out of anger, you're not doing it right.

We've spent a generation and a half in hands-off child-rearing. What DO we have to show for it? Although childrearing isn't the only issue at hand, here, it's a contributor to the cause. We have gangs, violent career criminals at levels the country hasn't seen since the era of prohibition, and they end up in this way because nobody had the authority at that time to demonstrate the difference between right and wrong.

Another reason that we have this happening to our children is because we don't have the money to survive in this nation anymore. Most households are double-income households, and because the divorce rate is skyrocketing, they are turning into single-provider households, the head of EACH, now, which must achieve an income double that of which they had been earning just to cover the cost of the living space (they EACH have one now, remember!), as well as the fact that both sides are still paying for the children in one way or another.

We now have nobody at home to watch the children.

And there is no money forthcoming to help care for the children after school because we're all away working to support them and pay taxes which are supposed to be going to the programs which would help care for them after school, but the taxes aren't going there...

BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL GOING TO SUBSIDIZE THIS BLOODY STUPID WAR THAT OUR PRESIDENT AND OUR CONGRESS THINK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LEADING AND BUILDING A NATION OF ENRICHED, ENLIGHTENED INDIVIDUALS WHO COULD ADVANCE THIS PLANET INTO A REALM OF PEACE, PLENITUDE AND GENERAL HARMONY!

(ha! I came back!) What is UP with this!?!? Why is the Bush clan SO OBSESSED with this whole Iraq thing, forgetting about their original cockamamie plan against Osama Bin Laden, that they can't see that this conflict is going to result in the death of a country which was based on tenets far nobler than they could ever perceive?

...did I just answer my own question?

Divining History Through Music

(or, What Will The Aliens Think?)

Something has been a recurring theme in my deeper thoughts through the years that I've been able to have deeper thoughts -- that is to say, since I was about twelve or so (born old, aging well, for the most part, but I digress).

As I have gone through life listening and looking about me, I have noticed the odd connection between the times and the music thereof. Music in 1974 was well out of the drug-induced stupor of the sixties, which had its own brand of music -- music that made a statement, and a very strong one. Music that I listened to in 1974 was different than what everyone else was listening to. My Mom (waves, "Hi, Mom!") had brought home some new music that caught my ear. It was Ragtime. Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book, and Joshua Rifkin plays Scott Joplin (I'm not certain of that last title, but I remember it all very well...)

I had discovered Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass by this time, and I thought the sun rose and set with them. I even got to see them at the (now closed) Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, CA (I even found the autographs I got from that show).

Now, at that time, Ragtime music (yes, it deserves very much the same reverence as Progressive Rock, Rock and Roll and John Philip Sousa -- with all of which I grew up, but...) was just another happy sound in my life. I loved its intricacies, and yet its simplicity made it accessable to a budding and very impressionable young musician who could pick up things by ear (but couldn't sight-read his way out of a croissant). It was magical. It wasn't until much much later in life that I would draw the connection of the sound of the music to the era in which it flourished.

It's by and large happy music. Very very happy-go-lucky, in almost as much as people were having a good time, they were also trying to forget their problems. And it had all the markings of the bars in which it was most often played.

Now it was considered most often "coloured people's music", as near as my memory and recollection of research can divine. The good, upstanding moral white majority wanted nothing to do with it, by and large -- or so they gave the impression. It's quite obvious that this wasn't true; the Gershwin Brothers were influenced by it; and hey, what about Porgy and Bess, hm?

And has anyone listened to the sounds of music between 1890 and 1910? Ragtime draws some blindingly obvious connections to them. I think these people wanted to remember, to bring back the good times that the music embodied.

As I grew older, I started, of course, listening to the music which was popular at the time. I mean, really, who wasn't listening to the radio when they were growing up? Anyone growing up in 1976 thru 1980 was probably tuning into a top-forty AM station and catching all the music that was happening. "Fly Like An Eagle", by the Steve Miller Band; "Love Will Keep Us Together", by The Captain & Tennille; "The Things We Do For Love", by Hall and Oates. All very indicative of the times in which the music was written, very laid back, not too terribly much of an edge to it, but not so dull as to be a waste of time. It was pop. Popular music, the stuff that MOST of the universe listened to.

By 1978, the glory of our country's bicentennial had waned a tad (even though it really should have carried on through 1989), and harder elements began to filter into the mainstream. Firstly, AM/FM radios had become more commonplace, replacing the AM-only boxes which had been the norm. Secondly, youth yearned for more of an edge, more of a voice, and they got it -- in AC/DC, Van Halen, Rush, War, the Scorpions, and of course the plenitude of punk bands which were beginning to form, such as The Clash and others. The Progressive Rock swung into the mainstream with music from Styx and Supertramp, among others.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter was elected out of office to be succeeded by Ronald Reagan, and music changed again -- it got harsher, more shocking (along with the attire which went with it) in reaction to what was being passed down as the status quo. The world seemed just a bit darker. We started getting some serious creativity arising out of a generation who hoped to change the world and turn the establishment on its ear, to tell it to take a hike. In 1984, for example, we got some serious proof that the world WASN'T ending at this time, that imagination was still strong, and that we were still drawing on the lessons taught to us by the previous generation as far as how to go about changing the world (and, of course, how not to). We saw the rise and fall of Blondie, and the Police finished up on about the same note (with the notable exception of being wise enough to bow out gracefully and go their own separate ways). The Eagles had split up, and Don Henley and Glenn Frey were making their own directions. Each of these groups addressed a certain kind of angst in the newer generation, whether it was a worldly concern or a personal one.

From 1984 to 1988, with Reagan re-elected, we took a slight downturn again, but people never lost hope. We got some good -- and very poignant -- music from the likes of David Bowie, U2, Peter Gabriel. We also saw a comeback from Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Jackson Browne and several other "cause musicians" -- the ones who come back and perform for causes such as the Christic Institute, Amnesty International and others who attempted to further the restoration of human rights.

In 1988, we got George H. Dubya. What is astounding, musically, is that for the next four years, we didn't seem to have a musical direction, a trend that is reoccurring now. I mean, sure, out came cRap music (the 'c' is usually invisible), with its explicit lyrics, and an attitude that, to this day, I find horribly oppressive. But it's dark, and it communicates through a generation that feels as though it has no hope, nothing to move toward, nothing that it can possibly contribute that will make the world a better place to live. Even the Cause Performers were losing hope at that point, or the people were losing enough hope that they didn't want to see false ones raised.

I will also note that, while it was dark during Clinton's terms in office, it seemed that creativity was somewhat encouraged. We got alternative rock out of it, those pieces which basically took a musical ice pick and shoved it firmly through the ear of the establishment, and we got grunge rock -- the whiny self-serving anthems of Generation X proclaiming that no matter what they try to do, nothing seems to work.

...and since Dumb Dubya got shoehorned into office (I still don't know what he's doing there, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ...Bueller?), we're back into the doldrums. If anything, the music has become more self- serving (in the case of the mellower stuff), or more violent and socially condemning (in the case of cRap). By the same token that the music is teaching our children to lose hope, to lose faith in the goodness of the mortal race inhabiting our planet, the children are not stupid. They are picking up on the general malaise that is affecting our country in general.

I have some degree of faith that somehow, the people are going to wake up, and when they do, and they smell the artificially flavoured pasteurised coffee food product, I wonder what tales the music will tell then.

Maybe my friends and I should start writing it now. Maybe we can nudge it in the right direction.

Got a match?