The Coming Troubles

The headlines today are making my neurons ache with pain. This whole electoral season has been a flaming ball of crap, hooting and hollering like Slim Pickens riding the fucking bomb. The Alt-right, a public perception friendly term for the rising movement of christian white supremacists who want to continue making people bend to hate, are celebrating the selection of their champion to Donald Trump's cabinet.

I fear for the future, I really do. Demonstration isn't enough anymore. Things are not going to change unless something loud and visible happens. Just look at the Dakota Pipeline. Protestors are being shot, gassed, and sprayed with hoses in freezing water. It's the civil rights movement all over again, and it feels like we really haven't made all the progress we did over these last fifty years.

The roaches are crawling out of the woodwork and they elected their king. Now he's going to run the country. I can't say the words "President Trump" without feeling the bile rise in my throat. Things are going to come to a head, and everyone in America who will not tolerate injustice needs to do something about it. There will be bad things coming soon, I can feel it in the air and smell it in the city.

This is the beginning of what could be the end. We need to be the ones to fix the mistakes of those in power.

Back Out Into The Streets

It's been another year.

A year since my last post, where it felt like entire world had fallen apart with the death of my brother. I had though 2015 was the worst year of my life.

And now, like the crack across a windshield spidering and spreading across the entire pane of glass, crisscrossing the smooth surface until the entire thing is wobbling perilously whenever you go above twenty miles per hour, I can say it's gotten even worse.

2016 has Fucking. Sucked.

The increased prevalence of mass shootings, of hate crimes, of the general increase of societal paranoia. The warning signs were there. The creaking of the oak was quiet at first, but got louder and louder until it was falling right on our heads and we pretended not to notice.

This election has been a watershed moment in American History. It changes every election coming forward from here on out, but it also changes the day to day spirals of society. Donald Trump, a man best known for suing everyone who insults him and screaming "You're fired!" with the same mannerisms as a pissed off cartoon character, is the president. He ran on a populist campaign of hatred, isolationism, and xenophobia. And he is now the 45th president of the USA.

Incidents of hate crimes, swastika tagging, public displays of white supremacy, and the whole rotten bushel of associated acts have increased dramatically. By the first few days of the President-Elect's preparations, it's become increasingly apparent he is scared, unprepared, and entirely overwhelmed. He's lining up the worst bits of the Republican party to fill cabinet and directorship positions. They didn't want him as a candidate, but now that he's in office and searching for help, they've  stepped forward with the proverbial briefcase of ringers.

The democrats and liberals are not entirely innocent of this affair. We laughed at his candidacy. Made jokes, made memes. Sneered at the "racist hillbillies" of middle America" as they howled at one of Trump's Nuremberg Rallies. But they are people too. People marginalized by the cutural and technological elite in the cities and on the coasts. If you saw this year's election map, it's painfully obvious how the societal divide is shown. Red in the middle, blue on the sides. These are the people from small towns like Moose Bend, Arkansas or Arrow River, Kentucky or something else colloquial and simple that us liberals make fun of. But these people have been marginalized by the government and big business pulling work out until they were dying in the streets for work. So they voted against the establishment. That doesn't excuse the racism ingrained in that culture. But it does bring us a step closer to understanding them.

We're divided now, more than ever. Far from "coming together to accept the president" we should still come together as people. We are all citizens. It is the political elite and the rich who have turned us against each other with their greed. They have the power and control.

Now is the time that we need to be vigilant for blatant abuses of that power. No one knows what the coming days will hold, but I have pledges to myself to speak out and interfere in any incidents of hatred I see or hear about. I wear the safety pin. This is the time that will go down in history and be appellated by one of two statements.

"The eventual collapse of the United States began in 2016."

Or

"The United States began to address it's inherent societal issues in 2016."

Now raise your fists up with me. I am back on the streets.

Into The Black

So here I am a year later. Looking back on the last post I made, I can't help but feel some sort of twisted nostalgia for the optimism I had for this year. Such high hopes that started off good and slowly but surely slid down to a catastrophic shattering of my world.

I began the year embracing Buddhism and Taoism, religions that-are-not-religions, and more a way of viewing the world. I learned a lot from my studies of Zen and of Self. Finally feeling a sense of peace with my path in life that I had come close to, but never truly grasped. I had to move back home in the early spring to help my family, saying goodbye to my first apartment. Not to what it represented, though, because I know I will return again to independence. My relationship with my family had improved drastically, and I really felt that they had learned who the real me was. This continued for sometime, me still able to enjoy my time off, staying in tune with current events.

The sorry state of the world, and especially this country, mirrors my own state of mind. Maybe a dark reflection, but still optimistic, in spite of all that's happened. I can see the light at the end of my tunnel again, and this time it looks like it will stick. But the darkness I've been through to get to this point has left its lessons on me once again.

My brother died.
He was twenty-six.

I cried today, as hard as I cried when I found out he was gone. Four months later, and the pain is still just as fresh. I heard the platitudes, and the empathies. I know that my brother exists in my memories and in the hearts of all that loved him. It still feels like he's just stepped out of the room, and he's still around, still existing, still experiencing the universe in a fashion unknown to me or anyone living right now.

But the selfish pain and grief of having lost my only brother, my childhood friend and companion, the man who slowly mentored me into adulthood the way only a sibling could. A slight, paternal sternness mixed with the goofiness of childhood and the desire to have fun. I'm tearing up now as I write this, because the memories I have of him are so bittersweet.

He will never grow old.
I will never see him in pain ever again.
He exists as perfectly as my brain can preserve him.
And I miss him everyday.

I'll learn to live with it, and in time, the grief won't be so overwhelming. But right now it hurts, so very much.

I love you, Toby. I'll always love you. And I know where your Self is, so is mine and the Selves of everyone who loved you.

Goodbye, Buddy.

-For Rob

Or Give Me Death

Freedom.
Freedom is ambiguous, but has one defining concept; the lack of total control, the openness and wherewithal to greet each day with the knowledge that what may come can never be know, but the mindset, experience, and wisdom to handle any situation.

As you might guess, I recently moved out into my own apartment. I pay my own bills, and rent, have a bit of fun, but responsibly. I go to my job on time because my freedom depends on my job. It's a tricky balance, and one I am lucky enough to be able to support. I know a lot of people my age are still struggling to make rent, or stuck at home, or in a bad situation. I treasure each decision I have the freedom to make because of what I have.

I missed being able to go out with no plan in mind, or to have a last minute change of heart and head somewhere other than my intended destination, or finding an event that interests me and being able to plan a specific night to go. One such occasion the other day resulted in three new friendships that were exactly what I was looking for in this crazy neighborhood. A fun night was had, and numbers exchanged, and for the first time in almost four years I feel like myself again, dressing how I used to when I experienced social freedom for the first time. Slipping back into a trench coat and hat, or a snazzy all black outfit accessorized with hints of red feels just like coming back in line with the parts of myself that know how to have fun. Tempered of course this time with a few more years of wisdom, lessons, and responsibility.

Here's to 2015, and a new year, a new beginning of many choices, plans, alternatives, and the freedom to do what I choose.

Pandering to the Lowest Common Denominator

The New York Post, owned by that almost messianic conservative figure, Rupert Murdoch, is a constant sight in my job's break room. No wonder, right? It bills itself as " a tabloid newspaper on the island of Manhattan that is widely considered to be the golden standard of journalistic ethics, writing and sophistication."

Bull. Shit.

Every time I open the paper, there is another sensationalist headline meant to shock and rouse god-fearing americans into action.

"WAR ON COPS"
"PIED DIVIDERS"
"TERROR TEENS SLAY HERO COP"

The writers at the Post must live in some sort of self delusional action movie universe. Their daily caricature of the President has devolved to something resembling a toxic waste mutant, by this point. Every day, every headline is either mudslinging the president, the mayor, exploiting tragedy, or at worst, rabblerousing. How else can you explain such rhetoric as "BAIL-FAIL JUDGE STRIKES AGAIN; FREES COP PUNCHER JUST LIKE THREAT THUG"

The Post would have you believe that President Obama is wiping his ass with the constitution while sad eyed heroic policemen are being cut down in the streets by wild eyed proto simian "thugs". They may claim that's not the case, but reading this drivel? Sure sounds like it. There's good and bad on both sides. It's gotten out of hand, but only long simmering resentment and distrust breeds this kind of explosive protest. People are fed up. The country is fed up. The youth are fed up, and I'm fed up, especially with bullshit newspapers, networks, and sock puppets paraded around on mainstream media.

Fuck you, New York Post.

Horizon Burning

After a day of working at my job in downtown New York, I came home to find my facebook page lit up with news about the Michael Brown verdict. I'm betting hundreds of people are/have already written about this, but the sense of trepidation and guilt I feel is burning me on the inside.

It's unjust, and a portion of me expected the not guilty verdict. The police in this country have steadily been overmilitarized to the point of parody, given deadly military surplus weapons that they themselves are not trained on. They are police. Not soldiers, no matter how badly they want to be soldiers. This is how fascist death squads operate, people. A gun should never be your first tactic. The police carry nonlethal measures that are just as effective at dropping a violent suspect without needless loss of life.

The stories have been there, buried in headlines or floating on the internet. It's a symptom of the mountain of oozing corruption and pseudopatriotic pus that we were spoonfed since 9/11.
The time of "your government will protect you" is fucking over. The people have spoken, and cities are burning.

Is that enough of a message?

Attn: Executive Staff

Dangerous radicals threaten our country. Their insidious methods and unstoppable rhetoric are a serious danger to the natural order of things. If they continue to spread their lies and propaganda...

Then people will listen.

And by god we can't have that! If they listen they might think. And if they think, then they might vote! And when they finally figure out that voting does fuck all to stop the flood of oozy corruption and money that pumps through our veins instead of blood then we'll really be fucked.

Release headlines! Call up the celebrities! Get another fifty tons of cocaine delivered to Hollywood, stat, and make sure those goddamn hoodlums in the ghettos are listening to the latest plastic bullshit we cooked up in the boardroom yesterday. Wave your hands in the air, don't care. Get cash get money. Get drugs get honeys. And if by some absolute fucking miracle you do make enough to be a threat it won't matter. We've already got our poison in your brains, and now you're just like us. Those morals you swore you'd never give up aren't shit compared to the power of playing with lives and livelihood.

Suck it dry. All for us, none for you. The ups and downs of the economy are mere distraction. Our towers of glass and steel shield us from the common man while the future of this country rips itself in two with but a handshake across a shiny wood table. That's the bottom line, and god bless America.

Long live the dollar! Long live greed! Long live ignorance! These give us our power!

AND THE BEST PART IS, NO ONE WILL READ THIS! NO ONE WILL SEE! AND THOSE WHO DO, WELL....

These dangerous radicals threaten our country.