I’ve always had difficulty concentrating on any subject for a prolonged length of time. I think it’s likely that had I been born in a different era that I would have been a candidate for pharmaceutically assisted assiduity. But I was schooled prior to Adderall and Dexedrine, and so the best tools available to exasperated teachers and parents were discipline and ignominy.
And those tools didn’t require a prescription. They were time tested and sanctioned for use throughout every aspect of my youth. From school to sports to parental methodology. Oddly enough the side effects of humiliation and physical discipline have much in common with amphetamines. Increased heart rate, quicker breathing and higher blood pressure aren’t exclusive to ADHD drugs, and are natural reactions prior to getting publicly shamed or having the shit kicked out of you.
I’m going to assume that psychotic manifestations are common to both methods of forced concentration as well. Although I think the side effects of the drugs are somewhat easier to quantify.
Anyway, I survived, and regardless of all the efforts of educators and authority figures so did my ability to not concentrate for any protracted length of time. That’s not to say that I can’t focus. In fact,, when I need to I can be hyper attentive, but only for as long as absolutely necessary. Then I mentally wander off. Sometimes the timing for my wander isn’t particularly well received by other persons, who for reasons I cannot fathom still believe that my attention is required.
I can’t help it though. It’s like I hear an audible click in my head, and even the pretenses of interest dissipate faster than kinetic energy vanishes after the thud from a parachute malfunction.
That dissipation then leads to multi directional pondering. Because once freed from whatever was compelling my attention, my thoughts tend to scatter in different directions until something more captivating appears.
So, in the spirit of wandering and pondering I’m going to visit some of the cardinal directions. I’ll start with South. South is an interesting direction because that’s where the Americans are, and although American antics aren’t necessarily rational they are assuredly attention grabbing. I think the Americans have new dreams that are challenging and supplanting the old one. I’m assuming the old one is the bungalow in argent suburbs, with a steady job, marriage and a couple of kids.
There are of course many American dreams. But in order to actualize those dreams they need to be accepted as legitimate, and from the look of things the traditional American dream people are having all kinds of problems with that concept.
I think the social and political problems that currently face the Republic are a direct result of the one dream suppressing the many dreams. Because those other dreams were overlooked, the ignored dreamers ramped up their behavior so they would get noticed, and now the one dream people are pissed that they have to acknowledge that other American dreams are a reality.
But in characteristic American style they won’t accept that there’s room for other dreams, and instead started a cultural war over which dream is going to dominate politics and the airwaves.
Apparently black, brown, Muslim, gay, feminism and immigrant dreams are a nightmare to the one dreamers. The one dreamer reactions to dream competition have placed Donnie and Marge and and the rest of the MAGA crowd into positions of power, and the platform of MAGA seems to be seething resentment focused on preventing those other dreams from happening.
But that’s a challenging agenda to articulate, and so the anger is public but the reason for the enmity is rarely spoken out loud with any coherence. Instead that antipathy is expressed in terms of policy, like Muslim travel bans, and border walls and abortion and book bans. And incoherent Marge. Moms For Liberty and the aforementioned Donald.
There seems to be a lot of selective banning from a group of Americans that profess to value freedom above all else, which seems kind of odd to me.
Anyway.
Let’s go East.
Middle East.
Why do the Americans have military bases in Syria and Iraq? The story the Americans tell is that they’re keeping an eye on Isis and Iran. But it seems to me that satellites can do that job, and I’m left wondering if they’re actually there to provide oilfield security for American energy companies. The fact that the battle of Khasham is also called the Conoco oilfield battle would suggest that watching ISIS is convenient cover to the missions actual objective.
It makes me wonder.
If Canada decided to nationalize the oilfields and Suncor got the boot, would the Americans decide that they needed to set up an army outpost at Fort MacMurray to keep an eye on them radical Canadian leftists?
It’s funny how oil and unamerican governments seem to go hand in hand. Canada, Iran and Venezuela are the owners of three of the four largest oil reserves on the planet, and the Americans have invasion plans prepared for two of those countries. I don’t think anyone should be surprised if they have a just in case plan stored away for Canada too. Saudi Arabia is kind of the exception. They basically have one or two MAGA Muslims in control of everything, and the Americans like that scenario. They’ve always preferred dictators to any government of the people that sounds and acts like socialism and impedes the profitability of oil companies. So, they just sell fighter jets to the Saudi prince and the oil flows and everyone’s happy.
Except Saudi women and gays, non-Muslims, and Yemen. And the occasional whacked. journalist.
Now I’m going to posit a Southern analogy to an Eastern predicament.
Let’s say that a movement started in Mexico. A movement where a percentage of the population decided that they are actually Meximayans and Mexincans. These people reawakened their old Gods and determined that they have an ancestral and divine right to certain lands. Lands that were stolen from them by the colonists. New Mexico, Texas and California for example.
Lets say that these people declared that their religion gives them claim to these territories. So, they begin to cross the border and force Americans out of those areas while moving into the old American farms, ranches and towns. Let’s say that these people are quietly supported by a Mexican army presence that surreptitiously backs resettlement of their traditional and God given lands.
Lets also say that the displaced Americans were forced into an enclave where they were governed by the Meximayans but they had none of the rights of their overseers. No legal, land, voting or other privileges.
How long would it take before the Americans went ballistic? That’s a rhetorical question but I’ll answer it anyway. Minutes is the answer.
So why does Israel get a pass for doing exactly that? I get it that the Hamas incursion into Israel was horrific. Kidnapping and raping and killing civilians is reprehensible, but I don’t understand the Picajew surprised faces..
For fifty years the Israelis have been displacing Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and replacing them with 600,000 Israelis in Jewish only settlements, and it seems logical to me that eventually that shit is going to have consequences.
Sigh.
It’s a lose, lose situation for everyone involved and there aren’t any options I can see other than terrorism and government sanctioned terrorism. Hamas and the Palestinians aren’t going to challenge Israel to open warfare because they’d get their asses kicked, so they do what outgunned adversaries always do. Guerilla tactics. Tactics employed by American patriots during the revolutionary war and the Viet Cong and the Stern gang and the Lochmei Herut or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.
The Stern gang by the way was a 1940’s Jewish group that attacked both the Arabs and the British as they fought to establish what is now the state of Israel. By today’s western definition the Sterns would be labeled as terrorists.
So now fifty years later and Hamas goes fucking barbarian nuts, and Israel is left with no choice except to attempt to wipe the assholes off the face of the holy land. Also after thousands of civilians are killed collaterally during the Hamas hunt it seems a given that Palestinian and Arab attitudes toward Israel are going to ramp up on the hostility meter.
And linger and simmer until the whole episode happens again. Because that’s what happens when morons bring God to a land dispute.
So I think this Gaza war is just the beginning of another chapter of the same fucking endless story, and Israel has now entered a phase of existence best defined as perpetual readiness.
That’s a shitty way to live in my estimation.
And because of the emotion around this conflict I feel the need to explain a couple of things. I’m not anti-Semitic. The notion that a person can’t disapprove of Israeli policy without hating Jewish people is ridiculous. I disapprove of the assholes that run Iran too and Hamas can go fuck themselves, but I don’t hate the Muslim people either.
I am anti religious toward any mythology that can be described as orthodox or ultra orthodox. Those assholes are the scourge of the earth. They constantly create death and destruction and if we’re looking for a way to eliminate terrorists from the equation, then banning violent religions would be an ideal place to start.
The history of civilization has almost always been a land battle in the name of a Deity of some kind. As a result, religious terrorists hordes have roamed the earth looking for contrary believers to rape and murder.
And then you take their land and their stuff without a single pang of guilt because God decreed your crusade or Jihad as holy. So rape is O.K. as long as the woman is a different religion. Killing isn’t just condoned though. I think slaughter is kind of an understood prerequisite, whereas rape is more of an option. A personal interpretation of Gods will, if you will.
But it’s really just a land grab and a divine excuse to behave as savages.
So it seems to me that the only possible solution to Gaza is a negotiated settlement of land claim. That means negotiating with terrorists and with religious zealots and that sounds like a lot of literal lines in the sand.
But this negotiation must happen or there are only two alternatives that I can see.
Continue to kill one another until everyone is weary enough to compromise, or continue to kill one another until all the neighbors get involved. And eventually some friends from other places.
I’m hoping a Palestinian leader emerges that isn’t Hamas. I’m hoping that the Israeli’s get a handle on Otzma Yehudit and the rest of the Religious Zionists.
And I’m hoping they talk. Like adults, and maybe behave like their respective Gods approve of the concept of peace.
That would be nice.