The problem with belonging to a pollitical party is it is a cult and only sees what it wants to see

 

    The problem with belonging to a political party is it creates an inherent conflict of interest its members when their party, or its leader or leaders, screw up. Do party members then do the my party right or wrong, or do they call a spade a spade? 

    I think political parties are secular religious, aka, cults. I’m a political independent and have no inner conflicts about poking political parties and their leaders when they miss the mark, and  giving them attaboys when they hit it.

    I posted on my Facebook timeline:

Sloan Bashinsky

February 10 

As I read Amendment 25, it will take V.P. Kamala Harris joining in to remove Biden from the presidency, and I don’t see that happening, but I imagine Trump and the Republicans will make plenty more noise about it and it won’t help Biden at the polls. Biden responded poorly on TV yesterday to what’s in the Special Counsel’s report.

Amendment 25, Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Joan

President Biden's response by mixing ip some names does not rise to that level.......at all.

Sloan Bashinsky  

Ronald Reagen said he could not remember crucial (incriminating) details of the Iran Contra affair, I saw him say that on TV. Trump says stuff all the time that isn’t true, but his lemmings believe him. But, Amendment 25, by its very wording, requires the vice president, to sign on to invoking it, and surely the Republicans pushing to invoke 25 against Biden have actually read it? Or, they can’t read? Or, they need court appointed guardians? Or, they should walk out in front of the next speeding bus and do themselves and America a favor?

    In my email this morning, from Al.com’s John Archibald, who often nails bull shit squarely on the head:

 

Archibald: Whites will soon be a minority in Alabama schools, so the state will pay students to leave

Here we go again, Alabama.

I went to Banks High School in Birmingham. It was famous for football in its day.

Johnny Musso. Jeff Rutledge. A kid named Jimmy Haywood as smooth as anyone I ever saw.

In 1977, the year before I started as a freshman, 239 kids graduated as seniors, according to the Banks yearbook, Contrails.” 

Nine out of every 10 of them were white.

By the time I graduated in 1981 my senior class was 66% white.

By 1984, the kids who were freshmen when I was a senior graduated in a class that was 56% white.

Three years after that, in 1987, the senior class was 37% white.

You see where I’m going. You see how it went.

Two years later the Birmingham School Board turned Banks into a middle school. It later closed, though the name has since been adopted by a private academy.

It is the story of schools all over the South.

It took Birmingham, a place synonymous with civil rights struggles, twenty years after Brown v. Board of Education to really integrate its schools. It took less time than that to resegregate. 

There was white flight in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Black flight since. A school system that was 70,000 strong when George Wallace shouted – predicted, as it turned out – “segregation forever” has lost 71% of its enrollment in the time since. Birmingham City Schools are about 1% white now.

It’s not just Birmingham. School systems in Montgomery, Huntsville and Mobile – though different in many ways – are all majority minority, according to U.S. News education reports.

And the state itself is now on that precipice.

White kids make up just 51% of public school students, while 32% are Black and 11% Hispanic, according to the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. As that group put it in January, “this year’s enrollment continues a long-term trend. In 2000, 62% of students were white, and the percentage of Hispanic students barely registered.”

And here we go again.

Because flight has a new name, a new engine: School choice.

Gov. Kay Ivey and assorted lawmakers last week unveiled a bill that will designate $100 million in state money to pull from the public schools and hand it – in increments of up to $7,000 in tax credits per student – to those who would like to fly.

Click here to read the rest, about Alabama's plans (and my problems with it). 

 

Poetry

I love my job. And one of the things I like most about it is interacting with readers. Some send me their own writings from time to time, and some comes in the form of poetry.

I have been touched often by the words of Billy Field of Tuscaloosa. I asked him if I could share this piece with you, and he kindly agreed.

It struck home just a bit:

 

God does not let you remember 

God does not let you know 

Does not let you remember 

The last time you held your son 

In your arms

And carried him

When he was small enough to carry 

But almost big enough you could not.

 

God does not let you remember 

The last time.

He does not say 

(when it is happening), 

“This is it. This is the last time.” 

Because He knows you could not take it.

 

Maybe He knows 

That if you did know

You would never put him down.

 

Those things just happen 

Like something that happens while you’re asleep 

And then, years later, you think about it

And you say, “Yeah, that happened… 

But I don’t remember it.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened.”

 

                                        --Billy Field, Tuscaloosa

    My email to John Archibald:

Great job on white flight. 

Alas, the God does not let us remember poem is ... horseshit? .... political propaganda?

I remember very well that just before my last semester at the University of Alabama School of Law, early September 1967, my 7-week old son died of what then was called crib death and today is called sudden infant death syndrome.

    The Alabama School of Law is in Tuscaloosa.

    sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Mystery reigns as the beatings continue until morale improves

 

    This post today about mystery and surprise wanders a bit between Birmingham and other places and the Florida Keys/Key West, but I think it all gets sewn together by the end, perhaps a patchwork quilt of sorts. 

    In my email this morning:

I am Content to Live in the Mystery
By: Henry Miller

POETIC OUTLAWS
FEB 11, 2024

I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. 

I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. 

The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. 

There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism.

 
I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.

I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying. 

I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. 

I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere.

You can find this passage in Henry Miller’s fantastic book—Black Spring.

Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
It is my experience that mystery is essential to soul development, for if we know how everything will turn out, what is the point of living? If we do not get ruffled, disturbed, surprised, disappointed, pleased, infuriated by what life serves, that would be really boring. 

In January 1994, I started attending a church service of sorts in a rented hall in a commercial building. Each Sunday morning, someone responsible for the meeting talked about this or that. 

After a few weeks, as a meeting came to close, a man, whom I had not seen there before, came forward from the back of the meeting hall and faced the gathering and told us to all close our eyes and ask God what we can best do to serve God? 

That was the first mention of God I had heard in that “church”. 

 

I closed my eyes and silently asked God what I could do to best serve God? Into my inner vision came a white quill writing pen. Tears welled in my eyes. I opened my eyes and got up and left.

That night after dinner, sitting with my diary and. a ballpoint pen in my “sitting chair” in my wife’s and my bedroom, looking out the window at an old, majestic black willow tree and a big moon behind its branches, I opened my diary and put my pen on the paper and one word at a time started appearing, as if I was taking dictation, and I started bawling, and that went on every night for weeks, and then it stopped, and I typed it all up into my computer and then made it into a little saddle stitched pamphlet, which I named “A Crazy Person’s Bible”, because any one who lived God would have to be crazy to live as God wanted them to live, turning the other cheek, praying for our enemies, taking no thought for the morrow, it is more blessed to receive, first take the beam out of our own eye, etc. 

Then, I had a couple of hundred copies made at a Kinkos and I put them in a cardboard box and took them to the mall where I lied to hang out during day time, and at night, when street performers were there. I set the box on a bench and I left. Later I came back and retrieved the box and what pamphlets were left in it and went home. 

I kept doing that, and I kept printing more copies, and I kept doing that, and then a sequel came, and did it all again, and another sequel came, and I did it all again, and then it played out. And, then I wrote two novels at the same time, and finished writing them both on the same day. 

Then, my life there imploded and I moved away and all those writings remained there and cannot be reproduced. 

By then, I was beginning to use the internet, and in time I wrote maybe 50 thousand pages on blogs on goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which I paid the owner of bigpinekey.com to create for me, which developed a pretty good following.

Then, I got tangled in something in Key West, which I could have avoided, but if I had, I would not have learned a lot of things I didn’t know, which were very important. the cost was the two blogs were taken down by the web host host and were lost, unless I knew how to use cache to retrieve them, which I did not. The hotmail account where I had sent out blasts of the blog posts to quite a few people got shut down, because I forgot the password and hotmail became outlook, and all those emails were lost.

I started a new blog, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, and kept posting there daily for several years. Then, I started writing non-fiction books and novels again, and I put them on blogs until they were done, and then I put the entire book on the blogs’ home page. A friend converted them so they could be read at the free internet library, archive.com, where they were, and are, read by people all over the world. 

My friend digitized my first novel and a book had written where the meltdown occurred, and he put them in the free internet library. 

 

Because of him, the internet, and the free library, I will live on Earth for so long as that library exists, which might or might not be a good thing, depending on who is asked. 

Here is the mystery poem written by the white quill pin and ended up in A Crazy Person’s Bible.

“Rosa Mystica” 

Rosa Mystica,
Sweet Mystery,
Bride of Christ,
Living Water
without which
God is dead
and there are no rainbows.

Linda OReilly
“Then, I got tangled in something I could have avoided, but if I had, I would not have learned a lot of things I didn’t know, which were very important.“
Too true. If I had avoided all the things I should have avoided I’d be a lot dumber than I am right now.

Sloan Bashinsky
Hilarious, Amen, Praise the Lord, F-ing A! :-)

    In a dream around dawn this morning, February 12, 2023, Alabama’s recently retired GOAT (greatest of all time) football coach Nick Saban told me that I should take up running again. We were in the Florida Keys, around where my father’s 2nd home was on Lower Matecumbe Key. The previous owner was an avid fisherman and had called the home “The Fish House,” and that what my father called it. I told Coach Saban that I didn’t know about that, running might hurt my back. He nodded to his left, down US 1 a ways, and said there are a lot of pins down there. 

     In 2011, I injured my low back doing an isometric exercise in my trailer on Little Torch Key. Standing in a doorway and using my legs and arms and hands to push up against the top of a door jam, I felt something snap and I was barely able to move for weeks. Last year, an MRI showed my L4 and L5 had fused naturally.

    When Coach Saban retired in early January of this year, I hoped he would run for the U.S. Congress, like Auburn’s head football coach Tommy Tuberville had done. Tuberville got elected by saying he would do whatever Donald Trump told him to do. I seriously doubt Coach Saban would do whatever Donald Trump told him to do.

    So, I wondered if the dream wasn’t about jogging, but was about running for office, which I did 10 times when I lived in Key West and on Little Torch Key, the island just below Big Pine Key. US 1 runs from Florida City all the way down to Key West.

    I remembered what I had posted at poetic outlaws yesterday, and that before I turned in last night, I had asked God to show me what I can do to best serve God?

    I wondered if maybe it was not a lot of pins down US 1, but a lot of pens? 

    I sure penned a whole lot of pages down there on goodmonringkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com,  and on bigpinekey.com’s popular Coconut Telegraph forum, and there are lots of poets and some successful writers in Key West. It olden times, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost and Tennessee Williams lived there. 

    But for me to live there again, run for local office again, wouldn’t that be, been there, done that? Many times. 

    In 2006, I ran for the Monroe County Commission, when I lived in my trailer on Little Torch Key. I friend in Georiga gave me serveral hundred “Re-Elect No One” bumper decals, which were left over from something he once had gotten involved in.

   I ran as an Independent against the Republican incumbent. 

    My campaign mantra was, “No more new development, period, the end. The Florida Keys already are way over developed and there is not a person living here who can look in a mirror and honestly say otherwise.”

    

    I got about 1/3 of the votes cast. 

    In 2010, there was a Democrat challenger as well, and got about 10 percent of the votes cast.

    Living in Key West, I ran 6 times for mayor of that city, starting 2003, once for county commissioner, 2008, and once for school board 2011, and didn’t get enough votes in any of those races to cause a ripple in a dead calm bayou.

    I was the out of the box candidate, the minority report. My constituents were Mother Nature and her sea and land creatures and vegetation, affordable housing, and homeless people. 

    Land and water polluters, developers and their lawyers and captured elected officials, and law enforcement officers who were rough on homeless people were my prey.

    I said every time I ran that it was because God told me to run, if I knew what was good for me. 

    I was told several times that I might have gotten elected if I had not mentioned God, or angels.

    My goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningkeywest.com blogs might be lost forever, but afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, dormant for some time, can be woken up and put back to work. Or, perhaps a new blog might hatch.

    But haven’t I been there and done that? Many times.

    When last year (2003) I wrote the novella, Return of the Strange, the sequel to Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale (2001), inspired by a street performer I had met in Key West, I wondered if maybe I might end up back in the Florida Keys, because some of Return of the Strange is about the invasive species, humans, raping and pillaging the Florida Keys, and infesting the ocean with flesh-eating bacteria, which is never told to the tourists.

    Here are links and descriptions/leads for both tales at the free internet library:

https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212

This free book starts with an earthly and metaphysical romp about how the novel came to be written, what it was like for Sloan while he wrote it, and his irreverent philosophy of writing, poetry and living - preferring to be a frog instead of a prince.

The novel is based on a storyline given to Sloan by street performer Birdie McLaine, whom Sloan met in Key West, 2001. Sloan told Birdie he had pretty much lived about half of the storyline the year before.

A non-stop romp. A cornicopia of love, loss, lottery winnings, psychiatry, fishing, law, kidnapping, paradise mating, incest healing, human greed, criminal prosecution, karma, incarceration and spirit set in Birmingham, Alabama, Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida, and the Caribbean garden island, Dominica.

The main characters, Mary Lou Snow, Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins are a the gods must be crazy menage de trois only a mystic, or a street performer, could dream up. The supporting actors are loveable, detestable, unforgettable. 

There really is no way to describe Heavy Wait in writing, or verbally, and do it justice.

It is not for the faint of heart, prudes, people who hate lawyers, lawyers who think they are hot stuff, people who think Jesus loves them no matter what they do. It is not for anyone, who doesn’t have a helluva sense of humor and a fertile imagination.

Sloan wrote the story stone cold sober without any chemical assistance, There was a good bit of other world assistance.

Sloan still believes God wrote the story, and he was just along for the ride, trying to keep up with the many unexpected twists and turns, which perhaps a novelist like Tom Robbins, who wrote Just Another Roadside Attractions, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume might appreciate. 

 

Sloan doubts a novelist like John Grisham would like Heavy Wait.  

 

Perhaps minor actor Stepehen King would like it. Perhaps not.  

 

Same for Oprah, the principal supporting actress.

https://archive.org/details/retun-of-the-strange-v-20_202306

The long awaited sequel to Heavy Wait. This book had a gestational cycle of years and it is a rip roaring romp through America and both the kindness and also the dark heart of the American experience. Equally moving, sometimes you will laugh, sometimes you will cry, sometimes you will not know whether to continue, and sometimes you won't be able to tear yourself away from this STRANGE tale of Riley and his paradise mated wyrd love, Willa Sue, who thought of living in the Florida Keys, but something unexpected happened.

    Larry King and Oprah Winfrey and lot of Americans wanted the hero, Riley Strange, to run for president, but something unexpected happened.

As for me, I have two doctors in Birmingham, who keep me going. One probably can be replaced by a doctor in the Florida Keys, but the other is the reason I still can talk. He developed a laser treatment to mow back and keep at bay a viral growth on my vocal cord. Either the angels take his place, or I have to return to Birmingham every six months to see him. 

    I don’t know if I have the stamina to make that long drive any more. I can’t imagine I have the stamina to pack up and leave Birmingham and move Key West and find a place to live and move in and unpack what the movers bring down from Birmingham.

    I would miss a lot of people in Birmingham, whom I met and came to know pretty well after I moved back to my home town in 2019, after hanging out a while in Tuscaloosa, sleeping nights in a spare bedroom in the home of my children’s mother. 

    I know I am a strange bird. I did not find anyone in Key West, aka Key Weird, where the weird go pro, who was anywhere near as weird as me- until 2017, when I met “Bob”, who now does the tech work for our Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcasts, and who gets my books into the free internet library, archive.org.

    In March 2118, as I rode my conch cruiser bicycle to Hometown Pac's call to candidates at Salute Ristorante on Higgs Beach in Key West, where that event always took place, it came to me out of the blue what I would say during my time before the audience.

    When I was called up to the speakers' stand by my good friend Todd German, who presided over Hometown Pac candidate events, chuckles and groans came from the audience. Todd handed me the mic, and I looked at the audience and said, “Everyone here knows Key West is an open air insane asylum.” Laughter and nodding heads from the audience. “And that I'm the head lunatic.” Laughter and nodding heads form the audience. “So why not make it official? Sloan for Mayor!' Groans from the audience.

    I was way too wyrd even for Key Weird.

    So, why would I do that again?

    Besides, I fucking detest politics, which I made crystal clear every time I ran for office in Key West and the Florida Keys, and that but for God threatening me, I would not have run. 

    Yet, I confess that I do enjoy poking politics and seeing the response, and it’s a lot more fun poking in person, at candidate events, in city and county commission meetings, than on a blog or in a podcast, where there is no live interaction with the pokees and the spectators.

    So while what lies ahead is a total mystery to me, what’s behind is crystal clear. 

    America is so totally fucked up that SNAFU is history and FUBAR reigns. 

    I have painted that in many posts at this mock presidential campain blog, and in many episodes of The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast at Torrent platforms, and The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast and the Redneck Mystic  Podcast at YouTube. Same material, different platforms. 

    So, can’t help but wonder what Coach Saban tried to tell me around dawn today?

    Do another podcast? Not for a while. Bob has really serious medical stuff that’s laid him low. But my fingers and laptop keyboard still work pretty good.

    Perhaps the answer lies in why I got into politics in the first place?

   In late December 2000, I got on a Greyhound bus in Los Angeles headed to Key West, where I would begin another stint of living on the street. When the bus reached Tallahassee, the seat of the Florida government, I fell asleep. The federal judge for whom I clerked after graduating from the Alabama School of Law, who ran the Democratic Party in Alabama from his judge chambers, except for the George Wallace faction, came to me in a dream and said he was thinking about getting into politics. I replied that I didn’t think that was s good idea, but, knowing him, he was going to do it. I woke up knowing I was fucked.

   I can’t imagine fucking up America worse if I were president, and maybe America. Or maybe I would fuck it up worse that might be just what is needed?

    I said quite a few times at goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningflooridakeys.com that I am a mere bait shrimp and the fisherman is God.

    Here’s a submission I emailed today to bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph. Big Pine Key is the home of the key deer. My mechanic friend in the submission is “Bob”.

Re: hydrogen-powered cars and trucks submission

Hi, Deer Ed -

Hope all is well with you.

I have a friend, who knows a whole lot about cars and trucks, tractors, motorcycles, and anything that uses a gasoline or diesel engine. He can take apart Ferraris, Lotuses, Porches, American cars and trucks, motor cycles, and tractors, and put them back together. 

He wonders where will be stored all the several thousand pound toxic waste batteries in electric cars after the batteries die? I wonder where people like me, who live in apartment buildings and have to park our cars and trucks on streets, will charge our new electric cars after our old gasoline-powered cars die and go to the junkyard with their tiny toxic waste batteries?

My friend said there are several patents in the US Patent Office for automotive engines built to use electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water and the hydrogen powers cars and trucks. He said the technology was road tested in existing cars by car makers, and it worked great. On a quart of water, a sedan traveled several hundred miles. He said the technology can be installed existing and new vehicles.

He said The Atomic Energy Commission, egged on by the oil industry, declared the patented technology could be used to make nuclear weapons, so it cannot be used by auto and truck makers. He said it would take a very long time using the technology to make enough radioactive material to make even one nuclear weapon, and anyone working on the project would die of radiation poisoning long before the weapon was made.

I’m a tech idiot, but he convinced me that something is rotten in the Atomic Energy Commission. I already knew something was rotten in the oil industry.

Imagine hydrogen-powered cars and trucks putting Tesla and the Chinese Tesla knockoff out of business. 

Imagine hydrogen-powered cars putting Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and Russia out of business.

Imagine America having no reason at all to be involved in the Middle East.

Just another fool

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

the internet, cults, revolutions and The Deep State

    The internet allows people to engage the world in ways never dreamed before the internet. In some ways, the internet has replaced religions. In some ways, the intenet has replaced God by whatever name called. In many ways, the internet has made it much easier for people to join herds they otherwise would not know exist. 

    I wrote to someone in Australia this morning, who approached me a few weeks ago after reading something I had posted in an online forum about the Melchizedek training. She  began to have experiences that suggested she might enter the Melchizedek training, which in my experience, and in the experience of a few other people I have known, is unimaginably difficult. It can be likened to what Jesus in the Gospels experienced, and to what his disciples experienced after he left them. 

    After she sent me this morning an Alex Jones video announcing Tucker Carlson had interviewed Vladimir Putin, and to be on the lookout for that video, which is about avoiding World War III, I wrote to her:

Alex Jones is seriously deranged.

I agree, the Carlson interview of Putin is really important, and perhaps it will be released in full, instead of Tucker only releases what he wants the public to see.

From news reports I’ve read online about the interview, Putin told Tucker than he invaded Ukraine because he views parts of Ukraine as Russia. That flies squarely against the widely head notion that Putin invaded Ukriane because it wanted to get into NATO. Of course, if Ukraine was in NATO, do you think Putin would have invaded Ukraine? 

You have a woman in Sydney named Caitlin Johnstone, who keeps giving Russia a free pass on the Ukraine invasion, and keeps blaming the Ukraine president and Joe Biden for not making peace with Putin. She has a very large following on Substack. She cherrypicks what she wants to sell to her readers, and ignores or insults what she doesn’t want her readers to be swayed by. I might do yet another post about her today. And Chris Hedges, who also has a very large Substack readership, and also cherrypicks. Mainly, they are raising hell about Israel and giving Hamas a free pass, when they should be raising hell about both. 

If you get caught up a herd like that, or in Trump’s herd, or in Biden’s herd, or in any herd, you are in a cult, and you are fucked, spiritually, until you leave the herd and see it for what it actually is.

    Here is the lead with a link for the Caitlin Johnstone piece yesterday, into which I plunged.

Pushing Gazans Into Rafah And Then Attacking…
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
FEB 9
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): Israel is reportedly preparing to launch a ground assault on Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip where Gazans have been pushed to flee to. Israel has instructed the 1.4 million refugees sheltering there to evacuate, along with the hundreds of thousands of people who were already living there before, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere for them to go. This could wind up being

Read →

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/pushing-gazans-into-rafah-and-then/comments#comment-49278111 

 

RedDust

Just a moment of praise for this writer. Does anyone write like Johnstone? Anyone at all? I've been reading subversive literature for over 55 years and her voice is as powerful and moving as any. So necessary in this time. It feels like a voice straight out of the darkness, a klaxon call waking us from the narcotic sleep of sociopathic empire. And the tenacity! tapping into some well of prodigious energy and creativity. Month after month immersing herself in the atrocities and brutal savagery of the merciless, destructive juggernaut that is Western imperialism. But what an opportunity. When in history has it been on such incredibly vivid display? You and Tim are holding valuable space for a lot of us out here Caitlin. Grateful, deeply grateful.

Caitlin Johnstone
Author
Thank you so much for your kind words. That means a lot to us.

ChazLB
ChazLB’s Newsletter
All we can hope is that our megar comments can inspire each other to do better think better and be better ...you are a life raft in this insanity.

gypsy33
Agree, Chaz. The world has gone batshit crazy and it’s a relief to hear a few voices of reason and empathy.
I feel so goddamned helpless though…

Realist
"All we can hope is that our megar comments can inspire each other to do better think better and be better ...you are a life raft in this insanity."
How about a solution instead of restating the problem over and over?

Sloan Bashinsky

Hi, Realist -
I agree with you that a lot of pissing and moaning online doesn’t change anything going on in Gaza, but I imagine Hamas likes all the pissing is on Israel. 

I’ve read most of the comments you invoked here, and I have read both Caitlin and Chris Hedges for a good while, and I simply do not see a solution that anyone can enforce, force or make happen, because I don’t see anyone who can make Israel and Hamas behave differently.  

President Biden could cut Israel loose, but Israel would still have access to a huge stockpile of U.S. munitions stored in Israel for the U.S. military’s use in the Middle East. And, Israel has plenty of nuclear bombs. 

What I suppose will happen sooner or later is Hamas and Israel grow tired of being harassed by the people of Gaza and the people of Israel, respectively, and that leads to some sort of truce or armistice, for a while.  

Or, Israel sim[ly bombs the rest of Gaza to rubble and it becomes a wasteland where people live in tents or bombed-out buildings or makeshift shelters- if they don’t starve to death or a plague sets in and kills them. 

Hamas and the man leading Israel and his inner circle are religious fanatics. They are convinced God is on their side. They don’t care what Caitlin and Hedges or you and I think about them. 

I’m 81 and live in Alabama, USA. I have lots of aches and pains, so even if I had a passport, which I don’t. I can’t go to Gaza or Israel and make noise in the streets and paint very real bullseyes all over me, which I have done in America. 

However, if I lived in Gaza and was still beathing, I’d be really pissed at Hamas and I would be letting Hamas know that, and I would be all over social media about it until Hamas killed me or made a deal with Israel to end the war.
If I lived in Israel, would do the same thing. 

But I don’t live in either place, and neither does Catiin, who lives in way down under (Australia), and Chris Hedges, who lives in America- both, like you and me, safe from the bombs, rockets, grenades and bullets flying in Gaza. 

I think Hedges should get out of his comfy office and go to the Gaza frontlines and interview people in Gaza and learn and report how they feel about Hamas. Then, Hedges should walk over into Israel and do the same there. Perhaps Caitlin can fly from Australia to do the same.  

As is, they report is second hand from what other people are reporting. Or third hand. Or fourth hand.

I think this is a reasonable suggestion. Caitlin and Hedges have large paid subscription numbers. I do not pay Caitlin, but I do pay Hedges, because he does not allow free reads. 

Maybe just armchair video gamers like you and me.

Realist
“Maybe just another armchair video gamers like you and me."
Where did you get the idea that I am a video gamer? I am not.
The solution to the Deep State problem is to destroy the Deep State.

Sloan Bashinsky
As for destroying The Deep State, I’m all ears how you say that can be done, but first I suppose I need to see your definition of The Deep State, because I have heard different versions of what it is, and I am pretty sure what most people’s view of it are of what it is manipulating unseen, glad that so many people think they actually know what The Deep State actually is.

Realist
"As for destroying The Deep State, I’m all ears how you say that can be done, but first I suppose I need to see your definition of The Deep State..."
The Deep State is also all ears, therefore I will not describe the tactics to someone I do not know. There are a number of ways that can be done. The Deep State is the unelected entity that controls this country.
If you can not understand the concept, you will be of no use.

Sloan Bashinsky
I understand the concept in ways most people who talk about The Deep State cannot begin to imagine. You said somewhere above that revolution is how to defeat The Deep State. You told me The Deep State controls “this country”. I’m an American, so I will proceed as if you mean America, where Donald Trump is proposing a revolution if he wins or loses in 2024.   

 

You spoke somewhere above of armchair cowards at their keyboards, yet you used a fake name, as do many people here use fake names.  Sometimes using a fake name is necessary to remain alive. Sometimes remaining alive is secondary to taking a stand that requires being in plain view to do what needs to be done. 

So, I give you the benefit of the doubt, even though I do not use a fake name and I go about pissing off a lot of people at Caitlin’s and Chris Hedges’s places, and many other places, using my real name, stating where I live. I’m in plain view on Facebook, Substack, the free internet library, archive.com, and various google blogspots, and non-monetized, ad free The Redneck Mystic Lawyer and The Redneck Mystic YouTube podcasts, also watchable by Torrent clients, who are far more open to something different than are YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, Facebook. X, etc. and Substack users.

To bring off a revolution, you personally have to put yourself at risk. If you do not do that, then you are pretending to be a revolutionist. A German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer is attributed to having said, “Silence in the face of Evil is itself Evil, God will not hold us harmless.” He wrote a very serious book, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, in which he compared “cheap grace” to the real thing. He and other men tried to kill Adolph Hitler and they were caught and executed.

Hitler was backed by The Deep State, in two ways. The first way can be somewhat understood by reading World Without Cancer, about the Rothschilds and I.G. Farbin. The other way can be somewhat understood by reading THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, by Trevor Ravenscroft. 

There is the behind the scenes cabal, some call it the Illuminati, of which the first U.S. President Bush was a member. They pull many levers people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump cannot begin to imagine. They pull Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s levers without them knowing it. They profit regardless of who is in the White House, regardless of who is in Congress, regardless of who is on the Supreme Court. They profit from the war in Gaza. They love the war in Gaza. They view Caitlin and Chriss Hedges as pawns, stooges.

Good luck beating them, but sometimes there are ways to disturb their peace, if you are willing to take personal risks.

There is a much deeper state, which is not of this world and that is what Ravenscroft’s book is about. That deep state pulls the levers of the human deep state cabal, and the levers of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and the levers of just about everyone actually.

The way Caitllin and Chriss Hedges can disturb both deep states’ peace and agendas is they get out of their safe armchairs, where the are making a good living without much, if any, personal risk, and they go to Gaza and talk with a lot of people in Gaza about their view of Hamas and Israel, and they publish their findings at their Substacks. Then, they go to Israel and they try to get the Israeli government to show them their evidence about the October 7 attack and about Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza, under hospitals, under the UN relief headquarters, and so forth, and Caitlin and Hedges report that at their Substacks. 

Right now, Caitlin and Hedges are reporting and commenting what other people are reporting and commenting. It’s 2nd hand, or 3rd hand, or 4th hand. And, Caitlin and Hedges are cherrypicking what they wish to report, and they cast as Zionist or American propaganda anything that disagrees with them Certainly, there is propaganda, and Caitlin and Hedges make it, as well, to support their positions. 

If I were president, I would declassify all U.S . Government UFO files which would fuck up just about everything. I would cut Israel loose. I would bring my soldiers home to peacefully as possible defend the invasion from Mexico and to protect public schools from NRA and U.S. Supreme Court-enabled domestic terrorists. I would ban Americans from going to Mexico. I would ban people in America from sending money to people in Mexico. Until Mexico stops the invasion. I would make Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s cheap, fast, early stage covid cure freely available. I would allow the American auto industry to use the road-tested hydrogen from water fuel technology patents in the U.S. Patent Office, to make America totally independent of oil within its own borders and the Middl East.

 
Every day, I would speak for half hour, live TV, to the American public, alternating between the different networks. Or, I would livestream a podcast every day, if the networks didn’t cooperate. I would not use a teleprompter. I would not use a speech writer. I would not use a press secretary. 

I would expect to be killed.

I have given you my perspective, and I would like to hear your strategy for disturbing The Deep State’s peace in Palestine and in America. 

 

Realist
"I understand the concept in ways most people who talk about The Deep State cannot begin to imagine. You said somewhere above that revolution is how to defeat The Deep State. You told me The Deep State controls “this country”. I’m an American, so I will proceed as if you mean America, where Donald Trump is proposing a revolution if he wins or loses in 2024."
Yes, I am an American. The 'revolution' Trump is proposing is not the type of revolution I mean. He is proposing to work within the system as President. This will never work; there is no system as most Americans think of it. He supposedly tried that the first time. My take on Trump is he is rather naive (being generous) or controlled opposition. He chose his administration from the ranks of Deep State minions. He acted as an operative of the Deep State. If he believed in the United States, he would have pardoned Assange and Snowden.
"There is the behind the scenes cabal, some call it the Illuminati, of which the first U.S. President Bush was a member. They pull many levers people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump cannot begin to imagine. They pull Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s levers, without them knowing it. They profit regardless of who is in the White House, regardless of who is in Congress, regardless of who is on the Supreme Court."
Yes, that is my position, except both Biden and Trump understand the situation.
At the end of WWII, the United States was the consummate winner...nobody laid a glove on us. The two great oceans were a significant factor. The CIA was born in 1947 from the remnants of the OSS. Over the ensuing sixteen years, it became the muscle behind those of the rapacious, megalomaniac persuasion (Deep State). On a beautiful fall day in 1963, when a CIA bullet entered the front of JFK's head and spewed his brain onto the trunk of the Presidential limo, the governmental system of the US was changed forever. All US Presidents after that were titular. Read 'The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War' by Stephen Kinzer
I use a pseudonym, not to 'hide' from the powers that be but to avoid the riff-raff from emailing me and visiting my abode with ill intent. Those in control can find my identity in seconds.

Sloan Bashinsky

Well said, thank you. 

 

President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King and Malcom X all opposed America at war in Vietnam and they all were shot and killed. 

I don’t see any chance of a revolution that will fix America. But I can imagine a Civil War if Trump loses in 2024. 

Realist
"President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King and Malcom X all opposed America at war in Vietnam and they all were shot and killed."
That is true, but in JFK's case, I believe his assassination was at the behest of Allen Dulles, mainly in retaliation for his firing by Kennedy one year earlier.

Sloan Bashinsky

in 2005, I met a man who said he worked for the CIA in Vietnam when France was trying to retake Vietnam, and although outwardly America was supporting France, his units mission was to help Ho Chi Minh beat France, because America wanted Vietnam’s rubber trees and other natural resources for itself. He said Ho wanted to do business, but America asked too much and, not caring for China, Ho sought the Soviet Union’s help. Kennedy didn’t want America to be at war in Nam. War is very big business. President Eisenhower warned Americans about the military industrial complex. I watched President Johnson promise on national TV that he would not send American boys to die in a war in Asia. Then, he did just that. What changed his mind? He wanted to keep breathing? His family was threatened? His hound dog was threatened? :-) 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com