01-22-2019, 01:44 AM
Well, we cut the cable down to the barest basic (where I live I am seventy miles from the broadcast tower, so if we are to get anything at all) to save some money. I'm watching far less broadcast TV, and it is almost entirely PBS. We couldn't get along without the Internet.
Unfortunately, much of the news has to come from Sinclair (a/k/a "Stinking Liar") Broadcasting... At least I am in the range of radio broadcasting from a freer country -- Canada.
Poverty forces hard, often callous choices. I think of all the nastiest regimes in existence, and the one thing they all have in common is that they ensure that the common man is flat broke, bored, and lonely ("Bored, broke, and lonely" -- it certainly sounds like the title of a woe-laden country song, doesn't it?) so that they can think that an exploitative deal is generosity, bored for a lack of choices so that a propaganda rally is exciting, and lonely so that a controlled crowd can be fellowship. That's Nazi Germany, that's Stalin's Soviet Union, that's Apartheid-era South Africa for anyone not white; that's any feudal state; that's Ba'athist Iraq. We're not there yet, but we are headed there if we Americans vote for Trump in 2020.
The dog seems to be showing himself approaching the end; he is going blind from cataracts, and there is nothing I can do about that. With little money I am stranded in the hick town in which I was born, the sort of place I outgrew long ago except for finances. But this is America in 2019, where money is everything, spirit is nothing, and human virtues are reduced to cheap sentimentality. And, yes, Donald Trump is President.
I am in a worse family situation than I was in when I was taking care of my parents. My brother brought his girlfriend here from out of state, and she hates it here. She thinks I am a a malingerer because I seem unable to hold a job. It's Asperger's, and I am looking for ways in which to adapt. Is it any surprise? When I wrote some movie reviews I occasionally panned a really-bad movie with the line "this flick is probably best appreciated drunk, on drugs, or with a low IQ".
Sometimes I think that life for anyone not already rich is a grim contest to determine who can suffer the most for people with great wealth or bureaucratic power but no conscience. For all the nastiness in life, one is expected to give that big, theatrical "Happy to serve you!" smile in most public-contact jobs even if one so hates life that some situations in Dante's Inferno don't seem so bad. Unfortunately, those are only for those who refuse to accept Jesus as Savior. OK, so maybe I would love to listen to music by Copland and Gershwin, listen to lectures on physics from Richard Feynman and on astronomy from Carl Sagan, get to see what Anne Frank and Pavel Ginz are up to, and enjoy some Kabuki theater. Dante tells us that one of the leading figures of political life in that part of Hell is Saladin -- the George Washington of his time. Only problem -- my vices are worse than disbelief.
I must say this: at this point, I am not afraid of death -- only of its agony, and of Hell as a consequence of my sins -- worst of all, wasting my talents.
So far as I understand there is no magic bullet for Asperger's syndrome -- and nobody can philosophize or psychoanalyze his way out of a horrid situation.
Unfortunately, much of the news has to come from Sinclair (a/k/a "Stinking Liar") Broadcasting... At least I am in the range of radio broadcasting from a freer country -- Canada.
Poverty forces hard, often callous choices. I think of all the nastiest regimes in existence, and the one thing they all have in common is that they ensure that the common man is flat broke, bored, and lonely ("Bored, broke, and lonely" -- it certainly sounds like the title of a woe-laden country song, doesn't it?) so that they can think that an exploitative deal is generosity, bored for a lack of choices so that a propaganda rally is exciting, and lonely so that a controlled crowd can be fellowship. That's Nazi Germany, that's Stalin's Soviet Union, that's Apartheid-era South Africa for anyone not white; that's any feudal state; that's Ba'athist Iraq. We're not there yet, but we are headed there if we Americans vote for Trump in 2020.
The dog seems to be showing himself approaching the end; he is going blind from cataracts, and there is nothing I can do about that. With little money I am stranded in the hick town in which I was born, the sort of place I outgrew long ago except for finances. But this is America in 2019, where money is everything, spirit is nothing, and human virtues are reduced to cheap sentimentality. And, yes, Donald Trump is President.
I am in a worse family situation than I was in when I was taking care of my parents. My brother brought his girlfriend here from out of state, and she hates it here. She thinks I am a a malingerer because I seem unable to hold a job. It's Asperger's, and I am looking for ways in which to adapt. Is it any surprise? When I wrote some movie reviews I occasionally panned a really-bad movie with the line "this flick is probably best appreciated drunk, on drugs, or with a low IQ".
Sometimes I think that life for anyone not already rich is a grim contest to determine who can suffer the most for people with great wealth or bureaucratic power but no conscience. For all the nastiness in life, one is expected to give that big, theatrical "Happy to serve you!" smile in most public-contact jobs even if one so hates life that some situations in Dante's Inferno don't seem so bad. Unfortunately, those are only for those who refuse to accept Jesus as Savior. OK, so maybe I would love to listen to music by Copland and Gershwin, listen to lectures on physics from Richard Feynman and on astronomy from Carl Sagan, get to see what Anne Frank and Pavel Ginz are up to, and enjoy some Kabuki theater. Dante tells us that one of the leading figures of political life in that part of Hell is Saladin -- the George Washington of his time. Only problem -- my vices are worse than disbelief.
I must say this: at this point, I am not afraid of death -- only of its agony, and of Hell as a consequence of my sins -- worst of all, wasting my talents.
So far as I understand there is no magic bullet for Asperger's syndrome -- and nobody can philosophize or psychoanalyze his way out of a horrid situation.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.