Sunday, July 19, 2020

Yet another all-encompassing rant because of one slight

   Well everyone, I just ate some meatloaf that was in a cool aluminum container and I decided to put it on a plate first and saw that it seemed to not be cooked yet after all.  But I think really it was half cooked and had a note to heat it for 20 minutes in the oven.  Well that is weird because it was in the prepared food section at the grocery store. So I put it in the oven and it was still pink so I sautéed it.  Hopefully it is cooked enough now.  It makes me have thoughts of a ruined society, though, because I feel like there was in fact a time where you would not have to be so careful at a grocery store. There wouldn’t be a risk of accidentally eating raw meat. It happened to me with some crab cakes once, and I have also noticed refrigerated drink displays having alcoholic bottled drinks mixed in with other cryptically labeled teas and sodas.  And what is Kombucha?  I don’t really know.  But what seems clear is that a lot of people in our culture don’t care about anything but money, and they especially don’t care about kids and young people. They just don’t.  And this is how systems form that become harder to intervene in as people start to get cheated or abused by the hundreds of millions. 
     Maybe I should try to stay positive, because great things have happened in our country, and I can see how God blessed my generation from the 80s and made our wildest cartoon dreams come true with laptops, cellphones, and the most entertaining internet phenomenon imaginable. I am also a fan of Obama’s great 8 years, the candy aisle at Target, stars like Ellen and Oprah and Zuckerberg, and even delivery options like Amazon.  But you can see people trying to establish their right to run everyone over and not care about things like clean water standards, FDA rules that can mean life and death, and the most basic justice of getting fair wages.  Why do people continue to tear up everything instead of striving for a functioning congress, a police force that saves people instead of killing them, and schools that provide any service needed in a world where there may not have ever been a greater opportunity to share the truest faith and justice possible? To me it does come down to being able to buy food safely and fairly, and to not have to watch an ongoing economic and moral erosion hurting the younger part of America while the still unsatisfied sharks at the top try to take everything from everyone. If you don’t care about keeping your customers from getting worms, then you don’t care about anything that matters.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Recounting

    Well everyone, I am one of the bad whiteys who was a little slow to see how much the police brutality against African Americans was not isolated incidents. I think some legitimate distrust of the media was part of it, but it took me a while to see that of course people should fight back.  When I think of my own experiences with law enforcement, it is so believable that part of the population has it worse than me, and that I did not have it so good myself for a while.  In New York, I feel that cops have helped me stay safe through some years where bad people from my old job followed me and made themselves known.  But in South Carolina where I lived most of my life, even as someone who tried to stay out of trouble, I did have my share of traffic stops that were overwhelmingly a form of guerilla taxation at best, with some levels of violation that help me believe very much that some cops just go straight for the murder.  
     My experiences almost all involved being stopped for speeding in a school zone, and it was always about ten miles over the speed limit because of the changed speed for an hour, and it would happen after all the children had cleared out so no one could notice that it was a speed trap.  It’s not a big deal, and there is a black dentist from Pennsylvania, I think, who has been pulled over by cops more than 500 times in his gold BMW.  But I think in some ways, it is a big deal, because of the dishonesty of it, because of the motivation that is apparent, and because of the use of power to just maintain more power and rob people. One speeding ticket I got was just because I was accelerating and not speeding at all. It was literally just car trouble. The cop was so mean, and the courts make it not worth your while to plead not guilty.  They reduce the ticket as a bribe for you to put up with their false accusations, and if you lose your case after pleading not guilty, then you have to pay the full amount. So people just go along with the lies because of their lives that are too busy to deal with that kind of garbage. Another cop once pulled me over for an expired tag and when I showed him the actual legal notice vouching for me for one more month, he ignored it and gave me the ticket anyway.  I missed the court appearance to be hospitalized for a manic episode, and my parents tried to get it taken care of for me.  It was total garbage. 
      There is also a little town between the two towns of Greenville and Spartanburg, and this huge 6 lane highway that cuts through, with some businesses along the way, so it is a nice way to travel safely. But in the middle of it where that small town is, the speed limit suddenly cuts down to 40 miles an hour.  It is a speed trap to pay for people’s worthless existence.  What a bunch of losers. Build a factory or something. Don’t involve people in the justice system for no reason just because you need a source of income. 
     Obviously these stories don’t compare to people being shot after stealing cigars, but that is my point.  I think one in ten of my ticket experiences was legitimate.  They took everything they could, which wasn’t that much because of my innocence, yes, but also because of my middle class white background, though I definitely dropped down from that because of my own experiences with suffering and discrimination. I think there are other society solutions that will help everyone more than “defunding the police,” such as more businesses and jobs that hire fairly and pay fairly, but I also think the arrogant, blatant disregard of human rights represented so consistently by bad cops who are not only not held accountable for any of it, but deliberately enabled by worthless whiteys collecting the cash several levels away, warrants quite an overhaul, or an overthrow, or just a reminder of Judgement Day and Jesus Christ finally setting things right with a machine gun.

The Catholic Reformation

    I went to a presentation once where someone said that the secret to wealth had to do with credit power and buying and selling debt.  I don’t understand all of it, and that kind of stuff has definitely been part of our economy for quite a while, but not to good ends and legitimate prosperity.  There is a tough reality that everyone has to face, which is that people reap what they sow, and it is work that results in results. If people build buildings, there will be buildings, and if they don’t, there won’t be buildings, though God is good and gives people extra blessings all the time. And while people talk about interest rates, and lending practices, and all these factors that do matter, there is another thing in the background of America’s economic struggles to contend with. In addition to slavery legacies still needing reparitions, we have also seen about 40 years of Made in China tags on many if not most of the products consumed here. 
     I do not agree with all the bad people who have lamented that other countries have opportunities and production, even when things like patents got copied. I try to be happy when anyone gets what they deserve. But if people want to be safe from dangerous economic domination, then they need to get to work. Our 16 trillion dollar debt is thankfully pretty diversified, but if people think they are just going to coast on the storage of generational money while a third of the country does not have adequate employment other than possibly some drug trade out of a lazy and inconsiderate resignation to traffickers, then they are going to be very disappointed, and their children are going to be more than disappointed as everyone's enemies overtake and overwhelm them. You can already see enough of it to hopefully just serve as a warning to quickly find productive, honest work that builds power and strength to reject abuse and the worst kinds of slavery.
    Also, while I am at it, thanks for the SSDI, everyone.  I already got chewed up and spit out by the corporations, but eventually will return and try to pay it back, even if it means doing time in purgatory.