Moderates United

I went to a public forum of sorts yesterday, and watched four speakers who were not idiots.  This is not something I am used to.  There is at least a 20-30 IQ point difference between me and most of the people with whom I interact, and generally more like 40-50.  That does not mean that I am not frequently the less emotionally intelligent of the two of us, but it does mean that where abstract analysis is concerned, I am usually able to see things most people cannot.  So, in any event, is how it seems to me (granting as an abstract principle that we are all stupid at unknown intervals, for unknown periods of time, for unknown reasons, and that none of us are stupid on purpose.  It just creeps up on us.  I am human, ergo prone to this.  I also have a substantial amount of personal data to back this up.  As I have likely shared, I imagine stupidity flying around like Cupid, and shooting us with arrows of idiocy, and the thing about idiocy is that it is never obvious when we are infected.  So be careful, be very, very careful.)

Be that as it may, I’m walking back to my car, in a crosswalk, and some stupid motherfucker in a truck stops so close to me that one of the homeless guys in a blanket thought he had hit me.  I came very, very close to being hit hard by a truck going at least 20-30 miles an hour, because the fucking imbecile was in the habit of driving fast everywhere.  Why?  Because, you know, that’s how he always drives.

But I didn’t get hit.  Not a scratch.  So me being me, I’m wondering what God might have intended this to mean for me.  “Don’t waste a moment”, maybe?  The End is Always Near?  Be grateful for your blessings?  These are truisms.  This is the sort of shit you are supposed to say.

As it happened, I had about a ten block walk, due to some stuff going on downtown, and I pondered it in a light rain.

Here is the thing with me: my belly is filled with naked terror.  If I were thrown suddenly into the next life, what I would carry with me is this terror, and rage that I have had to carry this all this time, with no fucking comfort, no fucking support, and nothing really good happening to me, no good times to recall.

It’s not that I have had no good times.  I have had some wonderful times with my kids in particular, but because being with them allowed me for short periods of time to put all my shit aside.  But in memory, that terror floods back in and ruins everything.  I don’t get relaxed, pleasant moments where it’s all good, and I felt perfectly relaxed, and it was the perfect day.  I get relative moments where things are working, and I’m screaming at myself just a little less.  I have memories where I can honestly say I did my job of protecting them from all the stuff I carry, and gave them genuinely positive memories.  I firewalled my pain, and created something good for them, at an unknown cost to me.

And I thought of the Book of Mormon and the song “Fuck you, God”.  I felt genuine rage, genuine anger.  I understand people who want to curse this life, curse any Creator responsible for it. I understand people who want to hurt other people, who want to bring blackness with them wherever they go.  I understand the opposite of love.  Some people are gifted with an easy knowledge of love, but I am not one of them.

I of course get moments in the other direction.  This was a blackness which descended on me which I will not feed.

But if there was a point in that occurrence, it was to awaken me to these latent feelings.  This is the root core sensation underlying my self destructive tendencies. I feel rage, and when I am the only one in the room, the only one I can hurt with impunity, then I do.

Edit: this here is the truth.

My goodness, I just spent the last hour convinced it was Monday.  This is not something that happens to me.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t get drunk last night.  I usually get drunk on Saturday night.  I only had 5 beers.  That’s a binge, the “experts” tell me, but light drinking by my standards.  I did forget my teacup.  I weighed 286 this morning.  I had a gooey calzone–2 actually–which is a mess of melted cheese and butter for dinner, but other than a small thing of natto, that was all I ate all day.

I think I am slowly getting in touch with my stomach.  That is where the energy I need to release lives.  As long as it is a repository for nervous energy, I will feel tension and I will feel the relaxation of that tension when I overeat.

Quite often, lies live in mansions, and truth lives in a simple shack.

I think this literally true, often–at least, too often–but it is the figurative element which most interests me.

All I will say is I wish I were stronger.  I have excellent ideas.  But I am not yet fully human.  I can feel it coming, but I am not there yet.  There is still frost on me, frost in my breath. I merge easily with darkness, and cannot yet feel the light.

I have found the great cavern within our world, and it occurs to me to deduce there must be flowing air, flowing water, and light, which I currently cannot feel.

I live easily in the realm of Form. I am at home there.  But Form has roots which are vastly richer, more nourishing, and more useful.

My work continues.  I will one day be a blessing.  This is my life’s work.

First, I forgot, 287, and the other half of the bottle of vodka. I am sore from this week’s labor.  My back hurts.  But I otherwise feel good.

Kawaii is a Japanese word meaning cute, cuddly or lovable.  In other words, something which makes you happy for a moment.  Puppies and kittens are obvious examples.

I am reading about Tokyo in National Geographic, and it is interesting to speculate how the fact that the Japanese equivalent of perhaps New York and Los Angeles rolled into one has been destroyed twice in the past century has affected their consciousness.  That sort of thing leaves scars.  Modern Americans have no equivalent.  We have no equivalent to the sufferings of most of Europe in the two World Wars. 

Our closest thing, I guess, is the Great Depression, that great failure of governance, that great failure of our leaders to do the right things.  That was our flirtation with Venezuela, and we “accomplished” the same result.

Small wonder the Japanese are not having children.  Small wonder much of Europe is not having children.  The scars of war are in the grandchildren, and the redemptive power of religion is largely gone.  They have not replaced it with cuteness, but it is perhaps a sign. In large tragedies, one seeks comfort in small things, and small things very often deliver what is needed.

The Japanese seem to have another similarity with the Germans: they have an uncanny knack for having words for complex phenomena.  Here, it is dying alone, and being unfound and unnoticed for a decent amount of time, between days and weeks.

I know for a fact my oldest once thought I had died.  I had recently had a surgery–my only of my life, for an umbilical hernia–and did in fact mix in a mild way the painkillers with booze.  I was alive, obviously, but I will never forget her opening my door and calling my name.  She was terrified.

I remember also a story a homicide cop acquaintance of mine told me, about finding a couple, one dead of natural causes, one dead of suicide, both a month or more old.  He dealt well with his job, but he said some smells would trigger things he had a hard time dealing with.

And I, I , I, I (it’s not good to begin paragraphs with I, especially repeatedly) think of Bukowski–who for some period of time also likely worried about dying alone–and his poem “Hell is a lonely place”.

he was 65, his wife was 66, had
Alzheimer’s disease.

he had cancer of the
mouth.
there were
operations, radiation
treatments
which decayed the bones in his
jaw
which then had to be
wired.

daily he put his wife in
rubber diapers
like a
baby.

unable to drive in his
condition
he had to take a taxi to
the medical
center,
had difficulty speaking,
had to
write the directions
down.

on his last visit
they informed him
there would be another
operation: a bit more
left
cheek and a bit more
tongue.

when he returned
he changed his wife’s
diapers
put on the tv
dinners, watched the
evening news
then went to the bedroom, got the
gun, put it to her
temple, fired.

she fell to the
left, he sat upon the
couch
put the gun into his
mouth, pulled the
trigger.

the shots didn’t arouse
the neighbors.

later
the burning tv dinners
did.

somebody arrived, pushed
the door open, saw
it.

soon
the police arrived and
went through their
routine, found
some items:

a closed savings
account and
a checkbook with a
balance of
$1.14
suicide, they
deduced.

in three weeks
there were two
new tenants:
a computer engineer
named
Ross
and his wife
Anatana
who studied
ballet.

they looked like another
upwardly mobile
pair. 


So, I have no point.  I am pointing to something real.  Life is a fascinating thing, with many textures.  We live many lives within our lives.


What is the solution?  One solution is me overcoming my hatred of Established Authority.  Wish me luck.  I feel like kicking most of these people in the balls.  That is not productive, though.  

You know, as I wake up, I realize I wasn’t so much abused, as starved.  The milk of human kindness was simply missing from my home.  There was no natural warmth.

And for me food bridged that gap.  I think it did for all of us.  We ate like a pack of wolves.  My father literally almost made one of my children sick at one point, watching him eat.

I really would argue that the ability to be kind to oneself, and the ability to calm oneself endogenously, are the two factors in maintaining a healthy weight.  All of the diets that lead to reduced consumption work, at least at weight loss.  I don’t think there is any serious dispute about this.  We all know what to do.  But we continue to get a new diet or diets every couple of years.  Keto is the current thing.  I don’t know what will replace it, but something will.

In the end, no quantity of information is sufficient if you find in food a comfort you cannot easily obtain anywhere else.  The problem has never been will power.  I think the problem is very much like the rats who got addicted to cocaine when they were left alone in their cages.  Put those rats in a place where they belong, and the cocaine is of no interest to them.  Put people where they feel safe to play, and to express, and being fat–and doing all the things that make you fat–loses all attraction.

Look around you: we do not live in a warm nation.  We love to take principles and apply them to all circumstances, and this can be a good thing, but no “compassion” springing from coldness can be anything of the sort.  This is Rousseau’s compassion, that led directly to the guillotine.  There are many guillotines in the hearts of many Americans right now.

My work continues.

It’s an old saw, an old idea–one based on the experience of the Greeks particularly–that once the people realize they can vote themselves other people’s money, the democracy is over.  This is what happened in Venezuela.  This is what happened in Greece.

This is the reason our Founders only wanted people who already HAD money to be allowed to vote.  If we consider that there are always vastly more people who have less than those who have more, then in any open contest, the many will outweigh the few, and the few, rather than endure impoverishment at the point of a gun, leave, or stop producing.  What they never do is gladly hand over everything to the mob.

This is why Venezuela is failing.  The smart ones got out.  The slow ones got caught and robbed blind, and now there is no one left who knows how to produce who is WILLING to produce.  You have masses of people looking to everyone else to allow them to live well for free, and it can’t be done.

What the Democrats are doing is IMPORTING people willing to vote themselves other people’s money.  Mexicans and others cross the border and go immediately on the dole.  They just need one legal child, and the child will get benefits that the parents then get access to as well.  They can go to school that other people’s taxes pay for, even universities.  We have lunatics like the whore Kamala Harris wanting to give our Social Security money–which is already badly underfunded due to long term abuse–to people who have paid in nothing.  Why?  For votes.  For power, and what power brings in its train.  For wealth.  For status.  For, in the end, personal gain at the expense of everyone else.

These people crossing the border are not “refugees”, but the Democrats are counseling them to say that.  Apparently our laws are so fucking stupid that if you just say those words you turn from being an illegal, to a court case, one which we cannot process fast enough presently to avoid setting these people free, never to be seen again (until they are arrested for a crime, at least).

The Democrats are supporting all this actively.  They are actively counseling and encouraging a mob of people who don’t even belong here to come here, so that they get votes.  But these votes are predicated on a process which history CLEARLY shows us will destroy our nation.  This is unambiguous.  There is no other sane interpretation.

Thus, our democracy–our Constitutional Republic, which is rapidly being eroded into a democracy–is not just for sale, but business is good.

Donald Trump is the only barrier to this.  Congress is not.  And no matter who wins the Democrat primary, this will be their goal too: destroying our country.