Prohibition Zeal ...

The misplaced zeal of prohibition.

Yes, booze was killing millions.
Caught in the hell of their factories.
In the slime of the slums.
Without hope and without light.

Booze becomes, then, or now, some relief.
Who can blame anyone wanting a little R & R?

So, the pious and the well-meaning.
Smashed the barrels and passed the 24th Amendment.

And we all know how that worked.
A boon to the crooked, it was.
While the rich still had their booze and speak-easies.

I guess the nation needed to try it out.

But what a dismal failure it was.
Because the real issues were poverty.
Child labor.
The cruelty of the rich.
The wantonness of Wall Street.
Desperation for millions caught in the cogs of "progress."

This whole anti-abortion thing strikes me as pious palaver.
Misplaced energy and misguided thinking.
The issue isn't abortion.
It's a thousand other things that weaken families.
Victimizes women and young girls.
The macho men who can't keep their pants zipped.
And the pathetic preachers who label it all, "God's will."

Piety of this sort isn't piety at all.
It's just ignorance, fear and misogyny.
The ancient anxiety of men.
To keep women penned and pregnant.

I don't know.
Looks like we're headed in all the wrong directions.
With a brute in the WH.
And sex-fixated conservatives, hands in the pockets.

I hope it doesn't endure.
It won't.
This kind of stuff always falters and fails.
But not without doing its horrible work.

It's Not a Pretty Picture

We have to stop judging war by the one "good one" - WW2.

For most of our wars, our dead and maimed soldiers have suffered and died to promote the private interests of wealth and expansion (Mexico 1848; Philippines 1899-1902) to keep the natural resources flowing into our nation, to manufacture cheap goods to sell to them back to the nations we've defeated, fundamentally deindustrializing those nations and forcing them into dependence. 

For what purpose?

Dear Readers, it's not a pretty picture ... and to be blunt, to be frank, our national cemeteries, beautiful as they are, filled with the remains of the young and lovingly tended, are mostly the province of American industry - steel, coal, oil, and agriculture, and our sense of entitlement, that we can have what we want, and what we want, we'll get.

Remember, too, that WW2 was fought by the citizen-soldier, and when it was over, they returned to civilian life, to carry on and build this nation.

They were not the neo-con "warriors" we've created ... an army of poor hoping for a chance, repeatedly deployed to hell again and again, led by a strange and bizarre Southern Elite Warrior Class, who upon leaving the armed forces often enter law enforcement to carry on their colonializing effort.

Am I being unduly harsh?

Perhaps.

But better to be harsh in quest of the real story, the truth that liberates, rather than maudlin myths, myths created by Big Biz and power-drunk politicians and evangelical preachers of American First.

I Pay, You Pay, We all Pay for Trump's Madness

I pay more for Chinese goods.
The money derived thereof:
Goes to American Farmers.

Socialism in a pitiful capitalist system.
Where the people are robbed.
And the rich get richer.

Trump is a jerk.
Has fun playing Big Boy.
Messes everyone up.

And I pay.
And you pay, too.
As the money is transferred.

To those ...
Many of whom voted for the Little Piss Pants.
The Child in the WH.

This is how money behaves.
Money without reason.
Without values.

Money, the supreme everything.
Bottom line is the top of the mountain.
For crooks and bums and the privileged.

Who believe that America was created for their benefit.
And that America out to be darn glad.
For their big homes and expensive jets.