Flammable Fashions

It makes no sense to talk about anything else today. 5000 degrees. It seems like the very gates of hell are in danger of bursting wide open. I remember the cyclone that hit Burma some time back. The government (or junta, as it’s called) would not accept western aid and barred western reporting. What we did manage to see was horrible enough, though soon forgotten.

Japan is different. It is a cutting edge society that mirrors our own in many ways. We run similar risks; risks we never dare contemplate until it happens. I saw a man running away from an advancing wall of water. The water was way faster than he. The camera panned away before showing what likely took place.

I picture tsunamis of all kinds draped in political garb: Islamic aggression; unsustainable spending and debt; the steady advance of liberalism (progressivism, socialism, communism) and, of course, ignorance.

Things in general are in flux and moving - which is not necessarily a bad thing. The stock market generates money whether it’s moving up or down. The puzzle is to predict correctly which way it’s going to go. When all signs point one way, it’s usually a good idea to run the other - unless, of course, one happens to get struck by traffic.

The nuclear power industry is likely dead (if it wasn‘t already). Indian Point will likely be shut down and buried. Rolling black-outs will become a part of our lives. We’ll build back-up systems for hospitals and the like. Homes too will have some kind of configuration of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines (for those who can‘t be without).

Perhaps this will be the shot in the arm the green army needs to get off the ground. In the meantime, we will review our teaching moments and spin them to suit our asbestos egos while insisting on wearing the fetching colors of government issued hazmat forms and labels, praying to God they might catch fire and burn.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Music Of the Primes

A guitar can be considered both, a musical instrument as well as percussion. Therefore a man alone with a guitar can often make credible music. Percussion came first - the big bang - then another, and another (echoes)… Then came a more gentle sound, probably in the form of wailing. When the wailing adapted itself to the beat, music was born. Finally, there was the ‘word’ and history began in earnest.

Similarly, harmony is a blend of the secular and the spirit. For the spirit to soar, it needs the discipline of a steady pulse. There has been undue emphasis on just pulse lately. Sound has been allowed to become discordant - the din of people expressing disparate agonies - every nation divided, pulling both ways. Voices shouting slogans in short, bumper sticker bursts mimic the staccato of an incomplete drum set. It has become a lingering sign of our times - 'The WHO' destroying their instruments at the end of the set. Drumsticks tossed into the audience. What are they going to do with them except clobber each other?

We are regressing. The drums of war are heard all around. Even God has been roused from his lofty abode and is seen hurling lightning bolts mindlessly here and there. The ground under Haiti trembles, and over a year later we still cannot cope. Iran threatens, and we shrink from our duty to stop it. And today, Japan stands helplessly while watching a wall of water advancing.

America too watches helplessly as it is being consumed by a tsunami of debt. In New York, the most expensive musical ever is being kept off-line while the bodies drop from the wires.

Curious about Spiderman: The day before Glenn Beck quit the airwaves in New York, he delivered and impassioned endorsement of Spiderman. He claimed that it represents a huge step forward in live theater, akin (perhaps) to switching from watching black and white to color TV. He spent a full half hour praising this show, saying (and I paraphrase) it is definitely worth the price of an over-inflated ticket and even the added cost of a flight from anywhere.

I remember thinking that Beck might simply be honoring some contractual obligation. Or, did he really believed what he was saying? I was torn, but leaning towards the latter. For one thing, he had high praise for the script (and music). He warned that liberals - especially New York liberals - would not like the story. Ticket sales spiked immediately after Beck’s show. Then, other reviews started filtering in. These, as expected, were overwhelmingly negative.

It is entirely possible that a conservative narrative cannot survive on Broadway. In today’s hyper-partisan climate, even the skeletal music of Bono, it seems, cannot endure the drumming of the ideological fist.

While in many ways the staccato bursts of gunfire in the Middle East seem to dominate our own narratives, 'The WHO’s classic coda to “My Generation” comes immediately to mind. And with it, the final scene of smashed guitars and sparking amplifiers.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Eli's Comin'!

All posturing aside. I, for one, am growing increasingly uncomfortable with our political situation. Our deepest fears are never spoken. When in the past I have written of America devolving into some Venezuelan-type autocracy, I have done so as a warning of what may be in the mind of our president, keeping in mind that there is yet another side that may serve to counter it. Incredibly, what I have been saying about Obama’s Democrats has come true by degrees. Incredibly, the Dems have shown a willingness to go along with almost everything, progressives and Blue Dogs alike. Incredibly, the MSM has not yet turned against them. Incredibly, Republicans are still taking the bait.

It is all well and good that there is now a third party that seems to have some grip on reality. The Tea Party reflects the nation’s general unease. Yet the pundits dismiss it as a flash-in-the-pan; as either amusement or poison that has the real potential to split Obama’s opposition.

The continued criticism of our own is, frankly, disheartening. But, what is even more ominous is the unwillingness to realistically assess the man in The White House and to acknowledge that, no matter what happens in November, he will still hold all the cards.

Even the Dems are running from him this political season. Should not also Republicans be running? And yet I see no sign of it. They are happily snapping up the bait, taking good advantage of the voter’s mood.

I have previously spoken of the tsunami that hit the eastern coast of India some years ago. The water was said to have been sucked out to sea as far as the eye could see. The curious walked out there in blind wonder. I remember when Route 24 was first being built, the kids and I would go out there and innocently play ball and ride our bikes. Meanwhile, the deer already knew not to go there - like the beach dogs in Chennai, racing up our street en masse, away from the ocean. The people had a nasty surprise coming when the sea returned. Most didn’t survive it.

It’s the same with our Republican candidates. They don’t seem to have a clue about what they’re getting themselves into. They seem to think they’ll be going to the market for some normall horse trading. It never occurs to them to question how easy it was for them to get in(to the trap).

The Pledge to America was a naïve attempt to give some purpose to their mission. Haven’t they noticed that nobody paid much attention? That they had missed the mark? Horse trading is no longer the issue. The fuses are lit; the big tent is on fire. The Blue Dogs are howling and pulling on their chains. Eli’s comin‘!

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

If there Were No America

I had relatives living on the South Indian coast when the tsunami hit. Within minutes I was on the phone trying to find out if everything was alright. It was. It turns out, we were far enough away from the beach to escape serious damage. The water's advance had stopped just down the road. The neighbors attributed it to the favored status by the gods of the legendary Indian singer, Yesudhas, whose house stands at the end of our block, at the corner of 4th Seaward and Balakrishna.

What has come to be known by its date, 9/11, happened a few years earlier. The news of it spread like a wildfire around the world. I was working at the time. It was a brilliant, clear day. We could see the smoke rising from numerous vantage points on the NJ side of the Hudson. After my shift I went home, shaken. That night I received phone calls from three continents …inquiring.

Today, the lettering announcing 'tsunami relief', painted on the side of the boats that were donated by the West to the fishermen who had lost their livelihoods, is fading. The new boats still go out every morning at daybreak without fail as they have done for a thousand years. In New York City, there's still a giant hole in the ground. No foreign nation has come forward to lend a hand.

I've long wondered what would happen if there were no America. Who would send food to the starving, blankets to the freezing, building materials and expertise to the homeless, hope to the oppressed? Surely none of the would-be giants of the new world order one hears so much about these days would be so inclined.

And, maybe, in the end, it won’t really matter all that much. I was talking about it with my wife just last night – about how vulnerable we all are; how even what we consider to be the ultimate in stability, terra firma, is just a brittle crust that’s floating on a sea of lava; that the whole universe could at any given moment decide to make us the target in a shooting gallery; that our own lives are only a heart attack away from being snuffed out.

So what do we do? Faith. We must live on faith. Attacking a people’s faith is the quickest way of rendering them helpless. Yes, by God! We will get our country back!

The Antichrist Is Alive and Well

Everyone with half a brain can see that Barrack Obama is leading us down the garden path to socialism or worse. Some people have become so concerned that they have sought to organize tea parties, town hall confrontations with their elected representatives, and street protests. Yet, at least half the American population remains unconvinced. These include some of our most highly educated, most talented and most successful citizens. Why?

We might argue that the privileged among us also tend to be blinded by their privilege. They may be so wrapped up in academic theory as to be unable to see the signs that the perhaps less highly bred are able to recognize instinctively. We tend to dismiss animals as being stupid. Yet when the tsunami hit the east coast of India in 2004, it was the curious (humans) who got sucked out to sea while the stray dogs living on the beaches headed inland as fast as their spindly legs could carry them, well in advance of the sea returning in the form of a great, destructive wave. Similarly, those who consider themselves ‘educated’ - and more often than not ‘Godless’ - have lost their intimacy with the world at large, preferring instead to perpetuate their incestuous relationship with like-minded, self-actualized academic elites while ignoring the warnings quite obvious to everyone else.

I count myself among the masses, the salt of the earth (if you will). I’ve always held blue collar jobs and worked closely with immigrants and minorities whose main focus it was to put food on the table for their families. They’d heard about ‘global warming’ but never gave it much thought. Neither did they give much thought to world affairs or to politics in general. If asked, they would say they favor Democrats over Republicans.

Since Obama has been in office, things have gotten decidedly worse for them. Many are now subsisting on some type of government handout; others have gone back home. Still they tend to blame Republicans, capitalism and democracy (in that order) for their problems – this, largely due to the unrelenting propaganda spewed by the mainstream media targeting Republicans, capitalism and democracy for the past 50 some odd years. Curiously, even with their self-appointed savior, Barrack Obama, now at the helm of the most powerful nation on earth, they tend to exhibit a distinct lack of optimism.

There are of course many who know exactly what’s wrong and are able to articulate it. Talk radio has become the vortex of the opposition to the new president and his radical agenda. The hosts are smart, articulate and passionate. Their listeners have become a significant – albeit under-reported - factor in American politics.

Despite a Herculean effort to marginalize the conservative position, the movement appears to be gaining momentum. The government is now working on strategies by which they would be able to take talk radio off the air. No doubt, they will succeed at some point, citing some academic construct intended to illustrate some inequity.

Even as eyes and minds are being opened as to the nature of the government scam that is being hoisted upon Americans, there are still enough intelligent, well-meaning burghers who support Obama’s agenda. They might even know that the ultimate outcome is some version of socialism, but this also seems to be quite okay with them.

Conservatives, who have consistently been raising the alarm to the threat of socialism, are at wit’s end. The word ‘socialism’ itself does not seem to scare people anymore. Maybe they have forgotten their history: the Berlin Wall; Communist Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union; gulags; re-education centers; ovens, Cambodia; Cuba; etc. No matter how vocal we may be with respect to the dangers of socialism, many simply brush it off, denying it is so or, worse, accepting it as inevitable despite virtual volumes of historical documentation pointing to failure upon horrendous failure in terms of human degradation and suffering under such perverse governance.

The failure of our argument against socialism may stem in part from how we are framing it. People who still continue to view socialism as panacea are not likely to look back to understand what has happened in the past. Instead, they are looking to the future. It is there that they perceive a threat much more compelling than the mere surrender of individual liberties: the destruction of the earth itself.

Throughout history, people have been predicting the end of the world. Various causes were cited; various predictions made. Alarms were raised concerning over-population; pandemic; meteor strikes; decline in moral standards; Y2K; etc. Groups that espoused such bizarre ideas were generally considered fringe cults. So far, none of these predictions have materialized.

Today, the big scare is ‘global warming’. It has now become general knowledge that ‘global warming’ is occurring and that mankind, specifically America, is the cause. We are told it would lead to untold ecological and social disasters unless something is done to reverse it. Every child attending school in America may graduate without necessarily knowing the multiplication tables or even how to read the diploma handed to them at graduation, but all have been made indelibly aware of the threat of ‘global warming’. They have been made to feel that they themselves are to blame for polar bears drowning in the Arctic Sea as well as for any natural climate-related disaster. They’ve been made to feel guilty for wars, food shortages or any other social failings anywhere on the planet.

It’s no wonder that all this saturation scare mongering has had an impact. Now we feel compelled to look to anyone who can promise redemption – a way to save the planet as well as ourselves – no matter what must be sacrificed to appease the earth (mother) who has turned angry and threatens to withhold her patronage. This represents a throw-back to when the concept of religion first gained traction.

Socialism, the willing suspension of personal freedoms, is but a small price to pay for the guarantee of seamless continuance. And that is why so many off us are willing to take the unprecedented risk of embarking on an experiment whose proponents are arrogant enough to claim certain absolution for previous sins knowingly or unknowingly committed. Jihad suicide bombers labor under similar delusion.

The lesson learned is that we all are all religious, whether we admit it or not; that the Antichrist is alive and well, forever vigilant and prepared to take advantage of our human weakness ultimately to ensnare us in his diabolic schemes.