For the The Times They Aren't a-Changin'

In spite of a highly touted new TV Series fictionally accounting for what transpired in the years and decades after Naziism took over ... after the Third Reich dominated the World by winning WWII ... the House that Hitler Built did fall and a period of somewhat greater caring for each other did follow. Here in my United States, we did pass a Civil Rights Act and for a long time did put forth effort in preventing local municipalities from blocking many from voting. There are, indeed, in the US of A many places where people who are different than others in certain ways can walk unmolested.

Maybe it's just the places M and I tend to go, but:

mixed race and same sex couples walk without obvious fear;

folk from minority and ethnic bakgrounds are welcomed to dine and travel, live and recreate among their privileged brethren; and

people who pray differently are not assumed to be worshipping the devil.

It's not that I don't remember; I do. I recall folk trying to beat me up because of my religion (1950's thru early 1960's) and times when my Dad lost his job because of his religious practice (1956) and  I do recall my Mom speaking of a time (1932) when she couldn't take the entrance exams to a New York Art School because the tests were only available on her Sabbath. I remember being asked (1972) just how it felt to be a Christ killer and someone counting me in the ranks of AIDS victims for counting myself among the Jews (1994). 

I still do remember .... When I ran a school for disturbed inner city kids in the mid-70's, having lunch in a tavern in one of the Whitetowns of Philadelphia and folk smashing a glass ritualistically against a
brick wall if it was used by a black patron ... after they left. I recall people threatening to rape my wife after I integrated the school (1977). And I recall people in Saxis, VA and Greenfield, IN (there, it was the police after impounding our car on the highway after our alterntor failed) making it clear that I wasn't welcome in their towns. And I still can recall Larry King interviewing 3 or 4 Christian clergyfolk and one of them saying: "The problem with Muslims is that they,re praying to the wrong god" (during the 2004 election, I think). Funny. It was 800 years ago that Maimonides reminded his readers that all monotheistic religions must-of-necessity be praying the the same One-God!

I feel sad. Maybe large parts of my sadness are directed at my fears about an upcoming surgery that faces M in a just nine days ... Those of us in the Last Quarter know that if we are to continue Playing,  some of our parts need to be replaced, especially when we realize that one or another "joint ain't jumpin'" without excruciating pain. M version 2.01 is about to be released. Does, indeed, make me sad to watch now and to anticipate the pain subsequent to her "Black and Decker" surgery.

Still, the schismatizing hate speech of the liks of Carson, Cruz and Trump and some of their confreres pains me, at least as much, as M's surgery and the angry atrocities perpetrated by groups who seek retaliation and terror against the civilization in which I live. 

There is, I suppose, a form of what the Social Psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Bias. The usual applications of that are to situations, such as:

If you succeed in life, it's dumb luck while if I do it is due to hard work and perservearance;

If you fail, it is due to your own malfeasance, while if I do, it was just misfortune.

In these months, the mouthings of the right wing Politicos make their view clear that Radical Islam is a type all to itself and has no similarity to Rad Christianity as in the Crusades or killing abortion
doctors or Radical Judaism as portrayed by the likes of Dr Baruch Goldstein who killed many during
their prayers in a mosque.

I suppose, for me, Radicalism, in its simplest form, is the blinding of oneself to the pain of others .... Radicalism is the denial that The Stranger in Your Midst, the Other, is a child of some Mom and a Subject in their Own Right.

I suppose I could reduce the above to a pithier:

RADICALISM -- IN ALL ITS FORMS and INCARNATIONS -- IS THE ENEMY.

Donald Trump/Forrest Gump 2016

As it is not quite written .........

“Blessed are those who think a lot of themselves,

    especially those who have made Billions.

Blessed are those who never say they made a mistake,

    for they won't be blamed or feel guilty.

Blessed are the haughty,

    especially those who have already inherited the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for winning it all,

    for they will be filled with more $Billions.

Blessed are the merciless,

    for their path is uncluttered by doubt.

Blessed are those who've sinned a lot,

    for some good reason yet to be determined.

Blessed are the warmongers,

    
    especially those killing for Truth, Justice and the Am-Way.

Blessed are those who've been unjustly persecuted because of big favors and bluster
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the thugly!

 “Blessed are you when people attempt to insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you just because you're great. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward for putting Christmas back onto Starbucks cups and planning to bomb the shit out of Foreign Oil Fields, for in the same way you persecuted the immigrants who came long ago shall you be blessed with the opportunity to persecute others.

***********************************************

I struggle with the way I take in to my heart the contemporary scene, dominated, as it is, by those who believe they possess the only truth. There are many, these days, who firmly believe that they possess the only truths. They promise to thus wreak havoc on the rest of the World and, thereby, to bring it to the "Better Days," promised by their Prophets of Old. 

Is it -- apparently -- my lot in life to spend my Last Quarter listening to those who thus believe and who speak in Platitudes, as they prepare to wreak havoc on the World ... whatever language it is that they speak.

Wilde Oscar's Prophetic Vision

I think it was Wilde Oscar who said something about us all being born in the gutter but some of us having been born-such looking up at the stars. Hard to say whether he (assuming my memory, this morning, is better than it was, yesterday, when neither M nor I could remember Glenn Close's name) was prophetically seeing the present era in which we live, during which each of us had to learn to devote a certain amount of time, each day, sifting through our Spam file. I'm confident that I'm not alone in having been invited, this AM, to:

• Get hot with Asians, Brazilians, and Russian Women and/or Men;
• Buy from Walmart, Kohl's, Sears, ToysRUs, the Grommet and others whose names I don't recognize;
• Receive 100's of $Millions;
• "Hook-Up" (some graphic metaphor, aye?) with multiple, horny married folk of both sexes (is Howard that hermaphroditic a name) in and out of the shower* with a varied and explicit menu of gustatory delights;
• Simultaneously get back at Big Pharma and "get hard" by buying ED-Rx knock-offs;
• Vote and Support Donald Trump;
• Cure my obesity;
• Save a friend who was ripped off in a foreign land**; and
• Get degrees that prepare you for a multiplicity of careers helping others.

Ach du lieber ... y'got the picture and if you're reading this, you get similar Spam. My Spam file (I imagine like your's) was 137 deep, this morning, and part of me fears hitting the "unsubscribe" button wondering if it will end in my identity being stolen ... 

Hit that button ... and ... snap ... 

Holy Cannoli and Abra-Cadabra ... 

You'll be turned into a Gremlin or 

Freddie Bartholomew searching 

for a piece of stale bread on a dark London street.

M reminded me, yesterday -- while we were driving and listening to a soft melody, of the kindnesses shown to her by my Mother during our first pregnancy. And, indeed, my Sainted Mither whom we both miss was a kind and caring -- if complex -- person who I suspect favored M over all her children. The mind ... even the Swiss Cheese mind of the Fourth Quarter ... is an associative machine. Give it a feeling-saturated image with which to resonate and it bounces about like a Meson in a Particle Accelerator to all sorts of other images related to that feeling. Two imagistic factoids wafted into my mind, immediately. Poof!

In the first, I recalled December 1956. My Father had come home with our first new Television set. I had been reading through the toy catalogues that would come in the Fall ... heady stuff in 1956 as we were all -- under the watchful eye of Dwight David and Tricky Dick, Adlai and Estes -- unwittingly awaiting the arrival of better times in which: cars would drive on their own; not just Dick Tracy would have a watch on his wrist; and all that glitters would be distributed from Trump Tower and the pyramids that would be filled with grain and not mummies. TV was great ... I could watch Elvis wriggle his hips and Gorgeous George wrestle Killer Kowalski and some other guy who kept pointing to his head, noting how smart he was. Cisco and Poncho. Arthur Godfrey and Kate Smith! ... Any case, I remembered, as well, that it was the next day that my Father was fired from his job and procured one 600 miles away. My parents were 37 and 38 when that happened ... kids ... younger than all of mine, today. Curious how I never considered how hard it must've been for my Mother to again be temporarily left as my Dad went off to fight a different kind of war ... an economic survival one. His Dad, during the Depression, would get on a pickup truck in Brooklyn each Sunday night and travel to Northeastern Pennsylvania for a workweek at a foundry ... only to return to Brooklyn on Friday. 

The second memory was different. A little earlier. There was a guy who -- with a Shetland Pony -- would encourage kids on the streets of Brooklyn to don a cowboy hat and climb on board that Pony. He would take a picture and return somedays later to demand payment from Mothers for these pictures. I remembered the picture and that my Dad was upset that my Mom had been conned into buying it. Not angry, per se, but upset. I suppose $ was hard to come by in 1953 ... but who knew. There was always food on the table and my Mother, the kind lady who effectively adopted M when we got married in 1965, was always there.

Ah! I suppose scams have always been there ... from Jack and his Beans to Esau getting swindled out of his birthright for a pot-o-beans. And, still, I hold on to a wish for a Spam-Free Universe.

Fantasies for the Good, I suppose, die hard. 

______________________________

* Funny. It was just yesterday that prior to beginning a public lecture I was responding to someone else's comparison between the ends of Abraham's and David's lives. I wondered rather cheekily if she was referring to the Biblical claims that Abraham -- after Olde Sarai died -- successfully and repeatedly got hot with a lady named K'turah (maybe Gen: 25 or 26) but David, poor Old David (somewhere in Kings I?) wasn't sufficiently warmed by another purportedly hot lady named Avishag the Shunamite. Think how much happier David might've been at the end with Cialis ... spending the end of his life in a claw-foot tub next to Avishag's? "Shoulda checked his Spam File, aye?"

** Hey, I can get ripped off right here on the internet. Why did my friend have to loose their passport and wallet in Venice?