Pretty damn damning, 68 million views

How the U.S. Exports Global Warming - Rolling Stone Magazine

Draft from 02/04/2014

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I'm all for happiness and hope and positivity and tango and football and elephants and cute kitty cats and lions and dachshunds who are BFF's. But at some point we're going to have to wake up, get off our collective asses, stand up, walk or drive or bike or mass-transit our collective asses somewhere, and actually start to DO SOMETHING about the raft of really pretty major fucking issues that face humanity across the board and across the planet. We will have to put our cushy-ass comfortable lives at risk, or at least our "way" of life.

I suggest en-masse demonstrations as a first step. Non-violent of course. Millions upon millions of unhappy folk in the streets, day after day, week after week have a way of getting the attention of the onion-eyed miscreant politicians and puppet-masters. An added benefit of this action is that we'll be able to finally determine if all the "conspiracy theory" stories about the militarization of the U.S. police forces, FEMA detention camps, millions of stockpiled black plastic coffins, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, etc.

Of course, I'm only joking and dreaming, because we all know this will never happen. We will continue to look the other way and to fuck it all up until it's too late. It will be ugly and painful and extremely uncomfortable at that point.

No, I take that back. The first step is to dream a new dream. The American Bad Dream ain't cuttin' it anymore, y'all. Something viable in the long term aka sustainable, something healthy and good and just and right. Something that doesn't commodify human beings and the human experience/life. Something that doesn't rape our Mother Earth, despoil the very source of our sustenance/life force. Something difficult and uncomfortable to figure out how the fuck to do it and how the fuck to do it right. Do the right thing and do the thing right as I always like to say.

Have a good day, y'all. Be careful out there. It's raining again.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-u-s-exports-global-warming-20140203

Rebuild the Dream | This Weekend

Van Jones has formed a new organization called "Rebuild The Dream" as in the American Dream - emphasis on "Jobs" and "The Economy", with some other really good ideas that we've all be thinking and talking about. And *not* talking about.

Organization, or "movement" - it appears there might be a possibility to get some steam going on the grassroots level. We've got the Tea Party, the Coffee Party, MoveOn.org, and several others I'm sure, and now we're going to have #RebuildDream. The folks who are gonna tell Congress how it's gonna be? This might be a dream. But it's worth a shot.

Don't get me wrong, I think my tone may be coming across as cynical. I'm into this, I really am - I'm mjust a bit concerned that we may yet again miss the mark and miss out on a tremendous opportunity to effect change and ultimately lose steam. Some vitally important marks in my view. Marks or targets across the board in our world today. I could go on and on and get all verbose and blogarrheal, but I won't. I just wanted to share the agenda/talking points for tomorrow's House Meetings which are being held across the country. Actually they're calling them "Dream Meetings". Kind corny, but I'll go with it. I'll be going to one in Austin - it's filled up at 100 enterprising attendees. I've been looking for a way to get more involved in my own governance. It will be interesting to say the least.

One thing - I'm with sweetiepiehoneybunch on this - the phrase "The American Dream" is so cliche'd to the point of being hackneyed, overused, misunderstood, misdreamed, misdirected, misinformed and exclusionary to the point of being insulting and delusional. It was our collective pursuit of "The American Dream" that got us here. Follow the "The American Dream" formula and you'll get the house with the white picket fence and 2.3 kids, a dog, a cat, a boat or Harley or both and live happily ever after.

I'm not sure I, or we, want to "rebuild" "The American Dream". I think we need to re-think it first. Re-dream it? Re-evaluate it? Re-up it? Re-deconstruct it? Re-name it? Vision? Mission? Construct? Contract? Covenant? And it can't be just "American". Sure it can start here - but it must include a global vision in cooperation with our fellow inhabitants of the planet. Not "our" plan/vision/dream/construct foisted on "them", but our plans in coordination and cooperation with their plans.

I'm with Van and his people on the Top 40 list in the agenda. Narrowing it to 12 as the basis of "the contract" to "Rebuild" "The Dream" will be a little difficult - but do-able. I would go with the Top 40 as the contract, but y'all know me - Mr. Long-Winded Man I Am. So much for not getting verbose in this one. (grin)

Let's call it "The New Global Vision For The Long Term Sustainability and Viability of Humanity and All Critters and Ecosystems to Ensure We All Survive For at Least Another 1,000 Years and Hope that the Aliens Rescue Us with Some Cool Technology By Then" or something along those lines. Start taking care of ourselves AND our neighbors AND Mother Nature. Someone with more time on their hands can come up with something snappy, an acronym, and a logo with some good PR "ooomph". Muscle, horsepower, punch. Something to get everyone's attention and keep it for the next 50 years.

I just thought of a good one, but I also just censored/filtered myself. Y'all will just have to imagine. It was colorful, damned colorful I say.

Anyway, 'nuff said. Here's the agenda for tomorrow's meetings across the country. More to follow in August - August 10 is our "Action Day" - getting the message (gelled from tomorrow's meetings) to Congress during their recess. And then more House Meetings in September. I'm thinking we'll host one out here. We'll see.

Y'all have a great weekend! Time to run the ranch and mow the yard.


Rebuild the Dream Dream Meeting Agenda

Political Tango :: Jon Stewart's Profound Speech

Here is the full text of Jon Stewart's speech at the end of his "Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)" last Saturday [October 30th] on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Full credit for the transcript to Ryan Witt and Liz Brown at Examiner.com and Rolling Stone Magazine.

"I can't control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

Unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country's 24-hour politico pundit panic conflict-onator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems and illuminate problems heretofore unseen, or it can use its magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous-flaming-ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rich Sanchez is an insult -- not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.

The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything we eventually get sicker. And perhaps eczema. Yet, with that being said, I feel good. Strangely, calmly good, because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller -- but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is -- on the brink of catastrophe -- torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don't is here or on cable TV. Americans don't live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.

Most Americans don't live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals. Most Americans live their lives that our just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often it’s something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things get done every day that are only made possible by the little, reasonable compromises."

Stewart then plays a clip of cars merging before entering the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey

"These cars -- that’s a school teacher who thinks taxes are too high…there’s a mom with two kids who can’t think about anything else...another car, the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah…An investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah…a Latino carpenter…a fundamentalist vacuum salesman…a Mormon Jay Z fan…But this is us. Everyone of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear -- often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river…And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go -- oh my god, is that an NRA sticker on your car, an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s OK. You go and then I’ll go…"Sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. You’re presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you."

Jon Stewart's America is the America I believe in.

The Great Correction :: Renovatio

The Great Correction, as in the inverse of the Great Depression, as in "course correction", as in "paradigm shift". I'm still on the subject of the Vanity Fair (April 2009) article "Rethinking the American Dream", written by David Kamp.

I've finished reading the article, and I cannot express how important I think this piece is. Every man and woman and young adult aged 16 and over should read this article and begin talking about it on a daily basis.

It is only through acknowledging that a problem exists - a very large scale problem in the way we Americans think - and then talking about potential solutions to the problem, can we begin to solve it.

Here is another excerpt from the article that is a verbatim account of what I have been telling my closest friends (and ex-wives) for thirty years now - that the American Dream is flawed in its view that in each successive year, life should be better. Better job; or same job only better; more money; better car; better house; or better the current house; better vacations; better toys; better kitchen faucet; better, fancier, more provincial door mat. Better, more, faster. Each quarter, each fiscal or calendar year, each generation, we kids and our kids and their kids. More is never enough.

It is our current and trending catastrophic reality that we live in a finite world with finite resources. We are currently banging up against the inevitable ceiling of those limitations in the basic building blocks of life - water, food, shelter. The basic premises of the problem are that we are simultaneously over-populated and under-resourced. In a word, unsustainable. Our current way of life is not sustainable in the long term.

I repeat, our current way of life is not sustainable in the long term.

We all know this to be true.

Most of us are deluding ourselves that in a year or two, things will be back to "normal", and that we can go on in our individual pursuits of the American Dream - building wealth, gaining assets or at least equity. I believe that the old, resource hogging, unsustainable way of life is gone forever. I may be offering this on the leading edge of this new wave, this paradigm shift, five or ten or fifteen years too early, but the change is coming. The time to change, or at least to begin the process of change, is now. The time to acknowledge that there is a problem is now. We can no longer afford to keep our heads in the proverbial sand.

Many of us are thinking it. We have been feeling it for five or ten or fifteen years or longer. People are (or were) more successful, but are more stressed out and less happy. But everyone is afraid to talk about it. There is a fear of being branded un-American or un-patriotic or downright crazy. Let's get it out in the open and start dealing with it in a positive, proactive, forward thinking way.

Let's reinvent the wheel. Think outside the box? B.S. There is no box anymore. Think, and so shall ye be. Supposedly Jesus said that. We all need to think about how it can be. How it wants to be. How it should be. Not just re-think, but completely reinvent the American Dream. The New American Dream. A new way of life for the new century, starting with us, but for the entire planet. We need to manifest a new reality.

We put men on the moon and sent exploratory vehicles to Mars and beyond. We uncovered the secret of the atom and the quark. Decoding DNA, cellular biology and cures for diseases, and on and on. We are capable of great things. Obviously, in the past we have screwed the pooch in many, many ways. I would offer that when it is in the pursuit of profit and self-interest (or national interest), it always backfires on us. I would offer that when it is motivated by love and the common good and what is right, it can never fail. We can do this.

It should not be based on profit. It should be based on love, compassion and understanding. It should be based on the common good. It should be based on (from the article) the "freedom from want, not the freedom to want". It should be based on sustainability. It should be based on technological innovation and good science. It should be based on social responsibility to our fellow man and to our planet both. I am confident we can reinvent our civilization. It may take one hundred years, or more, but I am confident and hopeful that intelligence and love can triumph over ignorance and ignoring the problem because it is the comfortable thing to do. I am confident. I am full of hope. We don't have a choice. This has to be done. Starting now.

It's interesting that this all gelled for me on this day of renewal and rebirth - Easter Sunday 2009. I have to admit I wasn't paying attention during Easter services at St. Mark's today. (I go to church once or twice a year...) I was daydreaming, looking up at the flying buttresses and delicate arches and fine millwork, hand-hewn from walnut timber by German craftsmen in 1870 or so. I was gazing at the intricacies and vibrant color of the stained glass windows and contemplating the beauty of what man can accomplish in this world. When I awoke from my tampiquen~a and cheese enchilada induced two-hour Sunday afternoon nap, my sweetie and I threw the rubber stick to the dog. I finished reading the article, and then started this post - it is probably the fastest I have ever written a post of any merit. I had to get this out. Forgive me in advance if it's dis-jointed or generally funky prose. It flew off my fingertips as it spilled from my heart and mind - largely unedited but for a few typos.

Renovatio - Latin for "rebirth". "Renovatio", or "The New American Dream"? I'm trying to think of a name for a new blog. "The Great Correction"? Suggestions are welcome.

Oh, here is that excerpt:

"And what about the outmoded proposition that each successive generation in the United States must live better than the one that preceded it? While this idea is still crucial to families struggling in poverty and to immigrants who've arrived here in search of a better life than that they left behind, it's no longer applicable to an American middle class that lives more comfortably than any version that came before it. (Was this not one of the cautionary messages of the most thoughtful movie of 2008, WALL-E?) I'm no champion of downward mobility, but the time has come to consider the idea of simple continuity: the perpetuation of a contented, sustainable middle-class way of life, where the standard of living remains happily constant from one generation to the next."

Stealing Ghandi's words, we must BE the change we wish to see in the world. We must BE the example for all humanity. We must walk the talk. We must. We must.

Here is the link to the article again: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 Please read it. Please forward it to everyone you know and ask them to forward it to everyone they know. This really needs to become the new national dialog. Please, please purty please.

Lastly, credit where credit is due. "The Great Correction" came from Eliza Gilkyson's song of the same name. But the real credit goes to my cool, hip, girlfriend who immediately told me about the song when I was struggling with the words for what to call this post. She is my inspiration and my muse.

Lyrics here:

down on the corner of ruin and grace
I’m growin weary of the human race
hold my lamp up in everyone’s face
lookin for an honest man
everyone tied to the turnin wheel
everyone hidin from the things they feel
well the truth’s so hard it just don’t seem real
the shadow across this land
people round here don’t know what it means
to suffer at the hands of our american dreams
they turn their backs on the grisly scenes
traced to the privileged sons
they got their god they got their guns
got their armies and the chosen ones
but we’ll all be burnin in the same big sun
when the great correction comes
down through the ages lovers of the mystery
been sayin people let your love light shine
poets and sages all throughout history
say the light burns brightest in the darkest times
it’s the bitter end we’ve come down to
the eye of the needle that we gotta get through
but the end could be the start of something new
when the great correction comes
down through the ages….
down to the wire runnin out of time
still got hope in this heart of mine
but the future waits on the horizon line
for our daughters and our sons
I don’t know where this train’s bound
whole lotta people tryin to turn it around
gonna shout til the walls come tumblin down
and the great correction comes
don’t let me down
when the great correction comes


Video here:

Rethinking the American Dream :: A must read recommendation

On Wednesday, I wrote about the article "Rethinking the American Dream" in the April issue of Vanity Fair. I'm laying here this morning, continuing to read, with a fluorescent yellow "Fannie Mae" logo'd pen in hand, and noticed that I am essentially highlighting entire pages.

Needless to say, this is a "must read" article. By the way, I hate it when I say (or write) "needless to say". It's like I'm saying, "I know I don't need to say this, but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway." Even though it's obvious that I DO need to say it. Strange thing this English language. Strangely beautiful.

Here's the excerpt that caused me to stop reading the article and write this post:

Still, the American Dream, in F.D.R.'s day, remained largely a set of deeply held ideals rather than a checklist of goals or entitlements. When Henry Luce published his famous essay "The American Century" in LIFE magazine in February 1941, he urged that the U.S. should no longer remain on the sidelines of World War II but use its might to promote this country's "love of freedom, a feeling for the equality of opportunity, a tradition of self-reliance and independence and also of cooperation." Luce was essentially proposing that the American Dream - more or less as Adams [James Truslow Adams, author of The Epic of America] had articulated it - serve as a global advertisement for our way of life, one to which non-democracies should be converted, whether by force or gentle coercion. (He was a missionary's son.)

I sit here, struck by the notion that we all know the American Dream goes beyond our materialistic tendencies and full blown desires - "the grim smell of want". It goes beyond "the better and fuller and richer life" ideal. It goes beyond equality and freedom and democracy. We, the American people, through our government, have used the American Dream as a gentle, subliminal weapon against governments and societies who choose not to ascribe to the American way of life. Actually, most times not so gentle and subliminal.

It's as if we collectively 'infer' to these nations and cultures that in two hundred years, we have found that our way is the best way of life, and we'd like for them to adopt it. Or else. And it's not just our government doing this on our behalf. It is also the profit motivated multi-national corporation, big oil, and all the other big resource rapists - whether those resources be natural or human. Talk about passive aggressive!

I would have to disagree with Obama in his assertions last week in Europe that Americans are not arrogant. Our apathy and ignorance of these truths are indicators of our arrogance. These truths - that we are fucking up our world with our way of thinking. Thinking that is overwhelmingly influenced by the capitalist profit motive.

I'm sorry, but this American Dream has evolved into a very bad thing over the past 100 years.

No. I take that back. I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry to be saying this. I'm not against the concept of the American Dream, I just think it's time we re-define what it is. Re-define it into something sustainable and healthy for man and beast and culture and nation and mother earth.

For thirty plus years now, my concern for this earth has not been the one billion of us living in the industrialized first world. It is the remaining five billion in the second and third worlds who aspire to the American way of life. A roof over their heads. Purified running water. Electricity. Schools. Books. Roads. Cars. Grocery stores. Wal-Marts. A Home Depot or a Lowe's every ten miles. Aquifer draining center-pivot irrigation. John Deere combine tractors. Petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides. You get my drift.

If one billion of us have fucked things up in less than one hundred years, what do you think will happen as the other five billion start to come online as resource consumers in the next one hundred years. We are already hitting the upper limits of what the earth and her beautifully, perfectly balanced systems can handle.

The beautiful American Dream has been transformed into a nightmare. A nightmare for the entire planet.

Like it or not, we have become worldwide missionaries of the Dollar. Our God, the Dollar, who art in heaven. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in these United States of America. Give us this day our daily debts. And forgive us our trespasses in the pursuit of material wealth, as we forgive those who trespass against us in their own profit taking. And lead us not into the temptation to stray from the American way. But deliver us from an evil, un-American, un-patriotic life based on love and compassion and understanding. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory. For ever and ever. Amen. Praise be to our God, the Dollar Almighty.

Happy Easter.

P.S. Don't worry about my blasphemy, or is it full blown sacrilege? Tomorrow, I'll be going to Easter services with the family at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio. Holy Communion should cleanse my soul. My God understands me.