FERGUSON NEW YORK

For the past 30 or 40 years the so called conservatives have been systematically and relentlessly attacking our country  - tearing down the things we have built up that have made us who and what we are as  Americans – things like public education civil rights, free speech, secularism, equality, economic opportunity (remember the ‘American Dream’) , generosity, compassion, etc. Stealing our money – the greatest transfer of wealth in human history is happening right now. The rich really are getting richer, the poor really are getting poorer. It’s been well documented.

It was obvious from the very beginning of the Tea Party movement that it was rooted in racism. They pretend that they are patriots and revolutionaries, but they’re not. The endless attacks on Obama, starting from Nov 2008, have all been rooted in racism. The entire Republican strategy for the past 6 years is to bring Obama down. Why? Because they disagree with is political philosophy? He is mostly liberal. No. It’s because there’s a black family living in the White House, and some people just can’t accept that. In their minds, only white males and their families should occupy the White House.

I think this Ferguson/NY axis of protest is the real revolution, and it’s a revolution against them (the Tea Party). It’s the next step in the ‘Occupy' movement, which raised many significant political, economic and human rights issues that had not been discussed for many years. Now it seems those issues are coming back.

I think the outpouring of protest right now is people saying they have had enough of this conservative assault on America and its time to end it. It’s an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment in our history. This is the real America rising up. Finally.

We are all now living in the city of Ferguson, New York. Welcome back, America. It’s good to see  that you  finally woke up. Where you been so long?

FERGUSON

The protests in Ferguson had been going on for about 3 months and showed no signs of dying out. It was pretty clear the grievances of the protesters were resonating with the people all around the nation. People everywhere seemed to have the same complaints about local law enforcement. There seemed to be a general perception that police harassment was the norm in many communities. All the rage was coming out. Something had to be done to tamp it down.

So the decision was made to allow, even encourage, violence in Ferguson on Monday night. A series of events was put in motion to discredit the protest movement. Usually when there are protests no matter how legitimate the grievance, if there is violence the protest is considered a failure because the general public does not accept the legitimacy of violence as a form of protest. When violence occurs, the protest movement is rejected and it dies. An elaborate plan was put into place. There were a number of steps which could have been taken to reduce or even eliminate the possibility of violence. 

I think the fact that these steps were not taken was deliberate.

Simply put – they could have allowed protests but still protected property. It seems they chose not to – despite the Governor’s assurances that vandalism would not be permitted.

The first suspicious event was the announcement of the grand jury’s decision. Why was this done at 8 pm instead of 8 am? Nobody seems to know. In the daytime there would have been no darkness to obscure the actions of violent protesters. There could have been massive peaceful demonstrations which could have fizzled out by evening. People would have become tired of protesting and just gone home. There would have been much smaller numbers of hard-core protesters and troublemakers after sundown. So everyone could have been on the alert for any violence breaking out. 

Then there was the fact that the police were massed in front of the police station, where nothing was happening, instead of protecting the surrounding businesses, which were being looted and torched. The National Guard troops were sitting around smoking cigarettes, waiting to be called in. The police stoked protesters anger by allowing them to believe they would be permitted to demonstrate in front of the police station (where they had demonstrated many times before) but then ordered them to disperse, telling them it was an ‘unlawful assembly.’ If people are exercising their constitutional rights of free assembly to redress grievances, how can this be ‘unlawful?’ Who makes the determination that this is unlawful?

So I believe there was an intention to provoke violence in order to discredit the growing nationwide anti-police movement and make it go away. But that hasn’t happened. It seems the violence attracted more attention (thanks to the media obsession with violence) and galvanized people in 170 cities to protest on Tuesday. So now there is a massive nationwide anti-police abuse movement.

What will happen next?

Or so it seems.

 Buddhism is a religion. Meditation is a practice. You  can have one without the other. Meditation is present in most of the major religious traditions. I think it was the Dalai Lama who said: "Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need any more Buddhists" Yet people are out there hawking Buddhism and making money off it and spreading misinformation. I think we have to separate Buddhism from its Asian cultural accretions and develop a new, Western Buddhism based on the sutras and not on the various Asian traditions (not that there's anything wrong with them, they just don't fit our culture.) I feel that Western Buddhists wearing robes and other costumes, using foreign-language texts, and taking on funny-sounding names are rather silly. If they were really enlightened, they would know that these things are just cultural trappings and not essential to Buddhism. If Buddhism is about anything, it is about clarity and seeing things as they really are. It's about seeing myself as I really am. Or so it seems.

May the 4th Be With You

 

As amazing as it may seem, there was a time in the history of the world when nobody had put the words “star” and “wars” together. Really. I know it seems Star Wars has been around forever, but it hasn't. Prior to May 25th, 1977, the world was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. A new Force, beyond anything we had ever seen before, was about to burst upon the scene. Our world would never be the same.

I was in the theater the day Star Wars opened. I think there were lots of people there with me. I don't know how the others found out about it, but I learned about it from a friend who went to the movies stoned one afternoon. Afterwards he described breathlessly “this movie that was coming that had swords that light up and space ships and little robots.” I had no idea what he was talking about, and suspected the fact that he was stoned at the time made him embellish what he saw in the Coming Attractions (as trailers were called back then.) But it sounded pretty good. Since we were science-fiction fans, we immediately made plans to be in the theater on opening night, even though we had heard nothing else about this film. I know I liked it. I'm not sure I loved it, at first, anyway. In fact it wasn't clear that it was a hit until at least the Monday after it opened when the ticket-sales numbers came in and it was clear that it was a block-buster. It could have gone either way. I think we assumed it was just another science-fiction film, for which we were grateful, of course. But a world-wide cultural phenomenon? No one even dreamed of that. No one even suspected it was possible. We could not have anticipated how big it would become.

The rest is history...

Bags of water

Earth is the water planet. We humans are mostly water. If you've ever seen “Solaris” you know that water could have its own consciousness. We think of Earth as ours – as belonging to us humans. But because Earth is mostly water, it really belongs to the water. If aliens from space ever notice Earth and want to communicate with it, it might not be us humans the aliens direct their messages to. It may be the water. Will the water respond? Since we are mostly water, the answer is probably yes. But will the aliens see humans as the masters of Earth, the most intelligent race on Earth? Or will they not see “us” at all? Will they just see a planetary water-intelligence? To them, will we be nothing special, merely bags of water?

Torches and Pitchforks

This whole debacle with the Clippers owner is very troubling. Not because of what he said, which was reprehensible, but because of how he's being punished for what he said. He was having a private conversation. He was expressing a point of view, however wrong we all feel it is. But he didn't actually do anything. He didn't commit a crime. He just said something we don't like. So we're vilifying him and punishing him. Is this fair? Is this 1984? Is this political correctness run amok?

Didn't a person's free speech used to be protected? Isn't a person entitled to personal privacy? What's happened to these rights? Somebody says something we don't like and he's a pariah. That shouldn't be happening. It foreshadows other situations which could occur in which someone says something somebody doesn't like and unleashes a torrent of outrage.

What if I said something people didn't like – would they have the right to punish me just for saying it? Not doing anything wrong or illegal but just expressing an opinion that others think is wrong? This is frightening. It's the way totalitarianism operates. Is that where we're headed? A dictatorship of the mob?

I hope not. But it's happening more and more frequently. The same thing happened with Paula Deen awhile back. Nobody is stopping to question the torrent of mob outrage. Where did we put those torches and pitchforks? Let's get them ready, we're gonna be needing them.

I have been reading about the idea of apocalypse. Revelation. Jesus was a prophet of apocalypse – he taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. What he apparently meant is that God was about to sweep away all the kingdoms of the world and reign on earth as He does in Heaven. This is obviously a political statement – and the earthly“kingdoms” took note of it and saw him as a threat. The only way the people to whom he preached were going to enter this kingdom was to repent of their sins and be saved. This was the “good news” - God is coming to rule this world; if you want to be with God in this new world, you must repent of your sins. Otherwise, you would be condemned to Hell – which is a world without God.

What amazes me about Christianity is that in order to fulfill the promises of its Prophet, the entire world as we know it must end. I'm not sure any other religion requires the end of the world. This is not being 'other-worldly'. It is “reject this world.” Other religions want to change the world, improve it. They don't want to end the world.

Christianity threatens this world. Its believers want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They want to be with God. This is essentially a selfish action and they are willing to sacrifice the entire world in order to achieve their goal. I think this makes Christianity very dangerous. If it doesn't value the world, and all the people in it, how can it be a good thing? If Christians are essentially selfish (all they really want to do is save their own asses) how can they be of benefit to this world? There is no sacrifice, no 'agape'. Everything is done so one can get into heaven and NOT out of love for one's fellow humans.