I really hate to say this but.... I will.

What the Hell?!

It was bound to happen.
Ever since Ruby Ridge, and maybe even before that, this country has this semimythical sense of balancing "the scales" and the events of last evening (Thursday night) prove this to me.
Let me take you back (if you are old enough) or fill you in (if you are young enough) to the time when this country was largely and blissfully unaware that problems with law enforcement were limited to sparse media coverage and the old age of civil rights (which most of us who grew up in the seventies missed....unless you were black).
Let me stop here and make an apology. I am a white man who grew up as a white child in a "mostly white" world. I was blissfully unaware, that there was even a problem with race until I was 6 and refused to hold a black girls hand in gym class and someone said some word that made no sense and everybody just nodded as if you could expect no less from me. It didn't matter to anyone that the girl had been mean to me or stolen my pencil in class.
But I digress.
I am going to stop myself here. Let me just add that there was a lot of bad things that happened in the lull between the press coverage of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's and the rude awakening of the early 90's. I do not mean to imply that nothing happened, lots of things happened. What I mean to say was there was a subtle shift for someone growing up in the white man's world.
The shift showed up slowly, mostly because it was treated as this faraway problem of unrest and uncertainty as human went about doing inhuman things to other humans and calling it one thing or another. For some of us, it was an ignorant sense of bliss as we were able to grow up without a constant fear dogging our lives.
What is this shift, you might ask (while the rest will jump to conclusions and declare anything I write to be wrong)?
The shift was perception. The perception of law enforcement.
(someone, somewhere just jumped up and yelled "Finally! He gets to the point!")
The point is this. We, as Americans, grew up with preconceived ideas of who and what Policemen were and what they did. What unified this for many of us was television.
I grew up with small amounts of exposure to this phenomena unlike I suspect many of my peers. I did not have a tv in our house so all my exposure to tv came through seeing it in other places. Places like the after school sitters' houses and during a visit to one of my mother's relatives.
I saw law enforcement through the gilded shows of Andy Griffith, All My Sons, and Barney Miller.
The pattern was set and I believe in the idea that the police were well meaning individuals who seldom ever used their guns, spoke plainly and seldom ever resorted to violence. In fact, I did not refer to them a police or law enforcement, I referred to them a peacekeepers or keepers of the peace.
The Peacekeepers
It was a wonderful concept that was largely attached to the old west of yore and legend. Men who dedicated their lives to being fair, honor bound and preserving the peace for the public trust.
It never occurred to me that there was a complete or nearly complete lack of race in these shows. It was never mentioned or brought up, in fact, until Archie Bunker reared his ugly head and reminded America that it wasn't all "Father knows Best" and you couldn't leave it to the Beaver.
In short, I was first exposed to TV in the south where 1950's TV was still king.
I really believed that the policeman was to be respected and honored for keeping the peace. It never occurred to me to doubt it until I went home to South Africa in 1980 to a very different world, a world much more like the civil rights world of 1960's America. The illusion was shattered but not the ideal.
I still hold to that ideal. I have been on the other side of that shield (albeit in a much lesser capacity as a security guard for a campus police force). It was eye opening and I needed to see that the police were not as bad as they had come to be, in my mind growing up in the 90's. (I will come back to this at the end, I promise).
What happened to change my perception of law enforcement?
One Word.
Waco.
I don't have time or energy to go over how everything went wrong in Waco but let me say that it was as some of my peers call it- a cluster fuck (sorry but there is just no other word that occurs to me at this point)
I know what some of you are going to say:
Mike, this wasn't the police.
It wasn't the police but it was law enforcement agency (in particular the ATF and the FBI).
Mike, this wasn't about race.
It wasn't race, it wasn't even religion. No, it was about a group of law enforcement agencies overstepping their authority and mishandling a volatile situation that went horribly and tragically wrong. It was about a group of men and women believing they were doing the right thing and just how badly their decisions turned out.
Ironically, it didn't actually happen in Waco.
But all I have to say is Waco and every white person (at least) will immediately remember that FUBAR.
Everyone has analyzed Waco to death. Well not everyone, but the media certainly did.
The problem with Waco was it was actually the middle, although it was the beginning for me.
By the time I learned aboutRuby Ridge- I had discovered that what I perceived as the causes of Waco had been going on for a long time (mostly without media coverage).
Bear with me.
Ruby Ridge happened before Waco but I had missed it or not realized how much trouble we were in.
It was bad and it made a lot of people very angry.
It made one man extremely angry.
I suspect he had lost his appreciation and respect for law enforcement a long time before me.
On the morning of April 19th, 1995. Timothy McVeigh let the US and 848 people directly how he felt about what was going on. Right or wrong, justified or not. Timothy McVeigh found it necessary to kill 168 people and injured/damaged 680 others in what appears to have been a terrifying act of retribution, this country has ever witnessed from one of its citizens.
I am not going to say anything more about this except to point at this as the basis of my point.
One man (with help) decided to do this - he did not apparently feel as he had any other recourse.
Again, right or wrong or somewhere in between, he committed this action because his perception of law enforcement had changed to something very ugly.
So why go on and on about this awful stuff?
Because Dallas.
Because of what just happened in Dallas.
5 policemen are dead, 12 more are injured in what is the deadliest direct attack on law enforcement in a long time. Retributive attacks are not new things and the police have suffered losses like this before but not at this scope, that I know of.
Right or wrong, there are some very angry Americans right now.
This is in a wake of 2 recent, execution style murders of African American men. Not criminals, just ordinary men trying to live in this racially charged state of the USA.
What is more, is these kinds of deaths of African American men has almost but not quite become a "normal" thing (which is utterly horrific in and of itself).
What makes this so much worse is what has happened after each of these killings. The outcry from the victims and many Americans and almost no penalty to the perpetrators (police/law enforcement) of the killings.
The disparity between this and all these "white privileged" criminals getting unbelievably light sentences for the often unspeakable crimes they commit shows that we have not gotten very far along from all that was wrong in the 1960's.
It's going to get worse, possibly a lot worse before it gets better.
It hurts.
As long as Law Enforcement- as a whole is perceived as the purveyors of this kind of racism and violence, it won't get better.
I know policemen, personally.
I don't know any racist policemen. Pretty much all of the ones I know right now, I would describe as good men and women trying to make their towns and communities safer for everyone, not just the "privileged white folks."
I don't have any solutions that anyone will even consider.
Guns are not a solution and yet everyone will be using them as such
(if you don't understand this, refer to my earlier blog).
Killing someone should not be the solution either. We, as a country, really- really need to stop referring to killing someone as the solution to any problem.
It doesn't work in any case other than the extremely short term.
If you disagree, then I am surprised you have read this blog this far.

To the Police, I would ask for perseverance and calm. We need you. We need you to be leveled headed and use good judgment before you use your guns. We need you to find a new or old definition of what you are and what you are trying to do that doesn't become a slur for overreach or synonymous with brutality and racial violence.

To Law Enforcement (whoever sets the terms in this country) get a name changed to Upholding the Laws we all voted for or something else that conveys that we should trust you to do what is best for everyone.

To the victims. especially, my brothers, I leave you with wiser words than any I could come up with.

"The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these." and "Forgive your enemies." and "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
                                                                               A man who came from Galilee (or "the wrong side of the tracks") said these things and changed the world. Not just any man, of course, but he would not have been one of the privileged men of his time.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
                                                                             Another man said this,  he was also from the wrong side of the tracks.
If you don't know about those two men, I am referring to,  I am sorry but I can't help you.
Otherwise, that is all I have today.
Pray for peace, forgiveness, and compassion for all men and women (and everyone else)
Be kind, if you can; love everyone as much as you can; hate no one, if you can; and think carefully before you speak and/or act, if you can.
I can and I will.
And that is life according to Mike.


addendums to the fact.
See? I am not the only one who feels this way.
Okay, I hear those three conservatives who finally made it to the bottom of this blog grinding their collective teeth and sharpening their knives.

and then there is this:
At least two cops killed, many wounded in Baton Rouge
and it continues.
I dread what happens next.

I had a better title but I am going to call this My semi coherent gun rant

As the U.S. reels from the deadliest shooting in American History and everyone seems to weighing in. The Media has jumped in with both feet to make this the story of the year.
As if this doesn't happen over and over.
I stop and think about another massacre that everyone all but ignore until it was an epidemic and now that it's not, we went back to ignoring as if the thousands had not died. Ironically, the victims of that massacre were also gay- at least, initially.
There was a famous quote used, a book written around that quote and even a movie made.
To what am I refering?
"And the band played on..."

• from whence: And the band played on is an expression used to describe the deliberate masking or downplaying of an impending calamity by authorities.
• sometimes is used in reference to the band playing on while the Titanic sank.
• In 1987, a journalist by the name of Randy Shilts would use it for a book that chronicled the discovery (creation), development and subsequent epidemic of the AIDS virus.
• My mother read the book, I tried to read it, but I could not finish it as the disease took away an uncle that meant the world to me, even as the hatred for the disease was only displaced by the new found hatred for Gays who many believed were the cause of it.
• In 1993, the book was made into a movie. 
• The impact of the book was profound and helped push the ignorance around AIDS out, things got better, but in the end we still have the disease and the ignorance that scared everyone into believing all kinds of wild ideas about the disease returned to pretend we beat the disease and now it's safe to go back to unprotected sex again and so on.

This blog post is not about the book or the movie or AIDS, it's about the title of the book in reference to the problem that we all face. A few people, will recognize the problem(s) at hand while just about everyone else (or so it seems sometimes) will do anything and everything to deny or pretend that this problem(s) does not exist and the minority who believe in such a thing is delusional or communists (socialists) who need to be silenced or shamed into silence.

And the band played on.

We have another shooting. 49 gay men and women (and I suspect straight/pansexual/transexual/etc) people were gunned down by a man filled with anger/hatred and violence. Who found that the easiest way to express his feelings/intentions/beliefs/purpose was with the problem that everyone will debate until no one really wants to talk about it anymore and we will rail against each other until we are hoarse and our own fears and hatreds will destroy the rhetoric that really matters here and we (as a whole) will ask the band to play on until someone else goes on a shooting rampage and kills a lot of people at once.

The problem is guns.

Many of us like them (lots of reasons). Hell, I like them.

But people do horrible, terrible things with them.

Almost everyone who handles one will do what should be unthinkable with one. I know what you are going to say, but hear me out.

You may not shoot another human being with it. You might never shoot anything with it but a target.

You might never even shoot it at all (you would be almost unique for that) but you are more than likely to fantasize shooting someone or something alive with it. I know what you are going to say, and  you are right, it's just a fantasy. 

But let me ask you this.

When you went to the shooting range or out to the woods (I hope it was in the neighborhood or next to my house) to shoot your gun (that is any firearm) to shoot that target you didn't imagine it was a human target. This means you with the human silhouette target, Frank.

Bottom line, a firearm is designed to do one thing: KILL. 

It's not designed to paint pictures or make music. Yes, it can do these things. A fork is designed to help you eat food but you can, with enough effort kill someone with it, but it wasn't designed to kill someone. There is also the argument that people kill and guns don't. The answer is you are right it takes a person to use the gun to kill someone...unless you drop it and it goes off and kills your best friend or wife or child. Gun accidents alone account for a great many deaths in the US each year.
I could present my proof, I could spend pages and hours pouring over the evidence only to have some self righteous gun owner or troll debunk it with a single phrase.
The Second Bloody Amendment.
A right (not a law) originally written to prevent the government of 200+ years ago from abusing its citizens as the British were commonly believed to do. The amendment is dated and retranslated over and over again so that it pretty much means that anyone who wants to claim anything about guns or WMDs has a right to own one and strut around preening with it.
Today marks yet another defeat of reason against this madness as the same group of Republicans kill yet one more attempt to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. My own state's elected cronies are headliners on that one.
One Day, though, the tide will turn.
I have to hope it does, because believing it is too hard.
I have a dream where this country will stop believing in the lies of a handful of angry white men and start believing in the the hands of all its citizens regardless of gender, sex preference, race, economic availability, political philosophy. On that day, we all will finally become Americans, not just the privileged easily bought out white male agenda driven loud mouths that are running this country into the ground.
It is so hard not to give "Them" a face and believe that they are a real threat.
We don't have to ban guns.
We should ban guns.
But we don't have to, just to find a place where proliferation is not a problem.
The law should read that you can only own as many guns as you can carry while outrunning a raging bull in your underwear.
Sure, some ingenuitive gun owners will hook extra weapons to their underwear, but since the majority of them are overweight lazy deer hunter types, they will be hauling ass butt naked.
It's a nice metaphor that makes me smile.

This is just a rant.
I hoard firearms in Fallout 4. I can be caught carrying at least 8 at any one time in this videogame.
In case you are unfamiliar with Fallout, it's a post apocalyptic video game where pretty much everyone and everything is hell bent on killing you. Like a liberal journalist at a Drumpf Rally.
But it's just a game.
I don't own a gun.
I do own a Daisy single cock Buck model BB Rifle. Which I don't use much anymore, it turns out to be useless against skunks.
I suspect it wasn't designed to kill much more than wood bees.
I can hit the broadside of my barn with it.
I have been tempted to point it at people. this scares me, because I can recognize the lure of power a firearm presents.
The main reason I don't own a firearm is that I have Clinical Depression and there is a history of suicide in my family.
I like my ugly mug in it's mostly original shape, in other words.
I call this a responsible decision, for myself and others.
Yes, by the argument of so many detractors who will read my blog (or at least the headline) and then call me names and write me off as another liberal kook, I say this.
I could probably do myself in with a spoon. I might even be able to attack someone with one of the knives or swords I own or the machete I have for chopping undergrowth or with the chainsaw- assuming I can ever get it going.
It's true.
Chainsaw deaths in this country are equal to the number of grown men crying in the backyards with raw hands, cramped biceps, screaming incoherently at their fucking tools for not working. or stalling mid cut

Oh the Humanity!
But my argument stands (the grammar nazis can bite my butt- I am going to keep using but to start a sentence! It's a Rant, get over it...I think Stephen King said that).
If I had a gun and bullets, it makes shooting people and things so much easier.
And it is the ease that scares me.
It's so easy to get a gun.
buy bullets.
and then go out and take all the frustration and anger and hurt and resentment and fears out on a group of people or persons who have gone out of their way to hurt or torment you in some way.
or just some random target or targets because you can't find another solution to your problems other than taking the easy way out.
I know someone will say it's not the easy way out.
I agree. It's the easier option.
Surviving, overcoming, living with the horror that your life has become is much much harder.
It's a given, as a seemingly average white middle age man who lives with his mother, I am painfully aware that I fit the stereotype of the psychopath, rapist, abuser, mass shooter profile.
I also have a history of being abused.
I could easily generate a long list of people who have treated me poorly, made me a social outcast, gone out of their way to harass me, hurt me, ruin my prospects with any number of women, destroy my reputation, make me into a self loathing overweight monster filled with such rage and despair that taking up a gun seems like the only way to show the world who I truly am.
It's a nice lie to tell yourself while looking in the mirror before you go out and do the unthinkable evil that is done in this country on a daily basis.
Kill someone.
No One is Immune.
We all have this potential to be that shooter.
We all have the same potential to stop that shooter.
We all can stop the potential for any and all shooters.
What is the answer?
I suspect it's the same answer that changed my life. It's the reason that a man who has so many negative attributes is also the same man who to those who actually bothered to get to know him realize that he is, in fact, a good man.
It's love.
It's why I am a Christian.
I do it for love.
It why I am a liberal, a social democrat, American and South African, a geek and a dork and an erstwhile nerd, a best friend, a good son, uncle, cousin, would be significant other.
I have potential (as we all do)
I have love.
It is that simple.
Find love and by that I mean the real stuff.
not some hot chemical human reaction to bliss but the stuff of godliness.
I found it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from Galilee.
You might find it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from India or Spain or Central America.
You will probably find it in the way your mother looks at you (assuming your mother found it as well).
The real stuff comes from the Creator of life (the universe and everything).
For me, it is in the Bible (along with all the other stuff, but it's the point of the whole book)
For me, it set me free, with it I can be who I want to be, not a product of my culture or past or present, or upbringing or religion or lack of such.
With love all things are possible.
with guns, nothing but death awaits.
If I were to dream a dream, I would wish for a world free from the need for such a tool as the gun.
It is a tool, there is no denying it.
So, instead of preaching on- which part of me wants to do, because that part believes if I can just make you see my point then surely you will join me in a weapon free world; I will, instead offer this olive branch.
Come up with a reason to love that is not as important as a reason to own a gun.
If you do, it is time for you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the hard questions.
You probably know them a lot better than me.

and that is the rant according to Mike.

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

Sunday's are good for musings.
(don't ask where or when I actually wrote this)
I am pretending I am sitting on my father's deck, watching the blue skies and thinking Deep Jack Handyish thoughts.

1. If all men, and women- but mostly men, could stop for one minute, and talk without using body references- we could find a way to fax a pizza or solve internet bandwidth caps.
2. What a world it could be if some people would no longer refer to their own children as sex gods or confuse them with cats.
3. We could have peace on earth, if my mother could keep up with her reading glasses, or my boss, or my father, or that guy at Starbuck's - who still doesn't get that you can't read the menu for espresso by tilting your head back and squinting through them while talking to the ceiling.
4. Chocolate may not be the key to total nuclear disarmament, but semi sweet dark chocolate might take my thumb off the trigger.
5. If I could successfully flirt with a woman I really like; then I could probably ask for an insane raise and get it as soon as the higher ups stop laughing and choking on their Lattes.
6. Love can heal all things, but so can duct tape. If you say no, then (cliche moment) you are STILL not using enough Duct Tape.... also use red duct tape. Nothing says I love you like red duct tape.
7. There are two types of people in the world: Those who keep saying things like this, and those who can actually count.
8. Church Organ music will not actually put you to sleep, you might wish you would become comatose though.
9. Cake, or at least the very idea of Cake,  will fix most problems if you just recognize that cake will fix most problems. For everything else, there is that lame commercial jingle or Chocolate (refer to number 4 for more).
10. If you tell everyone to sing, and for some reason they do, it will probably suck or sound really, really good.
11. People without iphones are only as unfortunate as people with iphones and no imacs. People without droids are just unfortunate storm troopers. People without iphones or droids should not make a scene and thus avoid being embarrassed while flipping their antique phones.
12. People who take Facebook Quizzes are blissfully unaware that sharing their privacy on Facebook with the world is paying someone else to come up with more quizzes to keep sharing their private info. It's a win- win- you gotta be kidding me win scenario.
13. If thirteen is an unlucky number, I need to not trust Dwarves, blame RR Martin (for everything) or blame it on that guy on Youtube.

and that is Life (and utter ridiculousness) according to Mike.

Mondays (Redux)

Mondays....

But, for me and the other truly fortunate souls in the multiverse, I have Mondays off.

Let the hate, envy and outrage flow through you.... no I am not a Sith Lord, although I can laugh like them.

Mondays, for me, are writing days, blog updates, book projects and many cups of coffee- well at least 2.

It's also a time to reflect and ask myself: "are you sure you want to write a blog about presidential elections?"

In case you're curious, the answer is still yes. Blame Bloom County. Dammit Opus!

(sorry, John Oliver moment).

but I digress.

So what is this blog about?

Nothing. It's a blog about nothing!

(sorry, Sienfeld moment).

I am taking this as a moment to ask no one in particular, what should I blog about next.

(sound of crickets cliche)

It happens. no one really cares unless I says this on youtube. then mostly people tell me to go somewhere (usually repulsive).

If I wished to address the problems of this country, I would need a lot more mondays.

So, another time then.

There are so many things horribly wrong in the land of the "free" and home of the "brave"

The free people in America are either ungodly rich or completely penniless (homeless and don't care they are homeless) and the brave people in America don't belong to the NRA.

The Blogger hides behind the Freedom of Speech act and the newly founded Not in the Face ammendment.

But I digress.  Now where was I?

Right, not much further that saying I am contemplative on Mondays.

actually this is part of why I contemplate on Mondays. Also, got get my two dogs- rabies injections, and the male neutered cause I love him...no actually just want to pet him without have to dodge his constant erection. (dog humor)

Okay, that's scheduled.

Now I must persuade Amazon Visa, that's it's me, not them, although really it's them.

I have a Amazon Rewards Visa Card with a self-imposed $500 credit limit, and I received this letter from them.

Let me summarize what this is. The card servicing company for Amazon Visa wants we to fill out a W-9 tax form and a dubious release form so that they can look at my banking information and tax information. Yaay! Invasion of Privacy!

No, I am not complying not for a $500 limit.

Sheesh.

So Chase and Amazon Visa can kiss my behind goodbye.

but only after payday, I forgot to remove the card from one of my paysites and now I owe them money again. 

ARRRRRRGH!

Moving on.

Well, I guess I just got the case of the Mondays.

That character probably was found in a field somewhere bound and gagged with telephone and usb cable.

and then there is wasting time on Facebook dealing with dopes:

Ironically.

wow nerd!

I wrote a big long post proving why the original post was wrong...apparently someone at Brobible (or whoever they grabbed the vid link from edited it down for some reason) and left out the few reasons that would have proved its validity.  The thing with stuff like this is that is probably still fake is that youtube is filled with videos like this. Even I have been taken in on this crap. I think people want to see Wow players lose it over that "dumb  game."
I almost did, and then it hit me it was just all just data, little bits of data.
Then I got over it.
Then I realized I had dropped 20 minutes with this dumb post and commenting on it.
Then I looked at myself (figuratively- too lazy to go to the mirror) and said You are a troll.
so I added it here.
In case this matters for some reason, Blizzard doesn't delete anything forever. you can always retrieve deleted characters.... Blizzard understands vengeful girlfriends and maleficent account thieves.

and that was monday.

and that's

Mondays according to Mike.

Things I am going to say, but...

 I am sorely addicted to Fallout 4 (modded).

In case you don't have a clue what that means. It's not important. Just know that sometimes I feel more at home in a post apocalyptic wasteland in an America that never existed than in a country that I only thought existed. I mean, our modern day America is not what I grew up believing it to be. I find that people in the game are often more friendly and accepting of me and each other than the very people I work with, play with, drive with, shop with and vote with. 

Sure, some of the virtual ones shoot at you and want to eat you, but it feels more honest than the hidden feelings that people around me IRL (in real life) express.

Since Real Life isn't that real anymore, I find myself interacting with most people via Social Media. Where people lose their minds on a daily basis, where people who would otherwise be ignored or just stay silent go on rapid fire twitter rants and facebook monologues.

Life is messy. 

Vegetarians turn out to be a lot like other fanatics and at some point trying to grin and bear it is more like slowly driving a rusty fork into your thigh while smiling and trying not to come out a call a sanctimonious ne'er do well a Dick. 

(my apologies to all the Richard's in the world)

Will said it, so it must be true.

Also side note never tell one of those Vegetarians that Vegetables Cry.

That was a fairly atomic response in which I suddenly became the sole representative of the entire meat processing industry...

and I didn't even get a hamburger for it.

 So blogger is messing with me. I find myself in a constant war with how mods is a good way to play a game I should have just beat in vanilla (although vanilla is atrocious in this case). Still, I find I stop at some point and say, No. No, I am not taking this anymore. I have got to go back and start again.
Why?
Because I can, at least in the video game.
Maybe, this time, I can get it more right than the last almost successful playthrough. Usually my downfall in Fallout 4 is a new mod comes along and suddenly everything makes better- but only if you wipe the slate clean and start again.

This doesn't happen in IRL. It doesn't there are no do-overs.
Well, almost none.
If you can get one or more parties to agree to start over, it kind of works although in all my experience- save that I usually am the one who loses something each time.
I really, really want it to work in my favor once.
I want to keep the girlfriend instead of thinking.

 So, I find myself going back to the one thing I can play and live over and over again.
So as I embark on my fifth do-over in Fallout 4. I pause to reflect on the two truths, I have found while writing this blog.
1.
       If in IRL, you feel like you need a Do-Over, probably God (or that other being who appeals to your idea of existentialism) is telling you to stop, look at the other part or parties and admit to them, to yourself that perhaps instead of starting over with them, you should start over with someone else or yourself. Do-Over, only work in video games if you actually do something different. (Don't tell Piper, she is better off without Nat).


2
If you have a rocket launcher you are ahead of the game.
IRL this is only true if the FBICIATBF G-Men don't immediately confiscate it.

That's where I am or was.
Now I got to go edit my Fallout 4 Prefs ini.
Anyone asks- tell it was all according to Mike
it works for me.

Thoughts from atop a Mountain

Life.
At least, my life, should be filled mostly with silence and thought, broken only by moments of music, laughter, secret smiles, and occasional tears.
We find ourselves living in a world filled with constant noise and distraction.
I find myself in a videogame world turning off the background music and listening for the sounds that the game designers wanted me to hear fill our shared world.
I find myself lying in bed in the morning listening for the silence longing to live somewhere where there are no bullets. I find myself wishing I lived alone in a forest where the only noise is the soft creaking of old trees, the soft rush of running, falling water, the whisper of bird song filtering through the foliage and the murmur of my own breathing.
Here on the morning, there is a blessed silence unbroken even by the planes in the sky, the traffic so distant below, a neutral plane of existence somewhere in between the chaos of life below and the wonder of emptiness above.
It's a place where poetry can take place far, far away from the mess of emotions and the madness of consent. Finding an inner calm even man made music takes on a new form of being and I find myself contemplating the things that I would otherwise dismiss as too distracting to include in my regular thought process.
What things?
Dreams. Dreams of what I want to be, dreams of what I wanted to be, and dreams of what happened anyway in spite of me believing that life would be different somehow.
One dream I have, often in waking fashion, is the one where I am with my brother and all the things that continually drive us apart are absent and we could be what we never really were. Together we walk through the waking adventure as my mind constructs my own desire until I am reminded with the certain regret that it cannot ever be and then I find myself wishing that the dream would just find someone else to haunt while still being happy, somehow- that they still happen. It's hard to put it into words that capture what the idea of "sweet regret" actually is.
I dream of not being alone. That there is someone else there with me. I didn't ever have a significant other so it's not a memory- but more like a memory of a desire unfulfilled as I grow older and the pain has softened into an endurable loss as I long for a touch I have never felt but often imagined.
Again, how do you tell someone, that you look forward to that kind of feeling when you can't even really describe who you want to be with and yet the feeling is acute and sharp as if the whole experience is about to happen?

I stop to consider that once, when the world was newer to me and our cultural background could be ignored as readily as all the grief and problems that come with awareness and understanding of the world around us bring, back to an idea of innocence that was as insubstantial as the morning mist yet the only reality that so many children experience between the rush of puberty and parental interference creates. Which is to say (the long way around) youth. That we did not qualify anyone else save by how kind or unkind they were to us. When what they believed was unimportant since we were more interested in what they could pretend was more important and playable. when the kid who had the best imagination took the lead, not the most athletic or best looking or any of the anchors that drown us in modern life were less important or crucial to play than could my stick be a sword and could the imaginary become enough of a reality to fill the hours in between lunch and having to be home for a bath and or dinner.
I know that not all children are given this gift, but those who do, forget it all too soon if they had it at all. We like to think it existed before technology came to rob it away but the truth is closer to the truth that grownups and grownup problems took it away from us long before some box invade our collective realities.
Children should just be allowed to be children.
That is all.

Anywho, now life invades and I must march off to a grownup event filled with all the importance that is devoid of play.
and that is life according to Mike.

Yup, we are living in the dark ages.

There is a war on enlightenment.
There is a war on reason.
There is a war on empiricism.
There is a war.
It is all the same war.
What war?
Well, the short answer is this.

err- I mean it's complicated.

Once upon a time, I thought like this.

When the last child cries for a crust of bread
when the last man dies for just words that he said
when there's shelter over the poor estate
when the last thing we notice is the color of skin
and the first thing we look for is the beauty within
when the skies and the oceans are clean again
when we're free to love anyone we choose
when the world is big enough for all different views
when money talks for the very last time
and nobody walks a step behind
when there's only one race and that's mankind...
we shall be free?

Sorry Garth, nice song but no dice.

got the tee shirt though only $25 what a deal and its 4x because I feel the love that much...also it was the only choice because they don't make shirts for whales.

ou don't need to watch this unless you are really this curious about what is happening in this country and the world.

The Irony for me, It is Irony.

The two proponents for denying science are sworn enemies for the most part.

The USA: Republicans and conservatives and their ilk are waging a war of plausible deniability on almost every facet of science, as well as pushing to insert their own pseudo sciences as being equatable to or better than proven scientific fact. But it's not just them, Religions are hopping in as well. Fanatical backlash is gaining a foothold on this country's ability to reason.

and

The Middle East: the "Muslims" or as I would say where Ultra Conservatives or Extremists hold power and can control what anyone wants to believe or practice under the guise of upholding the one true religion (theirs not anyone else's. This is ironic since, in many ways, science began there in those regions, they were the strongholds of research and reasoning, Men looked beyond the gods and religions to ask what is the universe. Now, it appears that is long gone along with the ruins and few artifacts that remain that haven't been hijacked and turned into something it wasn't.

My point is not actually to go into a comparison on the two but just to draw attention to the understanding that it's not just an American thing. It's like capital punishment. America and Saudi Arabia (and some other middle east countries...) If you understand that, then we are good, if not the cosmic joke has passed you by...move on.

My point is The War on Enlightenment is really the return of the Dark Ages where (purportedly) willful ignorance and fear ruled over reason and the desire to understand the world (creation).

What do I mean by Enlightenment?

By definition Enlightenment is understanding, awareness, wisdom, education, learning, knowledge;

going from relative ignorance to a state of intellectual ability to process reason. Growing up in the common tongue. Not being an idiot...well that's relative. 

Enlightenment also refers to European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition (Merriam-Webster).

Which was the end of the Dark Ages (or so they thought).

Humans are consistently stubborn.

I am not going to go into detail. I am not writing the book. I just want to make a point and that is to stop denying that we (anyone who thinks that we should be free) need to understand that someone or something wants mankind to plunge back into a world filled with darkness and demons where knowing what is good is nearly impossible with all that is evil.

Overly simplistic but that is what you get when the term Dark Ages is not enough.

Lastly, I want to say something about revisionism. 

the theory or practice of revising one's attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view. (M-W)

and more importantly

Historical revisionism is a practice in historiography in which a historian reinterprets traditional views of causes and effects, decisions, and evidence. It is said that "history is written by the winners." Thus, it is essential that we look at history with a critical eye. As such, it is an accepted and important part of historical endeavor for it serves the dual purpose of constantly re-examining the past while also improving our understanding of it. Indeed, if one accepts that history attempts to help us better understand today by better understanding how we got here, revisionism is essential. Only idiots take history wholeheartedly as indisputable facts. (wikipedia)

The main point of this is that we are in an age of constant revisionism, some of which is necessary.

Overwhelmingly (in my point of view) revisionism is one of the worst handled practices known to man.

Examples:

The North (the Unionists) revised the history of the Civil War to be about Slavery. It was and it wasn't (as any Confederate could have told you) Southerner's (the real ones or the reasonable ones) will tell you that it wasn't about slavery, it was called the war of Northern Aggression by the South (Confederacy of Southern States) not let's kill thousands of Americans because some of them wanted slavery. If it had been that, it would have been a much shorter war. But the South lost. The Revisionists won their rewrite of American History. Now the Blacks (African Americans - in a massive misuse of generalism on my part- to which I will never live the shame down on- won their right to blame everyone for everything- again I am exaggerating (not a lot though) [nah, I am kidding, but the side that gets the most attention presents the whole idea of revising history like this]

The Holocaust was a Jewish Thing. It wasn't but the winners and more importantly those who want it to be solely about the Jews made it so. Anyone who disagrees is shouted out of the building. 

Homosexuality. Don't get me wrong, I know that gay men weren't unique and only appeared during the 20th century, but claiming every great artist, philosopher, musician and "good guy" was gay is ridiculous. At least the other non-heteros haven't succumbed to this....not! It is quite entertaining albeit one sided. Still with Straight White History running the world some of it has validity.

I somehow doubt we will ever get the "straight" version of the bent nature of human history.

and the list goes on.

I will digress to one last point of revisionism that really troubles me.

Maybe I was taught wrong by dozens of really smart and educated teachers and professors, but no new idea is ever immediately accepted  by everyone.

Why do I bring this up? 

Because I had a friend (maybe he was right, he never once admitted he could be wrong and he took a certain glee in ramming it down my throat) inform me that the scientific community accepted relativity immediately and wholeheartedly. 

Apparently all those teachers and professors and wikipedia and google had it wrong.

I definitely had it wrong and like an worm I rolled over and let him pound me for it.

Sadly or fortunately, it was the end of my friendship with him. I mean even if he is right or mostly right, he was wrong. I probably will never think of him as my equal or for that matter friend again.

It's too bad. 

but I return to my song. I still want to be free. Even if that means that the "scientists" aren't on my side.

If you stop and take a look around, you will find the revisionism taking place everywhere.

It's going to be painful. Some good will come out of it. Though, for all the hope I originally had for it, most of it will be harmful since even the sides- groups I would agree with will not settle for moderation, it will be their way or no way, it seems.

All of us has a story like this.

Let me know if you would like to add to this brief (not brief diatribe)

If you don't believe me, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if you can believe in science and god at the same time?

or can you include evolution in Genesis.

or can you accept that America did not rescue the world in WWII without other's help, or that Japan would have surrendered without being nuked first.

or that reality may not be exactly the way you have always believed or known it to be.

I am not perfect nor all knowing, but I know certain things to be true for me.

I am not about to ram it into you because I want to feel validation at being right.

I want us all to be free, even the idiots.

and that it Life according to Mike.