Oh, No!

Oh, no!

Our position is precarious.

We go

Vulnerable to various

Scoundrels, utterly nefarious.

We gotta question why.

So goes the opening of my song, pertinent when I started it in 2017, and even more true today.

We’re living in a time that could have been scripted by both William Shakespeare and the Marx Brothers – tragedy and comedy – misdirecting us. Suffering and jokes have replaced vision. We’re locked in the audience of a perverse play, and our shouts of outrage and dismay don’t seem to matter. It’s beyond us, yet on us.

Never in the history of our United States have we been so disunited. Never have we seen nefarious liars amplified by well-financed algorithms as if they were admirable and entertaining. Never have our advanced political and technological systems been so vulnerable.

There have long been selfish sleezebags telling blatant lies while enriching themselves and their cohort. Long ago, those who would trap the last beaver, shoot the last bison, and brag about killing the last songbird would go their way, unquestioned and unimpeded. There have often been those who just don’t care for animals or people. Somehow, they stay in charge.

They have no feeling towards nature, no care for the many if it enriches a few. Hard to generate concern for butterflies, coral reefs, and the hapless residents of distant Nepal when environmental ethics are mocked. Hard to be sensitive and kind in a world gone mean and greedy.

Hard to have a tender morality when world leaders rape and kill young girls for thrills, and then hide with gobs of other wealthy, powerful politicians and industry leaders, their crimes obscured in a glut of atrocities protected by those in charge of our laws.

As we sit on the verge of the most important mid-term election ever in our country, a solid third of voters cling to the most offensive politicians. The red-tie bunch (Trump, Netanyahu, and their enablers) are proud of their ignorant obstinacy and arrogant atrocities. The wealthiest people in the world are throwing millions (mere chump change to them) at our democracy. Democracy, the humanistic hope for mutual self-rule, is a playground for amoral financiers, a show to be managed and mangled.

We’re being used. It’s unclear whether we can master the situation or will remain its dupes.

It’d be a magnificent relief if a potential blue wave would wash us clean. It’d be a welcome revelation to realize the word social is part of the word socialist. Those who shriek alarm at socialism are providing ample examples of what anti-social, anti-socialist policies are doing to our communities and our environment. To them, there is no us in the U.S.

It’d be a painful but relieving episode when our national swollen, painful boil were to pop, spewing pent-up pus on us. Messy but needed.

I share in the cringing hope that our country’s story be rescued and redeemed by the many who don’t want kings and their henchmen in charge. I share in the disdain we rightly have towards the once-laudable Judeo-Christian Heritage when we see its renewed penchant for invasion, conquest, colonization, and exploitation be exemplified in Gaza. I share in the conscience we all have when it isn’t tricked by old, mean books and strutting phonies telling us it’s justified “self-defense,” or worse, “God’s will.” The Bible offers various such rationalizations. Do Netanyahu and Trump expect to be cast as heroes in a new Bible story of conquest and land grabs?

(Please note, the last stats are two years old; it has not stopped.)

Gaza is a localized result of not valuing, respecting, and enhancing people or Nature, writ large. The overheating of our oceans, the resultant mayhem of droughts and fires, rainbombs and floods, the scraping of Earth’s forests, the decimation of our oceans’ ecosystems – all these add environmental equivalents to the horrid treatment of the people of Gaza.

It’s a time of devilish leaders. Angry though I often am at how religion can be devilish, I end up admiring our last two popes. That’s leadership. But so are the comedians and cartoonists, the uninvited court jesters telling us what the highly-paid commenters of mainline media won’t.

What has become of our morality and our conscience?

Susan Nieman, in her book Call it Evil, says that deeper than lawlessness lies a moral collapse, a cynical surrender to universal selfishness. Adam Smith’s admission that we do things for selfish reasons became the only thing we’re to do, no matter how well-to-do we are while doing it. From such lofty places, swaying elections is what you’re entitled to do.

Nieman reminds us of the boredom of the banality of evil, when we get used to all our moral red lines being crossed. Thomas Paine wrote, “The long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

It isn’t just Immanuel Kant who advises we act in such a way as we would have all act, that we would do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves, that we treat people as inherently deserving of our respect instead of a mere means to some desired end; it is built into our inherent conscience; it is inherent in the core teachings of most of the world’s religions and philosophies; it is what Jesus probably meant by how we treat “the least of these” is how we treat the most sacred.

Renee Good’s last words were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

Health care

Leaving us all alone.

Oceans

Ominous new dead zone.

Death genes

Sickening the seeds we’ve grown

It could make us die

A mere Open Mic song bewails our plight. We turn to music to try to express it. We even join in folk songs: “This land is your land…” But after singing, so what?

How are we doing? I must say, not well.

Plundered our Garden for items to sell.

But something is rotten and starting to smell.

Take Paradise and burn it to Hell.

Paradise, California, did burn. So did my local towns a few years ago. So did the posh area near Los Angeles. So did much of Spain and France. So does it go in Siberia.

Those are the fires. What about the increasing rain bombs, hurricanes larger than ever before, floods that float away cars and buildings? What’s to worry? It’s been declared a hoax.

Fox News

Leading us all astray

Confuse

Slippery in every way

Refuse

Letting them get their way

‘n fool us with their lies.

Fascists and other authoritarian governments seize and dominate the media. They control what people hear, and that becomes what people think. “Crooked Hillary” and “Sleepy Joe Biden” become reality when people hear them often enough. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to apply to those who are obviously crooked and sleepy. Anyone come to mind?

Remember when AM radio magnified the voice of Russ Limbaugh? Ever note how Fox News would play at bars? Note the puffed lips of pretty ladies paid to read Fox News reports? How people looked seemed more important than what they said and did. Most people barely know what happens in our political world. Haircuts sway votes. Shallow, empty slogans become the stuff of argumentation.

Consider who at Fox News has been invested with power.

Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, has changed that title to Department of War. He has purged that department and the Pentagon of anyone who followed policies to bring DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) into the military, a long-honored way to integrate our military and country, the very intent of an inclusive and just America. He berates the military as not macho enough. He has announced another 20% reduction of top generals and admirals.

(A parallel purge to this Fox list applies to our Department of Justice. It’s as if some foreign adversary had some shocking poop on our president and used it to have him divide and weaken our country.)

Fox commenter Jeanine Pirro became the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Dan Bongino, who left Fox News in 2023, became the deputy director of the FBI and head honcho of the ICE crackdown.

Tom Homan, recent “border czar,” has been at Fox since 2018.

Sean Duffy used to host the Fox business program. Now he’s Secretary of Transportation.

Michael Waltz worked as a paid contributor to Fox. Now he’s our United Nations Ambassador.

Mike Huckabee, prominent Christian former governor of Arkansas, is our ambassador to Israel. He believes in the End Times, and he may help bring them about.

The revolving door turns both ways. Faj Shah, former White House Press Secretary, moved to Fox News as a senior vice president. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was White House Press Secretary under Trump before joining Fox News as an on-air commentator. She later won the election as Governor of Arkansas.

Enough! I won’t burden myself or you with more examples. The point is, glamour, opinion, and obedience have replaced expertise in our government. These sycophants are about as sturdy and classy as the White House East Wing.

Tragic

Tactics are so obvious

Fakers

Think we are oblivious

Takers

Totally bad for us

We gotta question why.

Then the song shifts. A swing beat accompanies the interlude.

Fervently wishing for truth to appear

Hoping for leaders who lead us from fear

But they have made it abundantly clear

They haven’t a notion of what we hold dear. . .

But we were created with full sovereignty

Savvy and caring about all that we see

Subtle deceivers have fooled you and me

Traded our smarts for a faith fantasy.

Perhaps you see how scripture and theology have entered the song. Those familiar with my larger mission know that I see Genesis One fixing the problems of Genesis Two/Three. We’re freeborn earthlings. We’re born smart and sexy. We’re easily tricked by subtle deceivers, those who say, “Don’t think for yourself; don’t stay sensitive to your own conscience; be as gods, knowing your own good and evil; get tripped up by shame, blame, and pain; you’re born fallen and then fall into guilt; you can only be redeemed by believing in preposterous theologies.”

We’re so inundated with such spiritual confusion we violate our inherent roles as freeborn agents of Creation, those with dominion enough to “replenish the earth.”

The song ends…

Trump’s not

Anything but fraudulent

Liar

Couldn’t be more evident

Faker

Became our madman president

He’s a living lie.

He would let us die.

They would drain us dry.

We gotta question why. 

How to end this essay and song? How to use my freedom of religion and speech to say what needs to be said? How to add my part to the millions who are aghast at what our beloved America has become? How to live up to being not just a citizen of our country, but of the world?

Thomas Paine wrote in 1782, “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” He said then what I would remind ourselves is true now, “We have it in our power to begin the world again.”

Pause before final verse, outro, and coda.

Our lot

Is to get intelligent

You know, we’ve got to try, to have . . . (modulate and return to a swing rhythm)

Crystal-clean water and lots of fresh air

Bountiful harvests with plenty to share

Peace and protection for people who care

Full sovereign people who dare to declare…

(Spoken) Sovereignty – Civility ─ Ingenuity ─ Community