I hate this.

[Nazz]

"The truth shall set you free, but it will piss you off first."

Lotta truth in that truth about truth...

I have no problem with the melting pot metaphor (analogy?) And "castoff" isn't necessarily negative. I think that charaterization also helps understand our inception and growth as a nation too.

I don't know, Barry. We still have some ugly undercurrents running through our big ol' melting pot, more than I might have imagined. What was all that inciteful, violent speech directed at Obama in the campaign? And we seem to have a collective violent streak in us. I've never had any desire to own a gun, but I'm not "anti-gun." But gun violence here is much higher than any other industrialized nation, and no one seems to know why, exactly. Who knows?

No matter where any of us are born, we all come from Earth, right?

True.

[Barry]

You know, Nazz...It's like what I think sooZen was saying, if I may put my own spin on it...when you accentuate the negative, you eliminate the positive. And vice versa. Does that mean stick your head in the sand and ignore the negative? Hell, no! It just means emphasize the positive over the negative, which I think stands true for anything and everything anywhere and everywhere, be it under the sun or not. For too long in America, since about the Sixties it seems like (a decade I once worshipped as the Great Flourescence in my writing but now ain't so sure), too many of us here, particularly the so-called liberal left - you know, the ones who actually give a shit and have the drive to make the necessary changes rather than preserve the staus quo? - have accentuated the negative in American society. Maybe back then, coming out of the Fifties (shudder), that was what was needed to open peoples eyes. It's just my own personal opinion that the times have changed and it's now time to do something more constructive than simple criticism. It's what I try to do in my life, my love, my writing, my passion, my...in short, my work here on this planet. I try to be more constructive now in my work than I was in the past. Maybe it's an age thing. In my youth I was the stereotypical angry young man. I'm not anymore. I'm very grateful for that. And now I see things in a different light, not like the way I used to see things. Yeah, this country has it's problems. Don't they all? We could ask a Brit, a Canuck, an Aussie or anyone else if they thought their country was as good as it should be, much less perfect, and what do you think most would answer? Probably, no. Just like you and me. It ain't perfect. It ain't what it should be, could be, or what we might wish it to be. But it is our country. And those dudes from 200+ years ago had an amazing, I almost suspect supernatural or time-travelish vision. What they set up the rest of the world has sought to emulate for the 200+ years since. That alone has got to say something.
(steps down off soapbox and promises himself to try and shut up )

Peace,
Barry

[stilltrucking]

Would you say refuse is a negative word.

never mind

[stilltrucking]

I really don't care how many guns anybody has.

I was interested in the message.

When Obama is seen as a tyrant.

Yes we need our guns to oppose tyrany

That guy is a freedom fighter

When Obama is depicted as H*tler by those protestors.

He has recieved more death threats than any other president so far to date, they are coming in about 30 a day.

Obama faces 30 death threats a day, stretching US Secret Service
US President Barack Obama is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service, according to a new book.
Telegraph.com

Is refuse a negative word.

Refuse as in garbage.

As in
Wretched refuse of teaming shores

As in the poem

at the statue of liberty

I am first generation American

My family is refuse

We would not be alive it not for the USA

Oh my white brother

[stilltrucking]

Refuse

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Refuse
Waste is an unwanted or undesired material or substance. It is also referred to as rubbish, trash, garbage, or junk depending upon the type of material and the regional terminology. In living organisms, waste relates to unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from them. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuse

Collectively, items or material that have been discarded; rubbish, garbage; To decline (a request or demand); To decline a request or demand; to ...
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/refuse

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[stilltrucking]

This country has a long history of those that have spoke truth to power.

Those who have been critical.

I think of Red Emma who was deported for opposing Woodrow Wilson's war to make the world safe for J.P. Morgan and Company.

We elected George W. Bush twice.

And the same people who brought us Bushco are waiting to get back in power.

[stilltrucking]

I did not mean to talk sh*t about your religion.
I am a Quaker myself

Or was it talking sh*t about your country?

I am a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam who was born in a shtetl in Poland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAFmFsb9XM



"you always get what's coming you never have to ask" the Spinoza of Baltimore.

Nazz for all the threads I have highjacked and rambled on I had this one coming. Thank you for seeing what I was trying to say.
Obama is a tyrant and we need to take up arms against him. "Something like that."

Love peace and taco grease

[stilltrucking]

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service.
The Secret Service cut corners under Bush when it became a part of the Department of Homeland Security, and added personnel and resources are needed given the additional threats associated with the new administration


http://www.alan.com/2009/08/05/death-th ... ma-up-400/

Bush hardly ever appeared before the general public. He gave his speeches at military bases as I remember.

I think we should have the right to arm ourselves, I myself would like a small personal nuclear device mounted on a rocket under my rear bumper for the next trucker who tailgates me.

[Barry]

The first year of the balloon release my brother and I got into a huge fight. We had an email rally that went back and forth, becoming nastier and nastier. He disagreed with the whole concept of the balloon release, arguing that he wasn't sure even world peace was such a good idea. He felt that our military might was what had kept us alive, that without dropping the Bomb on Japan we would have had to invade, and that many more American boys would have died. He said all this because the balloon release coincides with Hiroshima Day, missing the point that it's not about whether we should have dropped the Bomb or not. I tried to explain that I had studied this issue extensively, that it's now well known that had we not dropped the Bomb, Japan would have surrendered long before the scheduled invasion anyway, that...Well, the argument raged for days back and forth through the internet until my brother and I weren't speaking to each other. We didn't speak for nearly a year. We've now patched it up. We're still great friends. But my memory of this flap is that it was produced through certain assumptions made by he of me. Sure, I played my part. I could have refused to be engaged. But after the initial email asking him if he would help me spead the word on this, he freaked, went off, immediately placing me in a camp he had preconceived in his own head. I was not in this camp, and nothing I said would overturn this notion he had once he'd gotten it. Nothing.
I've just read back through this entire thread to see where things went wrong. It seems it was when I called you cynical. For that I apologize. I erred and I'm sorry. I still don't see how you read me saying love it or leave it, but no matter.
Miscommunication based on assumption and presupposition is a huge problem in human affairs.
I do think refuse is negative word, regardless of the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. I don't think of my ancestors as refuse, no matter what prompted them to come to America. Could it be that in the context of the poem it isn't so much that the immigrants themselves thought they were refuse, or even the Americans they came to live amoungst, but that they were thought of as such by the people of the places they left? And would we do their memory well to perpetuate this belief?
Again, truck, I apologize for calling you cynical.

Peace,
Barry

[stilltrucking]

Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice."
Vladimir Ilyich LENIN
Explanation to Emma Goldman in 1920

She managed to get herself deported from the USA for opposing Woodrow Wilson's war to make the world safe for J.P. Morgan & Co. And then she was deported from the USSR for advocating free speech. She died in Canada but they let her body come back to her adopted land that she loved. America. A hero of mine.

I have a streak of sarcasm a mile wide, not sure if that is the same as cynicism. I try to watch it but it slips out sometimes.

[sooZen]

Nazz, It was not my intent to cause any defensive reaction, truly.

Yes, our shit stinks too but what after all is all this shit but fertilizer for barren minds.

I guess I think that by expending all my energies on what is always wrong, oppressive, or cruel, I can no longer see the "light." If you are a real political wonk, so be it, and more power to you and those that love dissecting every move that the left or right makes. Broad judgments about what is right or wrong are beyond my purvey. Working on my own growth is a full time job. I have quit watching "us" make wars, kill each other, and other sad and silly pursuits of humans. I am not isolated by any means but my purpose and focus is the sky, the earth, the trees, the stones, the creatures in my spaces.

I love this country, my town and my home and because I do, doesn't mean that those that disagree with my views don't love it too. I am not advocating an all or nothing diatribe nor will (or should) I go there when someone has a different perspective.

I guess I am past my hammering stage unless it is metals. I grieve for the losses we are suffer because we are such a young and foolish species but heck, a meteor could end it all anyway and I am not privy to what Nature and the Universe has in store. Nature has a way of evening the score of man's foibles and mistakes or just wiping the slate clean and starting all over again.

When you gaze at this planet, you see no borders, we are one.

The chimps, our closest relatives, fight, form teenage gangs and wreak havoc with abandon but are we so different? I think not but we alone of all of the species on this planet have something beautiful and it is the ability to look out into the unknown and wonder. I want to focus on the wonder and the beauty of the unknown and not who is carrying a gun and where. But, that's just me...

[Nazz]

Can't say that any of it was defensive. Maybe a reaction, the whole world is made of them. I enjoy talking to the world sometimes, still trying to figure it out. We all seem to have our wisdom and blind spots. It's a curious thing. Maybe I just get too down too often. I should think about that. There is so much out there, it's unbelievable! There is so much inside too. Just to be here is a gift. Keep perspective! Keep hope. Easier said than done, at times.

[stilltrucking]

Pardon me, but
Do you ever think of bonobos our closest relative too

Who do not form gangs or fight wars and are a matriarchial society.

Just imagine that we had never heard of chimpanzees or baboons and had known bonobos first. We would at present most likely believe that early hominids lived in female- centered societies, in which sex served important social functions and in which warfare was rare or absent. In the end, perhaps the most successful reconstruction of our past will be based not on chimpanzees or even on bonobos but on a three-way comparison of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans.
http://brembs.net/bonobos.html

link courtesy of Hester Prynne

The truth does not piss me off
it hurts, but that is not the same
as anger.

I no longer seek happiness I only seek awareness (Camus paraphrased)

I am a freak
I see what is inside me
and it is not all sweetness and light
I can see monsters and saints

Good and evil

I think the experience with LSD left me naked to the lidless eye.

And outside I see life as beautiful
and that I got what I deserve

But I will never understand why some peoples' lives are hell through no fault of their own.

I can live with mystery. In fact I need mystery in my life.
And if you think scientists are going to find a God particle or answer all the mysteries than you must be smoking some really good shit.

And I think we need the truth to power speakers
Cause a man sees what he wants to see
and ...

Freedom is just another word
And I still got plenty left to loose.

I know you got to accentuate the positive
but you can't ignore what is not good




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[sooZen]

It probably wasn't defensive Mark, I tend to piss people off and never know why... Maybe I was the one that was on the defensive. We humans usually are exactly what we tend to think others are projecting because we know it in ourselves. Pardon me.

I know what beauty you have experienced when you wander the desert, because you write so well about it. When you (or i or anyone) is going through a personal drama, like a death in the family or a serious accident or illness...none of this matters. Politics don't matter, whom has a gun and where doesn't matters, nada matters but the essential experience you or i are experiencing with all that entails. The world could blow up, wars erupt but it would not matter if a loved one or oneself is on a brink.

In the meantime, back at the ranch, don't you think that all that thrashing about concerning other folks doings (which we obviously can't control) and letting those things rule our day is futile? I would rather see your writings about a desert trek than worry about guns or wars. Unless one is pro-active about what they believe...what is the point? Carry a sign, get involved or perhaps reach an understanding that it is really not where you want to go.

Truck, I was speaking strictly in a DNA sense and I surely strive towards bonobo-hood but that is not our closest cousin. We are more closely linked to the complexities of the chimpanzee, where females are raped and beaten and babies are murdered. Just like us'ins, that is not always the case in every troop. It depends on the leader and his benevolence and isn't that familiar?

I surely believe and voted for the man in highest office office today. My brother voted twice for Bush... It was a topic of heated discussion within bounds. I still love him, enjoy his company even tho his politics are so very different than mine. We agree to disagree and it is no uneasy truce, only love and respect.

I guess I am through with this discussion for now. I have to go to work at the Farmer's and Crafts Market where life is really real. Someone may walk into my booth with a gun and blow me away but that is not what I am thinking or where I let my mind go. For living in fear of the unknown is not my forte.

Have a wonder-full day. Watch the birds, bees and trees and all is well in the Uni-verse.

Have a great day my friends,

[stilltrucking]

Truck, I was speaking strictly in a DNA sense and I surely strive towards bonobo-hood but that is not our closest cousin.

I will have to check that out. From what I have Googled so far the bonobos are just as close to us. But I could be wrong.

Together with the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), the bonobo is man's closest living relative (2).

http://www.arkive.org/bonobo/pan-paniscus/info.html

I am not the man I was when I stumbled on litkicks eight or nine years ago.

I owe you all a lot
I mean I am grateful to have met you
here on the internet

"I'll get by with a little help from my friends"

I see things in myself I do not see in others. Except in the ones we call monsters.
I wonder how many men here have come close to murdering their own mothers.