Ghosts Who Walk,
I felt despair all afternoon, and I wasn't expecting it. There was a wake after meditation practice, for the husband of a member of our Sangha. I had gotten lettuce, broccoli and sugar snap peas from the garden this morning, washed, composed a nice big salad, with some black olives and colorful cherry tomatoes and packed it along, even though I'd been told it wasn't pot luck. Id never been to the house, so I followed in our little convoy, mile after mile, out to Lakeway, mansion after mansion after acre of mansions, turn after turn into the vast exurban world of lake houses. I used to ride my bike out on what was a 2 lane country road in the 1980s. We parked at the end of a street full of luxury SUVs, and signed the book at the greeting table, and the chef let me put my big salad bowl in the appropriate place, on the table for that sort of thing, which was already full. He was very nice. Everybody was nice, and polite, and mostly overweight, and mostly wealthy. there we all were on the lovely, manicured grounds, shaded by a stand of live oak trees, with the sound system thoughtfully managed by a fellow playing the favorite songs of the accomplished and respected gentleman. I felt a deep, and broad, and tragic emptiness in that good company.
I was able to hug and speak to the widow, before I quietly left my salad to be enjoyed when that part of the program came up. I'd just had no idea what I was going to.
I have been uncaring in my feelings for the 1%, for the people I stood among today, polite people, doing what is expected of them. Their sterile mansions and grounds completely cover mile after mile after square mile, half an hour of steady driving. All of this depends every moment on electricity, city water, gas, gasoline, vast retail support networks, all the malls and businesses that line the 6 lane highway, which used to be a 2 lane country road, where I took long, quiet bike rides in the 1980s.
I felt the emptiness in that gentle gathering, premonitory despair for what is coming to that vast, unsupportable bastion of privilege.
"We've known how to stop the 'deaths of despair' Crisis gripping America's white working class for 120 years" (Business Insider, article, but still good)
"Trump is Obama's Legacy. Will this break up the Democratic Party? Michael Hudson is good, as always, and long again. Barack Obama, coming after George W Bush, with majorities in House and Senate, completely turned his vast electoral accomplishments over to predatory neoliberal capitalists, which had caused the 2008 financial crisis, and the military industrial complex and all it's wars of chaos. He blew it all, because that's who he really was. Now we get Donald Trump and a maxed out credit card, and promises that are not plausible at all, so what's really going to happen? Will the unrepentant Democratic party just go away? We're not ready for creative destruction yet, just destructive destruction. Hudson says what I've been feeling. Maybe Donald Trump's greatest and real service to all of us is just to help our whole imperial economic system crash a little bit sooner. Thanks Donald, Really. I don't know what else anybody can do now. Thanks for sending this Eleni.
"The Deep State's Dominant Narratives and Authority are Crumbling", says Charles Hugh Smith. Suddenly everybody is Googleing "deep state", too. Finally catching on...
NSA Whistleblower says the NSA spies on everybody, always, and has an entire section of specialists spying on congress, generals, senators, presidents and candidates, always. Nobody gets the raw-data, though, just the NSA interpretation and advice on what they should do, so it's all ok...
Former House Intel Chair explains how the surveillance program works, and who can order it, the standard procedures to follow, what the stuff above is supposed to be.
US confirms airstrikes in Mosul may have killed 240 civilians, many of them refugee families sheltering in a school.
250 humans are thought to have drowned to death on one black-day in the Mediterranean...Thursday, March 23, 2017.
Do Republican lawmakers have a $1 trillion or a $2.2 trillion revenue-hole? Just askin'. Something has to be done, now. Grace period is over. Less money, not more, lots less.
Waking up Homeless
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