Essay: A Choice

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Needs lots of editing, but I wanted to get this up today. I recommend reading it later.

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A Choice

Civilization has reached a terrible, momentous crossroads.  The most powerful country, the United States, is openly conducting genocide, in concert with Israel, for whom it is supplying the weapons.  I say “openly” because we can see it on our telecommunicated devices, actual images and testimonies.  Verification has occurred from a large number of well-respected press and governmental sources.  Moreover, experts on genocide, such as Omar Bartov at Brown University, and also Israeli human rights groups, have declared that what is happening to the people of Gaza is genocide (1).

It is irrelevant and disturbing, at best, that the USA and Israel vehemently deny what is happening.  Hitler called the Holocaust good.  The angry, orwellian denunciation and its propaganda arm, deployed by both Trump (USA) and Netanyahu (Israel), aligns so well with previous genocidists that it can be adduced as a legitimate point against both of them.

There are many smoke-and-mirror arguments meant to hide and deflect from what’s happening.  One tactic to accuse anyone who calls out the horror as being “antisemitic.”  Given that the mass slaughter and torture is so obvious--and here let me mention the title of a book that went viral on the internet, “One day everyone will have always been against this”--such accusations are plainly vile and shamelessly bankrupt.

It is vivid and necessary to underscore the horror in order to break through the common propensity to wear phlegmatic blinders; so, for emphasis:  We are talking about children starved to death.  Children shot to death.  Children in Gaza buried alive under rubble.  As well all the rest of the Gazans.

Genocidists often commit the most disgusting, mangled sorts of murder.  The twisted, broken bodies reflect the twisted, broken souls of those who hate them.

Another trick of propaganda, much aided by the mainstream media in the USA, is to frame the ‘debate’ as a bifurcation in which someone has to be either “Pro-Israel” or “Pro-Palestinian.” 

First, and for emphasis, it is impossible to reasonable debate what is happening--as if it could be acceptable in any way, shape or form for two million people to be confined to the rubble of a bombed-out homeland, now a wasteland, denied food, potable water, medical help, or any basic decencies at all, while more starve to death or get shot by the IDF every day.

Why are they shot and starved?  “Who knows” is the best answer.  Wanton cruelty and hate, based on the evinced attitudes and behaviors, the raw animosity, of the perpetrators.  An early indicator was Netanyahu’s rancorous rallying cry, an invocation of the “Amalekites,” a Biblical reference to total annihilation, the wiping out of the last trace of a people, their land, and their culture. 

Those that dwell in darkness revile justice and light.  Six journalists were recently killed, blatantly, in their Gaza press tent by the IDF. 

The Gazans are shot daily while forced to participate in de facto Hunger Games:  a trek to try and get food from sites sanctioned by the IDF.  I say “try” because the food is never enough.  The scenes are heartbreaking.  Any scuffle by the exhausted, battered homeless Gazans--hounded, tormented, wounded, displaced, killed since 2023, now desperate to feed their families as they seek a sack of flour, serves as an excuse for some of them to be shot.  Some seem to be shot for no reason, not even a paltry excuse.  The trek to get food is a gauntlet of fear, torment and mockery, in which the threat of a bullet is ever present.  In the manufactured chaos, one that turns humans into desperate, starving beasts, there seems no accountability for the shooters.

When someone says, “Are you Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israel?”  the searing answer is “I am pro-human rights and against the genocide taking place.”  One could add, “It is abhorrent and heartbreaking to watch, at least for those of us who choose not to hide behind invidious questions that set up a false bifurcation.”

Media sources, especially those prone to propaganda, are drawn to questions that set up an either/or.   A succinct response is, “You framed that question in the form of a lie.”

In WWII, the United States fought against and helped defeat Hitler.  Images and filmed scenes of the Holocaust spread across the world.  In the aftermath, the world vowed “Never Again.”  For a good while, at least in terms of a human lifespan, democracy surged, along with hopes for true equality and progress.  It is fair to say that, in the aftermath of WWII, the human civilization's level of ethics technology increased

However, we must now reckon with the unreckonable.  The USA is committing genocide, and alongside it Israel.  How can the country that championed democracy now be sliding into pure Darkness?  How can Jews, who suffered the Holocaust, now inflict that enormous monstrosity of Evil on others?

It is unthinkable.  And yet, we must dare.  We cannot simply shut down out of grief.  Why?  Because the answer, although dismal, also gives us a thin ray of hope:  We can get sucked into Evil, subsumed by it; but we humans can also find the path of the Good. 

The human brain has a vast amount of dendritic plasticity.  Culture, too, because it supervenes on a dynamic of persons--social interplays of groups and movements--has a vast amount of plasticity.  Brain plasticity.  Cultural plasticity.  We can go many directions. 

One huge breakthrough for the Good was when women fought and won the right to vote, attaining Universal Suffrage in 1920.  This overturned thousands of years of ignorance.  It was said, for thousands of years, that women would never have equal say.

Machiavelli highlighted fear and compassion.  If fear takes over, it creates a form of government based on fear, ignorance and greed.  The powerful, who are greedy, use fear and ignorance (‘big lies’) to create divisions in society.  These divisions allow them to hog a grossly disproportionate amount of the wealth.  Meanwhile, everyone else is trapped, pitted against each other in a caste-like hierarchy, where they struggle for scraps, prizes, and prestige.

This is classic FGI:  a fear/greed/ignorance-based system. 

After WWII, the US because super-wealthy, the greedy sought more and more, and it led, over decades, to the situation the US is in right now.  Today, 0.1 percent of the population owns 70% of the wealth of the country.  Some sources say 90%.  Through the carefully managed demagoguery of right-wing think tanks, boosted over the last decade by the charismatic appeal of the fascist Donald Trump, society has ossified along fault lines of racism, sexism  and homophobia, with immigrants being a particularly scapegoated group, at least at the moment.  Masked police have fanned across  the country and are violently deporting them, stuffing them into recently erected concentration camps.

(I have no illusions that I myself am not in danger.  At some point, if Trump continues on his fascist vector, so called ‘elites’ such as myself, that is, people with a college degree who speak out against him, will become full enemies of the state, subject to arrest.  This is what Hitler did.  And it is what Trump’s behavior indicates is coming, if the American institutions and people don’t resist.  So far, resistance has been feeble, at best)

(After immigrants, Trump will likely go after people of certain ethnicities and religions.  Then people of certain races and LGBTQ.  At some point, where exactly I don’t know, he will come after White males like me, who are “elites” and “traitors).

In the USA, for now at least, fear has won out over compassion.  Democracy is based on compassion--equality, respect, mutually beneficial relationships, and human rights.   These forces of Good and Light did push change in the country, for a period of over half a century.  Women’s rights advanced and so did civil rights.  Gay marriage was made legal in the US in 2015.  It remains to be seen if these advances can withstand the fascist backlash now in progress.  

Darkness is rising.  I have already written that 11/5 (November 5^th, 2024, the day Trump won the election) was one of the worst days in human history.  He tilted the world toward fascism, which increases the likelihood of nuclear war, which will be the end of us.

Darkness is rising.  What should you do?  You have to answer that question for yourself.  And, one way or another, you will be held accountable for it, by some sort of karma.  I myself am trying to align myself with Light and Goodness.  It may mean I suffer greatly in a concentration camp.  And yet … for now, and hopefully onward, I choose the Light. I explain my reasons more fully in another blog entry (2).

It is possible for humanity to escape FGI (fear-greed-ignorance).  FGI governance is relatively easy to set up.  This is why Machiavelli chose fear over compassion as a way to govern.  FGI exploits key weaknesses in the human mind and obvious physical weaknesses in our bodies.  Simply keeping people afraid for lack of food or shelter is enough to lead the majority to work jobs that they find meaningless for their whole lives. 

Rulers can and have relied on this cruelty for thousands of years.  I haven't yet mentioned the threats of torture, exile, ‘disappearance, or just public condemnation. Public condemnation can and has led to lynch parties.  Might makes right is "awesome" in the most dread-inspiring sense of the word.

Humanity, yes, has taken steps toward true democracy.  Human rights.  Equal justice under law.  A fair and dignified playing field, when it comes to work, including a social safety net.  Not only is this sort of government possible, it has already been implemented in some countries.  

This is the path of Light.  Our brain- and cultural-plasticity allow us to find it and walk it.  To prgoress toward the social construction of  Good societies.

Sadly, FGI has had thousands of years to entrench and refine its acculturative techniques.  Sexism is the oldest 'big lie' of Ignorance, a technique that keeps over half the population down for the material and temporal benefit of the other.

Fascism is an evolved version of FGI.  It combines the powers of a monarch with the charisma of a cult leader.  Totalitarian systems will only become better at controlling minds and bodies, as technology provides more power to do so.  Subliminal advertising, for instance, already plies our subconscious with prowess, thanks to the disrespect for the consumer built into our greed-based economy.  All-encompassing surveillance or robotic enforcement will soon be an option.  It is only a matter of time before the human brain itself can be interfaced with computer chips. 

The ‘latest, greatest’ technologies are hailed for their tangible benefits, such as medical cures, which greases the way for more research.  What isn’t mentioned is that these technologies will also be used to make weapons and to police us.  AI.  Robots.  Nanotech.  Whether they are used for Evil depends on who is in charge.

Technology, more than ever before, will be able to crystallize our self-fulfilling prophecies.  It will give reality to the projections of our collective unconscious.  Are we ready to handle this power maturely?

It is possible for humans to have a high level of emotional competence.  Many people already have such competence.  And yet the large majority of males suffer from “normative male alexithymia.”  Males pay a price to be macho, which is the type of masculinity promoted by a fear/greed/ignorance-based system.

Humanity will go down one of two paths.  The path of Compassion has been initiated in rudimentary and nonperfect forms in some countries.  Fear, on the other hand, has been the norm for thousands of years. 

Maybe Compassion has come to the party too late.  Probably so.  But … maybe not. 

Which will you choose?  Fear.  Compassion.  Acquiescence?

It could make all the difference.

Good night and good luck.

 

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Footnotes

(1) 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-genocide-gaza-rights-groups.html

(2)

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html

Poem: Gulp

 

Gulp

 

moon like a pill

on the roof of my mouth,

the ocean all rummy and

somehow this gulp is tragic.

but i’m inside a car,

or some rolling cube,

and my empathy for those confined

runs stark as we

circle towers along parallel lines

which in turn lead to squares.

 

not so far away,

over the ocean under the molly,

 

gulls whoop frissons into my ears

but that isn’t the party,

never has been or will be, 

no invitation even possible.

i exist to glaze in a car bar,

not a sandbar.

the gulls have their whirls

and loves and cocky calls and

i am stranded in the net

which shadows them.

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8/18/25 ... changed a word

To think you are beyond good and evil is to succumb to evil.

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 To think you are beyond good and evil is to succumb to evil.

                                            --Setuva Pumadancer

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Poem: Only a Stone

 

Only a Stone 

 

how dare i kick it. 

chuckle while it rolls.

me of crass flesh,

immature toddler

who slaps an old man’s crotch.

 

it’s true. 

i tease this immortal scone,

toss it with my toe.

a hobo’s kind of roulette:

which face ends where,

which will look up,

gnaw on a fallen moth,

or kiss a tigerlily’s paw?

 

i need this.

something.  anything.

imagination.  

persistence.

survival.

a decent bet.

==========================

Poem: Chronic

 

Chronic

 

the pains in my body

have been many creatures.

some with poison.

some with teeth.

 

they’ve done their best

to slay patience,

ensnare the wings

of my mind;

 

and my tendons

have struggled in their webs,

my nerves gnawed

by their scorpions and widows.

 

i’ve lost many times,

pinned down by sobs,

surrendering to hate.

 

when i can walk,

how different life’s moments are.

how naïve--

 

the little smiles and frowns

of the ordinary,

childlike in the gaps

between the knives.

=====================

Longterm chronic gout, took many years just to get the correct diagnosis.  I've spent about four full years of my life on crutches with active gout flare ups.  Sometimes in a wheelchair.  Lots of related atrophy, injury and arthritic issues.  These days I can walk a fair distance with a cane, no active flares.  

For one injury, I waited a year to get treatment, because in America, medical treatment is not a right, and I would've had to pay $9000 before the insurance company even began to help out.  I didn't have that money to spare.  I had to wait until I could figure out some better insurance.  This is how we live in the USA.

Americans who vote for Republicans continue to vote for this system, and more and more tax breaks for the wealthy, and less medical assistance for everyone else.  They were completely enspelled by the demagoguery of radical right politicians, even before Trump brought charismatic fascism on board, further tattering a tattered, broken democracy.   

One thing our mainstream newspapers still get right (New York Times):  democracy is, at best, moribund  when  over 70% of the total wealth is owned by .1% of the population.

The sad story of America is great wealth and power after WWII, and then that wealth and power causing greater and greater corruption and decline, the moral fabric of the people degenerating d into cheap hedonisms, petty envy, pernicious bickering and decadence for the wealthy.   That said, there was an awakening, too, of values of equality and Earth-awareness, a counterforce to the corruption, and the longstanding climate of vicious racism, which originated in slavery and only intensified in the South after the Civil War to end slavery.

Poem: Vision

 

 

Vision

 

a moth

slices my skull like a spade,

digs up maggoty pasts

which split into ribs, maws, spines,

jumbling

as they clatter down

into pupils of ooze,

seeds of vision.

 

i lick a ditch

where life pools,

nothing but ambitious jelly.

i fizzle among microbes

that die in sparks

to prompt a circus

of evolving hides.

 

merged

with hyperactive goo,

i not only rot

but strip back

to the ferment of the first broth.

i bleed not blood

but the slime in all life--

 

what we came from, what we are,

what makes us babble and coo,

create, love, believe, devour,

desecrate.

 

==================================

Poem: Apple Tree

 

Apple Tree

 

mobile of the delicious,

luring me as marionette,

even does and cubs

tugged from the theater of

the forest for a taste.  so alive, 

August’s living golden buzzing robe,

winesap- and pixie-dappled,

cox’s orange and dorsett.

the honeybee-drenched orbs 

blush toward evening,

more buxom than twilit Venus,

or a lunar floribunda.

 

who wouldn’t fixate

on the gifts of dance

arrayed over the decades,

centuries, too!

are we not swept up

by the minuet of airy seconds,

graceful boughs

in waltz with arms of breeze?

does it not captivate us,

lend our hearts to whirl?

 

 

 

===================================

8/16/25 ... diffy poem

8/13/25  added a "the"

8/11/25 ... more mods, struggle

8/10 ... hvy mods 

8/9 .. changed last phrase

changed word, shortened a phrase

added a "the"

Poem: Faraway

 

Faraway

 

happy clouds,

a white glove party

which laughs and points fingers.

 

they float over

a cherry soda sun,

sugar in their bellies.  safe.

 

just like that, they change:

behold a pale crowd,

pockets bulged with stones.

 

a swoop of nighthawk

and throats of nameless frogs

frame the stage

 

as the victim waits,

watching many a vee

of northbound geese.

 

always, she thinks,

that same letter

V  V  V …

 

flying off, 

swift with hope,

to chase some faraway home.

 

====================

8/2/25 ... some mods throughout the day

Poem: Fox Tale

 

Fox Tale

 

the yellow of the grasslands flexed:

a stretching gush of lions

speckled with manes of raspberry thorns.

they greeted the bay with a stark whip,

leaping into nowhere,

past a pure of azure and a few sparse ribs 

but no sun.

far from the lions,

spruce in spotty acres

might have been reaching up

proud and exhilarant

or convulsed by rage.

axes of wind, swung by

northeastern cold, had splintered

flanks of the evergreens

and tumbled them to the ground 

where

the cracked trunks attracted a fox,

rusty yet warm of tangerine,

a vibe as plush as it was sleek,

curving through a whirl of pounce

to pluck a squirm of gopher.

off then, quick as a flirt,

smudged by the terre-verte

of the madcap groves.

===============================

7/29/25 same day mods... all day .. mods

A look at Down East Maine before some of the significant global warming effects, when there were more spruce and few maples. 

Commentary: Israeli Rights groups finally call out the Gaza genocide

Today, the New York Times front-paged an article on the genocide taking place in Gaza.  The title is, "In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide."  .  The article is a step toward global mobilization and moral awareness. It starts off: 

Two of Israel’s best-known human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, adding fuel to a passionately fought international debate over whether the death and destruction there have crossed a moral red line.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-genocide-gaza-rights-groups.html

First of all, it is appalling that an "international debate" is taking place.  There's nothing to reasonably debate here.  Great evil is soul-stingingly evident in the malevolence being inflicted on the Gazans.  The presence of an international debate, in and of itself, shows that we live in barbaric times.

 It is never morally acceptable, and always utterly loathesome, to reduce the homeland of two million people to rubble, fence them into that rubble, and continue to bomb and starve them.  Hospitals gone.  Schools gone.  Fertile land gone.  Potable water gone.  Everything gone.  Via social media, the world watches scenes of starving people reaching through IDF fences, begging for scraps of food, reduced to dog-like instinct out of inflicted levels of extreme hunger.  This is never acceptable.  Never.  Again, no reasonable debate is possible here.  None.

What if the two million people reduced to homeless, fenced into the rubble of their homeland and starved to death weren't members of the same racial, ethnic or religious group?  Technically, it wouldn't then be genocide, but it would still be utterly unforgivable and ultimately wicked.  Again, there is no possible reasonable argument that treating two million people this way is morally acceptable.  Never.  None.  

We live in a primitive, dysfunctional time, far below the level of ethics technology we are capable of achieving as a species,   This is no excuse.  It is the opposite:  a catalyst to change and grow.  We have the brain plasiticity and the cultural plasticity to move forward, to someday, even fairly soon, achieve a non-barbaric and minimally decent civilization (1).

Anyone who is reasonably and morally aware--and we all can be educated to this level of perception, if given a chance--can see that this is genocide.  And it is very very very hard to watch.  It is loathsome, disgusting, reviling, abhorrent ... I could pile up futile words and it would never capture the horror of genocide.  Yes, it is hard to face.  But that is no excuse for putting one's head in the sand.

Humanity can move forward.  We have moved forward.  Even long ago, there was some incipient progress when, for instance, the Romans banned crucifixion.  In the 19th century, slavery was made illegal.  In the 20th century, women attained the right to vote.  All they needed was an opening in the rigid, enforced social mechanisms of ignorance- and fear-based governance.  

In general, there is a slow yet generally positive momentum observable in the trek of civilization, from the times of ancient Sumer to the present.  Much of the positive change has happened in the last two centuries.  

So, in conclusion, there is hope for us.  For humanity.  We don't have to be barbaric, cruel twisted versions of wolves.  We don't have to take the worst in nature and magnify it into heartless, rancorous malice.  

Knowing this, that we can improve and advance toward the Good, makes it even harder to watch what is going on now.  I try to remind myself of the wrenching strength it takes to be ethical, to fight for what is right.  To seek the Good.    It is painful to face the truth.  It takes courage and strength.  But it is, yes, an ultimately meaningful fight.  One can feel the Light of truth.  

I try to remember that not so long ago, about 160 years ago, not so distant in the scope of things, slavery was legal in the USA.  Brave abolitionists fought the good fight, despite the 'debates' that were taking place at the national level.  There is no reasonable argument that slavery is acceptable.  None.  And yet, still, 'debates' took place. 

We ended legal slavery.  This took thousands of years.  

There is hope.  

Not only that, honesty can feel wonderful.  Honesty engenders deepest meaning by its very nature.  It is a gift and a virtue, but it can also be miserably painful, especially in these barbaric, primitive times where people 'debate' whether depriving, fencing, torturing and starving two million people is acceptable.  Over sixty thousand killed outright.  And many more wounded by bombs, guns and the inevitable riots and thuggery when food becomes scarce.

Whatever pain I feel is nothing, the puniest picayune, compared to what the people in Gaza are suffering.  I have to deal with my pain, and I try to do it in healthy, cathartic ways that keep me aware and active.  In this sense, my pain, and all my emotions, are front and center in my life.  Every day can be adventurous.

The only way to defeat Evil is Good.  Honesty is a great step.  A Pact with Honesty is hard and demanding.  And yet it enriches and lifts the soul, nurtures growth and wisdom.  The opposite of a Pact with the metaphorical Devil.

=========================

(1)  https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html

   

8/3/25 fixed typos

Poem: Overturn

 

Overturn

 

does it rain when

the night-flesh of the city seems to sweat?

small glistens of spells

in the streets?

 

for even a moment,

could the wet dissolve our dry?

and in so doing, overturn

what seems like centuries?

 

maybe our skulls

could still hold water.

a tongue to sprout in each lonely cavern,

giddy with the truth, playful

 

as a river. 

 

you’d think it was Eden,

this outburst of succulence,

humans seduced once more by the fruit,

yet better off for it,

 

no longer starved 

for the dances of empathy

which would brim our eyes

as we leapt in remorse, breaking

into the freedom of joy.

 

might we then proclaim,

to no one god, an exultant

hallelujah?

 

but no one here, 

despite miles of peopled space, 

will celebrate something 

that has less-than-occurred.

 

the wind takes a drag

on sparse weeds in the cracks,

and the old dust

wrapped around gutters of trash, 

 

and i look up, just to pretend,

and, yes, the water that dared to speak

is gone.

 

 

=======================================

Excerpt from NYT op-ed on Hungary/USA

 I Watched it Happen in Hungary, Now It's Happening Here

David Pressman, Ambassador to Hungary, 2022-2025

After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse, I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence.

Take the judiciary. I met leaders of Hungary’s sole independent judicial body in October 2022 to discuss their work. For months afterward, their faces (and mine) were plastered in the papers, branded as traitors and foreign agents, just because they had raised concerns about the rule of law in Hungary. The response from other powerful judges? Silence.

Or take the private sector. Since Mr. Orban became prime minister in 2010, the state has awarded billions in public contracts to his son-in-law and childhood friend, a former plumber named Lorinc Meszaros. What have Hungarian business leaders said? Nothing.

 Last year, when Mr. Orban’s close associates reportedly told a multinational retailer to give the prime minister’s family a cut of its business, did other multinational companies speak up? They did not.

 Hungarians with little power or privilege to lose would occasionally protest. But those with power remained reliably, pliably silent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/hungary-viktor-orban.html

=================

Regarding the Poems

Most of the poems seem really bad, especially when I go back and look at older ones.  I can sometimes see what poems readers have 'clicked' and I have been editing those a great deal lately. Thank you for your patience! 

It is a dismal world right now.  Genocide is occurring, full screen on the global stage, courtesy of TikTok and Instagram.  Fascism is rising in the USA, under the malignant Trump.  He is attacking and degrading universities and cultural centers ("I love the poorly educated," he boasts), which is leading to the sad conclusion that humanity will do little to nothing to prevent global warming, and no doubt other environmental crises as well.  

Things are likely to get worse, and the situation is sliding fast.  It is a hard time in which to find purchase, in terms of direction or meaning.  The media pretends the evil things all around us, present to our immediate senses, are not occurring.  So does many a zealous citizen, a good portion of whom will viciously attack, if their ignorance is pointed out to them.

The New York Times Magazine just published a piece called "The Trouble With Wanting Men," by Jean Garnett.  She makes good points about how men have low emotional competence.  Most men have "normative male alexithymia" (can't identify let alone talk about what they're feeling).  Recent social awareness of sexism has apparently made men feel awkward at best, for they lack the skills to psychologically deal.  This awkwardness, again, at best, contributes to men wobbling and waffling on simple things, like verifying a date or whether they want to meet again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html

   

The most-liked comments on this article were not positive.  Indeed, they viciously attacked the author.  For some reason, the New York Times chose some of these comments to be featured as a "Times Pick."  One of these is by "Incel Q Lonely," who simply attacks the author over her candid self-disclosures:

lol taking a guy home home on the first date after the legal ending of an open marriage.  Yup the problem is completely and totally with men

This kind of hateful, angry reply is ancient.  It ignores the arguments that are put forward--a complete lack of respect or philosophical skill--and uses a fallacy, formally called an ad hominen, to attack the author's character,.  What's more disturbing is that this comment got over 2500 likes.  More shocking, still, is that the New York Times decided to feature it.

If a Black person wrote a piece discussing how White people have trouble relating to Black people's needs, based on a lack of awareness, I doubt the Times would feature a comment that mocks the author, especially by someone whose screen name plays on a hate group.  

In case anyone doesn't know, "incel" is a word associated with a misogynous movement.

So ... what I'm saying ... is that human stupidity is utterly draining.  And it tends to hog center stage.  Given opportunity, it violently takes over, as we have seen with the fascist movement here in America. 

This kind of draining and stupid behavior, a full capitulation to violence and anger over reason, is something that anyone who wants to promote ethics, that is, the Good, has to face.  When I myself am frustrated and furious, I try to think what it must have been like to be an abolitionist.  Imagine protesting against slavery, only to have slavers mock and jeer you, beat you up, if they have a chance--or tell you things like, 'because of you, I'm going to go home and whip some N--."  

How awful evil is.  And how sad that we have to normalize it and deal with its barbs and cruelties, or worse.  Telling the truth shouldn't be so hard or perilous.  But it is.   

Note well:  By truth, I mean that which does not fly in the face of what is empirically verifiable.  Science should not be dismissed.  I am not, in seeking truth, pitching a religion.  I am talking about global warming.  I am talking about women being as human and capable as men.   It is also a truth that no religion is the best and only religion.  And that any religion that is against equality is going, not only against science, but the dignity and fairness at the core of human rights.

One can embrace god, and there's nothing wrong with that, not necessarily.  As well, it is natural for many of us to celebrate and feel awe for nature and the universe.  To dance in mystic abandon. To rhapsodize and express our awe in variegated personal ways, such as poetry.  But none of that is to necessarily choose a religion.  

Whatever the full complement of reasons for my fixation with poetry, part of why I write is to seek a release valve.  The beauty and depth of poetry provides a means to express painful emotions and moral outrage in a way that is, more or less, healthy.  

It's not quite that simple.  If writing a poem leaves me in tears or full of hate, I still have to deal with it, explore the why, and try not to freak out.  But the beauty, the reach, going deep in the soul, it is like an utterly honest conversation at the most intimate level.  It is soulmate-level stuff, but within yourself, your muses, your inspiration, however you frame it.  It could be god.  Or one of the gods.  It could be your spirit partner, who might be a witch.  Or not.   What is your spirituality?  Your passionate voice has its own unique expresison.

Subconscious forces--maybe I should call them spells--are at the helm when I write.  Where they take me, I can't fully know.  It's difficult, scary, dangerous, wonderful and exhilarating.  It can be sublime, this mutuality.  It can feel good.  And it is good to break out of the denialism of evil.

===================================== 

  

Poem: Actual

 

Actual 

 

please leave

whatever excuse at the tone,

and i will fly somehow like a shred

in a flutter over a mountain of trash

 

in search somewhere of that furious ant

we call ‘free time,’  and i will

hop on its back, despite the worries

in my brain being so much larger and

 

then your machine can prioritize my voice

like mine didn’t yours.  however,

if this is an emergency or

a brief bit of warmth,

 

you can evade my device by

taking a step back to count to

ten and do it until your shoulders relax 

and

 

you remember that i

decided the touch of another person,

you in fact, is all i want,

even if it is just a gaze,

 

or the actual hum of your throat.

 

======================================

7/22/25 mods

7/21/25 ... eds  ,,, changed poem title etc.

Poem: Cookbook

 

Cookbook

 

her mind was a poached

egg because she had never been

able to perfect a poached egg and

the problem had never let go stuck

in the cast iron of her thoughts.

 

the space behind her fixation

suffered heavily from

an oatmeal of mouthfuls

too thick to eat through all of them

and so earned a slap across the face--

 

or used to, specifically

that would be her father

but the man was a time-logged

logger of a corpse now somewhere

below the poached egg.

 

her mother still insisted the universe

was a cosmic egg and yet

all those light years could never

find peace from the self-serving

circular saw of sinful neighbors.

 

yes round and round the merry-go-

round of light years ever went never

able to get under a blanket in 

the dark curled away from the

cookbook of mirrors.

 

 

 

 

==================================

7/18/25 ... mods all day, off and on... 

I volunteered on a crisis hotline for over ten years, long ago.

Poem: Melt Down

 

Melt Down

 

joy loped and raged

up high and low.

tesseracts in the sky.

a shirivasta of dolphins.

 

there were answers.

but to say which angle

gleamed on what contour

was an impossible appendix.

 

hyacinth breathed

and swallowtails praised

the storms of blossoms

in my wept eyes.

 

curves of petal and

moon-stippled grass

shelved to trellis

as brave as the first touch

 

i ever felt.

and all those years of fear fear fear

dwindled like rain.

 

there was no hope to calm

this jambalaya of pang and furor

borne on the secrets, the lack-

of-fabric, in all aroused things.

 

i laughed to feel a somehow shy kiss

from within and around

the mysterious consequence

of so much melting.

 

 

 

 

 

 =============================

7/22/25 ... added an 's' to blossom

Quote: Omar Bartov (genocide scholar at Brown)

 

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

 

This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html 

Poem: Sanctuary

 

Sanctuary

 

each patch of bark

the flank of a beast

which had lived before winchesters:

 

auroch and bison

stampeding up a loblolly

in a vast single herd.

 

i hugged tight

their revelrous snort and scent,

felt the pulse of their hooves

 

across my sternum,

 

my tears not enough

to loose their bellowing wanderlust,

consigned as it was to the trunk of a pine--

 

exiled from those gone prairies

when peregrine vigor

ran muscled and wild.

 

this their sanctuary now, the tree,

where no primate of my greedy ilk

could roam.

 

 

 

 

 

==================================

8/19/25 ... clarified a phrase

7/14/25 ... changed a word

Poem: Almost Out

 

Almost Out

 

each breath a foresight

of shivers before an avalanche,

scared.

 

joy was the problem

 

and fear and fury

and how they invited flight,

while calm and smile and peace

were the enemy of containment,

 

for they could not.

 

and it was all going to come apart,

exposed in shock as a head of lettuce

which turned out to be

a numb, hiding, traumatized child--

and under the leafy green, frail shields

 

a mad mad wasp nest

 

and the masquerade of it all

this balancing act,

a seesaw of lungful angst

between the exhales and inhales and

avalanches and hurricanes and

 

this is what emotions were,

it seemed,

 

when they felt so right

and why everyone had to hide from them,

as if the heart had decided

justice could only erupt in bouts,

before it succumbed, once again,

to the fatalism of earth.

 

 

 

 

=======================================

7/18 ... flipped word order... 

7/15/25 ... some mods

Poem: Keep It Up

 

Keep It Up

 

prouder than putty,

we break not bend into smiles,

primped yet grim

in herringbone and trench coat,

bobbing along

in our crowded currents,

sometimes eaten by trap doors

on the sides of cars,

or sucked into mouths

of giant marble facades.  but

we keep it up,

up and down the busy streets,

allotted our place to troll:

whale or swordfish,

eel, squid or shark,

halibuts, flounders, groupers, sunfish,

alewives and the multiplicitous minnows,

all fated to be digested in towers, 

each a morsel for a cube.

one by one, sometimes in gulps,

we get picked off, gone--

into the monstrous guts

of the machinations of the city.  but

we keep it up.

=============================

7/3/25... mods after posting... off and on all day

Genocide and 'Hunger Games' in Gaza

 

What is happening in Gaza is not fiction. It is not a horror movie. The “hunger games” are real and so is the genocide they are part of. That the world is allowing such dystopia to unfold is damning evidence of its own loss of humanity.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/6/29/in-gaza-the-israelis-are-staging-hunger-games 

=================

When you point out evils like this to Americans, you get hit with non sequiturs like, "You're antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas."  

None of these conclusions even remotely follow from condemnation of the ongoing barbarism and genocide in Gaza.  

When media frame it as, "You are either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine," which is a false bifurcation, the response is, "I am pro-humanity and dignity.  I am for all people to have rights.  I am anti-genocide."  

There is nothing about Gaza on the front page of, say, the Washington Post.  Prominent is an article on Republicans and tax cuts, and the Opinion pieces, which read:

pinions

Robert P. George and Cornel West

To save themselves, universities must cultivate civic friendship

Laura Rose O’Connor

Why some Canadians are choosing Trump over their country

Monica Hesse

What is a jury supposed to make of the Diddy trial?

1 hour ago

Will Leitch

The Dodgers are not the resistance, and that’s okay

1 hour ago

Ramesh Ponnuru

The Republican shell game on tax cuts

  

An unstaunchable glut of evil has drowned whatever figleaf of conscience America professed.

Poem: Floaters

 

Floaters

 

mouthy menageries,

they complain about the sun.

it’s not all that brilliant, after all,

only an intellectual sink

which sucks cool shadows away.

 

the sun, they mouth,

from their many puffed pulpits,

is a disciple of that chairman in 1984

who said,

 

we shall meet again in that place

where there is no darkness.

 

these dull clouds,

they hover herded,

clumps of neutered dreams;

cocoons woven

by caterpillars of duty.

 

they follow quick

the merest hint of wind,

obedient and derelict,

digested and complacent

as feces.

 

===============================

 

 

 

6/29/25 ... "duty" replaces "grey" .. fixed typo

Many people are born into the savagery of dictatorship.  It’s not their fault.  But the people of American, they are allowing their democracy to be transmogrified into totalitarian state, complete with masked squads of enforcers who make people disappear.  It is far and away the most pathetic and loathsome failure of morality to watch, firsthand, this annhilation of any elements of justice, fairness and equality.  This full victory of fear and  hate, under a narcissistic, tyrannical fist of might-makes-right.

Just one effect of this:  global warming will not be addressed, because the USA refuses to admit it's a problem.  Why?  The dictator Trump demands that it is not a problem, and demands that people agree with him to pass a loyalty test.  Trump is now keeping coal plants open that even the operators don't want to keep open anymore.  Why?  To mock the truth, science and anything they can do to challenge his power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/climate/trump-coal-gas-plants-energy-emergency.html

I write the above thinking that I might well be disappeared myself, within a few years.  Why don't I leave, you ask? 

I'm 61 years old, have lived in a beautiful, peaceful natural spot for 25 years, don't have the financial resources and, given my introversion and lack of know-how, am bewildered about how I would even begin to, say, get into Canada.  I'd need a job offer, I believe, at the professional level, and that is not going to come easy for me.  Part of me, too, wants to remain here and fight to the bitter end.  I should start saving my poems on my blog into a separate thumb drive.  But I haven't yet... maybe part of me is still in denial, or has hope that Trump can be stopped. Maybe part of me fancies myself a a prophet, who is called by the forces of Goodness to do certain things.. and no more.

People tell me I'm overreacting.  I don't know.  I don't think so.

We all sit and watch the masked police arresting immigrants and disappearing them.  "First they came for ... "  ".. and then they came for me."