Say it ain’t So.

These are perilous times in many ways:

Perilous pandemic

Perilous politics

Perilous protests

Perilous proclamations

Perilous pandemonium

Perilous publications

Perilous panic

Perilous parlance

Perilous pathogens

Perilous politicians

Perilous partisans

Perilous Powers

I heard a perilous report this morning. I found myself wishing some wise person would or could refute the perilous parlance I heard.

I was thinking: Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP are out to get us.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP unleashed the perilous pandemic with intentions of debilitating the US.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP place no value in human life.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP leaders are willing to sacrifice large swathes of their own people to the Covid just for the sake of having an alibi.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP want to dispose of many of their own old people because they’ve got too many of them due to their past one-child policy.

~Say it ain’t so: that Xi’s heroes are Hitler and Stalin.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP are willing to make a deal with Perilous Putin to debilitate North America with Covid and then divvy it up so that Ruskies can have Alaska back and CCP can grab USA to repopulate it with their presently overpopulated people.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that we actually have Americans who claim that our nuclear arsenal is obsolete and needs to be upgraded.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that any leader would even think about firing one of those damned warheads.

~Say it ain’t so: that we are headed for another world war.

Somebody please say it ain’t so.

Somebody please prove to me that all the above Perilous Reports are not true and they  could never happen.

More likely, however, than someone actually proving that to me is:

that I would do better to put aside this perilous rant and resort instead to a different “P” plea to hang my hopes on:   

Pray!

Pray it ain’t so.

Perhaps you’ll join me. Pause for a word of Prayer for all People everywhere and for the imperiled Planet we inhabit.

P.S. If you are Chinese, and reading this . . . Please don’t take this wrong way.

Have a nice day.

Glass half-Full

As the twig is (violently) bent . . .

As a twig is bent, so shall the tree grow.

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik revolutionaries  launched an armed insurrection to overthrow the fledgeling post-Czarist government of Russia; the Bolsheviks imposed a Communist dictatorship.

Lenin’s very forceful leadership extinguished what would have been a more democratic form of government. Up until the moment when the Bolsheviks grabbed control, there was a deliberative congress, composed of several political parties.

Lenin’s strong-man tactics nipped-in-the-bud that nascent Russian representative  congress. From the moment of Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ commandeering of the revolution, the emerging Soviet regime was fatefully routed into a tyrannical authoritarian path—in spite of the supposed “masses,” who would have–or so it was assumed according to Marxist doctrine– established a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The dictatorship that became entrenched following Lenin’s bully tactics became an actual “dictatorship” controlled one man–Vladimir Lenin.

The subsequent development of the Soviet State never escaped dictatorial  control by (first) Lenin, then (second) Stalin, until Stalin died in 1953.

I recently watched an excellent documentary series on Amazon:

Red Chapters: Turning Points in the History of Communism.

This 6-part work of historical video includes, in its first two episodes,  a very informative and concise explanation of the fatefully oppressive forces that were set in motion in St. Petersburg (Petrograd), beginning on the night of October 24, 1917.

At that nocturnal turning point, the Bolsheviks were absconding control of an emerging popular revolution. They wrested power from a multi-partied congress and dumped it into the hands of the dictator, Vladimir Lenin.

According to Red Chapters narrator Daniel Evans, on the fateful night of October 24, 1917 . . .

“Lenin’s left-wing delegates doubted the delegates’ resolve to oust (provisional government head Alexander) Kerensky.” . . .

“Paradoxically, Lenin did not want the Congress to vote for Soviet power. A ‘yes’ vote by the ballot box would translate into a coalition government, in which the Bolsheviks would be only one of many parties represented” (in that congress.) Lenin would not be the central figure. He might not even get into the cabinet . . . But if he seized power before the congress met, he could dictate the terms of government and open the way to a Bolshevik dictatorship.”

“Lenin harangued the party members to seize power.”

Red Chapters scholar-contributor Orlando Figes clarifies:

“Everything suggests that what he (Lenin) wanted was a Bolshevik dictatorship from the start, and that’s precisely why it was so important for him to seize power before the congress opened, to provoke the other socialist parties to walking out in protest.”

Red Chapters narrator Daniel Evans continues their account of what happened on that fateful night:

“ (Julius) Martov, the leader of the Menshevik party, proposed the formation of a coalition Soviet government. His proposal was greeted with a great cheer, and passed without a vote.

But this was not the Soviet power Lenin had intended.”

Leon Trotsky, Lenin’s #2 revolutionary intimidator, shouted down  Menshevik party leader Julius Martov. As Martov was taking leave of the assembly room, Trotsky commanded:

“Go where you belong, into the dustbin of history.”

Julius Martov headed for the back door. Here’s the video overlay as Martov’s face appears in the Red Chaptersdocumentary:

Red Chapters Narrator Daniel Evans explains,

“Walking toward the door, Martov warned the remaining delegates, ‘One day, you will understand the crime in which you are taking part.’ ”

And it was indeed a crime, which would be cruelly perpetrated for several generations upon the entirety of the Russian people.

Ultimately, Lenin’s strong-arm tactics dictated the oppression by which  Kerensky, and later many others, were ousted. By the same means, Trotsky would also later be ostracized.  By 1938 fellow-dissident-leaders Liev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev would likewise be purged out by Stalin’s post-Lenin manipulations.

The Lenin-Stalin hegemony became the dark heart and soul of Soviet oppression in the USSR for many decades to come.

Lenin imposed his dictatorial will by violent rejection of what would have been a nascent representative government. After Lenin’s death, Stalin continued and extended the pattern of tyranny; he wrested control of their dictatorial  party machine and established hundreds of gulag prisons where millions perished.

In the Russian revolution, Bolshevik violence begat a very long legacy of USSR violence and oppression.

Government reaps what government sows.

As the twig is violently bent, so shall the tree distortedly grow.

As societal control is established through tyrannical cruelty and violence, government tyranny expands accordingly–by the extension of force and violence.

The American revolution, on the other hand, brought forth a bi-cameral representative democracy with judicial oversight.

Liberty begat liberty. Lawful rule begat Rule of Law (not dictatorial tyranny.)

A nation reaps what it sows.

As the twig is bent, so shall the tree grow.

In Russia’s case, Lenin’s dictatorial tyranny brought forth an abusive system of imprisonment.

We Americans should help the Russians to overcome their past mistakes of Lenin and Stalin.

Glass half-Full

The Fierce Circle of Power

Power in the modern State/Nation/Union runs around in a big circle.

As in a big atom-smasher, where charged-up sub-atomic particles race to oblivion, or to wherever it is that electrons and protons and quarks and neutrinos and cheerios go when they manifest at the speed of light transforming between energy and matter . . . between things falling apart and things hanging together. . .

Power in the modern State cycles around, and is transformed, into greater and greater levels of constructivity. And, unfortunately, destructivity.

On one side of the Circle is Left, and on the other is Right.

The two sides meet at top and bottom.  At these two polarities—top and bottom—Left and Right merge together in a region  where Left and Right are indistinguishable, for instance . . .

A Government in which Democrat and Republican allow neutrally pragmatic institutions for the sake of productivity and increase.

A State in which Socialist and Capitalist tolerate similar policies that do not violate  their diverging identities.

A Regime where  Left and Right achieve tolerance, mimicking each other in their tactics.

Now looking back, a lifetime ago . . .

At the top, leaders and their agents at the peak of diplomacy met with the other side to do business, but unknowingly made arrangements that passively allow harm to all the citizens of the world who would soon get caught in the crossfire.

And a few years later. . .

An Agreement in which Communist and Fascist coexisted, militarily, for about two years, by means of a sham treaty . . .

A Treaty in which, 80 years ago, a Communist and a Nazi tyranny attacked and plundered the Polish nation that lay between them.

Then, years after that initial double-sided invasion . . .

Allied  armies later penetrated the morass of Power, bringing to light of day the deplorable bottom where Nazi concentration camps were found,  and later, Communist gulags. These hellhole prisons were established by both sides, for purposes of controlling both their peoples by means of the same criminally cruel imprisonments and executions.

Because Left and Right made no difference in their tortuous abuses of mankind.

At that low point, persecution, torture, imprisonment, pain and death are the same whether they’re inflicted by a damn Communist or a damn Nazi.

More generally, however. . .

These days, at the Top

of our hypothetical circle we catch sight of moderate players who manage to do their moderating thing  in spite of the treacherous slippery slope curvature of the two sides.

And at the Bottom—in the pit of both sides’ dubious or even despicable practices, the tactical crimes common to both extremities are occasionally uncovered, identifiable as the same  atrocities.

Because Left and Right make no difference, at their extremities, in their manipulations and abuses of mankind.

At what is perhaps our present High point, everybody seems to be chugging along in a globalized quasi-peace.

But at some future a Low point, persecution, torture, imprisonment, pain and death will be the same whether they’re inflicted by a Socialist or a Fascist, a Democrat or a Republican,  by a whacko shootist or a jihadist terrorist.

At some other low point of history, armies representing Truth and Justice—if there is such a thing in this circle— will be required again, to blast their way into the cycle of hellish human history, and liberate those prisoners who are caught in the crossfire.

Even now, the widening gyre,  the next circle, gathers speed to ramp up to dizzying velocity, delivering at some dismal low point of human depravity a new deposit of deplorable arrests and atrocities, accumulating in the pit where innocent souls get caught in the crossfire, deprived of justice and mercy.

Beware. On the last go-round, the pit could be bottomless.

Get ready to meet your maker. If you don’t acknowledge the Maker . . .well,  good luck with that. May the bird of paradise fly up your nose until it all hits the fan.

King of Soul

Religion Relapse

How odd it is—as a 21st-century scenario sets itself up—

we see the world gone mad preparing again to erupt.

So unforeseen it was that our great Argument of the Ages,

the dogmatic contentions of cadres and sages

should abandon the trappings of intelligent delusion

and revert to jihadic religious intrusion.

 

Europa intelligentsia had decided that God was indeed dead,

and they talked for a few generations of what to do instead:

whether a capitalist path or the communist wrath,

then a communist road or a big fascist goad—

And in the midst of all that

polarizing ideological spat—

we waged two world-class wars to settle the matter

of who should wield power and who should be scattered.

You know the drill;

it persists among us still:

Who should be in charge?

a strong-arm few or the people at large—

a fascist state or some proletarian rabble,

by authoritarian edict or sectarian babble?

  

After all the holocaust horror and gulag gangrene

we plummet again to mucky slog of humanic bad dream.

Obsessive jihadi encircle the world;

believing their fanatic flag will fully unfurl.

Back at the hub the elite are perplexed,

while their technocrat cadres compute the complex

as the widening gyre of the jihadi fire

leaps higher and higher and higher and higher.

  

Perhaps the privileged, enlightened elite

should renew communion with the (wo)man on the street

whose faith in a sacrificial, Prince of Peace deity

brings resurrection instead of  jihad enmity.

Could it be that the God who was tossed aside

by the godless secular bureaucratizing tide

is actually the same eternal entity

who spoke our world out of chaos infinity?

Oh, let us recover some providential indemnity,

and by this testament regain our serenity.

After the Enlightenment, the Ideology, the Decline and the Fall,

Think about it the repentative way: Selah, y’all.

King of Soul

The Bang at Trang Crossroads

Here’s ann excerpt from chapter 11 of the new novel, King of Soul, now being written; the scene is Vietnam, about 45 years ago. . .

(Warning: viewer discretion is advised. This passage could affect your feeling of well-being in the world as it presently exists, and as it existed then. . .)

Ahnika was terrified; she was so scared to turn around and then see that plane coming at them, but she turned her head  anyway. The pounding of her bare feet against the road made everything in her terrified vision seem to bounce up and down with insanely out-of-place energized chaos and this only compounded her terror. The planes that usually zoomed above their village had never come this close before. Why was it flying so low, so fast, so directly toward them. And why, since it was bearing down so close, so fast–why were bombs coming out of it, tumbling projectiles? This was not right. There was something wrong. Then came the explosions. It was no bad dream. These bombs were exploding; the smoke was billowing faster than the villagers could run; it was covering the whole world. Her brothers were just ahead, running faster than she could. But Auntie was behind; that’s why Ahnika was looking behind, because Auntie was back there, with little brother in her arms. There was a part of herself–a part of her family–a part of her Vietnamese life still behind her, trying to run, stumbling, falling. Falling?! Auntie had fallen. No No No No!, but no, Auntie had not fallen, but little brother had fallen from her arms; little brother was down on the road. Ahnika saw the look of confused desperation on Auntie’s face, and just as Ahnika was about to try to do something, maybe stop, maybe try to get little brother,  a soldier grabbed him and then little brother was in the soldier’s arms but he was still wailing while the soldier was up and running again. Go! go! he yelled at Ahnika. Just ahead, other villagers were coming fast out of a the hut by the side of the road. Yellow and purple smoke was swirling as they ran through it; now there was bomb smoke behind and yellow and purple smoke ahead where the men had set off the smoke markers that were supposed to mark the temple grounds so their pilots would know where to not drop, but something was wrong and these explosions meant for the Viet Cong were hitting us instead something was wrong. After the first marker plume had fanned out but failed to prevent the pilot from hitting the wrong spots and so after he had dropped his loads off course something was wrong and while the ARVN commander was trying to stop the next drop, Auntie buckled at her knees, reached back behind herself to find out what was wrong with her leg and her pain was registered on her face she was clutching at the back of her leg and now her fingers were stuck together with the sticky napalm and so Auntie did not see it when the soldier who had got little brother took a direct hit of the stuff he was incinerated. But then the white-shrouded Caodai man who had earlier been in the temple with them picked up little brother he was not crying anymore and the whole scene was darkened with smoke and roaring noise and pain so bad you couldn’t even tell where it was coming from but then Ahnika was struck with such a force from behind that she was down on the ground gravel in her mouth in her face and the worst pain ever felt by woman or child behind her, or in her behind in her shoulders, her arms but then she was up again desperate energized by the fear and running, running, pulling at the neck of her clothes because they were too hot, too hot but when she pulled at them then suddenly their entire cloth just fell away and she was up again running, running, wailing naked, crying with the pain, past any understanding of what was happening to them all or why or why or how this burning world could have turned out this way and she had her arms flung out to the sides , like a cross while she wailed and cried, like a cross she appeared and she felt like the pain of the whole world had fell on her shoulders but it was not her shoulders it was somebody’s else’s in the nightmare, somebody else’s writhing, stretched out in pain and taking on the shape of a cross. It wasn’t her any more it was somebody else in that cross, in that Trang crossroads as they ran, ran, toward Cu Chi, but she couldn’t remember who it was taking the brunt of so much pain could it have been her or somebody else as everything in the world is going wrong and the weight of the whole damned world falls on those shoulders stretched out like a damn cross.

King of Soul