Off The Wall, Or Up Against It

  There are those of us who view everything for its artistic value, whether 'it' is meant to be art or not.   There are those of us who view everything in terms of the profit that can be made from it. In the eyes of these people, if you cannot make a profit from it, it is worthless.   This is where the first view has them beat, because the first group recognizes that EVERYTHING can be viewed in terms of art, including making a profit.   Both of these are simply viewpoints on the same reality.   Here is reality             It is, as you can see, simple. Straightforward. It is what it is.   But people, us, we see this reality through our own lenses.   Our own filters. And those filters have a huge effect on how we perceive reality. Some see a circle, a never-ending rotation. Some see a zero, a nothing. Some see an empty vessel to be filled. Some see a coin. Some see the sun, or moon, or ...

  Follow the money.   Why is there so much disinformation out there?   Why do we have such a monster for a president? Why do we have Republicans like Mitch McConnell? Why is there so much division? Why can't the Senate get anything done? Why is health care such an expensive nightmare? Why are white supremacists unmolested and even encouraged by authorities? Why is the NRA so powerful? Why don't public schools get the funding they need while corporations pay no taxes?   Follow the fucking money. Someone's getting rich. They don't want to fix any of the problems, because those problems are making them rich.   Wake up America!

I'm hearing voices. On TikTok, on FB, on the news. In my head.   Voices that sound an awful lot like the voices I heard from my fellow young folks back in the late 60's, early 70's.     Back then we said "We know the answer!"   We were so sure. Love would conquer hate.   And now the voices I'm hearing are saying this:   "You knew the answer," they say, and it hurts my heart when I hear this, "You knew the answer, why the fuck didn't you make it happen?"   And they are kind enough not to say it in so many words, but that's what they are saying.   We had the chance but we let it slip through our fingers. It got to be too hard. Too many other things got in the way.   It's no excuse that there was an active campaign by the establishment to undermine us. They undermined us with drugs by making drugs easy to access and illegal. They undermined us by linking the Civil Rights movement with rises in crime.  ...