Off The Wall, Or Up Against It

Here's the thing. People are not being silenced when they say something that is considered to be Politically Incorrect.  The news stories about their situation almost always print what it is they said. What they said can be found in forums and news sites all over, even if not on the original platform they said it. It's still out there. They are being punished, perhaps, for what they said, but this is a social thing, social ostracization for their 'wrong' beliefs or politics or speechifying. Whether they should be punished or not is a separate issue, because if you are protesting 'free speech', then no one has taken their right to speak away. The government is not trying to silence them, and that is what free speech is about. Now. If you're arguing that 'monopolistic businesses' shouldn't be limiting speech, I would first question whether the business is truly monopolistic, Facebook, Google, and television producers and cable companies are not (be...

Was thinking about plane travel. Long plane travel, when you're stuck in an airplane full of people, perhaps in a middle seat, for like 20+ hours. For me, this is horrendous. The noise, the crowd, the limited space for movement… it is just this side of physical torture. In order to survive that and not have panic attacks, I have to shut down large parts of my brain. I have to find the least uncomfortable position.  Because there is no comfortable position. None.  All positions are uncomfortable. The entire ordeal from walking into the airport to walking out at the destination is one long uncomfortable position.   So I shut down major portions of my consciousness. Develop tunnel vision. Lock away all feelings that aren't physical, and do my best to dampen those as well. That's the least uncomfortable position, soul-wise. And then I work to find the least uncomfortable physical position as well.   I do not think about how much I want to get out of that plane....

  Why do we have laws?  Because people would do all sorts of bad stuff to each other if we didn't. If people didn't do bad stuff to each other, we wouldn't need laws. Why don't corporations just send out people with guns to hold you up in the streets and take your money? Because there are laws against that. If there were NOT laws against it, corporations would do it. This has been their excuse for every environmental disaster, every financial scandal and every consumer safety scandal since the dawn of business.   I can explain this step by step if necessary. Corporations exist to make a profit for the owners of the corporations. Ergo, the owners of the corporations want to maximize their profits.   The corporations hire people who can help them maximize their profits.   They hire the best people they can, including lawyers and accountants who can look at legal ways to maximize their profits.   The lawyers and accountants do a fantastic...

  I don't understand it. How can people not see this? It is so obvious to me.   People on the left and people on the right want the same things. They want a decent job at decent pay. They want to have a decent place to live and raise their kids. They want to feel valued for who they are and what they do, and they want a fair shake. They want to be healthy. They want to have dignity.   Someone convince me this is not true. Someone prove to me that the majority of people on the left and the right don't want these same things. That they want something radically different from each other.   Someone show me that the 'other side' wants crappy jobs at crappy wages, that they want a shitty place to live and to be devalued and cheated. That 'other side' wants their kids to grow up in poverty, uneducated and to turn into criminals. I dare you.   Because I don't believe that is true.   Oh, don't tell me 'but they voted for such and such'...

Over the years corporations have hired the very best lawyers and ruthless executives to find whatever ways they could to increase profits. One of the ways they have done this is to influence government policy. Since government regulations and taxes eat into profits, they have worked to influence the government to ease those regulations and lower those taxes. In some cases they have bought politicians lock, stock and barrel. This started under Nixon, had it's fastest growth under Reagan, and solidified itself as a regular part of US government during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.   In order to pre-empt a public outcry they have set up and maintained propaganda media outlets, to spin the story as reducing 'big government' and to introduce distractions. The politicians they purchased removed governmental restrictions on such propaganda media so that they could spread endless misinformation and distraction campaigns, feeding into people's natural fears.    Th...

Here's my contribution to the conspiracy theory craze:   I'm calling it Dick-Anon.   Eisenhower warned us about the "Military-Industrial Complex".  He was being very honest, and although he didn't explicitly say it, he meant Nixon.   Nixon was his vice-president for 8 years. In that time, Ike had the opportunity to see what kind of man he was, and he knew Nixon was in the pockets of the wealthiest.   Nixon, famously, went to visit Chairman Mao in China. This was seen (and touted by the media) as a distraction from the Watergate scandal. While this was what most everyone focused on, he also had another very much more serious agenda, one that would change the US forever.   While in China, Nixon also met with other top CCP people, whom he knew would be taking over when Mao died, which he also knew would be soon. Along with all the publicly stated accomplishments of that trip, was at least one which, although not publicized, has become exceedingly...

  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 ...