Chuck Bowden has died

I just read an email that says Chuck Bowden, my mentor, my dear friend, has died.

Words fail.

Eagles, the last resort

Probably due to copyright issues, this is the only non-cover version I could find on Youtube. Nobody does it like the Eagles:

The covert origins of ISIS

Gloom and Doom

I’ve been accused of being a doomer. Perhaps.

Allow me to state my case. I fully expect my argument to anger some of you. (Wonder how many Facebook “friends” will disappear? Oh well…)

Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning alerted me to something I hadn’t considered, that the atrophy I witnessed was cyclical and as predictable as the changing of the seasons.

I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into all the details.

Suffice it to say that we are well into a crisis period that typically last twenty years, more or less. These periods typically culminate in major wars.

Strauss has died. Neil Howe thinks this crisis began in 2007 putting us about a third of the way through this stage of history.

I think he’s too close to his own subject to see current history with the clarity with which he views the past.

I think the crisis began earlier, perhaps late in the year 2000. (I find it odd that all of those waiting for some cataclysmic event with the coming of the new millennia hardly noticed its passing).

Consider the formation of a cancerous tumor. Early stages go unnoticed, but in time, the magnitude of the event becomes apparent.

The illness begins with individuals. It later manifests in institutions, but without the failure of individuals, it cannot run its course.

Believe me when I tell you: we failed.

Events serve as sign-posts along the way, markers if you will, that gauge our descent into darkness.

A few that come to mind:

In late November of the year 2000, Al Gore was elected president by the slimmest of margins. This may or may not have been a good thing.

Whatever the case, the election was stolen.

George W. Bush was installed as president by the Supreme Court of the land.

September 11 of 2001 brought an attack on the two buildings of the World Trade Center in New York and of the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

A rush to judgment took place: Osama bin Laden and 19 accomplices were branded as sole perpetrators of the event with little evidence to back these claims.

The crime scene was secured without a thorough investigation and then disposed of as quickly as was humanly possible.

Book closed.

Waves of fear and anger were then channeled toward Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks.

False evidence of weapons of mass destruction and potential imminent demise was presented.

Those offering counter arguments to this evidence were marginalized or vilified, some removed from their jobs, some imprisoned, some even killed.

The Patriot Act was installed.

Surveillance techniques were devised and implemented to spy on the entire world, including all citizens of our own nation, in clear violation of the constitution of the United States of America.

Multinational corporations (often bearing names once thought of as American) off-shored manufacturing jobs to countries with less stringent environmental practices. Workers in these countries serve as modern day slaves.

We paid for foreign goods with Dollars, created out of thin air, but backed by the threat of attack by the world’s most powerful military machine.

America went from being the world’s greatest lender to the world’s most indebted nation.

Our citizens became fat, lazy and sick.

Addicted to drugs, shoveled at the people by doctors which act as agents for giant pharmaceutical corporations.

Addicted to time wasting devices.

Meanwhile, the war on drugs not owned by these pharmaceutical companies grew to the point that America became number one both in total numbers and per-capita at incarcerating its own citizens.

George Bush was (re)elected in 2004.

Mid-east wars lingered, further bankrupting our nation.

Etc.

The stock market crash of 2008.

Rather than bailing out citizens with a debt jubilee, the government bailed out corrupt banks and Wall Street institutions.

The more I write, the more that comes to mind and I don’t have room or time for all of this shit. There’s torture, more lies, more deceit.

Then we elected the great savior, Barack Obama.

The Liar in Chief. (This motherfucker will lie to you and make you like it).

Obama ran on a program of change.

Those that opposed the bush administrations mis-steps suddenly went silent, despite the fact that obama took up where bush left off.

More lies, more wars. More off-shoring of jobs. More bail-outs of corrupt banks and institutions. More and greater drugs wars, more fucking prisons.

Obamacare sold as socialized medicine when in fact it’s forced participation in privately owned insurance scams complete with penalties for those that refuse to participate.

Yet more wars.

More fabrication of evidence. More lies.

Now we’re jabbing the Great Russian bear with a sharp stick….

Can you say dumb ass?

Doomer?

Damn right. This looks, smells, sounds, tastes and feels like doom to me.

Pull your head out of your ass and take a look around.

This ain’t over.

Man, Dustin Welch brings it:

Jacking off will make you go blind

My mind wanders while milking cows. I think of all the things going on in the world. Wars, everywhere, it seems.

People are going bat-shit insane around the world. Looking for someone to blame: invading Latin Americans. Moslem terrorists. Christian terrorists. Jewish terrorists. Republicans. Democrats…. (Must be the goddamned Democrats.)

Soccer games devolve into riots. Perhaps the games are an escape mechanism from the realities of life in these times.

Game is over. Time to go home….

Have you heard about the invasion of a new-to-us insect, the Sorghum aphid? Of course not. Or the white fly, blister bug, grass hopper invasions? Who needs food? There’s plenty to be had at the grocery store.

But I need crops to sell.

Where’s the organic pesticide for that one?

Or the new genetically modified strain of Frankenfood that will survive this shit?

Eating genetically modified food is bad for you.

We’ll starve without it.

Drought in California. Earthquakes in Oklahoma. Methane hydrate releases from the Arctic Ocean.

You’re being spied upon. Every word, every movement.

Drugs, by God. Drugs are the problem.

Or is it that I quit doing drugs?

Anybody have some drugs?

Oh yeah.

They put you in prison for that, assuming you survive the SWAT attack.

Or the drones. (Not yet unleashed upon us. Be patient. They’re working on it.)

This is one convoluted fucked-up world.

Is it me, or is this shit getting worse by the day?

Belmont Stakes

For those that might not have noticed, there’s an important horse race to be run today at Belmont Park, New York.

To begin, California Chrome has a chance to win the Triple Crown, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since 1978. This entails winning three consecutive races against the best three year-old Thoroughbreds in the country, The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and finally the Belmont Stakes. While there are more valuable races, none carry the prestige of these three classics.

The race takes on particular significance this year. California Chrome is owned by a pair of working class men and their wives, hardly Thoroughbred racing elite. The owners of the horse also were his breeders; he’s the product of a relatively cheap mare and a second-tier stallion, a California home-bred in an industry dominated by Kentucky elites.

Kentucky is hardly a center of power among states until you talk Thoroughbreds. It’s there that the kings and power players of the world operate with a relative strangle-hold on the best racing bloodlines to be had. If they don’t own the best, they soon will.

Texans, New Yorkers, Floridians, Californians, Saudis, Japanese, British royalty; they and more all bow to the Kentucky elite.

The consolidation of power in the Thoroughbred industry is not unlike what you see in public and private industry with the empire of the United States or the European Union, perhaps the newly emerging BRICS nations, Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Microsoft, the Federal Reserve bank, etc.: bigger entities dominate, subdue, and swallow smaller competitors to the point of elimination. Submit or die.

One may say that is not the desired effect of these entities; that point is arguable; the result is not; they have in effect wiped out most adversaries.

The battle is not over. Nature favors entropy: a big body forms; wind and rain and storms break that body into smaller pieces.

Cajuns want to be Cajuns; a mountain man will do as he wills. A Northern California hippie lives as he sees fit, as does a Maine fisherman. Puritans fled the Church of England; Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church. Afghani tribesmen live as they wish as do Arab Bedouins. An Oregon logger lives in a different world than a New York stock broker.

People refuse to submit to a one-size-fits-all mentality.

When it became apparent that Perry Martin and Steve Coburn owned a freak of nature, an anomaly, the big horse from humble origin, they were offered 6 million dollars for a 51% stake in the animal.

They refused the offer.

They are not wealthy.

But they had a dream and that dream was not for sale.

They kept their horse and to date, they have beaten the big boys.

They acknowledge that the horse is no longer theirs, that it has become property of the people, all the little guys out there with dreams of one day rising from the fray, not to make money, but just to be.

Un-owned.

Go California Chrome.