Our Society is Lost
Yesterday a friend of mine got caught in a huge traffic jam on a local street. The cause of the jam? The line of cars trying to get into a Popeye’s Fried Chicken drive thru to buy their chicken sandwich. Also yesterday, there was a fatal stabbing outside of a Popeye’s fried chicken in Maryland during an argument over…wait for it…a goddam chicken sandwich.
If you’re around a Chick-fil-A around lunchtime in Texas, you will be caught in a traffic jam with hundreds of people sitting in dozens of cars willing to wait for almost an hour to buy THEIR goddam chicken sandwich. This willingness, though, is in large part owed to conservatives making some kind of statement in support of Chick-fil-A for their anti-diversity politics and support of Trump.
In the meantime, we’re only a few weeks away from the madness of Black Friday (which now starts on Thanksgiving morning) as millions of Americans stupidly storm into big box stores to do battle with one another to buy a cheap made in China flat panel television which they can neither afford or fit on a wall in their home.
Insanity has now become normalized. More Americans are engaged in Dancing with the Stars and The Voice than they are in participation in their own government. They go nuts over shit they read on Facebook and Twitter, while ignoring the real world of what’s going on around them. AND, our system of consumer protections has been decimated. Lying about products, politics, people, and policy is now OK and our courts have been packed with ideologies who believe that is just fine. The President of the United States has amplified this cancer by lying himself over 14,000 times in 3 years. He’s tweeted over 11,000 times, most of those tweets either lies, attacks against his enemies, wild conspiracy theories, or promotion of his own businesses. His education department is making it worse by destroying decades of progress in public education and assuring that millions of Americans swim in debt created by a system designed to entrap them for profit.
We are living in the age of lies. The masses, whose wages have been stagnated for 0ver 30 years and whose education system is broken, now live in a distopian television fantasy world, reduced to fighting over goddam chicken sandwiches, flat panel televisions, and casting meaningless votes for people who have no business dancing on national television.
We are lost, and with few viable government protections left, Trump has accelerated the downward spiral to an outright freefall. I don’t have a solution for it, and don’t even know where to start.
Propaganda has won and the 1% have won. And they pump disinformation out wide so as to keep the people fragmented. Perhaps the oft derided Millenial Generation will overcome the Boomer Dementia and Gen X Ennui…
1Have never done a Black Friday. For one thing, wages in this household have been flat forever. And I am only one of many. I am thinking that it is only a dedicated small core of people who believe in Black Friday anyway, but the media coverage makes it look a great deal more than that. As for Chick Fil whatever, had it once and never again. That was many, many years ago before they lost their slot in a local mall. Any way, around here more people are working shrinking their waistlines. The Chick Fils are still all in local malls and guess what – have very short wait lines. A waist is a helluva thing to mind. Plus, competition.
2We’ve become (it happened many years ago) an electronic entertainment society. Feed me, please me, don’t ever make me vote.
If there is a solution it lies in connection. Not electronic connection, but connection with community and connection with the earth. Put down those devices and seek connection. Become an activist for humanity and the planet. Make loving connection your life’s work.
And vote.
3maggie @ 2,
I’m there, too maggie. Out of my own rebellion against the excesses of retailism and a limited budget, I rarely buy retail. I buy like-new items as I need them from thrift stores.
The money I spend at the thrifts goes to good causes like hospice, the homeless, job training and the hungry, not to enrich greedy retail corps for cheaply-made, new-flash sh!t made in China.
One just can look around and note all of the retail store closures in the last ten years. If people can’t spend money they don’t have in retail stores or in fast food places.
All I ever ate from Chick-fil was one chicken biscuit (just one, mind it), provided to me as classroom teacher in honor of Teachers’ Day. Gee, teachers were worth a chicken biscuit…
4OOPS-Should read “People can’t spend money they don’t have…”
5Trump’s late night tweets strike me as the 3 AM blitherings of a serious speed freak.
6Having been around a few of those in the old days, I can spot it.
Remind me not to read your blog entries first thing in the morning. As if things aren’t depressing enough right now.
7The world is too much with us; late and soon,
8Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours.
–William Wordsworth
Social scientists probably have a name for it but once we fall though some floor of minimum satisfaction, we weigh the bad stuff highly and don’t notice the good. It’s a form of cherrypicking, to support our views, only it’s played with turds.
9What Do You Desire? By Alan Watts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCFB4jSgTMw&ab_channel=HouseOfThoughtMedia
10This tastes better than a fried chicken sandwich!
Edit:
Addressing a court ruling that President Donald Trump cannot keep his tax returns from a Manhattan grand jury, CNN analyst Elie Honig said the president’s likely appeal to the Supreme Court may not even make it to their docket, meaning he will have no choice but to hand them over.
On Monday, a three-judge panel for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled: “Presidential immunity does not bar a state grand jury from issuing a subpoena in aid of its investigation of potential crimes committed by persons within its jurisdiction, even if that investigation may in some way implicate the president.”
Speaking with CNN “New Day” hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota, the former federal and state prosecutor said the lower court’s decision and detailed written opinion — which was unanimous — was so strong the Supreme Court may decline taking up the presidents appeal.
“Bottom line here is the Supreme Court may just not hear this at all,” Berman suggested. “They may say, ‘You know what? There’s no case here because the appeals court was so sweeping in its ruling. Which was to say, ‘You know what? You don’t really have the immunity, but we don’t even have to make that decision because your case is so bad.”
“The Supreme Court does not have to take any case it does not want to,” Honig explained. “The Supreme Court only takes a very small fraction of the cases that people try to get in front of it — usually under 5 percent.”
“Now when the Supreme Courts decides whether to take a case they’re looking typically at a few things,” he elaborated. “First of all, is this a close call? I think the Second Circuit opinion makes clear in their view it’s not a close call at all — it was a 3-0 decision. Same as the judge below, so now four judges have said this is not a close call.”
“They’re also looking for, is this the kind of thing that different courts around the country are disagreeing on and there’s no disagreement,” he continued. “This is the first time this specific issue has come up. I think there’s a chance the Supreme Court says no thanks. If that happens, then yesterday’s decision stands and the district attorney gets the tax returns.”
Asked for a time frame, Honig replied, “The Supreme Court is on its own timeline. I think we will know within the next two, three weeks whether they are taking it or not.”
Watch below
https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-attempt-to-use-the-supreme-court-to-keep-his-taxes-hidden-appears-doomed-heres-why/
11364 days
12Now that Labor and Government have been removed, try sitting on a one-legged Capitol stool to milk that cow.
13Yes, it happened.
Authorities: Dispute over Popeyes chicken sandwich leads to fatal stabbing
https://triblive.com/news/world/authorities-dispute-over-popeyes-chicken-sandwich-leads-to-fatal-stabbing/
14“We are living in the age of lies.”
Maybe, baby, but how can I be sure you’re telling the truth?
15That thinking stuff is hard work, and I’m tired. Besides, there’s a rerun of Rules of Hazard on.
16Dukes of Hazzard. Damn autocorrect.
17Duvidele, as Jack Nicholson’s character Col. Jessep said in A few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth!” Just a guess, but are you as vertically challenged as Tom Cruise?
18“The cause of the jam? The line of cars trying to get into a Popeye’s Fried Chicken ”
The reason for the existence of chains such as Popeye’s, BK, Mac’s, wendy’s etc is that they are “Fast Food”
19Having to wait in a traffic jam puts a lie to that nisnomer.
K-
20Not only is “Fast” a misnomer, in my vegetable garden growing opinion, the “Food” part is as well.
At the risk of contributing to reasons for depression, I have to add a wrinkle to my last comment.
21We do have a sh*t-talker-in-chief.
And I believe that is what a lotta magas like about him.
“He tells it like it is!!!”
But it occurred to me later that the kinda sh*t he talks on the world stage as our president.
In our name.
Is exactly the same kinda sh*t talked by professional wrestlers.
So what passes for repugnantcan statesmanship is wannabe thugs trash-talking everything liberal.
Anybody want to know why they’re all in?
They know Trump’s gonna crash and burn.
But they know they’re swinging the middle (undecideds, apothetics) further to the right.
And it’s working.
And remember, any wrestler not willing to brain another wrestler with a folding chair was a coward.
22I got rid of my car and my tv. Now I walk, ride my bike or take the bus. I don’t give my money to the auto industry or watch 24/7 propaganda on the boob tube. I listen to music more, enjoy books again, and think about my friends and family. Also no facebook or twitter. I do have a cell phone and laptop but now I have to think about how I’m going to use the time that I use to waste in a car and watching tv. I think I’m happier but we’ll see.
23