Boom To Bust - A Revolution

The character Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight noted, "You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."

That line succinctly sums up American culture right now.  The 60s liberals have lived long enough to become the villains.

Like everything else in the Boomers' lives, they thought they were going to change the world forever.  Like everything in life, nothing lasts forever.

All the rock and folk stars are retired or dead.  The music has lost all meaning to anyone but the geezers who were alive then.  Woodstock is all but forgotten.  The Summer of Love is a myth.  And all the peaceniks then are war hawks now.

Hell, the only major political figure still alive from back then is the evil bastard Henry Kissinger, who is the villain that lived long enough to see himself become the hero.

The world has come full circle and the Boomers of the 60s are now the establishment, and the new generation of counter-culture are the conservatives that the Boomers fought so hard to get rid of.  Even Johnny Rotten (of Sex Pistols fame) recently came out in favor of Brexit and Trump.  A lot of folks got double-take whiplash when they saw that story.

Everything old is new again.  Funny how things work out that way.

The Weather Underground long ago surfaced and Bill Ayers is ghost-writing autobiographies these days.  Fidel Castro is dead and no one remembers Mao's Little Red Book, even in China.  Free love gave way to long-lasting STDs after spawning the Disco Era - which mercifully died a long time ago.

About the only lasting change the Boomers have achieved is the on-going decriminalization of marijuana, which has yet to spread outside a few States and the Netherlands.  It only took 50 years to get that far.

Yes, Boomer life has been reduced to old folks' homes and shuffleboard contests on cruise ships - basically the life they rejected en masse all those years ago.

The Beatles have become elevator music - a quaint throw-back to an earlier age - much like Frank Sinatra and Big Band had become in the 70s.

Woodstock was overrun with Band-Aid, Farm-Aid, Live-Aid, Lollapalooza and all the other mass events that tried to recreate a fluke of time and place.

Bob Dylan retired to his ranch, so rich he can't write decent songs any more.  It required a certain amount of personal suffering to achieve the status he once had, and he hasn't suffered in a long time.

I rememver when Boomers thought they were important and had something to offer society.  The problem is, they tried to ram it down everyone's throat, and folks don't like that.  They also hadn't planned on the same thing happening to them.  It never occurred to them that anyone would revolt against the revolution.  In rejecting everything that came before them, they also threw out the history books that tell the tale of many similar events happening throughout history.

If we can learn anything from the Boomers, it's not enough to be young, dumb and full of cum - and have demographics on your side.  They committed the First Rule of History - what comes around goes around.  It's all circles.

Many US presidents have tried to lay claim to John F. Kennedy's legacy, but hoodathunk Donald J. Trump would actually claim it.  Like it or not, he is presiding over the counter-counter-revolution.  All the angst and violence spawned by his election are the last gasp of a dying phenomenon called the Baby Boom.  Like the 60s, the Teens will likely create on industry that will last a decade or more, even if Trump (like Kennedy) doesn't make it through his first term.

The irony seems lost on the American culture.  The same hatred and revulsion the War Generation felt towards the Boomers' radicalization is what the Boomers feel now towards the changing times.

Oh, that's right...The Times they Are A'Changin' was a Bob Dylan anthem for the Boomers, who must now listen to it again and realize that they are on the other side.  Remember?

Come gather around people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

And if your breath to you is worth saving

Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changing

It's tough to realize that you've deluded yourself your whole life.  The Boomers actually thought they were changing things, except they forgot to keep fighting.  Instead, they joined the rat race and tried to make a little money.    They thought they could sit back on their laurels and everyone would recall the Boomers with fondness and leave their legacy intact like a socio-political shrine.  Guess what?

Reality.

California Dreamin' has become California Screamin', and the voices are weak and shrill now.  The train jumped the track about 30 years ago with the first Iraq invasion - supported and backed by the same folks who brought us the "anti-war" movement - a movement that only lasted until the Boomers were heading up the Military-Industrial Complex that they so reviled all thos years ago.

Now the Boomers aren't protesting war, they are prosecuting it.  They aren't trying to bring down the Establishment, they ARE the Establishment.  They are no longer the revolutionaries, they are the entrenched interests trying to protect their nest eggs.

The irony of history is a delicious dish.  It is fun to watch those who fought the Cycles of Time be finally crushed by them. If there is a lesson here for all generations, it is that all change will change again.  Only things that are dead cease to change.  No matter how radical you think you are, you will eventually be the Establishment.

Que sera.

You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody

In order to sit atop the food chain, you must become a predator.  There are no two ways about it.  It doesn't matter the industry or discipline, if you want to reach the highest echelons of power and fame, then the price is nothing less than all you have.

And there is no greater price than integrity.  Once you have sold that, then you have nothing left to call you own.  If you have talent (can make the bosses rich), but are unwilling to sell your integrity, then you will be allowed 'success', meaning that you can feed your family and maybe buy a house and/or a car, but that is the limit of your rise.

One of the reasons I went into media was that I could work in any industry.  I could go anywhere, do anything and experience all that the world had to offer, because I had a skill that was necessary to every market...the ability to craft high-quality communications.  As a consequence, I have delved deep into the petroleum industry, the medical industry, the financial industry, the religion industry, and the entertainment industry.

I have put my hands deep inside a human body.  I have climbed to the bottom of oil tankers and played with ROVs.  I have sat in board rooms on Manhattan's lower east side with views of Hudson Bay.  I have worked side-by-side with household names.  In every case, the price is the same.

It always starts the same way.  You are given tastes of the top.  There are limo rides from JFK to the Meridien at the base of the Twin Towers.  There are private jets.  There are dinners for ten where the wine bill alone is $5,000, and there's more silverware at each place-setting than the average family owns altogether.

And then there's the parties.  Hot and cold running bimbos.  Horizonless pools overlooking LA.  Snack trays and punch bowls full of prescription and non-prescription drugs.  Orgy scenes that make anything in the film Caligula seem overly modest and sedate.  And should you require a brief respite, there's the Montana mountain home with a 12-person jacuzzi, maids and butlers, and beds pre-heated by the 'skin pillow' of your choice.

This sets the hook.  You get addicted to the lifestyle, not to mention anything else.  You don't move in the same world that 'normal' people do.  You don't stand in lines or fight for scraps.  You make the scraps.

But at some point, the Moment of Truth comes.  You are presented with the keys to the next level.  You have seen what is waiting.  You are ready to throw integrity to the wind to put your name on that mountain house or have the pilot's number on your speed dial.  You are hungry to make Maxim' in Paris your personal breakfast stop, where the Eggs Benedict is your Egg McMuffin at $53 a pop.

So as you stare at the bottom line and all the legalese blurs behind your daydream of fame and wealth, and you take pen in hand and start to initial the bottom corner of each page, somewhere in the back of your mind, a small, almost vanishing voice says, "But at what price this?"

At some level, you are aware of the photos and videos of the orgies and nights in the jacuzzi.  Somewhere there are photos of you playing strip pool with hookers and straws up your nose.  You know, even without verbalizing it, that the road back from this point will mean wading through your sins.  This time, though, it will involve all the wrong people seeing and judging those sins, even though everyone standing in judgement of you secretly wishes they had been there too.  And maybe that's why it gets so surreal.

What few people ever realize, though, are the connections between the severe emotional tragedies in your life and the contract sitting in front of you.  Whether the tragedies were created, or simply taken advantage of, they are used to control you.  They are milked for every drop of emotional anguish that can be inflicted on you.  At some point, most people will surrender thinking they have nothing else to lose.  They will develop personas that hide the vulnerable True Self from further harm and take over the public face of the individual.

The potent combination of desire and fear combine on the bottom line of that 50-page contract sitting in front of you.  You think to yourself, "If I sign this, not only will I have the good life, but the power to slay my personal dragons."

Ah, and the revenge.  Yes, the revenge lies at the bottom of everything.  With power and money, you can get back at all those who hurt you, who made you feel inadequate, ineffective and unconsequential.

With these powerful motivations, you hurriedly march through the contract to the last page, and there, shining like a beacon in the darkness, is a single line with your name neatly typed under it.  Just one more quick scribble and your bank account will swell, your power will increase, you will have it all at your fingertips.

Within seconds of signing, you realize you've lost it all.  You feel the profound loss of having traded your soul for paper.  Suddenly, all the people who were just fawning all over you begin to act as if you aren't there.  They have what they came for: your pound of flesh.  You know instinctively that the way back is far more treacherous than anything you braved to get here.

The vision of fame that you had moments before turns to sharks ripping the flesh off your bones.  You are now fodder for the masses and any sense of privacy and individuality have fled the scene.  You are left with only two choices: wield the sword you picked up, or fall on it.  In either case, someone must die for your choice.

It dawns on you that the reason people who have it all never look happy is because of what they lost to gain what they have.  For what does it profit a man that he should gain the world but lose his soul?  Everyone wants it until they have it.

Show me anyone who is rich and famous, and I will show you an empty vessel.
================================

Zimmerman Blues

Dear Bob,

Once upon a time, you dressed so fine, you threw the bums a dime in your prime.  Didn't you?

OK, sorry for that, but I was sitting here thinking (again) and one of your classics popped into my head.  With very little massage, it seemed to fit so well with the world today.  Hope you don't mind if I borrow some words from you and send it to a new generation.

We sure could use a voice like yours today.  Well, maybe not the voice voice, but the literary voice.  A little joke.  Don't take it personally.  You see, there just doesn't seem to be folks like you around right now.  Rage Against the Machine is retired, or mostly so, and any other radical outlets seem to be very muted at the moment.

No one is sparking the fire of resistance.  Everyone seems so engrossed with social media and gee-gaws that they've forgotten to look up once in a while and see which way the wind blows.  Of course, an apprentice of the Weathermen is in the Oval Office, but he sure seems like he's gone off in the completely wrong direction.

But don't think twice, it's alright.  Somehow we'll get out of this mess.  I have faith that at some point, folks will wake up and bring it all back home.  With any luck, we can do it without any blood on the tracks.  Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is.  Do you, Mr. Jones?

Thanks for listening, Bob.  Hope you're doing alright.  The idiot winds are blowing, but the answers are few and far between.  The Masters of War appear to be winning for now.  Sometimes it seems that one hand is tied to the tight-rope walker and the other is in our pants.

All I need is just one more cup of coffee before I go to the valley below.  It ain't me, Bob.

The times they are a changin',
B

Well, they’ll drone ya when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll drone ya just a-like they said they would
They’ll drone ya when you’re tryin’ to go home
Then they’ll drone ya when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned

Well, they’ll drone ya when you’re walkin’ ’long the street
They’ll drone ya when you’re tryin’ to keep your seat
They’ll drone ya when you’re walkin’ on the floor
They’ll drone ya when you’re walkin’ to the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned

They’ll drone ya when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll drone ya when you are young and able
They’ll drone ya when you’re tryin’ to make a buck
They’ll drone ya and then they’ll say, “good luck”
Tell ya what, I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned

Well, they’ll drone you and say that it’s the end
Then they’ll drone you and then they’ll come back again
They’ll drone you when you’re riding in your car
They’ll drone you when you’re playing your guitar
Yes, but I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned

Well, they’ll drone you when you walk all alone
They’ll drone you when you are walking home
They’ll drone you and then say you are brave
They’ll drone you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned

Singin' WWIV Blues

Since I was one of those lucky kids who had to hide under my desk at school every Friday at noon, when the air raid sirens went off, I think i can safely say this is the opening of WWIV.

WWIII took place from the end of WWII until the 80s, when the rest of the world went socialist and there was no point to fighting with your friends.  It was a 'cold war,' which means the sides blew up other people's countries as a proxy for their own ideological differences.

Here in WWIV, it's the banksters against the rest of the world.  This war is fought in board rooms and stock exchanges, using paper and bytes.

There's no nation vs. nation, because all the governments (with the exception of Libya) are already owned lock, stock and ice-cold barrel.  Any country that has money and a fair cut of resources has been subsumed.  The few that haven't, well, they're not important because they don't have anything of value to the banksters.  Qaddafi had about the only large stock of sovereign gold and oil left that wasn't in the bankster inventory.

WWIV is a war of thinking people vs. the Sheep.  The handfuls of independent folks out there who still think and act in ways that aren't sanctioned by The Owners are slowly being cornered.

Things like the TSA grope-a-ropes are actually sorting bins.  The Sheep just shuffle through silently and take their vaccines and soma.  Those who complain are being tagged and catalogued for later rendering.  The hot war will come soon enough, but for now, the banksters need to figure out where all the hiding places are, since the rebels aren't in a single physical area, like a country or something.

The whole thing reminds me of that old Star Trek episode called, "Taste of Armaggedon."  The gang lands on a planet which is at war with another planet, fought by computers.  The machines launch virtual attacks and calculate virtual damages, and then the assigned Sheep are tagged to voluntarily walk into disintegration chambers.

I mean, every time I read one of these 'cyber-war' stories trying to make me afraid of someone else' bytes, I just have to laugh!  Did all those Pentagon and bankster idiots watch Star Trek too?  Because it sure seems like they're trying to bring that episode to life.

Certainly, one gets the impression this whole charade is coming to a head.  The US is fighting six wars at once, while at the same time it's going flat broke.  The EU is about to go 'foof!', which is Greek for "oh hell."  Russia and China are playing footsie as they look at the entire western hemisphere going in the crapper.  The entire Middle East is singing the Rolling Stones (hey you, get offa my cloud!).  Even Antarctica seems to be having troubles, since Emperor penguins are swimming 2,000 miles to New Zealand to get out of there.

That's almost a good as Spalding Gray swimmin to Cambodia.

The interesting part of all of this is that one gets the distinct impression that the banksters are acting out of desperation.  They are moving fast and apparently not too concerned if people see behind the curtain now.  Maybe their TSA headcounts of the wild ones is showing just a few more heads than they had anticipated.  Certainly, places like Texas passing laws making the 'yellow shirts' criminals was not in their play-book.

Where's Gandi, or Emerson, or Thoreau?  Where are the Bob Dylans and hippies?  Where's the righteous indignation and the social conscience?  Have everyone gone nuts, gone soft or gone completely to sleep?

What really amazes me are the hippies.  They turned on, tuned in and burned out.  They vanished into the woods and became Microsoft and Celestial Seasonings.  An entire generation of trouble makers have become a bunch of gelatinous proto-plasm whose biggest concern is timing their investments and and hoping Social Security lasts long enough for them to get theirs.  A complete waste os resources, that bunch is.

It's a sad state of affairs when the shining hope for the future is a bunch of pasty cyber-punks whose idea of fun is cracking security on the US Senate's webpage.  I mean, come on...that's not a victory, that's a flea on an elephant.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud  -- Bob Dylan, Masters of War

It's over, I think.  \\If the world was turned right, neighbors would show up at the house next door with pitchforks and torches when the banksters came to repo.

If the world was turned right, people would shun corporate products and sparkly gee-gaws and politicians, and start their own economies governments.

If the world was turned right, everyone would stop paying credit cards and mortgages at the same time, and shove a middle finger in the face of anything that resembles 'old school' power and control.

Than's if the world was turned right.  As it looks from here, it ain't even turned at all.

Pretty soon, the scanners at the airports will become disintegrators, and we'll all be living a Star Trek episode where we march happily into them and vanish forever, on command.  There won't be need for bullets and bombs, we'll all just fall on our swords when told.  When the message comes that little Johnny had his virtual leg blown off in a virtual attack, poppa will eargerly run over and hack it off so that the game can continue.

Who knows?  Maybe Roddenberry was on to something.  After all, we all have communicators now, phasers are being tested at Livermore and warp drive exists for the privileged few.

Beam me up, Scotty.  There's no intelligent life down here.