bring on the lovingoverthrow

It's been more than 15 years since I was introduced to the work of Jean Kilbourne exposing the incredibly devious, heartless, and misogynist techniques advertisers use to market alcohol and tobacco in America.  I particularly remember her analysis of the Virginia Slims "You've come a long way baby" campaign and her pointing out the fact that it trivialized women's civil rights struggle by equating the gains of that struggle with the liberty to choose and smoke a particular brand of cigarettes. 

Tonight I saw an ad on television targeted to young people that trivializes democracy by equating  the courageous expression of freedom and the power to overcome corporate facism with the power to design a new soft drink.  It is called Dewmocracy.  It is a Mountain Dew campaign.  Mountain Dew is owned by Pepsico.

So, what we have is Madison Avenue, in service of the corporate lords, creating an ad campaign which promises young people that, by purchasing a consumer product, they can overthrow the reign of the corporate lords and align themselves with the great historical struggle for human dignity and liberty.  Pimp is too kind a word for what's being done here.  These are wolves at work, seeking to lure our children out to play with the intention of making them prey. 

 Madison Avenue enslaves Beauty.  Cuts her off from Goodness and Truth and forces her into service of greed.

Human need is shared and is not occasion for profit.  Whoever claims to own the means of fulfilling our shared human needs is a villain and should be handled as such which, of course, means compassionately. 

Those to whom you are paying for a clean bottle of water will soon be charging for tanks of clean air.  Indeed, clean air is so unevenly distributed already that we might as well admit it has been made a commodity. 

To all members of the Abrahamic traditions:

If we are not going to provide our young people with an education, can we at least not allow their lack thereof to be made occasion for profiteering? 

Here's what empire does.  It guarantees those privileged with wealth the opportunity to obtain even greater wealth by practicing usury on poor people who are forced into debt in order to obtain the skills necessary to survive in the culture.  With the additional wealth, these privileged are then all the more able to provide the finest educations to their own children, thus perpetuating and enlarging the injustice.

Of course, as long as we live in empire, a poor person's lack of education will be occasion for profiteering because everything in empire must be made occasion for profiteering.  What's more, empire regards people the same as it regards the earth, as a raw resource to exploit by any means convenient to extract some private gain.

Earth to America from the Blue Man Group.

Especially for those with an interest in the well-being of planet earth. 

Fundamentally I am convinced healing is everywhere it is sought.  If I go looking for healing, I find healing.  The question is whether I take the healing I find or let myself be numbed into willingness to live with my wounds.

As long as a human being takes even merely humanity* as its living body, there will be woundedness.  The only question we're facing is whether we'll be content with the wounds that are bound to befall living beings in a universe such as ours or will we continue to heap more and more until we've all been ground to dust?  We behave like reptiles crawling on top of one another, even eating one another, just to stay alive.  And we don't have to.

What a shame, that after all this time, the reptilian brain still has so much power to shape human culture.  Neither do I rejoice to see wolfism on the loose, too often in charge, in human dealings.  As much as I love wolves and am glad they appeared, wolfism is not a good fit for human beings.  Let wolfism govern the wolves for whom it is fine.  Let humanism be for humans.  Divine humanism if you please!    

Goodness, truth, and beauty each offer healing but when they work together, oh what a miracle! 

*better the planet, please

I declare that goodness, truth, and beauty are working together in the Blue Man Group.  See them here on youtube.  When goodness, truth, and beauty work together, wisdom is alive and human beings are happy. 

I first heard the term "winter soldier" when I was at Camp Casey, Colorado Springs during the fall of 2005.  As winter was coming on, we considered our options and  talked about whether this was a time when we needed to be winter soldiers for peace.  At that point, we had learned that our sleeping overnight at the camp was a violation of city ordinance and that our compliance with city ordinances was a major concern for Eric's landlord.  I will always remember the many long evenings we spent gathered around and cooking meals over the firepit that Gwen donated. 

For the record, the only thing I did that I remotely considered claiming as a winter soldier act was going to the camp in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to hang up the large origami peace crane I had made.  On the other hand, others and especially Eric Verlo, are definitely winter soldiers in my book.

It wasn't until the next spring that I learned the significance of Winter Soldiering in the history of the U.S. peace movement.  By gift of association with members of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veteran's Against the War, I was learning about the vitally important role that veterans have played in educating and mobilizing the American public on behalf of peace.  Suddenly, I learned that one of the Vietnam Vet's I had come to know and love had participated in an historic event during 1970 called Operation Rapid American Withdrawal (RAW) during which "more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way".  At camp, we showed "Different Sons: Vietnam Remembered" the movie which documented the event.

Along with learning about the guerilla theatre of Operation RAW, I learned about the Winter Soldier Investigation held in Detroit in winter 1971.  From Wiki:  "the Winter Soldier Investigations was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31-February 2, 1971. Discharged servicemen from each branch of military service, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years of 1963-1970."  Although it captured little mainstream media attention at the time, this groundbreaking event was a turning point in the efforts of the peace movement to end the Vietnam War.

Now, 36 years later, a new generation of veterans is faced with having to teach the American public all over again its responsibility to question the war policies of its government.  Therefore, the  Iraq Veterans Against the War are planning to hold their own Winter Soldier Investigation in Washington, D.C. during March 2008.  I remember a moment during the march from Mobile to New Orleans when we stood at a local Vietnam War memorial.  The young Iraqi vets stood opposite the Vietnam veterans during a ceremony.  Afterwards, one of the Iraqi vets stood up and expressed his hope that, in 30 years, he would not find himself standing where his older comrades stood - looking across at a new generation of soldiers now required to fight the very battles that he had once hoped would never need fighting again.  Whether this young man's hope and the hopes of all these soldiers are fulfilled depends entirely upon us - the American people.  What will it take for us to learn and, more significantly, for those of us who think we have learned  to do what needs to be done to give flesh to our knowledge?

The only relationship empire understands is ownership.

A great victory for lover's of law and justice!  The Supreme Court has sided with federal district court judges who have rebelled against some of the wildly unjust mandatory sentencing guidelines that got drug up in the drug wars - specifically here those creating such disparity between crack and powder cocaine.  Read it in Truthout. 

I so want to celebrate and praise every one who understands judges and the great trust they hold on behalf of the people. 

Justices Thomas and Alito, the dissenters in this case, don't understand if, as is reported in the article, they concluded claims such as these which touch upon fundamental issues of justice can be rebuffed as intrusion into "policy".   Could it be they regard judges as corrupt recipients of political patronage who have no choice but to get with the program their political masters have concocted?

For more about the injustice and how it lands on women and children, see this article about UU minister Melissa Muumert's movie - Perversion of Justice.

__________ 

*Good judges can't be bought because, for love of wisdom and compassion, they gave their hearts to justice.

I had so hoped I would be writing to say that Tom Hanks and his Hollywood posse were about to take down George W. with a new movie called Charlie Wilson's War.  I saw a glimpse of a preview and allowed myself to hope Tom was going to portray the privileged white guy who grows up to play war with his country as if it were the latest of his toys.   Instead, I find he is playing a privileged white guy, part of a co-ed gang, who led "the largest and most successful covert operation in [US] history".  I guess I have to watch the movie to learn how hard I'll have to work to love my upper crust brothers and sisters as they blunder about under the weight of a privilege they hardly see much less acknowledge. 

My companions inform me that Tom Hanks is a conservative and so I shouldn't be surprised.  I am so ready to be surprised.  When I first felt my disappointment, the thought sprang to mind that John Belushi would've played the character I hoped Tom would play.  Then I saw how much I had been healed during my youth by the good work of the guys and gals at Saturday Night Live. 

Oh praise ye lovers of Beauty who stray not far from Goodness.  Truth will not desert you even if you wish it would.  That's what I'd say if I was inclined to such outbursts.