H2Omeloncholy: 2016

Monday, November 14, 2016

monday morning melonbacking

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

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2016 NON-VOTER SF Forty-Niner quarterback, Colin Kaepernick's kneeling protest of National Anthem

Dot org. The most convenient - daresay, cozy armchair - form of protest today. Enter name; send means solved.

Change.org is collecting signatures to prompt electors to reflect the popular vote when they convene on December 19 for the Electoral Collage to officially deliver the 2016 Presidenital 'results'. Secretary Clinton is currently leading as that very 'current' continues to rise in her favor. According to the National Popular Vote Tracker, as of this Monday, 11/14, Trump's 60,637,350 trails her 61,422,098.

http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174

A projected estimate, perhaps, doubles the difference when all is said, done, and counted. 'Projections', though? My good peops, 'projections' ain't eva befo' been this suspect. Always kinda deemed 'projection' as some psycho-babble: what we project on others and they conversely project on us. This projection is oft false - too mired in our biases to see The Other with the clarity required to get down with what be real. Politics seem to have arrived at a caustic impasse wherein an objective number of votes and subjective, slanted 'gaze' prove sho' sooth synonyms. This current melee is tantamount to our alien-green Statue of Liberty having a wardrobe malfunction.

Now, one 'gets' it, my noble gentlesoulfolk. And how.

How...eva, one also finds this desperate dive across the electoral line - a dot org mea culpa, if ye will - failing to one, sharp degree. As difficult as this is to type, let alone think, President Ele...(cough, cough)...Elec...(cough), President Elect Trump won. He won fair n' square. His supporters deserve their moment. Many, thy humble blogger included, are presently feeling the identical blow that Obama-detractors experienced upon his win - twice over. Before the concise triumph of 2008, there was that swingin' Floridian chad. We ALL failed. Not acting in November/December of 2000 was a colossal mistake. Sorta like voting half-way. Before the stroke of 2001, we should have addressed the archaic, inane Electoral College with more than quaterback-ed, armchair critique. Same scenario with Gore winning the popular vote by approximately half a million. We should have ALL insisted then - yes, then - that the popular vote spoke the true will of the demos. Alas, nope, we did not. And even allowed a conservative Supreme Court to decide our folly. 'W's first term was selected, not elected. Gore conceded. We followed suit but went even further: cursing the Electoral College yet inexplicably leaving it intact to thwart our most basic democratic principle.

One utterly agrees with every squirm about this dastardly decision. Nevadaless, when one spies a Confederate flag, one knows (especially as an XX-chromo H2Omeloncholic agent) that at the most, one is supposed to feel threatened, and at the least, insulted. Contrarily, what really glides thru one's mind?: "You...or your ancestors...lost. You simply lost. The Civil War? Over! And lost fair n' square. You are waving the tattered flag of Denial." The South is not isolated in its refusal to accept reality. The Obama Administration, in its final year, begins to lift Cuba's embargo. Phew! Utterly ridiculous that it lasted so long. Why? A proud nation just couldn't accept that we lost the Bay of Pigs. We lost; we did. And of all thangs? To 'them'. Accept it.

And accept when we lose because we have been apathetic. When we don't empathize, we suffer - all of us. The Dem donkeys forgot to empathize with white angst - created from blue-stated NAFTA that neighed loud, decimating manufacturing employment. This moment is pin-to-needle painful but one must wonder if the progressive e-fight isn't whining the day after. We agreed to these dysfunctional terms of electing officials by a broken system. A call for its o'erhaul? Before, homezgentry, not after. We are stuck finding some way to respect the choice of that otherwise silent, if not media-silenced, electorate whose victory lap has been earned (gulped) honestly. Maybe the only honesty in this whole debacle of democracy.

Ay so, yo, let's frack the "crooked Hills" comprising an election apparatus that breeds barbaric results. The fix is in. In order. But let's also not be victimized by some false sense that we are not complicit in this calamity. Can we consider signing on, 'forwarding', tweeting, liking...and the e-endless like...the heavy-duty soul-searching to do beyond revamping the rules that (sigh) should play out thru December 19? This particular election cycle is lost. Gone. Dammit, lost. Middle America has a voice that demands being heard. One hears you, red-light-districted battlegrounds - throwing up a bit in one's mouth. No, yours is not the popular choice and she won by an even larger margin than Gore. Yet n' still? Da most maddening of FACTS? Not one who participated in this process is immune from responsibility. Albeit errors can - and when appropriate - should be corrected, the highest retribution might well be the difficulty of dire reflection. Prior to the coming revolution.

Shakespeare always says it best and proves no less in Caesar:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars (or even electoral joke)

But in ourselves"

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility of

POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

H2Omelironic

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility of

POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

All's Bright as Glorious

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
introducing her presidential candidate-of-choice in New Hampshire

Saturday, 02.07.16

“And, when you’re young,
you’re thinking,
where are the boys?
The boys are with Bernie…”

founder of Ms. Magazine & feminist pioneer, Gloria Steinem
interviewed by Bill Maher

Friday, 02.06.16

'Tis that time, my noble peops. Ye know it all too well: Mercury retrograde. Yep, that astrological quirk on our calendar when communication is oft challenged with unintended glitches. Contrarily, when steeped in the practice of mindful presence, the retrograde phase can serve rather well. It can clarify past confusion and even, perchance, extract a bit of wisdom from commentary widely dissmissed as eminently whack.

One could attempt the melon-fruitless task of waitin' out the cosmos, hidin' upon the terrestrial down low, down deep undercover until Mercury's transit. Albeit such cowardice is no strategy for the aspiring sage. Shall we not all challenge ourselves, not to be content scratching our napps, squinting eyes, nor scrunching wide noses when Meaning blurs? Demanding betta, one finds oneself revisiting that first week-end of February - now in May. Three-month's time to process errors uttered from those far wiser than their above words - writ here in the font, "courier". Alas, their message did not carry. Unlike uncut H2Omelon, neither quote held water. Yet both Albright and Steinem have bona fide, feminist, ~~street~~ global cred as elder advocates/agents of change. Dig it? Solid!

photo credit: David Paul Ohmer

Muddled no mo', one raises a hand to draw the following conclusion:

They were right.

As much...
as they are wrong.

Whilst neither Madeline Albright nor Gloria Steinem possess the obvious melanin of your customary subject of H2Omeloncholy, each can still check that familiar, dichotomous box of a visceral right gone every-otha-shade-of-wrong and/or vice versa.

Albright and Steinem were indisputably mistaken about all XX chromo agents - young or old. Nevadaless, they may be contentiously correct about one in particular: they addressed the whole of XX chromo voters when, in fact, their insightful assessment was far more applicable to the lone she whom they defend/support.

Berta Cáceres is dead. In body. Neva in spirit nor in cause. The appropriately exalted, recently slain, indigenous environmental activist named names. The late Cáceres placed blame not in hell or upon youth but where it belongs. She knew who backed coups and reaped rewards. Sensing 'the' (her own) carnage to come, she held those responsible. To the fire.

312. Nay, not degrees Fahrenheit nor the age of Michelle Alexander. Her chronological years concern one not in the least. 312 is the page count of her seminal indictment of nineties' catastrophic, crime 'reforms', The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander's text fans a kind of Baldwinian "fire this time". She extends the critique to our current election cycle.

The appetite in adolescence is ravenous. It must be. How else to grow into sound adulthood? 'Empire' and incessant regime change, howeva, stunt civic maturity and halt egalitarian impulse. Da States 'inferno' scorches earth beyond Dante's romantic comedy redux, The Diplomatic Young & Restless. When dramatic actors run amok, driven by the ruthless ambition of 'super predatorial' foreign policy - raping and pillaging citizenry and treasure - is youth, alone, to blame? Dare we indict the 'hell' on Earth of patriarchal oppression wherein Connie Francis croons, blistering beach side: "where the boys are"? Just are...in socio-positionality as much as indiscriminate geographic or divine 'place' of tyranny meeting torment.

To be praised by Henry Kissinger and preferred by Bibi Netanyau - all whilst Wall Street winks? Well, that there points to 'the boys' still runnin' the joint. "May their FORCE be with you." Meanwhile, back at the plundered ranch, what of the mothers who rock the cradles of 'collateral damage'? They birth the next generation of Palestine and Libya and Iraq and Honduras. Like tinder-boxed Pinocchio, their sons are too brown to be real 'boys'.

Lest one succumb to the immature myopia or, say, 'youthful' discretion, that all dogs and doves go to heaven whilst all hawks go to hell - where their "special place" awaits. The pigment of politics may consign itself to black/white dialectics, but we are - all - little else than morally, ethically grey. Blur, yo. Ay, so. Our 'place' remains at the discretion of our last deed. It or 'we' can only be as "special", i. e., 'exceptional' as the higher (or lower, if not lowest) purpose to which we commit with the full might of our most intimate as much as international relations.

This "special place in hell" cannot be found in any voting booth or be reserved for any age within any gender, or even dominant ethnic demography. May, though, this hottest spot hold court, seated or even tragically rooted, in the next four to eight years of 'Merica's interventionISM? Even they - whose vote is voluntarily disenfranchised by their own apathy or ignorance - are destined, one way or anotha, to catch wind of Lady Liberty's othawise statuesque torch. Takes only one spark gone astray for us to "feel her Bern".

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility of

POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

CV

Monday, November 14, 2016

monday morning melonbacking

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

H2Omelironic

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

All's Bright as Glorious