Herbert Cain now leads the polls for the Republican nomination. I for one would find it very, very, very funny if all the teatard agitation and all the racially motivated opposition to that Kenyan-born Muslim Socialist resulted in two black men contesting for the presidency in the general election. If it weren’t for all the things to weep about. But just imagine a favorite Republican uncle or brother-in-law looking at the top of the ballot on Election Day and going, No, wait… I’ll laugh through the tears.

In my Twitter feed yesterday I noticed that many Obama supporters among the tweeple I follow were incensed that “white liberals” were retweeting and facebooking the link to the viddy above, and seemed to think that if a YouTube clip of Herman Cain singing “Imagine There’s No Pizza…” went viral, that it would somehow be a threat, or demeaning, to President Obama.  Personally, I’m sorry that Herman Cain has stolen Rick Perry’s thunder (tho’ a punier Zeus I could not think of), because I was hoping against hope to see Obama destroy Perry in a debate or two, but I find it hard to see Cain as a threat to Obama in any way, except in that he’s possibly plumping Romney’s pillows for a soft landing into the Republican nomination. The fact that Cain is a clown doesn’t put even the least smudge on Obama’s adamantine gravitas. But, I’ve been warned: if Obama isn’t reelected, it’s all my fault.

Tho’ I hate to echo conventional wisdom, Romney (I want to call him “Willard of Mittgard,” but that would be silly) is the best chance the Republicans have among a very weak field to make a reconquista of the presidency. Willard Lies-A-Lot is now getting more Wall Street money than Obama, but Obama is currently out-fundraising the entire pack of GOPers by 20 million or so dollars. Don’t doubt the Wall Streeters will hedge their bets in spite of Obama hurting their delicate fee-fees with some ferociously mild criticism.  Obama, in spite of the shit storm he is obliged to inhabit as the leader of our crumbing empire and cheerleader for our failing “free market” economy, with extra gravy as a non-white, non-Republican POTUS, is still a man who is going to be hard to beat in the next election.  Never mind that I’ve bet the wrong horse in 8 out of 10 presidential elections in which I’ve cast a ballot. This is why:

I am one of the “white liberals” who had his delicate fee-fees hurt when Obama turned out exactly as I thought he would, in short, “the very model of a modern mainstream Democrat, which is to say, slightly to the right of Nixon on most issues.” Even the most determined pessimist (or, as I prefer “dark roast realist”) is occasionally susceptible to the sepsis of hope. As I wrote in a previous post, “I’m glad…the cohort of Dimbulbicans that have been pissing me off since the Nixon administration now have a president…they can hate as much as I hate what 8 years of Bush (did) to this country.” I still enjoy that.

But. Tho’ I will never vote for any “R”–Republicans have been vile in their obstruction and machinations to destroy what’s left of our democracy–I don’t think I can vote for a “D” who has out done Dubya in strengthening a national security state destructive of human rights while escalating illegal wars; who has allowed the set up of a bureaucratic Star Chamber in contravention of Habeus Corpus and the Constitution, and approved the assassination of American citizens (no matter how vile their alleged crimes). The fact that openly gay soldiers can now go to foreign countries and kill people without fear of official persecution for their sexual orientation does not compensate for the effective loss of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the Constitution precisely to prevent such state tyranny over the people. I have other disappointments with Obama’s tenure and policies (and there’ve been some positives of course), but presidential sanction of murder by remote control is enough to kill my inner Obamabot in so far as I had one.

OK, the logic is contorted, but it goes like this; as a contarian outlier, my deep disapproval of Obama on this issue probably indicates enough generic approval of Obama on the part of people voted for him last time to reelect him.

I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I face the ballot on the first Tuesday in November in 2012. I suspect it doesn’t matter; it certainly hasn’t mattered in most of the elections in which I’ve voted.  There is that quote or pseudoquote attributed to Einstein defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’m not sure this is true even if Einstein said it, but people all over the world rejecting doing the same thing and are now taking to the streets in search of a different result. Obama was not the different result, and he most likely won’t be different if he is reelected. The different result (to echo Nassim Taleb) may be like that on the same old day at the end of an exceeding sameness of days when the flock of turkeys goes to slaughter prior to Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor/Robert Tiso, Glass Harp

“therefore I will wail and howl,

I will go stripped and naked:

I will make a wailing

like the dragons,

and mourning as the owls”

The Future?

Check out the Hang Seng Index; you can watch the stocks fall and volatility rise in (sur)real time. Though the Masters of Paradigm have been baying to the Chicken-Little skies like a flack (flock+pack) of Shar-Poos on Ritalin that reducing debt and spending is the cure for our sovereign woes, it seems that the “markets” do not like governmental austerity nearly so much they think they do, which is to say, not at all. As soon as the debt ceiling bill (to be here and hereafter known as The Suck Heard ‘Round The World) was passed in Congress and  signed into law by President Obama, everyone suddenly looked up and noticed that the actual effects of enforced austerity in countries in the Euro Zone was, like, bad. And as the illimitable Atrios has sang out many a time:

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeee…

+++

The WD-40 Company should consider issuing its fine product in vintage years. It’s a pure petroleum distillate, no fish oil or hog lard–fine dinosaur wine, but currently non-vintage. One could invest in a case of vintage “40″ as a hedge against inflation… Checking in at the company website, I see that it already offers a collectible series. Go to “Gunny’s Garage” and get in on the ground floor, folks…pre-peak-oil WD-40 can only accrue in value as pure petroleum lubricants become more and more rare; not to mention the nostalgia value that will also accrue as our military-technological Imperium fades, in a product promotion that “supports the troops.”

+++

I try to think ahead, just for fun. What is fun for me is not necessarily fun for you. To prepare for my place in the new economy, I’m taking up stone knapping. Dr. Omed’s Fine Flint and Obsidian blades, suitable for all hunter-gatherer and neo-Aztec needs, including dressing out captured bankers and stockbrokers, coming soon to a fine rock shelter near you.

I have seen the aboriginal future, and it involves laying your still beating heart on the altar atop the Pyramid of the Sun.

The poem of course is my own. I wrote it for Mrs. Dr. Omed in 1997 before she became my Missus and before I accepted the virtual mantle of the Reverend and Doctor Omed. It is one of the poems in the book I wrote for her, An Army, with Banners. The image above is of a woodcut print made by the printmaker and artist Shawna Khalily. Mrs. Dr. Omed and I first met Shawna and first saw her work at Day’s Espresso and Coffee on Bardstown Road in Louisville, the day she hung her show on the walls of the coffeehouse. We knew that day one of those prints would be coming home with us, and last Sunday, the last day of her show, we just happened to wander in as Shawna arrived to take down her art. The print pictured above went into our car. It now hangs on our wall, where I can see it as I type this.  I’m so happy I could howl.

…Little old lady got mutilated late last night, werewolves of Luhvul again…

…Aaaaaahooooo…*

*As Charles Simic wrote in one of his poems, and as my friend Clarissa Pinkola Estes reminds us in her book, Women Who Run With The Wolves:

He who cannot howl will not find his pack.

Rising Bread as Full Moon.

Lammas had come round again. I take note of it on the Tent Show, when I remember, as I did two years ago today:

Lammas aka Loaf Mass aka Lughnasadh is a feast celebrated on the cross-quarter day halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, by convenience of tradition,  August 1st or 2nd. It is called the feast of first fruits–the fruits of the year’s harvest. The first fruits are honored by baking bread made from flour milled from the new crop of wheat.

By tradition, the first reaping from the field is winnowed, milled, mixed, baked, and consumed all on the day or days (sometimes Lammas is two day affair) of the festival.

Today it’s too damn hot to bake bread, even virtually, so stare at the image above and imagine with me the Bread Moon rising in the evening sky while the tree frogs sing their hymns of sex and longing in the tall cypresses outside my window. As for first fruits,

…the spirit of thing is to honor and give attention to the “daily bread,” the food you put in your mouth on this day, preferably a food handmade from basic, unadulterated ingredients.

Food close to its roots, so to speak, that has some savor of the ground it grew in or place it came from, that’s best, though hunger can make a Twinkie, or potato chips, or a baloney sandwich on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip, holy. You want to be hungry when you eat the food you’ve consecrated for Loaf Mass. Bringing your hunger to the table is part of what makes the food a holy offering and the table a consecrated altar to whatever god or gods you’ve asked to dinner.

The fruits I prepared for our dinner tonight were white yams, cucumber-leek salad with yogurt and dill, corn on the cob, and briefly (briefly) seared filet d’cow. Some of the meal was locally sourced via our neighborhood green grocer, The Root Cellar. If you live in Old Louisville, or anywhere near it, go see, feel, smell, taste, and buy the fresh, local fruits, veggies, eggs, milk, cheese, etc. The man (his name is Ron) needs your business, and we need such businesses and the local growers who supply them to survive and thrive in the coming years when local food will be the main source of calories available, as it will once the dinosaur wine becomes too expensive and we can no longer sustain long petro-fueled supply chains and industrial agriculture.

Others are having their tea party (sponsored by FOX news and with a salad bar catered by Applebees, hanging strange fruit in their Liberty Tree for another round of Whack-O-Bama. Let us take other liberties, and may the salt we take with our bread keep its savor. Watch the Bread Moon rise. Listen to the tree frogs chirruping in the cypresses.

FIRE IN THE LAKE

Ko / Revolution

above TUI  The Joyous, Lake

below LI  The Clinging, Fire

The Chinese character for this hexagram means in its original sense an animal’s pelt, which is changed in the course of the year by molting. From this the word is carried over to apply to the “moltings” in political life, the great revolutions connected with the changes of government.

The influences are in actual conflict, and the forces combat each other like fire and water (lake), each trying to destroy the other.

THE JUDGMENT

REVOLUTION. On your own day you are believed. Supreme success. Furthering through perseverance. Remorse disapears.

Political revolutions are extremely grave matters. They should by undertaken only under stress of direct necessity, when there is no other way out. Not everyone is called to this task, but only the man who has the confidence of the people, and even he only when the time is ripe. He must proceed in the right way, so that he gladdens the people and, by enlightening them, prevents excesses. Furthermore, he must be quite free of selfish aims and must really relieve the need of the people. Only then does he have nothing to regret.

Times change, and with them their demands. Thus the seasons change in the course of the year. In the world cycle also there are spring and autumn in the life of peoples and of nations, and these call for social transformations.

THE IMAGE

FIRE IN THE LAKE: The image of Revolution. Thus the superior man sets the calendar in order and makes the seasons clear.

Fire below and the lake above combat and destroy each other. So too in the course of the year a combat takes place between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, eventuating in the revolution of the seasons. Man masters these changes in nature by noting their regularity and marking off the passage of time accordingly. In this way order and clarity appear in the apparently chaotic changes of the season, and man is able to adjust himself in advance to the demands of different times.

Changes ought to be undertaken only when there is nothing else to be done. Therefore at first the utmost restraint is necessary. One must firm in one’s mind, control oneself…because any premature offensive will bring evil results.

When we have tried every way to bring about reforms, but without success, revolution becomes necessary. But such a thoroughgoing upheaval must be carefully prepared…The first thing to be considered is our inner attitude toward the new condition which will inevitably come. We have to go out to meet it, as it were. Only in this way can it be prepared for.

When talk of revolution has gone the rounds three times, one may commit oneself, and people will believe you.

When change is necessary, there are two mistakes to be avoided. One lies in excessive haste and ruthlessness, which bring disaster. The other lies in excessive hesitation and conservatism, which are also dangerous. Not every demand for change in the existing order should be heeded. On the other hand, repeated and well-founded complaints should not fail of a hearing. When talk of change has come to one’s ears three times, and has pondered well, one may believe and acquiesce in it. Then one will meet with belief and accomplish something.

What one does must correspond with a higher truth and must not spring from arbitrary or petty motives; then it brings great good fortune. If a revolution is not founded on such inner truth, the results are bad, and it has no success. For in the end the people will support only those undertakings which they feel instinctively to be true.

We must be satisfied with the attainable. If we should go too far and try to achieve too much, it would lead to unrest and misfortune. For the object of a great revolution is the attainment of clarified, secure conditions ensuring a general stabilization on the basis of what is possible at the moment.

I wish I thought President Obama was a revolutionary in the sense expressed by this excerpt from the I-Ching. But I do not. I think Barack Obama is the true conservative in this lethal pie fight in which our ruling class is currently engaged. I think his conservatism, and his hesitation in taking up the good fight against the Lords of Misrule that have taken over the political discourse and monkeywrenched the levers of legitimate government, is actually more dangerous than the antics of the duly-elected teahadists in Congress. Obama’s thirst for compromise has brought us to the brink of effectively repealing the New Deal and sending many of the citizens who voted for him straight to Hooverville, those of them that aren’t there already. The radical “conservatives” in the parliament of whores have shouted out repeatedly for all to hear that “compromise” is a dirty word, the ultimate blasphemy in their holy war against everything/anything that Obama and the Democratic Party care to stand for. But the members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus are simply the equivalent of the Black Hand catspaws willing to shoot the Archduke.

This completely arbitrary, unnecessary, and fallacious not to say fraudulent debt ceiling crisis is not simply an episode of legislative hostage-taking on the part of the whingiest whingers of the whinge wing of the GOP. The idea that debt is our primary problem and reducing the deficit is the solution to it is a folie en famille or even folie à plusieurs, a species of induced delusion that has infected the governmental and financial elites not only of this country, but of the world. The current crisis is primarly a product and expression of this delusional psychosis of  global elites, not the rabid, mouth-frothing insanity of  the political puppets of a subset of our “Galtian Overlords.”  The cannibal clown pie fight in D.C. is not “a feature, not a bug,” it is both bug and feature.

As Mrs. Dr. Omed says, “It is very hard for someone to recognize a problem when their livelihood depends on not recognizing it.” The livelihoods, not mention the status, power, wealth, and position of our ruling classes depends on them not recognizing and addressing our true problems, not just publicly, but I suspect for most, even in thought. Those who do address our true problems (take your pick, I got my list, make your own) suffer the punishment–loss of prestige or influence or income or even the fate of heretics  at a modern multimedia Auto-da-fe.

President Obama’s reelection depends–or at least he and his administration behave as if they believe his reelection depends–on not recognizing our true problems, and instead focusing on “problems” for which the dominant but dysfunctional paradigm already has “solutions.” Let me go straight for the Godwin’s Law violation and suggest that more than one Wannsee Conference has met to promulgate the protocols of a “Final Solution” of our Finance Problem, and no tea party fanatics were invited. Wake up and smell the catfood. “Extremism in the cause of liberty” may or may not be “a vice,” but the extremities of triangulating centrists, not the extremism of extremists, brought us to this pass.

Via ”A girl’s guide to taking over the world” on Facebook.

The deadpan, bored expression on the girl’s face as she flicks up her skirt to flash the giant, hairy merkin straped to her crotch just slays me. The various expressions on the faces of passers-by are priceless. Every time I play it, I dissolve into a fit of hyena-he-hes.

I’ve posted this Storm Large viddy before, but it makes a nice, um, matching bookend to the other, and the song brings similar good cheer to my black little heart—if the vagina fits, wear it:

Vaginistas of the World, UNITE!

Mercy Dotes

For forty thousand generations
we stirred the embers
of a low fire,

kept the audible prowlings
of the huge night
at bay.

A small tribe,
we looked up at the stars,
and the spaces between the stars,

tracked the transits
and transformations
of the moon, counted five wanderers,

As chert or clay came to our hands,
words came to us,
and we built them into stories

nested in stories,
tool kits for making memory
into myth,

to tell the children,
to tell the children,
to tell the children

how to compact the whole life of our tribe,
a small tribe,
into a bundle of words and pictures

small enough to carry
inside the head of an elder,

but enough
to survive a long trek,
and feed the whole tribe,

by the low fire,
in the great dark,
under a starry sky,

give us meaning,
give us meaning
give us the meaning.

by which we mean to survive.

Aurochs and Horses, Chauvet Cave, southern France

Mrs. Dr. Omed and I recently drove to the local Mong-O-Plex to see Werner Herzog’s idiosyncratic 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I’m not a fan of 3D or of 3D glasses–neither is Herzog, as it turns out–but it was worth the headache and two days of blurred vision to see this film, and to see how the prehistoric painters used the contours of the cave walls to conjure the presence of the animals.

In his big book on Paleolithic art, The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion, the anthropologist John Pfeiffer proposes the hypothesis that cave paintings are part of the arsenal of “special effects” created by the anatomically modern Cro-Magnons reinforcing and dramatizing the “mnemonic systems” that preserved the technological, cultural, and general knowledge of the tribe.  Pfeiffer points out that “the notion…that knowledge of any sort…should be shared as widely as possible is a relatively recent thing.” Secret ceremonies, degrees of initiation in the mysteries of the tribal cult are also major components of the process of imprinting vital tribal memes.  Not to mention dislocation, pain, and fear. Learning by ordeal. Penile subincision with a stone knife, for instance, concentrates the mind wonderfully; the boy will remember what the elder whispers in his ear. Pfeiffer calls it “education for survival.” He also emphasizes that these are things done in the dark, the ritual drama playing out against a pitch black backdrop, the sputter of flames from fat-fueled lamps licking painted stone into life.

Despite the decimation of traditional tribal cultures in the world wide demolition derby of modern history, we are all becoming more and not less tribal. In the Information Age all the netizens of the Global Village are self-selecting in a frenzy of Lamarckian cultural evolution, into tribes. Not tribes based on kinship or territory, but on shared memes (on shared whims sometimes). Instant communication equals instant tribalism. The question is no longer “what’s your sign,” it’s “what’s your tribe” asked in any number of ways.

In the American midwest there are fundamentalist-run “Hell Houses” that open during the Halloween season with the avowed purpose of instilling the fear of Hell in their customers, and facilitating the conversion of the rubes by literally scaring them into the arms of Jesus. This is the ritual drama of recruitment into a tribal cult in a degenerate form.

As Lao Tzu said, there are many paths, one way. One possible path is to return to making dreamtime maps, epics and legends with plenty of “entertainment value” to transmit the nested data in continuing sagas to the post-illiterate electronic tribes of the noose-sphere, with a trickle-down to the post-literate society at large. Pilgrims and seekers, Dr. Omed has gazed deep into the blue screen of fate.  He sees some. He knows some.  Know it or not, some of you are the root workers, the conjure doctors, the shamans of  Little Sister.  Just keep on doing that hoodoo you do so well.

In related news: All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal