Congratulations to all those who’ve graduated from American service academies commissioned as second lieutenants or ensigns. Americans are thankful you’ve chosen to be professional military leaders who’ll command forces defending these shores.
While the above is the preferred job description, their profession encompasses the less savory demands of our modern capitalist republic. These United States no longer face adversaries which threaten its being. Therefore, any taking up defense of this super state is a misstatement.
Not since the Roaring Twenties have our armed forces been so intricately bound with corporate interests. Even during Vietnam there had been some pretense of halting the nefarious spread of nationalism mistaken as communism. It was just right place, right time luck that DuPont and Bell Helicopter reaped fantastic profits. What had once been a straight-forward picket of sovereignty is now far more protection and expansion of the super state’s great overseas mercantile concerns. Continue reading Heirs to Death→
Some librettist and composer ought to join forces and create an opera featuring the life of one-time heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston. A tragedy, not an operetta. The travails of the long-dead champion contain classic elements the ancients would’ve venerated.
Brutal skills honed in an unforgiving background marked and formed the raw ambition that raised Liston high. Capricious and uncaring fate drove him into the lowest depths imaginable.
Strong and determined as he obviously once must’ve been driven, so did Liston easily succumb, powerless and guileless to thwart what now seems inevitable. The sole question needing asking and answering, whether Sonny Liston understood his plight, and did he submit? Continue reading The Tragedy of Sonny Liston→
Las Vegas evenings into mornings can be arbitrarily unkind as well as exceptionally rewarding. Throughout April 2017 I encountered or heard about five women who had experiences running the gamut from high to low, induced remorse, or whose initial reticence entering an endeavor produced joy.
Not all Las Vegas doormen and valets are lazy, slit-eyed, money-grubbing opportunists. Several might be decent, honest, observant and caring people. Naturally they’ll seldom pass up a chance to make an extra buck, but doing so won’t plunge them into rat-bastard unscrupulousness.
A few of these stalwarts worked the portals during the nights in question. None have yet to ever mind speculating about guests habiting their respective properties.
Nice to have the steel-toed shoe on the other foot. All the better with which to kick.
The Schadenfreude to be enjoyed drops directly from the 2016 election results.
Given a clear choice between vast experience and absolute unpreparedness, between a first-rate temperament for governing or petulance and impatience intolerable in well-run enterprises, between a superior intellect brimming with curiosity and a small mind formed and locked early, less than half of American voters chose disaster. Unfortunately, our no longer great nation remains beholden to the last vestige of slavery.
The Electoral College.
Undeserving though awarded our presidency nonetheless, Donald Trump personifies the least of the United States. In his bloated, billowy, and bloviating presence he is the antithesis of “American exceptionalism.”
Heard the sharpest retort to one of the vilest insults recently. Of greater interest, though, was the woman who launched it.
Nasrin identified herself as “Persian.” Yeah. She’s Persian, all right. As Persian as I’m African. She’s a 20-something Cali girl through and through.
What gained my favor was her having enough pride in self to supplant Persian for Iranian. The former carries nobility stretching back into antiquity.
A Persian background is replete with culture and atavistic figures. Xerxes? Cyrus? Esther? Their respective histories are as current today as their living importance in the past.
Iranians, their inheritors, are poor cousins. Compared against their classic progenitors, they lack stature. Who esteems them? Continue reading Her Persian Voice→
Could Harvest of Shame be filmed today? And if so, what would our reaction be? Horror? Guilt? Scorn?
In 1960, CBS News produced a documentary titled Harvest of Shame. Migrant farmworkers, the conditions under which they lived and worked, were the subjects. To further emphasize the misery, CBS premiered this episode on Thanksgiving night. Perhaps it hoped the subject matter would pierce viewers deeper on our national okay to gorge day.
I first saw the show about 16-17 years after its initial broadcast. Recently I re-watched Edward R. Murrow and a cast of fellow citizens then likely considered disposable, if better-off Americans bothered considering them at all, discuss who made our nation’s groaning larders possible.
Watching it again after intervening decades, the black & white program has become starker, my understanding of disparities in America clearer, as the chasm between empathy and indifference in Americans has widened. Continue reading All the News That’s Fit to Reap→
Who visits Las Vegas to practice decorum and exercise restraint? Nobody. Not even Mormons.
Despite the justifiably popular “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas” slogan that lures however many suckers from the nation’s tight-assed regions, that O.J. Simpson was jailed and remains so for convoluted activities here proves the advertising somewhat specious.
This is how perception has re-formed amid the Mojave and the Southern Nevada mountains – bands like the Eagles and the Pure Prairie League sound more appropriate here than they ever did down in Arizona’s Sonora Desert and certainly back East in New York. Those guitars and keening voices cut through the Mojave’s harshness.
Although the poignancy of the bands’ ballads further emphasize the region’s emptiness, each offers relief to the barren horizon and the few figures populating it. Hmmm. Figure that out.
People often ask whether I miss New York, and if so what do I particularly miss. My pat reply is usually, “Whatever I miss was already gone before I left.”
Met one of the world’s most remarkable men recently. And he wasn’t drinking a beer after performing some incredible feat.
Arturo. Pudgy, balding, brown eyes the depth of infinite sorrow sat on a face that struggled and failed rising past sadness. A great achievement did not distinguish him. Noble, though? Yes. What separated him from our mass of humanity? Arturo had been able to forgive his wife’s killer.
The United States is no longer inspirational. Our people have surrendered aspiration. This Republic has assumed the vilest qualities of Donald Trump, a pig who has been awarded our presidency.
Gone are the verve, curiosity, and intellect which propelled our formerly great nation. Removed is the fresh-faced visage and vigor which once made us indispensable among all countries inhabiting the earth.
