Category Archives: Political

Letting Go of Democracy

02 Wednesday Nov 2022

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USA -- Broken1

Let go.  Democracy isn’t that great.  Let go.  Civilization is overrated.  Let go.  Money has corrupted the whole thing.  Let go!  Nancy won’t solve it, but neither will Trump.  Biden is overrated in an overrated seat, so stop pedestal shopping!

Live your own life.  Find its meaning, set out on a great adventure for your own personal peace of mind.  Study your roots, ignore your roots, make an investment—sell all your stuff and travel the world…  You feel you lack “privilege” and that I have it as a white male?  Well, I started drinking alcohol on Dad’s lap at five, was blacking out on the substance by thirteen, and almost killed myself in my twenties, OD-ing on lithium and whatever else overrated Western medical professionals prescribed me.

Too much “overrated?”  Maybe, but that’s what this all is.  Sure, democracy beats monarchy, but don’t you think there just might be something better out there in the universe of governing principles?  What about Russell Means’ and the Lakota’s idea of Consensus-rule?  Instead of up-down votes leaving upset minorities and power-crazy majorities, winners and losers… what if we actually took the time to move slowly but surely with Consensus decision-making?

No movement until we’re all on board!  Takes a lot of prayer, meditation and introspection… a lot of work!  But we’re worth it.  So let’s go.  Let’s let go.  Let’s let go of something that wasn’t that great for all people in the first place.  How was “American” (European) democracy for the native people we displaced and violently removed to establish it?  I’d say it’s always been a bummer to first peoples, who lived in harmony with the earth.  With this land they knew through a higher spirituality than that in our bibles no one owned but God.

Higher Power.  Great Spirit.  All-mighty Creator.  Call it what you want, but let’s go.  Let’s let go.  Be humble, know our place in the universe, and the truth that expensive, overrated “people-rule” politics will never solve your problems.  Admit that truth and watch real power roll in and lead us to the promised land.

The Cowardice of NATO

24 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Europe, Poetic Blog, Political

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Stuck in 1984, NATO is frozen inside its borders, holding meetings, wearing fancy suits—looking good—while Ukraine suffers.

Cowardice.  Lack of backbone.  Lack of facts!  Lack of leaders making sound decisions based on facts, instead of cowering to irrational fears of nuclear threats.

Like Trump, Vladimir Putin is a blusterer.  The core of him is fear.  But no sober analyst has pegged him as suicidal!  No credible reports have spotted his desire to end life on earth.

It’s just that his army’s not that great.  He thought he had USSR power, but he’s quickly realizing he’s got 2022 Russia power, built by a so-so Russian economy.  So how does he generate the fear of USSR power, to enable him to kill Ukrainian children today?

He talks about using nukes, to make NATO cower.  NATO members are so in love with their suits, fancy cars and current peace inside their borders, that they stand on the sidelines watching Ukrainian children die at the hands of Putin, and they weakly hit back with economic sanctions.

“We don’t want a direct war with Russia” was 1984’s line, but Joe Biden and other NATO heads love to issue it to cameras, reporters, and President Zelensky of Ukraine—who of course looks to a force like NATO to stand up for freedom in Europe.

Cowards.

Backbone

10 Thursday Mar 2022

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Backbone1 (2)

“We don’t want to set a red
line because then we’ll be boxed
into that decision.”

“We don’t want to confront
the world leader killing civilians
because he might get mad and
turn on us.”

“Ukraine is our friend, but since
they are not members of NATO
we’ll fight a proxy war on the
sidelines, issue sanctions…”

“We are standing with Ukraine!”

“We are standing up to Moscow!”

Bombs dropping on hospitals and
schools, apartment buildings and
a Holocaust remembrance museum.

The Russian army surrounding towns,
about to starve out the people, while
they bomb civilians that try to
escape.  Frigid.  Heat cut.  Cold.

Cold to the bone…

We have no backbone.

In America, the government has
appealed to nuclear fear for eighty
years to help keep us out of a
direct confrontation with Russia.

I mean the Soviet Union… I mean the
USSR… They’re the same thing, right?

No, they aren’t.  One was a legal member
of the United Nations and its Security
Council.  The other is not… “Russia,”
re-established as a Federation in 1991,
did not formally apply and get voted
into the UN, as they should have been.

Give the Devil an inch and he’ll
take a mile.

Allow Russians to form on the Ukrainian
border without a direct response:

an invitation for them to come over
and kill a bunch of Ukrainians.

Where’s your backbone, Joe?

“But we don’t want to…”

Yeah, the spineless always have
an excuse not to confront evil.

What Homeless Problem? Leaders Scapegoat the Poor Instead of Tackling Development’s Filth

05 Friday Nov 2021

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-by Bill Watkins 10/27/2021

The problems of “Los Angeles” run deep, as deep as the rivers and lakes that used to bless this land before the great European conquest.

It used to be a land of many names to many tribes.  By any name naturally sweet, especially when compared to what we industrialists have done to it.  Litter spews out of sidewalks’ cracks, asphalt trying to make all accessible to earth-burning cars, elected leaders in suits meeting in grand halls making and spending money…

Then we are appalled “at that bum on the corner.”  At all the trash, the smell of urine, RV’s mounting months of rentless stays, providing homes to some and eyesores to others – those enclosed in business attire at stationary houses, nine to five jobs shaking their heads…  “Let’s have a meeting about the homeless!!” they hurl, as the trash mounts.

Did anyone ever think we should just pick up the trash?  Daily?  And not just in gas-guzzling trucks, but on foot?  Los Angeles has forgotten how to walk!  LAPD, since the 1960’s, has even decided to police by helicopter!  Never mind the noise, the sound of war…  There they are because you forgot to lock your deified car, someone stole it, and now we add the second crime of noise pollution from above to stop the theft!

I call for a return to Otsungna.  Yaangna, or whichever the names were before the Spanish and their guns stole land and branded it angelic with their bibles.  We have failed.  We have desecrated.  We have polluted…  And now it’s the fault of poor people?  People who look to a blessed outdoor life?  Sleeping under the stars?

In this formerly peaceful, natural space the conquerors called Los Angeles I don’t see a homeless problem.  I see a filth problem, and lazy leaders getting rich in suits who haven’t the slightest idea how to get out of their SUV’s, put on some work clothes, go out on foot –

and solve it.

The Failure of Democracy

03 Wednesday Nov 2021

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It’s not so bad.

The realization that the second
major people-governing concept
has failed…

First there was Higher Power, gods
invoked so close to us on
earth that they came to our
dreams, spoke and guided us.

Folks like those under the prophet
Samuel kicked that theocracy out
years ago, thought kings might
be a better way, for “Hey—

all the other nations was doin’ it!”
The Hebrew god warned kings might
be corrupt, finally that on the day
we complained, he wouldn’t hear.

So the Greeks rose up like a Narcissus
flower, rejected single male power,
and invented dēmokratia, democracy –
Long live people-rule, at last!

The Romans liked it, spread it
around by force, liked Jesus—spread
him around by force, combined the two
to steal land in the New World,

a Dutch mapmaker calling it all…
America.  The natives still had their
higher powers, excited by the earth
and their place under a Great Spirit.

But we had our democracy, bible, and
most powerful of all, it would seem,
gun powder.  An Asian invention, fireworks
English and other Euros used to kill.

So people-rule it was and has been,
although I’ve never seen people rule
during an earthquake, forest fire
or hurricane.

“It’s flooding, you say? Well, let’s
hold a vote,” never much swayed
the elements, but still we claim that
“people-power is best.”

Until it isn’t.  Until two parties argue
and argue and do nothing.  Until you
realize there is no power in hallways,
marble and human art, that the

natives may have had it more right
than wrong, the waterfalls, valleys,
rivers and mountains of their
higher powers holding joy and sway.

I used to talk and write of Geocracy,
God, Earth and People-rule, but
know the word in front offends, so
onward I look, want to join?

People don’t always rule, so let’s
move on… There’s something better
at the end of this tunnel, so keep
digging toward the light.

Democracy has died because it was
never in the first place right.

The combination of people, honoring
the earth and invoking a higher power
seeming to this poet the truth,
a way to it, giving blindness sight.

Democracy Has Failed: Is There a Better Way?

01 Monday Nov 2021

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-by Bill Watkins 10/25/2021

I have never seen “people-rule” during an earthquake.  Or in the midst of a Category Four hurricane, forest fires or any other natural disaster.  I have never known a person or group of people who knew the future or could influence events to a level that would decide it.

And yet we around here hold on against hope to an old Greek concept that touts the untruth that people do have power, an ultimate power of governing events.  It’s a lie, but a far better one than what monarchies pitch, so… we stick with it, a so-so governing concept that only has occasionally worked on Turtle Island (“America” to the invaders), and only after we Europeans removed the natives here by brutal, genocidal force.

Men will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them.

Democracy on stolen land?  Can it work?  Of course not.  When did the United States ever get consent to rule over the native people here?  They did not, nor will they ever have it, therefore the USA has no “right of empire,” as Sir John Locke, quoted above, would eloquently put it. 

If here today, I think the English philosopher would conclude that the United States Constitution is invalid.  Written on stolen land.  For what good are written laws upon a shameful genocide and forced removal of people?  Karma alone is powerful enough, some might say, to forever curse the Europeans who continue to hammer their Roman civilization down on the unwilling—

And by unwilling, I’m not just referring to “people,” ye lovers of “democracy!”  There’s more than just us here!  There is the Earth, its plants, its animals, powers at work to create this world and universe.  There are powers at work that might know what the future holds, powers above human pay grade…  People can decide and control a portion of events, perhaps, but not the whole thing—

Why “people-rule” is invalid, false, and misleading.  Why democracy, although a better system than monarchy, can in no way be thought of as the best conceivable governing system.  We must seek a third concept, a more truthful, all-encompassing one that includes more of nature and all those powers we can’t control.  The American Congress invokes those powers at times, has their ministers praying in their enclosed halls, but perhaps the prayers are blocked by grand European-style marble ceilings.  “Democracy” is hallowed like a religion by some, a false one (unless you can say people rule our floods).

What could be better?  What might that third concept be?  What about American Indian Movement (AIM) activist, Russell Means’ Lakota concept of “Consensus Rule?” He said in his book, Where White Men Fear to Tread, that “the human, intelligent way—the Oglala Lakota and Indian way—is to rule by consensus. That is true democracy.” Could we get consensus among ourselves with enough effort? Wouldn’t a complete consensus include a nod to Mother Earth and Creation before making decisions?

It’s time we accept we don’t know it all, can’t know it all.  Invoke, invoke, invoke.  Hold more meetings outside, adopt native views and native terms.  Tear down the racist USA, the term “America” itself a European invention forced down throats in non-European land.  Listen to the natives, who had no guns when we met them.  Their way of life not perfect, but one lived in concert with nature, not in aggressive competition against it.

Ame-rica, a Dutch mapmaker’s idea, coined from Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci’s first name, but also a telling mix of Latin words expressing “love of wealth and riches.”  And power.  False power.  The false claim that people have power in all situations, a false claim that “Democracy” foments.  Democracy has done its duty!  It broke us out of the far worse corruption of kings…

But as Democrats and Republicans fight in Washington, roads and bridges fail, and pharmaceutical companies get rich calling their drugs “health,” it’s time to admit that democracy is overrated… In fact, it’s just a good system, but maybe “good is the enemy of the best,” as AA’s Bill W. once put it.

Let’s move toward the best, back to the earth, back to admitting people are part of this universe, but not the whole part.  Let’s make amends to first peoples, wipe out bad, racist, violent and dishonest concepts and find something that works.  Russell Means presents the concept of Consensus.  Perhaps it’s high time we strive to achieve it on this once-revered, honored land.

It’s Not the Virus That Kills

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, God, Government, Health, Poetic Blog, Political, Politics, Spirituality

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Virus1

-by Bill Watkins 7/31/2020

Death stats are reported by folks who believe deeply in death.  Physical death.  That’s it, we’re done, the physical is all…  But isn’t there another way to live and see life, death and health?  The spiritual way, one under-represented right now in governments world-wide?

Back when I still believed in the invalid United States of America, I wrote an article entitled “What is Health?” which included Twitter poll results from users, who shared their definitions:

1. Bill Watkins:  “Health is a Peace of Mind, Knowing I did the best I could to be the best person I was capable of becoming in all my affairs.”

2. “Duck,” Anti-Circumcision Activist:  “Health is discovering yourself and feeding your truth.”

3. Online T-shirt Salesman:  “Health means your state of being and ability to function naturally.”

4. Aaron V. from Lake Tahoe:  “Health is natural whole foods, clean water, clean air, a nature soundscape with wildlife, good social relationships, the freedom to explore and then see self-improvement or progress, and having a shelter or sanctuary where one can retreat to and be certain to have all of those things despite what else is going on in the world.”

5 Sonya on Twitter:  “I believe saying ‘I am healthy’ is relative to your own circumstances. For me, I feel health is a state of physical wellness as well as mental wellness. I believe it’s hard to say I am healthy if either one is compromised to a degree where we are not enjoying living our lives. If we are feeling the best we can for our age and capacity – in that everything is functioning as well as can be expected – and we are getting through each and every day with quality of life in tact, even if it has to be aided by medication, then to me that is healthy. If body and mind are still functioning well enough for me to enjoy life, then I am healthy.”

6. College Newspaper Staff:  “I’d say health is a state of being. I think it’s a perceived value of physical, emotional, and mental stability and regularity for each individual person. The achievement of ‘healthy’ will differ from person to person based on lifestyle, availability of nourishment and space, and personality.”

7. Dan R., Twitter:  “Being good in mind body and soul.”

8. Yvonne on Twitter:  “Health is a balance of spiritual, mental and physical well-being”

9. Anastacia on Twitter:  “Health to me means that I’m happy, I am not sick, I can laugh with out being in pain.”

10. Poetry Group on Twitter:  “Health is the harmony of our body.”

11. Carlos M. on Twitter:  “Wellness is a holistic approach to life that includes diet and exercise first with traditional medical care second. ”

12. Ariel B. on Twitter:  “Health is Peace of Mind.”

13. Marion W. on Twitter:  “Time set aside in solitude and/or quietness to grow, reflect, write and decompress.”

And… how about Google?

14. Google:  “Health is the state of being free from illness or injury.”

***

A lot of different perspectives, so why do governments think they can represent us all on this issue?  They stay away from mixing the state with religion, but aren’t they coming across many of our personal, even religious beliefs by putting their hands into such a controversial bowl of heaven keys?

“Peace of mind” is a short version of my definition for health, as it was for one of my Twitter poll participants—something that has little to do with Western medicine’s extracting blood, focusing on the physical, administering drugs.  Core to the Western medical business is core to religion: giving folks peace of mind, that they will heal from hardship.  Religion goes on to speak of heaven, doctors stop at peace…  Maybe those two words and concepts are in some ways interchangeable.

But in neither heaven nor earth will it ever be right to decide someone else’s health path, if that someone is an adult of sound mind.  Who should decide mental soundness?  I’d say, based on my Twitter poll and personal conviction, more people should be involved in health decisions, from different fields of study, and different beliefs.  There is more to heaven, earth, and health than is cooked up in Western medicine’s cake, and it’s time governments recognize that, call out doctors for the fallible people they are.  They have fancy degrees, I concede the hard work that goes into them, but who can say something divine or perfect grants them?

To me health is a peace of mind, knowing I did my best to be the best person I’m capable of becoming—a spiritual concept, borrowed shamelessly from the late, great John Wooden.  “Death” to this humble citizen of Mexico, the invalid United States and someday England: doesn’t exist, if with faith in God you lived a good life.  “No good thing ever dies,” mused Stephen King once upon a time, and I agree.  So why all the talk of “Covid deaths?”  Did those souls not live?  Why not talk about their life?  Where is the gratitude for the air we breathe, for the lives we get to live, for our amazing immune systems?  If this was our last day to live on earth, what would you do with it?  Panic?  Complain about death?  Whine about a virus?

Not me.  The above set of questions reminds me of my old life, one in which I was spiritually dead, playing sports and drinking alcohol instead of loving my parents, life, a woman, and being an honest, honorable person.  There are worse things than physical death…  Among them, a life in fear, and as such out of love—if you adhere to St. Paul’s ideal.  So love life!  Live today!!  Say thanks to what you say thanks to, because tomorrow is a big question mark, salvation for me in peace of mind, something I’ll never get wearing a mask or fearing my fellow man for any reason whatsoever.

Fear is the killer, folks, FDR echoed here…  Fear is the virus.  Inoculate yourself against it by living great days in faith, in love and free of alcohol or drugs…  Thanks for your attention, an open mind following truth as a key to serenity, willingness putting us on the road, proper relations with our fellows and the earth a guarantee for eternal life.  Never death

Truth in American Policing

11 Saturday May 2019

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Police Aviation -- 1934 image1

—by Bill Watkins
Los Angeles, 5/11/2019

Native Americans had quite a message for us, so far unheeded or followed very much.

They lived at one with nature, took and used what they needed, in harmony and without loud intrusions like guns.

Europeans brought guns with their bibles, an arms race close quarters and over-populating seemed to bring in the Old World.  A good life to a European person was different from the good life a Native person found in America.  Book reading, elaborate clothing, and aforementioned guns—loud and nature-defying—were seen as marks of a better society than found when Columbus and other explorers began to conquer this land.

The British and Spanish cited lack of Christianity as a justification to kill, enslave and remove native people here, in a long war to replace their culture and presence with ours.  Now, guns are commonplace, noise meeting little resistance, police forces an extension of those first European thoughts that the un-Christian should be dominated and controlled.

A militant start has yielded militancy, and I have seen first-hand the violence at the heart of modern American governing.  Violence.  Judgment of others.  Justifications for noise and war.  Scapegoating people to separate us, from “gangs” to “terrorists”—groups we create with political corruption, greed and un-checked imperialization and colonization.

Guns do not make a culture better, but louder.  More violent.

Helicopters the same.

When will we stop, listen to the native Great Spirit?  When will we hear God in peace?  When will we stop taking so much money in leadership, while communities suffer and seek to protect themselves in what judgmental circles call those darned “gangs?”

We made the gangs with our neglect.  Now go punish them with our guns?  Now go invade privacy and disturb the peace with helicopters and sirens day and night?

The greatest enemy to peace in the city of Los Angeles is the greed at City Hall combined with a violent paramilitary force protecting the status quo of neglectful suits claiming to serve under-served neighborhoods.  Those under-served communities suffer, while councilmen make $178,000/year, the mayor about $232,000 and the Chief of Police around 300K.

I’m writing to plead with the real criminals of Los Angeles to change our ways, take less, and finally start serving communities we turned into problems years ago by kicking peace out to make way for our war.  Our war on nature.  Our war on people without bibles.  Our war on people who peacefully lived in a spot we coveted.  We displace and displace, neglect and neglect, drive around in our suits and bloated salaries.  Join me and end this criminal cycle!

Illusion of Power

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

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We sell our souls the moment
we pledge allegiance deeply to
anything not God, not good, not
the Creator, not Nature, not the
One.

You know the One.  The peace you
feel when you appeal to the highest
high.

It’s hard.  You have to ignore or
overcome your past, stuck in a
bottle or two—pushed out or down,

it’s tempting to get revenge, climb
some big ladder, and from apparent
heights spit down and cause problems
to your apparent enemies.

Keep it simple, they say, and maybe
they are right.

The more we hide, the more our sins
expose, the secrets we keep barring us
from finding what we truly seek;

Peace of mind.

Abandoning hate from anger from fear,
we wake up to a new day, listen to
higher power, wear less suits, tie
yourself not to things, material everywhere
except heaven—

which still exists!  Yes, we make or break
the goals we score, the mystical place
gained beyond the Great Mystery,

Native America pushed aside but truth
seeping up through evil’s cracks,
they are back in the grin of Columbus
the shiny coin of Lincoln, Seattle,
Standing Bear and the beginning.

Nothing ends that cannot, Newton
squaring all of us in three parts, one
of which asserting the conservation
of things, the equality of reality, dreams
and poking holes in power which is
only God’s no matter how it seems.

“Good Orderly Direction.”  Beware the
false gods and flags, borders and divisions.

Beware big words, capitalizing this
or that thing, there really is a jealous
Being moving stuff toward Faith.

Death removed, life toward one goal
with the Guide.  Good luck on it,
admit your faults, come out to see
the rainbow—

Imagine if after the rain, the sun
decided to fly!  It’s always here, while
today’s obsession comes and goes.

We cannot improve or change the world;
enjoy it, bloom where planted, and
consider deference to real power,
instead of the kings you crown on TV,

only that which we can touch and see.

There is more, believe me—or just wait
for the next event to humble us from shame,
putting higher power first is…

Serenity.

All Blood is Red

09 Thursday Aug 2018

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We hurt, we sing, we fight,
we pray, a human race here,
another there they said…

But all blood is red.

You have poked a snake, called
the same different, played the
game of hide and tweak—

with the Devil you sought peace
instead of the forgiveness
taught in Bible’s peak,

You have to love and listen
before your speak, the song
sung on podium’s dead…

All human blood is red.

Donald Trump, the hooting
and hollering of hatred from fear
of losing or anger of never having,

we blame a neighbor, our wives
instead of the calm look at our
own tweaked lives, this and

more, settling on your door,
like the stench of rain on your
dog’s coat, the sound of silence

broken by the caged parrot
breaking free in the empty blue
of pet store revelry, the God of

love is the only found so seek,
A long rest awaiting peace of
mind near heaven, blessed are

the meek.  The poor.  The
downtrodden will rise, the songs
words supplied, I’m talking of

the post-barfly path of the
abstinent walker of trails, could
be you, could be mine, the drift

of our lives toward peace and
childhood all the time.  The angry
and vengeful fall into their own

sulky trap of not seeing and
being the little boys and girls
grown up they can be, a deep

breath awaiting change, but until
then, take up your bed, walk with me,
and sing the song of what could be.

I’m hopeful not expecting the racist
to be well, to look up when called
away from their privately made hell.

Look around, see you in me, in them,
May God bless you to use your head.

See at last the truth before too late:
you are not that great…

We are all the same deep down,

All our blood is red.