Category Archives: Politics

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.

March to Moscow

08 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Poem, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Politics, Russia, Spirituality

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Moscow2

Caring folks of the world, unite!
Don’t tell me this isn’t your fight.

Fear makes and shoots bombs,
killing children every single night.

Love is the most powerful weapon
forged in the fire of Creation…
Adults who make and shoot guns
to kill have lost sight of naked life,
have replaced it with love of nation.

Give what you got, wake up at
the sound of another mortar blast!

Get up now, grab a bag, take your
kids to the East not West!

Yes, I said it… It’s time we paid a
visit to the source of hate.

Bring love, food, flowers and music
before it is indeed too late!

They paint a picture and it’s tempting
to judge.  But I’ve never spent a day
in someone else’s shoes, I need to
purify so start with myself—

Who?

Me and my band of loving thoughts
we’re marching to Moscow to confront
the big boss.

We shall bring love and food and music
and flowers, straight up the gut of fear,
many yelling at us that “we’re headed
for a nuclear power!!”

We hurdle obstacles but do not
hit back when they hit us.

The press snaps photos, others tell
stories, and the human heart that’s
in each and every man, woman and child
will beat as one because love is…

Love is actually what we all want,
even Vladimir Putin.

How to Properly Stand with Ukraine

04 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by in Poetic Blog, Politics, Ukraine

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What created this moment?  How did the world come to watch on television a six-year old Ukrainian girl succumbing to her injuries from a Russian bomb in tragic, senseless death?  The most powerful military force in the world watching on the sidelines?  The most powerful military alliance in the world standing by, thousands of miles away?

Fear of nuclear war is seemingly rational, but fear itself is a poor decision-making paradigm.  It seems that it is this fear which drives U.S. decisions to steer clear of direct confrontation with Putin’s army, which is currently bullying Ukrainian population centers—even willing to shell nearby nuclear power plants.

Confronting bullies with economic sanctions is not “standing with Ukraine.”  If you witnessed a defenseless child being assaulted in the street, how would she feel about you promising to go after her attacker’s bank accounts and ability to be economically mobile?  The child would yell out, “No! Please help defend me against my attacker!”

With knowledge comes responsibility.  With power the same… We all know Putin’s army is committing wrongs against innocent people, threatening the peace and safety of Ukraine, Europe and the world at large.  A military defense exists to defeat Putin…  Why not use it now to control air space above a largely defenseless Ukraine—

Pushing back on the bully.  Scaring back the bully.  Making the bully rethink his aggression until he backs down as the Soviets did when we pushed them back in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.  Repeated appeals to “our NATO allies” and waiting for Putin to take all of Ukraine in a bloody, unnecessary invasion represents fear.

A fear of confrontation.  A fear of the bully.  Is that America?

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

05 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in Homeless, Los Angeles, Poetic Blog, Political, Politics

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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.

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

My Pledge of Allegiance

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in America, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Peace American Flag

I pledge allegiance to World Peace,
And to being peaceful, Loving
and True to God as I understand God,
while tolerating others and their
beliefs, gods and names for them.

I reject nationalism, racism and borders,
accept boundaries as sound and safe,
but not as weapons to degrade, dehumanize
and exclude my fellow human beings
seeking a good and free day, as we all are.

I declare gratitude to God, my higher power,
the Native Great Spirit, the bible, the
Tao Te Ching, all human effort to be godly
and better than we are… We are powerless
over events, results, the future!  Admitting…

Is the start of a happy life, Truth the key;
without it we have nothing, no peace of mind,
nothing to give, sort of like trying to go out
one day without sleep the night before,
thinking you could possibly enjoy…

San Miguel del Mundo!  Not on maps only,
but in my heart, one that prays for a less racist,
honest and peaceful America that admits
the truth that people are not in charge,
Democracies are a myth, and Love is all.

***

(Excerpt from my new poetry book, San Miguel del Mundo: https://www.amazon.com/dp/165567577X)

Alcohol Ads Should Be Banned

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholism, Poetic Blog, Politics

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by Bill Watkins, 10/2/2019

Richard Nixon banned Cigarette ads in 1970.  He was aware through common sense and a 1964 Surgeon General study that cigarette use killed a lot of people, and he signed their advertising out of American existence…

Not so with alcohol, C2H5OH, the colorless, volatile, flammable, toxic liquid resulting from fermentation some like to buy and drink.  As with cigarettes, alcohol is a mass killer of human beings, a mass destroyer of public property and very hard to control.  And yet our televisions pitch it to us daily, ramping up during sporting events—whether in prime time or at six in the morning during British football broadcasts on NBC.

The scariest numbers in this are 88,000 and 28.4%.  That first number is how many people in this country die every year of alcohol-related causes, third most of all preventable causes of death, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).  Alcohol only behind cigarettes and poor diet/exercise habits, according to the Institute.

28.4% is the percentage of under-21 viewership of alcohol ads allowed by law, according to the FTC.  As there are about 100 million Americans under twenty one, by current FTC guidelines and alcohol’s self-regulation, it’s acceptable to advertise the buying and drinking of a dangerous liquid to about twenty-eight million young people under twenty-one years of age.

The FTC has no record of how many alcoholics the alcohol industry pitches in advertising every year.  NIAAA claims fifteen million Americans over-18 suffer from alcoholism, over six percent of that age group’s population.  Is it fair that someone struggling with alcoholism, or a sober alcoholic, can tune into their favorite sporting event on TV, only to be hammered with ads that pitch him or her to engage in an activity that could or almost killed them?

Like guns, alcohol is a mainstay in this “great democracy” set up on usurped Native American land.  Europeans brought alcohol, guns, disease, and a bible—used them to control this land.  At what point will we decide to stop, analyze what is truly good, maybe listen and follow what that book taught on God, not killing and heaven?  If Nixon can hit back on a killing substance in 1970, take away some of its power, why not Trump with alcohol?  Just kidding.  But maybe a lawmaker like Amy Klobuchar, who has seen the harm of alcohol up close?

Maybe we can all find our inner common sense, reverse rudders on this crude, usurped land management, ask Native America back, kick out killers like guns and alcohol.  At the least, we can kick out the ads—a precedented step not easy against a Washington alcohol machine, but a needed one to protect America’s greatest resource: our children.

Let’s Stop the War

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in History, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Native Map of America

by Bill Watkins, Land Thief, 9/1/2019

We’ve been waging war on this land ever since Columbus first “discovered and conquered” the West Indies for Catholic Spain.  First the Spanish, then the English in a land called Wingandacoa—which they changed to “Virginia” after Elizabeth I, the virgin queen, who King James loosely quotes in his first Virginia Charter of 1606:

…our licence to make habitacion, plantacion and to deduce a colonie of sondrie of our people into that parte of America commonly called Virginia, and other parts and territories in America either appartaining unto us or which are not nowe actuallie possessed by anie Christian prince or people…

“If they’re not Christian—take it,” was the attitude.  By force.  Build a fort, plantations, seek gold, bring most back to the Crown, take some for yourself, call yourself an admiral and own the land you find.  Never mind the native people and their way of life; that there was more to heaven and earth than was dreamt of in European philosophy!  Some could dismiss this all as history, if we lived in the United States of Native American Nations.  But we do not.

We live on stolen land, most of us, while its original caretakers have been pushed nearly off the map into tiny reservations.  The native people loved the land, used it wisely, moderately and with great care.  They were grateful for it, the seasons, lived in and amongst nature in a cycle of life that didn’t need books or written law codes to direct. Their art was composed by the Great Spirit; the waterfalls, valleys and rivers along with wildlife provided their entertainment and joy.

There’s the Gold, Britain!  There, the precious resource, the eternal commodities of Gratitude, Wisdom and love for the Land!

But no.  We have our bibles, our guns—they, these savages, must leave while we erect Europe Part II in this glorious land.  We’ll run our concrete and asphalt over it, build our buildings, drive our vehicles—burn the earth the natives cherished in order to go faster, higher and farther…  If there was a flame, we’d be a moth bound for it, and so there was and that flame was war.  And we are still waging that war in the city of Los Angeles, formerly Otsungna—the native place of roses.  From military to paramilitary police, we equate might with right still, pat ourselves on the back as we kill silence with our helicopters and sirens,

then we train to kill and kill our fellow human beings, if the mood strikes us, call it self-defense, say the Constitution allows us to have guns and shoot people.  Good guys and bad guys, calling ourselves Christian, while Jesus’ words echo unheard: “Only God is good,” he said, but what is he next to our own will to steal and destroy land the native people used to love and revere?  The USA is a sad ruse of stealing land, breaking from England, and playing house.

The native Great Spirit is still king here.  Get ready, if you’ve never felt it, for its proud light is soon returning, as this land thief soon removes himself.  And some day I plan to bring “gold” back to my queen or king, teach them the native ways of loving our land.

Land Theft Invalidates USA

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Posted by in History, Native, Native American, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Native People Mapping1

by Bill Watkins 9/5//2019

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.  —John Locke

Land theft is no basis for a valid government.  Someone could appeal to violence and war, rationalize the European conquest of the Americas, but underneath the movement and close to the soil of this land is the truth that crimes against humanity established the thirteen colonies, who rebelled against England to assert themselves as the United States of America, while America’s original inhabitants were to be killed off, subdued, moved and forgotten.  A criminal for-profit enterprise, leaving us with usurped land, its native inhabitants pushed into small reservations—a miniscule percentage of their natural inheritance—people who never gave consent to be governed by Europeans, and never should.

When Queen Elizabeth chartered Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploration of the American eastern coast in 1584, she granted him license “to discover, search, finde out, and view such remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince.”  The first “Virginia Charter” backed up that thought, as King James urged English adventurers to “bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a setled and quiet govermente.”  Professed Christianity would help the English usurp the land called Wingandacoa by the natives, James ordering his sailors to propagate the “Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darkeness and miserable ignorance of the true knoweledge and worshippe of God.”

Having studied native American culture diligently for a few years, sober for twenty years, sensitive and aware, hungry for truth, it is clearer to me every day that it was the alcohol-consuming, cursing, armor and gun-loving Europeans—not the natives—who lived in darkness and miserable ignorance of the truth that the Earth was to be honored, respected and preserved. That guns, explosions, killing and noise were not strength but weakness.  And strength?  Witness a piece of it in the eloquence of a great native chief:

From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man.  Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.  

Chief Luther Standing Bear1

Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota Sioux

Like the English, the Spanish were guilty of land theft, starting with Columbus’ 1492 raid, leading to a threatening letter from King Ferdinand to the Taino-Arawak people of the West Indies.  In the letter, King Ferdinand informs the native people that the Pope is the ruler of the world, the bible’s God is the ruler of the universe, and that Spain shall be the ruler of all non-Christian lands they discover.  Should any of the native tribes resist, the Spanish would declare “war upon you from all sides and with all possible means, and we shall bind you to the yoke of the Church and of Their Highnesses.”  Further that “we shall enslave your persons, wives and sons, sell you or dispose of you as the King sees fit; we shall seize your possessions and harm you as much as we can as disobedient and resisting vassals.”

And so these supposed Christian people stole land, people who touted a bible that forbade stealing.  We erected laws and a Constitution that also forbade stealing, even though the privilege to write laws and hold land here was obtained through armed theft. Usurpation and theft can never be a valid basis for government, something John Locke proposed and I hereby second today.

…the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered…

Yes, Sir John, you speak the truth.  So should all of us, so should all of us!

The Death of Bush: Another JFK Murderer Silenced?

03 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in JFK, Kennedy, Poetic Blog, Politics

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Cloudy Bush2

—by Bill Watkins, 12-3-2018

***

I do not feel much for the loss of George Herbert Walker Bush, as many do on my favorite cable news channel, MSNBC.  What I do feel is regret that I did not work harder to get an interview with my uncle’s old boss.

Yes, I’m the nephew of a Bush Sr. cabinet appointee, Admiral James D. Watkins (1927-2012), called to run the Energy Department after heading up Ronald Reagan’s AIDS Commission in 1986.  Before that, my uncle served in the Navy, retiring as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) not long before accepting the Reagan post.

Years and years earlier, a lot of mystery clouds George H.W. Bush.  Between gigs as a Yale undergrad, notorious Skull and Bones member, “Texas Oil Man” and a place in the House of U.S. Representatives—was he an active CIA operative, critical to the botched Bay of Pigs operation of 1961?  Was he in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and did he, like E. Howard Hunt, have a role in killing John F. Kennedy?

Watch John Hankey’s clever, upbeat horror doc to wake up from any nap, then join me in suspecting George H.W. Bush of covert activity and cover-stories while in the CIA throughout the 1960’s prior to being elected to Congress.  It’s called The Dark Legacy and is available wherever you stream your videos, or from his website: http://www.thedarklegacy.com/.

When I watch the burial services of George H.W. Bush, I feel no sadness.  Only regret that I did not push through with my connections to get a good interview with the man.  Maybe I could have appealed to his highly reported sense of “honor” and cough up some truth!  I believe another of JFK’s murderers has finally passed away this week, and you will too if you research around a bit.  Start with Oliver Stone’s JFK for overview, get into Jim Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins, then read everything attorney Mark Lane ever wrote on the subject of the Kennedy killing.

Killing Kennedy is not our only national sin, definitely not the first!  We killed off and lied to Native America, stole land, and worked that land with slaves we never paid nor made true amends to, I’m sorry to say.

If we are ever to be a decent country, we must tell the Truth.  The truth of this week for me is that I look forward to moving past another JFK farce, get back to Mueller squaring up Donald Trump for obvious crimes committed, including Obstructing Justice by firing James Comey at the five o’clock hour on May 9th, 2017.