Video from our Sungod Abscondo concert

We played our first concert as a full, 4-piece band this week.  I put together this playlist of 10 songs from the show.

Fear of authority

It is foolish to always trust authority.  It is equally foolish to always resist all forms of authority.  So, the question must be asked, when is it healthy to fear and resist authority?  Alternatively, when does a fear of authority represent nothing more than paranoia? 

It is first necessary to consider the purpose of authority.  In a democratic society, authority is given to government functions by the citizens (and is, theoretically, not imposed upon them).  Perhaps the most legitimate purpose for authority is in keeping us safe from others.  If someone else is pointing a gun at me, I want that individual restricted and the gun taken away.  If someone is actively building a bomb, I want the materials confiscated and the individuals involved arrested.  If someone is driving drunk, I want that person punished in order to keep me safe.  And if it should be the case that my actions are threatening the safety of others, I also accept that the authorities have every right to restrict me or punish me.

However, what I see more of these days is another kind of authority altogether.  I see airport security questioning people about where they traveled and why, I see people being arrested for smoking marijuana (doing no harm to others), I see people being turned away from night-clubs for the crime of being 20 years old.  Much worse yet, I see profit-hungry corporations taking over the authority of democratically-elected governments in order to maximize profits by dropping more bombs, making more fighter-jets, or filling more (for-profit) prisons.  I see a government that spies on citizens with no reasonable cause.  I see cameras spying on us in every public space.  I see a government telling gay people they can't marry, immigration officials telling human beings they can't work without documentation, and I see scared people taking their shoes off to pass through metal detectors just to enter a government building or get on a flight.  What I don't see is probable cause for how any of these behaviors are examples of people threatening harm to others.

Authority has pushed too far. As individuals, we do not have the power to resist illegitimate authority in every case.  To do so would be self-defeating and foolish.  However, it is our shared responsibility to recognize illegitimate authority where we see it, to make no justifications of it, to detest it, and to push back on it whenever and wherever some small battle can be won.

I no longer approve of President Obama

I'm glad that I wasn't one of the millions of hopeful Americans giving as much of their time, energy, and money as they possibly could to get this man elected.  He campaigned on "hope" and "change" and I wondered back then when the hell we were supposed to be hoping for.  His promises looked thin.

Of course I understood that democratic change was impossible in the USA because, after all, the USA is no longer a democracy.  It is a corporate-controlled state that maintains its democratic functioning as a sport-like side-show to pacify its subjects.  Indeed, American democracy died off in the 1960's.

How can I make such a claim?  The simple truth is that no significant, positive democratic change has come to the American people through its government during the past 40 years.  I challenge anyone to name one.  The democratic system is not functioning in the sense that it is possible for "the people" to shape policy according to their needs or desires.  To the contrary, only the most powerful corporations have any power to do so.

So, as expected, I'm looking at the Obama presidency and realizing that nothing at all has changed.  We are still fighting immoral and illegal wars, based on lies, in both Iraq and Afghanistan because the military industrial complex wants it so.  On top of this, Obama easily approved the biggest mafia heist in history when he turned over trillions of borrowed dollars to the financial institutions who threatened to destroy the economic system as a result of their own corrupt behavior.  Now he begins to tell us that no real health care reform can be expected because the insurance companies don't want to allow anything that will hurt their profits.

So, the country is heading straight toward collapse (due to the impossibly large budget deficit created only to fund the looting) as people are being killed and lives are being ruined (in wars and through lack of a health care system) and all as the environment is simultaneously being destroyed.

So we're supposed to sit back and love our "nice-guy" President?  OK, in fairness, maybe real change isn't possible.  Maybe the CIA will take him out JFK-style if he orders the troops home or does anything meaningful.  So this is about self-preservation?  In that case, he can piss off because sending others out to die in a war to save your own life...watching others suffer and die needlessly in a non-health care system for the purpose of self-preservation...watching the country and the planet plunging toward destruction while telling us that change doesn't happen overnight...those are hideous, unforgivable acts.  You should never have run for office. So which is it, are you a coward or are you simply not on our side at all?

If you become President of the USA, you ought to change something or die trying. 

I'm glad that all did to support this President is give him $100, because that's about all he deserves so far.

An American in Paris

There is no European dream
Just the life experience
From the land f the un-free
To a time and place to free us

With a glove that never fit
On a hand that didn't need it
Walked away from that sad, cold room
I quit

You might ask when I'll be back
But if you heard my lazy laugh
And knew that its not at you
You'd see I never intend to

In an artful walk that passed me by
I saw my future
Foreign languages, but familiar eyes
I feel alive

So there'll be no European dream
Dreams will never free us
From the land of the unseen
In a place where we can be us