There’s so much negativity out there these days. Pessimism is a poison pill.
So I’m here to offer some positivity! Here is the heartwarming and entirely true story of my launch into the stratospheric heights of fame and fortune.
Hot and sexy, oh yeah!
For sure, there are a lot of naysayers who think that success in the music business is impossible now, except for a handful of well-connected — usually hot and sexy — young artists. Granted, 70,000 new tunes are uploaded at Spotify every day. It’s reasonable to expect that in this tsunami of songs, a guy like me would get lost, made invisible by the blinding glare of millions of other songwriters, some using all sorts of fancy AI computer programs to write sixteen songs a day. These keyboard commandoes have been accused of riding roughshod over the creative playing field like a stampeding herd of buffaloes in a ballet class. Whatever.
The competition is stiff!
I refuse to buy into to such cynicism. Surrender is a sure guarantee of failure. I know in my heart that the world is just and kind and fair and takes care of all God’s children — as long as you have faith and brush your teeth three times a day. And lo! My faith has paid off in spades!
The big break just came this past week with a song I wrote way back in 2006, called Give Me Your Love.
There’s quite a story behind this particular tune.
“I wrote 26 songs today on my iPhone!”
I was living in Uganda at the time, becoming increasingly enamored with the pop music there. Yes, there’s a thriving pop scene in Africa. Very catchy, danceable songs, the kind you want to sing along with after hearing them a couple times. Most have reggae or reggaeton rhythms, great singers, excellent musicianship, highly-polished music tracks, incredible productions.
I was inspired! I started to get some fresh song ideas.
“I dedicated my last 406 albums to Paris Hilton.She’s so hot and sexy!”
One slight problem. I didn’t have access to any music instruments. None! All I had was a small laptop, a Macbook. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me, and I went to work.
This means, everything you hear (except for the singing) in this song was literally typed in. None of it was played. Note by note, I inserted the instruments, the entire musical track done with a computer keyboard and mouse, entered into a music program called Logic Express. I listened on earbuds.
“I am music and I write the songs … eat your heart out, Barry Manilow.”
Once the music track was done, I wrote the lyrics, came up with the melodies, the harmonies and background vocals, as I continued my travels to Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, China and Japan.
Eventually, after a year of backpacking and working on organic farms, I returned to the U.S. with Give Me Your Love and several other songs complete.
“I write Christian rock anthems. All 24,837 of my songs are in the key of C and at 82 BPM. Praise the Lord!“
Back in Portland, Oregon, I started looking around and found a studio singer with the right attitude and voice, hired her, and recorded the song into my MacBook using a single mic and pre-amp. I told her exactly what to sing, how I wanted it sung, gave her each and every part, then blended it all together in a final audio mix. I still genuinely love this young lady’s performance.
So now let’s get to my newfound success, directly related to this particular song! Hang onto your hats … or wigs … or hair weaves!
“Music is like life. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
About a year ago, I joined a indie musician site called Reverbnation. Then just recently, I signed up for DistroKid, a music distribution site which thousands of musicians have been flocking to the past couple years.
What this means for me as an artist is that my music is now available at Spotify, Apple, Shazam, Boomplay, Deezer, Pandora, Yandex, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Joox, and every other digital music distribution site across the planet!
Now get this! Three days ago, I got notified of my first earnings. If you dare, take a look at this, and if you’re an aspiring musician/singer/songwriter, burn with envy and awe.
(Click to enlarge)
Mind you, this money is available anytime I want it. I just hit the ‘Withdraw Money’ button and it’ll pop right into my PayPal account!
“John Rachel, you are so hot and sexy! Your nipples are pierced, right?”
I know as sure as my name is Heironymous Merkin that this is just the beginning. That the floodgates are now open. The sky is the limit! I’m even thinking I might offer an online series — like those Masterclass courses — on how to achieve success in the music business.
For sure, this has been a very exciting week!
Finally … because I consider everyone reading this a dear personal friend and honorary sister or brother, I would never expect anyone to have to spring the $.99 to listen to this song. Therefore, good people, here it is for you to listen to, download, pirate, or sync up with a video of you doing skateboard tricks dressed as an Oscar Meyer’s veggie dog, taking your toy Rottweiler to meet the macaque living next door, or leading a flash mob performing the macarena at the funeral of a skydiving champion whose chute didn’t open during the graduation ceremonies of your local high school. It’s a very versatile song!
Give Me Your Love – Written and produced by John RachelThat’s the MacBook I traveled with, and this is where I recorded the vocal for “Give Me Your Love”. Believe it or not, I still have that Roland keyboard and acoustic. Some things don’t change.
This is the latest on the fierce military conflict between the US and Canada.
To recap, tensions have been escalating over the past 24 months. Then four weeks ago, the US announced it had irrefutable proof that militant, America-hating militias had joined with the regular military forces of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, to position a formidable, threatening, highly lethal military presence right on the US border, stretching from Washington State east to Minnesota. Concentrations of troops hunkered in reinforced battlements were also allegedly discovered in southern Ontario and south of Montreal on the border with upstate New York. Secretary of Defense, Chelsea Clinton, stated that this is what prompted the military operation now underway — the mobilization of 250,000 infantry troops, numerous tank and artillery battalions, and full air power support for the invasion.
For months, reports had regularly appeared in major US media outlets — the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg — alleging that over 14,000 US citizens have died since the beginning of last year in the proximity of this conflict zone. It was declared that this was the result of shelling and missile launches by Canadian forces. It was also contended, cities like Detroit had been attacked from artillery and missile emplacements in Windsor, Ontario. The worst carnage reputedly has occurred in Seattle, Washington; Spokane, Idaho; Minot and Grand Forks, North Dakota — even as deep into US territory as Duluth, Minnesota — as long-range 155 mm shells and MSRS missiles were terrorizing populations across the northern states.
Current President of France, Marine LaPen, dismissed these rumors with some sharp language: “This is a joke. A cheap attempt at tugging at the heartstrings of the world community because their country fell apart. 14,000 people killed in North Dakota and Idaho? Right. Why every year 25,000 Americans murder other Americans, over 12,000 with guns. Then another 107,000 of them die from drug overdoses. And we’re supposed to get all weepy-eyed about a few folks who end up on the wrong end of an artillery shell? Merde!”
Of course, finding individuals who hate the US is not difficult these days. After the US crashed the world economy in 2023 by defaulting on its national debt, then replaced the US dollar with JoinCoin, its national digital currency — known among traders as Sh*tCoin — which within 24 hours plunged in value to practically zero, a lot of people across the globe were left holding the bag. A big empty bag.
Then again, Canadians have their own unique set of reasons for hating America. You’ll recall that in July 2024, US Ambassador to the UN, Caitlyn Jenner, was overheard privately calling Canada a “hockey rink masquerading as a nation.” And later in the year at a celebrity White House dinner, then-president Joe Biden mistook Celine Dion for Vladimir Putin and intentionally dumped his entire bowl of prune pudding on her head. Canadians were outraged!
To be honest, looking back we now realize we should have seen this war coming.
Before the unprovoked invasion of Canada by the US forces, leaks in the mainstream media in America — many believe egged on by foreign NGOs, like NEF (National Endowment for Fascism) — were stirring the pot to prepare the public for the US’ recent brutal aggression. Reports increasingly talked about a Canadian troop build-up on the US/Canada border, the beating of US citizens at a bingo parlor in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Red-white-and-blue toilet paper was allegedly the rage in Vancouver, British Columbia. None of this was confirmed. The only accurate report was that the most popular TV in Canada for three years running was a sitcom making fun of US politics called The Jest Wing. Americans didn’t think it was funny. How could they? Americans have no sense of humor.
But those were just previews of coming attractions. It didn’t take long for violence-obsessed warmongers to crank the spigots of intimidation and confrontation wide open. Now it was truly game on!
As Vice-President Kanye West stated: “So the Canucks want to dance, eh? We’ll show them how to dance!”
The Department of Commerce invoked a 30% import tax on Canadian maple syrup. Then the State Department imposed visa requirements for Canadians to cross the border. Only 160 tourist visas would be issued a year. All work visas were canceled. A highly-publicized boycott of Canada Dry ginger ale brought thousands of supporters out in the streets to protest. A Canada Dry bottling plant in Nashville, Tennessee was burned to the ground.
Understandably, we can never forget the tragic April 9, 2025 retaliatory special ops assault by the CIA on a Canadian bacon distribution center in Winnipeg. The ill-conceived operation was embarrassingly a huge failure. All of the attackers were captured, their sunglasses confiscated, and they are now being held as war prisoners at a depleted tar sands facility in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Rumors are that the US is still attempting to arrange a POW exchange, having rounded up and incarcerated the entire Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team after their Stanley Cup victory over the Boston Bruins last June.
So now we’re seeing, with the war in full swing, that the battle for the hearts and minds of citizens across the globe gets even more intense.
President Kamala Harris pulled no punches yesterday on the White House lawn at a ceremony honoring an aerobics team from her hometown of Oakland, California: “Listen, guys. Canadians are a bunch of filthy, ignorant, white supremacists. I mean like, have you ever seen a Canadian with a tan? America’s gonna kick their butts and show everyone out there who’s boss!”
Granted, when former president Donald Trump was asked for comment, he was visibly impatient: “Listen. I’m in the thick a huge legal battle. My vaccine passport has been revoked. Now I can’t even get into the strip club I opened in Orlando.” Even so, Trump, Barack Obama, and his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have co-authored a new book called, The Audacity of Grope: It Takes a Pillage to Raze a Nation. In this inspiring polemic, which highlights the beauty of democracy, the infinite potential offered individuals by the American Dream, and heaps praise on the US as a society built on diversity and the highest moral values, they reassure us — with warmth, candor, and an abundance of aw-shucks knee-slappers — that anything is possible if you’re ruthless and cunning, and can crack cool one-liners with or without a teleprompter.
No one knows with certainty how this horrible war will ultimately turn out. There’s a lot of back and forth on the battlefield and in the media. Each side is claiming enormous successes and ultimate victory, accusing the other of lying to the world about what’s really going on. Reports from the battlefield are a tsunami of mixed messages.
But we do know this . . .
Canadian troops are weary and running out of ammunition and supplies. 2000 fighters comprised of hard-core, French-speaking, America-hating storm-troopers, called the Chez Off Battalion, are surrounded and pinned-down in a croissant factory outside of Montreal. They refuse to surrender and are using young school girls and 23 members of a wine-tasting club as human shields. The UN and Human Rights Watch have condemned the hostage-taking as a war crime.
On the other hand, US troops have been disoriented by the sheer boredom of the Canadian countryside. One extremely well-equipped tank regiment got lost when their commander held a map upside down and over 120 tanks going the wrong direction made it all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah before the error was discovered. Another artillery company destroyed itself when it read target coordinates incorrectly and unleashed a barrage of high-yield cluster munitions straight up. Like they say: war is messy.
One thing is for sure: The world will never be the same. The vast majority of countries have condemned the US for its savagery and unprovoked aggression. The G-5 (currently Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela) is imposing new sanctions on American persons and businesses every day. The only airport which will accept flights by US airline companies is on Baltra in the Galapagos Islands. Imports of American products by foreign countries have stayed the same, but that’s because the US doesn’t make anything. Gruesome evidence of war crimes by the US military appears on television every day 24/7 across the globe. Everything American is being canceled and deleted. Tragically, this has produced such a social and cultural gulf between the US and the rest of the world, it may never ever be bridged.
This has predictably left US citizens haunted by a question that probably will never be answered:
“Why are we being vilified for just defending ourselves against barbaric hordes of America-haters from a neighboring country?”
Distractions divide us and guarantee we’ll never talk about essential core challenges. The egregious, central obstacles to “promoting the general welfare” are never mentioned by the talking heads, the pundits or politicians, to whom we look for guidance and leadership.
Distract and divide promises catastrophe, even to those who use it to further their sinister agenda. It’s astonishing how myopic most of the people at the top are, eh?
The control of everything by a tiny, short-sighted ruling elite is now total and the consequences are apocalyptic. We helplessly watch as their pursuit of wealth and consolidation of power has resulted in a merciless war being waged against the 99.999%, the trashing of the ecosystem, and destruction of any prospects for humans ever living in harmony with either — that is, co-existing cooperatively and constructively with one another and living sustainably on the only planet we can call home.
There are three major battlefields for this amoral and sociopathic assault and we rarely have meaningful discussions about them, are forced to wade through a swamp of deceit and disinformation to even identify and try to address them, or are consigned to having non-sensical discussions which have no possible impact on outcomes.
Wealth Inequality: The funneling of wealth upwards has accelerated and long ago passed the threshold of irreversibility. 24,000 people die a day from starvation, while guys like Bezos, Gates and Musk have so much money they couldn’t spend it all in a million lifetimes. Corporations continue to consolidate and a handful of investment firms literally own everything. The system rewards monomaniacal pursuit of obscene levels of riches and opulence, the media lionizes self-aggrandizement. Every major religion has posted the warnings. Maybe they’re onto something.
War and Peace: War has become a religion and ‘peace’ an expletive. The U.S. economy is now built around and defended by endless wars and requires world conquest to continue satisfying its rapacious appetite. Arrogance and hubris have replaced civility and common sense. We are now confronting two major nuclear powers at the same time, Russia and China. The U.S. won’t back off and Russia and China will not bow down. Total war would be the last chapter in human history. No need to return the book to the library. Books and libraries would be radioactive dust.
Ecological Destruction: Notice I didn’t say ‘climate change’ and this is intentional. Because this exemplifies precisely how the cabal uses a worthy topic to defeat any hope for real reform. Climate change is one component of a war on the entire ecosystem which supports all life, which includes ocean depletion, toxicity of air and water, species extinction, soil depletion, desertification, deforestation, promotion of monoculture, not to mention the assault on the human organism with poorly tested medicinal drugs, chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, food additives, industrial and agricultural pollution, manmade radiation, the intensification of exposure to electromagnetic waves, gene “therapies” and genetic modification of foods, on and on. We are directed to focus all of our attention on climate change, a battle we might at best win — likely will not win at all — over the next five decades, at the expense of all other perilous policies and undertakings, working in sync to compromise and probably destroy the prospects for survival of life on Earth. Pretty clever, eh?
Distract and divide assures that these three destructive trends work synergistically. Wealth inequality is created and sustained by war, war itself makes the rich richer, the military is the number one institutional source of ecological destruction, ecological destruction drives desperation and creates the conditions for war over resources and resource-rich territory, wealth inequality puts the decisions about the health of ecosystems in the hands of those who are incentivized to externalize the damages their pursuit of wealth creates — dumping it in the laps of the 99.999% — likewise with the decisions to go to war. It’s an endless, accelerating, self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop — a race to the bottom in terms of quality of life and a hopeful or even survivable future for the masses of humanity. We are too distracted to assess and discuss them rationally and constructively, too divided to put up even a weak fight.
All three of these globalized pathologies likewise reinforce political control, as power is in parallel funneled and concentrated upwards.
Reversing any and all of this can only be achieved with focus and unity by a huge percentage of the global population: unwavering focus and unassailable unity directly targeting those responsible for the unfolding catastrophe.
There are two courses of action with the potential to break and defeat this skewed, oppressive, top-heavy, hierarchical system.
1) Imprisoning or killing the rich and powerful.
. . . and/or . . .
2) Vanquishing their control of all private and government institutions, then restructuring the entire system.
Neither is pleasant or easy. It seems, however, these two options are still on the table.
But let’s be clear. They won’t be for very long. Historical opportunity never arrives at a convenient time or when we expect it to. And it can disappear in a flash.
Moreover, while totalitarianism, oppression, abuse of power, class warfare, enslavement certainly never arrive at a convenient time, even a superficial glance at human history tells us these are what we can always expect.
Google ‘sociopaths’.
History also teaches us that the more ennobling, inspiring periods of history, those occasional surges that we deem progress, result from substantial numbers of people focusing on the challenges and uniting their energies, dedication, determination, creativity and time.
Focus and unite . . . the only solution.
Of course, often there have been violent revolutions — refer to #1 above — which create the conditions for comprehensive legal, systemic reform and restructuring — refer to #2 above. While nothing dictates that they are inseparable, again referring to history, we usually see them conjoined when the battle is in full swing.
I regret having to conclude with this, but there is a third possible course, the product of unprecedented technological advances, the direct result of humankind’s incredible ingenuity. Both our capacity to 1) generate life-terminating levels of toxicity in the environment and 2) produce weapons of war with total lethality for life on earth, puts the ultimate spanner in the works. We are in a race against time. If we continue to poison the planet and/or unleash the fury of nuclear war, other options become moot considerations. The end of the end game will be the end. Period. No sequel. No do overs.
Focus and unite . . . the only sane and possible solution.
Here is a speech Vladimir Putin could have made, but DID NOT make — at least in this specific language — to the Russian people just before initiating the special military operations in Ukraine:
“It is my responsibility as the president to warn our citizens of secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of US/NATO lethal weaponry — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to Russia and the nations of our hemisphere, in violation of American assurances, and in defiance of treaties and our own policies — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons on our borders — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.”
Does this have a familiar feel to it?
Here is the speech which President John F. Kennedy DID MAKE to the American people on October 22, 1962, when he warned of a . . .
“… secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.”
The Cuban Missile Crisis which resulted from the discovery of this military escalation by the Soviets, almost resulted in a world war and nuclear annihilation.
The tables have rotated 180º. Now it is the US which is putting the survival of humankind at risk, escalating the crisis with Ukraine by dumping more and more weapons into the conflict zone, demonizing Putin and everything Russian, apparently urging the Ukrainians to avoid a negotiated peace and to fight to the bitter end.
Do not for a moment forget . . .
There were solutions in place to prevent the entire Ukrainian situation from evolving into the terrifying mess we now see. First, there was the Minsk II Agreement of February 12, 2015, signed by Ukraine, guaranteed by France, Germany and Russia. It was ignored by Ukraine, never implemented. There is speculation that it was the US which prompted the stonewalling. Then in December of 2021, Russia itself proposed very concrete steps, as draft treaties, that could be taken to defuse the tensions and guarantee greater security for all of Europe and the world. These were formally submitted to both the US and NATO in writing. They were dismissed. Now with the conflict in full swing, Russia has repeatedly made clear its current position on ending this. What the Russians demand is no different than what Kennedy demanded of the USSR. This is also being flatly rejected.
From the outset of the crisis, Russia has been maligned, vilified, denigrated, canceled, viciously attacked at every opportunity for merely wanting the assurances and concrete reductions to the threat posed by NATO and the US on its borders, just as JFK laid out subsequent to his announcement of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
(As a revealing aside, the comprehensive scale of the vilification and attempted isolation of Russia across the planet, even in spheres completely unrelated to politics — dance, sports, art, music, cultural exchange programs, space exploration, pet shows — could not have been spontaneous. Any multi-layered attack of this scale had to have been in the works for some time. At least, that’s how I see it.)
So . . .
What conclusion can we draw from all of this? What message are we actually hearing from Biden, Blinken, Stoltenberg, Johnson, Scholz, Macron, and the rest of the US puppets around the world?
I can see only one: US/NATO wants war with Russia. Which frankly, hardly comes as a surprise. From documents, white papers, policy statements, speeches by officials in the State Department and various administrations along the way, all easily accessed by just looking, the dismemberment of Russia and looting its vast and varied natural resources has been on the agenda for at least three decades.
Yes, folks . . .
It’s war. Not liberation. Not freedom and democracy. It’s war.
We now have proof PUTIN IS ACTUALLY IN THE UKRAINE with the Russian troops!!
This undeniable fact was provided to me personally in an email from an anonymous State Department official. All of you commie-sympathizing, America-hating naysayers, cowardly skeptics, and Vlad-The-Impaler-Putin apologists, just look at these photos and hang your sorry heads in shame.
The high-resolution imagery from American recon satellites is incredible! It’s even better than Google Street View . . .
Here he is on the front lines killing innocent Ukrainian soldiers! . . .
Putin actually put these on his Facebook page. How stupid can you get? . . .
Little known fact until now, ladies and gentlemen:
Putin was even at the Maidan uprising in Kiev! . . .
I hope this will silence the mealy-mouth critics of the administration and we will no longer have to endure Putin apologists claiming he’s a wonderful guy and great statesman. I even heard he drinks human blood every morning for breakfast. Maybe it’s just a rumor. But pass it along anyway.
Idiots in power!(I try not to judge people by their looks but I have to be honest. These people are scary!)
Above are just some of the people in positions of enormous influence and power who are promoting the war in the Ukraine. Make no mistake about it. They couldn’t care less about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. What they truly care about is antagonizing and ultimately destroying Russia.
Contrary to what 111.99% of what is reported in the Western MSM, Russia did not want this conflict. Putin did not want to “invade” Ukraine. Putin and the Kremlin do not want to kill innocent Ukrainian citizens. Russia does not want to take over and occupy Ukraine.
Everyone in the idiot gallery above is for sending more arms to Ukraine. Of course, arming Ukraine with lethal weaponry, the threat of Ukraine arming itself with nuclear weapons, is what made it necessary for Russia to destroy the Ukrainian military — which is what it is now doing — because it had become an existential threat. So what’s the solution proposed by the above brain trust for addressing the crisis? How do they propose fixing this mess?
More arms . . . more weapons . . . more threats to Russia!
“Gee, what started that apartment building on fire, chief?”
“Apparently, open cans of gasoline and kerosene in the basement.”
“Well, gosh darn, there’s only one option. Let’s pour more gasoline and kerosene into the building and see what happens.”
Several of the idiots in the scary collage above have moreover suggested that NATO and the US establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Which will mean — please give this your full attention — US/NATO planes and missiles deployed to shoot down Russian aircraft. Translation: Direct engagement, military conflict — yes, war! — with Russia.
Gee . . . how will this turn out?
After decade after decade of bombing; after twenty years of the War on Terror; a meltdown of the economy in 2008-2009; two years and counting of Covid-19 technocratic terrorism still hovering over us like a sledgehammer; with a coming economic meltdown which will make 2008 look like a rounding error; with the raucous, maniacal, increasingly fever-pitch pounding of war drums and shrill harangues against Russia and China; with a Congress and White House apparently inhabited by the certifiably insane (again just look at the above collection of whackos) . . . hmm. Whaddya think?
What will the future look like?
My prediction is that if we keep going the way we are, the future will indeed be . . . bright!
Very bright! And hot! Here’s how I imagine it’ll turn out . . .
I’ve made it abundantly clear that I LOVE JAPANESE FOOD!
Having said that does not exclude the possibility of occasional cravings for the tastes and textures of cuisine from the homeland.
I’ve already praised R-H Bagels, an excellent LOCAL restaurant, a leisurely bike ride from our house, for its New York-style bagels.
And I’m sure I’ve mentioned that Masumi and I make a pretty darn good pizza right here at home. We even bought a pizza oven, so we can get those required high temperatures!
What I haven’t mentioned are my shameful failures at recreating a truly genuine, mouth-watering hamburger experience, despite more tries than I want to confess to. The problem mainly seems to be the bun. I’ve even resorted to croissant burgers, since I simply cannot find a decent hamburger bun or good approximation of one. I’m over-simplifying, of course, maybe to let myself off light. Okay . . . it’s more than just the bun. It’s getting the hamburger itself right as well. Apparently, I’ve lost my touch! Boo hoo!
This has driven us over the 14 years we’ve been together, in a desperate search for a truly great American-style hamburger. One that oozes bloody juices, clogs the arteries just sitting on the plate, and creates visions of one of the few things the U.S. actually still gets right these days.
Our first breakthrough arrived somewhat unexpectedly, though the only reason I didn’t expect it is because I didn’t stop to think about it. Actually, it should have been obvious. This was during a summer holiday in 2016.
Because the main island of Okinawa, in particular the major city there of Naha, is overrun by Americans — the whole island, much to the outrage of the locals, hosts numerous U.S. military bases — we found a spectacular hamburger joint called Gordie’s. Gordie? Actually, in all my years in the U.S. I can honestly say I never met someone who called himself ‘Gordie’. There was a legendary hockey player when I was growing up named Gordie Howe. But he was Canadian. Whatever.
Gordie’s in Okinawa is pretty cool! I highly recommend it.
But let’s face it. Okinawa is not exactly convenient.
A little more convenient, but still not that convenient, is a hamburger restaurant we found in Himeji, a place called Lamp’s Bakery. This was late 2018 when our friend Alex Malherbe came back for his second visit to Japan.
Certainly, Himeji is a great place to visit and we’ve been there together at least three times. BUT it’s over two hours away. This has made it incumbent on us to find something a little closer to home.
There are two hamburger cafés right in town. We won’t talk about them. You know why.
But hope springs eternal! (Or is that infernal?) Because . . .
In nearby Sanda — about a 30 minute drive — right downtown near the main JR train station, is Alto Hamburgers. It’s a tiny restaurant, seats maybe 16 people. Interesting story behind it. The place is owned by college students, who crowdfunded the whole project, and obviously did their homework. They have a number of very good deluxe hamburgers — bacon, avocado, mushroom, of course cheese, teriyaki, etc. — but in my book, the real draw is their onion rings, which are to die for!
Having lavished all this praise on Alto, I now confess that while it puts up some serious competition, the real #1 hamburger slinger is a restaurant/antique shop/farm way outin the country — which says a lot considering how far out in the country Tambasasayama is — in Kasuga, a forty-minute drive from our house, but one well worth every second of it.
Ladies, gentlemen, gays, lez, bi, trans, double-transitioned, pan, non-binary, non-indexed, no-preference, self-cancelers, and protoplasmic virtue signalers from every whispered and howling corner of the human genome, let me introduce you to Locasse Farm Lab!
And there you have it! Driven by my desire to recapture the joy of devouring an American hamburger, our search is a success. Let’s hope that Alto and Locasse remain in business for the foreseeable and my arteries don’t gunge up with saturated the meat-based calking compound delivered by their HMDs — hamburgers of mass destruction.
Likewise, an incompetent, historically ignorant, politically naive, diplomatically challenged, shallow, impulsive, narcissistic reality show host elected by a conned citizenry to the highest office in the land can occasionally get a few things right as well.
I won’t get into a spitting contest over whether the election was rigged to an extent necessary to “steal” it from Trump. Every election is rigged, to varying degrees. To deny that is to be out of touch with how fundamentally corrupt our electoral system is at all levels, and what an abysmal state our last-gasp democracy is in. Recall that on occasion, election rigging wasn’t up to the task, so a president was elected by judicial fiat.
Nor will I come anywhere near Trump’s motives or level of involvement in the shambolic insurrection that took place on January 6.
The important thing he got right was this: We should throw every last bum out of our legislative branch, both House and Senate. I didn’t say assassinate or torture them, although a good case could be made for “disappearing” the entire lot . . . for good! And for the good of the nation. At least barring them from public life. I include everyone, even Sanders, AOC, the rest of the squad, all of the virtue-signaling mannikins now in Congress who spend more time raising money for their reelection campaigns and their corrupt corporate-oligarchy political parties, than taking care of the business of governing and caring for the people.
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Yes, there have been a few promising initiatives. But overall, there is no evidence that any of the people in power, and I also include Biden, Harris, and just about everyone in the collection of self-serving mediocrities which populate this and past administrations, know or care the first thing about serving everyday citizens and “promoting the general welfare”.
I’m sure I’ll get a barrage of comments defending these lackluster sock puppets of the ruling elite. Let me just recommend in advance: I’m not talking about measuring these phonies by the vapid standards we’ve become accustomed to. The bar has been lowered so many times, it’s not a bar anymore. It’s a broken pipe laying in the mud. Reach deep inside, folks. Use your imagination. Recall the dreams and idealism of your youth. Imagine what the U.S. could be instead of trying to decide how much humiliation and misery we should tolerate.
I don’t have to defend the necessity of an occasional revolution. As you can see from the above quote, Thomas Jefferson did it for me. By his measure we’re about 12 revolutions overdue.
Even John F. Kennedy recognized that when confronted with extreme abuse of power, we are left with no alternative.
What he said was unambiguous. If the system isn’t able to self-correct, then the system gets a big bloody nose. In extreme cases, we skip the left hook to the nose and go right for a decapitation. I hear Chanel makes a nice line of designer guillotines. How timely.
Let’s be clear. At no time in recent history has the need to replace those in power been so urgent and obvious. Real democracy is dead in the U.S. and the country is ruled by oligarchs. Not very smart oligarchs. Not oligarchs with a shred of decency. But money talks. The ruling elite have the money. Most everyday people are scrambling to survive. There’s no contest.
As much as many of us prefer to ignore or deny, Donald Trump got a few things right. Unfortunately, he suffered from a debilitating case of ADHD. He’d say the right thing, then either contradict himself in action or appoint opponents of his ideas to key positions, who then went on to sabotage whatever occasional flash of brilliance he had. Plus he was an unbroken stallion, and the Deep State realizing they couldn’t control him, deep-sixed his presidency. Most of us are grateful for that but we have to keep in mind that the cure in the long term might be worse than the disease. Turning more power over — perhaps the entire control of our nation — to the invisible autocrats of our intelligence agencies and the untouchable puppet masters of technocratic tyranny is not a very smart idea. If that’s our strategy, we might as well just get it over with and take a blow torch to the Constitution. How about during half-time at the next Super Bowl.
In some incredibly twisted way, Trump was the voice of the people — at least some people — probably not the kind of people anyone here would want to hang out with. But he had (and still has) a lot of fans. His campaign was the first time in a long time that it was publicly acknowledged that a lot of regular folks were tired of getting screwed by a rigged system. Yes, Trump couldn’t have been a worse bearer of this torch. But at least we got a fleeting glimpse of the flames.
Now we’re back to the default setting: Guys like Biden and gals like Harris spouting slogans that are ear candy and brain anesthetics, woke gender-blenders like Buttigieg striking poses to get a third-leg up on the next presidential election, fake progressives cheerleading their walk-in-place approach to solving the most serious problems in history, and hapless, hopeless, pathetic voters looking at fake radicals like the Squad as the flickering pilot lights for real change. What all of this screams is form without substance. We get fooled again. New boss is the old boss with a focus-group tested bumper sticker on his BMW.
The sad thing about January 6 — and everybody knows what I’m referring to because the Alice in Wonderland narratives around are still being milked by pundits and politicians alike — is that it had both sides working to make sure it flopped, that instead of representing an actual challenge to power or a wake-up call to the public or a warning label for the buffoons and criminals now holding office, it was a huge embarrassment, an unfunny joke, a reminder that politics is Pro Wrestling, only without sexy ring girls.
Joe Biden calls January 6 “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Liz Cheney — talk about strange bedfellows, Cheney and Biden — claimed the forces behind January 6 “represent a threat America has never seen before.” Which is certainly easy to say if you’ve never picked up a history book in your life.
The Congressional resolution which established the investigation of January 6 called the mob assault “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”
The Democratic Party elites are calling January 6 the domestic equivalent of the 911 attacks.
Did all of these people get their education watching Saturday morning cartoons?
What are these pathetic snowflakes going to do when some tech-savvy insurrectionist strolls onto the national mall carrying a suitcase nuke and turns DC into a caramelized crater?
For better or worse, the whole thing was pure spectacle — that’s the way Trump and the MAGA crowd see the world — a pathetic attempt at symbolism wrought by morons. The government was in no danger of being overthrown by such a disorganized, ragtag bunch of urban hillbillies. The real danger lay in the weaponization and politicalization of this non-event by the Democratic Party and the intelligence agencies, which had a number of embedded provocateurs, on the scene as the PR stunt devolved to its disastrous denouement.
Granted, I can’t prove this. It’s impossible in an era of fake news and fake justice to prove anything. But if a little logic and common sense are applicable here, it’s axiomatic that our internal intelligence agencies knew exactly what was going to happen, and if they didn’t actively engineer this embarrassment, then they let it unfold knowing they could use it against their current and future enemies — that would be the American people. This is a classic, well-established, and usually effective drill.
Where is this headed? A bill authored by truly one of the most lackluster congressmen in our history, Adam Schiff, will open a second war on terror, this one targeting domestic terrorism. More surveillance, more eavesdropping, more curtailing of free speech and dissent, more false flags, more fear, more anxiety, the final nails in the coffin of what was once for the world the beacon of civil liberties and respect for human rights. Yes, it’s 911 all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? With people representing us like Adam Schiff, who needs a foreign enemy to destroy our democracy and turn our citizens into slaves?
Put the right label on it: MADE IN AMERICA! The destruction from within of our country, its ideals, its constitution, its promise of government by the people, its self-anointed role in the world as defender of human rights, guardian of human dignity, promoter of democracy.
There’s only one remedy . . .
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Maybe these “extreme” ideas are starting to make more sense?
But you ask: “What will happen? Congress has all sorts of protocols and procedural precedents, established rules and guidelines for committee assignment and processing of legislation. What about all that legislative infrastructure?”
Exactly! What about it, folks? How about throwing out the babies AND the bathwater? Is any of it serving “we the people”? Sometimes you have to completely raze a building and start from scratch. YES . . . THAT IS WHAT I’M RECOMMENDING!
It’s either that or a constitutional convention or . . . uh-oh . . . we’re back to what Jefferson and Kennedy said.
Here’s a pop quiz. Do these words ring a bell? If they do, do they resonate?
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
If that’s too arcane and brainy, then tune into something more street hip, if somewhat less precise.
Some of our greatest traditions come out of the Wild West, a rough-and-tumble time that forged America into the greatest country in the world. A formative time that gave Americans that hard no-nonsense edge that is universally respected far and wide.
Moreover, some would say that the cowboy ethic is still alive and well and drives not only our dealings with the pitiable nullities who aren’t fortunate enough to live here in the “land of the free, home of the brave” — you know, foreigners — but is the key to understanding ourselves, what makes us tick.
So here’s a little yarn for you all to enjoy and get educated with. There will be a question at the end — only one — but I know the kind of smart people who would read something like this here at my website. I have no doubt you’ll all get it right. Or set me straight if I’ve got it wrong.
Here goes.
It was late summer 1859. Billy Balalaika had just arrived in town and was sitting at the bar of its only tavern. The place was noisy, packed with a lot of grisly fellows wearing dusty chaps and smelling like they hadn’t had a bath in three months — because they hadn’t.
Billy was the only guy in the place wearing a black hat. Everyone else had a white hat. That was a weird story in itself. Billy had owned a beautiful stetson he had bought in Durango but a strong gust of wind had blown it into a ravine. So the first thing he tried to do when he got to town was buy a new hat.
The store had an excellent selection. All white. He chose one but the lass at the store said, “Sorry. Can’t sell you that.” She reached behind the counter and pulled out a black hat, the one he was wearing right now.
“But I want a white hat.”
“Can’t do it. I’ve been given instructions. We know who you are. It’s this black hat or no hat.”
Billy was baffled. But he needed a hat.
So here he sat, brand new black hat tipped back on his head, sitting at the bar, sipping a beer, chatting it up with the bartender, trying make conversation with the two smelly blokes on either side.
Making a dramatic entrance that commanded everyone’s attention, in walked Sam Unkel, the roughest, toughest, meanest badass west of Topeka.
Sam drew his gun, walked right up to the bar, roughly turned Billy around, and pointed his six-shooter right at Billy’s face.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Are you sure you have the right person? I’m Billy Balalaika.”
“I know who you are and what you’ve done. Everything that’s gone wrong in this town is your fault. Everything that’s wrong with this world is your fault. So you’re going to die. Right now.”
Billy knew he wasn’t kidding. This guy was obviously insane. His reputation had proceeded him. He had killed many others, most of them innocent people. Sam thrived on being the roughest, toughest, meanest badass around. He was a very sick man.
Billy managed to keep his composure.
“Listen. I’m just having a beer. Why don’t you just sit down and enjoy the evening. Look at this place. Full of fine people, just having a little fun after a hard day’s work.”
“Nope. I’m going to kill you. I hate you. And everyone in this town hates you. I’ve told them all how evil you are. In fact, the only reason I ain’t pulled this trigger yet, is I want to see you suffer. I want to see you squirm and cry and beg. When I’ve had enough of your groveling, then I’m going to splatter your f*cking brains all over that mirror behind the bar.”
It was now apparent there was no reasoning with this lunatic.
Billy then did something so amazing, some people these days would call it “playing three-dimensional chess.”
Billy smiled at Sam Unkel, then at full volume in a beautiful operatic baritone broke into the Russian national anthem — IN RUSSIAN!
Sam, of course, had no idea what he was hearing. But it completely gobsmacked him. For the briefest second, his mind wandered as he tried to process what was going on.
In that instant, Billy drew his own weapon, and fired a perfect shot which blew Sam’s hand clean off. The hand, still grasping the Sam Unkel’s weapon, flew across the room and landed in the middle of a table where a poker game was in progress.
Sam, the roughest, toughest, meanest badass around, went running out of the tavern, screaming in pain, blood shooting out of the stump, all over his beautiful white hat. He didn’t die. But he’s still trying to learn to shoot left-handed.
Billy finished his beer. The bartended comped his drinks. Billy tossed his black hat in the trash on the way out the door. He left town in the morning.
That’s my tale of the wild west, folks. Wasn’t that fun?
Okay, here’s the question. Ready?
We know who fired the only bullet. But who started the gunfight?
People Power – Part 2: Focus and Unite
Distractions divide us and guarantee we’ll never talk about essential core challenges. The egregious, central obstacles to “promoting the general welfare” are never mentioned by the talking heads, the pundits or politicians, to whom we look for guidance and leadership.
Distract and divide promises catastrophe, even to those who use it to further their sinister agenda. It’s astonishing how myopic most of the people at the top are, eh?
The control of everything by a tiny, short-sighted ruling elite is now total and the consequences are apocalyptic. We helplessly watch as their pursuit of wealth and consolidation of power has resulted in a merciless war being waged against the 99.999%, the trashing of the ecosystem, and destruction of any prospects for humans ever living in harmony with either — that is, co-existing cooperatively and constructively with one another and living sustainably on the only planet we can call home.
There are three major battlefields for this amoral and sociopathic assault and we rarely have meaningful discussions about them, are forced to wade through a swamp of deceit and disinformation to even identify and try to address them, or are consigned to having non-sensical discussions which have no possible impact on outcomes.
Wealth Inequality: The funneling of wealth upwards has accelerated and long ago passed the threshold of irreversibility. 24,000 people die a day from starvation, while guys like Bezos, Gates and Musk have so much money they couldn’t spend it all in a million lifetimes. Corporations continue to consolidate and a handful of investment firms literally own everything. The system rewards monomaniacal pursuit of obscene levels of riches and opulence, the media lionizes self-aggrandizement. Every major religion has posted the warnings. Maybe they’re onto something.
War and Peace: War has become a religion and ‘peace’ an expletive. The U.S. economy is now built around and defended by endless wars and requires world conquest to continue satisfying its rapacious appetite. Arrogance and hubris have replaced civility and common sense. We are now confronting two major nuclear powers at the same time, Russia and China. The U.S. won’t back off and Russia and China will not bow down. Total war would be the last chapter in human history. No need to return the book to the library. Books and libraries would be radioactive dust.
Ecological Destruction: Notice I didn’t say ‘climate change’ and this is intentional. Because this exemplifies precisely how the cabal uses a worthy topic to defeat any hope for real reform. Climate change is one component of a war on the entire ecosystem which supports all life, which includes ocean depletion, toxicity of air and water, species extinction, soil depletion, desertification, deforestation, promotion of monoculture, not to mention the assault on the human organism with poorly tested medicinal drugs, chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, food additives, industrial and agricultural pollution, manmade radiation, the intensification of exposure to electromagnetic waves, gene “therapies” and genetic modification of foods, on and on. We are directed to focus all of our attention on climate change, a battle we might at best win — likely will not win at all — over the next five decades, at the expense of all other perilous policies and undertakings, working in sync to compromise and probably destroy the prospects for survival of life on Earth. Pretty clever, eh?
Distract and divide assures that these three destructive trends work synergistically. Wealth inequality is created and sustained by war, war itself makes the rich richer, the military is the number one institutional source of ecological destruction, ecological destruction drives desperation and creates the conditions for war over resources and resource-rich territory, wealth inequality puts the decisions about the health of ecosystems in the hands of those who are incentivized to externalize the damages their pursuit of wealth creates — dumping it in the laps of the 99.999% — likewise with the decisions to go to war. It’s an endless, accelerating, self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop — a race to the bottom in terms of quality of life and a hopeful or even survivable future for the masses of humanity. We are too distracted to assess and discuss them rationally and constructively, too divided to put up even a weak fight.
All three of these globalized pathologies likewise reinforce political control, as power is in parallel funneled and concentrated upwards.
Reversing any and all of this can only be achieved with focus and unity by a huge percentage of the global population: unwavering focus and unassailable unity directly targeting those responsible for the unfolding catastrophe.
There are two courses of action with the potential to break and defeat this skewed, oppressive, top-heavy, hierarchical system.
1) Imprisoning or killing the rich and powerful.
. . . and/or . . .
2) Vanquishing their control of all private and government institutions, then restructuring the entire system.
Neither is pleasant or easy. It seems, however, these two options are still on the table.
But let’s be clear. They won’t be for very long. Historical opportunity never arrives at a convenient time or when we expect it to. And it can disappear in a flash.
Moreover, while totalitarianism, oppression, abuse of power, class warfare, enslavement certainly never arrive at a convenient time, even a superficial glance at human history tells us these are what we can always expect.
Google ‘sociopaths’.
History also teaches us that the more ennobling, inspiring periods of history, those occasional surges that we deem progress, result from substantial numbers of people focusing on the challenges and uniting their energies, dedication, determination, creativity and time.
Focus and unite . . . the only solution.
Of course, often there have been violent revolutions — refer to #1 above — which create the conditions for comprehensive legal, systemic reform and restructuring — refer to #2 above. While nothing dictates that they are inseparable, again referring to history, we usually see them conjoined when the battle is in full swing.
I regret having to conclude with this, but there is a third possible course, the product of unprecedented technological advances, the direct result of humankind’s incredible ingenuity. Both our capacity to 1) generate life-terminating levels of toxicity in the environment and 2) produce weapons of war with total lethality for life on earth, puts the ultimate spanner in the works. We are in a race against time. If we continue to poison the planet and/or unleash the fury of nuclear war, other options become moot considerations. The end of the end game will be the end. Period. No sequel. No do overs.
Focus and unite . . . the only sane and possible solution.