Paulosophy, Vol. XV

There's a difference between wanting everyone to be happy, and wanting everyone to be happy with their lot.

Paul Kimball

"Thought" du jour - 9 August 2011

''If we took away the minimum wage - if conceivably it was gone - we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.'' - Michelle Bachmann

Thus do we begin a week of choice quotes from the leading contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, just so that we can all remember who they really are, and what they really represent.

Paul Kimball

Paulosophy, Vol. IX

Nationalism is a crime against humanity.

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 3 August 2011

"Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young.  Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction." - W. H. Auden

Shadows Grow

I can't believe that I actually called this our "pro-environmental" song... as if we might have had an "anti-environmental" song. Still, I think people knew what I meant, and I was young.

"The sun is gone

the shadows grow

our pockets kill the fields,

the rain it bleeds

through open holes

the wound that does not heal,

the wisdom falls from mind to mouth

to hands that will not feed you inside.

The mountains cry

the ground it weeps

we're tangled up in green,

the clouds that fall

from empty skies

silent and unseen,

the hands of time slip through the day

the grass beneath our feet turns to dust.

How much longer can this go on?

What we don't know won't matter...

4, 3, 2, 1..."

At the end of the song, we had a countdown of 4, 3, 2, 1... which was useful when performing it live, of course, but which was also symbolic of where we were heading in the destruction of our planet. Back in 1991 when I wrote this song, I might have figured that we were at a 3. Now, we're at a 2 and pushing towards that 1...

Paul Kimball

Signposts: A Taxing Problem

I took this picture in London in 2009, but given the way the economy is going in the United States, and the ever-growing problem of homelessness, I suspect we'll be seeing more and more of these signs south of the border in the months and years to come, particularly as the homeless are virtually ignored in Washington, where tax and spending cuts are all that anyone wants to discuss. 

It reminds me of a question that a professor of mine posed to the class on the first day of first year criminal law. "If there was a law," he asked, "that stated it was illegal for anyone to sleep under a bridge, would that be a fair law?" As it seemed to apply equally to everyone, all of us students seemed to think that it was indeed fair. To which the professor asked: "How many rich people have to sleep under a bridge?"

In other words, while such a law would purport to apply to everyone equally, it would in fact be applicable only to homeless people. While it might appear to be a fair, equal law in principle, it wasn't a fair law in practice. As Anatole France wrote: "La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."

I see the same kind of reasoning applied to defend tax cuts in the United States, by people who seek to further the interests of the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else. On the surface, and in general, these cuts seem to apply to everyone (although specific cuts and exemptions obviously only apply to certain groups), and that's how they're presented to the public. But it's a sham equality, just as a law against sleeping under the bridge is a sham equality. Tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthiest members of society, and they have no meaningful impact whatsoever on the vast majority of people, particularly the poor. But for the wealthy and their "front men" (i.e. politicians), if a few more people wind up sleeping under bridges so that they can make even more money, c'est la vie. Besides, they can always pass a law to prohibit it, and present it as the height of fairness, just as they do with tax cuts.

And if the world goes to hell after they're gone, I'm sure they would agree with Louis XIV - "apres moi, le deluge".

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 31 July 2011

"If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it." - Lyndon B. Johnson

I consider Johnson one of the great figures of the 20th century. Bookended by Kennedy and Nixon, it was an era of Shakespearean sweep, and tragedy. Of the three, it was Johnson who accomplished the most. He was one of the truly transformational figures in American history, but he remains overshadowed by the men who came before and after him, neither of whom could match his record of accomplishment, or his character. Most of all, however, he remains defined by a war that he neither started, nor finished, and certainly did not want. In the long run of history, however, after Vietnam recedes from memory, I am convinced that Johnson's vision of the Great Society is what will endure.

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 30 July 2011

"Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination." - Harry S. Truman 

New Frontier

New Frontier

Soul grifters...

time drifters -
no longer
heavy lifters,
Independence,
but no longer
independent,
Pluto towns
Jupiter frowns…
faces like the aftermath
of a nuclear weapons test.
The irradiated chickens
(half lives and half wits)
have come home
to roost
on the new frontier –
pick a channel
and watch them
cluck.

Paul Kimball

Turned

"Caught, in the undertow of today,
you start to drift away
got no place left to stay.
Turned, from that which you have known,
to that which you've been shown
your world's no longer your own.
Listen, when their words come out,
don't know what they're about
but you follow 'cause they shout.

You can't tell right from wrong,
you don't know what's going on,
You can't see wrong from right,
all you see is black and white.

March, just another face in the crowd,
you chant their "truths" out loud
while you wrap your mind in a shroud.
Raise, your hand up in a fist,
and yell about what you've missed
you're told it's time to resist.

You can't tell right from wrong,
you don't know what's going on,
You can't see wrong from right,
all you see is black and white.

Lift, their flag high in the air,
convinced that you are there
to fight for your fair share.
Darkness, creeps up on our fair land,
you grasp it with your hand
it's all you understand..."

For almost a decade now, we've been told that Islamic terrorism is the great threat to Western society, when in reality the real existential threat, as demonstrated before 9/11 in Oklahoma City, and this past weekend in Norway, and every day in between through the increasing rightist political radicalization of larger and larger segments of our society, comes from right wing extremists, just as it did in the 1920s and 1930s. Yes, there is a link between those horrible, violent attacks, and the rhetoric of the right wing politicians and demagogues - it's important to always understand that the foot soldiers carry guns, but the real right wing terrorists wear business suits.

Paul Kimball

Paulitics 101 - The "phone hacking scandal" is just a symptom

If the media and politicians had any real integrity, the story wouldn't be about phone hacking - it would be about the government-sanctioned media consolidation that has allowed people like Rupert Murdoch and groups like News Corp. to have so much power in the first place.

The phone hacking scandal is a symptom; the disease are the multimedia monopolies that since the 1980s have grown ever bigger, more powerful, and wealthy, and have in the process worked hand in hand with multinational corporations to decimate the middle class, stifle independent voices, and undermine our democratic system - all in the name of profit.

It's time for our elected representatives to stop equating what is good for business with the good of the people - and it's time for people to hold them to account, not just every four or five years at election time, but through regular, informed and meaningful participation in the political and civic process.

Paul Kimball

Jefferson

One of my most overtly political songs.

"Half-turned sods of hallowed ground,

tabled, filed under lost and found,

weighted down and then strung up

a pleasant walk to the scaffold.

Hangman's noose on a threadbare throat

he mouths some words but none come out,

That's all right, no-one's listening

That's okay, no-one's listening.

Chorus:

We're all gone away, lost again

watching monuments twist in the wind,

Jefferson was a passing phase

now it all hangs on the turn of a phrase.

Placebo cure for the rotting ghost

those with the least told that they have the most,

bargained away and then discarded

a pleasant walk to the graveyard.

Chorus.

Open hole swallows fish-tail mind

deposits the same by the no exit sign,

entrance come and gone, no-one's here

entrance come and gone, no-one's here."

We don't even know what the real momuments are anymore (hint: they're not made of marble, and stone, or anything else we can see or touch), because we're so busy worshiping at the altar of the false ones that we've created to justify a society that's lost its way.

Which reminds me... I watched the excellent documentary Reagan this evening. If only every American would do the same.

Paul Kimball

notes from underground

"We look up
from the streets
at the towers
of the city states,
watching them
as they reach
for the borders
of Heaven's Gate.

All the gods
and the goddesses
looking down
from inside,
so content
so confident
so arrogant
so full of pride.

They spit
and it rains
they shit
and we stain,
they teach our children
to turn the other cheek
while they tell their children
that they'll inherit the weak.

This is the truth
that is found
by those of us
living in the underground."

Apropos of the current financial crisis in the United States, which in reality has been going on not just for a couple of years, but since the founding of the Republic.

Paul Kimball