Dictatorship

Dictatorship
The Republicans don't want a Republic, they want a dictatorship. It becomes clearer and clearer that there are more and more right wing conservative fanatics that want to control America, strangle it with a one party system that makes all the rules and enforces and imposes those rules unto the rest of the population.
Suffocating dissent through character defamation, assassination, and personal denigration has become the outstanding characteristic of this administration. I consider being called unpatriotic, because I don't support the administration, a badge of honor. I will die fighting for the Democratic principles of this country, not for the National Socialist Party, disguised as the Republican party.

Here I Am 

The Blog, The Whole Blog And Nothing But The Blog, So Help Me...

I have been reading a lot about how bloggers are keeping journalists honest, and maybe even getting them fired as a result of exposing them. Please, there's enough bullshit in the world without the bullshit of bloggers thinking they have the power to alter the universe! Bloggers,including this one, aren't any more accurate or honest than anyone else and anyone who thinks so is living in the proverbial "Fool's paradise." No one has a lock on honesty, it's all bullshit according to Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, professor Emeritus at Princeton University who's a seventy-six year old retired philosophy prof. who is old enough to know BS from lies and honesty. I think I do too and have listened to nearly four generations of different people passing out the same old bullshit at my own age of seventy-five.
Let us not begin to think that one form of reporting has it over any other form of reporting, and especially forms that have no editors, or even editorial guidelines, or any form of proctor to see thast bullshit doesn't run rampant! There are just as many craven folk's writing blogs as there are in any other form of communication.
As I said, having observed about four generations now, I note that nothing has changed but technology,meaning primarily media, so that the same old, same old...bullshit, that is, gets passed around faster, but not more accurately, so we get recycled hate, bigotry, predjudice, innuendo, and the aforementioned bullshit!
Nothing's learned, nothing's changed. There's a whole new generation of "Brownshirts," and skinheads, and Nazi sympathizers in Germany. It's a well known psycholical theory, if not fact, that those oppressed, assimilate their oppressors by becoming more like them; militant where they were docile, aggressive, where they were pacifists, victimizers where they were victmized. The Japanese did it with the US, assimilating and becoming even better at business, the Isrealies assimilated the militant, aggressive parts of their tormentors, the Nazi's, and there are other examples in history where you can find similar parrellels, so nothing has changed but the generations. Plenty of education, but no learning, plenty of sympathy, but no empathy, identification, not with the victimized, but with those who victimized! We need to find "those" genes and splice them out or modify them somehow, but that won't happen either for there will be those who say we have no right to depive people of their depravity!
What a shame.
Anyway it doesn't make it true if you read it on a blog, whether this one or any other.

More Psychiatric Balderdash

Why is it most of the weird stuff about things and people seems to come out of the psychiatric community; Orgon Boxes, Mega-Vitamin therapy, Primal Screams, Evil as an inherent trait?
Those are some of the questions I would like answered, don't they screen these people before allowing them into programs where they could do irreparable damage to the very science they espouse? This is not science, it's balderdash. Nonsense put out by the kind of loonies who are attracted to psychiatry in the first place.
Not all psychiatrist are loony, but not too many of them practice real science, or even know how to conduct real research, they usually turn to their colleagues in psychology for that, who are trained in research.
Another thing that occurs to me is that it is usually Academic Psychiatrists, I guess, who have a lot of time on their hands , and don't deal with "real" patients too often, who come up with this crap!
We will never understand pathology if we label people as "Evil." I guess if we label them there is no need or reason to understand them, we can just put them away and throw away the key.
First we need to understand that abnormal, and aberrant are just words without meaning. Everything that anyone does in within the range of human behavior, but we will never understand where pathology arises (nature/nurture)if we don't accept that these are extremes of normal human behavior, not outside the mainstream. There have proved to be too many "exceptions" to the rule, to place these behaviors there any longer.
Some psychopaths are born, some are made, and some "normal" people have holes in their personalities where their psychopathy is hidden from themselves, and isn't acted upon until a target of opportunity presents itself. Others in their environment may never know of this psychopathy until the person is caught or exposed. But not all who committ crime against humanity are psychopaths/sociopaths/antisocial personality disorders, people of good conscience committ horrendous acts because of these "holes" in their make-up, or because they fight for a cause they believe in, and rationalize away all empathy for the other.
I will have more to say on this subject in future writings.
Stay tuned

The Borgia's Are Still Around/Some Of Them Are CEO's

Poisoning? Wasn't that one of the Borgia's favorite things, to poison their enemies?
They are still around! Witness the recent attempted murder of Yushenko,by feeding him, in soup, or something, Dioxin. I thought poison had gone out of style myself, except for poisoning rats, but I guess not.

Another thought: Remember when we used to say that if people like Willie Sutton, the bank robber, would only turn the skills to making money legiimately, they'd acquire wealth in a more acceptable way? Well they did listen, and became CEO's! Hey, they don't use guns!

Pundit? Instant Pundit?

Hearing a lot about Pundits lately, so I looked it up in the dictionary and discovered, what I believe to be, an oxymoron. The dictionary defines Pundit as:a learned or authoratative person.
How can you be learned,AND authoritative? a learned person is one who is open to learning, to knew ideas, to expansiopn of his or her knowledge, to listening to the ideas of others and incorporating them into his or her own as a way of enlarging their worlds.
An authoritative person is the opposite. Rigid, conforming to rules, closed to all but his/her own knowledge. Authoratative people aren't listeners, they are the Major Domo's of knowledge, Guardians of the Gates, Authorities of knowledge, not creators of knowledge
Pundits I have read fall into both classes, learned and authoritative, and sometimes mostly authoratative in that they expound their ideas, like Krauthammer, and Will, and brook no dissent. James Dobson is in that category, I'm ashamed that he is a psychologist, ashamed to be in the same category as he is. Psychologists, by virtue of their training, do not advocate policy one way or another, just an aside, neither should pharmacists, who are trained to dispense not proselitize, or use their morals or religious beliefs, or bring their own mental health problems, in the form of moral/religious issues nto the marketplace. Dobson and others of his ilk aren't free of "sin" and don't realize they live in glass houses too.
I'm just as bad, I'm doing some authoritative punditry right now...oh well, Pundits I like are Maureen Dowd, and Molly Ivins...boy will I hear it for that!

Memoir two, Does Anyone Remember Prolaire-B?

I was first introduced to Prolaire-B, a Stuart Pharmecutical drug that was on the market for dysmenorrhea (sp), for women with menstruation problems. I was introduced to it by a pharmacutical salesman who was in our Repetory Theater Group, "Town and Gown," run by a fella named Hatcher, in Birmingham, Alabama, who told me that all of the Interns in the local hospitals used it as a hangover drug, because it contained amphetamines, Belladona, and other "upper" type drugs for the various complaints of menstruating women. A cornicopia of "Good feelings" stuff.
A displaced New York City kid like me (64th st and first avenue, Manhattan), who was introduced to drugs in Harry's Pool Room, next to the Dumont Theater on, either 67th or 68th street, I don't remember which as I write this, where Buddy Lester and Jackie Gleason had their shows, in the form of opening Benzedrine Inhalers and taking out the accordian folded stips of cotton paper, tearing the strips off, and chewing them to get high on Benzedrine. They used the real stuff in those days before it became the Benzedrex Inhaler! Sips of beer took care of the dry mouth that chewing the strips brought about. We were fifteen and sixteen then, actually not even allowed to be in Harry's, but he looked the other way.
I used to wonder why I got so focused, and won a lot of pool games, while my buddies got wired, and made wild shots (I didn't know I was ADHD in those days), but I enjoyed winning.
Anyway I graduated to Dexedrine in the late forties when I met a guy fourteen years my senior, and a physician, specializing in Internal Medicine, who became my savior and mentor, and introduced me to the before mentioned Dexedrine. I never got hooked on it, but always used it when I painted or wrote, well, yeah, I guess I got hooked on it that way, I'm only kidding myself if I say I didn't, but shit, it was legitimate, free (no triple scrip then) and really focused me, but I had to drink at night to come down from it and sleep, rather pass out, drunken sleep is not sleep, so the next day always started with a dexie.
I was a singer/actor/disc jockey/writer/painter, in my that life, before I got my doctorate in psychology and became a Ph.D. psychotherapist, and there I was in Birmingham , Alabama, still a long way from a doctorate, lead actor in a theater company (got some great reviews from the locals, who's name I'll remember later, ah I remember, Emmett Weaver was one, and Lily May Caldwell was the name of the other one), disc jockey, first at WVOK, the fifty thousand watt Voice Of Dixie, as "Smilin" Johnny Davis, a station name, and then as myself, Dick Hoyt on WBRC, a Taft Family Broadcasting Station. I actually introduced myself as "Dick Hoyt, with an H and an O and a Y and a T, with music for me and thee!" Corny!! I spelled it our because no one understood HOYT, they would say "White", "Wyatt", until I learned to pronouce it with two syllables, as they do in the South with many names and things, so it became, "Dick Howitt! with an H...etc."
We were putting on a performance of "Anything Goes," and I was playing the lead, Billy, when this drug salesman ( who's name I can't remember)gave me the Prolaire-B. I was still drinking pretty heavily, so I tried it. It was GREAT! Much better than dexedrine, the Belladonna perked my eyes up brightly and the rest of the concoction made me feel wonderful. It was my new drug of choice for years until they took it off the market as dangerous, hey, but it was years before they did that, as is the case with most dangerous drugs.
My then girlfiend, later my second wife, Nancy Hardenberg knew nothing of any of this, at least I hope she didn't, else why marry such a train wreck of a guy unless she was a masochist Nancy wasn't in that show although we went on to star in several vehicles together, most notably as Will Parker and Ado Annie (yes, I danced a bit, too)in "Oklahoma."
I don't know what the point of this memoir was except to say I sure loved Prolaire-B when it was on the market, and wondered if anybody else did?
I'm clean and sober now and have been for the past forty years and that was due, in part, to my third and last wife, Phyllis, who was well worth being clean and sober for. I focus by meditating now!
More later

Despots

The other day I wondered where Montesquieu was when you needed him, and it brought to mind that he warned against despots, and it got me to thinking about what a despot is so I looked it up in the dictionary, which says that a despot is one who rules by tyranny, an autocratic and oppressive ruler, and I thought "Wow!" that describes Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggert, James Dobson and others of their ilk who oppress free thinking and who rule by fear. Fear of the devil. Fear of being excluded from heaven. Fear of disagreeing with the head of their congrgations else they get cast into Hell!!
Really, how different are they from the lawmakers in Russia who want to suppress all Jewish organizations, and religions, as extremeist and dangerous?
Is this any more stunning than James Dobson threatening Senators and Congressmaen who don't agree with his extremist views with some sort of retaliation? I don't think so.
Of course they could just buy people to espouse their point of view like the administration does. Hire Armstong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, or Charles Krauthammer, hell I'm 75 and have an income that isn't even at the poverty level, Hell they can hire me! If it wasn't for the warmth and generousity of the woman I'm living with, I'd be in a cardboard box somewhere, or, heaven forefend, having to live with one of my kids!
I don't have a following so I can't be a despot who can order shunning, boycotts of the opposition, threats of excommuncation and all that, but I can be a voice of one trying to find some order in the chaos, and some explanation of bigotry and bias.

Memoirs Of Suicide

I'm not sure how old I was the first time my mother attempted suicide, maybe nine or ten, but I do remember when and where vividly. It was midtown Manhattan, between Seventieth and Seventy-sixth Streets, on the East side of the street, in a bar where ladies only came by invitation "Ladies Only." Otherwise it was a hard drinking, mostly Irish, bar for men. I wasn't supposed to be there at all, but I couldn't be left at home alone, and I guess, no one was around to watch me.
Ladies sat in the back where there were booths for that purpose (no Lady ever sat at the bar in those days!) I was ensconced under the booth where no one could see me, I mean, not like there were patrols out looking for kids illegally in bars with their drinking parents and boyfriends, but there were some socially conscious folks around who would report on people who did bring their kids to bars.
My mother was an alcoholic, and though her boyfriend, George Howell was not, he put it away pretty good trying to keep up with her.
I don't remember any details aout the bar, they were all pretty much the same, railroad type bars to match the railroad style apartments in the tenements they occupied. Except for the first eight years of my life, we lived in railroad flats, over the next five years, and then I was on the streets permanently until I went into the Navy at sixteen.
Anyway, as my mother got drunker, she did what she always did, first with my father before he went to prison, and then with George, his replacement, she got boisterous, and then startd doing her Gilda Gray interpretation and started to shimmy "Like her sister Kate," as the song says, in the back room.
The men would come and get her, and hoist her onto the bar and that's when the fun started with them all looking up her dress and making lewd remarks as she shook her ass. Then a fight would ensue as George defended her honor and cracked a few heads, and, believe me, he was big enough and strong enough.
He got her off the bar as the fight, broken up by the bartender and a few other roughnecks, and skooted her back to the booth as drinks were bought all around.
"Goddamned you! You're gonna get me killed one of these days." George said.
Julia laughed (my mothe's name) "Big tough guy like you. Nobody's gonna kill you!"
She covered her mouth with her hand when she laughed, because some time before, George had knocked out a front tooth, and it embarrassed her to laugh or smile. Sometimes, when she didn't get her hand up fast enough, she'd stick her tongue over the hole to cover it. It didn't work.
"How about another drink?" She said.
"No. You've had enough. Let's go." And using me as an excuse, "The kid's got church tomorrow."
I don't think she even remembered I was with them. " Oh yeah. He's got Catechism class, too. But I want another drink!" She insisted.
George grabbed her by the arm. "C'mon, we're goin'home." He roughly shoved her towards the front door, and suddenly she took off.
"I'm not goin' anywhere but to the cemetary."
Julia ran out the door of the saloon and right into passing traffic trying to get hit by a car. Traffic was light and cars swerved around her as George, and me, too, ran out into the traffic, George waving his arms and me just running towards her and grabbing her around the legs. She was sobbing and crying then.
"Let me die, God, let me die!"
She struggled and George finally got there and subdued her.
I don't remember what happened after that, and I don't know why, but she wasn't contrite the next day, nor did she remember it at all, so I would guess that's why.
That was the first of several suicide attempts, that last of which was successful, when she was thirty-seven, and I was fifteen. I'll tell you about those some other time. I'm too worked up right now.

Where is Montesquieu When You Need Him?

When there's a Republican President in the Whitehouse, and the Congress is controlled in the Senate and the House by the same party (and that goes for Democratic control, too) the country could be in trouble, if that same party controls the Supreme Court, we are really in trouble! Without a system of checks and balances that the two party system provides, with rarely one party ever being able to overwhelm the other, we would be subject to a benign kind of dictatorship wherein the fiats and whims of the majority party would not be limited by established laws and countervailing powers, but would engender a new aristocracy, that would steamroller the opposition.
Without a separate Judiciary, and a Legislative Branch of government with two house,each to check the other, we have no Democratic government. It is no longer "We, the people..." It is "We, the republicans...", or "We,the Democrats...", and this is the way it's going to be!
The Founding Fathers called on the idea's of, heaven forefend, a French nobleman, Charles-Louis, de Secondat, baron de La Bre'de ett de Montesquieu, to help them frame the Constitution. We, in our tempestous hizzy fit with the French, conveniently forget how much they helped frame our own freedom, and constitution.
Our voters have not voted their conscience, but their emotions, and though emotions are important, they don't belong in the ballot box, but in the passionate defense of checks and balances!
Good governance demands that attention be paid to the patient nurturing of this society of laws, and to the intracate details of governance. A one party system won't do that. In the next elections I hope we all remember that!

Pardon My Cynicism

Gee, I read in the paper today that the Holocast's lesson is called crucial to todays society. That if the world had listened to the horrors of the Nazi death camps, that it's possible that genocide in Cambodia, Bosnis and Rwanda, might, or could have been avoided (Reuters, United Nations) Forgive me, but the world did listen and didn't give a damn, and it never does give a damn, so long as it doesn't happen in their neighborhoods! (NIMBY'S, Not in my back yard!)
I'm sure they listened in Russia, but two pages over from that article was a little blurb from Moscow, that a group of nationalistic LAWMAKERS called for sweeping legislation to outlaw ALL Jewish organizations, and punishing anyone who supports them. They accuse the Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred, pardon me, accuse the JEWS of fomenting ethnic hatred? They say the Jews, by their behavior, provoke anti-Semitism? Is this classic "Blame the victim," or what?
Does anybody see paralell's to what we've been through and continue to go through here in the USofA, except on the side of, so-called, patriotism? The "You're either with me, or against me" mentality that is gripping our nation and emanates from the top of our government?
Tyranny and dictatorship wherever it appears, even in the name of patriotism, is wrong, and cannot be righted by claiming to be on the side of the angels!
If you exclude "all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremeist." can excluding, Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, Budhhist organizations be far behind?Isn't that how it starts? Isn't that what Hitler did, and his ally, Mussolini, oh yes, let's not forget, as much as we love Italy and Italians, that the leadership of that country, despite the peoples wishes, allied themselves with Hitler!
If the Shiite's dominate in the Iraqi elections, do you not think they will impose their will over the objections of the minority?
We need "Realty World," not "Reality TV." Alas, I'm afraid we will never get that, and it's not, as some are fond of saying, because thee is ignorance in the world, because in Russia, as in other places, it is LAWMAKERS, supposedly educated people, not ignoramuses, who are making these decisions!!
Meanwhile, in other parts of our enlightened and educated planet, and nation, a former FBI agent, and an Internet stock advisor, were convicted for manipulating the stock market to their own adantage and the disadvantage of hapless investors dependent on the ethics and integrity of the people they were dealing with. At the same time a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, drunk and disorderly fired his gun into the air four times...don't ask me to explain it, even though I am a psychologist, some behavior is beyond my imagination, or ability, except to explain the world and its inhabitants as, if not totally, paranoid, then certainly full of highly suspicious people, or paranoid personality types!

Dignity And Self-Respect

If you are going to live your life with self-respect, you must have dignity. Where does dignity come from? Living an ethical life. Being true to your own ideals, which could translate into living by your own rules, not doing that which is most convenient, or will cause the fewest waves.
You have to go to the wall for your beliefs. The courage to stand in the face of adversity. The will and discipline to not cave in to pressure or promise of rewards you haven't earned.
Today it is so easy to just go along, to say "What the hell, what does it matter?" To think you'll just get yours and to hell with everyone and everything else.
These are times in which it is easy to stand aside, and not listen to conscience. To stand aside and not be counted. I understand that. I read history. What has changed since recorded history, not much except the technology to kill each other more violently, so why should you, or I, or anyone else go to the wall for their beliefs since life is so much longer now, and it is hard to be a firebrand when your past fifty? If you actually have to ask why, I don't know if explaining it to you would make any difference, but I'll do the best I can.
If we just go along without protest, without pointing out the fallacies of our, not necessarily, opponents ideas or designs upon our freedoms, we will wind up with a Castro, Hussein, Hitler, Gadaffi, Pappa Doc, Stalin.
These days our fortitude is challenged, our faith tried. Now, more then ever we need our self-respect and dignity, and the ability to defend them without cringing!

Writing, writing, writing, or ranting, ranting, ranting!

Believe me I am going to write a sequel to Thrust Home, in fact I've outlined it and have developed some characters. It's title is "Killer Instinct," but I somehow have not been able to get into it. It may be that having not achieved too much success with "Thrust Home," self-published as it was, has taken some of the edge off of wanting to write a sequel to a book that not too many people have read in the first place. It puzzles me because I don't write, in the first place, for money. I write because I want to tell a story, and want to see how interestingly I can tell that story, at least that's what I tell myself!
Meanwhile, I have written a Western Novella titled "Vengeance Trail," and am partly through another one titled "Homeward Bound." One is about an old widower whose home is destroyed and his partner's wife killed by rowdy young cowboys, sociopaths looking for fun, and the rancher and his partner tracking them down and wreaking vengeance. The other's about two pals returning from a cattle drive who are waylayed in a town not on the map and made part of a chain gang at a copper mine and their subsequent escape.
I'm feeling the press of time at 75.
I have a play to rewrite, and two other books to rewrite, and a screenplay I want to convert into a novel. I also want to make an album of songs. One Christmas tunes (my family and friends will listen to me at least once a year...LOL) and the other simply for vanity's sake. I want to do these albums while I still have the voice and can carry a tune!
I also have a dozen or so canvasses that I need to finish up. Cursed with multi-talents (who knows if they're any good!) I am torn as to which to stick to and wind up dividing my time between them, as I have my whole life...actually, i's not as anguished as it sounds because I really enjoy all of it, but no art that puts you on the line is easy, unless you never show it, and though I don't consider myself ego driven, I do like to have my work, read, seen and heard because it's gratifying. No one has indicated that I'm Faulkner, Picasso, or Sinatra, but nobody's told me I should get a day job either!

Horticulture/Tilt At A Windmill, Why Don't You?

I have tilted at windmills my whole life. Why, you might ask and I don't know if I can tell you why? Was I born contrarion, or did I become contrarian through the course of my life. People delude themselves continually and I feel compelled to rail against them, or is it me deluding myself?
Questions, questions, all I have are questions. It's easier to ask questions than to provide answers, folks rarely argue with questions, citing your curious nature, but provide an answer, and you create an argument, a put-down, castigation, sometimes an agreement, but most often irritation.
You can, for instance, lead a whore to water, but you can't make her drink. Do you know who said that, and why, or what circumstance it came up in?
Is it gender-biased, gauche', or simply irrelevant?
Who knows, who cares.
I'm right, you're wrong!

Innate Differences?

Innate differences, of course there are innate differences, but they are not intellectual. They are physical and probably emotional. Men are innately more pugilistic than women more generally aggresive than women, stronger, more muscular, faster. Women are innately more gentle, more patient, more nurturing, more communicative, healthier. There are probably many more innate differences, but that's all that comes to mind right now. Intellectually? Woman is more than equal to man in my opinion, linquistically, emotionally, diplomatically, and in other ways I'm sure I've overlooked.. Men wouldn't make stupid comments like the President of Harvard did if they weren't terrified of women, terrified that they wouldn't get laid, or nurtured in other ways as well. Our sitcoms are built around men being terrified of women because women read men so easily, as the woman who shares her life with me, Almarene says, "I can read you like a cheap novel!" She's right, and that's why men abuse their women, because they are as easy to read a s cheap novel. Men abuse women by beating up on them, women get back at them by saying "No," for which they get abused more. We (Almarene and I) find our differences a signal for exploration, not war. We didn't at first, but now we delight in those differences, it makes for lively discussions! Nothing to fear, but fear itself.

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