Sunday, January 7, 2024

In Remembrance -- Christine Mandell 1958-2023

 


The recent passing of my former esteemed violinist and musical partner (1985-88) Christine Mandell on the 4th of November 2023 requires some sort of public statement, and gracious acknowledgement from me... While for the past two months I have been getting the logistics and preparations done to re-release our 1987 cassette only album "Home Delivery- Elmtree Street" as a CD,  I only learned of her passing several days ago, two months to the day practically just as I am putting the master CD into production... ASAP, which was what it was meant to be, anyway, but it hurts terrifically I'm not able to get her own copy in time...

Chris and I met in spring 1985 thru a notice she posted at the Haight-Ashbury Music Center looking for a guitarist she could partner with, to work on an arrangement of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, and whatever else we could come up with. We turned out to be quite musically compatible, having both spent time busking, myself in the SF Bay Area and Santa Cruz CA and herself in Amsterdam,& Copenhagen. She even spent a night in jail in Copenhagen, which shows both her own dedication to the art as well as the occasional ignorance of the unmusical public. That aside, we found we had a particularly common interest in rocking up classical music some... myself with my own compositions for chamber orchestra I was concurrently working on, and the band I already had embryonically started with my San Francisco musician friend Derek Williams, and a former girlfriend. 

We played several places in Berkeley generally as open mic incidents- the Freight and Salvage, Starry Plough, and Larry Blake's, as a guitar and violin duo.  We started working on some folk idiom based things, culturally working on ideas of Eastern Europe, Ireland, Scotland and Spain. We brought a recent acquaintance Larry Marshall in to play drums on the initial recording sessions and Larry worked our one actual gig as a four-piece with us, at the Ansonia Residence Club for an art party.

We got the Elmtree Street album together by that Halloween, people compared us to Camper Van Beethoven -who were contemporary but a bit younger, mainly merely because both bands had a violin.
I got some attention from some LA producers , but, after meeting them and discovering what they really wanted was a take of my publishing, I wisely backed out of that. Chris (and her later replacement) didn't care for the contributions of my ex-wife, and I had to agree with them. Larry went back to the reggae band he'd come from the Reggae All-Stars, and Derek and I decided to continue our songwriting partnership, as well as performing live in a duo structure, for the next 15 years. 

 Chris was a musician's musician, one thing I loved about her was she was not into it for the money, for while I would have preferred more to have come my way myself for it, I wasn't actually either. It's a life if not a living. She contributed to paying for the sessions and didn't want anything of the potential profits, but I was able to get something to both Derek and Larry, and that was as ought have been as well. We made music that was from the heart and meant for ears, so it makes me happy to finally be putting out a CD version of Elmtree Street (in a limited edition) I am super sad that I managed to get to it just a bit to o late to reach her. And that's the way it goes I suppose, life was built to break our hearts. I never had another more gifted and spirited collaborator again, but I think the world will be lucky and happy to hear what we managed to get together, for what it was. I am planning to have the CD available by Jan 31.  

In fond loving memory, and may she be ever in that angel band. We'll play together again, up there.

                                       Christine Mandell 10-30-1958   11-4-2023

Thursday, October 13, 2022

The War Nobody Wanted, But Everybody Wants To Watch

 Now almost eight months into things, the conflict in Ukraine has got many people upset. This of course is an understatement, but there are levels of upsetness which bear defining. One major level of upset, of course, are those in the West who believe the entire episode was "unprovoked," and don't remember there was a treaty put in place several administrations ago, with the Russians, in which the USA agreed they would NOT push for Uiraine becoming a part of NATO, and, that basically the West would leave Russia its basic sense of self-identity and security by advocating for a neutral Ukraine.

The interest many Americans seem to have in a country so far from the United States as to be nearly halfway across the world is apparently all based on video games. Youtube is filled with scenes from the war with brave Ukrainians shooting invader orcs out of the sky, and these clips get hundreds if not thousands of clips, meanwhile, nobody considers that, in that plane going down in flames is a human being, some mother's child, someone who probably didn't necessarily even wish to be in that situation, but for orders they received they were bound to follow.

Death comes to all equally, and it hardly behooves civilized people to cheer on when another of our human family meets their end. Whether or not anyone feels the invaders deserve what they get, the entire episode seems to have been conceived from the mind of a leftover pint-sized ex-KGB cop who still feels it was a horrible thing that the Berlin Wall came down, and thousands of his people, and others living under the spell of the Soviet Union, became capable of entertaining freedom of thought for the first time in generations, if not history. 

On the other side of the coin is the lionized comedian thrust to the spotlight by circumstances who begs for "preemptive strikes" on his enemy by those outside his borders whom he's already begged and borrowed billions in armaments and other benefits from. It's not enough, apparently, to be an overachieving underdog working against an incompetent foe, but the rest of the world must risk nuclear conflagration by escalation -perhaps only military contributions from NATO will satisfy him. He's doing quite well by the looks of it from the help he's already received, and listening to the calls for mulilateral escalation ought to be cause for trepidation and alarm. But more or less, for any of the American public, they're not. They want more, and to see just how well all those rockets and and air ssystems really perform. Because hey they have a lot of stock dollars riding on them!

In back of the Napoleonic ex-KGB cop you have not the Communist Party, they failed and gave up their part in The Center long ago, but the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by Patriarch War Pig. Resemblances to Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri are easy to see- all of them seek to sanctify spiritual suicide to give their sacrificial cannon fodder blessings in Heaven. Allah be praised, here's another bunch of self-satisfied patriots willing to send their younger generation off to the slaughter. These patterns are easy to see in every military society on earth, but, when it's religious leaders who are making the call to war, their religiosity has obviously been tossed to the winds.

This blog had its second largest audience after the USA in Russia. We've been banned there, and we know why. Voices like ours willing to talk to Russian people without demonizing them, willing to hold to the idea that  people are people everywhere, but governments are everybody's real problem, obviously can't be allowed to spread our "lies" to a population their government wishes to keep misinformed. But that's OK. The more ideas like ours get under the skin of the ex-KGB cop and the piano-playing Pericles, the more we  feel validated in our efforts. Frankly it wouldn't matter WHO the world leader is, since most of them are socio-psychopaths in the first place, seeking power in order to either apotheosize themselves, or manipulate large masses of other humans, or both. We are equal-opportunity critics, and if we've limited this current post to the two characters making a mess out of Eastern Europe, then its not like we don't also cast an eye to the nutcases running our own nation. It's just that at the moment, those people will have more of their own problems soon, and we'll have enough to say when the other shoe drops.

The threat of nuclear holocaust should drive everyone to call again for peace between all nations. Give up the video console thrill of remote flame and destruction and ask yourself, how would you feel if the large population center you reside near were pulverized in seconds with megaton intensity, and that big grey cloud looming outside the window held nothing but the ashes of hundreds of your countrymen, and possibly, yes, maybe even your own. (And if so, well, bye-bye window). Gone, in an instant, and if anyone even remembers your name it'll be because someone outside the blast zone has records you once existed. Nobody wants to die in a nuclear war, and the people most anxious to see it happen seem to be riding the rail to be the front row cheerleaders.

That is one reason why I say- militarism and religiosity are mutually exclusive. If the preachers preaching Armageddon would back off and allow the world to live (being as it is, we've pretty much set the planet afire with civilization's carbon footprint, already) and the politicians preaching antagonisms and throwing stones would sit down at the table and talk about working things out, just maybe we could all breathe a little easier. Personally, I hope I'm long gone before the world ends, and would prefer not to be part of the audience if and when it does. And I would hope most of the folks who read this blog will feel the same. "People are people everywhere. It's the governments that are fucked." 

Saturday, April 16, 2022

What's Going On

 Since this little invasion of Ukraine has been going on for fifty days now, and a good percentage of my readership over the years has been from Russia (2.54 thousand hits all time, ranking 2nd among nations) I figure it probably is time for me to comment about it. I recently received a note from Google that this blog cannot monetize if it "spreads any information deemed to be false about the situation in Ukraine." This blog has never actually beeen monetized in any fashion by me, having lost control of navigation into those Google advertising innards when I dismantled a lot of my Google connections some five or six years ago. Nonetheless, Google decides what you should read. And what I want to tell you is exactly what IS happening in Ukraine, and inside of Russia, for any of you still able to read this, in either location.

Well. We have the invasion of a soveriegn nation happening. All historical precedent Russia may claim that it holds Ukraine as something dear to its cultural bosom are false. Ever since the Holodomor, the enforced famine of the 1930's, Ukrainians have held a righteous grudge against Moscow, since Ukrainians have generally been treated as expendable units by every nation ever galloped across their steppes. Mother Russia, I am sorry to say, is a myth which has died as hard as the myth of the Soviet Union. There is no going back to things as they were 500 years ago, not for anyone- not for Muslim extremists in the Middle East and Afghanistan, not for the Germans and any Austrian Empire, not for the Brits and their never-setting sun. It's all over. Ukraine has been a nation of its own over 30 years, and in a similar position to that of the American colonies when they wrested themselves from Great Britain. They have a national identity conciousness which is not going to be eradicated by Putin's minions, his military, nor his hypocritical Orthodox war-pig priests.

Putin's military is going noplace, and nobody needs to fear their invading them anywhere else, since their ineptitude has so blatantly exposed the weaknesses within Putin's heirachical strategies. Not telling your troops what they are doing, where they are going, or what they are expected to do when they get there is no way to guarantee any sort of victory, and many of your Russian troops are righteously deserting, in the face of overwhelming losses in the tens of thousands of their comrades. 

Anyone with any sense would have fled the area to begin with, but the people who have chosen to stay to defend Ukraine have every right to do it. As a pacifist I cannot condone anything other than a worst case survival scenario but people have a right to defend themselves and their territories, especially when their invader seeks to obliterate any sense of individual and collective identity other than that imposed by the "insane Tsar," as he has been so recently and rightly proclaimed. 

At one time it looked, truly, as if Putin was one of the only real rational world leaders. Any of the early advances like the Crimean takeover could be explained out of some historical precedence, yes, but what has been lost on the Russian leadership and "thought-influencers" is just how weak and paltry and in-effective their conservative imperialism is against everything that brought down the Soviet Union from the West. Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, forever, my friends. Patriarch Kiril vows a holy war, and does not sense himself the sheer hypocrisy of a Christian leader advocating for war, violence, and murder of one's brethren.

The Ukrainians and Russians have along way to go perhaps to sorting out their pasts and collective histories, but one thing is absolutely sure- Russia has not defeated Ukraine, and are doomed to defeat. Putin's "special operarion" is one of the stupidest, ill-thought out, and ridiculous chauvinistic ventures of any world leader since the fall of Stalin and Mao. And it's no joke, people inside Russia are only hearing Putin's side of it.

Your biggest battleship and troop transport ships have been sunk! Six of your generals and an admiral are dead! You cannot assume that your navy can nor will overtake southern Ukraine. Your troops have been defeated as they tried to encircle the capital! The best thing to do is urge upon your leaders a quick and hasty retreat to where you were before hostilities began, since those hostilities were intiated by your leaders, and rest on specious and unsuppported suppositions of the intents and values of the leaders of the Ukrainian nation. Your nation has to learn to live with itself, within itself, and go back to sucking its collective navel in shame, for the criminal destruction of the landscape and population of Ukraine and the deaths of tens of thousands of your sons in battle are not worth the ugliness they have created in the eyes and hearts of the rest of the world.

Those of us who have tried to express brotherhood between nations, as I have myself with persons living in both Ukraine and Russia, can only watch and be horrified by this return to the barbarities that characterized Europe in the 20th C. I have a young friend in Russia of draft-age for whom I have great fears and hopes, that he not be sucked into Putin's and the Russian War-Pigs' machinery- machinery every bit as evil as was that of the American conflict in Vietnam- wars fought by people with no urge to take part in them are wars that cannot be won, either. The values expressed by Patriarch Kiril and other Russian writers echo the same lame quacks of American conservatives of the 1960's- national "honor and pride" forbid them from seeing the tragedy of defeat taking shape before their eyes. All is not as they lead you to believe. Always question what you're being told. World freedom begins with each of us making up our own minds.

Saturday, February 12, 2022

PIGPEN'S BLACK FOREST BLUES


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Thursday, September 16, 2021

FROM A STARLIT SHORE a novel

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Wednesday, June 9, 2021

From A Starlit Shore (Excerpt)


AND NOW HONK HONK and the others found themselves at the very Gates of the Games! It had been a bit of a push, getting one or two of them to hurry along, with so many interesting attractions along the way, but they were now at the Gates of the Arena, two kilometers away from the city and town of Sil, and the children gazed in awe at the grounds that lay before them – from the vast, deep amphitheater holding thousands, to the deep pool that lay off to the let, where rowing and swimming competitions occurred, Or maybe the wide track that ran in a circle roundabout the arena, with guards at the entry points to assure no spectators could interfere by accidentally walking out into it while a race was being run. Banners flew from poles at precise thirty meter lengths. On the stone seats of the amphitheater, workers had spent the day laying programs for the events, so that the seats were covered each in large white paper. On the seats of the well to do VIP section, these workers had also each lain a rose, as a memento they might cherish later for years on a dusty mantelpiece.

Tomorrow was the Day of the Game Song Sing. At the occasion, groups of men and women from the different provinces all grouped together at the start of the ceremony, and sang the Anthem to Tudops, the Anthem to Palacha, and the Anthem to Corocovo, now in his twelfth year or ruling. Of course, it was yet unknown whether or not the King might actually appear at the Games this year or not, being out of his league in the matter of his boudoir and Lady, but yet it would be certain that those charged with upholding the traditions of the games- the Sponsors, the Maintainers of the Arena, the Boroughmeisters of Sil- all these forces worked in concert so that when the King would decide whether he came or not all things would be under control and proceeding to plan with or without him.

All round the Arena nestled in little niches were statues of past celebrated champions -of decades past- and representations of various sports that took place therein. Huge torches blazed from cornices in the arena’s pavilion stands, and at the time of the Song, their would be groups of athletes chosen to represent, gathered in the Pit of the Arena, all hoisting their respective banners, and singing the Praises of their benefactors- Sun, Nation, and King.

The children were not as anonymous as they had been left to feel however- for the news of the missing children had traveled to Sil at the time of Orodam’s departure, and there were a crew of town dignitaries assembled not far from where the kids found themselves. The leader of this bunch, one Glanza, approached Honk Honk with three of his men. The staffs they carried were imposing, as were the men’s gruff appearance and clothing. Obviously they had been targonid hunters at one point in their lives, thought Honk Honk. But if I get a chance, I’ll show them I am just as tough and fierce!

Ho there! You must be the Ransomed Ones! We are here for your behalf! As members of the town council of Sil, we have made all accommodations for you! You will not need sleep in the fields this evening, nor any other as long as the Games are on! Won’t you come with us? We have a celebration planned for you at our favorite tavern!”

Honk Honk didn’t speak. He looked at the others. It would be just as well with him if the girls went with this offer, but he and Rlok and Matim and Jonc better be left out of this! He had big plans- of the chickens he could steal, of the apple orchard he knew would be just ripe enough at this time, and the idea of sleeping in some house in a bed at a time like this- what sort of adventure was that?

Yoni made her way through the throngs of the streets of Sil. Everywhere preparations had been made, and people were in the process of both welcoming the tourists like herself, or putting the finishing touches to the town’s decorations. Coming here as a single woman, she would not be looked upon in any ways different from so many of the others who came, although there was no need in her life for partnering, nor parenting. And so there would be little reason for her to be involved in so many of the different games that went on with the women of Palacha behind the scenes, at the Games. She had no rivals, no others who were obvious competitors to take the one man she had set her mark on.

Although when she left that morning she barely thought it, by the time she had made her acquaintance of her taverner for the night, she had put her mind on the Duron she had known as a younger nymph. Back when there was little to wonder about about anything other than, how was that man built, beneath his toga? All the same, it would be only a matter of time before she would run into him somewhere here in Sil or the Arena, and she made herself comfortable in her room going through the various spots around where it might be that she eventually did.

Duron had been twenty two and as the bulkiest and strongest man of his cohort, the Farmland Champions of so many years past, and Yoni had been two years his junior but speedy and primed for marathons. The attraction had been mutual, and so had the parting. Or so she had thought. On the morning of the Games Song Sing, however, he was nowhere near.



Duron had begged off from Craald about getting themselves a Sil slut to share like they had the other night, and booked himself into a small room near the great Ovens of the Games, where the targonids were roasted, and all manner of food for the thousands of spectators primarily prepared. At least, that which came on the public dime, that of King Corocovo. He settled into his own dreamless pillow, thinking only of how the next day he would have to go to the King and report on the episode of the children. The children were free, but safe? He laughed. When he was young he had runaway to the games himself, only two years before he had met that … usbanler Yoni. He didn’t think about her but how he had won at darts and made his way back up to champion and in such a position that he was in effect, one of the King’s most trusted outriders. And what sort of things could he say to his liege?

Yes, the children were safe, but no, we did not catch the rapscallions? For now he knew Corocovo could only put a bounty on the heads of both Congulula and Llnash – a bounty which would likely be sneered at by the peoples of Loronam, but no less, bound to gain the interests of the King’s loyal subjects.



Loronam itself, originally an outpost of explorers to the west of the great dividing range of Gwala, located at the side of a river which flowed from springs high up, home to all manner of outcasts from Palacha, those who had either neglected to join in the Ondinian revolt, but only moved over the hills, or those who came there, like Congulula and Llnash, as fugitives- a center of anarchy in the King’s mind, a haven for a free marketer and profiteer on another’s.


Duron then had to rise early, and make a round trip journey from Sil to Palachina and back, in the company of the King when he returned. For the King not to be present at the Day of Song Sing would be a blasphemy of a kind, and Duron was, at least in his own mind, pretty sure that it would be a priority of King Corocovo himself to want to be ready to ride to Sil when he came to furnish his report.

So sighing wearily from his bed, he took to the small kitchen that lay on the first floor of the inn, next to the bar. Here, he made himself a breakfast of targonid rump and gorgoz, and so feeling heartily prepared, he began the long ride back, taking care to feed and water his horse Blue Willow before leaving.


He found the King just as he would have expected- all the palace guard and courtiers arranged ‘round a King ‘dressed to kill’ for the great ceremony of the Games Song Sing was the most regal presentation of his Majesty conceivable to the average Ztamian peasant. Duron could have laughed out loud at the number of small children from the Farmlands who also had come to gather at the feet of the King’s throne, for some of them were the sons and daughters of men he knew and had oft rode and plowed with. The gang of children laughed cackled burbled and made various eruptive noises as Duron bowed to the King.

Your Majesty, I report to you- the children are safe, they are free from the kidnappers. But they themselves- we were unable to apprehend. It’s our feeling they rode east to Loronam, and if we wanted to, we could go after them there...”

But I see no point in that at the moment, Duron. We have these other matters to attend to. And you say they are safe? What of the parents?”

The parents paid the ransom, and they are in attendance at Sil. Where, I have my expectations, we are soon about to return?”

Yes, Yes, yes“ mumbled Corocovo. “We’ll get on soon enough. Meanwhile, look what we have here!”

He nodded with a light point off to his side at the children huddled and sitting Indian-style around him.

These little sprats are off to the games as well. It’s my hope we shall bring them with us, with the other children at the Games? Perhaps some accommodations can be made for them all.”

Beaming generously, Corocovo laughed and took up his royal staff and thumped it three times on the floor.

We ride, we ride to the Games! And we will bring along this little throng, and everyone will have a song to sing along at the Song Sing!”

With fifes and drums and squires with trailing headpieces, the retinue of King Corocovo III’s court began the trek to Sil. They could arrive in an easy five hours, and by that time, Tudops would hang suspended at the top of the sky. And all the Games players and spectators and the hundreds of different craftspeople of all kinds who lined the roads of the approaches- all the King’s majesty was emboldened now, as Duron rode beside them, and a mob of raggly children followed merrily behind.



The process of the Games- the week of the contests, fetes, feasts, and orgies, took a week. Each day was demarcated with special attention to some aspect of the variety of attentions which could call people from the countryside from all over the kingdom.

The first day was the Day of the Song Sing.

It was followed by the day of the Targonids, the Day of the Bakers, The Day of the Harvest, the Day of the Virgins, the Day of the Champions, and the Day of Tudops. To wit- the Day of the Targonids was devoted to targonid completions, athletic and culinary. From roping and riding to barbecuing with relish, the Day of the Targonids meant that many, many of the crowds around would at least get a good plateful of the succulent meat for their supper, whether at the terms of the King at the end of the afternoon, or the Queen’s judge, comments on chef’ prowess, where free samples were ranged to the first three or four hundred who could pack the square near the great Targonid Ovens that lay on one portion of the Arena’s exterior.

The Bakers utilized their own ovens, on the other side of the arena, the following day, It would be a give that Rolot the baker would be conniving to get one of the various patrons who made up the panel of judges to taste one of his creations. The Day of the Harvest featured a ceremonial parade with a cornucopia drawn on a long low wagon, with marching bands and proud farm boys in line as the King and the Queen gazed over them in reverent praise. For it was hard work making the crops grow. The Ztamian winter was fiercer than would have been Earth’s, with four months of bleak cold edged with terrific rain and lightning storms. The crops needed be in before all that commenced, and it was so that these rude laborers could feel honor in their efforts that a day was given over to them.

The Day of the Virgins was one the reasons all the children were hastening to get to Sil. For to be the first among their cohort to lose this proof of innocence was nearly always some sort of contest for many of the runaways who came of their own to the Arena and the Games for Games Week. A king and a queen virgin would be nominated from among the scrabbly bands of runaway kids, by the acclamation of the children themselves. While it may or may not have been something of a status symbol to be the King of the Virgins, Honk Honk however would rather ready himself for the sacrifice of that detestable title, and more for the Champion of the Bed. He thought that title would suit him a hella lot better, anyway. Once the King and Queen of Virgins had been picked, it would be their due to have to consummate in copulation in front of a thousand mainly elder Ztamians. The old beefy men in their greasy togas kneeling behind their wagons to ejaculate at passerby were always guaranteed to get their jollies, as were the matronly cougars who prowled the amphitheater rows, seeking out tousle- headed young studs for their flattering gigolos.

The Day of the Champions was when the winners from the competitions- a fair majority of which took place on this day alone- were named and celebrated, with crowns of laurel and orgofam, and as well, champions were named from among the semi-official competitions which took place in the many venues of sexual pleasure. That male and female champion were almost always, but not in all cases, called upon by their peers to fornicate in a special grove which had been unofficially created in a vale about two kilos from the Arena- there, in a ceremony lit by torches and on a bed made of orgofam briars, surrounded by dozens of their admirers, the winners would copulate, sometimes for hours, while cheered on by these friends … Who themselves turned to each other, for frolic was the name of the game whenever the races and trysts of the day had been completed.


The final day, the day when everyone took their bets on how they were going to spend the next five days, five months, five years, or a lifetime, with any conceptualized idea of a partner, was the Day of Tudops. This was given over completely to the cult of their star, and all the many different sorts of sacrifice were made. The Song of Tudops was once again sung, lustily by all, for at the completion of this final day would also conclude with another very serious mass orgy. Couples of all kinds made their selves known as such, for in this humid climate, there had never been any impetus for those attending the games to wear any sort of dress. Special houses had been erected in different spots round Sil and the Arena where Games-goers could shed whatever they had come wearing, and have them safely secured and returned when they departed.. It was most people’s hope not to make the return trip alone, for another great benefit of the Day of Tudops was that it was the traditional day of final choice, for women to pick what man they had best been pleasured by over the last week, and for men to make vows unto the women who had chosen them. This was the way things usually went. In most years. But this year, with the King’s situation at the palace with Queen Aashon in such a state, it was unclear if the King would be staying at Sil long enough to hold forth over the great finale Sing, or cast his blessing over the thousands of copulating subjects who were in every position imaginable when he would take the time to take leave of them all.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

E Pluribus Pabluminium

      The two party system is taken as more or less an icon of our American politics. It's driven into most of us by an early age that the two main political parties in America are the sine qua non, the be all and end all of American politics. But it's actually unusual for a nation to divide into only two political parties. In many other countries, there's often four, five or even more putting up people for election. And perhaps, that itself might be an incentive toward a more fulfilled democracy, in those places.

     For it seems to me the primary purpose of both of America's most national parties is merely to drive and focus voters in one particular direction. They have been at it for so long now, that the two polarities seem to be straining the population to the point of maximum saturation, in terms of propaganda and rhetorical frenzy. Extremes at the far left and far right begin to coalesce into blocs of more respective power, until those moderates who controlled "the center" of each are marginalized themselves, and the parties transformed beyond recognition. The liberal "Democratic" party toward more "cancel culture" and intolerance of opposing ideas, and the right "Republican" party toward more jingoistic and even authoritarian law n' order tropes. When I grew up it was more a given that Democratic presidents initiated more wars and supported the Blob, or M. I.C., as it's come to be known, and that while Republicans rarely if ever started any, they merely set the stage for the next incoming Democrat. But now the Republican party are both the staunchest defenders of military blob spending and the most vocal about pulling troops out of wherever we've managed to send their poor souls. A Democratic peace movement at the moment seems like merely a 60's memory.

     These divisions of American culture in to these two and separate factions- an intellectual "elite" that looks down their nose at "plain country folks" and ignores realities and grievances, while still claiming to support "the working class", and the other, a population that see outwardly only greater and greater government and corporate intrusion on their personal lives and "educated fools" who want to tell them how and what to think-these divisions are the product of two parties, and two parties alone.

     For what do other political parties add to the discussion? Quite a bit. There are always a large portion of Americans in any election who have been made to feel so tired of the cant and rhetoric of the majors that they deign to remain outsiders. Third parties never collect more than about 6-7 % of any national vote, but what they do and do well is serve to remind the major parties of just where their programs, platforms, and candidates are lacking. Without third parties, how will either Democrats or Republicans manage to improve on those arguments and grievances their own party is ignoring, often much to its own peril? That is why I believe that acceptance for third parties- the more the merrier! would be better for our democracy than joining one of two herds of lemmings, each streaming past the other to an indefinite coastal cliff, from sea to shining sea.

This common complaint of our national seeking unity blinds itself to the reason we can't seem to find it- because these two political organizations, with no real other raison d' etre than to get, maintain and keep control of power, are the very source of the disunity itself.  Free yourself from party affiliations, labels, and all the various silly constructs of ego that help to keep you confused in this age of more information-than-you-can-eat. Think for yourself, believe in yourself- & be the change that you want to see.