(25 comments) SHARE        Sunday, January 14, 2018
Thus Spake Oprah as the New York Times Spots UFOs Over The Comb-Over Empire The aspect of Trump's ascendancy is shunted from the duopolist dynamic and the narrow, acceptable discourse of political and media elites: Trump's pathetic dye job, fake tan, and comb-over mirror the US empire. Its decline and deterioration simply cannot be covered up by the desperate application of cosmetic measures.

(6 comments) SHARE        Friday, December 22, 2017
When The Unthinkable Becomes Quotidian: Thermic runaway and Strangelovian palaver At present, the whole of humankind is held in the thrall of a trajectory of doom. Yet their power is hinged on the ability to dominate the storyline. Withal, complicity translates to destiny usurped. Conversely, the first measure towards a restoration of equilibrium is to call out a lie.

SHARE        Sunday, December 17, 2017
What Was Verifiably Great About America: Fragments of a Memoir Set To A Musical Soundtrack I have come to conclude, people born into situations providing economic advantage, both liberals and conservatives alike, experience difficulty, more often than not, envisaging the lives of those born into a labouring class existence. Worse, a wilful obtuseness, in combination with a supercilious posture is, all too often, evinced, by reflex, towards those scorned as "hillbillies," "trailer trash," and "genetic retreads."

(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, December 8, 2017
Capitalism's Failure of the Flesh A bitter irony of modernity is that the age-old dream of freeing people from work's tedium has been answered by robots, but capitalism has turned that "freedom" into a barren life with little left to lose, writes poet Phil Rockstroh.

(8 comments) SHARE        Monday, November 20, 2017
The Soul of the Nation is a Casualty of War If reality is met head-on, if empire, external and its inner analog, is renounced and challenged, then a liberation staged by the heart's partisans can begin, thereby freeing up a great amount of acreage -- a fructifying landscape -- wherein both the earth's ecosystem and the architecture of human desire can begin to co-exist and cross-pollinate; thus a crucial re-visioning of oneself and the culture can begin.

(16 comments) SHARE        Saturday, October 28, 2017
The Voiceless Left Stands Before The Monster Of History The notion that the dismal circumstance will recede by the banishment of Donald Trump from the scene. Trump is merely a representation of one of the genera of imps squatting in the dark recesses of capitalism's forsaken soul. He is the very embodiment of a crackpot realist. If you do not take hold of the monster within, he will take hold of you.

(5 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Escaping the Colonised Mind In our late-stage capitalism, every inch of humanity has been exploited and maximized for profit, creating "colonized" minds and emotions, a challenge for humans to free themselves and save the planet, says poet Phil Rockstroh.

(8 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 17, 2017
2 or 3 Things I Know About Capitalism (with apologies to Jean-Luc Godard) "Superficial explanations for today's social anxiety and political discontent miss the underlying reality: the crisis of late-stage capitalism in its frantic death throes, explains poet Phil Rockstroh" -- Robert Parry, publisher and editor of Consortium News

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Citadels of Paranoia; Panoramas of Despair: An Occupation of Phantoms. The frantic fear-mongering of American culture -- Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, the Others are out to get us -- has generated an alienation that fuels violence, globally and in random acts of murder, writes poet Phil Rockstroh.

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, September 16, 2017
Shelter Within The Storm: a dialog on politics and culture Adialog, between myself and playwright and essayist John Steppling and artist and essayist Hiroyuki Hamada on the artist's role in times of extreme societal and cultural alienation e.g., including worldwide and increasing Climate Chaos and numerous other subjects, political and cultural.

(17 comments) SHARE        Saturday, December 21, 2013
Walking in an Anthropocene Wonderland: "But I'll know my song well before I start singing" Just what kind of suicidal clowns flounce through life gibbering on about bacon straws, cupcakes, online images of kitty cats, and the latest Playstation model when the specter of extinction looms and their psychotic leaders are doubling down on the criteria of doom?

(15 comments) SHARE        Saturday, November 23, 2013
Fear In A Handful Of Dust: The Sacred Vehemence Of Imagination In A Soulless Age The economy is chronically depressed. Isotopes of Fukushima are carried on currents of wind and wave. The oceans and seas are rising from humankind-created Climate Change. The world's oceans are being destroyed. The human element evinces the pathology displayed in psychoanalytic consulting rooms: The economic elite are psychopathic; Tea Party types exhibit paranoid displacement while liberals exhibit neurotic insularity.

(5 comments) SHARE        Sunday, June 2, 2013
The United States of Whatever: Ecocide and the Soul of a Nation To turn a blind eye to the natural world, as we have done, translates into psychical ecocide. Perception is degraded. Language truncated. Life becomes dispossessed of purpose and meaning. Apropos, the rise and banal persistence of: The United States of Whatever...[Yet] where there exists the implicate order of the soul there exists the wherewithal to rise up and resist the forces that lay siege to one's innate humanity.

(5 comments) SHARE        Friday, May 31, 2013
Ecocide and the Soul of a Nation At the front of the political madness enveloping the United States are anti-government, anti-science extremists who reject evidence of global warming and block any response to this existential threat. But the disconnect between environmental destruction and today's humanity goes deeper.

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, April 27, 2013
Within The National (In)Security State: Fear as a Constant Companion Ask me about my sense of patriotism, and you will receive only silence" because what does not exist cannot speak. But ask me about my sense of affinity with the whole of humanity--about the golden fire of our imagination that binds us to all things, about the cathedral of our bones that binds us to the sorrows of the earth--only if you desire to risk having your ear bent beyond repair by my soliloquies.

(2 comments) SHARE        Friday, April 26, 2013
America's Locked-Down Insecurity State Emerging evidence from the Boston Marathon bombings suggests the brutal attack on innocent civilians was motivated by the fury of two brothers against overseas crimes of the U.S. government. In that, the martial-law lockdown of Boston may be a glimpse at the future to come.

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tyranny of Deception Truth has always been a challenging pursuit, often resulting in the persecution of its pursuers. But the modern era offers a special challenge as lies are now the mass-manufactured product of an industry that relentlessly serves the interests of the powerful.

(6 comments) SHARE        Saturday, April 6, 2013
Tyranny Of The Reasonable: Popular Complacency In An Era Of Economic Exploitation And Perpetual War The individual who finds an implicate order within -- who keeps hold of the golden thread of his true nature as he wends through the baffling labyrinth of social convention and official deceit -- will make an ally of fate. His true name will be emblazoned upon his heart and will ring across the devouring abyss of a conformist age.

(4 comments) SHARE        Friday, March 22, 2013
Fortune's Fools: Individual Calling at the Cusp of Ecological Catastrophe At this critical juncture, one's individual calling will be interwoven with the fate of the earth and the collective destiny of all of humankind.

(4 comments) SHARE        Friday, March 22, 2013
The Cusp of Ecological Disaster In a world where all emotion is translated into a sales pitch and each thought becomes a talking point, the existential question is how to live a life that embraces real emotion and articulates original thinking.

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, February 9, 2013
Empire of Panic and Illusion Americans have been sold on the promise of perfect security, whether protecting "the homeland" with gadgets of death or guarding "the homestead" with high-powered assault rifles firing 100-round magazines. But this "safety" is an illusion, making Americans less secure than if they engaged the world around them.

(9 comments) SHARE        Saturday, February 9, 2013
Empire Of Panic And Ephemera: Applying Rigorous Imagination To America's Paranoid Style You can attempt to check-out i.e., approach life, as people in the U.S. do, as virtuosos of reality avoidance -- but reality knows your home address: the human psyche. Your psyche is with you for life. You cannot drop off your psyche at an Interstate rest stop, and drive away. Glance in the rear view mirror and it will be lounging in the backseat of your vehicle tapping its foot to the music swelling from the car radio.

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, January 26, 2013
The Great Dismal: "What we speak becomes the house we live in" At paradigm's end, buffeted and shaken--yet held enthralled within the maelstrom--by the vast and sweeping scope of unsolvable governmental/cultural forces -- we feel the pull of a gravity that feels akin to love. We yearn for some remedy, like lovers whose blazing love threatens to burn away all their moorings and upend all they know.

(9 comments) SHARE        Friday, January 25, 2013
Overcoming the Great Dismal The core challenge facing today's U.S. political process is whether the daunting threats to the planet and its people can be addressed, responsibly and cooperatively. Another hope is that in building these solutions, America can break loose from the chains of soulless mediocrity

(5 comments) SHARE        Friday, January 4, 2013
Late Stage Capitalism And The Shame Haunted Life: You Can't Kill Trauma With A Gun The unhinged among us psychically bearing the things we bury, literalize our denial, even by acts of murdering the living (even school children) in a futile attempt to kill the raging ghosts of memory deferred.

SHARE        Friday, December 14, 2012
Grappling with Phantoms Any nitwit can seek happiness, and, generally, does. But it requires a cultivated courage of the heart to create comedy and beauty out of the material of constant sorrow. Do not shrink from the task of dwelling in the truth of your unique being and living your way into the attendant tales spun by your awakened heart. To cede your own power to the forces of unreasonable power -- is the stuff of tragedy.

(8 comments) SHARE        Friday, November 16, 2012
After The Flood: Requiem for a Friend, Death Knell for a Dying Paradigm Personally, I'm done with attempting to persuade idiots by intelligent discourse and fools by plying them with common sense...finished with issuing reasoned warnings to dissemblers and dimwits who claim the iceberg directly in the path of our ocean liner is simply an ice dispenser, conveniently located to refresh our beverages.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, September 26, 2012
A Crucible of Political Disenchantment: 'Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul' Despite all the cultural cues that we have internalized, one cannot consume, medicate, buy on credit, receive a promotion, vacation, vote, hope, affect a pose of hipster irony, tithe to the church of your choice, receive a hundred FaceBook friendship requests, hit the winning lottery number, support the troops, nor be the recipient of a VIP swag bag in order to stumble your way back to possessing a sense of control and power.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Atomized America of Late Capitalism America's late-stage capitalism, built upon the imagined glories of global empire and the deep deceptions of personalized propaganda, has created a nation that has lost touch with genuine human empathy, a place where mass shootings are weekly events and politics is shouting.

(5 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Beaten Down, Isolated, Angry, And Distracted: "Awake we share the world; sleeping each turns to his private world." This is why I eschew being a "pragmatic" predator drone-apologist liberal or a purity-swooning conservative: A compulsion towards partisanship serves to censor the disorderly dialog of the heart, and thus compels one to remain locked within an ego-fortified structure of imprisoning platitudes and self-serving rationalizations.

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Deranged Angels of Self-Preservation The new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," envisions a social order overturned by a violent and vengeful rabble, a parody of Occupy Wall Street activists transformed into the villains of this pro-One Percent propaganda film.

(13 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 26, 2012
In The Land Of Never Was: The last, desperate hours of Climate Chaos deniers -- and capitalist rah-rahs -- On consideration of the path we are heading down, at exponentially increasing speed, uprising would appear to be an appropriate course of action. If you were embarked on a journey across the high seas and discovered the captain and his officers were all suicidal madmen,then mutiny would be a viable option.The data is in: The oceans of the earth are dying; the very air is bedizened with seeds of fire.

(4 comments) SHARE        Monday, July 9, 2012
After the Fireworks Have Faded: Intimations of Bosons Among a Cacophony of Bozos On the day that Independence Day is celebrated in the U.S. arrived confirming evidence of the existence of the Boson Particle, a possible connecting component of matter. Accordingly, let's make a few connections: The present order has wrought economic tyrannies and inevitable environmental collapse, and is proliferate with the seeds of its own destruction.

(3 comments) SHARE        Sunday, July 1, 2012
Footlong Hot Dogs of the Apocalypse Editor's note: Since World War II, America's wealth has sheltered the population from harsh realities that other fellow humans face. But that protection is breaking down, from the greed of the super-rich and the stubborn insistence of many Americans to stay focused on their footlong hot dogs and super-gulp drinks, writes Phil Rockstroh.

(3 comments) SHARE        Monday, June 11, 2012
In The Name Of My Father, Part Two: In the shadow of the corporate state madhouse Editor's note: Late-stage capitalism has similarities to an aging billionaire terrified of microscopic germs -- imagine Howard Hughes at the end of his days -- trying to extend life by frenetically worrying about invisible dangers, writes Phil Rockstroh in this reflection on his father's death.

(7 comments) SHARE        Monday, June 11, 2012
Madness of Late-Stage Capitalism Late-stage capitalism has similarities to an aging billionaire terrified of microscopic germs -- imagine Howard Hughes at the end of his days -- trying to extend life by frenetically worrying about invisible dangers.

(2 comments) SHARE        Friday, May 18, 2012
In The Name Of My Father: Requiem and Renewal in the Shadow of Wall Street, in the Light of a Georgia Spring In the Deep South, the dark hue of my father's Native American skin marked him for abuse by belligerent locals. Although he had been deprived of detailed knowledge of his ancestry, his Comanche blood resisted intimidation. His tormentors wounded him deeply, but they also succeeded in opening deep reservoirs of ancestral rage. My father harbored an abiding animus to bullies--a trait he bequeathed to me by blood & circumstance.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, April 26, 2012
Confronting The Big Empty: Eating Cheetos with the hungry ghosts of the corporate state Although the yearning for freedom is inborn, as is the case with the development of any skill or talent, one must open oneself to its promise by discipline and practice. Otherwise, attempts at exercising freedom -- free will's dance with resistant and changing circumstance -- can be an ugly sight to behold.

(5 comments) SHARE        Monday, April 9, 2012
"To Undo The Folded Lie": Resisting palliatives in an age of oligarchic excess and Anthropocene Age devastation As America's Great Middle Class crumbles, the Rich are again grasping for every possible regulatory rollback and tax cut, all the better to fund some final bacchanal of late-stage capitalism, a well-catered cocktail party of aging men and women wearing the false face of Botox, as poet Phil Rockstroh observes.

(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, March 30, 2012
On The Nature Of Self-Defeating Convictions: A missive to an estranged southern friend Depressingly large numbers of people have invested a great amount of time, energy and identity in the maintenance of their reality-defiant attitudes [regarding capitalism]. There is just too much fragile self-esteem, bulwarked by brittle pride, at stake. While self-doubt is the worthy adversary of the wise, belligerent ignorance is the dubious ally of those who fear and resist self-awareness.

(4 comments) SHARE        Friday, March 30, 2012
Nature of Self-Defeating Convictions Such a large number of those whose lives have been degraded by the deprivations of the present economic order will not focus their anger at Wall Street grifters: If capitalism, by the very nature of the system, allows a swindlers' class to not only legally exist -- but to thrive -- then it follows that there must be something flawed about the nature of capitalism itself.

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, March 19, 2012
Police State Blues: "Our rights do not end where the caprice of authoritarian bullies begins." To express indifference or to be an apologist for the quotidian evils of our time is reprehensible. Like the "good Germans" of the 1930s, you might believe your codified hatreds and commodified longings, manifested by the industrial and military power of the state, will deliver and preserve freedom " but these beliefs, maintained by systems of mechanized force, will, in time, come to debase everything you hold dear.

(7 comments) SHARE        Thursday, March 15, 2012
Reclaiming The Commons: Human Lessons in the Era of Corporatism and Perpetual War Put one foot in front of the other. Write one word after the next on your protest sign. Make your life a flaming arrow aimed at the dry and rotted heart of the system or make your own heart a warm hearth of compassion for its victims, as you negotiate its cold realities.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, February 29, 2012
On regaining a spirit of defiance: "I'm worried now but I won't be worried long" In this regard, predictions of doom are not the stuff of dour old men, afflicted with Cassandra complexes, long, unkempt beards flapping, as they hector passersby with gloomy auguries of a rapidly arriving "time of reckoning"--when what they mean is, their libido is waning, and it feels to them like the end of the world...We're talking peer-reviewed scientific inquiry not crank-speak here. These are dangerous circumstances.

(16 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Cash Of The Titans: Against The Noxious Fantasy Of Limitless Growth Cancer, if given voice, would proclaim itself to be a believer in "free market values""devoted to the principle of endless growth"until, of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, February 14, 2012
My Biohazard Valentine: Love, Work, And Dissent In A Time of Hazmat Suits And Political Hypochondria One does not have to be a monk, artist, poet, mystic or musician to approach their vocation with élan and ebullience; yet one should grant oneself the right to surrender to ardor while engaging in work. To derive meaning and resonance from life demands artful labor -- the awful daring of choosing to give oneself over to responsibility, thus allowing one to occupy one's occupation, heart and soul.

SHARE        Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A Bio-hazard Valentine of Dissent The powers-that-be would prefer the common folk to accept their fate quietly, even as many are made surplus to the work force and all are facing global warming's coming devastation of the planet. But more and more people are choosing to make noise through messy dissent.

(7 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, February 1, 2012
A Journey To The End Of Empire: It is always darkest right before it goes completely black The times have bestowed on us a shuffle to the graveside of our culture, and, we, like members of a New Orleans-style, second line, funeral procession, must allow our hearts to be saturated by sorrowful songs...When the service is complete, the march away from the boneyard should shake the air with the ebullient noise borne of insistent brass.

(7 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Occupying Libido: Negotiating a landscape of hypocrisy and hungry ghosts Obama and Romney manage to hide the malevolent, hungry ghost of empire behind a veneer of soul-defying, daylight normalcy. But Newt Gingrich's bloated carcass displays imperium's murderous id. What has become of the diminishing resources of the world? Newt grows ever fatter and more grotesque as he greedily devours these things. What terrible fate befell the U.S. constitution? Newt dry humped it to dust.

(9 comments) SHARE        Friday, January 6, 2012
Secrets of Empire & Self-Deceptions Of Partisans: Yet a howling defiance into the darkness of the corporate state night Barack Obama's true nature and authentic identity remains elusive. After all this time, he still seems less man than marketing rollout, less of a political leader than an object lesson in product placement. The situation is like having the role of chief executive of the nation filled with a disposable razor or a heavily hyped iPhone application.

(15 comments) SHARE        Friday, December 16, 2011
Liberating America's Worldview Occupy Wall Street protesters appealed to the broader U.S. population -- and even the police -- as fellow members of the 99 percent, but many Americans still fear breaking with the oppressive status quo and most police will follow orders in harsh crackdowns.

SHARE        Friday, December 16, 2011
Dying Empire Bebop: The Sedition Of Ecstatic Novelty John Coltrane reported that the conception and creation of his timeless masterpiece, "A Love Supreme" ended his addiction to drugs and alcohol. This soul-reviving suite should be made the suggested soundtrack of every drug and alcohol rehab unit in the United States -- if not played on a repeating loop at every gas station, convenience store, and shopping mall on the planet.

(7 comments) SHARE        Thursday, December 15, 2011
Recovering from Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS): "Because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same" Occupy Wall Street protesters appealed to the broader U.S. population -- and even the police -- as fellow members of the 99 percent, but Phil Rockstroh observes that many Americans still fear breaking with the oppressive status quo and most police will follow orders in harsh crackdowns. Or as Bob Dylan presents the case in verse: "Because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same"--Just Like Tom Thumb's Blue.

(7 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, December 7, 2011
"By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It": Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies Because the vast majority of the populace are deemed "losers, due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created to displace the rage, born of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system's exploited underlings. OWS is beginning to change the narrative, align it with reality, & that is an alarming development for the 1 percent; hence, the retooled, amped-up propaganda campaign we're seeing signs of at present.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, December 1, 2011
Amid The Architecture Of Declining Capitalism: Memes, Death Genes And Real Estate Schemes Memes are ever-replicating, exponentially reproducing, collectively evolving bits of human thoughtware as our bodies are the hardware. If their resonances remain on in the realm of pixels and soundbites, a meme will translate into little more than pop culture ephemera. Memes must be carried by flesh into the non-virtual world; their human carriers might even be peppered sprayed themselves and carted off to jail.

(6 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, November 23, 2011
"The Degree To Which You Resist Is The Degree To Which You Are Free" The first vibrations, closer to tremors, transpired because the ground below us has been fracked of dreams " the void engendered seismological activity. Now, from Cairo, Egypt's Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece, to Liberty Park, in New York, New York, to Oscar Grant Park in Oakland, California, we have become like tuning forks, in sympatico with the resonances of the tormented earth.

(3 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Police State Makes Its Move: Retaining one's humanity in the face of tyranny When anyone tells you that dead soldiers died for your freedom, it is your duty to occupy reality and inform them of just how mistaken they are. And if you truly cherish the concepts of freedom and liberty, you just might be called on to face mindless arrays of fascist cops and lose your freedom, for a time, going to jail, so others might, at some point, gain their freedom.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Dehumanizing Late-Stage Capitalism As the populace of the corporate/consumer state, we have been induced, by means of small bribes and hyper-authoritarian coercion, to sign a social contract that sells our essential nature on the cheap, i.e., to be defined (hence diminished) as a consumer, a commuter, an employee, a Republican, a Democrat, a member of a demographic group, a cipher, a s

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, October 27, 2011
We Shall Not Be Moved: Police Repression, Official Mendacity And Why OWS Has Already Overcome Behind the bland face of the political establishment (purchased by the bloated profits of the plundering class) are riot cops, outfitted and armed with the accoutrements of oppression, who are ready and willing to enforce the dictates of the elitist beneficiaries of the degraded status quo.

(5 comments) SHARE        Thursday, October 13, 2011
Punching a Hole in Bubbles of Denial and Addiction: Late Capitalism and Its Discontents of the American Autumn Many situations in this life are rigged e.g., the gamed system of the corporate state. But life itself is too vast, too intricate to be rigged; it is truly too big to fail. Now: To the streets, glistening with renewing rain"to the flaming barricades"its flames caress the future. Come out of self-exile; you are the change you can believe in.

(3 comments) SHARE        Friday, October 7, 2011
Occupying The Heart Of The Beast: Observations, Impressions And Images From Amid The Multitudes In Liberty Plaza "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." ~ Wendell Berry

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, September 21, 2011
"Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day": Replacing Liberal Timidity With Leftist Passion The inspired, enduring (very threatening to some) art, music and political action of the era [the 1960s] were not the result of liberal accommodation and compromise. Antithetically, the cause of peace and justice (briefly) made some headway despite liberals not because of them

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, September 5, 2011
A Labor Day Tale Of Three Cities: Pittsburgh, Birmingham and New Orleans At present, in cities such as Birmingham and Pittsburgh, the structures, built in the mechanized fury of the Industrial Age, stand idle"decaying around legions of the unemployed and the woefully underpaid and under-compensated. In the oxidized scream of rust, one can almost hear the wails of rage of those souls who surrendered their life force to erect and work the now abandoned factories, mills and foundries of the nation.

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, August 27, 2011
Idiot Wind: The Eternal Return Of The Politics Of The 1970s The empire is too pervasive and invasive to avoid our being carriers of its proliferate pathologies; this system weaned us and socialized us, and, even when we rebel against it, our actions are generally restricted within limits set by it. Otherwise, the consequences would be too crushing for most of us to endure: financial ruin, destitution, homelessness.

(6 comments) SHARE        Friday, August 12, 2011
Life in an Age of Looting: "Some Will Rob You with a Sixgun and Some with a Fountain Pen" Here's the lowdown: The Wall Street fraudsters of the swindler class want to refill their coffers and line their pockets (that is, offshore accounts) with Social Security and Medicare funds. That's the nature of the unfolding scam, folks. Oligarchic rule has always been a system defined by legalized looting that leaves a wasteland of want, deprivation, and unfocused rage in its wake.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, August 4, 2011
"We Would Rather Die In Our Dread" The so-called "debt crisis" involved a similar dance of deceit and distraction. As was the case, early into the Obama presidency, with the healthcare "debate," the deal was struck before the faux rancorous music began. The fix was in. The moneyed class works the system and those without power and influence get worked over.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 21, 2011
"The Arts Of Life They Changed Into The Arts Of Death:" Bachmann, Palin and Robertson and the limits of logic Granted, the sense of unease displayed by right wing, fundamentalist Christians regarding the state of the nation is understandable; although, their attribution as to the origin and cause of the destructive drift of U.S. culture is so far off the mark they would fail to get wet if they fell into a baptismal pool the size of Lake Michigan.

(4 comments) SHARE        Monday, June 13, 2011
On "The Issue Of Character" And Empire How many times do the prigs, ninnies, and scolds of the U.S. have to repeat this sort of inanity before they grow up and realize that human beings have strong libidos? Libido propels both creativity and contretemps, and it is wise to aver that "the issue of character" should best be evoked and debated, as a general rule, when the situation involves hypocrisy.

(7 comments) SHARE        Sunday, May 29, 2011
Descartes Pilots a Predator Drone: René, Can We Begin A Dream Collaboration Project? Dualist mind, enchanted by your mastery of things you deem dead, you have bred seething clouds of black flies infesting Cartesian slaughterhouse holding pens and bequeathed to us dying oceans and endless wars waged from vast distances by bloodless technocrats within cubicles.

(6 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles It is a common (unspoken) fear of the men I grew up around down south that if they were to let go of what little they clutch, nothing would arrive to replace what would be lost. There will be no place reserved for them and their families in the new situations and novel arrangements that (by their addled take on the situation) elitist environmentalist snobs contrive to force upon them.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Politics Of Revenge And Submission: "When the individual feels, the community reels" Since 9/11/2001, due to the lust for revenge of the people of the U.S., hundreds of thousands of innocent Islamic people are dead. These human beings were killed in our name. Be very careful when you proclaim: "I'm glad 'we' got bin Laden. He deserved it." Be very grateful most of us don't get what we deserve.

(9 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Among Ciphers, Barn Burners and Confidence Artists: a comb-over treatment for declining empire Born into wealth and privilege, Trump -- this cross-hatched haired, reality television popinjay -- is marketed as a man of the multitudes. Perhaps, he is: On one dismal level, he is the very emblem of the callow, infantilized, highchair tyrants spawned by the Viagra Capitalism of late U.S. empire.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, April 14, 2011
Interstates And States of Grief On US Interstates, we meet the US empire coming towards us. In this evocative video, we meet confederate ghosts and demons of consumer emptiness. We travel down the highway, propelled by engines of extinction, towards empire's end, where we find ourselves bearing much grief yet are stranded amid ferocious beauty.

(5 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Why Americans Are So Easily Conned While nice liberals retreat to their comfort zones, the forsaken laboring class constructs insulating walls of resentment. [...] These conditions create an existence as redolent of the aromas of existence as plastic covered cheese-food. In cultural terms, it is as if the people of the US have become mummified in plastic packaging wrap" have been rendered -- Body Bag People.

(1 comments) SHARE        Sunday, March 27, 2011
The Mark Inside: Joseph Beuys And Coyote meet "Humanitarian" Bombing Campaigns In the last few days, I've noticed a marked rise in the levels of anxiety and apprehension in the minds of many of the folks with whom I have contact. Images of irradiated rains and bombing campaigns have left many riddled with dread, haunted by the uncertainty of it all"gripped by the feeling that events are hurtling at an exponential rate of speed towards some ill-defined but tragic reckoning.

(1 comments) SHARE        Friday, March 18, 2011
Why the Jokes about Japan's Tragedy Over the last three decades, anyone (who has been even nominally conscious) can see how destructive to the health and well-being of the general population of the nation, conservative, "market-driven" economic dominance has been.

SHARE        Wednesday, March 16, 2011
From Celebrities To Tsunamis: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answer The "culture wars" serve the ruling elite. This is a technique the operatives of corporate duopoly have down. Unloose social conservative activists to kick up dirt with divisive issues e.g., the rightwing wants to roast Big Bird on a spit and legislate that every unborn fetus be declared Jesus Christ himself. All the while, above the obscuring dirt cloud, the financial elite fly off in their private jets

(5 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A Zoo Of Our Own Making: We will kill for empire and a parking space A visual Poem, video and words, on Empire, alienation, and parking problems. Created and written by Phil Rockstroh.Directed and edited by Angela Tyler-Rockstroh

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Amnesia As A Way Of Life: WikiLeaks Amid The "Careless People" Lamentably, the US Empire, as was the case with any imperium throughout history, has grown into a bloated abomination kept provisionally alive by self-deluded apparatchik and ignorant killers. What can one do about the situation, other than try to get out of the way of this wounded giant and stand clear upon its inevitable collapse? Unfortunately, damn little.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, December 2, 2010
Amnesia As A Way Of Life: WikiLeaks Amid The "Careless People" "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising." Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922 Accordingly, at present, there arrives a paucity of news, but, hour after hour, comes a drowning deluge of advertising. Enveloped in this commercially dominated hologram, on a cultural basis, it has proven difficult to arrive at a common lexicon to tell the tale of truths buried & freedoms imperiled.

(7 comments) SHARE        Thursday, November 11, 2010
Public Like A Frog: "Where all are guilty, no one is" The difference between the Soviet Union during its last few decades and the US Empire in its death swoon is the people of the Soviet Union knew it was all a fraud. In contrast, our corporate masters are too wily to display their corrupt carcasses on the reviewing stand on May Day as the fraudulent parade trundles past.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Everyday is Halloween in Empire: The Zombie Apocalypse Of Duopoly Culturally, a profusion of nightmare imagery warns: paradigm shift or perish The hack-scripted B-movie of the current political system could be titled: Duopoly Of The Dead: The Democratic/Republican Zombie Apocalypse. By devotion to maintaining the status quo, these hulking, putrefying parties of the undead shamble through public life risen from the grave to tear the flesh from the present and eat the brains of the living.

(1 comments) SHARE        Monday, October 4, 2010
Economic Inequity, Manufactured Populism, and the Bigot-Whisperers of the Right As a rule, the right's lies and displacements are most effective when liberals offer working people only bromides, platitudes, and lectures on propriety and good taste. Obama and the Democrats, time and time again, present demagogues with an opening the size of the cracks in Glen Beck's gray matter.

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, August 19, 2010
Part Tinker Bell, Part Predator Drone: The Fantasy of the Presidency as Deus ex Machina Unlike theatre, there won't be a plot reversal by deus ex machina. Still we demand our president both heal the wounds of capitalism and smite our enemies. We insist he be both warrior-king and our collective killer Christ. Democratic presidents become possessed of this errant archetype too. Accordingly, to be viable as commander-in-chief, they need to prove their toughness, preferably, in a he-man act of resolute stupidity.

(3 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Hanging A Hammock Between Death And The Abyss: A Götterdämmerung Of Kitsch Does one get the feeling that the more powerless we feel, collectively, about the rising levels of economic exploitation exacted upon us and the accelerating rate of ecocide committed on the planet by corporate oligarchs, the more celebrity "news" and other tropes of empty distraction and denial will froth forth from the idiot imaginings of the pop culture douche-scape?

(5 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A Heap Of Broken Images: Social media and the architecture of anomie Social media sites are no substitute for communal fabric. There is no animal musk nor angelic apprehensions to en-soul the flesh and tease wisdom out of obdurate will. No matter how many restless shades want to friend you on FaceBook nor ghostly texts descend in an unholy Pentecost of Tweets, online exchanges will continue to leave you restless, hollow, and yearning for the colors and cacophony of an authentic agora.

(19 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 2, 2010
A Day In A Dying Empire: An intimate fable on current events "We stare at our glowing appliances while exquisite things are extinguished, forever ... mistaking configurations of pixels for the breath and brilliance of the world."

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, June 16, 2010
A Zionist State of Mind, A Dreamscape Of Ghosts: One Jew's Hard Awakening he Jewish state demands its neighbors make amends for crimes they did not commit -- to cower before the steel-toe might of its military and make perpetual penitence for the sins of Europe. Even if they did so: Such an act would not restore my mother's childhood ... would not return to flesh the ashen remains of the millions who made their graves in the winds of twentieth century Europe.

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Beyond The Soaring Rhetoric of Obama's Cairo Speech: A Toxic Innocence At Home A collective tantrum rages on the right, as their ranks hold their breath and hoard bullets. In the enveloping darkness of political powerlessness, they are sleeping with their Sarah Palin night-light on, then tossing fitfully awake attempting to mollify themselves by gazing mindlessly at Fox News crib mobiles, then scanning the heavens craving a Happy Meal apocalypse.

(5 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Audacity of Hopelessness There is the banality of evil, and then there is the evil of banality. Both, the present era has produced in abundance. From about the late 1970s to the present, the United States all but ceased manufacturing products and went into the business of manufacturing marketplace hype, baseless fears, and illusionary enemies.

(19 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Against the Tortured Logic of Obama's Placebo Presidency: A Call for the Audacity of Hopelessness President Obama and the Democratic Congress could have ridden a wave of public discontent towards meaningful reform, but instead they have hugged the shore. And they seem to be surveying the property, scouting locations to build beach house retreats for their elitist benefactors and the militarist fantasists whose tsunami-sized arrogance wrought the present destruction in the first place.

(8 comments) SHARE        Monday, April 28, 2008
Fastened To A Dying Animal: a short jeremiad regarding that affront to the nation's dignity known as the US election pro Trivial and specious narratives drive and dominate our national political debate and it has, as a consequence, rendered the nation's public too shallow to even apprehend the extent of the damage inflicted by official treachery, professional cupidity, and the degree of their own degradation therein.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 2, 2007
A Q and A For The People Of A Forsaken Republic: Addressing the origins of the Who's-Your-Daddy Nation When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami.

(21 comments) SHARE        Thursday, September 20, 2007
A Conservative's Garden of False Narratives: Who are you calling a moonbat, anyway? All progressives have experienced the following nonsensical encounter of the conservative kind. Present a reasoned argument to a conservative, and, all at once, ignoring the tenet, tone and thrust of the point, they begin hallucinating a creature, only known to exist in the rightwing bestiary, known as a "moonbat" -- a mythological beast that, ironically, seems to appear when a conservative is confronted with reality

(3 comments) SHARE        Monday, August 13, 2007
A Disneyland of Militant Ignorance: The American Normalization of Mass Murder. If, during a rare press conference, George W. Bush's face were to suddenly shed its skin, right on camera, live on national television, on all channels, broadcast and cable, to reveal the countenance of a Gila Monster -- the elitist beltway punditry would begin to catalog the merits of his reptilian single-mindedness.

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come There is one law the lawless Bush administration and their keepers from the plundering class cannot flout: the second law of thermodynamics. They won't be able to claim executive privilege to avoid the consequences of negative entropy.

(8 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 12, 2007
What Lies Beneath: Privileged Grotesques, Ordinary Monsters and the Iraqi Deathscape. George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he didn't deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 28, 2007
Mcmansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy: Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants In addition, we Americans continue to believe our fables of righteous power: Big is good, goes our John Wayne jack-off fantasy. Our leaders must be large: Only Mcmansion-like men, such as Mitt Romney, are acceptable. We believe: Dennis Kucinich is too diminutive in physical stature to be president -- with the length of his body being roughly the size of Romney's head.

(33 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 21, 2007
Within the Architecture of Denial and Duplicity: The Democratic Party and the Infantile Omnipotence of The Ruling Class I could never reconcile myself with the Judea/Christian/Islamic conception of god -- some strange, invisible, "who's-your-daddy-in-the-sky," sadist -- who wants me on my knees (as if I'm a performer in some kind of cosmic porno movie) to show my belief in and devotion to him -- I can't delude myself into feeling any sense of devotion to the present day Democratic Party.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 14, 2007
Tantrums of Mass Destruction or The Enduring Beauty of Ugly Truth: In Praise of the Shabby-Ass Human Glory of Every Day [O}ur pathologies are embodied in our infant/tyrant leadership who throw global-wide tantrums of mass destruction because as a people we have forgotten how to give ourselves over to the eros of engaging the world by social and political involvement.

(15 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Expanding Markets and Dying Oceans: Eating the Planet Like a Bag of Doritos for Jesus The largest social faux pas of all, in the contemporary US, might be to remind a person of their powerlessness. The present paradigm must (and will) collapse: Rising gross national products, imaginative ad campaigns and faith in some mythological being returning from the sky will not cause the earth's rising oceans to recede nor its melting Polar ice caps to reconstitute.

SHARE        Thursday, November 30, 2006
Prisoners of Envy: Wal*Mart Nihilism Versus the Punk Rock of Blogging The frustrations of a life defined by the narrow confines of corporatism produces these lethal states of mind, whereby the homicidal urges that are encoded into the genetic makeup of all human beings become magnified into impulses both monstrous and preposterous: Resultantly, many Americans view life and death issues as having the weightless consequences of a thrill-kill video game.

(7 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, November 22, 2006
America Has Left the Building: An Open Missive of Anger and Hope Corporatism has rendered us analogous to the last days of Elvis ... Puffy, bloated -- we wheeze our way through our set ... Guarded gate communities are our own private Graceland where we die in excess and isolation. The electric lights sequined across the entire planet, now glow from space like one of Elvis's Las Vegas costumes. But does no one see the dying man beneath the jeweled jumpsuit? The land and The King are one.

(12 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, November 15, 2006
To Hell with Centrism: We Must Reclaim the Inspired Edge It was leftist outsiders -- not reasonable, accommodating Centrists -- who were right about the disastrous consequences that would befall an invasion of Iraq; as we were and remain right in our revulsion to the fascistic fraud that is the Patriot Act and the War on Terror.

(2 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Midterm Elections 2006: It's Always Darkest, Right Before ... It Goes Completely Black Does anyone believe that the denizens of K Street have, as of late, begun enriching the coffers of the Democratic Party because the lobbyist class now harbors a secret desire to create a system where a greater diversity of views can be promulgated? Yes, and Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of East London because he wanted to draw attention to the wretched plight of underclass women in class-stratified Victorian England.

(23 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Selling Satan: Iraqi War Dead and the Collateral Damage to America's Soul All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.

(5 comments) SHARE        Thursday, October 12, 2006
A Journey Through The Mind Of Contemporary Conservatism: Clutching Our Values Aboard The Death Train Of Empire For many years, these episodes of mass psychosis have been gaining velocity. Empires are inherently bughouse crazy, because, by their very nature, they grow conservative to the point of becoming totalitarian.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, October 5, 2006
Six Flags Over Neo-Nuremberg: Bush, Oprah, The San Diego Chicken, And A Proto-Fascist Panopticon Of The Mind Commercial advertising is a form of political speech: A very potent one and its effects are far from benign. By means of its cultural dominance, commercial advertising is promulgated, to the point of total market saturation, without any form of effective opposition; hence, by its very nature, it amounts to corporatist propaganda and serves as a vehicle of mass indoctrination.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, September 28, 2006
A Soul Defying, Tacit Approval Of Torture: How Did We Come To This? essay examining how the citizens of the United States came to be a people who accept torture committed in their name.

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, September 21, 2006
Reflections On Our Inner Bush: Corporate Monkeys In Our National House Of Mirrors Bush is only a byproduct of the present corporate order; he is but a reflection of the everyday hubris, denial, mendacity, and exploitation of daily life in the corporatist state.

SHARE        Sunday, September 17, 2006
Within The Gated Subdivision Of The American Mind: A Monument To My Comfort Zone Americans have managed to push from our minds the carnage in Iraq, as well as the growing unease within our own minds regarding the subject. What toll does our denial take on us?

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, September 11, 2006
Mr. Rove's Opus of Deception: 9/11 And The Lonesome Ballad of Blind Willie McMansion. An essay on why Rovian prevarications, so rife within the corporate media bubble, continue to define our life and times.

SHARE        Monday, September 12, 2005
Levees Made of Lies: Rage, Grief, and the Chimera of the American Dream

(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, August 25, 2005
Listen Up, You Christo-Fascist Bullies -- You Apostles Of Perpetual Psychosis -- It's High Time Somebody Called You Out

(1 comments) SHARE        Monday, August 8, 2005
The United States of Dixieland: Corporatism, Jesus, and the Death Genes

SHARE        Thursday, July 14, 2005
The Rise of Pharmatopia

SHARE        Saturday, July 2, 2005
Baby George In The Land Of The Bubble People An exploration as to the reasons why the bubble of unreality that the administration of GWB exists within will burst.