By SJ Otto

As the end of our President, Donald Trump closes in, I find two contradictorily views that I find really strange. As an anti-imperialist I couldn't be happier seeing the headline; "All wars must  end, ' new defense chief says."[1] I saw this in The Wichita Eagle, my hometown newspaper. Some other articles I read are about Trump ramping up executions here in the US.

According to the first article, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said:

"We are not a people of perpetual war- it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end."

I have complained for years that we don't need to occupy other people's countries. I don't know why Trump is against these wars, other than his "Americafirst" view. What ever the reason it is good news for people like me.

Unfortunately, Trump is not against unnecessary killing of human beings. Here in this country, he is pushing to make sure that people on death row are executed. He has also opened the door for the US to use assassinations as a tool of foreign affairs. As for executing people here in the US, Rolling Stone reports:

"Precisely one week before Thanksgiving, Orlando Hall became the eighth person incarcerated in federal prisons to be executed this year after Attorney General William Barr lifted a 17-year ban on the federal government’s implementation of the death penalty. When Hall, 49, was killed by lethal injection, he became the first person that a lame-duck administration has executed in more than 100 years.

This wasn’t some sort of scheduling happenstance, caused by a rapid succession of appeals that pushed Hall’s date down the calendar. No, his date quickly followed the killing of Christopher Vialva in late September, and Barr has scheduled five more before Biden is inaugurated as president. His Department of Justice just concluded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, which we all knew — but Barr clearly realized weeks ago that he and the president would be out of a job come January 20th. Why else would they have started scheduling executions, rushing to kill those who are incarcerated on the federal government’s death row? Perhaps because these prisoners might be otherwise spared under President-elect Biden, who wants to eliminate the death penalty?"

So why do conservatives such as Trump, want people executed so badly? Why do conservatives such as Trump love the death penalty so much? I have read several articles by people who complain that Communist countries have killed more people than any other ideology. Yet many right-wing capitalists believe in executions. They want to kill people. Quoting TimeMagazine, Yahoo News said:

"The Cuban leader’s passing comes at a time of change between the two nations, which have had a tense relationship over the past five decades. President Obama sought to reverse that in his last term in office, reopening an embassy on the island and opening up channels for both travel and the exchange of some goods. “During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends,” Obama said before offering condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Castro.

“As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America,” Obama concluded.

His statement stands in stark contrast to that of President-elect Donald Trump, who called Castro a “brutal dictator” whose legacy was one of “firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

“It is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” Trump said."

On top of our executions, we also have a drone program that kills suspected terrorists and if they are around their families, their family members are killed. They also like the drone program that kills people in foreign countries seen as a threat to this country. The assassinations take place without any due process. Our government simply kills people, and if their families are present, women, children, they are killed also. If terrorists do that to us, we complain. But when we kill their innocent people, we are OK with that. Trump seems to be using assassinations of all kinds in his presidency. Press Reader has posted an article: "Targeted Assassinations could open a Pandora's Box,"

Also according to CBS News:

"Satellite-controlled machine gun with "artificial intelligence" was used in last week's assassination of a top nuclear scientist in Iran.....

....Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was driving on a highway outside Iran's capital Tehranwith a security detail of 11 guards on November 27, when the machine gun "zoomed in" on his face and fired 13 rounds, said rear-admiral Ali Fadavi."

It has been reported that Israelis have been blamed for the action:

"Iranian authorities have blamed arch foe Israel and the exiled opposition group the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, known as MEK, for the assassination." 

But at the same time, some pundits say that Trump was behind the attack and simply used another country to actually carry out the execution. Again we see a fondness for executions.

The death penalty has been outlawed in most of Europe, with the exception of such authoritarian/ fascistic countries as Turkey. The US refuses to get rid of executions, either for criminals in the US or suspected and accused opponents in foreign countries. It is time to end the death penalty and the assassination of foreign personnel. It is obvious that conservative Republicans as Trump will continue to use death as a means of control over our population. It is primitive, outdated and just plain cruel. The possibility of innocent people being killed is not worth the use of death as a control mechanism.

By SJ Otto

A few days ago I found this article which is called, “How to Be a Modern Hippie,” by Colleen. I found it interesting because I was somewhat of a Hippie starting in my high school days and in my early 20s. In some ways, I still am today. I found this article in with another Hippie story, “What Are Hippies Called Today?” Hippies were a big thing in the 1960s. By the 1970s we were calling ourselves Freaks.[1] We were a little different from the Hippies, but we were really pretty similar. By the 1970s we had to have out own identity that differentiated us from the Hippies. We couldn’t just imitate people from ten years past.

Today, there is no “Freak scene.” The Hippies today are not the same as those that were visible in San Francisco, during the Haight-Ashbury days. I visited Haight-Ashbury in the late 1980s and there was little, if anything, left of the Hippie culture at that time. It was like I was going there to see “where it used to be happening.” The Freaks were a post-Hippie phenomenon, so for the sake of this article, I will look at what the author sees as people who are today, referred to as Hippies. I have a close friend, Tom Saad,[2] who is always telling me that he sees himself as a Hippie today.

He has long hair. Both of us probably considered ourselves to be Hippies in our high school days and fallowing. Originally much of that was a cultural thing. We were counter-culture people along with many of our friends were. We all had long hair, smoked pot, took LSD at times and we listened to rock and roll of that time period. Colleen’s article mentioned Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane. Tom always liked Led Zeppelin and I always liked Jefferson Airplane. Today, Tom listens mostly to Led Zeppelin. I still like Jefferson Airplane but I also like punk rock, such as Die Toten Hosen.

Much of what I have written about, so far, has been cultural things such as music, hair styles and drug use.                            

My politics have evolved since I was in high school. As with the Freaks, I was an anarchist, in those days. Today I am a socialist. I began to read and follow Salvador Allende, the Marxist and socialist president of Chile. He was the first Marxist to be elected in the Western hemisphere. So my beliefs aren’t really all that different from my high school days. But part Colleen’s article is about compassion toward people and supporting the voiceless, as a part of the Hippie experience. That is a definite part of my personality and my out look on politics. My socialist ideals are simply an extension of my ideas on compassion. I have compassion for people and I envision a world were there is peace, equality and people are all taken care of each other—no hunger and no lack of medicines for those who need it. Politics should lead to happiness.  

Colleen writes about Hippies caring about animals. I’ve always liked animals. I studied Hinduism in high school. I never became a Hindu. But I did adopt some of those beliefs. One of them is that animal life has value. I won’t kill an animal, not even an insect, unless it is necessary. I avoid any practice that causes pain to animals. I try to respect them. I am not a vegetarian, but I believe in respecting those animals that we eat. I avoid anything the causes such animals any pain, such as boiling lobsters or eating veal which is a tortured animal. I only kill insects that are a nuisance, such as roaches and mosquitoes. I don’t kill spiders in my house or insects that cause no harm.

But back to the Hippie article, Colleen discusses the rejection of traditional mainstream values:

“Their rejection of mainstream values was surprising because they were the very people who were in position to gain the most—in jobs,

political access, and money—from the existing system. That these young people chose to drop out from lives in which they had clear advantages was a sign to many that perhaps something really was wrong with the system.

The civil rights movement was attracting national attention by the mid-1950s, and the New Left became a factor in American politics in 1962

following the release of its “Port Huron Statement,” a stirring announcement of youthful political idealism.”

Again, here is something I have in common with the Hippies. I definitely feel outside the mainstream. I definitely have little interest in the pursuit of money and I don’t aspire to be wealthy as I am supposed to, according to the system and its supporters.

Colleen wrote about some of the theoreticians of the Hippies. Some such as Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg were not that political. Others, such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were very political. Rubin turned to the right after the Hippies and Yippies[3] began to die out. Hippies were a strange movement that included some leftists and some cultural figures who had no interest in politics at all. Others such as Rubin, ended up as political conservatives.

I suppose there are some young Hippies around today. For many Hippies, as my self, we are in our 60s, 70s and older. We are a dying bread. But we are still Hippies. Some young Marxists I have seen, commenting on line, have said they see Hippies as being conservative, right-wing, reactionary. I don’t know how they formed these opinions but I don’t agree at all. In the 60s and 70s we defied the status quo. We challenged the system on many levels. We challenged the culture and the politics. We were often met with opposition and it was not always pleasant or benevolent. Any one who wants to see examples of that opposition can see the move Easy Rider. The Hippies were often treated badly and it can be seen in that movie.

The Hippies today are small in number compared to those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of those early hippies cut their hair, put on a suit and got a high paying job. They lost all their early values. Some of us have retained at least some of those values. I’m proud to be one of those. 

This article is condensed from the article I originally wrote for Artsy Fartsy. For the entire article click here.

          Here I sit in a counter-culture bar, Kirby's, with my wife, Cam Gentry.

            The above picture ^ is Tom Saad.

[1] Steve Otto, War on Drugs/ War on People, (Ide House, Los Colinas, 1995), “The Freaks,” p. 146.

[2] As this article says, many Hippies are writers, musicians or artists. Tom has been an artist since his high school days. Here are some examples of his work:

[3] See also Steve Otto, Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie,  (Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2005).

GregLake - I Believe In Father Christmas

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 I come across many people almost every day who all show skepticism of what is known as “white privilege.” There are certain ideas that escape most white people. On the most basic line, most white people are not “individually” responsible for the actions of their parents, or forefathers. But we can’t ignore what our forefathers did. That is not to say that we must be punished for what we did not do. But we do owe those whose ancestors our ancestors ripped off. We do need to make sure that we do not continue the mistakes of our ancestors.  We did not institute slavery.  But we don’t want to be responsible for the mistakes our ancestors have made. We are not those people and we are not the ass holes who came up with those rotten ideas.

So we can take responsibility for what our white ancestors did to those black ancestors. Not because we are guilty of anything, but we have benefited from the position society gave us. We did not ask for it, but we have it and we benefited from it. So here is an article explaining white privilege:    

-SJ Otto

From Our Human Family:

I had a conversation with a person the other day who told me the term white privilege made him think about sin. “It’s kind of a Calvinist idea,” he said. “It’s something you’re born with, and you can’t really get rid of, and you’re supposed to spend all this time repenting for it.”

A few days later, I saw a column by David Brooks that made almost the same point. Lamenting the five “epic crises” upon our current culture: the other four of which were quite vast—COVID-19, racism against African Americans, the public’s rejection of Republicans, and an economic depression — Brooks also included “Social Justice,” (his capitalization) in the list, which he called a “quasi-religion.” There it was again. This characterization of what is largely a social movement against violence, and particularly violence targeted at Black people, as instead a fundamentalist religion, bent on creating zealots who fervently root out illusory “sins” among the flock.

I thought back to some of the less skillful diversity trainings I’ve attended over the years, in which participants are asked to verbally “acknowledge” or “admit” to “having” white privilege. They couldn’t see it; they didn’t ask for it; they didn’t want it; and yet, somehow, they were supposed to own it.

And if white privilege is something you “have” — well, then, it’s part of you. It indicates something about your character. When white privilege is framed this way, it sounds like an aspect of the self, like sexuality. It’s not a thing we can see, or objectify, but it’s something that permeates us and is expressed in our behavior. It can be lauded or labeled or judged or celebrated.

There’s something in the grammar of how the concept of white privilege is introduced and discussed, that is, that virtually guarantees the actual meaning of the term will be misunderstood and its purpose as an idea obscured.

Often, white privilege is introduced in relation to the history of white racism and violence against Black communities. When white people who may never have heard the term before, and who are trying at the same time to metabolize horrifying historical data about racial violence, the enslavement of Black people, and oppression — information that is largely suppressed from school curriculums, media representation, and everyday conversation — and then are asked to “admit” their “privilege,” they’re likely to protest, or emotionally freeze up, or respond with shame and rage.

And if that shame and rage is then received as more evidence the person does, indeed, “have it,” then they’re trapped in what feels like circular reasoning, with punishment and humiliation as the end goal. It’s this perception of social justice practitioners as intent on shaming and exhorting white people to change that I think has fed this false narrative that white privilege is akin to a modern-day sin.

In actuality, there is virtually nothing about the concept of white privilege that pertains to individuals — their morals, their characters, their personalities, their feelings.

The reason white privilege is nothing like sin, is because sin is based on behavior. It’s something you can acknowledge, repent of, and change. The point of sin is to inspire the sinner to emulate the Divine, and in doing so, to treat others with the mercy, compassion, love, and generosity of the Divine. The presence of sin is to inspire the individual to change the way they act in the world.

There is no atonement for white privilege, because white privilege isn’t an aspect of the individual self. And that’s part of why — at first — it’s so difficult to understand. The dominant culture addresses all of us as individuals. We view advertisements, telling us how to be better people by buying certain products. We read self-help books, telling us how to be better people by changing our behavior. We get report cards in school, telling us how to be better students. Then we get evaluations at our jobs, telling us how to be better workers by learning new skills and working late. The dominant culture reinforces the idea that if we work hard, we will succeed, and if we fail — well, then, we need to work harder, smarter, to keep up.

Americans are not taught to “see” structures. We are taught to see everyone as individuals, and that the best way to address others is as if we are all equals. In fact, we are taught that it is borderline rude to talk about people as members of groups, because it flattens and obscures what is special and unique about each person.

The term white privilege flies in the face of all this training in individualism. It’s a kind of shorthand. Like its cousin, class privilege, it indicates something about the way groups of people are placed in relation to one another in the social order. The “white” in white privilege is not meant to refer to individual people, each who happens to be white. Instead, the “white” in white privilege refers to the ways race, as a category, is a carrier of social codes, and is saturated with meaning and power.

The racial phenotype — that is, the series of physical characteristics, such as skeletal structure, height, hair texture, eye color, and skin tone — that is coded as “white” in a social order that is white supremacist is granted certain structural privileges, such as access to resources, economic capital, freedom of movement, and protection by the law, regardless of their individual merit or hard work. This is not to say that white people, per se, cannot have experiences of economic hardship, personal suffering at the hands of other people, such as interpersonal violence, trauma, and abuse, mental health conditions, or other experiences that make it difficult to survive. White privilege is about social location in a hierarchy, not individual history. It is based upon a broad, historical narrative about what “whiteness” means, as a way of being and a system of organizing culture.

For more of this article click here.

 By SJ Otto

I was watching the show “Info Wars.” My brother told me he knew a bartender who only watches that channel for news. So here I am watching this guy and his show just for the fun of it. And he is telling his listeners that all the news on the Coronavirus is a conspiracy to take away our freedom. “It is all a scam,” according to the guy blathering away on my TV. I understand his name is Alex Jones.

I guess anyone with money can get on TV and spout anything they want. What this guy is saying is not really political. It is just lunacy. That virus is terrifying to some of us. I already have problems breathing because if my sinuses. I am also 65 years old and I’m diabetic. So I am terrified of dying from this disease, especially from the idea of gasping for air and chocking to death. The show I’m watching at present is an attack on the anti-Corona vaccine. Jones is complaining that “the left” wants to force us all to take that vaccine.

‘Everything from the left is a culture of bullying,’ he warns his viewers. He blames a lot on the left. According to Jones and his followers, who love to call in on his TV show, the whole virus thing is a scam. It’s all a lie. He has all kinds of intricate information which he uses to try and debunk all the information we all get from the news on the Coronavirus. He has all kinds of information telling us all how dangerous the vaccine is. And of course the idea is to force all of us to take this horrible vaccine. According to Jones we are all ‘just following our leaders and brainlessly doing what we are told.’

None of this stuff looks to me like it fits with any political agenda. If the left is really pushing this vaccine as some kind of plot, what is the purpose? What does any one get out controlling people with a vaccine? This guy is among all those “don’t wear a mask” people. How dare all those control freaks try and force us to wear a mask.

The shut downs enforced in some states are also part of the scam, according to this guy.

This is pure insanity. Anyone who really wants to die from this disease is free to do so. The mask is for the protection of others, as much as protection for the individual wearing the mask. If a person does not want the vaccine they are free to not take it. It they want to choke to death from a virus that cuts off their air supply—have at if folks. I have nothing against suicidal people. If someone wants to die that badly, I say go ahead. That leaves more vaccines for the rest of us. Some of us want to live and we are terrified of dying from that disease. I am one of those. I wear my mask. I try to avoid big crowds. I try to wash up when I can. I will have to die some day. But I can choose to avoid some forms of death that seem unpleasant, such as chocking to death from a virus. When the vaccine is offered I will take it. Not for political reason, but because I don’t want to choke to death. It is that simple.

—And by now I have changed the channel to watch something more amusing—that’s anything other than “Info Wars.”

Pix from Zazzle.

 By SJ Otto

I really enjoy analyzing and criticizing commercials.  I don’t like watching them much, but I enjoy making fun of them. All day long I’m bombarded by commercials. They can really get to me.

When I find a really interesting commercial, I analyze it to figure out why these folks think I will want to buy their product. The latest example is a couple of ads for Loan Depot. The ad features a whole bunch of people who stare back at us, while some guy gives us a spiel on how this loan company has grown and how they invest in neighborhoods and the community. They act like they are providing this badly needed community service. But the bottom line is that they are just trying to sell you a loan.

I see face after face of people who I suppose I am supposed to identify with. But what I see is a whole bunch of dorky people staring at me. They look weird. And I have to wonder why I’m being subjected to looking at these fools? Some of these guys lookreally dorky. Recently I wrote an article about hippies. One thing that arose from that movement is that suddenly guys did not have to all look alike. Conformity is a major part of the male experience. We all (guys) grow up given a basically similar hair cut to the guy next to us. Looking the same as everyone else seems to be a major part of American manhood. We can see that in this commercial when one of these guys has a narrow head, he’s unshaven and his ears stick out. Some men’s ears stick out, while other men’s ears REALLY stick out. They guy looks goony as hell and I have to wonder why anyone thought I would want to stare at this guy? If I looked like that guy I would change my hair style. I don’t care how un-manly it looked, having ears like that, that stick out, just plain sucks. Some people look like dorks anyway and following the crowd, to look like everyone else, does not help things. They just look like dumb, damn, dorks. They may be real smart, but looking like a f#&*ing idiot doesn’t help them any.

The commercials I’m amazing come in two. There is one with mostly guys in it and the other has a lot of women. They both seem like a really stupid idea. But it is if there is one for guys and the other for girls. They both seem to want us to identify with people who are supposed to be “just like us.” I’m thankful I don’t look like any of these people.

The women’s ad doesn’t really look any better. Women don’t look as much alike, but they all stare at us from that ad and we have to wonder why they don’t have anything better to do. In one scene a whole bunch of women are making that hart sign with their hands. In other scenes we see a woman gawking at us. I have to wonder what we are supposed to be doing back at them. They look stupid. So what is the point?

And that is the point of this article—what is the point to a bunch of idiots gawking at us.

 By SJ Otto

How much does a TV ad that glamorizes a warrior coming back home from battle have to do with Christmas—the supposed time of peace on Earth and good will towards men? It probably seems touching, sentimental and patriotic that a little girl waits at home for her dad to come home from the wars overseas. But for me, it is appalling. I question the need to send Americans over seas to take part in totally unnecessary wars. I have been a peace activist most of my adult life. I have also opposed imperialism—the US foreign policy of this country that has made war necessary. The US has deliberately conquered other people’s countries and stolen their sovereignty. This nation uses such tools as unmanned drones to hunt down and kill suspected military opponents of USforeign policy. If such people are around their families, wife, kid, etc., then those innocent bystanders are killed.

So we have all this death, destruction and at times, outright murder of foreign people and their families. And after killing for the American Empire, dad comes home to his young daughter. She has waited safely at home, where there is little to no danger of being killed by warriors that her dad has been killing. 

These kinds of commercials piss me off. I’m sure a lot of people find them cute, patriotic or just plain sentimental and touching. I find them appalling. People need to consider what these patriotic warriors are actually doing and not just applaud and glamorize their role in the US Empire and its war crimes.

Toyotathon: "Mailbox" | Toyota

 By SJ Otto

It wasn’t long ago that my brother made the comment, that “Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and a lot of those drinking and drug use programs, all seem to be ‘one size fits all.” The more I thought of it, the more I realized he was right.

I wrote a chapter in my book, War on Drugs/ War on People, where I compared the various types of treatment for addiction. Some of the methods I looked at were terrible and I dismissed them outright. But I had to take the 12 step programs of AA and similar outfits more seriously since they are the most common and accepted methods for dealing with addiction:

“Along with AA there are now instituted Narcotics Anonymous chapters. I don’t see much difference between AA and NA. Both treat chemical dependency although the chemicals are different. And those who are dependent have little qualms selling of their prized possession for a six-pack or a marijuana joint or a narcotic fix.[1]”

 One problem I found with 12 steps is that it is often reliant on religion of some kind:

“For this program to work the addict has to believe in a religion before that religion will offer any cure or way of suppressing the need. This is especially critical when it comes to substance abusers who either have no church or reject all churches, (including atheists who renounce the concept of a god or the need for religion). In this case, those who can't cope with the demand of religion are unable to give way to the idea of surrendering to a "higher power" which in most instances in religious circles is called a "god.” Atheists agnostics and non-believers need to feel personally empowered if they are to overcome their addiction to alcohol, narcotics or other drugs; terrorizing them with religion and religious programs usually have an opposite affect and they elect to continue their habits.[2]”

I have heard from several atheists who insist the program can work. A person can use something besides “god” or religion. They can use a philosophy, such as Marxism, Taoism or Epicureanism. Or any other idea can substitute for the higher power. The higher power can be anything the patient desires. However, religion is not the only problem I found with 12 step programs.

When in these programs there is a very strict code and the patient is not to touch any alcohol at all. Abstinence is total. That may work for a lot of people, but there are some people who can’t hack it. They try over and over and they fail.  Many people can successfully finish these programs, but not everyone. Is it possible that some people are better off to try and reduce drinking, or drugs gradually. The benefit of less drinking is probably better than trying to quit completely, when for some people, that just doesn’t work. To try and reduce alcohol consumption may work for some people and the benefits from drinking less may also help such a patient.

Another problem with 12 steps is all the possible “triggers” that patients learn to avoid. They include avoiding people they used to drink with. Often the 12 step patient avoids any past friend who drinks at all. Even if they were a good friend and even if the relationship is not based on drinking or drugs, that person needs to be dumped. The patient must make new friends. They must all be friends who follow abstinence. That is a must. Also places that the patient used to go to, such as bars, must be avoided. This all requires building a whole new life style. Again, for some people this may be too much of a change to swallow. That is especially true for an older person who has developed a set of friends that are important to them and that kind of radical re-arrangement of life is difficult.

For some people who go threw these programs there is an obsession over “triggers.” For example there are non-alcoholic drinks that resemble the taste that a patient is used to drinking, such as non-alcoholic beer and wine. But the 12 step programs advise against these things. They can be “triggers.” The program requires a radical life style change. A patient can drink soda pop, bottled water, coffee or tea. For myself I have diabetes. I’m not supposed to drink beverages with straight sugar. That leaves out coke, Pepsi or any other soda pop. I also can’t drink diet soda because the sugar substitute hurts my stomach. That leaves me with a choice between coffee or tea. I sometimes drink Tomato juice because it has so much less sugar in it than other juice drinks. So that is three beverages I’m allowed to drink if I follow a 12 step program and avoid spikes in my blood sugar..

Drugs of any kind, such as marijuana, or also considered “triggers.” To get high at all can lead back to drinking. So that means the patient has to be completely sober and can not get a buzz from any source. A new product that some people are using as a substitute for such drugs as cocaine or narcotics, is Kratom. Some people say it works. They have kept off of hard drugs using the stuff. They have lobbied to keep the product legal and it can be bought in many stores throughout the city of Wichita. But according to 12 step programs this is too dangerous. It can be a “trigger.”   

In a few parts of the country there are efforts to legalize some of the softer drugs, such as psilocybin mushrooms, peyote and ayahuasca. These drugs are much safer than alcohol. As I have said in an earlier article:

“Allowing adults to legally use herbal highs, as psilocybin mushrooms, peyote and ayahuasca just makes sense. This would help me a lot. I have spent a lot of time in rehab places such as AA meetings. At some point I decided to give up and just try to use alcohol sparingly rather than total abstinence. Total abstinence is just not for me. Life is about developing life styles and I believe that a free people in a free society should have choices as to how they live.

In small amounts, alcohol does create a feeling of euphoria, but it also creates a kind of sloppy state, where a person looses his/her sense of judgement. In simple language, it makes us act stupid. I like some of the effects of alcohol, but it is hard on my liver and creates other health problems.

My favorite of those drugs are mushrooms, shrooms or as we used to call it: psilocybin.”

It is about time adults had a choice of intoxication besides just alcohol. Alcohol really is an unhealthy drug. It is one of the most damaging and dangerous drug a person can use. So why it is the only legal high we have in this country?

I once went to an AA meeting where they discussed holding alcohol free dances. The point of the meeting was to stress that it is possible to have fun without alcohol. The idea of the meeting was a good one. But many people there just fussed over what kind of “triggers” they had to avoid. Some AA members become obsessed with avoiding “triggers.”

They have so much fear of these triggers that it seems if they are incapable of having any fun. And I don’t see how they can have fun. At what point do they just try and enjoy themselves and just forget about avoiding intoxication.

I don’t deny that 12 step programs help some people lead productive abstinent lives. But not everyone can follow such paths. For some people, certain drugs become a form of self medication. The drug of choice may not be the best drug to off set the chemical imbalances some people have. But until such people can get treated by a professional, they may have to do with the street drugs they can find and use.

[1] Steve Otto, War on Drugs/ War on People, (Ide House, Los Colinas, 1995), p. 182-183.

[2] Steve Otto, War on Drugs/ War on People, p. 183.

 By SJ Otto

Tomorrow is the last day of the year 2020. That number sounded like something special when it began last January. But it has been a year full of dread.

Early in the year we heard in the news how the coronavirus spread all across China. It started clear back in January. Next it went to Europe. Italy was hit hard by the virus. And still in all this time it seemed so remote from America. It seemed like it couldn’t happen here. Then about March it started to hit the USA.

At first it was New York. That made sense since world trends usually come to New Yorkfirs. But it didn’t take long for Coronavirus to spread across the country. 

It still seemed remote to me because I live in Kansas—the middle of the USand most of Kansasis rural. Kansasis one of the last places most trends end up. But even today, Kansas has as many Covid-19 deaths and as many cases as most other states. We’ve had our hospitals filled up, just like every other state. We had a nearly complete shut down of businesses, such as bars and theatres back in April. The state let up, a little later, and then it clamped back down. Every one now wears a mask when they go into a business, such as a grocery store or liquor store.

Not long ago I went to my brother, John’s favorite bar, Judy’s. The people there were not wearing masks. There was no social distance. There were no protections at all. Both my brother and I found the same thing at a local bar I like, Dudley’s. We are both concerned and worried about catching that virus. My brother is seven years younger than me. But that doesn’t make him real young. I am 65 and have diabetes. If I get the virus, it doesn’t look good. On top of our ages are the grim reports that people much younger than us have died from Coronavirus.  For example Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.) has died from the coronavirus. He was 41.

As the year comes to an end we have a lot of hope ahead of us. There is the vaccine. However there are someright-wing nut jobs that are spreading fear of taking the vaccine and they are denying that the virus is a real threat. They have denounced the Coronavirus as a hoax. Unlike the nuts, my brothers and other members of my family plan to get and take the vaccine when it is offered to us. For the next few months we will all continue to wear masks when we go into stores or businesses. I’m hoping that by summer we can start to return to normal. Maybe this time next year the pandemic will be over. Maybe the masks will be gone. It is hard to tell. Will we ever get back to the way it was before? Who knows? I have never in my life seen an epidemic or pandemic as bad as the Coronavirus. I have heard about all these different epidemics, such as the Spanish flue epidemic, from around the beginning of the 20^th Century. It lasting from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world's population at the time.    

We are living in strange times. But 2021 holds out hope that things will be different.

Pix by How to Use Masks during the Coronavirus Pandemic - Scientific American& Spanish Flu- Wikipedia.

 By SJ Otto

For a lot of people spirituality is connected to religion. It is all about a belief in god. But not all religion is directly connected to god and the afterlife. For the strictly religious people religion and spirituality are just about the same thing. Then there are atheist and those Marxist who consider themselves purely materialist and for those people there is no such thing as spirituality. For some of them, there is no difference between spirituality and superstition.

But I am not convinced of either of those beliefs. I do believe there can be a sense of spirituality for those of us who are basically atheists, or atheist leaning.

Many religions have a secular side to them. Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism and others all have a secular branch. As with Buddhism, there are some who believe in a god and afterlife and some who’s practice is strictly a way of life—or a philosophy of life.

Taoism started out strictly as a philosophy. But some people mixed in the ancient Chinese religions with it and created a new religion out of it. The philosophy now gave the religious people a guide to live by, so they could please their god(s).

I was in El Salvador one year and I met a Chinese woman who shared my interest in Mao Zedong (毛泽东) and Maoism. She told me she thought there is spirituality to Maoism. I have heard that from others who take an interest in Mao. From some Maoists/ materialists such an idea is blasphemy. But not to all Maoists. After all, Mao took inspiration from Lao Tzu(老子)and Mencius(孟子). It would seem as if Mao took some of his inspiration from people who some would describe as spiritual. Some people treat Confucianism,[1] as a religion, even though it does not deal with god or the after life. Mencius was a pupil of Confucius.

A few years back, I was under the care of a psychologist. I told her how much I like going to the country and enjoying seeing nature. When that happens I am in the woods, away from civilization and away from human kind. I enjoy seeing nature, the plants, fish, frogs, crawdads, clams and all of those animals that take care of themselves without the help of humans. That is nature. The psychologist told me this was a form of spirituality. I agreed.

I looked up a few definitions on web sites about spirituality. On Wikipedia:

“The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various connotations can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man",^{[note 2]} oriented at "the image of God"^[4][5] as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit^[6] and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.^[7] In modern times, the term both spread to other religious traditions^[8] and broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including a range of esoteric traditions and religious traditions. Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension^[9] and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live",^[10][11] often in a context separate from organized religious institutions,^[12] such as a belief in a supernatural (beyond the known and observable) realm,^[13] personal growth,^[14] a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning,^[15] religious experience,^[16] or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension".^[17]”

On a site called Taking Charge of your health & well being I found this as part of their definition:

“Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life.”   

The part that says something is “bigger than ourselves” is where spirituality can apply to a philosophy of life and not just a religious belief. The two main philosophies I live by are Epicureanism and socialism. Epicurus(Έπίκουρος) had a lot of similar beliefs to both Karl Marx. But the biggest difference was that Epicurus did not encourage people to be involved in politics. He discouraged such practices and said people should try and live well on their own. It was all about one’s self. Marx said the opposite.[2] that it was not enough to just explain the world, as most philosophers, but to change the world.

Originally I was raised a Catholic. By my high school years I had picked up on Liberation Theology. Pope John Paul II, head of that church during the 1980s, tried to destroy Liberation Theology during his reign. He eventually revealed that he was in league with Ronald Reagan and the CIA. After that I dropped that religion (Christianity and Catholicism) all together. Since high school I have had agnostic tendencies. I studied Hinduism briefly in high school and after Catholicism I studied Druidry. So I have had those religions to give me some inspiration and ideas. But I ended up taking a more atheistic Marxist oriented look at life and I have rejected all religion.

So on a personal level, I look to Epicurus as a philosophy—a way of life and I look to Marx and socialism as inspiration to change the world. Likewise I have other inspirations, such as the plants and animals that live in the woods, the streams and lakes where I live. Duidry and other forms of pagan religion take a lot of inspiration from nature. And nature is where I get some of my ideas on spirituality. Humans can learn a lot from the animals and plants round them.  

 By SJ Otto

Now that a vaccine is available, I will get one—eventually. I have no plans to sit outside someplace and wait over two hours to get that shot. I’m too old to sit there and wait for any kind of medical action. If it is about an hour or less, fine—it could even be about an hour and a half.  But not several hours.

I’m used to wearing a mask by now when I go to a store. I have rarely gone to bars since this pandemic started. But Kirby’s is the only regular place I used to go that practices masks, social distancing and spraying things down to sterilize the place. It ain’t perfect, but it is more than most bars do.

We still have a few people who claim that all the hype around the Coronavirus is a hoax[1]and all the masks, business shut downs and social distancing is unnecessary. At the same time hospitals,in California, are turning away patients from such things as car accidents and heart attacks. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life time. It would be fine with me if it never happens again as long as I live. And I mean I hope we have no more of these pandemics. In the short run I hope to avoid heart attacks and car accidents. This is a bad time to need to be hospitalized or taken some where by ambulance. I’m 65 years old, with diabetes. I have trouble breathing due to bad congestion. My chances of surviving this disease are not all that good. This virus is a major event in this century and it will go down in history as such. This has been a difficult year (2020) and for the next few months it will be just as difficult. By next year this may be over. In the mean time, those of us who are still acting sane need to hang on and wait it out.

Pix from coronavirus | Definition, Features, & Examples | Britannica

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[1]Media personality Claudia Stauberd and Alex Jones of Infowars are examples of right-wing conspiracy fools who rail against all the safety precautions taken by our government to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

 

By SJ Otto

These are strange times and Donald Trump is a strange president. He is not only far to the right, he seems to be coming unhinged. Some of us wondered if he was able to handle the job of President. With the help of his cabinet members and other aids he has been able to do the job.  All of those aids have helped keep him in check. They prevented him from doing impulsive things that could have been dangerous.

His tirade against the elections results—which includes his assertion that the election was stolen from him, seems to make him look delusional. Can he really believe what he is saying? That is the hard question. Did he really believe he could come out ahead if he created a putsch by his followers? More and more the president seems to be lacking the needed sanity to do his job.

This also shows how US democracy has huge limitations. How could such a man get elected? How did he manage to stay elected? Most Republicans saw him as a loose cannon when he was first elected. Most of them didn’t like him at all. But he supported the Republican agenda. He promoted that agenda far better than the Republican Party believed would happen. After his firsts year in office—the party was sold on Trump.

His supporters are mostly working class people who are deeply dissatisfied with the USpolitical landscape. Bernie Sanders and many news pundits have compared Trump and Sanders for appealing to the poor, working people and disenfranchised. They are political opposites and yet they appeal to the same class of people. According to Axion:

“The bottom line: Many Sanders voters see Trump as having paved the way for a President Sanders.

• Sanders supporter Jamal Jilao said, "I hope the time of being fearful of using executive orders has been laid to rest."

That article included other interviews with several voters including David Small:

• "He's always toed the same line," said voter David Small. "The poor and disenfranchised will feel like they have a real advocate."

But Trump is the opposite of what working people or poor people really need. He is a corporate lackey and not a working class hero. His followers are a strange group of people who seem almost mesmerized by this leader. He and his followers resemble a cult. And while his followers are working class, he is a $billionaire.

Trump has proven that the system has huge holes in it. Trump is unfit for the job and yet he has hard core supporters who idolize him as a hero. Those people are largely responsible for getting him elected. They wanted a leader who is willing to shake up a system they do not trust. In some ways Trump is little more than a common thug. His followers often say: “he talks the way I do.” How does he talk? He is unrefined, blunt and he pushy back hard against his critics and opponents. He lashes out at his enemies and makes no apologies for his actions. He is the fist president, in my lifetime, which refused to congratulate the winner of the election that he lost.

Many of his followers are thugs who have no problem getting in a fight. Some are thugs, pure and simple. There is a similarity to these followers and the kinds of people Adolf Hitler recruited to create a political movement. That is not to say they are straight out fascist or Nazis. The point is that Trump supporters are following a strategy that has been used in the past.

Trump is the most undemocratic USleader in the last century, or maybe even in the history of the US. The system is broken and Trump has proven that. All our politicians and news pundits will stand around scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong. But USdemocracy has always had its limitations.

The Electoral College was developed at the beginning of the history of the USin the 18^th century. The idea was that people are not smart enough to elect a president directly. The founders did not trust the American people so they came up with the idea that the voters would elect electors who could vote against the will of the people in case they made a mistake. The electors are supposed to be smart enough to put a check against the individual voters. It is antiquated and three times now the Electoral College allowed a president to get elected with a minority of the popular vote. That is likely to happen again. 

The entire Republican Party should share the responsibility of this president. They enabled him to mislead the nation and they did it in order to promote their far-right agenda. Trump allowed Republicans to pick three Supreme Court Judges. He appointed people to cabinet positions who often opposed the very institutions they were put in charge of. For example Betsy DeVos was appointed secretary of education. She opposes public education.

An example of Republican style corruption was Trump quietlyending a rule intended to protect low-income Americans from predatory high-interest payday loans. So this and other actions were welcomed by Republicans and because of such actions they supported Trump. By year two Trump had won over the party and most of them gave Trump solid support.

By SJ Otto

The USkilling machine goes on. The USis just about the only industrialized nation that STILL uses the death penalty. Not long ago I saw an opinion piece by a writer who commented on a fellow school mate who was writing an analysis of Fidel Castro. The school mate was looking at what he considered the good things about Castro. But the author of this piece immediately stated that Castro was responsible for many people’s deaths. His attitude was that this leader murdered people, so there was no redeeming value in his regime at all. What surprised me most of all, is the idea that it is communist leaders as Castro who kill people—not capitalist leaders, such as President Donald Trump. Trump has been on a killing spree lately using the death penalty to kill people and he has sped up the process so he can put lots of people to death. So what difference does it make whether someone gets killed by a communist leader or a capitalist one? The results are the same. The person who is executed is dead. Regardless of the reason, the person dies.

So for many people there was little surprise when Lisa Montgomery, 52, was executed by lethal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, and pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. January 6.

According to CNN: 

“Montgomery was the first woman to be executed by the federal government since 1953 and was the only woman on death row.

The Supreme Court denied a last-ditch effort late Tuesday by her defense attorneys who argued that she should have been given a competency hearing to prove her severe mental illness, which would have made her ineligible for the death penalty.

She was the 11th federal death row inmate to be executed by the Trump administration after a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.

"The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman," her attorney, Kelley Henry, said in a statement. "Lisa Montgomery's execution was far from justice."

I have read lately from various pundits that more people “have died under communism that any other ideology.” But how many people have died under the capitalist system we call the USA. The US has had two Indian wars. That cost a lot of people their lives, especially Native American Indians. Sure this country was at war with them. But the Native American Indians were being driven off their land and their way of life was being destroyed. And, at times innocent women and children were killed when US soldiers raided the homes of the Plains Indians they wanted to pacify.

Then there was slavery. Run-away slaves were often hung—that is to say they were executed. It is easy to brush off executions since we normally execute murderers in the US. But not everyone executed here has committed murder. Certainly the run-away slaves usually murdered no one. 

Then, during the Indian wars, US calvery often attacked villages that had just women and children. None or nearly none of those people were combatants.

According to Smithsonian Magazine:

“Jeff Campbell worked for 20 years as a criminal investigator for the state of New Mexico. He specialized in cold cases. These days, he applies his sleuthing skills to a case so cold it’s buried beneath a century and a half of windblown prairie.

“Here’s the crime scene,” Campbell says, surveying a creek bed and miles of empty grassland. A lanky, deliberate detective, he cups a corncob pipe to light it in the flurrying snow before continuing. “The attack began in predawn light, but sound carries in this environment. So the victims would have heard the hooves pounding towards them before they could see what was coming.” 

Campbell is reconstructing a mass murder that occurred in 1864, along Sand Creek, an intermittent stream in eastern Colorado. Today, less than one person per square mile inhabits this arid region. But in late autumn of 1864, about 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho lived in tepees here, at the edge of what was then reservation land. Their chiefs had recently sought peace in talks with white officials and believed they would be unmolested at their isolated camp. 

When hundreds of blue-clad cavalrymen suddenly appeared at dawn on November 29, a Cheyenne chief raised the Stars and Stripes above his lodge. Others in the village waved white flags. The troops replied by opening fire with carbines and cannon, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies.”

This certainly is gruesome enough. There have been people executed for either political reasons or suspected acts of disloyalty to our government. Such is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, the four anarchists executed for their alleged part in the Haymarket Affair and Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg. None of these people committed outright murder and politics were the main reasons for their executions.

There are also the other wars such as Vietnam. Over a million Vietnamese died in that war. Did most of them really want the US to stop them from being communists? Was the USright to insist that capitalism prevail there?

After the Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution, capital punishment was outlawed. Capital punishment is still on the books in Cuba, but no one has been executed in several years. So it would seem that the USgovernment—especially under Trump, is and has been quite murderous. The rest of Europe has abandoned capital punishment, but the US keeps on killing people.

There was plenty of evidence that MS Montgomery was mentally ill. She was not completely sane. So our system of government executed a person who was mentally unbalanced. Once again, our government is murderous under Trump and the system has allowed it. It is hard to say why Trump has such a lust for blood, but it speaks badly of the US justice system that such executions are taking place. This is just about the only place left on Earth where people are executed, with the exeption of the hell holes this country has propped up such as Iraq.

 Yesterday was the official MLK Day. While I didn’t post yesterday, I am posting today. Here is an important speech of King’s:

By Steve Otto

My wife just died so I am writing this obit for my blogs. I have written obits for my other friends, such as Tim Pouncey. But I was married to Camillia (AKA Cam) Gentry, so this is more difficult. Cam died January 21, 2021.

Cam spent her life time as a librarian. She was a librarian at Wichita State University for many years and then she was a librarian at the Dorothy Bramlage Public Library, in Junction City, KS. After that she went to the John F Kennedy Library at the Hutchinson Community College, KS. For most of her last years she worked at the hospital libraries for Via Christi, first at St. Joseph and then at St. Francis, here in Wichita. She has a Masters in Library Science. We both have lived in Maize, KS for the last 20 years or so.

Cam and I met at Kirby’s, a popular bar in Wichita, and for most of our lives it was  our favorite place to hang out and meet friends at. We met in the early 1980s and we got married in 1984. Cam and I had different politics. She was a liberal and I am a Socialist. But we do agree on a lot of issues. For example we both hated Trump and voted against him. Cam had always been a feminist and activist. She was also a Democrat. She was very politically active. In her early years she was a member of National Organization for Women (NOW). She did clinic defense for the abortion clinics in Wichita. She was a member of Freedom of Choice Action League (FOCAL) which shut down and ZAP which grew out of FOCAL. Both organizations were dedicated to clinic defense. She participated in the 2004 March for Women's Lives and the 2016 Women’s March in WashingtonDC. She was a liberal Democrat and never missed voting. She worked for and supported many Democratic candidates. She mostly supported progressive candidates. She really liked supporting progressive women.

For a more complete look at her life with me click here andsee the full-length obit.

 Here is a favorite song of Cam's:

Services have been postponed until spring or summer due to the coronavirus. At this time no service are currently planned.

Clint Gentry also contributed to this article.

And at Wulf Ast.

Readers can click on the pix to make it bigger.

Jacob Anthony Chansley, AKA Jake Angeli, and also known as the "QAnonShaman" was a part of the January 6, storming of the US Capitol. In the picture above he is standing next to a man who has long hair and a beard. Chansley has an outfit that resembles something a 1960s Yippie would wear. He has a hat made of animal skins and horns. He has face paint on, and he calls himself a “Shaman.”All this points to the clothing of a 1960s or 1970s hippie, anarchist or some kind of left-wing person. But he is far to the right—a conservative. And it used to be hippies that would follow non-Christian type beliefs, such as Shamanism. He is not the only conservative who dresses more like the old 1960s radicals. And the event he took part in, resembles the actions of a 1960s radical. An example of that was the Free Speech Movement at the University of Californiain Berkeley.

According to Calisphere:

“The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a college campus phenomenon inspired first by the struggle for civil rights and later fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War. The Free Speech Movement began in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeleyprotested a ban on on-campus political activities. The protest was led by several students, who also demanded their right to free speech and academic freedom. The FSM sparked an unprecedented wave of student activism and involvement.”

The students took over SproulPlazaand occupied the balconies of Sproul Hall, a campus administration building, holding FSM banners and an American flag.

If there is one thing similar to such actions today, it is that Government officials do not take well to such people taking the law into their own hands. The FBI kept secret files on FSM leaders. Voters elected Ronald Reagan to "clean up the mess in Berkeley."

There were other protests taking place, in the ‘60s, around that time and according to Wikipedia, there was a backlash against these actions and a wide variety of protests, concerned citizens, and activists were lumped together.

And…

“Earlier protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities meeting in San Francisco in 1960 had included an iconic scene as protesters were literally washed down the steps inside the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall with fire hoses.”

Today authorities are trying to arrest every person who took part in the actions of January 6.

So what does all of this mean? Is this just a fashion trend? Or is it more significant? I don’t have all the answers. It seems as if the hippies of today are conservatives. The action on the Capital, this January, is almost revolutionary. It is hard for me to imagine what Donald Trump was actually thinking. Did he really believe he could overturn the election results and put himself back in office for the next four years? Only he knows the answer. In a way, I have to admire Trump’s ability to draw in working class people among his supporters and he even won the support of what seems a lot like modern day Yippies—revolutionaries NOW of the far right.

Of course I oppose everything Trump tried to do to this country. He and I are complete opposites. However he was able to draw in a large section of the proletariat and lumpen proletariat to a completely anti-worker bourgeois platform. For conservatives that ain’t easy—or at least it shouldn’t be.

I always considered Ronald Reagan the nation’s best con man. He lowered the working people’s wages, took away a lot of their rights and they loved him for it. Trump is a con man in the same league. He also conned the working class, and even now with being out of office, I strongly suspect he will keep at it.