YOU CAN'T IGNORE IGNORANCE

     Well, most people do ignore ignorance.  If they didn't--if we all paid attention and tried to make things make sense, the world would probably shut down.  At least what we call "the media" would shut down.

     I just scanned through the current Google news page.

     First, this headline:  "Nonfatal Opoid Overdose No Bar to Further Prescriptions."  This, from Medscape.  If you get a fatal overdose, your doctor won't renew your prescription.

     And this, from Huffington Post--which is usually thoughtful:  "Congress Pushes NASA to Build Deep Space Habitat for Mars Mission."  That "Habitat" in deep space is no doubt needed to house homeless Americans, but the Huffington Post failed to mention that.

     Or this bit of unqualified news, from USA Today:  "US says Iran tested rockets 1,500 yards from American Warships in the Strait of Hormuz."  Shouldn't USA Today have noted--just to keep us properly informed--that the very narrow Strait of Hormuz is the southern border of Iran, and that those American Warships were more than 12,000,000 yards from the nearest US border.  What are US warships doing 7,000 miles from the US?   

     What would happen to the USA if  people in  "the media" were thoughtful?  And at least tried to make sense of things?

                                                              Bert Hornback

SOME ISSUES AND SOME PROBLEMS WITH THEM


     I just read about a professional athlete in America who has an "issue" with his shoulder.  I have a problem with that.
     I realise that most Americans are afraid of problems.  They can't face the fact--not just an idea, but a fact--that gun violence in America is a terrible epidemic, much worse than AIDS or any other disease ever was.  Americans can't face the fact that the first Bush's greedy, arrogant oil-war against Iraq has been going on now since 1992.  They can't have bad news:  they are too insecure for such.  The closest Americans ever get to a problem is McDonalds--which isn't a problem at all.  It's not even an issue. Americans want McDonalds, all day every day.

       The U. S. Constitution guarantees that Americans can't have problems.  They can all have guns, and they can print as much paper money as they want to.  And God blesses America--and nobody else:  the U. S. Constitution guarantees that, too.

       Everything is all right in America.   Problems are forbidden.  The word has been removed from American dictionaries.  (That was needless; Americans don't read--they only watch commercials.)

      America is a land of issues.  There is nothing seriously wrong with anything in America.  Just a few minor issues:  national bankruptcy, guns, forever wars, guns, poverty, guns, murder, guns, pollution, guns.  No problems, just a few issues.

ON OPEN LETTER TO MR. OBAMA 

WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO HIS BOMBING A HOSPITAL

 Mr. Obama:

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  Don't go to church this morning; instead, STOP KILLING PEOPLE.

Stop your wars.  Ground all your war-planes--and your new favorite murder-weapon, the drone.

And if you don't have the moral courage to do that, then resign--and let a moral man take your place and call the halt to military murder.  (We can trust Mr. Biden.)

You are the person in charge.  You can stop it all, today.

Your "I'm sorry" is about as cheap and stupid as saying "stuff happens."

All your weapons were designed and built to KILL HUMAN BEINGS.  And they all belong to YOU.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

YOU are the president.  YOU are responsible.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

MURDER is not made legitimate by high office--or by U.S. citizenship.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  STOP MURDERING PEOPLE.

Should I be polite and say "please"?  Of course not.  This is not a matter of your royal pleasure.
This is a moral, civilised command:  a human demand.

                                                                    Bert G. Hornback 

"OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM

     "The Star-Spangled Banner" is not really a very good anthem.  Not only is is too hard for
most people to sing--the range is to great--but it's a war song.  And we have had more than
enough wars. And more than enough boasting, too:  "the land of the free, and the home of
the brave."  Don't forget slavery, and what we did--and are still doing--to Native American's.
We have not only slavery in our past; we have genocide.

     "God Bless America" is not much better, though it is shorter.  We sure don't want "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," or "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (borrowed from the unmusical English).

     How about "America the Beautiful"?  The first verse will remind us of how beautiful this
continent we occupy once was.  And what it asks--of God--is that he "crown our good / with brotherhood."  In such a murderous country as ours is, we could use more "brotherhood"--and "sisterhood."

     The second verse is even better--if you forget the racism of "pilgrims' feet"  which marked a "thoroughfare for freedom" across what our white ancestors saw as "wilderness" but the Native Americans knew as "home."  Of course "freedom"---the same word as "friendship," historically
--would not have let us massacre Native Americans along that thoroughfare.  But the last lines
of the second stanza of "America the Beautiful" are very, very good--and we need them:

                                America! America!
                                Amend thine every flaw!
                                     Confirm thy soul
                                     In self-control,
                                Thy liberty in law!

       That would be a wonderful anthem.  Even a prayer--a prayer I would be very happy to pray, fervently.
                               


                 

New Books!

Dear friends,

I do have lots of things to say--and a bunch of new essays that I need to post.  But I have been busy
with two new books, just out.

           ANEMONES MY FOOTSTOOL:  ESSAYS LITERARY,
               SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND POLEMICAL

                                               and 

                              OH, TO BE A 'CELLO!

The first book contains ten essays, mostly literary--but then literature is usually social, and both concerned with and a part of culture, and it is sometimes--maybe often--polemical.

The second book contains thirteen essays, variously "about" music, and thirteen poems--by
Yeats, Masefield, Lewis Carroll, Donne, Tennyson, Hardy, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Leo Hunter.

They should be available through bookstores and internet bookstores like Amazon.

And beware:  there is another book of Dickens essays in the offing, to be called  In the World to be of It.

                                                                       Yours,

                                                                       Bert Hornback

COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

Commonwealth is a word that has been in use in the English language since the late fifteenth century. And it has been a good word: good being itself a social word, from the same root as gather and together. Massachusetts and Kentucky are commonwealths, not just states. As commonwealths, they are dedicated to the common good. The motto of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”

We have perverted the idea of wealth, however. Wealth these days is what every American is supposed to pursue for himself or herself--and to hell (or poverty) with everybody else. And thus we get Donald Trump.

Of course, Trump is a minor leaguer. His bragging about having $9,000,000,000 is silly, in the grand scale of American greed. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are each worth ten times that. They sit on fortunes of $90,000,000,000 each.

There are currently 45,000,000 Americans living in poverty. That's 15,000,000 households or families. Suppose Buffett and Gates gave each of those 15,000,000 families a thousand dollars. That would cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and they would still have $75,000,000,000 each, which would earn as much as the $15,000,000,000 that each of them gave away.

But neither Buffett nor Gates is going to live forever, so they can afford to give a lot more than 16.5% of their hoardings. Let's have them give away 90% of their hoardings--and they will each still have more than the bragging peanut-vendor Donald Trump.

Or let's give them three years. The first year Buffett and Gates can each give $3,000 per household to the Americans living in poverty. That will cost them $45,000,000,000 each--half their wealth. And those poor families will have an extra $6,000 each.

The second year, Buffett and Gates will have $45,000,000,000 each plus the $5,000,000,000 that their fortunes have earned for them--without their doing any work at all! So they can each give $2,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost each of them $30,000,000,000--and leave each of them with $20,000,000,000.

The third year they can each give $1,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and still leave each of them with more money than Donald Trump has!

Of course, even this kind of giving won't eradicate American poverty. But if we use it as a model--for all American billionaires, and maybe even for millionaires, in threee years' time we could make the United States a commonwealth, and even a functioning society.

 And if we could do that, then maybe we could all turn in our guns!

HOW TO MAKE A HORSE RUN FAST?


When American Phaorah was just a colt, another horse bit half his tail off.  

Ever since American Phaorah has been afraid of other horses behind him:  It might happen again!  So he runs--and he runs fast, to keep them off his tail.