Seasons Fleetings

Are your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and your cousins going to be visiting this holiday season? Are you dreading it? Do you feel nauseous? Oh, word. Samesies! Yeah I've been there in fact I'm still there. I just want to address a few things about that. Here are some topics you can mention when ol' Aunt Clara grimaces at your answer to her, "what's going on with your life" questions. Tell her what's going on with the country! She might think you're really smart and be enlightened or she might just further her frowning. At that point just pour her another glass of wine. She can join the rest of us depressive masses drinking our years away after discussing our fleeting freedoms.

Enough of your "back in my day" rantings. You know damn well  previous generations were gifted with a more straightforward path to economic success.  Now you have to jump through bureaucratic flaming hoops to get a degree, and if you happen to Indiana Jones your way out of Starbucks and through the narrow crevice that leads to Good Job Landia, there is no guarantee it'll last when you watch your job get outsourced or become obsolete in a few years.  Not to mention drastic inflation, and increasing expenses, insurance and taxes. The only jobs that offer healthcare tend to be government jobs, which are so tedious to land when at first they lie and promise all you need is your worthless high school diploma, they then explore your identity and drug test you and if you can't qualify for the fire department or police force, you'll be stuck doing menial low paying jobs unless you seriously hit the books and become a business owner or entrepreneur which they've also made nearly impossible to qualify for and if you do then you'll be shook down in tax money, insurance and jacked up rent money.

Throw in fast paced ever-changing technology, automated services, robots and kiosks, licensing, permissions, registrations, worthless college degrees you stay in debt for thousands of dollars and years for, the constant presence of terrorism, endless pressure and stress to do better but can't because it all takes time and money you don't have added to the pressure and stress to procreate and bring more mouths to feed into the world. I know! Let's all join the military and carry out dirty deeds ordered by the mysterious agenda of the military industrial complex. Its all a crap shoot.

Thanks for overseeing a Keynesian system of economics and the degeneration of moral and cultural standards so that the next generation are debt slaves with poor job prospects and surrounded by foolish communists and subservient institutions. Thanks for a rotting education system. Thanks for telling everybody else to take responsibility for their actions and then not follow your own advice. "Do as I say and not as I do," right?

Maybe we are the most whiny wet blankets of our time, but even you know, as home owners, that having property in the U.S. is an illusion since you have to pay massah guv'mint an annual fee to keep your house or it'll send jack-booted thugs with badges and guns to imprison or execute you. 

Brought to you by a lazy piece of shit millennial constantly being asked about my life and occupation. Merry Christmas!

Why "The Punisher" Matters

Man, oh man, The Punisher is excellent! They have given Frank Castle so much depth, gotta give it to Marvel for that. I never thought that I would get to see a true portrayal of Castle, but they have succeeded mightily! And Jon Bernthal is a Godsend cast choice, great job, again by Marvel casting.

Now that I have your attention, I want to talk about the real thing that I love about this show. The thing that I really love, too, is the way that they're giving the truth about how this government has played us all, especially these brave men/women who pledge their lives to this place.

Although the show is fiction, the way that this government exploits and manipulates patriotism in this country is very, very real, indeed.

It's also real the way that these brave people are discarded when no longer usable, and forced to try to re-adapt to an environment that they are no longer trained to exist in, like a flu virus trying to get a body to accept it. They've been brainwashed into a state of societal abnormality and so many have seen horrors that will haunt them forever, on top of having to deal with the struggle to re-adapt.

http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1384&context=essai

Mental/physical trauma, psychological scar tissue underneath the very real physical scar tissue obtained in the hell that is war, only to be sent back to a country that has no treatment for their trauma, or alternative to give them. Their loyalty betrayed, and their suffering given no aid, by the very entity that put them in that state. The lucky ones have a support system of family/loved ones that can get them to a sense of stability, but what about the country that they pledged their lives to protect? Shouldn't it be that country that provides them every outlet needed to compensate them for their sacrifice?

And on top of that, they're used as sacred cows for political football(pun intended) purposes, to manipulate the patriotic mindset of the masses of this place to keep them loyal and obedient, knowing that they've been screwed over by the very people who are prodding the symbol of the American soldier as sacred symbols of patriotism, and demand that they be treated with the utmost respect and reverie!.....both of which are deserved.....neither of which are actually given to them by the very government pushing it to everyone else.

I have the ultimate respect for these men/women, I will never besmirch them in what they stand for, because I see that they're in it for the right reasons and are braver than I can ever be, in that regard. That's why I feel so sorry for them, seeing how they're being played and how they're being used to play the rest of us.

But, at least I can watch Frank Castle get his retribution. That's the beauty of comic book heroes.......

When A Woman's Fed Up

Folks are acting all shocked and aghast in seeing the tidal wave of sexual misconduct/harassment/assault allegations against all of these famous men, and men in positions of authority.....As if women haven't been telling their truth forever....From the lowly supervisor at work, to the former and current President of the United States, men are being accused of all levels of sexual exploitation....You just weren't listening, or believing them, same as how a lot of them were all appalled when video started forcing them to see how racism is a continuous, non-stop issue....

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/harvey-weinstein-scandal/weinstein-here-s-growing-list-men-accused-sexual-misconduct-n816546?cid=public-rss_20171122

See, this is the woman's experience, always has been. It isn't just a Hollywood women's experience. This is every woman's experience, in all walks of life, no matter the class bracket, no matter the skin color, no matter the religious background, no matter....

It is her normalcy, it is what she has to develop psychological blocks and coping mechanisms for, just to be able to function and maintain her sanity. It's what she sees, clear as the hand in front of her face, whereas men, seem to suffer from not having that lens built into their eyes to be able to see the problem. 

And when women have the courage to come forward and speak of the trauma that they've suffered through, at the hands of their oppressors, we do all we can to dispute, distrust, and dismiss them, yet when a man comes out and speaks of the same trauma at the hands of a man, there is no hesitation in the belief of their painful experience, and no hesitation in the action taken to achieve some level of justice, on their behalf. 

Maybe this is all coming out in a continuous wave, because this is something that never stops for women, in their everyday existence. Now you're being forced to see it all the time, the same way they're forced to deal with sexist patriarchy, all the time.

And stop pretending to be so shocked, that's part of the reason why this has been allowed to exist, in the first place. The only real surprise is that it took this long for it to become an issue that we have no ability to turn away from, and simply dismiss. Things have changed, and ugly truths are finally being exposed, and with that, the culprits, as well....And that needed to happen, it needs to be put out in the open, so that the women's truth and story can be truly heard and heeded to. 

Things will not change, nor move forward, if we continue to put our heads up our collective, patriarchal asses and continue to subconsciously put our women a peg below us. As is the case with racism, women don't have the option to be able to ignore what is put upon them, they can't(nor should they) change who they are to avoid being abused, and they can no longer be content with our patronizing attitude, with no intent to change our behaviors that continue to perpetuate the inequitable and exploitive status quo. We need to do more than be forced to bear witness to these stories, we need to change. 

I wonder if we will 'man up' to that challenge?.......

Black Culture: Why Aren't We Competing?

*I'm writing this as an addendum to a vlog that I recently published on my Brian Speaks On Youtube/Facebook pages*

I woke up this recent Sunday, and when I turned on my television, the first thing I see is the headline announcement that CIA Director Robert Mueller has enough evidence to file charges against former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn AND his son in conjunction with his investigation of possible collusion with Russia's ties to influencing America's previous election, which saw Donald Trump become our country's president, defeating Hillary Clinton(albeit it 3 million votes less in the popular vote, but I digress).

As a person of color, I have no binding interest in either Trump, nor Clinton, because both have histories that are very negative, in conjunction to black people. So, for me, Trump only represents at minimum a caricature of a president who will only ignore black people, leaving us in the same position that we've always been in society here, or, at worse, a malignant authoritarian, who will play on long standing stereotypes and fears that his base has toward black people, to justify ratcheting up the persecution and systemic racism that we already are suffering from, thereby setting us back even farther.....oh, and that whole possibility of dragging us into a nuclear war, too. So, I feel that I represent the general attitude of black people here, where I just pull up a seat, sip some tea, and play spectator to the festivities of being entertained by the current confederacy of dunces, all the while, laughing and trolling the supporters of this failed, last gasp attempt at white supremacy domination.

For those who have been following me since the presidential race, and the subsequent victory by Trump, I have been consistent in saying that this shock to the system was the best thing that happened, because people needed to be shocked awake from their being asleep in this dream that America was a post racial place and that these people haven't been laying in the weeds, just waiting to seize an opportunity to have control. These truths needed to be exposed in a way that couldn't be unseen, or dismissed as tales of sour grapes from a class of people who've been crying wolf for over a century. A lot of things that I've predicted have come to pass, regarding Trump's failures, incompetence, and being the symbol of racism, xenophobia, sexism, Russian puppet strings and general lack of class and couth eventually coming back to blow up in his spray tanned face, and I have yet to be proven wrong, or be disappointed. In fact, it has been even more spectacularly bad than I even imagined it would be, which has given me no end of cynical joy.

But, even as I laugh about the epic failure of white supremacy for the world to see, I feel a sense of strong disappointment in black culture, for not seeing this as the perfect opportunity to seize the day, take control of our culture, and our communities, and become self-sufficient and independent of any proclivity to rely on help from the government, or any other entity that can claim themselves as our 'white savior'. This is the perfect time, a time where white supremacy is on the ropes, getting beaten down, to be able to take control of how we are perceived in this society to the masses and prop ourselves up to the levels of which we've been advocating to be all of this time.

So, why aren't we competing? Why aren't we making legitimate and tangible moves?

I understand the effects of long-standing systemic racism and it's psychological ramifications on the psyche of black culture. I understand that these obstacles have created a sense of distrust, and as a result, the idea of collective unification among black people is a concept that's almost seen as science fiction within Black American culture.

Even though I understand these scars of long term, psychological warfare, I still have to call us out on not trying hard enough to break free from our programming. Our ancestors dealt with straight up, hostile, overt systemic racism, and STILL managed to create a Black Wall Street(and literally built the Wall Street we all know and hate now), before it was burned to the ground by white supremacist hatred. So why can't we re-create the formula that our ancestors weren't given the ability to grow for us to be able to inherit? Why can't we be the foundation that our descendants will be able to prosper from? We're accomplishing great things on individual levels, breaking glass ceilings and destroying stereotypes. Now it's time for us to do it as a collective.

We can be, if we get out of our own way, and get together....I'm ready when you are, and I'm ready for the day of our collective redemption.

Black culture: Why aren't we competing?

New video from my Brian Speaks On Youtube page. Thanks to all who watch and support