March Came in Like a Lion Again This Year
I think I’ll make March 1st an anti-holiday. This is my surly time, my misanthropic month, every year without fail—gray days to reflect on the collective stupidity of humankind stubbornly maintaining tribal alliances and power decision-making, especially at times when mass violence occurs. Thousands of bodies mutilated (and millions threatened) by old men in nice clothes and expensive aftershave. Each group thinks it’s innocent, but all are destabilizers of liberty. In-groups need their out-groups, otherwise marauding can’t happen. Prejudices and bigotries amplified, pointing the finger, not accepting our own failures as irresponsible, uncaring, unjust actors in a mob of cowards.
True Throop statement: If one civilian gets killed by toy soldiers in a boy war, then the army, and all of its leaders, are criminal. Not so long ago, the stupid boys used to face each other to shoot holes through each other. When artillery improved, the toyboys lined up miles apart and bombed the enemy from out of sight. It was never brave. But it wasn’t murder either. Those toyboys signed up to play “shoot another soldier in the face for money”. A kind of Russian roulette depending that others in the game played fair and square. Then General Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea” and the psychotic invention of total war—take the powerful down a notch by setting fire to their helpless families and friends. Outside the Union, Sherman’s murderous frenzy, made official new war tactic, was mostly ignored by the rest of the world until WWI, when 700 civilians died from aerial bombing. By WWII, more than half a million non-soldier mothers, brothers and babies were blown to pieces by prime ministers and their doting pilots. And the cherry on top was the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, irradiating Japan for the next 300 centuries. Even the history professors rarely if ever speak of that chivalrous time, just a few generations ago, when soldiers killed soldiers and left the babies unscathed to cry in cribs for their mommies and daddies.
I wrote the following last March 1. I’ll repeat it every year to show how broken is the modern animal man:
This March came in rough for me. The full moon last Saturday was precursor to a low down, surly grump crash that dropped me hard. I hit bottom. And, as usual, I decided to blame the devil for being bad. Futility on steroids, but practiced by a will stronger than any man drug. I must warn you that this week’s writing is moody, judgemental, immature, angry, self-righteous, false and true. It can’t be helped. The past two nights I’ve gone to bed thinking I’ll change up the theme in the morning. Too dreary. Too political. Political writing and its art are for fools who don’t get paid doing politics. The pundits at least get to buy cars and corn flakes no matter what policies are debated to derange society further. No one wants to read Ron Throop vitriol. And yet the sun rises and the will refuses to break. I get my coffee, read the news, and wonder, “Where is everybody?” “How can they let this go?” “Oh Hell, express it anyway!”
I have a theory. The United States superpower is breaking down. It was inevitable after Hiroshima, the fire bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, the ditches of My Lai and the like. The dominant nation gets to write the history and spread the politics. America won the great wars and its owners got to pick the propaganda good and the propaganda bad. No different than if the Axis Powers were victorious. After an alternate end to World War II, I’d own a chopstick drawer, and Germany would have long ago carpet-bombed Mexico City back to the stone age. Likewise, there would be no Jewish, disabled, black, brown, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, communist, or any kind socialists left to talk to. Back in the present reality we are Nazi light—segregationist attorney generals and police pepper spraying anyone that says “Bad police!”.
As citizens we’ve been served an official and social brainwashing for 76 years. Consumerism fed us opium burgers and dopamine cakes to fatten up on laze-about tribalism. Talk politics set within very specific boundaries. You’re either for transgender or against. Pro gun or anti gun. Green New Deal good, grunt. Green New Deal bad, grunt grunt. But talk about life and death, e.g., infant mortality and cluster bombs, and you’re too far left, right, above, or below—just another radical to discount and then go shopping online to kill the coronavirus. Both tribes have gotten egregiously angry at being members of the richest, fattest nation on earth.
And what are the tribes angry about? Approximately eight wedges each in shallow pies labeled “Donald Trump” and “Liberal Elitism”. While we gobble up tribal desserts, our rogue government is free to starve and bomb Yemeni kids to ensure more legs and arms being sawed off by billionaire Saudi psychopaths. Half the country erroneously split on issues of gun violence, abortion, black and blue lives matter, Facebook® censorship, taxes, white nationalism, racism, sexism, legalized pot, fossil fuels, big trucks, electric cars, mask wearing, wiping our asses with masks… Just pick your tribe and follow. Textbook social psychology for the macrocosm. Wear your team t-shirt, “Black is the New Black”, or “I Made a Liberal Cry Today”. Yet when it’s time to chip in for monthly foreign bombings, we’re all in this together as one nation, under smog, indivisible, with craft beer and war crimes for all.
The poetry of vicariously violent imbeciles.
See? The March lion roars.
I did not feel my life threatened today. Very good, for me. And for people who look and live like me—the shades of middle class who can afford potato chips and furnace repair on the same day. Unfortunately, boredom tempts the fortunate to search for problems that don’t exist within their safety sphere. Right winger Fred delivers pizzas to supplement his Ford 350® pick up truck habit, and hates the illegals for making him do it. Liberal Rita is feeling the COVID pinch and can barely afford to tip 15% at brunch these days. She could strangle all those Trumpers for hating illegals. And George Floyd, whether it was a new pick up truck or brunch identifying his day, woke up late last May and got his neck pressed until he was dead. He suffered. Lots of people suffer this way every day in wedge issue America. Thousands of people die, or fear death prematurely, because they don’t have access to health care, equal education and equal safety. The only domestic issue there has ever been is equality for all, and it never shows up in the polls. We play newspaper politics, and let the bad guys and the New York Times® distribute the pie. The “qualified” people, lawyers and ex-CIA on TV, get to arrange society for us. We pick our pie and talk, talk, talk like mad to divide it up unequally. Some march for this, others rally for that, but no talker releases his total power hold to give to those who have less.
I see the enemy. It’s persistence has made the U.S. middle class the weakest citizens on earth. A superpower that can’t even feed and house its people is pathetic. But we must admit that it has total control over us now. It has broken our evolution. We are timid and helpless. Any “boo” will frighten us. Those who can afford rent and car payments lock their minds into the fear they’ll lose the rent and car payment if they dare make a stir. We pretend alongside the enemy, that we live in a rational and fair constitutional republic. We don’t. We take what we can get and bow our heads to power. When a kid shoots and kills his friends in high school, some of us get out in the streets and protest. It feels good. We’re proud we did our part. We stop for coffee at a local roaster. The next day and every day, a black kid gets shot for walking to the store for ice cream.
Who do we hold accountable?
Never ourselves. It’s the GOP or the NRA or the lazy Congressperson. Sometimes it really is these things, but no times do we bring abusive power to its knees, as we should. That would be unseemly at a time when it’s the other guy who’s unhinged, not me. Meanwhile, while receiving everything necessary (and keeping the lot to ourselves), the middle class can’t even achieve Medicare for All which would prevent the premature death of 45,000 Americans each year. Yes, that means a whole lotta poor people die at the hands of the “woke” population pretending to give a damn. I’ve talked with woke middle classers who actually think Medicare for All is a bad idea. Oops, there goes another poor baby. Was she from the city or rural Kentucky? It matters because sometimes poor kids live to be 18, and we simply can’t afford another vote for Hilbush Clintrumpden.
So who is the enemy?
I say 100 oligarchs, 50 CEOs and boards of directors, the U.S. Constitution, propaganda and the Pentagon. Prove me wrong, please, and I’ll buy you an ice cream. A yummy pint is always safe to obtain where I live in the middle class.
A couple more paintings from this week in addition to the frustrated possum:
I want to end this rancorous week with a poet who painted. He lived at a time when “man” was the plural of women and men. Let’s just substitute “human” for “man”, and “its” for the possessive adjective “his”. Then call for April to hurry up and haul ass.
Thank you for sticking with me.
Daffodils just around the corner!
Good one. March madness. Love two free dogs in the park! Most dogs spend their days on a leash walking the sidewalk like the human they aren’t.