“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Friedrich Nietzsche
I don’t how many times I’ve written I am going to stop with these weekly stories. I felt it especially hard after my last piece on the insanity going by the name of Gaza. Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck I am expecting from sharing these stories. My buddy was in this afternoon to drop off the last batch of printed ones for my looseleaf notebook, bringing the count up to 451.
Clearly, I have some underlying need to keep on doing this thing. Maybe, it is a way of not feeling alone, like some word astronaut, adrift in the cosmos of consciousness. The page has become my companion and we seem to be stuck with each other. I am talking about my singularity, our singularity, our fragility. After all, it is what we all share and what I attempt to share in my writing.
451 times before this, there was at least one thing that inked my pen and got me going, no matter how despondent I’ve been, wallowing in my transitory shallowness. Whatever that thing happens to be, it manages to unlock a plethora of blabbering.
This morning, I woke up to a picture of a gargantuan cruise ship staring right into the face of the Napali Coast, looking eerily like a science fiction, Godzilla moment. It struck me as obscene, a defilement of nature’s magnificence, like a deranged, peeping Tom, looking through the window at a naked woman.
In the midst of this true upset, I read that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims to have had a worm discovered in his brain a number of years ago. To me, this mother fucker is defiling the Kennedy name, which meant the world to me as a young college freshman, having my midterm cancelled, because his uncle had been assassinated. As a young man, still cloaked in idealism, he was how I imagined a President should look and speak. Christ, he even lived in Camelot! The dream died hard and here we are, living the nightmare.
One way or another, these two seemingly disparate occurrences were the makings of my next story and that’s how it has been working for me all these years. We are all living in a global nuthouse, more fucked up than I can ever recall, during my extended stay on this spherical asylum called earth, unless someone decides to change its name, like making Pluto an un-planet.
Donald Trump was president of the United States of America, from 2016-2020. I spent over forty years in NYC and this motherfucker was a clown, I kid you not. He grew up as an entitled, little pecker in a neighborhood not far from my own. He lived in Jamaica Estates, on the other side of Union Turnpike, where I lived at the same time. He was a fucken buffoon, who loved the limelight. It never looked good on him, because he tried too hard and there was nobody home.
Today, this soulless pimp is adored by millions. I think it is a reflection of how angry so many of us are, convinced we are being screwed by the rich and powerful, in and out of government. His ardent supporters are no crazier than the Germans, crushed by World War I, feeling victimized and powerless, hungry to strike back, a bomb with a short fuse, easily enslaved by a hyper-manipulative, match holder, Mein Trumpf.
In the steps of his predecessor, his orange-skinned off spring is playing it like a Stradivarius. To me, he is an idiot-savant. He is doing what he has always done back in NYC. Circumstances have changed and half the audience are now life-long followers, leaving the other half apoplectic.
He was never one to care about the rules or the law, because he is Donald Trump. There are four trials underway. In my mind he is guilty of inciting the insurrection on January 6th, disregarding the handling of Top Secret docs, absolutely trying to overrule GA. election results and hiding payments to professionally promiscuous ladies. His minions, who carry the torch of morality are blind to its light. Add Clarence Thomas’ continued presence on the Supreme Court and any semblance of ethics is gone, burned by that torch. Growing up, we naively thought the Rule of Law was sacred, keeping barbarism at bay.
Tragically, Trump is only the pimple on the festering boil of crazy. A woman’s right to full sovereignty over her body is also falling victim to that torch. A couple of hundred years ago, those same rich, white guys in their powdered wigs didn’t believe all men were equal, while women’s “rights” were relegated to the kitchen and bedroom.
Speaking of history, we don’t have to go back any further than 50 years to our college campuses to see nothing has changed. Back then, an unjust war and human rights brought young people together, flexing their muscles like never before. Then, we had to slaughter the Vietnamese to protect America. Today, we are empowering Israel to brutalize the Palestinians, screwed from the moment a piece of their ancestral land was declared a State for Jews. Just like then, campuses are portrayed as violent and it is only the reaction to them that is such.
Let’s go global for just a second. Nearly 80% of top climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5C by 2100. Around 5% thought we would limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, which is supposed to be our fail safe point of no return. Within the past week, Our Trumpf asked oil industry execs to donate a billion dollars to his campaign and he’d gut all climate regulations. Now, that’s not crazy, is it?
A recent study indicated that biodiversity loss, the introduction of invasive species, the aforementioned climate emergency and chemical pollution all increase the risk of infectious disease. Yeah, but how about the rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Man, that is really something!
An assassin on a motorcycle recently shot and killed Um Fahad, a well-known Iraqi TikTok personality, presumably for “wearing tight or revealing clothing, or singing and cuddling her young son,” according to the New York Times. What the hell was she thinking?
Believe it or not, I am not picking on Donald Trump per say. Sadly, he is merely the canary in the coal mine, already a metaphorical corpse, because of the poison in the air, the timeless atmosphere we created millennia ago. We refuse to learn, to step outside ourselves and see the human landscape we have painted, canvas after canvas. I am ignoring Biden, who is a whole other kind of embarrassment, just an old Washington marble statue, absent any sign of life.
Those of you bearing witness to the craziness, are not crazy. On May 7, 1824, two hundred years ago in Vienna, an already deaf Beethoven introduced Ode To Joy. I will never, ever lose hope, in spite of how we seem to be hellbent on destroying what God has gifted us. Remember, the world of tomorrow belongs to young people, who have had ample opportunity to witness our missteps. They just may be the difference the world needs.
Whenever you happen to read this, take a minute, take a breath. Be Beethoven, deaf to the craziness that surrounds you. Listen to the sound of your heart and touch the joy. You are not crazy. The Napali Coast is forever sacred and worms don’t eat brains.