It's difficult to keep up with the rapid pace of events, even just following them in the news, let alone trying to comment on them. I never got into instant messaging in its heyday nor with twitter these days or facebook. While I enjoy communicating in writing, just spewing forth raw thoughts, reactions, emotions to me is just noisy blather. I always tried to be thoughtful and use reasoned, fact-based analysis. But thinking takes time. It's my guess that those in decision-making positions don't like that.

Elected officials, I suspect, don't really want an informed citizenry. Informed citizens might end up being a lynch mob. Such is the case with Czar Obama's claim about how his administration's actions are leading to recovery. With massive unemployment, massive deficits, large drops in real income even for those who still work for wages, things are obviously worse, not better. And with his creation of a "Wall Street approved" advisory panel to take the blame for the coming further lowering of our living standards, Obama can say "See, it's not my fault; this bi-partisan committee says you need to eat more dirt." I'm reminded of the (to me) greatest sentence ever written, by poet e.e. cummings: "There is some shit I will not eat."

I'm also reminded of a Bob Dylan song (Masters of War ?) which he wrote, as I recall during the Cuban Missile Crisis thinking that he, and we, might not be alive much longer so he wrote a song that was comprised of all the questions he wanted answered, or to write a song about, and put all of it, everything, in it, just in case. Well, something like that. And that makes me feel that my "simple questions" blog should perhaps just state questions without figuring out the answers. Just in case.

Do those who work in National Security, cops and spies and spooks, harbor a secret desire to be in, or to have been in, the Gestapo, with those flashy uniforms? See today's (02/18/10) TomDispatch for William Astore's words on US military obsession with the Wehrmacht.

Are those in power in DC and Wall Street really dumb enough to think that they can get away with all this? Will they be able to kill or lock up enough of us for them to survive and rule?

Are those in power working on some secret plans to kill off the "subhuman" excess (like you and me) so their continued rule will be more manageable?

What will those still with jobs and homes to lose do when eventually the sick are turned away from hospital emergency rooms to die on park benches?

Can "journalists" keep up their work for the propaganda ministry when massive protests and violent clashes occur in cities throughout the country?

Will Americans ever awake from their addiction to fantasy, such as believing that we live in a democracy or that our military is furthering our safety through "humanitarian" interventions?

Why are the same people who gave us our current wars still influencing policy and why do they want to bomb Iran? Haven't they killed enough Muslims already and made enough enemies to last America till the next millennium?

Will the 8.4 million recently unemployed soon be characterized as their predecessors often are, as lazy, drug-addicted and shiftless?

What does it feel like to become a member of the lower class, those "others" you had always felt sorry for or looked down upon?

Will working class Americans ever wake up to the reality that they are, in fact, a community, and not just individuals?

Will Americans ever discover Marx's maxim that "freedom begins where necessity ends?"