Objectivist Free Will Nightmare

Objectivist Free Will Nightmare

Last night I dreamed

Rand Paul walked up to me

as I sat working at my desk,

in his suit and wide red tie,

curly hair oiled

like a delicate machine.

He tipped up my chin, grasped it firmly

and planted a kiss on my lips

while I froze.

"My god," I whispered,

"I've kissed a libertarian."

and sunk my face in my palms.

A wave of shame consumed me,

as I sat deregulated,

more broken than an oil spill;

Mr. Paul smiled a small

controlled happy smile,

and walked on to the next desk.

~ January 2015

Yes, I really dreamed this. Not much of a poem, but it cracked me up, so thought I'd share.


Edit: Forgot to add for those not into U.S. politics, that Rand Paul is a republican-libertarian Senator from Kentucky, and  son of Ron Paul, de facto founder of the Libertarian Party.

Flashback~No One Remembers Anything Least of All This

Flashback

No One Remembers Anything Least of All This

Do we find the cost of freedom
buried in the ground?
~Stephen Stills



It doesn't matter how high

the white dove flies.
The downplummet fall
is determined by
gunpowder and blood.

Where war meets money
there are only
unequal equations
and the black
hole sucksounds
of mouths
without wings.

~September 2013

Friday Flash 55 ~ Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance:

noun, Psychology.
anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs...~dictionary.com

I don't know how many other people were bored or desperate enough to watch the Republican Debate last night, but the words above are the only ones that come to mind to describe the proposals I was hearing. I've taken an excerpt from the debate transcript and highlighted my 55 words--stranger than any fiction, and I include the others so they make sense--I hope you know I have edited them like crazy to get two simple statements from a politician in only 55 words. Anyway, the two statements offered illustrate the term above, in my opinion, about as perfectly as possible. 

Note: No offense to any sane people who may hold different views than my own is intended.

The words in bold are my 55.

Posted for  Friday Flash 55  at the G-Man's

Taken directly from the transcript of the Republican Debate at the Reagan Library, September 8, 2011

MODERATOR: Governor Perry, you clearly don't like the Massachusetts [health care]plan as an example for other states, but Massachusetts has nearly universal health insurance. It's first in the country. In Texas, about a quarter of the people don't have health insurance. That's 50 out of 50, dead last. Sir, it's pretty hard to defend dead last

PERRY: Well, I'll tell you what the people in the state of Texas don't want: They don't want a health care plan like what Governor Romney put in place in Massachusetts...What they would like to see is the federal government get out of their business.....My wife is a nurse. And I'll promise you, we understand that if we can get the federal government out of our business in the states when it comes to health care, we'll come up with ways to deliver more health care to more people cheaper...

LATER...

MODERATOR:Governor, I'd like to ask you, border state governor, what specifically, in your mind, would make the border secure?

PERRY:  Well, the first thing you need to do is have boots on the ground. We've had a request in to this administration ..since June -- or January of 2009 for 1,000 border patrol agents..or National Guard troops, and working towards 3,000 border patrol. That's just on the Texas border.

There's another 50 percent more for the entire Mexican border. So you can secure the border, but it requires a commitment of the federal government of putting those boots on the ground, the aviation assets in the air. We think predator drones could be flown, that real-time information coming down to the local and the state and the federal law enforcement. And you can secure the border.

As Governor of Texas, Rick Perry has:

• Said Texas should have the right to secede from the Union if the federal government became "too intrusive." 
• Accepted or requested, like most governors, federal funds to the tune of one third of his state budget
• Accepted or requested additional funds under the decried 2009 stimulus bill of $12 billion dollars.
• Proposed $34 million in cuts in his state budget for wildfire fighting this year while decrying not receiving enough federal disaster aid for recent wildfires there, despite 25 FEMA disaster grants.
• I could go on, but my head hurts.

Are we getting the theme song here? Same as the one from the Tea Party town hall debates on health care: "Get your Socialist Government Hands off my Medicare!" We want the federal government OUT OF OUR BIDNESS except when we want them to take care of our bidness.

Okay, off my soap box, and sorry to inject the ugly subject of politics into the friday funfest, but honestly, i just didn't have anything else tonight.

NOTE: All of the information I've stated here obtained through google, keyword 'rick perry'.

On the Lam/Rant

On the Lam

The math police have found my poems

and tell me they do not add up.

Something is missing O not meaning,

we don’t read for meaning, just for obedience,

for the drumming of integers, 

the solid thumping of cadential boots

the singsong buzz of stinging stresses strung just so.

Unsequential imperfect necklaces must be 

snapped and broken

and the  beads of lapis words

that drop crushed underfoot.

I slink to my hidden den of vines,

wild witch dodging the hobnails

aimed at my pagan bastard's

face. All my life I've run 

from the dominion of zealotry.

There's only death for such as us
in the mind that closes around what it knows

and sees nothing else.

Here in words, there in ideas.

And what do I care if my iambs are lost lambs?

I hang my lines, my life, to fly a banner

not build your pillars of fault.

What matters is that the words stick

like a hooked seed in the fur

of  thought, barb themselves in

till they release in comprehension

shake loose, or rot.

The words are eggs not clockwork birds,

sitting on a mental wire in a robotic row. 

However scrambled, they invite a broodiness.

So I dip my finger in sour yogurt

and write graffiti on a white wall

where only the flies 
and the one who comes to clean

get close enough to see.

I come and go to whisper and sigh,

laugh not replicate. I've run from the shapers

since the day I dropped from my mother's womb, 

and it's my pure pleasure now

to flip them off, along with their droning coercion

to give, give, give

the asked for thing

the wanted word, demand for justification

and my own invalidation in a

graceful surrender, useless denial,

automatic agreement

and/or respectful silence.

I’m old and

done with that.

I'm on the lam, baby. 

And I've got 

one more silver dollar.

April 2011

Image courtesy Scientific American