Wake me up when it's over

What is Woke?

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination".

So this must mean they aren't alert to Racial Prejudice and Discrimination?

I beleive that is is far deeper than that. 

I was recently asked by a Republican friend (he gave me a Trump hat to add to my Trump Bear collection), If I knew the meaning of Woke.

At first I was going to give him a long drawn out answer       (which I will here in a moment), but instead countered with, 'what do you think it means'?

At the time of this writing, he still hasn't responded.

Which nicely sums up the reason for this article.

Let me digress a little to help explain what I think WOKE means, and I think you are going to be shocked by my answer

As a child of the 60's I remember watching on TV the Selma bloody Sunday and Dr. Martin Luther King and Detroit riots and asking my parents why are the black people so mad?

(being a white child in a small white town in the middle of Michigan I didnt know or see any African Americans on a regular basis)

I remember my mother saying: 

"its because they havent been treated very well in history and they are tired of being pushed around...I guess"

She was a kind of stepford wife now that I look back on it, so that answer makes perfect sense.

But how did she learn that? CRT maybe?

NO. we didnt have that nonsense back then. She knew that from living in the depression era and stories from her parents and grandparents about slavery, as well as history books.

And that is where my explanation begins:

We have the anit-woke movement because we dont have an enemy to fight anymore so now the Republicans are looking inwards for a fight. They are the classic schoolyard bully.

I remember the Cuban Missle crisis.., our enemy was The Soviet Union and Communism..specifically Nikita Kruscehv and Fidel Castro.

It was simple for all of us R and D to join hands around the flag and work to defeat communism!

Just in my childhood alone, both Kennedy's and Dr. King were assinated on prime time TV!

Every night we saw bombs dropping on villages in Vietnam and protestors outside of the capital protesting everything from the war to racism!

We were a country in flux, but we could always find an enemy to agree on... THE SOVIET UNION and the NUCLEAR threat!

Now to anyone under 50, this is just silly talk...but I clearly remember sitting under my desk in case the air raid sirens went off!

We had the Moon race and Nixon.

True corruption reared it ugly head at the turn of the decade with the Nixon tapes and his resignation which brought in a new era of  Peace.

People often wonder how Obama became President after a war monger like Bush.

Easy, We did the same thing with Carter in the 70's. 

We were tired of war and corruption and wanted a gentler kinder man and that was who we got.

But we still had enemies to collalesce around. 

The Iranian kidnapping and later release under Reagan. 

 

We still had the Soviet Union, a perrennial favorite of boogeyman to threaten everyone with.

When Reagan visited Berlin in 1987 and told Gorbachev to 'Tear down this wall', it wasnt about Drag Queens or getting rid of affirmative action. It was about freedom and choice!  

A Republican shouting to the world about freedom and choice. Hard to imagine that today isnt it?

Then Iran/Contra started moving us into left/right camps. We saw the corruption again on a grander scale, while internal policies shifted to the wealthy and the war on poverty started to become the war on poor people.

With the collapse of the Berlin wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, we no longer feared our boogeyman and started looking closer to home to find one.

At that time we had AIDS and of course the Gay Community became the next victim of anti-Woke mentality.

It wasnt until the bombing of the World trade Center in 2001 that we finally had another Boogeyman to focus ourselves on and what better man to lead us into the wrong battle with the wrong people than George W. Bush...

(the first  Republican President elected by the minority of the voters)

First it was the Iranians under Reagan and now the Iraqi's under Bush. ( I'll let historians and phycholigists figure that out)

But, we had a new Boogeyman! 

We were happy to not worry about teaching children about the Civil War and Bigorty and racism. We didnt really care about the GAYS.. because we had a handle on AIDS finally, and none of the Brown people at the border were a concern because we could kill them nightly on TV with jets and tanks!

We could watch our mighty war machine bomb the crap out of people we didnt like with reckless abandon in HD!

But then came Obama and his progressive wishy washy 

lets not have wars philoshphy and help poor and

 old people with affordable health care 

and that left millions of haters with no one left to hate.

Since nature abhores a vaccum who better to fill that role than a a carpetbagger from NYC selling a bag full of hate seeds for the right price and BANG!

Now we get the war on WOKE...

You mean the war on my history? 

The life I fully remember living since childhood?

The history you dont want to be taught to our children, the history that was taught to you? 

Only so you can win an Election?

I think if you need to find the cancel culture you need only look into the mirror!

You are trying to cancel my lifetime of memories!!!

Yes I'm WOKE, I'm WOKE as Fuck, because I lived through it.

I marvel how Republicans like to throw 'we freed the slaves' back at Democrats when discussing racism..

well, like my dear old dad used to say:

 "What have you done for me lately"? 

Anyone under 50 doesnt remember history, so they want to try and recreate it for their own personal convenience.

Well, I think I found out who the next boogeyman is...

Make America Great Again?

You mean like this? 

NO Thanks. 

Just one more thing......

 

This will be my final installment of the Puzzle Palace... Enjoy!

Is it just me, or does it seem fitting that Trumps final act as possibly the worst Human ever elected President came down to the Supreme Court telling him to take a flying leap?

TWICE!

The Trump Apprentice White House Clown car will be leaving the White House for the Final time on Jan 20th and frankly it couldn't come any sooner for me.

I have lost friends and family over the last 4 years over this Idiot in Chief, luckily not to COVID-19 but due to a lack of understanding on their part about what the Presidency means and American Civics in General.

His rise to power brought a lot of newbies to politics and that is where the trouble begins.

The unwashed masses of people that voted for him because he hates the same people they do, also unleashed a fear and pent up resentment to the Elite....(of which he is a part of, lest we forget he is a billionaire Capitalist that graduated from Wharton).

He then was able to paint liberals and middle of the road Democrats with that broad brush and his followers ate it up like Crystal meth to a hooker in Oklahoma City!

And since him and they are new to the game, he tried to change all of the rules, bend them, break them, run roughshod over them. He took what was already a fragile, yet still somewhat polite society and turned it in on itself, for his personal gain and greed. Truly a power hungry Cyclops and Bully with a capital B, that used his influence to gain power for powers sake.

And when the 'elite' tried to question his motives, he insulted, ignored, screamed and mocked them at every turn. Like PT Barnum, he kept the center stage, turning Twitter into a MAGA-phone (see what I did there) never seen before.

His followers couldn't get enough! It was the 24 hour Trump show....He hates them and I hate them, so lets just start wearing our hate on our sleeves. We dont have to hide under a white sheet or on a 40 acre farm in the mountains anymore..

We can carry our rifles and drive our Trump Flag adorned  4x4's right down mainstreet and be loud and obnoxious just like him and its okay.... He gets us and we will make sure he stays in power. regardless of how he acts or speaks. Or ultimately, how many true Republicans split the ticket and voted for Joe just to get his slick Willie ass out of the Oval Office.

Other than a big tax cut and undoing everything the black guy created....(Obama). his accomplishments are mainly centered around his being in the spotlight and news cycle 24 hours a day.

He uses a firehose of noise, confusion and outright bold face lies to inflame and embolden his critics and followers alike. If he couldn't live in the moment, he burned it down for the amusement of himself and his audience..

This is what I mean about Civics... Did you know that someone that migrated to America has to take a 20 question test made up of 128 questions in order to become a citizen of our country?

Here is the link. I bet most of you would fail it. Democrat or Republican alike.

Civics test for citizenship

We need to get back to what made us great in the first place. It wasn't the 2nd amendment, hell I dont think it was even the 1st amendment. It is a combination of our rights and civil liberties and our compassion and understanding. 

We have always had rich and poor in this country.  we have always had 'elite' and poorly educated. BUT...

We never fought amongst ourselves over who we voted for in the last election. We were always able to meet at the 80% we agreed upon, not be divided by the 20% we didnt. 

Trump has turned it into a negative gain sport,  where its a daily bloodletting of US vs. THEM. Its Comb-over Caligula and Fox News against good people that dont pay close attention. 

So am I glad that Trump and his minions used every dirty trick in the book to try and steal the election from the very people he said were trying to steal it?? 

ABSOLUTELY!  Forcing his nonsensical arguments and his factless noise pollution to the forefront of our collective consciousness only to be dismissed by every court in the land was the moment we needed to begin the healing process.  In most cases the Judges admonished the lawyers for even attempting to bring such garbage before them... and several of the Judges were Trump Appointees!

The only way for us to have closure, and it will take time, is for him to take his high wire act and fall without a net.

You bet, its comforting to see this part of our history come to such a gruesome and convoluted death. To see him and his swamp creature cronies writhe and die under the harsh light of Democracy.... 40 courts including the Supreme Court twice rejected out of hand the lunacy and lying that they were handed by his lawyers in an attempt to bamboozle the Courts into accepting his far fetched plan to remain in power.

He thought he could stack the courts in his favor so they would do his bidding. And in the end it was his undoing, he was served a BIG JUICY BURGER OF DEMOCRACY ON A SESAME SEED CONSTITUTION BUN!

That alone proved to me that America still has guardrails and adults are still able to keep the trains running on time and the will of the people kept sacrosanct. 

You want to know how we stole the election?

WE HAD MORE VOTES! Just like every other election ever held in this country. Not by running and crying to every court in the land that it must be some giant conspiracy... Dont forget, that would involve 1000's of God fearing, Good old fashioned Americans...like your neighbors and friends....Can you believe for one second that many people could keep a secret?

To quote Sherlock Holmes: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Or the bouncer at my old nightclub:

You dont have to go home...but you cant stay here..

NANANANA, NANANANA, HEY HEY HEY...GOODBYE!!!!!

Yes, we have no bananas....

Random thought of the day...I have been voting since 1974. While stationed overseas I have voted by absentee ballot more than once.

Until a few years ago, I'm not sure I ever gave it a 2nd thought...as I am sure most of you would relate to.

But now, its being touted as rife with controversy.... prone to hacking and illegality.

But yet, its a proven resource used by the very people now doubting its veracity.

Sounds fishy to me.....why now?

Gore didnt worry about it and he lost an election because of a bad machine! And he quietly accepted his fate. for the good of the country and all of us. ( History has determined that was a mistake of epic proportions)

Mccain lost to Obama and never questioned the process.....

Now a guy that cheated Veterans out of money for a phony university scam, and had to repay money to his own charity that he used as a personal piggy bank, is questioning the honesty and legitimacy of the process... HONESTY, LEGITIMACY?

Re-read that last statement. What the hell does he know about honesty? He is talking about not vacating the White House if he loses......and now his AG and most of the REPUBLICAN leaders are setting up the scenario as a real possibility....

That should scare the hell out of all of you.

Republican or Democrat.

We have principles that were established over 200 years ago.

The peaceful transition of the Presidency is the bedrock or our system and the envy of the modern Democratic world!

Without it we really do have anarchy.....let that sink in.....

We will have become a Banana Republic, without the Bananas...😔

Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to love the bomb....

George Carlin once said, My stuffs stuff, your stuffs shit...keep your shit away from my Stuff!

That pretty well sums up how most Americans feel about us vs. the rest of the world.

Or as others have put it...'our shit dont stink'.

As a natural born citizen and honorably discharged veteran, I find it disturbing when people that I know and associate with,  suddenly become these Flag Waving zealots everytime we fire off a couple of cruise missiles and kill bad guys.

I'm not saying they dont deserve it, most of them have gotten away with planning attacks and killing Americans and allies alike unabated. I'm all for taking them off the battlefield. Good riddance I say.

But, if  I push you, and you punch me and then I shoot you....which one of us is really the bad guy now?

That is pretty much how I sum up the problems in the middle east. 

Have you ever noticed how we tiptoe around China and Russia, but yet we bomb everyone else with reckless abandon all  in the name of being right or retaliation for being bombed by them?

Let's get one thing straight. It's never been about getting even..if that was the case, Bush Jr. would have invaded Saudi Arabia! They bombed the twin towers not Iraq...But everyone hated Saddam Hussein and was looking for a way to get him off the world stage....

I'm not suggesting he was a nice guy and didn't deserve his fate, but all we did was take out someone that was able to keep peace between 2 historical enemies, the Sunni and the Kurds. Once we blew that up...LITERALLY, then without that moderating force, we (as in BUSH), strengthened the splinter reform groups that lurked inside of IRAQ that he was able to quash with his hard handed control.....

ISIL originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and participated in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Western forces at the behest of the United States

Syria is another quagmire we never had any real reason to be involved in...and IRAN....well our history with them starts with us throwing out a (wait for it), a democratically elected President and installing the Shah of Iran! 

WHY?  for the OIL silly, thats why!

Thats right boys and girls, we are the terrorists in Iran...so once they had enough of his corruption and Mass killing of his people, they overthrew him and installed a cleric and became a religiously ran country and took over the embassy and held hostages until we elected a new President and they were released.  Don't believe me? Click on the link below.

The CIA and the Shah of IRAN

So, lets recap shall we....we created the Islamic Regime of Iran, we helped create ISIS, we are still aiding and abetting Israel to keep killing the Palestinians....(thats another history lesson for another day)...and yet every time we blow something up, we all grab our Flags and cheer while we continue to kill 'our' enemies!

No wonder we need a bigger military than anyone else in the world...it seems to be our very nature to just piss everyone off and then when they decide they have had enough, we send over a few more bombs.....

Its not about who is the President...its about who we are as a people. And it seems to me we just arent very nice people anymore ....sigh 

The Man in the High Tower..the consequences of living in an Alternate Reality

In this issue of the Puzzle Palace I want to discuss something bizarre and highly unlikely.....NO, its not the Trump administration, however bizarre and unlikely that already is!

I want to discuss an alternative reality, a divergence from our original timeline..when it happened and how things are going there!

It all started the evening of December 11, 2000. The night before the Bush V Gore decision. There was a GEMINID Meteor Shower and a full Moon at the same time! Don't believe me? Check out the link!

NASA Geminid Meteor Shower December 11, 2000

Full Moon in Gemini on Dec 11th 2000

 My theory is as we passed through this, a shift happened in the space/time continuum  and for a split second 2 Earths were created. On the following morning the Earth all of us reading this live on was pushed into a new and disturbing timeline...and we all know what happened and continues to happen.

BUT, in the uninterrupted Earth timeline, the following morning Dec 12, 2000 the Supreme Court ruled in Favor of Gore...(as it rightly should have) and President Al Gore was sworn in on January 21st 2001.

In that timeline the 9-11 bombers were apprehended by the FBI and the Twin Towers are still standing today.

We never went to war with Iraq.....Saddam Hussein was eventually overthrown by his own people and became a Democratic Republic and a member of NATO.

After 8 years of peace and prosperity under a Gore Administration, President Hillary Clinton was elected (the Republicans still offered John Mccain and Sarah Palin...some thing never change) as our 1st female President and after a less than spectacular but quiet 4 years reign,  our current President Barack Obama(serving his 2nd term)  has managed to continue the unparalleled 19 years of peace and prosperity with a balanced budget and low 4 trillion dollar deficit.

The Stock market is over 35000 and un-employment is steady at 2.3 %. Since we never had the Supreme Court stacked with Republican cronies, the 2008 District of Columbia v Heller ruling was not struck down, (keeping the current 138 year old definition of a Militia) and the Assault Weapons ban was renewed and made permanent. Except for Columbine, (which happened in 1999) there has never been a mass shooting on the scale that we see almost weekly on our 'alternate Earth'.

They have reduced greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions to the point where the ice shelves are not melting and the sea level rise seems to be abated......

So if you have stayed with me on this journey and think this is all a fairy tale and preposterous....

Do I need to remind you who the President is today?

A Reality TV/Porn star screwing adulterer that is at best shady in his business dealings and at worst, a lying,  cheating tax evader using his new found power in the most corrosive and corrupted manner ever.

Maybe I have it all wrong, maybe he actually went back in time in a Delorean with a sports history magazine instead...thats just as likely and would've ended up with the same result....

You tell me... which is more plausible?

Hey you damn kids, GET OFF OF MY LAWN!

I heard an interesting theory the other day about why countries like China and Japan have better infrastructure like high speed rail and highways then we do....it was a real 'DUH' moment for me. 

(and it has nothing to do with a trade deficit) 

Since the early 1990's we have spent upwards of 7-8 TRILLION dollars on a perpetual state of war. To protect us from people without an Air Force or only a small regional off shore Navy by developing weapons we don't use and deploying troops overseas and building massive bases.

While they have been able to use their income to build-out their infrastructure and keep from having a deficit by not needing to maintain a war footing. They are actually causing us to go bankrupt and haven't fire a single shot.

Basically, alot of countries in the world think WE are the terrorists, and frankly I tend to agree. Somehow we think by PROJECTING power it makes us safe, when in reality we have never been invaded in modern times.

We have an ally to the North and South of us and some of the longest shoreline of any country on the planet to the East and West.

We meddle, threaten and invade other countries in an effort to PROTECT ourselves......think about this for a minute, if you never see your neighbor, and he only waves at you when you do, are you afraid of him?

Now, make him the neighbor that is constantly standing in your yard screaming at you or driving around your house all the time blowing his horn...now that guy I would quickly dislike and probably lash out against.

We are THAT guy.....I'm tired of being the UGLY American. You want clean air and better roads and better schools? Stop buying Planes and Submarines and Nuclear weapons for a while. Stop looking for the next Boogeyman to invade. 

I mean, these state of the art weapons are supposed to have a 50 year life cycle....like the B52 in the photo above!  Built in the 1950's and still rocking hard!

(what ever happened to walk SOFTLY and carry a big stick)

We are the worlds bully....Lets get off of the rest of the worlds lawn and let their grass grow for awhile....and fix the potholes, that would make me feel alot safer!

The curious case of the Republicans and the Gun

First off, I think thats a really cool looking gun..!

I mean, I get why some people are so infatuated with them.. They are powerful and threatening and convey a sense of protection and security in a world fraught with unknown boogeymen wearing black face masks and driving around in Toyota pickup trucks.

But is that really a problem in the USA? I would say NO!

It would seem the terrorist threat we face today are white men with guns killing school children and church goers..

Do they drive Toyota pickup trucks and wear Black clothing...Not that I can tell, but I haven't seen all of the evidence.

But, thats not the point of my Blog today. 

I'm not going to discuss the merits of Gun Control and whether or not its needed.......

I'm here to educate the 2nd amendment diehards that constantly post MEME's on FaceBook and Twitter about how the Democrats are going to take your guns away and force us to live in some fear based reality where we might need to overthrow a tyrannical government or some other such nonsense.

Let me help you overcome your anxiety....apparently the Right are the only ones that use guns..they are convinced that every Democrat wants to get rid of them..I guess a Democrat has never owned or used a gun as far as the MEME's I have seen suggest.

Here is my best argument for why you need to stop losing sleep over this issue.

A: There are over 400 million weapons of all types in private hands in the US...

B: If you understood the way Law making works in this country, with a Republican controlled Senate and White House  its never going to happen.  And if for some strange bizzaro world reason it ever did...Mr. Trump has been able to stack the Supreme Court with NRA purchased Justices....

C: Have you ever stopped to think that maybe these MEME's are being created by a 3rd party outside of the US that is trying to force division and anarchy in our country?

D; By posting them and then asking them to be shared by other like minded thinkers, you are only perpetuating the myth and hate against others that probably share alot of your feelings. Remember, with 400 million guns, there has to be at least a few Democrats in that group.

So instead of continuing to fret about this impossibility, Take your AR15/Colt45/Smith and Wesson 38 special and blow the shit out of some black pajama wearing targets sitting in Toyota Pickup trucks and relax.

Guns dont Kill people so you need to use them for something....

RIGHT?