mine is bigger than yours

my response to a facebook post lamenting the loss of unions and, like a million

other posts, calling the United States "the greatest nation on earth":

i am all for unions and hope we can recover them, and save the ones that have survived the capitalist onslaught.  but when i look at this post i think about people like Donald Trump, who believe in this 'greatest' notion (themselves, their nation, their baseball team, their sex, their shade of skin).  it oozes out of the endless stream of propaganda flicks Hollywood has been churning out all these years.  it's pandered to by virtually every politician in every political speech. it feeds the lust for bloodshed and the contempt for the Democracy of people living in other nations (and all the other others there are).  but then there are some of us who think we're just people, like everybody else.  a distinguishing characteristic of being human is frailty, making mistakes so you can actually learn things.  it's in our shared vulnerability that our compassion finds its bearings.  so no, i don't agree that we are the greatest nation on earth.  never have been. evidence tells quite a different story.  persons of color and native americans could hardly call it 'the greatest' without betraying the memory of their friends and family, without denying their own exclusion.  but this is also true of pale-skinned people who recognise their membership in the family of humans, who accept no artificial boundaries within the single human race.  so let's have a go at being a nation of, for, and by human beings.  our brothers and sisters, our fellow passengers on the "greatest planet in the universe" will surely teach us things we never dreamed of.

- Evan Hawthorn,  the 23^rd of September, 2015

a brief excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

Promethean pilgrims crossed the frozen expanse

traversing time from their fiery birth,

ferrying sparks of elemental essence

to the evanescent residents of earth.

and the harpy scowled and brandished her fist

irked at these heavens and their meddlesome rains

for making short work of banishing enchantments,

dispelling the mist she'd swelled with such pains.

she pressed the edge of a crumbling tombstone

and vanished beneath the cemetery grounds,

slinking down a subterranean passage

that echoed with crunches and gurgling sounds.

the snooping rat waited with the royal raiments

in the blaze of a torch that scorched the stone.

he smirked as she donned her crinkled crinolines,

tickled by the gilding of a wrinkled crone.

pausing on the threshold of a caved-in temple

she tossed a bone to a pale, hulking brute,

ensconced in the stench of previous suppers

stiffening in piles, rotting with their loot.

his lopsided face seemed to come unhinged

as he strived for a wink with his single, crazed eye.

wrenching her foot from a trail of slime, she said

"try and be more tidy, this place is a sty."

his muttered response had a whiny, cringing tone,

too shrill and unnerving to closely heed.

in any case Her Grace hastened away,

unable to process another creature's need.

while the snitch raced after his merciless mistress

skirting rivulets of travelling blood,

the ghoul yanked a morsel from his stacked up stiffs

relishing the squish and the sickening thud.

- Evan Hawthorn, the 19th of September, 2015

Sentimental Distortions and the American Way

on thanksgiving, American presidents pardon a turkey, while 45 million are killed.
this principle is routinely applied.  for example, President Obama had the chance to
come out of the closet and admit that it is Iran that is threatened, while our militant,
psychopathic, incorporated bullies with their lavishly funded "full spectrum dominance"
consistently ensure that threats to peace continue.  when we supplied chemical
weapons to Iraq to use against Iran, and thousands of Iranian soldiers were killed,
they did not retaliate with chemical weapons, because they considered that immoral.
this kind of behavior is clearly mystifying to our leaders.  the Iranians also deem
nuclear weapons to be immoral, while we obliterated two entire cities with them, and
have gone on using them as a threat to enforce our wishes on other nations, recently
declaring we consider them a 'first strike' option.  Iran borders SIX nuclear powers,
three of which (India, Israel, and Pakistan) the United States is actively shielding from
UN inspections.  it is also completely surrounded by US bases.  and, as recently proved,
thanks to the freedom of information act, the CIA assassinated their democratically
elected president in 1953, installing the brutal, corporate-friendly Shah, because
British economic "interests" were  "threatened" when the president decided
that the people profiting from Iranian produce should be the Iranians themselves.
rather than take the wind from the sails of the congressional clown car and explain
this REALITY to the American people, that we (and Israel) are the threat to peace
that must be contained, and Iran would be willing to be left alone, its scientists no
longer subject to assassination, its airplanes no longer 'accidentally' shot out of the
sky, its people free of the silent sanctions that managed to kill half a million Iraqi
children, Obama chose to negotiate a treaty based entirely on maintaining a
fabrication.  this deception lies like an unexploded landmine, waiting to go off and
kill a million more human beings.  he then placed a comment on a facebook page
about a sweet Iranian boy.  and the tribal democrats cheered, and the rabid
republicans bayed at the moon, and the circus of instantly inattentive attention
spans were blithely led away.

- Evan Hawthorn, the 14th of September, 2015