Universe On The Couch

Today Tom Cruise's new bitch has announced she is going scientology. Big surprise.

So let's look at this "religion." It was started by a second rate science fiction author who said in public the real gig was to start a religion and get rich. He is so right. The Catholic Church has been at it successfully for two millennia. The Vatican is incredible in art treasure. They own immense land here in the USA. Not to say they haven't done much good, but there's power and wealth there to be sure.

No. We're talking cult here. Formula: Throw together some old psychological and religious ideas in a new package with a new lingo. Make it appeal to the needs and wants of people and give them answers to their questions. Keep it simple and unambiguous. Some magical thinking always helps. Promise happiness, fufillment and immortality. Cloak yourself in mystery and even some manufactured divine experience. How your fabricated cosmology was revealed by alien angels or something.

Recruit young lost females and brainwash them. Unconditional love and dependence. Control of their media and outside world. Dress funny and weird diet. Some sexual mastery on them too. Once they are in your cult (Charley?) they can recruit others. Young men can be seduced in. Have them do all the work and give you their money. And so on...

So old Ron wrote his piece of shit book-or should I say puddle of piss-Diuretics-I mean Dianetics. A bleached, distorted and oversimplified Freud and the pop psychology of the fifties. Like all religions and cults antagonistic to the competition, in their case modern psychiatry. Not exactly a difficult target to find issue with. I have plenty of issues and I be one of them.

Well the thing worked. Decades later they are powerful indeed. Ronnie's death is shrouded in mystery. Maybe aliens took him onto their flying saucer to be the Martian King. They have media muscle and cash galore. Thousands of brainwashed sheep. They make born-agains look like free spirits.

And the genius of celebrity recruiting. Makes it seem legit to the ignorant masses. Like Hollywood actors are so superior to the average person. John Revolting as my brother calls him is a major one. He is cool onscreen, but its an act folks. He pretty much plays the same guy in every movie. Not exactly major talent. Tommy is not so hot either. A second-rate actor. He's no Deniro, Penn or even Brad Pitt. Nicole is the real talent in that former couple. And his new bitch. Never heard of her. But then I don't read Stupid People Magazine, even at the dentist. And then there is Christy. I would have fucked her twenty years ago. But I guess Dianetics is big on carbohydrates.

Scientology is anoything but science. It is nonsense. It is not even a spiritual path worth considering. It is not for seeking truth. But to a sociopath bent on power, money, domination and sex from wayward souls. it is an inspiration.

Some of you may mistake me for a liberal or Democrat as I loathe the current Republican control of our government all-around. But my ire goes to pretty much all of those in control of our politics.

Still, one has to ask what is wrong with the Democratic party? Clinton was a landslide and years that will deem nostalgic over time. They held power in blue collar, Catholic, Jewish, urban, rural and minority America. No more.

Well let's be honest. Even Bush hardly had his alleged mandate in 2004. He scraped by an uninspiring candidate with a dirty lying campaign and economic tricks that will haunt us for decades. He also rode in on the corpses of 9-11. He even lost the majority vote in 2000 and the Florida results are still suspect.

Still, Bush won. And they got control of both the House and Senate. Even California has The Terminator (per public servants). The Supreme Court is looking unbalanced too.

So what is the Democratic problem?

Certainly they are losing the spin battle. Rover is genius here. He could sell turds as yummy treats. Which is pretty much what he did. Talk about a failed presidency. Record trade deficits. Record federal deficits. Record household debt. Record low household equity. A stock market crash with job losses. Local governments and states are broke. Terrorists hit two of our main cities. We get in two wars. Our personal rights and privacy curtailed.

But no. The war hero who served dangerous duty is questioned about his service. While Bush skipped his guard duty. I don't care how you stack it up, a power boat with guns going down a jungle river getting shot at from the hidden vines sounds scary. The values bullshit was brilliant too. Gay marriage. I suppose God wants them to spread AIDS in bath houses rather than form committed stable unions.

So now the Dems are on this spin thing. I agree they need to do better PR. And if its dirty, well I don't see much clean in the Republican camp. I say go for it. But spin isn't enough. They need some kind of original agenda. Not being Bush wasn't enough for winning. And plenty of his voters were not that thrilled with him either.

The candidates need charisma. Bush is spun as one of the boys. A guy you could BBQ with. A good old Texas boy. Didn't fit in at Yale (Supposedly because he wasn't the spoiled rich kid?! More likely he wasn't that smart). But somehow this draft and then guard duty dodger is a macho tough guy. And this spoiled life served on a silver platter boy of priviledge is a regular one-of-us guy?

Kerry was no JFK. His rich wife didn't help. Nor his ambulance-chaser running mate, who was essentially invisible after the convention. Dean was a kick, but this exciting guy who did a great job as gov was relentlessly attacked by his own party.

But I digress. The Democratic liberal platform for decades has been socialism, litigation, race and feminism.

Race. Affirmative action. Discrimination. LBJ was right with civil rights in the sixties. The institutional racism than was deplorable. Unfortunately as LBJ predicted, the Dems lost the South. Wow! You reject candidates and party because they believe all men are created equal! Today there is still racism, but its more subtle. Sorry but you can't pass laws for everything. Some will not play nice. Most of us carry all sorts of prejudices. It's an ugly part of human nature and the better of us fight against it in ourselves. But the laws, programs and courts have now made it worse. Some of this crap inflames dormant racial tension. Many of us are sick and tired of the race card and race excuses. It's time to move on.

Litigation. Hostage to the trial lawyers. We even get Edwards the ambulance-chaser and Whitewater Hillary. Billions to the lawyers when the Nicotine Dealers were sued. The use of civil law to address every agenda is perversion of the law and our entire society based on a system of law. It is sucking up wealth into useless activity and money is transferred from those who earned it to those who cry and the lawyers. There is a visceral constriction of personal freedom from this.

Feminism. Like civil rights, it had merit. Voting. A chance to do things. But that tme has passed. Men in this country have been essentially castrated. But no, the politicians, especially the Dems, have made the workplace an Orwellian straightjacket. Better watch what you say. Don't want to offend anyone. Its a major crime. Then on to litigation. Divorce? She usually gets the house, kids, half the assets besides. Then he has to pay for the house and send both child support and alimony. Maybe he can see the kids-when she says. Grandpa is often eliminated from the picture.

Finally and most to the point is Socialism. Of course Bush escalated Medicare and Nixon added on LBJ's Welfare State. But the Dems have had the rights on this one. Funny how we spent a half-century fighting this shit while we kept moving that way ourselves. Our most socialistic presidents: Wilson, FDR and LBJ.

Well this shit need to be curtailed. All the regulations. All the government interference. The free market works. Leave it alone. Get out of all this nonsense. Its time to stop the corporate welfare. If a company fails, so be it. Get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are dangerous institutions that will destroy our economy. Stop FDIC. Its just a net for thrifts to take stupid risks. after all the feds, meaning taxpayers, will bail them out.

So what new ideas? I would probably hate them anyways, but politically: Tax the "rich." More middle-class welfare (like homeowner deductions). And of course socialized medicine.

As usual the two parties don't give us much choice.

Watched a DVD on eighties punk music the other night. Back in the day I was about as hip as an ex-jock medical student could be. I listened to the alternate music including punk. I hated the pop crap like Michael Jackson. You can guess my spin on "Beat It." I hung on the edge of that crowd of artists, musicians and even gays.

But I got older and more conservative. I lost interest in being cool and the hip crowd. I started down a more personally determined path, not that of the mainstream culture or conforming to some alternate culture.

Punk and other eighties alternative movements essentially died as the decade went on. The Reagan years and rise of the Yuppies. The tail end of the Baby Boom grows up. Gen X has to get a job. Snorting cocaine turns to crack and armed gangs. Casual sex meets HIV.

At the same time rap slowly was growing. The early stuff was creative and even funny at times. Rappers Delight. Fight for your right to party. It has now become the dominant youth music. Of all races and social classes. Alt rock has a strong rap part too. Movie sound tracks. TV commercials. White boy rap. Christian rap. Gangster rap.

Well I hate the shit. Most of it sucks. I am sick of hearing it. At the gym. On TV. And especially booming out of car sound systems. A small amount of it is tolerable. Even smaller amount is good. Most of it is crap. I have listened to it. I have "given it a try." If only I in my forties could be so cool as to play it. Fuck that.

So the thought becomes why did I like punk and hate rap? After all both are fuck you to the rest of society. Both are less than pleasant music. Both are less than great creative artistry.

Am I just too old? Hard to believe I used to read and study to punk. I can't read to lyrics of any kind now. I read to classical or jazz. Rock or punk is for driving or working out or working in the garage. Perhaps its just that like most people, the music at that stage was a more central part of my life and I "imprinted" on it. We used to mock those who spoke of The Beatles highly. "Phony Beatlemania has bit the dust."

But there are three differences of importance. First is music itself. Punk is played in old garage band heavy metal style. Rap is synthetic music with no musicians. A drummer vs. A drum machine. Guitars vs. Digital samples. Punk may be primitive and often simple, but rap is the same damn thing in every song. Boring. While the poetry can be creative, rap doesn't even sing.

Second is that rap is conforming to its social sub-group while punk has minimal conforming to any group at all. The majority of rap is the typical ghetto themes. Abusing the bitch. Fucking the bitches. Killing people. Selling drugs. Respect and disrespect. Kill the cops. Revenge. The style is pimp. Flashy clothes. Status cars. Jewelry. Expensive but tasteless.

Punk themes ran the gamut from masturbation to suicide to breaking the yokes making fried eggs. The emotions ran from love to heartache to depression to anger to damn funny. Short hair, long hair, painted hair, spiky hair, no hair. The clothes were all over the place.

Third and final point. Punk rejects and rebels against the mainstream culture. Rap actually is quite conforming to it. Punk says fuck your materialistic shit. Your TV sucks. I'm bored of the consumer society and insipid status seeking. Rap is right in line with consumerism. The main thing is to buy status symbols like cars and houses. To be the big spender. Money and the power that goes with it. And they don't care how they get it. Parasitism is the rule. Or outright violent theft. Or selling out. They are no different from two-bit dictators, ambulance chasers, stock manipulators, conmen and many of our elected officials.

So there it is. Punk was a stage of the less brainwashed members of my generation at the Boomer/X juncture. We looked beneath the lies and propaganda and saw the rotten growing tumors in this society. This has only gotten worse. The economic boom over twenty years really helped cover it up.

Rap on the other hand is that rot itself. The combination of worship of Mammon that destroys all else and eventually destroys the prosperity itself. The moral decay. The anti-intellectualism and rejection of reason and science. The destruction of the planet. The rise of violence. The dearth of quality art.

The future makes me shudder.