Friday Night at 8: Steering the Straight Course

Obligatory YouTube this Friday night — Ray Charles, “Hit the Road Jack” (replacement for “Busted” which got busted off of YouTube)

We got news coming down the pipeline about White House press secretary writing a tell-all and the very media indicted in that tell-all is covering it.  Just when you think things can’t get more surreal … well, I dunno, I think we’re all pretty much aware that surreal is the flavor of the day here in these Disunited States.

The story of the day.  Oh but there are so many stories of the day.

I am all for staying informed.

I’m one of the fortunate ones who can get their news from the blogs and especially here at Docudharma, where our news aggregators and analysts are second to none!

But it is Friday and I’m done with the work week.  I tend to use this day to reflect a bit and check my navigating skills to see that I’m still on the straight course.

We’re wheeling towards the Presidential elections as we are also confronted more and more each day with the crimes of the crooks who have stolen power from We the People.  Scotty’s revelations were no revelations to those of us who have been following the daily crimes of this misAdministration.  We knew he was lying at the time and we knew how and why those lies were put forth.

What’s new is that now everyone else is finding this out as well, in a juicy, gossipy way.  The very media who are complicit in these lies continue to follow the dollar and so report a story damning to themselves as the mindless entities they are and report it to entertain the crowds, to offer yet more of their bread and circuses.

We’ve got folks who are pissed off in New Orleans and all along the Gulf Coast.  Across America folks are getting very grumpy as they see their houses taken from them, their health care become non-existent, gas prices rise to the point where one community college has actually shortened the school week so their students can save on fuel.

America is waking up in a bad bad mood.

Me?  I’m listening and I’m steering a straight course.  My life is no longer defined by the politics of the day and the spin thereof, the shiny bright distractions whose only purpose is to pull our minds into a vortex of outrage and spit us back out again, bewildered and exhausted and oppressed.

And what is this course I am steering, you may well ask?

Well I’m not ashamed to tell you.

I am steering the straight course to my own power as a human being, my own humanity.  Our present culture tries to steal that power every single day in so many ways.  It’s been said that the fish rots from the head down, and our culture is the body of that fish, rotting and stinking.  I won’t pretend the stink is Chanel No. 5.

I don’t look to our so-called political or cultural “leaders” any more, even the ones whom I admire, and there are many of them.  I have and will continue to appreciate them, but not as my leaders.  Not any more.

I look to folks like me, folks here at Docudharma and elsewhere in the blogosphere, folks in my life who have some common sense and aren’t taken in by all the shiny distractions.

And even then, I no longer will follow blindly, or as NL said so well:

… we should never suspend our critical thinking, no matter whether we are talking to friend or foe. And I think that is an important lesson to learn.

I’ll keep my critical thinking and welcome the critical thinking of others as well.  I find that also somehow increases trust, though I couldn’t tell you why.

If We the People are going to take back our real power, there’s no one else to turn to but ourselves.  So I’m steering the straight course.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no time to get stoned!  No adventure is without real moments of recreation and entertainment.  Sing it, Brother Ray …

Happy Friday to all and I hope your weekend is wonderful.

20 comments

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  1. … brownie.

  2. The “Busted” video is no longer available.

    Will find a replacement.

    Apologies to all and sundry.

  3. Woke up hearing her sing…”What’re you fightin’ for?” this a.m.

  4. Dylan sang, “Don’t follow leaders.  Watch for parking meters.”

    Anonymous scribbled on a bathroom wall in an obscure blues club:

    God is Love.

    Love is Blind.

    Ray Charles is Blind.

    Ray Charles is God.

    Amen.

  5. Pretty scary to think how prescient these lyrics are.

    Why must you record my phone calls?

    Are you planning a bootleg L.P?

    Said you’ve been threatened by gangsters

    Now it’s you that’s threatening me.

    Can’t fight corruption with con tricks

    They use the law to commit crime?

    I dread, dread to think what the future will bring

    When we’re living in gangster times.

    “Don’t call me Scarface!”

    Don’t interrupt while I’m talking

    Or they’ll confiscate all your guitars.

    A catch – 22 says if I sing the truth

    They won’t make me an overnight star.

    Don’t offer us legal protection

    They use the law to commit crime.

    I dread to think what the future will bring

    When we’re living in real gangster times.

  6. litter in the way trying to get us off course, isn’t there?

    So many times I turn on the tv to watch news while I’m blogging. Invariably I either mute it or turn it off. I want to stay informed (mostly of their spin), but its all just so much distraction.

    And yes, if we could find a pill that spurred critical thinking, I might even be challenged to give up my distaste for the pharmaceuticals. LOL  

  7. Best read out loud in the voice of a black preacher….good job!

  8. is that we invest too much in them and our belief they will make us better people instead of investing in ourselves as all having leadership potential.

    We are inevitably disappointed when they turn out to have the same human failings and insecurities as the rest of us.

    I don’t mind following if I hear a great concept but I am not a follower, if that makes any sense.

    It probably has something to do with being a cat.

    • Edger on May 31, 2008 at 03:35

    A subvert too…

    My life is no longer defined by the politics of the day and the spin thereof…



    I am steering the straight course to my own power as a human being, my own humanity.

    …..

    If We the People are going to take back our real power, there’s no one else to turn to but ourselves.

    Almost cut my hair

    It happened just the other day

    It’s gettin’ kinda long

    I coulda said it was in my way

    But I didn’t and I wonder why

    I feel like letting my freak flag fly

    The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.



    After stopping the world the next step is seeing. By that I mean what could be categorized as responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call reality.

    –The Teachings of Don Juan

    • kj on May 31, 2008 at 05:17

    yes, yes and yes.  

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