The Art of Scapegoating and of Being Scapegoated

Image by Heidelbergerin from Pixabay

I'm assuming most of you know what a scapegoat is, even if you don't know the origin of the term. That's not really important, and you can look it up if you want to know.
Also, before I go on, I want to call your attention back to this post from something like six years. It's both relevant and important.
[If you went and read that old post, I'm sure you can see how it's relevant to our current political crisis. I want to reiterate that I wrote that well before 2016.]

Let's just assume that you didn't go back and read the post about "The Boss" (since I feel fairly certain that most of you did not) and I'll give a very brief introduction. Very.

There are certain personality types that want to be in charge, completely in charge, with no cost. By "no cost," I mean they don't want any of the responsibility that goes along with being the boss. They just want to be followed blindly and never carry the burden of any mistakes they make. In fact, they are so self-assured of their own "rightness" that they believe they cannot make mistakes and, therefore, if something goes wrong, it must be the fault of someone else. These people are in constant need of scapegoats.

But let me be clear, this is not because there is some conscious thought process that says, "I messed up, but I don't want anyone else to know, so I need to find someone else to blame." It's not like that at all because it never occurs to "the boss" that any mistake may have been his. He just looks for someone who must be at fault because, clearly, someone messed up.

I grew up with one of these types of people, my stepfather, so I am very familiar with how this works. I was, of course, the scapegoat in my house. It was even more fun because the blamelessness extended to my brother, who was his biological son, so any time my brother messed up it was somehow my fault. Here's my favorite story:

I had a mostly unsupervised childhood and I roamed pretty much freely all the time. As long as I was home by dark, no one really questioned where I was or what I was doing. However, on this particular day, I had been to a friend's house and, for whatever reason, I'd actually asked permission to go there. Possibly, it was farther away than I usually went; I don't know. But I had asked my mother if I could go and had permission to make the walk, because I walked everywhere or, later, when I had one, road my bike.

At any rate, when I arrived home, I found that I was in trouble, in trouble for somehow breaking a lamp while I wasn't home. I, of course, responded to the accusation from my father with, "I didn't break it. I wasn't even home." He then accused me of being gone without permission.

And this is where it gets tricky. See, my father knew that my brother had broken the lamp and, yet, he accused me of having done it as soon as I walked in the door. You have to try to follow the process of how this played out.

I said I did have permission because Mom had said I could go.
But that didn't matter because he hadn't said I could go so, therefore, I had not had permission.
It was my fault the lamp had been broken because, if I had been at home, I could have stopped my brother from doing it. Thus, I broke the lamp.
I want to point out that my "father" had been sitting in the chair next to the lamp when it happened.
But, see, it somehow was not my father's responsibility to be keeping an eye on my brother. That was, evidently, my job, a job I had failed to do because I wasn't home. I wasn't more than 10.

This was the way things were during my childhood, and there's not much you can do about it when you're in an insulated situation like that, which is what most households are, insulated little kingdoms.

Don't worry, it gets even more weird.

When I was a teenager, my dad was on of the van drivers at my church. He mostly didn't do any driving for the youth group but, on some trip or other, the guy who usually drove us wasn't available, so my dad was driving. It was a full van of middle and high schoolers all doing what teenagers do when they are in a group together, meaning they were being goofy and making a lot of noise.

Except me. Because that's not what I did. I had a book and was sitting against the window reading and ignoring what was going on. That was my normal.

Maybe this was why my dad never drove the teenagers; he didn't like the noise.
So we're driving along and I suddenly hear my name being yelled angrily. I look up to see my "dad" staring venom and hatred at me through the rear view mirror. Evidently, he had had to yell my name three or four times to get my attention and the only reason it had worked was because everyone else shut up after the second time. Look, I said I was reading, didn't I? And I was focusing really hard on it because of all of the noise and commotion. I don't remember the exact words my "father" used, but it amounted to "Shut the fuck up." No, he didn't curse. We were on a church van, but that's what came through.

Everyone stared at me.
Everyone knew that I hadn't been making any noise.
Not thinking clearly about what was happening, I opened my mouth, "I was rea..."
"I said shut up!"
Everyone looked at my "dad" then looked back at me.
I went back to my book.

Before that happened, everyone had liked my dad and wondered why I didn't care for him. Yeah, that's really about how I felt about him, like he was a type of cookie on a plate of cookies and my response was something like, "No, thank you, I don't care for that one." That's how disassociated I had become from him by the time I was in high school. I mostly just ignored his existence.
Except for those occasions, like this one on the van, where I was forced to acknowledge him in some way.

What I'm saying is that some people have to have someone to blame for their inability to handle situations, whatever those situations are. And I want to be explicitly clear, Trump (#fakepresident) is not ever thinking to himself, "Man, I screwed this up, but I can cover it up by blaming someone else." I think that's what people think about the way he deals with stuff, that his blaming of... whoever... is some sort of conscious deflection. It is not. He just knows that there must be someone to blame and has no concept whatsoever that that someone might be him.

And that, really, is the best way to scapegoat someone. Total belief that the person you are scapegoating must really be at fault. After all, when the Jews sent the scapegoat out into the wilderness, they believed that goat was carrying their sins with it.

When Trump blames WHO for the current state of affairs in regard to the pandemic, he believes WHO is at fault. They must be. Who else it could it be? Oh, China. It's also China. And the media.

These are not lies. Well, they are, but they are not the kind of lies someone makes up in order to change the narrative. It's all self-deception because Trump (#fakepresident) is incapable of looking at the truth. He's actually not smart enough to lie.
It's just like my dad believed it was my fault that my brother broke that lamp. With every fiber of his being, he believed that.

I don't want to say that the pandemic is a good thing in any way, because it's not. People are dying. Lots of people are dying. None of the numbers, especially in the United States, are accurate because there isn't enough testing being done (okay, South Korea's numbers are probably accurate). Why? Because the "president" has been a roadblock to any kind of appropriate response to what is happening. BUT!

But it is good that people -- governors, specifically -- are beginning to ignore Trump (#fakepresident) in order to do what needs to be done. Ignoring these kinds of people, these "bosses," is often the only way to accomplish anything. Or to live peacefully. Or whatever.

Make America Great: Stepping into the Future

While it can't be said that America was ever great in practice, an argument could be made for it having been great in concept. Or, at least, in concept in its own collective consciousness. If that time existed, and I think it did, it was in the post-World War II years and lasted up to around 1970. The assassination of Kennedy and, then, King wounded it, but, really, it was Nixon who drove a stake right into the heart of the idea of American greatness. Then he twisted it around a bit and pissed on the corpse for good measure.

Let's take a quick look at post-WWII America:
First, America had just saved the world. Almost literally. Whether that was actually true or not doesn't matter, because that's how Americans viewed it.
Second, America was helping to rebuild the world, including offering great assistance to peoples who had just been its enemies. Sure, maybe some of that was motivated by the guilt of having nuked Japan but, still, we were doing it.
Third, there was a push toward equality for all. True, it hadn't gotten there, but people began to see it, finally, as a possibility. It brought hope.
Fourth, World War II led the US into a technology boom, which was heightened when Russia launched Sputnik. We had a great focus on education and science and the future, and we really believed that anything and everything was possible.
Fifth, because we believed in the future, we began to build for the future and infrastructure expenditures show it. It was all rather altruistic because it was an idea, not for those doing it, but for those who would come after.

That was the environment the Boomer generation grew up in, one in which there was huge growth, plenty of everything which was handed to them on a platter so they didn't have to work for it, and the future was so bright they had to wear shades. Perhaps, it's no wonder they long for "the good old days."

Of course, their focus is on the physical output of the ideals of a previous generation, ideals they themselves don't hold. They are a generation of consumers and profit and, now, through Trump (#fakepresident), Republicans are engaged in an act of necrophilia. The focus on coal and other dead industries is nothing more than trying to fuck a corpse back to life.

And the worst part? Trump (#fakepresident) is doing it on live TV and twitter for the whole world to watch, dragging us along for the ride. Not that Turkeyneck McConnell, Paul Ryan, and a slew of others aren't humping away with him.

I think the only way to step into the future is to push the Boomers out of power. Probably all of them. Even the "good" ones (and I do think there are some good ones). Leave them to have their orgy of the dead on their own.

It's time to stop letting the future slip away.

Because we are well on our way to not even being on the bus to the future. It's like we were driving that bus, then let China take over, and, now, we're just getting off entirely.

There are so many things on the verge of happening:
Self-driving cars
Flying cars
Sustainable energy
Laser guns! (oh, wait, China already did this!)
a Mars colony
Asteroid mining
Feeding the whole world
Curing cancer
Well, I could go on for a while...

Do you know why none of those things are actually happening? Boomers and their fear of profit loss by not being allowed to rape the Earth and kill species.

It's time to put or focus on the technologies of the future because we can't go there by trying to make coal the fuel of the future. It's the fuel of a long-dead past, and we need to leave it there.

Look, I'm not saying you're ever going to get that personal jetpack, but, if you do, it certainly won't be coal powered. It's time to get rid of the G.Old.P. They are the proverbial weight around our collective neck tying us to the past. Personally, I'm tired of the past.
It's time to step into the future. I want to see it before I'm dead.

Turandot (an opera review post)

The 2017 opera season is underway. This is a short season, only five operas which will all be presented this year, but that's because the San Francisco Opera is presenting Wagner's Ring Cycle next summer! I can't wait. This is such a big deal that we had to purchase the tickets for it LAST YEAR. I have almost an equivalent anticipation for this as I did for The Phantom Menace or Raimi's Spider-Man. But none of that has to do with this opera, so let's get to that.

Turnadot was Puccini's last opera; in fact, he died before it was finished. That he died is just part of what makes this particular opera problematic and, often, controversial. The ending most often performed is by Franco Alfano and was written from Puccini's notes; however, that did not keep it from feeling inauthentic to me, not least of which was because the ending is happy. I'm not saying the ending wasn't good, and Puccini may have intended a happy ending for this one, but it didn't feel quite right to me. It's not really what he's known for.

That said, the opera was amazing. Turandot contains one of the most famous arias in all of opera: "Nessun dorma" or "None Shall Sleep." In the role of Calaf, Brian Jagde (seemingly becoming the SF Opera's tenor De Niro) performed it admirably.

The other big issue with this opera -- skipping over the issue of the name and the disagreement about how it should be pronounced -- is the... Well, I don't know if it's accurate to call it racism, but it certainly caricaturizes the Chinese. In fact, the opera was banned in China for a while because of it. But, then, the opera is kind of a cultural muddle, for which there are reasons of a sort, but you can look up the origins of the story on your own if you want to know about them.

At any rate, seeing that we are much more culturally sensitive these days than people were in the 1920s, and rightfully so, the San Francisco Opera staged it as a fairy tale. Of sorts. Which has a basis in the original story, so it all works out.

With that in mind, the sets were amazing! I mean, they were seriously amazing. I've commented previously about how great some of the sets have been at the SF Opera, but I think Turandot has had the best set design of any opera I've seen. By far. It was almost like watching a dream. Especially the scene during which "Nessun dorma" is performed. It was like a fairy forest with a bridge... Well, it was really great.

And the costumes were also really good, especially Turandot's. Actually, a couple of her gowns rivaled the sets.

The only possible negative I have about this presentation is that there was actually a lot of that whole standing and singing thing. However, possibly due somewhat to the richness of the sets and that, often, there were background chorus people milling around, it didn't often feel that way, and, when it did, it felt more natural.

This production of Turandot is definitely one of the best operas I've seen so far.

Day 31 (a future history)

Monday, February 19, 2018

Trump announced his new America for Americans program this morning. I’m not really sure what it all means, but it sounds like it’s something special for white people to help white people live all together without anyone who is not white. He said if you’re white and live in a place where mostly minorities live, you can apply to have the government move you to a white neighborhood. They’ll even make sure you get a better house because houses in minority neighborhoods are always trashy. Or something like that.

He also said that if you live in a white neighborhood and have people in it you don’t like being there, minority people, you can apply to have them removed. I think he said relocated. Yeah, relocated because they’re going to have relocation camps.

The scary part is that he made that crying Nazi guy in charge of something called hud. Hud is going to be the organization making sure that America is for Americans. That’s how he said it. But the Nazi guy, when he got his turn to talk, said it was about making something he called a pure ethno state. Something like that. He said ethno state a lot. And he wore some kind of Hitler armband, which was the really scary part, because he was right there on the TV with the president wearing a Nazi thing. AND EVRYONE WAS OKAY WITH IT!

Then, he gave Trump some little gift pin thing, and Trump put it on, and it was also some kind of Nazi thing! He just put it on and everyone clapped and he called it beautiful. It made my stomach hurt like I wanted to throw up and there were people in the auditorium who were crying, but I don’t know who it was or how many.

Then all the stupid little Trump Youth Bastards started cheering and Caleb got up and said he was going to write everyone down – everyone, even teachers – who wasn’t cheering. And he did, too. Or, at least, he pulled out a notebook and started acting like it. Everyone started standing up and there were some claps, but Trump was still talking, so the Asshole (that’s Caleb) started yelling at everyone to shut up.

That didn’t make people quit crying, though. I could still hear sobbing.

It made me think of my friend Tamira, and I quit wondering why they suddenly moved away. I want to move away and I’m white! It all made me sad. I miss Tamira. She didn’t even say goodbye. They just left.

Lots of people have just left. But no one who is white.

And I think some people are just disappearing. Like Mrs. Madison. Because I don’t think she’s ever coming back, and no one is talking about it. Maybe they took her to a “relocation camp.”

Oh, the relocation camps.

Trump made someone called Arpieo in charge of the relocation camps. Arpieo is some other asshole that Trump pardoned, someone who has had his own concentration camps. Or something. I kind of remember when that Arpieo guy got pardoned, but I didn’t care, then. And I didn’t know he was running concentration camps and throwing Mexicans into them. It sounds like he had everything except the gas chambers. I don’t know; it just makes me sick, and I want someone to do something about it, but I guess people are trying to and that’s why we’re in a war.

At the end, Trump says we are now going to be called the American States. The real American States. It was just something he said at the end, but I think that means there is no more United States, which makes sense, I guess, since some states were smart enough to get away from Trump and all of the stuff he stands for.

It’s confusing to keep up with, though, because we’re at war with China and Trump says that it’s China that has taken over those other states, which I know is a lie, because why would you change the name of the country if it was someone else who had taken over part of your land. And Russia is at war with China. And maybe something happened in North Korea, but I don’t know. All I know is that Trump said we were going to do to our enemies what we did to North Korea. And maybe there’s a war in Europe, too, but no one seems to know, only that the “war in Europe” was mentioned at some point.

It all makes me feel stupid because, back when I could know stuff and find things out, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything happening in the world or I was trying to pretend that nothing was happening in the world. I thought everything was just going to be okay because this is (was) America and everything is always okay, even when bad disasters happen, like those hurricanes last year and everyone was freaked out but, after a little while, everything was okay again. And I just want everything to be okay again.

But I guess sometimes things are not just okay and if you want them to be then you have to do something to make it better. I just don’t know what to do. I’m only in middle school.

Day 17 (a future history)

Monday, February 5, 2018

Christ on a cracker! They made us watch stupid Trump and his stupid special TV broadcast at school today! We had to do it as a big assembly in the auditorium on a big projection screen. AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT EVERY SINGLE DAY! EVERY DAY!

No, I mean it. Every day. Even on the weekends. It’s mandatory for everyone so they can tell us how the war is going. Or something.

Is this what a war is? I want to say that it doesn’t feel like a war, but how would I know what a war feels like? Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t feel normal. Life feels weird now. All of it.

We eat almost the same thing every day now.

There’s no TV.

There’s no Internet.

People are disappearing from school.

Everyone is going to be issued a special ID status card.

Oh, yeah, the cards. They’re going to make us carry ID cards that we have to use to check into the daily broadcasts. And we won’t be able to buy anything without them. Or go anywhere very far. They’re going to check the stupid cards for everything!

Maybe it does feel like a war. Just without any fighting. At least any fighting here. Trump said there is fighting in New York. With the Chinese. And THAT doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Chinese be in New York? Wouldn’t they be in California or something? But he said we’re fighting the Chinese in the streets of New York.

He also said there are a lot of traitors in the military who are refusing to fight against their own people, and that doesn’t make any sense either. If it’s the Chinese and they invaded New York, why would the Army be refusing to fight? People at school are whispering about it really being a civil war, but no one is saying it out loud. The teachers won’t talk about it. My parents won’t talk about it other than that my dad says that’s crazy talk then goes off on a rant about the Chinese and their horrible commie propaganda.

But that’s the only thing that makes sense to me, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

Except for the Russians, because Trump has asked the Russians to help take and hold New York.

He just went on and on about how great our friends the Russians are especially after they helped us take over Syria. Or we helped them take over Syria, because Russia got Syria.

And now they’re gonna get New York. Because that’s what happens. Syria. Korea. Afghanistan. Russia “helps” us, then they get to have the country. I don’t want to be the United States of Russia!

If it is a civil war, then I understand the thing about going to California, now.  Or any of those places. They must be the places fighting against Trump.

I don’t understand why no one is talking about what’s going on and why none of the adults will talk about it. Except my dad. HE believes Trump. The idiot. He's made at Trump about the TV, but he still believes every word that comes out of his mouth.

But my mom just shushes me when I try to ask questions, and none of the teachers will talk about anything that’s happening.

Oh, the principal said they’re going to be bringing in special counsellors for any students who need to ask questions or have someone to talk to. I don’t know why they think I would want to go talk to someone I don’t even know, though.

If this is what war feels like, being scared all the time, I don’t like it.

Day 13

Thursday, February 1, 2018

I wrote a letter to my friend in Australia. On paper. With a pen. I need to know something about what’s happening in the world, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I walked to the post office after school with it – and that’s not close! – and just got a blank stare from the mailman. He looked like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it. Finally, I said, “I want to mail this.”

His expression didn’t change. He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Of course, I’m sure.”

He said, “You know we’re not accepting any mail from outside the country, right?”

I think I probably stared blankly at him because I hadn’t known that. So I asked why not. He just shrugged, then, for a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something, then shrugged again. I said, “What does that mean?” And he answered that it meant that I could mail the letter and it might even get there but I wouldn’t get anything back even if my friend responded. I cussed.

We stared at each other for a while and his expression never changed. He looked bored. I stood there getting angry.

Finally, I took his pen, opened the envelope as carefully as I could, wrote a note at the end of the letter to my friend that he probably couldn’t write me back, asked for some tape and sealed the letter back up, and told the dude I wanted to mail the letter. He told me it would be $7.00.

$7.00! I think I cussed again. I’m not actually sure. I don’t remember what I said, only that I was SO angry. His expression changed, though, to shock. I didn’t have $7.00 with me. Since when did it cost $7.00 to mail a letter? To anywhere? I stormed out and tried to slam the door. I really wanted to slam the door, but it had one of those stupid hydraulic arms, and I couldn’t make it slam. I’m pretty sure I screamed.

Now I have this letter that’s worthless. If I’d had the $7.00 while I was there, I would have mailed it, but there’s hardly a point in making another special trip to mail a letter which might not ever arrive and from which I will get no response.

So I tried to sneak a long distance call, and that was worthless, too. After almost an hour, I got connected to the operator because I was trying to make something that wasn’t a local call and was told that only local calls could be direct dialed anymore; everything else had to go through an operator and approved before it could be made. Which explains why it took me so long to get through, because the operators are backlogged with calls. AND she told me we were going to be billed JUST because I talked to her. $12.00! Twelve fucking dollars so that the operator could tell me that I couldn’t make my call. My mom is going to kill me.

There are a lot of rumors at school. Almost everyone has their own rumor. Almost none of them have to do with China taking over any part of the United States, though some of them are that Russia has invaded New York. And a lot of people are saying that there is fighting in New York. A lot of it. With tanks and missiles and all of that. I don’t know if I believe it or not.

Some people are saying it’s because Russia invaded and the fighting is against the Russians.

But some people are saying that it’s New York fighting against Trump and the United States.

They’re saying it’s a civil war. A new civil war. And that’s why that thing from the Statue of Liberty is showing up everywhere.

It is, too.

There are new flyers on buildings everyday.

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…

It makes me cry sometimes. I feel like I’m yearning to breathe free.

I hate it here.

It even showed up on TV yesterday. When the teacher was turning on the TV for Trump’s daily shitfest, she accidentally changed the channel… and there it was, just on the screen.

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…

come to California

Oh, God, I want to go to California! Or Washington. Or even Oregon. Anywhere that is out of this hell of a place where I feel like I’m a flower without sun.

No one said anything when it was on the screen. It was like no one breathed. Four seconds… five… I don’t know. Long enough for me not to be the only one with tears in my eyes.

Then the teacher changed it back to the right channel and Trump was talking, and I did cry. Sobbed. I wasn’t even embarrassed because I wasn’t the only one. Shelly ran out of the room with her hands over her face.

That was the first time I realized how many kids are missing from my classes…

Mom is calling. Dinner, probably. Yea. More hamburger meat and baked potatoes. It will be the third day in a row.

Day Ten

Monday, January 29, 2018

Why do people say, “Excuse my French,” before they cuss? It doesn’t make any sense. I only thought of that because I almost wrote it, but why do I need to write that; no one is reading this but me, so I don’t need to ask anyone to excuse me.

Anyway…

It was so fucking cold today! Not because it was actually colder than normal, but I had to wear a dress to school because of my stupid stitches. I hate dresses, and today reminded me of why. The air just went right up my legs, and I spent the whole day being cold and uncomfortable. AND everyone saw my stitches because the dress wasn’t long enough to cover them up when I was sitting down.

Not that it mattered because Toby saw me leaving the junkyard with the blood all over me and told everyone about it, so I didn’t even get to make up an excuse for how I got the stitches. It was SO embarrassing. Or it would have been except that no one really seemed to care, and a lot of my friends had the same kinds of stories about having to go out and scavenge. But none of them got stitches from it.

I guess everyone’s desperate for news, and there aren’t a lot of good places to get it. No one really realized how dependent they’d become on the internet for information. I wanted to look up lockjaw just to make sure I couldn’t get it, but there’s no Wikipedia anymore. And we don’t have any encyclopedias or anything like that. I don’t think we even have a dictionary in the house. I had to wait till I got to school today, then I wasn’t ever able to get to the library. The library has become very popular.

But it’s not looking stuff up that has people upset; it’s not knowing what’s going on. Trump is going to be having a daily broadcast so that he can tell us what’s happening – the first one was today, and we HAVE to watch them – but I don’t believe anything he says. Anything. And I hate his stupid voice. And tiny t-rex hands. And flapping lizard throat.

TODAY, he told us that we are at war with China and that China has taken over the whole west coast in a secret attack. He said it was China that was responsible for that message on the Internet from the Statue of Liberty, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would China say something like that? And he didn’t even talk about New York and those other states that aren’t on the west coast. Didn’t even mention them.

Maybe we’re supposed to think Canada captured them.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Yeah, China didn’t say that, and that’s what he wants us to believe?

I want to know what’s happening, and I don’t know how to find out. No one knows how to find out, but everyone has opinions and wants to talk about them. My friends tell each other what their parents said, but most of them don’t seem to believe any of it, especially if it goes along with anything Trump has said. None of us believe Trump.

My dad does, though. He’s on a rampage about China and how we’re going to kick the asses of those Reds. He keeps saying we need to nuke them. That caused a fight, another fight, with my mom. My mom said that was terrible what he said, but he didn’t seem to care. They had a long fight with a lot of shouting which only ended when the door slammed. He hasn’t come back, yet, and I haven’t asked Mom if he’s going to. I don’t know if I care, right now.

Mom seems to not like Trump anymore. She hasn’t said that, but… Mom really hasn’t been saying much anymore. She’s quiet all the time, now, and I have to say stuff to her three or four times before she even realizes I’m talking to her. She doesn’t even listen to the news on the radio anymore.

I think I’m scared; I just don’t know what I’m scared of.




A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if you are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. For a change of pace, try What Time Is the Tea Kettle?, which has been described as "deliciously absurd" and "quirky fun." Besides, it has cats. How can you go wrong with cats? Um... Forget I asked that.

It's always great to feel supported.

Thanks!

Day Five

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

There’s no school today. Not now, anyway.

We were actually on the way to school when there were a bunch of explosions. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from at first, but then smoke clouds rose up in the direction of the air force base. There were sirens almost immediately and that loud air raid siren thing they always use in movies. I didn’t know that was a real thing. I stuck my head out of the window of the car so I could look for airplanes, but Mom yelled at me and started pulling on me and swerved all over the road. She didn’t like it when I yelled at her for trying to kill me.

Mom took me back home even though I didn’t want to go back home. Home is so boring, now, with no internet or TV that I WANTED to go to school! But it turned out that they closed school, anyway. Everyone thought we were under attack.

I think the radio is stupid. I mean the news on the radio is stupid. So, of course, Mom had to listen to the news all morning, not that she wasn’t already doing that, but she was more insistent about it because of the explosions and wouldn’t even let me talk. At all! She just kept shushing me!

But the radio is stupid because they just speculate all the time. It’s dumb! No one knew what had happened at the air force base, and it took a long time for anyone to find out. Hours. So they spent those hours talking about what might have happened. Were we being attacked? Should people go to bomb shelters? Was it the Chinese? If it was the Chinese, how did they get here?

Lots of people went to bomb shelters. The radio said they were all filling up. Mom wanted to go to a bomb shelter, but she wouldn’t go without Dad, and she couldn’t get through to Dad. All of the phones were jammed up with people using them. As it turned out, Dad was in a bomb shelter.

Mom was SO mad even though he didn’t have a choice. Everyone from Dad’s work was sent to the bomb shelter because everyone thought there was an attack. There was no way for him to call Mom about it, but she didn’t care. She was just mad at him and didn’t talk to him all night. Not after telling him that SHE COULD HAVE DIED while he was all safe and stuff and she was never going to wait for him again.

He said “good” and “fine” and, after a little while, once he figured out that she wasn’t going to talk to him anymore, he went off to… I don’t really know. I went to my room and stayed and am still here. Mom is still listening to the radio. I’ve been reading a little bit.

Oh, yeah, I got a book at school yesterday, Slaughterhouse-Five. I wanted Hunger Games, but she didn’t have any copies left, so I wanted Animal Farm, but she didn’t have any of those left, either. Slaughterhouse sounded like a cool title, though, and there wasn’t a lot to choose from, so I picked it.

I don’t understand it, though. I think it might be good, but I can’t figure out what it’s about. It’s the only book I have right now, though, since I couldn’t trade it for something different today. If I can’t figure out what it’s about by tomorrow, I’ll try to get a different book since reading is the only thing to do, right now. IF there’s even school tomorrow.

There will probably be school tomorrow since we weren’t under attack. Maybe. The radio said the base was sabotaged. It said they were going to send out planes to bomb somewhere on some secret mission but, as soon as the planes started getting ready to take off, they all blew up.

It wasn’t just here, either. It happened at bases all over the US. All the planes that were going to go on this secret mission all blew up. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them. Or most of them. Hundreds of them. I don’t know. They don’t give a lot of details on the radio, just a lot of talking about nothing.

And then they had Trump on talking about nothing, too, because he said it was a great attack on the sovereignty of the US by horrible, terrible enemies and terrorists and about all of the brave brave men who had died except they had already said on the radio, at least at our base, that no one had died. The explosions just crippled the planes and made them no good, but the explosions hadn’t killed anyone.

Trump also said they had a glorious success on the mission. It was beautiful. But he didn’t say what the mission was, only that there was a mission and that it was a success.

I don’t believe him.

Dad said it sounded like Yemen and Jalalabad and Mosul, but he wouldn’t tell me what he meant. Probably because Mom was mad at him. Nothing good, though.

So I think there will be school tomorrow, because, so far, everyone is trying to pretend that everything is okay. Everything is normal. But everything is NOT normal. I wish it was normal and that there was still the internet and I wasn’t stuck reading a book I don’t understand.

A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. Look, there are links all of the page and many different types of stories available.

It's always great to feel supported.
Thanks!

Day Three

Monday, January 22, 2018

I got up for school and the internet was still not working.

Except that it was and, now, I know why everyone kept saying the internet itself was fine because now the internet is gone. Trump took it away. I thought I hated Trump before, but I really hate him now.

When I got up, I turned on my laptop to check. I figured it had to come back sometime and, really, I’ve been checking all the time all weekend so, of course, I checked. My google homepage said this:

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This message brought to you by the free states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey

Even New Jersey.

I wondered who wrote it. It’s really pretty. I want to go to California. Even Washington.

Anyway, that’s what the internet said. Everywhere I checked, netflix, facebook, youtube, everywhere. That was on every page. Obviously, the internet was working even if that’s all that was there.

Then I had to go to school.

School was weird. The teachers tried to act like everything was normal, but there kept being questions about China. And about the poem on the internet. That’s where I found out that it was from the Statue of Liberty. I hadn’t known the statue said anything. I wanted to know why. Why did it say that, but I hate raising my hand to ask questions.

But Olivia’s hand shot right up – she ALWAYS asks questions, everyone hates her for it, which is why I hate asking questions – and she asked it, but the teacher wouldn’t answer. She just said we were in English class, not history, and we weren’t going to talk about that. So I thought it was a poem and we could talk about it because it was a poem, and I almost raised my hand because I really wanted to know, but Emma raised her hand and asked almost the same question and about who wrote it, but Mrs. Stick-up-her-butt still said no.

And that’s how it was all day. No one would answer the real questions we had. Like about the Statue of Liberty and about why California and Washington and New York would put something on the internet that said that and about whether we were in a war with China. Other than the trade war that everyone had been talking about for months and blaming China for why everything was costing so much.

After lunch, Trump came on TV. It was a live broadcast. He wanted everyone everywhere to watch it which made me wonder if my parents were being able to watch it, because the TV at home wouldn’t work because we didn’t have an antenna, and there were no TVs where my dad worked. But they heard it because it was on the radio, too.

And Trump said he turned off the internet.

He said we had to be protected from those rebellious states and thoughts and he couldn’t have them putting stuff like that on the internet because only he knew what was good for the United States and he wasn’t going to have that kind of stuff out there for people to see.

He said he would make a new internet and it would be beautiful. Then he talked about twitter. A lot. And he was mad that some people would ruin everything for everyone because they wouldn’t do what they were told. And that he was going to make a big, new, beautiful internet.

But, until then, we would all have to use our TVs so everyone should go buy antennas and he was going to make sure that there were plenty of TV antennas for everyone and it was going to make so many jobs.

So I was mad that my parents voted for Trump because he said awful things and did awful things, but my parents said I just didn’t understand but that I would when I got older and that he would be better as a president and I should just wait and see. But he hasn’t been better as a president; he’s been worse, and even they complain about the things he says and does all the time now.

AND NOW HE TURNED OFF THE INTERNET AND I HATE HIM!!!

Because when I got home, I found that instead of the blank screens I had been getting, I was getting that screen you get when the internet is down. The one with the little dinosaur that let’s you play that stupid game. And now there is no reason to check for the internet anymore, because I know that it’s gone.

At least until we get the internet that Trump says he’s going to build, but I expect that that is going to go about the same as the wall that he still is talking about but isn’t happening, either.

Dad spent all evening out trying to get an antenna for our TV, but no one has any. He said he might be able to make something out of a clothes hanger, and Mom spent an hour looking for one, including ransacking my closet. I told her I didn’t have any wires ones and that I would look, but she wouldn’t let me or even listen to me and shoved my stuff all around. It was rude, and, like I said, I didn’t have one. She couldn’t find one in the whole house, so we still don’t have any TV, either.

I feel depressed and don’t know what to do. There’s nothing to do. Except, I guess, read. Is that what people used to do before there was TV and the internet? I can’t even listen to music because Mom has the stupid news on the radio ALL the time, but all they do is say the same things over and over again without ever actually saying anything. THEY can’t even answer the question about whether we are in a war with China. Or what it means that that poem was in the internet and why those states said that.

Tomorrow, I guess, I need to go buy some books. Or go to the library. All I can find here are mom’s stupid romance things, and that’s not what I want to read about.

I want to go to California. I bet they have the internet.

Day Two

Sunday, January 21, 2018

The internet is still not working. I think I’m going to go crazy. All the things I usually do are gone! Including talking to my friends. Mom says I should use the phone, the actual phone. She says that’s all she had when she was a kid and that that ought to be good enough for me, too. But talking on the phone is weird, and I can only talk to one person at a time. And I can’t share pictures on the stupid phone.

Maybe if they would get me a cell phone, but Mom says not until I’m 14. Which got changed from 12 when I turned 12. All of my friends have phones! Sometimes I hate my mom!

Like today. She made us go to church. All of us, even Dad. Dad never goes to church. But Mom said we all needed to get right with God and that that included Dad, too. I hate when she starts talking about getting right with God. What does that even mean? Being good? I’m a good person... except for the porn, but I like it and I don’t really get what the big deal about it is. I’m not mean to people or anything so what’s the problem?

Except that I’m obviously not right with God which is why I try to never go to church. I hate it. It’s the most boring thing in the world and the people are all stupid with their fake smiles about how good it is to see you before they go off and leave you in a corner to sit by yourself while they all have fun with each other.

But there were a lot of people at church today. It was packed. And weird. There were even a few of my friends from school there which was the only thing that made it okay.

Everybody was still all fake, though. Pretending to be happy and that everything is okay when clearly none of them think everything’s okay. But no one was talking about it. Whatever “it” is. Mom tells me to be quiet whenever I ask her what’s going on and that I’m not old enough to worry about it. Maybe I wouldn’t worry if I knew what it was.

Is it just that they all think we’re in a war? No one is saying that. And haven’t we been being in a war for a long time? I don’t understand what the big deal is and no one will explain.

During church, the pastor kept talking about China and the “damn commies.” He never said we were at war with China, but he blamed the internet on China, too. Maybe that was just because Trump is blaming the internet on China. Which probably certainly means it’s NOT China because when has Trump ever told the truth about anything?

My friend Jerry, whose parents made him come to church, too, said that his dad said it can’t be China. His dad works with computers or something and said that what’s wrong with the internet is too complicated to be China. I don’t know what that means. It all seems complicated to me. Jerry tried to explain it to me so he seems to understand, but I don’t get it. He kept trying to tell me that there’s nothing wrong with the internet itself and that’s why it couldn’t be China.

Then he said I didn’t understand because I’m a girl, so I punched him in the stomach.

Shithead.

The pastor talked a lot about China and getting rid of foreign invaders. Foreign invaders pretty much means anyone not white, and lots of people have already moved away. They just left, including my friend Tamira who left right after school started. He also talked about purity and getting right with God, but he didn’t say how to do that. Probably getting rid of porn because people at church are always all weird about sex and that’s another reason I don’t like going to the youth stuff because all they ever talk about is how bad sex is.

I wanted to go out to eat after church. A bunch of my friends were going, but Mom wouldn’t let me. She said it costs too much, now, and I guess it does. We haven’t had any fruit or vegetables in months. Everyone says it’s because of California. The prices are really really high, now, and we can’t afford anything more than potatoes. And meat. Meat is still cheap. It doesn’t come from California.

I started three different books today, but they were all dumb. Mom’s stupid romance crap. I just want the internet back.

How To Be... a Zen Master

I am not a user of the word "Zen." Ever. Seriously, I don't think I've ever once used it in everyday speech, and I tend to ignore people when they say something like, "That is so Zen." Why? Because I don't really know what it means, but not just that--no one seems to know what it means. It's always just been this kind of ambiguous term that people throw out every once  in a while... to sound cool, I guess. It's one of those terms that people will tell you, "If you don't get it, man, you just can't get it." But what they really mean is that they don't really know what it means, either; there are just special circumstances they feel warrant the use of the word.

Wikipedia seems to agree with me on that. They call the term "vague."

And, see, here I am, right now (as I write this, not as you read this, although I might be), drinking a cup of Tazo zen tea, which I just discovered a couple of weeks ago. Bet you didn't know your tea could be all Zen, did you?

The real issue with all of this is that there is no one Zen discipline. Zen Buddhism began something like 1500 years ago in China and has been continually changing since then, not to mention spreading. First to Vietnam, then to Korea, and, finally, to Japan, but it took it 700 years before it was its own discipline there, and Japan has been the biggest influence of Zen on the West. But the forms of Zen in Japan aren't the same as they are in China or Korea or Vietnam or, even, in Japan, since they have three different schools of Zen in Japan: Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku. All of these variations cause confusion about what it means to be "Zen." At least, it causes confusion over any definitive meaning of the word.

With over 1500 years of teaching, there aren't even any central or essential Zen teachings. No doctrines to point to. Each different form has its own ideas.

And none of this even deals with what we've done with the idea here in the West. Because, here, we've reduced it to someone (anyone) who demonstrates "detachment and control in stressful situations." If you have a cool head, you're "Zen," and, if you do it often enough, people might call you a "Zen master." And, hey, you never even have to try Buddhism. Which says nothing of the fact that sometimes it's just applied to "spiritual" people (often by themselves) to make them sound better.

No wonder I've never used it.

What it all comes down to, though, is that there are many, various, diverse, and sundry ways to become a Zen Master. 1500 years of many, various, diverse, and sundry ways. Just decide which Buddhist discipline you want to follow to get there. Or there's the American way which is to not bother with Buddhism at all and decide to just not get worked up over anything. Hmm... I'm beginning to see the relation, I guess, between being Zen and pot smoking (except for the part where I've never smoked pot).

Note:
Make sure to come back tomorrow to discover what all of this has been about in my final "How To Be..." installment. Yeah, all of these posts have a point. Or have been leading to a point. A point that, perhaps, this post more than any other exemplifies best.

Oh, also, "Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire" is still FREE! today.