(photo credit Wikipedia)

A Storm is Coming....


"Family"

freeacre

Murph and I don’t watch a lot of television, as you know. A lot of us at the Campfire don’t. But, I gotta admit that once in awhile some series comes along and we rent it from Netflix. We really liked “Deadwood,” for instance. And, “Rome,” “’The Sopranos, and “Fringe.” Getting them from Netflix, we can watch them the way I promised people could watch them, with no commercials, when one of my first jobs was to sell cable TV. That was the pitch. You pay a small monthly fee, but you get to see everything without commercials. It was a good idea that lasted about five minutes. It got their foot in the door. Now, we pay a large fee and most of the content is commercials. Somehow, they got us to pay for the commercials as well as the propaganda, in order to watch programs that used to be free. It’s kinda like having to get your own switch to be beaten with. But, I digress…

Once again, though, I’m hooked on a show – “The Sons of Anarchy.” Since we get everything late, you may have seen it. It is a lot like “The Sopranos,” but it revolves around a West Coast Biker gang family rather than an East Coast Italian Mob Family. The characters are multifaceted and the plot lines are intricate and very often violent. The characters in the extended “family” are strong, ruthless, sociopathic, and oddly likeable and vulnerable at times. There is a rich texture of ethnicity and a strong code to live by. How they express their individuality within the confines of the shared values of the group is interesting. The fact that they all share a bond more important than anything else is fundamental to both the Sopranos and the Sons. They are more than a crime syndicate. They are an extended family as well, albeit sick and dysfunctional.

I ask myself “why?” Both of these organizations grow from a culture that is old and corrupt. Post collapse, as it were. Sicily, apparently, has been run by different warlords, or Godfathers, for generations, once the Roman Empire disintegrated. The Sons of Anarchy commit horrid crimes with little regard for the greater cultures sense of decency or decorum. Gun-running, dope-dealing, sexual exploitation, and other malfeasances are primary ways to generate outlaw income. Both are kept in power by the collusion of the state, the banks, the media, the politicians. All corrupted and bought off.

That’s the part that I find myself dwelling upon. What happens to a human being when the ideals of the culture are found to be corrupt? When the ones in charge – church or government, police, banks, companies, et al, are generally known to be criminals and thieves? To whom do you turn to for help and support?

Family, tribe, mob or gang.

In a morally collapsed culture, one chooses to either be a straight, compliant citizen ruled and taken advantage of by the corrupt cabal, or oppose them and become an outlaw resistor. Of course, many succumb to the individualized pressures and abuse coursing through their childhoods and lives. Addiction, incarceration, tissue damage and death are results from bad choices in damaging circumstances.

Is this where we are headed when the general population gets hip to the fact that pretty much everything that we have been taught about ourselves and our nation is false? That we’ve been suckered and used, poisoned, and swindled by the very ones who command the most respect, conduct the world’s business, make the most money, lead the church denominations, make the laws, and have sworn to protect us. I guess it depends on our own personal experience.

Not all of us are bikers or importers of olive oil.

I don’t know if anyone as yet has come up with a series about outlaw mall rats or guerrilla farmers. Just think, we might be on the verge of something new in this Kali Yuga age of deterioration, war, fear, and despair. New to us, anyway.

It ain’t going to be easy. We are going to have to be able to hold our own in the mix of the differing locals vying for control, I would imagine. An example is our struggle against the U.N.’s Agenda 21. Then there are those pesky drug cartels, bikers, Nazis, and minions. But, what if, in small towns, or even apartment complexes all over the place, we reached out to each other and declared peace amongst ourselves? What if we stopped using plastic? What if we got together a code to live by that actually did provide support and protection as well as equality, fairness and freedom? What if these parentless mall mutants tweeted or twittered themselves into a cohesive group and took over shuttered malls, and made the best of a difficult situation?

Despite cosmic events, earth changes, dynasties, wars, pestilence, greed and idiocy, life seems to go on. Until it doesn’t. We also have courage, friendship, knowledge, joy, loyalty, trust and love. Those have been constants as well, in many forms. That is what has gotten us through the hard times in the past, and no doubt will again.

I gotta feeling that the ruling class would like nothing better than to quell a “revolution” with some serious shock and awe. Even if they have to make up the combatants themselves, like these so-called “Black Panthers” that supposedly want to kill white people. Or, suddenly, “the anarchists” who are stalking the Republican convention and probably hard at work setting up IED devises to blow up innocent civilians like some domestic Taliban. Great! At the slightest outbreak of protest or civil disobedience (false flag or not), they can come at us with a dizzying assortment of para-military hardware and advanced and enhanced weaponry guaranteed to keep us in place (while making money on it all as well).

What I would wager they really do not want is to have the citizenry reject the whole paradigm. Shun them. Turn off the TV during the conventions. Don’t purchase anything advertised on the tube. Don’t send them money. Take your money out of the banks and the markets. Don’t vote for anyone in Congress who voted for the bank bailouts. Cancel your newspaper. Don’t use your cell phone during the conventions. Laugh at them. Make other plans.

Protest. But protest in a way that matters and won’t get you clubbed or used as an excuse to increase police and paramilitary brutality. We need to flex our financial muscles. If there is one thing they have taught us, it is that “money talks.” We need to speak to them in their own language.

We could say, “We are the many. You are the few.”

Perhaps humankind is not really a herd. Maybe it’s a pack.