Hippy Dippy Weather

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

A Knock At The Door

or

Hippy Dippy Weather (Man)

There was recently a gathering, a march, a whateveryoucallit where some folks, young folks, poser hippies, tree hugging geezers and environmental radicals protested genetically engineered foods, chemtrails, contrails, the destruction of our planet by big oil and the military industrial complex, the NRA, FBI, CIA, and the entire Republican mindset ; naturally I showed up.

I tell people that I’ve been in attendance for years; civil rights, reproductive rights, demonstrations to end violence and crime; food not bombs, roses not guns, love not war, hugs not drugs and candidates of my choice. I’ve marched, rallied, protested and assembled for decades; my complaints are many and the results of my complaining are paltry. I was an activist in the sixties when we got our asses kicked; fifty years later, Big Brother still has us by the short and curlies. The only things that I can bet on at these noble and fruitless gatherings is (a.) that they will be small potatoes compared with the protests that other countries pull off (mortality); and (b.) my photo will be taken and updated somewhere in the files of the not so secret police (immortality) . Someday, in the dead of night, they’ll round up all dissidents (geezers first), and the country will be left to people who don’t give a rat’s whisker about anything but being able to get their fat butts behind the wheel of a gas guzzler, pick up some fast food, carry an assault weapon to church to worship a heartless god, keep their women at home (barefoot, pregnant), and to hell with anyone who doesn’t act/look/think like them. Not that I’m paranoid or anything.

I think social media and electronics are responsible for my suspicions that someone is watching me, listening in, taking notes and compiling a dossier with my name and all of the people I know, associate with or are related to. Take FB for example: I have ‘friends’, some of those friends have hundreds of pals and, in turn, they have hundreds. How many degrees of separations exist in that reckoning? Answer: I’m friends with everybody in the world and naturally that makes/connects me with everyone from Bin Laden to Obama (although, Osama has let his page expire), anything I post is open to scrutiny. Somewhere there’s a list of the books I’ve read, music I like and photos I’ve taken; someday a red flag will go up somewhere (“Mr. LaMancusa would you like to explain why you youtubed  ‘Gangnam Style’?”) and (BAM!) it’s goodnight Irene.  Me? No, I’m not paranoid.

While we’re on the subject: “that this country is the leader of the free world is open to a wide interpretation of the words”. Do we not get much of our news from corporate sponsored stations? Expect them tell us only what they want us to know; anything that threatens the profits or security of big business, the government or the people I protest against is greased. Like ‘newspeak’ in the book ‘1984’ by George Orwell; they don’t believe we have any memories of stuff that happened yesterday, last year or in the presidency before last.

They’re not just out to get me… they’re out to get us all. They feed us propaganda, sensationalist stories, gossip and which friggin’ movie star has f**ked up their life; which one is pregnant with another man’s baby and what they’re wearing when they take a whiz. Served up like a trough of toffee.

Consider; when I swipe my credit card, give my pin number, show my ID, log in, sign up, show up, tune in or turn on, somewhere, someone can track me, monitor me, spy on me. There are cameras everywhere, eyes in the sky, security, scrutiny and surveillance and don’t you disbelieve it. And yet, and yet, we cannot catch and prosecute criminals except on CSI TV. Think about it.

Believing that there is no possibility of clandestine law enforcement, confinement facilities and/or ways of erasing people makes you dumber than I look. To believe that elections are fair and impartial, that politicians aren’t worse than crooked and the medical profession isn’t looking out for their bottom’s line is at the very least… naïve.  To suppose that court systems deal out impartial justice and that the government is not listening to your conversations is like saying that big business and the military industrial complex is not running the government in the first place. I know, I know… love it or leave it.

A recent oration by the Canadian Minister of Defense (Hon. Paul Hellyer) pointed out that, by gum, the world is not run by governments, wars are not started by governments or the populace and that we do have at least three species of outworlders living on this planet (a couple that are working with our government) for gum knows what reason. Check it out, if ‘they’ haven’t taken it down by now; there are certain things ‘they’ don’t want you to consider, having an open mind is one of them. I could allow myself to drown in drama dogma and occurrences that will keep me off balance but that would just play into ‘them’.

Have you followed the doings of that big GMO seed and pesticide company? Did you know that they have just purchased their own army? Do you know which president has bought land in a country with no extradition policy? Do you realize that voting rights, healthcare, women’s rights, education and climate change are still on the agenda of those damn tree huggers after half a century of demonstrations that only ask the rest of us numbskulls to wake the f**k up? Did you read Charlie Reese’s final column? Do.

Do you really think George Carlin was jus