Tags
American political commentary, Draining the swamp, Say no to hate, Seek the light, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Painting by Ivan Albright – 1943
Based on the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Get over it, America! I’m doing nothing wrong. It’s all legitimate. It’s what privileged families and corporations have been doing for generations. Because we can. Money can buy anything and anyone.
Get over it, America! For generations, our corporations have expanded across the world, exploiting, and amassing wealth so that you can live the American Dream.
Get over it, America! I’m the only one who can save America from its enemies. I’m the chosen one. I’m a stable genius. I know what’s best for America. Don’t believe the fake news: It’s a witch hunt.
Instead of draining the swamp in Washington DC, as promised, our president has forced us into the swamp with him. He exposes the foul depths of the soul of our nation—much like The Picture of Dorian Gray—in which we the body politic are co-conspirators by our complicity, negligence, or silence. Hate disfigures our countenance. Cruelty shrivels our heart. Greed drags us down to the deep.
There’s no getting over the onslaught we now face daily. But we can say, “enough.” We can seek the light of reason, truth, and justice.
Three Worlds One Vision 
I am reading your words again and again, your writing is very powerful. I wish they would get over it, but to get over things they need to accept things. 😉🤔
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Thank you, Sara. If we cannot see ourselves for who we truly are as a nation, we will not be able to bring about real change. I keep hearing Americans say, “This is not who we are.” But this is who we are. As long as everything was well in our world, we didn’t want to know.
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Brave words !
Who will bell the cat ?
How does one remove dictators ?
Invade, blackmail, assassinate …charge,
try, convict and execute !
Change will come
1. From within
2. By ballot
3. ?
Et tu brutae
With Supreme Court judges in his back
pocket Humpty Dumpty powers are
endless.
God bless and save USA from
it’s self inflicted Armageddon !
Que sera
Kamtan
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We in the USA are, indeed, facing a self-inflicted Armageddon. But it’s also one with disastrous ramifications for the entire world. Here stands a world leader who wields the power that can cripple a nation and its people with economic sanctions and blast its cities to rubble.
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I saw an Ivan Albright exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute several years ago, including the image of Dorian Gray you used, from the movie adapted from Oscar Wilde’s morality tale. Gray is presented as a handsome, naive young man who is led astray by an older mentor (perhaps a Roy Cohen type).
DJT is a given now. The question for all of us is what WE will do to remove him legally. Too many of those who would wish a different POTUS rage at their TV screens, don’t purchase or read the few great newspapers we have and thereby support the free press, don’t participate in get-out-the-vote efforts, don’t contribute even $1.00 to support candidates in opposition to him, don’t write or call their congressman, etc.
Citizenship requires more than voting in a general election. I hope your writing, Rosaliene, motivates your readers to look at the only thing they can change directly: themselves.
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Attitudes do change but often influenced
by our leaders…not holding my breadth !
DJT may well be with us until 2024.
Time will tell !
Bring on November 2020
Kamtan
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Dr. Stein, Oscar Wilde’s novel made a great impression on me when I first read it during my high school years. After hearing our Acting White House Chief of Staff utter those words, “Get over it,” the Picture of Dorian Gray came to mind. We the body politic rarely get to see the dirty undercurrents in action that shape our national and foreign policies. DJT has changed all that.
I agree when you say that WE must all become engaged, in whatever way we can, in the politic process for his legal removal. But, just removing him won’t change anything. DJT is yet another puppet–though one who is taking advantage of the power of the presidency invested in him–in the grand scheme of the minority globalized power elite. We need radical change.
Are we ready to look at that true ugly image of what we have become as a nation? Are we ready to right the wrongs of our past, built on the genocide of the indigenous peoples of this land and the blood of African slaves? Are we ready to embrace the Other as our brother and sister?
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may your heart
stay strong
& find a peaceful
refuge, Rosaliene!
someday i’ll again
pay attention to the follies
of humans 🙂
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Thanks for dropping by, David, and for your kind wishes 🙂 Thanks, too, for sharing that beautiful and heartwarming story posted on your blog yesterday.
I find refuge in beginning each day with reflections and meditation and at weekends among the plants in my garden. Plants have so much to teach us humans, ever so busy fighting for a space to call our own or grabbing all we can for ourselves.
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Great post, Rosaliene. Kamtan asks how do we remove dictators. There’s a simple answer to that and it’s the most difficult of all. Dictators don’t just happen. They are gestated in, and born from, our own hearts. They are the product of billions of nurtured false beliefs, of lusts unchecked, of greed, of desires for destructive things not needed. They arise from refusal to take responsibility for one’s own life and effects upon others and the environment. We are the primary source of dictatorship. Within our ashes are live coals that keep dictators burning with their own passions. We need to recognize this and we need to make that supreme effort to change ourselves. Voting, protesting, boycotting, yelling, screaming, vandalizing, all of that are drugs that soothe or add fuel to the fire. If there is a dictator, under any guise, living in my heart, I need to kill her, or him. Then I need to learn how to act compassionately towards all and sundry. That is the most difficult act of all.
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I agree, Sha’Tara, “dictators don’t just happen.” We humans have created our own Hell on Earth and have made possible the grave inequality and injustice that we witness and experience today. Yes, each one of us must find a way “to act compassionately towards all and sundry.” With our current unfolding climate and ecological crises, a time is fast approaching when each one of us will be put to the test. Our walls of hate and violence towards the Other–under renewed, fevered construction here in the USA–may well serve as our self-imposed isolation and mausoleum of Earth’s once greatest empire.
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I’d venture to say that you are experiencing and witnessing a typical end to a non-typical empire. Empires are unsustainable entities. They can only exist by absorbing other groups, nations or empires. America has reached its apex of growth and now must follow the unwritten rule: collapse upon itself. The collapses fall the heaviest upon the “homeland” of any empire unless hidden by some major global catastrophe, as the collapse of the British Empire reaching its apex during “la Belle Epoque” and specifically during the Edwardian times. WWI hid the beginning of the collapse, WWII hid the final collapse and the imperial power moved to the USA leaving Britain weakened, confused, disoriented (pun intended!) with a skeleton “empire” of little capitalistic value, just a lot of independence troubles. Unlike other empires, the US did not invest in its imperial conquests. It set up no American spaces where American migrants could go and establish businesses and homes among the conquered populations. They chose to exploit and suppress using military bases. The speeded up level of exploitation could only result in over exploitation, increasing oppression, increasing violence and bloodshed, increasing rebellions. While the home rank and file paid in money, debt and bodies to guarantee the profits of US based corporations, bankers and an inflated military, little of what was ripped from the conquered ever came back to support the homeland’s infrastructure. The process was pure extortion from both ends to feed a dwindling and morbidly enriched middle – the rise of the billionaire class. Essentially, the US empire subscribed to a scorched earth policy of exploitation abroad and overwhelming debt at home. These are unsustainable. Now comes the end. No matter how the bag is shaken, what will come out is mostly shells and hulls. They can be sorted, lined up, painted and made to look pretty but they won’t feed anyone.
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Both of your comments….excellent
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As always, powerful words Rosaliene! The Democratic Party must get its act together for once and present a compelling alternative to the madness that now consumes Washington, D. C.
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Thanks, Henry. Sad to say, I don’t believe that the Democratic Party has the power to end the madness consuming our government. They, too, are trapped in the swamp of corporate control.
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To those who try to justify their opposition to impeaching Trump by saying leave it to the voters to decide if they want to dump Trump in the Nov. 2020 election, do they realize how much more damage he could do to America, both internally and in America’s standing in the world, in the next 1+ years?
The moral fabric of this country has been plummeting daily downhill with ever-growing momentum since he was elected. Trump voters, take off your blinders and REALLY put America first instead of your delusional faith in Trump.
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It won’t happen…
Trump will be re-elected in 2020 Nov.
USA is stuck with him until 2024 or before .
In my opinion
Kamtan
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Thanks for dropping by, MisterMuse 🙂 From what I can glean from media reports, Trump supporters know only the “alternate reality” fed to them daily on right-wing TV and radio talk shows. Until they feel the pain of his policies, as is occurring now among farmers suffering the fallout of his trade war with China, they will continue to support him.
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Bravo!
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Thanks for dropping by, Kreb 🙂
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Wow, well spoken, Rosaliene.
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Thanks very much, Dr. Bramhall 🙂
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The phrase “exposes the foul depths of the soul of our nation” expresses perfectly what has happened to us.
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USA culture or corruption and death !
Founding fathers must be turning in their
graves.
In my opinion
Kamtan
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Sadly, Ken, not many Americans are able to acknowledge this. Only with self-awareness can be work together to bring about the changes that we need for a better America for all of us, not just a few.
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Very powerful words that just don’t stop ringing.
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Thanks, Jay, that was my intention. Let the ringing spur you to action.
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Powerful!!!!
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Thanks a bunch, Pallavi 🙂
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Grrrr. And well put!
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Thanks for dropping by 🙂 Love your blog!
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Trump did not win by a majority vote…
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HD winner by default !
Yep !
Will HD be pushed replaced or resign ?
Looks like USA has him until 2020-2024
November 2020 not far away
Kamtan
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If Potus is to be removed it will come from within his own party !
Et tu Brutae
Timescale ? Million dollar question.
Week month year looong time in
politricks !
Kamtan
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yes, yes, yes, and more yes! You have such a profound ability to communicate great depth of feeling in a few words and it is stunning. Keep sharing your passion. It is great to see, friend ❤
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Thanks, Shayleene! Coming from such an excellent writer as you are, your comments are very much appreciated ❤
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Excellent and powerful writing, Rosaliene! Couldn’t agree more.
Btw The Picture of Dorian Grey is one of my favourite novels by one of my favourite writers. 😊
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Thanks, Sarah! Sorry to have missed your comment.
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No worries. 😊
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As I look around on Thanksgiving, I realize that the middle class appears trapped in the pursuit of greed. Why do we always want more?
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Greed is but an attitude of humans.
Their Achilles heel ! Selfish greed
Its malignant Tumor/cancer.
Humans are blessed with the ability
to identify greed as a neccessary evil
in so doing exercise compassion in
addressing the evil it is.
Mans best friends “dogs” are instinctively
greedy hence the phrase “dog in the manger”
….humans are blessed with the ability
to rationalise / identify greed.
We are not dogs yet few behave like such.
We are compassionate animals not irrational instinctive dogs in the manger.
Viv la Vida
Kamtan 🇬🇧🇬🇾🇬🇧🇪🇸🇬🇧👽
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James, I wish I knew the answer.
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