I Have To Laugh

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When you get up close to this sculpture, you get a true sense of what being an actual ankle-biter would be like. Those unaware of the term might be interested to know that some people call children, especially small, precocious and strong spirited ones, ankle-biters. In my estimation, this reflects almost as much ignorance toward children and making a fiberglass statue of a native chief does toward native people. How using toxic chemicals to edify and memorialize the spirit of a people our forefathers nearly wiped out, who sanctified Mother Earth, can be justified...I have always wondered.

In the end, we can bear witness to many injustices, understand the disconnect between war speak and reality. To give just a short list, we have collateral damage when we kill innocents; smart bombs are actually just as stupid as all the other bombs in that they can only be "used" to destroy; military intelligence is really just conniving, duplicity and a veiled threat or intimidation (which is the opposite of intelligent) We must look to our world to make sense of what is around us, to make our way through the turmoil, the jungle of unregulated greed and fear mongers, to negotiate the language of lies. In our search for truth, getting straight on the language we choose to speak, the ideas we use to shape our reality and the quality of our mental pallette that will be used to color and interpret the data we do receive.

When we bump up against a wall of crap, or one or another of the vestiges of The Big Lie, a lifesaving reaction is to laugh, because if you investigate further or dwell on the madness, it may well make you cry. I'm sure that on some level this echoes words that I tried to put together in a prior post, or at least tries to clarify the meaning behind them.The iconographic images that we are fed about native people are often of the stoic and unafraid "chief", the defeated alcoholic, or the wild savage, riding bareback and firing either stolen bullets or flaming arrows at a circled wagon train. Many, of my generation, have seen cigar store Indians, picked up cheap at antique stores before people began to realize that these images are "collectable" if only because they are so distasteful. These realizations and understandings of our reality have to make you laugh, or they would make us cry.

The truth is that we perpetrated genocide on the true Americans, continuing the onslaught for over five hundred years. To this day, we rape and torture the very sacred Earth that they aspired to remain one with, so in essence, we are continuing to burn, bomb and bulldoze their temple. Beyond that, the sacred creation, that which all life flows from. If we were Islamists, we would be the ones whose innocent neighbors would be wiped out for. We continue to use war like Raid, the popular insect killing aerosol poison in a can. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing people with t-shirts proclaiming that they were abut to open a can of whoop ass on anyone who crossed them. The can looked a bit like a Raid canister. They were funny, but only in that they relate to a definite reality in our day and age. We had a fellow, who was supposed to be merging onto the highway, just yesterday, become belligerent and flip us off because he did not like the fact that when he felt the need to merge, we had not gotten out of his way. Clearly, he has never been educated as to what merge actually means, but he was feeling like the injured party. This too is funny, because someone must have told him that he is always right, no matter what reality might have to say about the situation.

Another layer of hilarity is slathered on top, like decadent icing on a sinfully fluffy brownie, the probable reason that the irate driver was acting like a bully is that he was coddled in his formative years, probably because his own mother had been slapped down and made to feel inadequate by her spouse and her response was to never want to bring the pain of learning to her son. The really funny thing is that these sorts of power and control dynamics and the culture that has allowed them to continue is based on the lie that bullies, mostly rich, white, men, have the power to rule and the rest of us need to get out of their way. The funniest thing is that we continue to act as if that great big lie is true. It is even funny that now, the slaves don't need chains because there literally has become nowhere to hide.

This is also part of why the revolution will never be televised...and that is funny too, because ignoring the people and our wishes, is no longer working. Finally, after hundreds of years, the truth is out, the jig is up and the piper needs to be paid. The oligarchs want us to foot the bill for their excesses and continue to keep our heads down, shoulder to the wheel of their debts with own obligations on our backs, yet the majority see through the lies, like a dissolving doily that used to cover a relatively tiny patch of horror. The funny thing is that we are living in the most profound and uninterrupted time of peace on Earth, but the cameras keep multiplying the dwindling carnage, making up more and more ridiculous reasons to blow things up.