Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Imagine if Dr. King were with us. For a fleeting moment I felt he was this morning, when I saw the quote below on signage in front of a Catholic Church in Gowanus, Brooklyn:

"Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Something our political leaders (and wannabe leaders) should show. If only.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

  

Running for Your Life: Deep State S—t

Here are some uncheery thoughts.

Political campaigns may just be the leading growth business in post-industrial America. (Hurry! Please donate today to CAMPAIGN _________. There has never been a greater threat to civilization as we know it than the prospect of a ____________ Party victory. Don’t delay! Pony up today!)

And what do you get for that investment? Hope and change? Or more of the same?

Surprise! More of the same. That equates to trillions spent on defense and foreign policy prerogatives that have been proven failures, at best, and elitist pet projects, at worst.

Do politicians earn the right to represent us after filling their pockets from coins from our pockets? Yes. Do they actually control (or even mildly have influence to fiddle with) the levers of power in such a way as to earn the trust we put in them by our honest investments in their business. No. Not even close.

I read a lot of books: novels at home and nonfiction – primarily political and social science books – during my daily commutes to and from my paying job. Hands down the most interesting I’ve read this season is Mike Lofgren’s THE DEEP STATE http://bit.ly/2e4U19B.

DEEP STATE s—t is scary s—t. As scary as Trump being president? Well, no. But scary enough to warrant a new wave of folk considering asylum in Canada if its central messages were to be given wider distribution.

In our daily news feeds, the deep state doesn’t get discussed much. Consider what J. Edgar Hoover did in the 1950s-1970s (See THE BURGLARY http://bit.ly/2ebfJrr )  What Dwight D. Eisenhower complained about in his famous military industrial complex speech in 1961.

In the Hill-Pill debates, what time is given to balancing privacy concerns with national security? What gets classified? We know that Hillary used a personal e-mail server but do we ask the question: What does get classified? Who is in charge of those policies and practices? What are the checks and balances?

The deep state – the Washington, DC, Puzzle Palace – is in charge. And democracy? That’s the fastest-growing civilian business in post-industrial Amerca. It’s like melting gold and pouring it into an unused well in coal country.

Fraud, baby.

Next: Running for Your Life: Pace Setting

  

Running for Your Life: Faceplant or Face-plant?

Hmm. One word or hyphenated?

Current Merriam-Webster shows the word as hyphenated, to mean a sudden face-first fall.

In word use the hyphen has a way of dissolving – usually over a long period of time like forest rock giving way to matsutake mushrooms. But that process can be hurried by constant use.

In my case that applies. It just so happens the “faceplant” has emerged as my own private injury method. On Thursday, Sept. 29, only two days before my scheduled half-marathon in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, I managed my second faceplant in two years. The first one occurred when I faceplanted while walking the dog: one hand holding a hot coffee, the other the dog leash, and Wham!, I tripped over Thurber’s back leg and went down chin-first on pavement.

Seven stitches later I went to The Post to work on a Sunday.

Then, on that last Thursday in September, I’m face-first again, this time while on a final training run before the Oct. 1 race. While on a Prospect Park trail I was zooming along, feeling no pain, when I tripped on a tree root – Screw You, Tree Root, my daughter K rejoined – and fell even harder than the first time: Right on the same spot as I’d injured during the dog-tripping incident. Then off to the clinic: 12 stitches this time (because the collision was harder, my teeth opened a wound in the roof of my mouth.)

The upshot? No Bay Ridge Half. And yes, this result in the spelling of “faceplant.” It’s on my mind so much now that when I close my eyes I see the hyphen dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in water.   

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

Running for Your Life: Yeah, That Addiction Thing

Okay, so you didn’t drop everything and read the “Put Down Your Phone” essay by Andrew Sullivan that I posted last month. Don’t worry. Here’s another, this one in that swishy new Economist lifestyle magazine that continues to find its way to my door at home.

This report, by Ian Leslie, is called “The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive.” http://bit.ly/2dusGxV. Redeem yourself and stop everything to read THIS article. These Internet addiction pieces do seem to be piling up, like leaves falling year-round in our so-confused climate.

Some beauts. For those who insist on keeping their phone in their hands, rather than convince themselves they have time on the hands.

• When motivation is high enough, or a task easy enough, people become responsive to triggers such as the vibration of a phone, Facebook’s red dot, the email from the fashion store featuring a time-limited offer on jumpsuits.

• Respondents spent all their hours thinking about how to organize their lives in order to take pictures they could post to each persona, which meant they weren’t able to enjoy whatever they were doing, which made them stressed and unhappy.

• No matter how useful the products, the system itself is tilted in favor of its designers. The house always wins.

And finally:

• In theory, we can all opt out of the loops of incentive and reward which encircle us, but few of us choose to. It is just so much easier to accept and connect. If we are captives of captology, then we are willing ones.

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Today’s “Greats” honors Dwight D. Eisenhower. Why? For the greatest political speech in post-TV American history.

His topic? On what now we take as a vested interest that will never be torn asunder: the military-industrial complex.

(And this speech in 1961 occurred long before the military- and defense contract-serving NSA got its act down on tracking every shred of the people’s social and political lives.)

Consider these ideas and just try to imagine them being uttered by any one of our current leaders, in or out of office:

• We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

• It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

• We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

If only Eisenhower were with us. Alas, he is not. But these ideas are sound and the MIC much more threatening to our “democracy” than it was in this great American’s day.

Talk about making America great again! Let’s do something about the unstinting control exercised in our lives by the MIC of 2016.

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t