Conditions Are Always Impossible - Episode 1

Hi folks!

I promise you that for our debut, we sincerely intended to offer gems of lasting wisdom (or at least funny and intellectually stimulating ideas to amuse you) but since the election hit so many of our friends like an emotional asteroid, the moment has stolen our opening theme. I really hope this one makes some of my old leftist chums feel a bit better, and also helps my friends of fiercely independent bent and those on the right, be a little better understood by alienated friends and family.

It is just one family here, folks. Every idea that takes us further away from that, weakens all of our hearts.

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And here was me, thinking this was going to be easy!

Finally finished the very first episode of “Conditions Are Always Impossible” and wow, was that ever an educational thing to do. I will never roll my eyes at anyone else’s low-rent production values, ever again – promise! (way more to juggle all at once, than I anticipated).

Of course, I have always been crazy for trying new art media, tech, and kinds of work, so I long ago noticed “Nothing makes you work harder on pre-production, than all the problems you leave yourself to solve later, in post.” Which is a fancy way to say – please pardon the many rough edges, we’re making all of these mistakes for the first time.

We even have to try to learn to talk in forty-minute segments – which reminded me so much of running out of tape, in the old cassette days – thanks to poor-man’s zoom limits – and it was because of this, that a few subjects got stranded in between side A and side B ‘takes’.

I’ll try to fill-in the important blanks below – but they really won’t make any sense unless you listen to the show, first – so please LISTEN – and I do sincerely hope you enjoy it, and come out the far side of it feeling a little less thoroughly doomed, lonely and/or hopeless, if not altogether energized!

And no, you won’t miss any fine visuals, if you want to putter around the house and do some chores, while we make you giggle, cheer and fume, in hopefully useful sequence! (just trying to haul my analog book-junkie posterior, into the twenty-first century)

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- Hedges’ point about this election being a battle between corporate media versus oligarch media is wrongheaded and even dangerous in a way he ought personally to recognize. In truth it was a war between corporate media and every other form of media put together – independent media – some of which was broadcast on the software of oligarchs, some not – but it was the fact that they carried critical and lively CITIZEN VOICES – very much including his own (once an insider – but exiled for decades now) – which made it all so powerful. Not malign super-actors – or dumb zombie-horde audiences!

Hedges did superb programs on underclass life in America for many years on RT – and then had his entire body of work scrubbed from the web in an instant, just because Russia was willing to pay him to be honest about America realities, and American corporate media wasn’t. That was world class reporting he was doing that whole time, not treason! (the same kind of logical conclusion as was implied by his own oligarch idea – though of course, everyone speaks before thinking, sometimes).

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- Feminism means a lot of different things, from simple liberation for women, to an assertion of innate moral superiority for some over others, but for people who come from countries where laws and customs are still heavily oppressive, the idea that we took the thing too far, or at least down a road that makes us less, rather than more happy (that is, we lost contact with finding each other again, and not only ourselves) is much harder to get to.

On the other hand, they absolutely do see, and are much saddened and bothered by, our weird western levels of alienation and self-involvement (see the consequences of alienation clearly, if not the causes). Of course there are many more factors – but as in the talk – the question is – what do we do with all that individual freedom? How do we come together again, to be the bigger and better things we humans used to also be – enduring communities and cultures.

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- I am ashamed of myself for not mentioning Julian Assange ahead of Snowden. Snowden’s case is simpler and clearer for illustrating the hypocrisy of corporate media, but Assange paid such a staggering price, he deserves the hero’s laurels first (as I feel sure Snowden himself would agree).

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- Finally, as Kit Klarenburg’s superb reporting reminds us, regularly – RAND actually publishes their incredibly creepy strategic papers (or at least, shares some of them with the general public). If you think I am making up the level of malice and avarice in the long term planning of the war state, please go and do a bit of reading there, first (and read Klarenburg, also – really outstanding stuff, again and again).

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Cheers, folks!

Remember – one team only (all divisions, falsehoods)

And there ain’t no do-overs, neither!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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PS – The weirdly chilling line I meant to add, when talking about the impact of 9/11 was this:

“September Eleventh was when even the coolest people stopped pretending they never watched television”

- Renewed the product life-cycle.

“Never let a good disaster go to waste” really is how these bastards roll.

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PPS – Apologies for the length, but I know at least a dozen people who need to hear all of this – though admittedly, only some will take it as a loving and informative call to solidarity, while others will no doubt consider it to be a rebuke, of sorts. The first group are correct, and I trust the latter will come around in time.

(I believe in the spirit of people, and that no other force on earth comes anywhere close).

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Here are a few recent pieces which bear on parts of our wide ranging discussion.