Friday Night at 8: Steering the Straight Course

Obligatory YouTube this Friday night — Ray Charles, “Hit the Road Jack” (replacement for “Busted” which got busted off of YouTube)

We got news coming down the pipeline about White House press secretary writing a tell-all and the very media indicted in that tell-all is covering it.  Just when you think things can’t get more surreal … well, I dunno, I think we’re all pretty much aware that surreal is the flavor of the day here in these Disunited States.

The story of the day.  Oh but there are so many stories of the day.

I am all for staying informed.

I’m one of the fortunate ones who can get their news from the blogs and especially here at Docudharma, where our news aggregators and analysts are second to none!

But it is Friday and I’m done with the work week.  I tend to use this day to reflect a bit and check my navigating skills to see that I’m still on the straight course.

We’re wheeling towards the Presidential elections as we are also confronted more and more each day with the crimes of the crooks who have stolen power from We the People.  Scotty’s revelations were no revelations to those of us who have been following the daily crimes of this misAdministration.  We knew he was lying at the time and we knew how and why those lies were put forth.

What’s new is that now everyone else is finding this out as well, in a juicy, gossipy way.  The very media who are complicit in these lies continue to follow the dollar and so report a story damning to themselves as the mindless entities they are and report it to entertain the crowds, to offer yet more of their bread and circuses.

We’ve got folks who are pissed off in New Orleans and all along the Gulf Coast.  Across America folks are getting very grumpy as they see their houses taken from them, their health care become non-existent, gas prices rise to the point where one community college has actually shortened the school week so their students can save on fuel.

America is waking up in a bad bad mood.

Me?  I’m listening and I’m steering a straight course.  My life is no longer defined by the politics of the day and the spin thereof, the shiny bright distractions whose only purpose is to pull our minds into a vortex of outrage and spit us back out again, bewildered and exhausted and oppressed.

And what is this course I am steering, you may well ask?

Well I’m not ashamed to tell you.

I am steering the straight course to my own power as a human being, my own humanity.  Our present culture tries to steal that power every single day in so many ways.  It’s been said that the fish rots from the head down, and our culture is the body of that fish, rotting and stinking.  I won’t pretend the stink is Chanel No. 5.

I don’t look to our so-called political or cultural “leaders” any more, even the ones whom I admire, and there are many of them.  I have and will continue to appreciate them, but not as my leaders.  Not any more.

I look to folks like me, folks here at Docudharma and elsewhere in the blogosphere, folks in my life who have some common sense and aren’t taken in by all the shiny distractions.

And even then, I no longer will follow blindly, or as NL said so well:

… we should never suspend our critical thinking, no matter whether we are talking to friend or foe. And I think that is an important lesson to learn.

I’ll keep my critical thinking and welcome the critical thinking of others as well.  I find that also somehow increases trust, though I couldn’t tell you why.

If We the People are going to take back our real power, there’s no one else to turn to but ourselves.  So I’m steering the straight course.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no time to get stoned!  No adventure is without real moments of recreation and entertainment.  Sing it, Brother Ray …

Happy Friday to all and I hope your weekend is wonderful.