A Life Well Lived

     Today it occurred to me that my current age, fifty-six years and ten days, is the same as the lifespan of Adolf Hitler, who died ten days after his fifty-sixth birthday.  Given that Hitler was a prematurely aged man during his final years; that he was addicted to a smorgasbord of drugs; that Parkinson's disease increased his daily misery; that he suffered from wish fulfillment fantasies of some incredible reversal of Germany's hopeless military fortunes--I'm doing well by comparison.
     He'd married Eva Braun the day before their suicides, deaths from murder, or however it happened.  In any case, I'm in better shape physically, mentally, psychologically, I'm less likely doomed to go to Hell.
     I don't believe in Hell, the kind of thing seen in Bosch's paintings with the bird-headed Devil eating the damned, shitting them out through a hole in the seat of his throne.  I don't know if Hitler traveled, or travels, through the Devil's guts as punishment--I don't even know if he, or anyone else, deserves that as a forever recurring punishment for execrable and harmful earthly behavior.  One of my religious studies teachers said, "It could be that even Hitler has been forgiven [through divine grace, I guess]."
     As a peaceful person, I nevertheless feel enmity towards those who inflict tremendous damage on those who don't deserve such treatment.  War-makers and rapacious destroyers satisfying their own greedy lusts for dominance, power, and money sicken me, although had I been born into an upper class recruiting the impressionable young into politics and big business (and the CIA) I may have developed attitudes common to such groups.
     The poor, these upper echelons believe, are expendable.  Underpay them, let them fight the wars we create and profit from, let them believe the horseshit propaganda our controlled news media generates, get them worrying about made up stories, like Russiagate, that have nothing to do with the economic realities of their lives.  "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" is a line from a popular fantasy film but it nonetheless illustrates the reality that the Fourth Estate, when controlled by power and big money, doesn't want you to know what's going on.
     Hence, our political "heroes," like Bernie Sanders, who betrayed his own progressive movement by exiting the 2020 Democratic Primary in favor of the corrupt and odious war criminal Joe Biden, even plays along with the fantasy, urging his progressive supporters, and shaming those who don't, to support Biden, a man diametrically opposed to their interests and needs.
     Sanders, one of ninety-six senators voting for the CARES Act, the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history, but masquerading as a Coronavirus relief package with a single $1,200 payment to Americans urged to stay home while the economy dies, has revealed himself as more interested in Democratic "unity," than in saying "Fuck you" to the powers bent on destroying non-rich Americans.
     What would Hitler have done in the same circumstance?  Impossible to know, but would he have robbed his own people to such a vast extent?  Under the right circumstances, maybe so, but I don't think that fucking the German economy by screwing workers on a gargantuan scale was part of Hitler's plan.  Would I, were I part of the uppermost classes, have voted to rob the American people as did ninety-six senators and most of the House of Representatives, including the Progressive Caucus?
     Some people believe Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, eighty years old and opposed to Medicare For All (thus, in favor of killing tens of thousands of Americans every year), is a strong vocal and ideological opponent of President Trump.  They're wrong.  Pelosi, with Trump, allowed to pass the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history, on purpose.  Subsequent Coronavirus relief packages also lack Medicare For All, or even small concessions to the medical element of a global pandemic killing, to date, approximately 90,000 Americans, thirty times the number of people killed on 9/11.
     The milk of human kindness does not flow from the cold dead tits of Nancy Pelosi.
     As an independent thinker, I prefer to believe I wouldn't have voted for the Cares Act, that as a senator I would have put a stop on it and made the speech of my life, as Sanders didn't do.  He made a rousing speech, but it lacked force since he voted for the thing anyway.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also speechified against it, and then voted for it.  In my way of thinking, if you're against something, don't vote for it.
     But the twelve-hundred dollars!  We have to get those measly checks to out of work Americans!  Meanwhile, they voted to allow the richest Americans to receive bailouts.  Anybody thinking at this time that the government is on our side doesn't know anything, has been brainwashed by mainstream news media, or is dumb on purpose.
     Our worse problem isn't Coronavirus, or "murder" hornets: it's the murderers running this country.

                                                                              Vic Neptune