Paul Haeder, Author

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Thoreau

Oh, it could be they’re thin-skinned, but it is definitely censoring, or prior restraint, and certainly it is a wimp of a system of having these stories republished from all over the liberal spectrum and then having someone like me as a malcontent, really, just facing off the studpity of stories that were written and discussed, oh, 30 years ago, 20, that is, covered then by better writers but are not bubbling up in the new or latest concerned journalists?

It’s what is the new normal even with web sites/blogs that defend Julian Assange and attack so-called cancel and censuring culture, but in turn, they cut off writers like myself because I am pugnacious, critical and do not follow the middle of the road party line.

It’s bizarre, really. I can’t comment on Chris Hedges stuff, or Mr. Fish’s amazing cartooning, or anything from Tom Dispatch, or what Robert Scheer does on his podcast. Petty but more than sad. Very pernicious.

You see, it’s how the stories continue to be curtain peekers, laying out what is wrong, how things all over the subject matter spectrum are collapsing, but they never have people quoted who have deep calls to action. No radical thinkers, who want tires in the streets, burning. Shutting down this shit hole. And, alas, god forbid if I make fun of the writers and those who might be quoted in the pieces.

Sheer Post has people on decrying suveillance culture or capitalism, but oh, the algorithms they deploy to block me from getting comments posted. They just do not get sent, so Sheer Post is using ISP lookers, and seeing my name, and even when I use other accounts, they still prior retrain.

Here, my retort to, “America, Land of the Dying? Alarming Study Shows US Killing Its Own Population” (Source)

Oh, these grand sweeping articles, with nowhere to go. Imagine that, you are what you eat, what you think, what you do, what you breathe, what you drink, what you hear, what you see . . . . Imagine that, the chemicals produced by the Trust the Science pathogens, daily, and the synergistic effects of those debilitating and life shortening cocktails. Imagine that, salt-fat-sugar and empty calories, and sedentary living. Imagine that, grass fields and crop fields sprayed with animal-freezing and culling toxins that end up in baby’s umbilical cord and bottles.

Imagine that, a country run by old dead thinkers and young neoliberal I-got-mine elites. No dental clinics in every census track area. No free medicine. No preventative medicine. Horrific schools, K12, treating youth like prisoners. All the perverse thinking and chatter of the elites, the celebrities, the de-creative forces of Holly-Dirt and the Press.

Without revolution, without actually grabbing these felons, one and all, and putting them through hell, reappropriating the bucks and power, without that, and without killing lobbies, killing the forces of the polluters, top to bottom, we will continue to be the Big Mac, Homo Plasticpithecus. We will continue to read these pieces, but by god, no call to action.

As if the writing here is unique, blessed with unique takes on things we activists and teachers and writers have been harping on for decades.

Where are those lawyers who are the blitzkrieg forces that will sue you if you say their products kill, maim, degrade, poison us? How many Cheeseburger Bills will we continue to see? How many Exxon lawsuits will gouge entire countries for pointing out that company’s theft of resources and poisoning of ecosystems and people?

Put the pieces together. Insert stronger voices in these pieces. Quit the fake equivocation and false balance and so-called objective yammering.

Vandana Shiva anyone? Alice Waters, anyone? How many more people can you get to help your limp piece bring light and life to a revolution of spirit? Young people dying? Oh, that’s right, the CDC is it, Fauci is it, as more and more scientists, doctors, others are showing just what is happening with MMR and mRNA shots all at once in little Johnny and Jane.

Trust the science? Trust the law? Trust the press? Trust the cops? Trust the military? Trust the educators? Trust the doctors? Right!

The point is that an endless stream of these stories have hit my email box and the magazine racks for decades. I also wrote pieces on social and environmental justice, urban planning, the environment, social work, homelessness, etc. For now, though, we need deeper understanding that there are other paradigms and others working to pull down the system.

The same old readers of these articles are not in the mix, and most are at home, doing their thinking and their prognosticating and complaining in some middle class or above retirement thing, or just not engaged in deep community change.

We are in a period where the haves have, and some of the haves have enough, or they feel, like the Romney’s, that they are middle class, you know, middle of what? Again, the 80 Percenters in the USA have about 8 percent of the so-called/deemed wealth. It’s the Point Zero Zero One and the One Percent and then their soldiers of fortune and professional managerial class who collectively, respectively control, 28 percent, 40 percent and then 24 percent of the wealth. For the 92 or there abouts percent of USA wealth.

A few at the top hoarding, but their Eichmann’s, their hit men and hit women, their abiding supporters and upper management and upper echelon professionals and technocrats etc, they are ruining the world, us.

So, now, I meet people who are in the middle class, but they want to see what the expensive homes look like. They talk a lot about their overvalued home they have been in for 30 years, with this and that Marth Stewart refab-rehab-update-makeover what they spend a shit load of time on, thinking about and occupying themselves doing. The hope is to sell the place for $800,000, say in the case of Lake Oswego in the Portland, OR, area, and then move into a smaller town, say, Longview WA, and get a place, comprable, for $500 K and then use the $300K for the nest egg while collecting Social Security and utilizing 401 Ks and pensions or something to that effect.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney described himself as a member of the middle class at a Florida town hall, CBS News reports. The problem — Romney’s net worth is upwards of $100 million.

Criticizing President Barack Obama’s tax policy, the former Bain Capital CEO said he would promote one that helps “those who have been hurt by the Obama economy.” (source)

And this piece of human stain, who is embraced by the human stains in the Democratic Party, hates middle class folk:

Of course, Romeny has more than a cool hundred million since he made that stupid statement. Think half a billion, or more. Remember when Mitt gave his half-consumed hot chocolate to the barista at Seattle’s Best in a Borders Bookstore in Provo and said it was good and he could have it. No monetary tip, from the freak of a Mormon, but his spit upon drink!

Romney spent some time in the coffee shop as his wife browsed through books before they were called to leave.

On their way out, Ann throws away her half-consumed hot chocolate, but Mitt approaches the counter. “I know you guys can’t sell this again, but I was wondering if one of you guys wanted the rest of my hot chocolate.”

“I don’t want to waste it, there’s still plenty left, it’s still perfectly good…” (Romney Offers Barista Half-Consumed Hot Cocoa in Lieu of Tip)

“No thanks,” one of the other baristas told him, wondering if this was some sort of bizarre joke.

Henry David Thoreau’s memoir of his secluded time there was published. ‘Walden‘ was a seminal work of early environmentalism and a celebration of the individual’s spirit: Aug 09, 1854.

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden