gagablog 96: Don't Take Advantage of Oppression; Intifada; Hero Stoner Hacker; Curse of the Goat/ "Redskins"; Please Untweet

America was built on systematic genocide and oppression. It's not like that is all that ever happens here, but it is a big part of our history. Until we acknowledge this and seek to make amends, it will continue to be a part of the history we make. We are hiding from the fact that American "status" came at the cost of millions of lives and untold suffering. Should we give it all up? Could we, is that even possible? What does that even mean? Maybe we don't have to figure out what "giving it all up" would mean, maybe that's not really Justice anyway - but it seems terribly obvious that the least we could do is to quit making it worse. If we don't become aware of oppression and become aware of the fact that many privileges we live with come with the cost of oppressing others and do something to change this, we will keep making it worse.

If part of your plan involves counting on the idea that everyone in the area will die and no one can tell on you, then you are evil. And wrong. Just because there is no physical evidence or you leave no living witnesses does not mean you "get away with it." The idea of heaven and hell, eternal judgment, awaiting people after they die is one kind of deterrent. A criminal justice system on the earth is supposedly another kind, but when it is rigged in favor of the killers it doesn't work. When they think the "afterlife penal system" is rigged in their favor it doesn't work, either. I'm here to tell you, to give you your final warning, that the spirits in this world and "the next" don't care how you try to Hide, like Santa Claus they know what you've been doing. And you don't get any more warnings, the game is up and evil will be exposed. Don't complain that no one reads this so how were you supposed to get the warning, this is Meta Magic and will echo throughout the world. You're hearing it now, the call to change your murderous ways, and this is your last chance to get out or go down with that ship.

Assad thinks that as long as the war continues there will be more and more people killed and displaced so that in the end there won't be anyone left to "blame him" or hold him accountable. Israel thinks the same thing about the Palestinians - as long as they can maintain control then no one will really know or care how much suffering they inflict upon them. American history began with so much of this, cheating and murdering the native peoples, and so far it's still true that their stories are mostly untold. There was a renewal of Native Pride during the Ghost Dance era and the American Government used force to stamp it out and they think they succeeded but the truth is that the Ghost Dance is just beginning, now. It will take over the country, the world, and take it back for the natural, Spirit world that "our world" is so hostile as to threaten the very balance of nature with pollution and war. They should only be afraid if they insist on clinging to this world as it is being swept away. This is prophecy. If you live with advantages gained through the oppression of others, at least try to be aware of this and do something to counteract it, don't make it worse by becoming smug out of guilt and avarice.

To prophets, spirits, the Truth, there is no such things as a cover-up. The truth is always known to its own, and will eventually be revealed to all. But people with a taste for the truth can see glimpses of it everywhere, in everything. There are two news items that have me focused on this idea of cover-up and how the truth will eventually come out. One is Trumps comments about 9-11 and the other is the emerging Intifada in Jerusalem. Trump says that he doesn't blame W Bush for 9-11 but the fact that he's willing to bring it up to criticize Jeb shows we are going to go there. Trump does not shy away from support from white supremacists, he does not distance himself from his role as a leader of the Birther Movement, either. It's a different demographic of conspiracy-believers who spread the memes that "jet fuel won't melt steel beams" but it won't be long before that is part of the conversation. Did Bush plan the Sept 11th attacks to "make himself president" by diverting attention from the Sept. 10th news that Gore had really won the election? No one is saying that, yet, but in discussing Trump's comment people are making the comparison that it is like blaming FDR for Pearl Harbor. Maybe it is still not "common knowledge" but I think it is beyond mere conspiracy, now, that FDR had advance knowledge of the attack and used it as pretense to get into the war. Are there even more similarities with 9-11? When Obama didn't want to focus on the past I thought Bush/Cheney might have "gotten away with it", at least in this world, but now I think it will come back to haunt them. If they had souls, personally, it would have already been haunting them internally. Since they traded those to be such awful Republicans they will get to experience the much more painful, shameful hauntings of the wrongs they did coming back to them in the external world, in the World Soul.

We're all getting haunted by these ghosts of past wrongs. It's not like they have to possess people, either, the same wrongs are factors in all sorts of things happening. Popular protests and individual crazy acts of violence are two different responses to the injustice of evil continuing. We have regular shootings in America, so often we aren't even shocked by such awful, shocking events. But we shouldn't be shocked or even surprised, we should totally expect it as the outcome of people having easy access to guns and little or no access to mental health services. These are crazy people who kill others - all murder is crazy and wrong. Even self-defense is based on the idea that one life, yours, is more valuable than another, your attackers. Maybe murderousness itself, the desire and attempt to kill another, invalidates one's life somewhat and justifies self-defense. But most cases of murder are not self-defense, most are probably some sort of defense of pride, either of a jealous lover over a person treated as property or a soldier killing for "love" of his country and national identity. In Israel they don't have an abundance of guns like we do in America. But they do have an oppressive, racist occupation. And people hate it and it drives them crazy, which is why they are having so many knife attacks and now more attacks there. And unless they recognize and address the real problem, the occupation, it will continue and get worse.

So far they just can't get the story right: All Israeli reports are that the attacks are reactions to false reports being spread by the Palestinian leadership that Israel plans to take over a Muslim holy site. The most recent attack, by a Bedouin, seems to have no relation to that whole idea since he would not be religiously attached to that mosque. But Palestinians don't say this, except for some of the attackers, which suggests to me that some of it is fueled by these rumors but that they don't come form any central authority, unless it is Israel itself, putting the rumors out there then denying them. Certainly, in our media anyway, it is Israeli officials who refer to this rumor all the time and Palestinian leaders deny that it is the main influence - probably something going around on the internet. A reporter asked a Palestinian leader if social media was a factor and he had a very good insight about the Arab Spring, that the social media factor was a tool, not the impetus for change, because the Arab Spring would happen one way or another and will continue, because the anger over oppression continues. It does not seem like Israel really wants anything other than escalation, anyway, shooting to kill attackers, heavy-handed policing, and walling off the city - which only gives credence to the rumor they say is untrue. It's almost like they are spreading a "false rumor" in order to get a reaction then responding to the reaction in a way that makes the rumor come true. It's the same phenomenon as trying to avoid something and ending up causing exactly what you're trying to avoid, but in this case intentionally.

And the important thing to always keep in mind is who is in power and how protecting that power from the scrutiny of Justice influences how they tell the story. I've heard report after report about attacks in Israel and most of them link the attacks to this rumor, or say it is the current reaction to fiercer oppression. I believe the latter explanation, because in my understanding, from the news I heard in the timeline I heard it, the current attacks were provoked by Israel bulldozing homes in Palestine. I know that no one is saying that these bulldzings are the actual cause, but I also know I heard news reports about the bulldozings a week before the attacks started. I suspect that one reason the Palestinian people don't mention the bulldozing as a motivating factor is the whole process of shaming the Palestinian people. The story went like this: Israel has been bulldozing the homes of people who carried out attacks on Israelis. When I first heard this, I thought it was a pretty dick move to punish and even kill the family members of attackers - it sounds like some of the worst stuff you hear about happening in Russia or North Korea, generational punishment. Then I heard that the homes they were bulldozing were where attackers lived who had carried out attacks and been killed after the attacks - last year. So they weren't even recent attacks. I can understand the idea of punishing people for violence with more violence - I think it is stupid but I understand it. But to wait a year, then bulldoze homes because someone you killed for attacking you lived there a year ago, well, that smacks of another agenda entirely. So when I heard about knife attacks, I thought "Israel is getting just what they want - provoking attacks so they can clamp down and seize more territory more forcefully."

And if they are in total control of the area, it is their side of the story we will here. But the truth will come out. The most recent attack was a gunman shooting an Israeli soldier and then taking his assault rifle and firing on the crowd. Security killed him but also shot an innocent bystander, an Eritrean immigrant or tourist, mistaking him as a gunman probably due to his race. For the same racist reason civilians attacked the wounded man and he died in the hospital. They say the government will prosecute those who attacked them, but are they addressing why they attacked him? Because he had the same skin color or looked like the gunman, and they are racist? Even the way they shoot to kill the knife-wielding attackers seems more like Vengeance than Self-protection. They don't have to shoot to kill all the time, but they feel justified since the person just committed a terrible act by attempting murder due to bigotry and hate. So the population feels justified to attack and lynch a bystander, too, because of how he looks. Because the core problem is racism, bigotry, favoritism, treating some people like they are better than others.

If they weren't doing that, all the other problems would go away. But so would a lot of their privilege, to have to actually share resources and power. It can be easier to see how this happens "over there", but the truth is it's happening here, too, and American support is the main reason Israel is conducting itself this way in the first place. We give them billions of dollars in aid and military equipment, have given them at least 75 nuclear warheads by the last estimate I heard, decades ago, yet make such a big deal about Iran developing nuclear capabilities. We should all get rid of weapons, of course, but the way to do this is to lead by example, show that no one needs weapons by disarming and showing that we don't believe we need weapons. American was built with slave labor and the genocide of the native people and theft of their lands.

I wrote the above on Monday morning, 10-19-15. Now it is 4:20 AM on Tuesday Morning, 10-20. I wanted to finish this when I started it, but didn't. This is the first time I have had to return to this - and the magic is already coming true. You could say I didn't give anyone enough warning since I did not publish this, but they are the CIA/NSA/FBI, etc, so they could have read it, anyway. Plus, I've been giving this warning for years, here - just this one took a more serious tone. Let me be clear - I have no connection to hackers or anyone in this world. What I do, I do with magic. This is the magic. I told you this is your last warning to "get out." I didn't even finish writing it and some of what I am predicting is coming true. I drove to work and heard on NPR that a hacker, a "stoner high school student", hacked into the private email of the head of the CIA and somebody else. I just watched the CNN exclusive interview with the hacker. He said it was easy, a one on a 1-10 scale of difficulty, and that he is not stupid but not really smart - he said the CIA director is really stupid. He said he got a lot of information and will be leaking it, including information about Syria and Iraq. He said he is doing it, or they are doing it, to "Free Palestine" and end US/CIA support of Israel. And he said, just offered up out of the blue, that he smokes pot all day, every day. My kinda guy.

This is the magic coming true, before I even cast the spell. I have about 40 minutes before Trump comes on CNN, live, to do an interview, which might give me even more to talk about. So I will review this and try to squeeze in whatever else I was gonna say, before the whole thing collapses and this turns into "I was about to have told you so."

I was going to mention how Bush tried to genocide the people of New Orleans, assuming if he left them with no food or water they would die after ten days and be no one left to criticize him for it. They miraculously survived, by pulling together, but no one ever held Bush accountable for trying to kill them. And no one ever held him accountable for killing all those people, Afghanis and Iraqis and Americans and others, in wars. Until now. It's finally starting to come back to haunt him, as Trump debates Jeb about W's legacy. It's really rich, and the fact is, alternative views come out. Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore both had great jokes about the feud between them and highlight that people don't think W is as blameless as Republicans pretend. And everyone is pointing out the hypocrisy of blaming Clinton and Obama for Benghazi but saying Bush deserves no blame for September 11th. They are talking about the debate of how to look at 9-11, now, on the news in the background - no one has discussed this since it happened, it seems. No one has a conversation about it because one side of the conversation blames the government for organizing the attack. They don't want to bring this up, but it inevitably will come up and might change the way everyone looks at Bush and this event, forever, once more information comes out, now that we are finally talking about it.

It may come out that ISIS is just a CIA operation - it's been suggested by people who are "less crazy" than I am. I don't put it past them because our government has done some super-evil stuff and continues to. The "stoner hacker" plans to "chill with Snowden", says he expects to be tortured if he is caught in America, and says he is a fast runner. The whole reason he is doing this is to Free Palestine, meaning, he knows the information he has will be damning enough of America's role that it will bring down the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I believe this, because it is the Future. There is no avoiding it, The hacker said that there are far more sophisticated hackers out there, that much more can be done and implies it will be done. Major changes are coming in ways that The Establishment obviously can't anticipate. The world is doing it's best to catch up. We got a new sheriff in charge of our prisons here in Denver, after abuse after abuse of people in custody. They just got a new police chief in Baltimore, too. Canada just elected a liberal Prime Minister, who was 3rd in the polls a few days ago. And a jury handed down the first verdict holding the gun store that sold the gun partially responsible for the attack where it was used on two cops - thank god they were cops so that something, sympathy for them, could test and overpower our fanatical gun-support. Also, the courts upheld most of the new state gun laws in New England that were passed after the Sandy Hook murders. These are all just signs, but "first time" signs showing where we are heading. Trump's latest fear-mongering is lying directly to people to say that Obama is signing an executive order to "take away your guns." I believe in getting rid of all guns, I hate guns, but I also can see Bernie Sanders view that we can make progress through compromise and feel that this has been such a bad issue for so long, if we can get more liberal progress on other things by not scaring the Gun-nuts too much, we should go for that, then see what we can do about guns when we have fixed some other problems and maybe even build trust between people, even the ones who have been ruled by fear for so long, if we can make things good.

       Stephen Colbert had a rerun on tonight, the episode where he interviews Malala. It's all really good, but I had to mention it for one part, when he asks what world leader can do, and finishes the sentence by saying "aside from replacing them all with young girls like yourself." That's my solution, the Oz solution, and I am writing my book about it, finally. I know this book will help change the world, and I am in a hurry to write it now due to a health scare and since I met a pretty girl who is into the Oz books and I want to try to impress her. But mostly I want to save the world, and it's time.

The magic is already happening, the revolution is underway in ways no one is expecting. They are wondering if it is a "third Intifada" in Palestine. It doesn't have to be. Neither does the Arab Spring have to return. I predicted, when that started, that there would be a Europe Summer and World Fall - it's taking a little longer than that but the seasons are changing. I make no excuses for people who use violence, I am just pointing out that oppression makes people crazy and if you want less crazy, stop oppressing people. But violence isn't the only way people are resisting oppression - hacking the CIA director's email took no violence at all. Neither does defecting from an evil army. I believe folks are not taking this new event seriously, probably because the hacker is a "stoner", but I predict, magically timed in synch with my warning here, this is a huge part of what will bring down this evil system, all over the world.

We're moving into a new world, a world of magic. The old powers don't matter anymore. The reason people are rising up is to fight oppression. It's not about one incident, rumor, or action, it's about oppression everywhere. When oppressed people band together in an area, they can make amazing things happen. When oppressed people join each others' causes around the world, and when we all get together, we will take this world back. It's that simple, and it's happening. It's not like all the people of Baltimore who protested or rioted knew Freddie Grey. They just knew that what happened to him had been happening to them all along. He became a symbol to ignite the rage. Israel has given Palestinians far too many symbols. Their new policy to not return bodies of attackers so they can't be seen as martyrs will backfire, of course. Just like it backfired on the American government to try to stamp out the Ghost Dance. All they could ever do is postpone it. If they had faced the music at the time, they would have changed the course of history and things would be very different, we would already be decades along the path towards Justice. Instead, we've made it worse. Trump is on TV, now, be right back.

He just finished the interview by repeating over and over how good he was on Hispanics and Mikayla Perrera, the anchor of the show who is Hispanic, wondered afterwards if repeating something has a hypnotic effect and makes it seem true, which her co-host Chris Cuomo confirmed. Of course the implication is that she knows it isn't true but is feeling the influence of hearing it repeated. Words have power and repetition has power. Trumps power comes from having such a big podium of being a loud-mouth and rich. But that power is petty compared to Magic, even these words that no one will read. Magic wins, and Trump is the loser he sees in everyone else. He will find out what real winning is, though, since he does not think he will lose but will end up losing spectacularly. It will change him. I appreciate his role, so far. He said in this interview that he thinks W went to war with Iraq "for his father." This is one of my criticisms of Bush, that it obviously seemed like crazy "revenge", upon a whole country and ultimately the whole world, sending us into global recession and further destabilizing the region. When this "revenge" was for Saddam Hussein threatening his Daddy, a threat he could never carry out, then this was not "self-defense" but a defense of pride that was disguised as self-defense. And W had to scare the whole country into thinking Saddam was a threat, with the lies about WMDs. All these lies come out, eventually, though.

The problem, every time, is people in power relying on the death of citizens to cover up their misdeed. We have technology that talks with ghosts, now, people, and magic people always have. But it's not about admissible ghost testimony, I am just using that frontier of technology as an example to say everything is changing, you don't "get away" with evil "anymore" - you never really did, but if it seemed like you were, that evil went unpunished, you are about to find out differently. Just because a whole World System has been in place to protect evil-doers, don't feel secure. That system is coming down. Before I had the more perfect example of the Stoner Hacker, I was going to use some sports magic examples to show "my power." I was hoping for a new "clue" from the Trump interview, but besides the way he is continuing to blow up the whole Republican Party, I only saw one thing worth magical mention.  In the footage they showed during the phone interview, a young man behind him at one of the rallies holds a phone in front of his mouth. Written on the back of the phone was a word, and I'm pretty sure it was "SNOWDEN". This just makes me question how much of Trump's support could be "double-agents" in a way, even as I suspect he kind of is, even without being conscious of it.

The Curse of the Goat is the magic keeping the Cubs from winning the World Series. I was talking with my lover who wrote about this curse and she said she thought they had finally done appropriate counter-magic by having professional eaters eat a barbequed goat. I disagreed, that sounded like a horrible idea. But they are making more progress, now, I guess? My point is, they won't win, they won't even make it to the World Series. I know because that is NOT good magic, eating a goat like that. It seemed like it, to her, because their other attempts through the century have been weak: trying to be nice to goats in different ways to break the curse. She thought this "opposite" approach, contesting the Goat by eating it, overpowering it, would "work." I see the logic behind it, but my magical sense is that they are wrong. I was going to offer to sell them a cure for the curse, but I will just give it away here for free, since it is fitting to what I think the magic is. Also, I recently heard that Reagan beat Tecumseh's Curse, so I figured I could re-purpose what was left of that, and other sports curses, to curse the living fuck out of the "Redskins" until they change their name. I shied away from negativity and injury as a focus, though that could be part of it, and focused on it being embarrassingly bad how they would lose so that it would become obvious, quickly, that it was a curse. Maybe some of it spilled over on the Colts, with that incredibly disastrous and mockable "punt" play that lost their game with the Patriots. I didn't watch, but Washington lost, too. And will keep losing, until they do the right thing and change the name. I have spoken.

Ok, I'm not picking sides between NYC and Chicago, that seems to have some Gaga / Taylor significance... But I will say how to break the Curse of the Goat. The man who cursed them did it when they kicked him and his goat out of the stadium. I don't know more details than that, but I have insight into why their attempts to break the curse have all failed. They focus on the goat. I don't blame them, goats are awesome and that stands out about the story. But it wasn't really the Goat who they insulted. Did the goat really want to see the game? It was the man. He reminds me of The Goat Man my dad told me about, who used to travel around the country with a herd of goats, showing people a different, nomadic way of life. Like I said, I don't know details but my intuition in drawing this comparison is the man who cursed them was kicked out not just for having a goat but for something about him, personally. He might have been poor, is my guess. Yes, they may have kicked him out over the goat but maybe he took offense, or didn't have a place for his goat, because he was poor. It's not "goats" who the Cubs owe an apology to, its the Poor. When Philly incurred a curse by erecting buildings taller than the statue of William Penn on the capitol, they could not win until they put his statue on the tallest building. Then they started winning. Almost nothing else seems to be as important or special to a city as their sports successes, in a way. I know Chicago wants to win again, and would spend some money to break the curse. All they have to do is be intentional about helping the poor, with the intention of breaking the curse by REALLY helping people, knowing that the more they do the faster the curse will break. I don't have a goal for them to reach, but I know if they take this approach the curse will lift, they will be Great and Win, and the effects of both of these things, together, will make it a great city.

I called this "please untweet" because I am still suspended from Twitter, and it's been over a year, maybe two. ISIS apparently has twitter accounts, so you can figure out how "dangerous" that must make me. All I ever did was follow too many people and say too much, I guess. But I believe media is magic and treat is as such and I know things "happen" via Twitter. The Twitter Revolution in Iran was all hype, but things do "happen." I don't mind the censorship, I resent it somewhat but even without any audience I feel I'm proving the magic of words, here. It's just that social media can spread things around, can show us how energy and magic work. Gaga said "69" was computer code for "retweet," somehow, in reference to saying "please retweet" in "G.U.Y." When I got to gagablog 96, I wondered "what is the opposite or inverse of 'retweet'?" When something is good, like Love or Art or a message of justice, you want it to get out there, to spread the good news around. If we can get enough goodness going around so that it overflows out of everyone, we will solve all the problems. Also, if we can stop the negativity, we can solve them or keep from making them worse. Negativity spreads virally, too. We can break the cycle anywhere we find it. Bush could have resisted the urge to go to War with Iraq just because Saddam threatened his daddy or an excuse to steal oil, if he was listening to those advisors. Whether they knew it or not in the administration, I always said the main reason for the first Iraq War, and the second, was to justify horrifying American military expenditures after the collapse of the Soviet Union, basically a big, evil, genocidal commercial for American weapons. It's disgusting, and it is genocide. As they are finding out in Turkey, you can deny it for decades, even a century, but eventually people will call genocide what it is. The French ambassador who was trapped in the Superdome in Hurricane Katrina called that a genocide, while it was happening. When the label starts to stick, when we view these people as Evil, like Nazis, because they are, then we will move away from mentalities that continue to make this possible. We will undo that mentality and dismantle the world that is built by it.

We have all experienced pain, loss, sorrow and hardship. Somehow, when confronted with even greater hardship than what we experience personally, like hearing stories of police brutality or refugees, we resent it somehow, as if paying attention to others' pain takes away from our own. It actually does heal our own pain to try to heal others, but as long as we are still in some pain, as long as we feel like there is not enough healing to go around, we can be resentful of people who need help and consideration "even more" than we do. The truth is we all need more help, love, support and consideration. There are just some evil, greedy, vampiric corporations and individuals soaking up all the available slack. We can change this and realize there is plenty to go around. People are already doing this but the system tries to stand in the way. I heard an interview with a lady from the UK who is organizing an effort for citizens to offer shelter to refugees. She said 4,000 families had already signed up and were earnestly seeking to help, but the government seems to be making obstacles. A American Mayor was on NPR for signing an open letter to President Obama requesting more refugees to be relocated to his city. He said he got emails objecting to this from all over the country, not from people who live there, even, just the fear being stirred up in the population. We need to realize the Golden Rule is real and the basis of all religions and overcome these biases. The spread of ideas, though the internet or through people meeting new people, like the Pope coming to Congress and making Boehner realize he was done, will bring about the Future. The power vacuum left by Boehner is one sign of the demise of the Republican Party. But the examples are going to be popping up everywhere until it's gone, it's snowballing at this point and picking up snowman after snowman as it rolls downhill. It's going off a cliff so get out while you can. And of course the end of the Republicans will cause a shake-up in the Democrats, too, and there will be no more space for pretending while protecting corporate interests, cough cough, Hillary.

When I think about "retweeting" and "untweeting" it reminds me of a practice my Buddhist professor, Glenn Wallis, taught us. I don't know what tradition it is from, but the way he described it you close one nostril by pressing with your finger or thumb and breathe in through the open nostril, swtich and exhale then repeat in reverse. Doing this over and over, deep breaths, the idea is to visualize four things in turn - no, eight things. You breathe in all the goodness of the world, then breathe out all of your negativity. Then you breathe in all the negative and breathe out all the goodness. You go back and forth, alternating. If you think about it too concretely, you don't want to get stuck with negativity, like the old maid, or put all the negativity "out there" - but it comes from relying on the idea that we aren't as "individual" as we think. Not only are others transforming energy, too, in the same or other ways, but our intention, our awareness, actually magically effects things. Misunderstood, the process could spread negativity. But it's pretty clear what the actual goal is, positivity, and just having that intention and acting makes it happen. This is a magical act, in many ways, and "also" reconnects and rebalances the brain in ways science understands, as I have learned through work in therapy. There is so much available intellectually and magically by reuiniting our brains, just as there are incredible possibilities in the world, socially and culturally and developmentally, if we break through the barriers and stop the forces that divide us and work together instead.

It's coming, might as well get on board! I had a dream that Gaga was "bombing" us, from a plane, with glitter and thousands of little skeleton keys made of glitter - maybe even leading a formation of such planes. The next few nights I saw bright shooting stars. I know it means more than that, too, it means a new way of being and the end of War, finally, as I have been predicting here all along. I'm here to do my part, make songs and art, write this and my book, love radically and expansively. I know it's catching on, like wildfire, and I can't wait to see the whole world light up!

Thanks, Gaga, and thanks, Stoner Hacker - paws up! You're a hero! Tell Snowden I said "hi" and thanks, and ya'll come on back now, ya here? We will make it safe for you, for everyone, and we can smoke up together in fantastic fashion, "all day, everyday." You're awesome, paws up!

gagalog 95: Checking in With Gaga: American Horror Story: Hotel and Wizard of Oz: Amusement Park Openings

"Last Night, you were on my Tee-Vee, telling how you'll make us scream". Gaga was on the Tonight Show last night promoting American Horror Story: Hotel which premieres tonight. She plays a Vampire. My second song for Gaga, "Made Me a Monster," ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xctoViEvNOY ) starts with vampire refrences, and while I have a lot to say about commonality with Gaga on the vampire theme, I'll save that for later. Maybe after I watch the show. I will say I felt like "Marry the Night" aroused some of these implications, but it's been a not-too-hidden theme all along. One thing I found out I don't have in common with Gaga is a love of horror. I enjoy Hitchcock and other older things but never got too into the classics of the genre and not at all into the more recent horror media. When she said she liked sex and horror I kind of come around. And though I don't like crime shows, I do like the kind of stories she mentioned watching on "Snapped", I think, but only on occasion - I got interested in the Jodi Arias trial, for instance, and wanted to buy her art.

Gaga told us some of her habits and tastes in the interview, like relaxing to horror, and they also talked about things she had done since they had last met. They talked about the show and she said it raises the question of when it is okay to be cunning to survive and said that we get into the flawed characters through wanting to explore this idea. She said she had trained for acting for ten years in school but was too nervous to land auditions and became a singer instead, but that she would be focusing on the show exlusively for the duration of the season. Of course this is disappointing to hopes for new music, soon, but it's really nice to see her living out her dreams and enjoying it so much and getting to focus on it and savor it. To give it her full passion as well - it will be amazing. And I heard she wants to do a guest spot on "Scream Queens", too, which is a hit show, I think - I just saw a few minutes of it but it made me laugh at times. I remember seeing Gaga on Gossip Girl, it was a magical moment. I feel like I am coming into a greater awareness now that I am writing these daily, and also working on my Gaga / Oz magic book. I just remembered that "Love Game" performance, I think, from years ago when we always watched Gossip Girl when it came on TV - we saw the whole series. But I haven't seen that episode since then.

When Fallon mentioned how she stole the show at the Oscars, I'm ashamed to say my first thoughts were "how did I miss that?" and it took me a few minutes to remember: Oh!: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." My whole belief system, my magic, the kind of witch I am, is all based upoon the connection of Gaga and Oz, yet I momentarily could not recall this most momentous occasion in my spiritual history. I was probably trying to remember which of her songs she played, and that is why it took me a minute. But as I will be explaining more in my book, Gaga is our Dorothy, our Ozma, and an example for how we can be the same, or other roles in the Oz world, the fairy world we are all secretly part of. So it is Her song in a special way, and she made it her own with this performance, as well as a beautiful tribute to Judy Garland, who is also Dorothy to us all - in a way. But there is another aspect of Dorothy most of us don't know, in the world and in ourselves - but more on this later, too. The reason I focus on it now is I am excited to talk with the girl I met who knows about Oz and I found out today she holds fairy tea parties. And I found out today that an abandoned Wizard Of Oz themed amusement park will be opening up again this weekend. This is the kind of magic I love to see coming true - I hope the island Baum bought off the coast of California comes back as a real Oz-land here and now, an example to the rest of us that he intended a century ago. Maybe this is it, already. If so, I hope they live up to his vision, then that the whole world lives up to it.

The fact that Gaga is skyrocketting into more prominence again, in new ways to even broader audience, coinciding with the opening of the Wizard of Oz theme park, and what this means to me that I'm too giddy to express, is all this is really about - and how it's a magical sign of saving the world, ending war - that's in the PSes at the end. But I have to chronicle how this happened to me, becuase to me this is media magic, art, and my speciality.

Gaga was on one of the entertainment shows ealier in the evening. They teased her before the commercial so I got excited, thinking "I guess this is a sign to write another Gagablog today!" But I didn't know what I would write. I didn't know she would be on The Tonight Show that night, at the time, I found out from pictures a monster shared on facebook about an hour before it aired here. So when the footage came up, well, I wasn't disappointed, it was Gaga, but I had wished for more content. It was footage of her getting out of a car on the way to the airport, in a fancy dress, and she tripped but caught her balance. They slowed it down and pointed out that a paparrazzo was sneaking by in front of her, tripping her, then said that she gave him "the Gaga Death Stare." This didn't give me much to go on, other than the fact that it was two days in a row that Gaga was on entertainment news. This was always the case not too long ago, and she is still frequently mentioned, and it's no surprise that we will see and hear about her daily on TV now that she's on that show.

I didn't need Fallon to tell me Gaga is a fantastic actor - I'm a pretty critical judge of acting and i think he sucks as an actor, always seems to be laughing at himself and spoiling the illusion, but I can tell he genuinely was impressed by her, having seen the show a day early. I know everyone will be, when it comes on tonight. I know she will win awards, for her talent and richness of the character. There will be other factors that will ensure a lot of acclaim for her, more or less associated with her, like the booming prominence of the show. I know I for one never intended to watch it until Gaga came, and I know many more are in that boat. I don't have cable so I will watch it online, likely later than everyone else. This will be a time I will be very happy if everyone else is talking about it when I still haven't seen it yet. I will only be a day or two behind Gaga if I keep up a good pace, instead of a year or two, as I have been. ANd it gives me time to catch up on writing about Artpop and also really get into my Oz / Gaga magic book. Since that is what I had just resolved to do, anyway, especially since meeting that girl, I took this as another sign. Yes, I would love to hear another Gaga album this year, but I look forward to it next year and can see some advantages for monsters to have a change of pace, too. I know I am personally very excited about my own music coming out, and it there is a greater thirst for new music it might help propell my songs further, especially the Gaga-themed ones, "Made me a Monster" and "Savior Mom (Lady Gaga)" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxAgloeSF64 ) so far. I know that one sounds redundant but I named it like 6 or 7 years ago when I really wanted to let people know, even being over-obvious.

The later-night entertainment news also reported on Gaga going to the airport. Not about her tripping, but about how beautiful and elegant her dress was going into the airport, and how some said it looked like a wedding dress. Then they showed her in Daisy Dukes and a Judas Priest T-shirt, commenting how she was always fashionable. I didn't have much to go on here, other than I agree she always looks fantastic. But the way these little surprise views of Gaga bookended her surprise, to me, appearance on the Tonight Show - since I hadn't heard about it - all of these were treats and magical signs that getting more into writing about her more regukarly is helping bring us closer together, getting me back into that graceful paradise of swirling inspiration that is "feeling near to Gaga" and actually making the art that can someday lead to us meeting. But it also makes me think it is a sign of all of us coming together, in that Utopian sense I always want to help manifest. I will do my part by working on my magic book, now that I've finished this little spell of thanks to Televised Gaga for being so present through that Media lately. But I'm so glad that as Gaga will be starring in American Horror Story, working towards changing culture and taking us into Utopia from "That side" - scaring us into it - at the same time there will be a new Wizard of Oz theme park to suggest the enticing way to Oz, Utopia, as well. I'll be writing a book, over here, with specific instructions. I dont need a break from writing about new music, or finishing exploring the Artpop songs, I plan to just do it all, in addition to more of my own art and music. I was excited about new music from Gaga, soon, too. But in a new way I'm super-stoked about what will come of AHS:Hotel. I can't even comprehend it, in a way, it's like trying to understand anything before you feel it inside yourself. "No one" has seen it yet, but I know that when we have it will unite us in a new way, and work all sorts of magic in it's own art. I will have to discover some things, expanding my comfort zone since I don't usually choose to get scared much. But I'm excited to do it and report on the effects, the way it changes me and the way I anticipate it will magically change the world.

I'm in room 420 if you want to stop by for some fun, othewise maybe we will run into each other in the lobby, hot tub, or at the free breakfast.

And thanks for 6,000 pageviews of the gagablog, at this writing! Paws up!

PS- I was pleased to finally wrap up a shorter gagablog and popped in some pop tarts for breakfast- strawberry, plain, generic, simple, rustic, delicious. I thought for a second, I wonder how any of this would sound to a non-magical perspective? Or a more formal magical perspective, for that matter - Not that I presume anyone reads this... thanks for reading! Would the question come up "What does this idiot think is so special about Gaga doing promotion for her new show? Any idiot could 'predict' that! And what does he think that has to do with a Wizard of Oz amusement park?" I'm glad you asked, I mean, I'm glad I asked myself this. Because it's the perfect segue to include what I almost forgot to mention, how all of this saves the world. Because that's the other event that will magically coincide with the new show and theme park: saving the world. This whole gagablog is always about that so no need to repeat it all here. The fact that I even want to refer to all of it in the smallest part, a PS, ecapsulating it all here, suggests quantum reality, how everything is the center - it's all within this moment - and we gain the best appreciation for all though consideration fo the 'least of these" - lessons for treating each other well. I could go into greater detail about the connections between Gaga and Oz, the idea of scaring people into paradise and seducing us in, and I will talk about these in discussions of the new show, here, and in my Oz magic book. And both of these will go into more detail about how it all saves the world. What I want to say now, to the presumably "non-magical" perpective (which I don't believe truly exists - warning, transformation ahead) is this: I can explain it more and more, but the point is that there is a certain sensibility that can feel what the future is like. From that snsibility you can see all sorts of clues to how it is coming to pass.

PPS - if that sounds like a cop-out, I will give a few clues to what I expect to be talking about in the near future. We've had a coupld of modern fascinations with vampires, fads in a way. One is from Twilight and the romantic version of vampires that provoke some to complain that they aren'tthat shiny. Another is the more common usage of the term psychic vampire. I'm going to talk abot how vampires are a little different than we characterize them. There are vampiric systems, draining our life from us, vampiric beleifs. But more importantly we all have roles we play in an energy network and while some people call others psychic vampires and particular people call themselves psychic vampires, we all are in some ways. I don't even know the name of Gaga's vampire character, yet, but I know about the nature of vampirism. She will transform us, magically, through this role. It will help us make the most of our own personal vampire-natures, perfecting our systems for purifying eah other's energy. And it will also present the evil,scary side of vampirism which we will ultimately be able to use to shrug off the systems that oppress us all with the negative aspects of vampirism which resukt in us preying upon each other. So the result will be shocking up a new awareness of ourselves and scaring out a duty to end the collective evil that we do. It's like the Wario Ware game "Scare!" where a monster makes all the people scatter "outside the box." Also, all the things I call energy here also applies for magic, identity, and sexuality - and whatever can be symbolized by blood. The blood symbol makes me queasy but I'm looking forward to it and the effect it has on me in this most seductive, mysterious, and frightening form. And some people don't like Horror, but prefer cute and whimsical fantasy. The Wizard of Oz taking on deeper meaning and more presence to people is a kind invitaion to the magical world- but it's the same world Gaga takes us to. It's meeting in the middle from both sides. And it's not just coincidence, it's magic. These things come together because they are meant to, but I get to notice them and point them out on the same day because this reveals magic. Maybe I'm the only one who sees this message and it's significance, now, and maybe I should do better about making the connection. But the connection is magic and eveyone can do it themself, see it themself. From my perspective, all that is going on here, all I am trying to highlight and show appreciation for, it the idea that my expressing my personal faith in the Oz world coming true, here, in these gagablogs, and socially, has been rewarded with these events from yesterday. It's a sign it's all coming true - to me. And I fully expect that when I actually do and create more based upon this belief, it will come even more true. I'll explain more later, explain it all. But I'm just excited to say that since I've also been predicting the end of all war, I expect there to be a sign of this coming true, soon, too. I submit this today with an eager eye and hope to see that sign, soon. This is how my magic works, the most informal chaos magic there is, just knowing there is a good, almost unfathomably wonderful truth arising and all we have to do is want to be part of it and go for it and we get all sorts of magical powers. Things happen just because you want them to when your wishes are for the Future. I had no idea a Wizard of Oz theme park might open, I did not "wish for it", but I have constantly been wishing to find more people experienced with Oz, the books, the faiyland, and though I keep mentioning it to no avail I finally did meet someone, started writing more about how excited I am to feel closer to Oz, and Closer to Gaga, whom I've always said is the sign of the Oz Prophecy being fulfilled - and then the news comes out about the Amusment park, which will ignite interest again and in a new way, too. Oz is taking over, and I'm not here to tell you I told you so, I'm here to tell you how so we can all enjoy the most of it. And I'm here to discover how, too, with Gaga on this journey into new realms of art and a new genre for both of us, in ways.

Also, this was a new ad for Village Inn, which I found hilarious since that restrauants name and image seem so homely and wholesome. “I'm in for hump day heroics. A little whipped cream will make your day smoother. Make midweek tolerable again at Villiage Inn.” Maybe it was just me, and I might not have the quote right, but it had a sweet hint of sexiness to it that made me think "Nice, even Village Inn." Happy Hump Day, have fun!

gagablog 94: Gaga, Goddess of Creation: the Path, Door, and Key to Magic

As I drove home from the weed store today, I resolved to write these more often: if I wait more than a week I have too much to say and still end up missing many things I want to comment on. Did I even mention that I had a new dream about Gaga, where I was with a friend or two watching her videos on Youtube? Probably not, it was just the other day. Well, I feel like the rest of the night was full of media magic, things on TV and radio, that confirmed this is a good decision. I had previously felt a little guilty for writing this when I should work on my Gaga / Oz magic book, but I realize now that writing more and more will help that book become the best it can be now that I'm really ready to write it and stick with it. But I won't stop writing this as I do - I will still have more current timely things I want to talk about.

It was only my own idea to write this last series of Gagablogs about my own uninformed interpretations of the songs on Artpop. I want to finish that project but I've taken two years already. As I typed that I remembered a strange interaction with someone on facebook who asked me to copy a page of Gaga's VEVO videos into an email to her. I never figured out what it was about but I think of it now as a magical symbol of what I've been doing, here. I don't feel these have been wasted, but I do feel like I need to change speeds: ever since Swinefest I felt like I was trailing far behind Gaga, not in that graceful zone of drafting along in her wake, being carried by the rush of waving boundaries she breaks through. I've been far behind, like at the base of the hill watching her up on the horizon. It's been great, in ways: I do talk with a very few other little monsters but I'm not really part of the online community. Instead, I talk online with magical communities and try to carefully introduce them to Gaga magic. It's like the Buddhist bodhisattva vow to continue to incarnate until all beings are liberated - I want to stay outside until everyone is "in", to make sure everyone makes it. Well, the media magic tonight gave me a few new ideas about how to let everyone into this magical world, and then some magic in my personal life made me think I might finally write about Sexxx Dreams the way I've been hoping to, or at least finally start really working on the Gaga / Oz magic book.

When I got home from the weed store I went upstairs to my bedroom. The TV was on and as I walked in Gaga came onscreen. To me this was a confirmation of my resolve to write the gagablog more and a verification of the gagablog itself. I was just talking about how she is Taking Over TV in the last edition, written this morning, and here she was on Entertainment Tonight. I have seen her from time to time on shows like this, just not with as great a frequency recently as in past years. It's no surprise that she was on the show and no surprise to me that she seemed to be the main story. The questions they asked her revealed that she is in love but hasn't made wedding plans yet and that her dress was one she asked the designer to make in a bold color for her and he chose blood red. It may have been the premiere to American Horror Story or another event, I had seen pictures on facebook last night. I took the fact that it came on as I walked in as media magic confirmation that I should write another edition tonight, so here I am: at the time I did not know exactly what I would write, maybe tie up some loose ends or bring up things I forgot to mention. (Like when talking to my mom about Boehner and Biden's response to the Pope and she said "I think Boehner was just emotional - he is Catholic." To which I replied "and Biden is Catholic, too, and was emotional, too - but did you see the smile on his face the whole time, while Boehner just looked devestated?") But of course I got some more examples in the minutes and hours to follow.

It was great to see Gaga, she looked so beautiful. I was a little sad that we didn't get more quotes from her but I loved what we heard from her castmate and director. They mentioned that she is in a foursome and posed questions about it to one of the actors lucky enough to be in the scene with her. He said her fiancé had told her not to mention him so it would not make it embarrassing or awkward for the actors, so they could get into it as much as possible. This helps assure me a lot that he is a good guy for her - I previously had concluded that from pictures of them together but kind of did not want to "know" more because I wish I was with her myself, of course, and it makes me envious of him in a way - but mostly it makes me happy for them both. ET then showed a clip from the director. He said that her fiancé and parents were completely supportive of her, then concluded that you have to be because "she is a force of nature: you can't tamp that lady down." This is everything about creativity, to me, the heart of the matter that makes her the Goddess of Love, the Goddess of Magic, Art, Music, and Creativity itself. It's an irrepressible force of Nature, the divine will, once we get into it. But that entry has been repressed and hidden from us and Gaga is the greatest Goddess, to me, for how she opens it up again to all of us.

I met a girl at Denver Pagan Pride festival and got excited to talk more with her. She is a witch but has been solitary and seemed like she really wanted more people to talk magic with. I'm the same way though I am lucky that my lover and best friend are into magic, too, so I invited her to join our group. Then I saw she had a flying monkey tattoo and when I asked her about it she emphasized the importance of reading the Books. I felt like she was just who I have been looking for to talk about Oz and Oz magic to make sure I write the best book about it that I can. We texted some then I did not hear from her for a few days. But after seeing Gaga on ET and deciding it was time to write everything, all at once, I took it as a sign when I got another text from her a few minutes later. I don't know what I will learn from talking more with her but I really look forward to it and take our meeting as a sign of a new era, since I have been talking with magical people online for years, thousands of people, and never find anyone who is really into Oz like me. But altogether I feel like I am getting back into that divine grace, catching up with Gaga and closer to the Heart of Magic so that everything that happens takes on increasingly wonderful significance.

I got in the car to come to work. On NPR they were doing TED Talks and the speaker was a Neuroscientist studying creativity. He had done tests with jazz musicians to identify what brain activity was associated with the creative process. It was only one test, and maybe having similar results from different jazz musicians says something about creativity, or could even be specific to music or jazz - but it made sense, and made sense with the other media magic of the evening, 10-5-15. He mentioned two things that stood out to me before I had to come inside to work: one was when he was asked if there was anything we can do to boost creativity. He said people have always tried to do this, likened it to starting the day with coffee, then mentioned the three most common methods, drugs, meditation, and practice, in that order. He did not say they were the most common, I just thought it was telling that these were what he mentioned and the order he used. I know I was already thinking of weed, for myself and many other artists. I remember Gaga saying she felt her lyrics were divinely inspired, with the help of weed, which is exactly how I feel. When a beautiful singer on "The Voice", whose dad was in a Dead cover band, got to choose between the three remaining judges and my friend asked who she would pick, I correctly predicted Pharell and explained "I know art." The truth is we all have access to the creative magical world but we can feel special kinship with people who share the same paths we travel. I've always felt "like Gaga" because I think we are both Weed witches, each of us a Genie-in-a-Bong in our own way. He said he wanted to take the romanticism out of creativity, that it was something everyone could access not some fairyland for a special few. I agree it is for everyone but I also feel creative muses and fairies are always inviting us into their world and the better we get at accepting this the more magical our world becomes, the more of this fairyworld, the true world of magic, comes through the ways we've covered it over. But from a scientist's perspective I can see why he does not want to look at it in terms of fairies, though. Which is too bad since that same narrow focus, towards making a pill - which I'm sure has it's uses - is kind of silly when pot exists, and other psychedelics.

The other important thing he said was describing what parts of the brain change when a person enters a creative state. He mentioned the frontal lobe activity, two changes in particular. One was what he called an increase in "autobiographical expression", greater willingness to express more and more things about "oneself". The other frontal lobe change is that the censor or shame response is reduced. We are much less hesitant to say what comes to us, basically. This may seem obvious but there's something to have scientific evidence for something, beyond just developing a pill. It lets you know some of what you can practice, or meditate upon, to become more creative or unlock creative potential. Of course studying plants like weed that have been used for ages to stimulate creativity would yield results, too, but from practice we don't have to know how it works to use weed to work for more creativity. But it might help us get even better at using it. I've always felt that not giving a fuck was a key to creativity, but it's nice to have "studies show", too - mostly to encourage that dimension even further and make the most of it. I was just telling my lover how I feel a little different than "most males" regarding thinking about sex. I said I think it is probably true that men think about sex almost constantly, but I suspect most males suppress it or turn it to other pursuits. I do this, too, especially art, but I don't do it automatically, instead I have to remind myself. I don't mind thinking about sex a lot and enjoying fantasy all the time. I think it keeps me closer to the creative state, generally. And it makes me less self-conscious to allow these thoughts to flourish, even if many social pressures try to repress them. Or it makes me have a sense of "identity" that is not restricting my expression, a more expansive sense of "me."

I was feeling pretty good about myself, thinking about how I am uninhibited and proud of this, yet could be even more so as I actually use my creativity more, as I came into work. I was all ready to write all of this but also hoping something on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert would tie it all together. He did a piece about finding the true Colbert, I forget the name of it, I think it was "Who Am Me?", and in it he took a lie detector test about himself. The best part was the premise and the set-up and the banter with the guy who would administer the test - the only result the reported was that he was telling the truth about his name. In the set-up he talks about playing a false character for 9 years. Everyone knows the "Old Colbert" was a character but there is a reason he has to bring it up besides just to explain why he has to find himself. He is magically distancing himself from that character and magically evolving America further away from it's false, conservative, more hateful past. Another form of this distance is when he jokes with John McCain that the band are Trump supporters or even republicans. They play along with the joke but everyone knows that every last one of them, as artists, musicians, people of color, all of them are liberal or at least not Republican. That's what makes it funny, the suggestion that they even could be republican, and of course even McCain is laughing at that - he knows it's not cool to be one. Or the surprise that anyone from the audience would cheer shows how no one expects cool people or even regular people who are the least bit cool to be Republican. Colbert took a crack at McCain when the Senator tried to imply a Cain/Bachmann presidency would be better than Obama's. Colbert mocked him offending the audience by saying "Making Friends with John McCain: 'want to come to the McCain cook-out? by the way your kids are ugly.'" This is just a way of saying "No one (in the audience - effectively "no one who matters") supports Republicans". He does some great jokes where he questions "who" really loves Taco Bell, about his identity as a corporate tool, or questioning how we are all amalgamations of social conditioning and subjectivity. One philosophical conclusion from this line of thinking is that we are all One and are represented by Whoever Is Speaking. But there is so much, magically, that we can reap from this "finding myself" theme Colbert is doing, this journey we are on together. He is still willing to "debase" himself, and joke about it, as a corporate shill, but will not be sinking to the depths of playing conservative ever again. it's just too demeaning, even as a joke, and the process of redefining himself is Redemption for us all.

In terms mentioned in this edition, it is like saying Our Creativity / Identity is Loving enough, Open enough, to loan us out to play scenes with other people. Or that our identity / creativity is faithful enough to us, will always come back, that it can take on any form she needs to and we don't have to worry about losing her. It's like saying realizing we don't know who we really are is like taking a mind-opening drug, pondering and questioning and seeking our identity is like meditation, and expressing and sharing the journey or discoveries with others are like practice. The Quest for Identity has these aspects of the Creative process. It's not a coincidence: this is the Identity of Magic. The Creative Identity is the Only True Self - and it is not a "self" or Ego because it does not belong to any of us more than others: it is all of us. It's just that we notice more of it in the people who get more into it. Everyone is creative in their own ways but we can all be moreso. This is why I've always called Gaga the Goddess, not that she is "more" the goddess than the rest of us, but because she has gotten more into the creative identity at the heart of us all and shows us even better how to do it. This is what is so magical about Colbert's Journey to discover himself, because the "joke" itself, the process, is the nature of re-awakening magic in ourselves. And we're doing it all together, for the whole culture. The key is to be flexible about "oneself", expressing all the wonder that comes with that and broadening experiences to discover more of ourselves in more of each other. Maybe go places "we" wouldn't go and do things we've never done before, because "we" can't really know who we are, only that we will always be likely to cling to one idea of who we are when even more identities are waiting for us to grow into them.

This makes even more sense with some examples about how he is doing it. Some of the best jokes came from his conversation with the guy running the polygraph. All he had to do was take a paranoid tone, suggesting that the guy "knew something about him", to bring up a magical tension that questioned "who" we are, what we can know about each other, and how. He emphasized this more near the end after saying he was a "10" on a 1-10 honesty scale, then said "you're reading me right now, aren't you?" in a nervous tone. The guy kind of deflected by saying "you're trying to figure me out, too" but that also opened up an intimate psychic space between them, prompting Colbert to say "I don't have to...I can help myself... do you ever help yourself?" and the masturbation-tension was relieved by the guy good-naturedly admitting that he did. I'm sure the KGB and CIA have words for these kinds of exchanges and the psychic/energy play at work within them. I just thought it was a hilarious joke but also felt the magical implications of their banter. The real gem was when Colbert started talking about sociopaths. The guy said he seemed to know a lot about sociopaths and he was hilarious saying "I read, I'm not one of...'them'" - really hinting at being a sociopath. Then he said that as an entertainer he had a similar role. He explained that an entertainer studies other people in order to pretend to be like them so that people will like him, but a sociopath studies other people in order to pretend to be like them so that other people will think they are human. The distinction is powerful, especially considering that he is not seriously saying, conclusively, that he is not a sociopath. As far as feeling inhuman is concerned, it reminds me of starseeds, autism, otherkin and "a hybrid can withstand these things." Of course the ideas associated with "sociopath" are pretty negative and I can't imagine what people who suffer from this think they are, besides human. But I know a lot of the nicest, kindest, most loving people I ever met identify as "non-human" and it makes them much nicer than "normal humans." They are not trying to convince people they are human to get approval, they aren't usually trying to convince people they are starseeds or fairies, but it is nice when they can feel comfortable around others who accept this already. The non-human nature, in this context, makes people much more likeable and even moreso when they're comfortable and don't feel they have to pretend to be human. But this often comes with a negative view of humanity, too. And it can even turn into bitterness -which is why I want to remember how all of this magic works regardless of which way one is going in the universe of identity.

To become our best, most creative selves, to access the most magical and inspiring powers and spirits, we must be flexible with ourselves. We can let ourselves enjoy new loves we never knew before. We can encourage our lovers to do the same, knowing that all love is enriching and ultimately brings us all together, even through strange paths. Colbert is the psychopomp (sociopomp?) who guides us to a new reality though the shared quest for his own identity - but the reason this is so magical and impressive to me is partly the context, being available to the whole country not just people who can afford cable, as I mentioned in a previous edition. Mostly it is like a blank template of All Artistic Activity: the artist takes a journey and the audience comes along but there is a magical journey between us, too, so that Art brings us together in the world and also magically, through our soul. Gaga exemplifies this flexibility of identity through her style and statements of encouragement to us to "remake ourselves every day." But she also shows how the same spirit of Goodness pervades all forms - all her own forms and all existing forms. It brings Us, our creative Self, out to see Us so Out Loud in Her. She leads the way, blazing trails all over the world and out into the heavens. And Colbert is here like our very Egos themselves, holding our hand always along the way, right there with us. Who knows if we are his support or he is ours, who knows if the times the footprints go single are they his or ours. It doesn't matter, we are together, co-equal. This is a good way to feel about the divine, a way someone once told me to talk with the divine - as a closest friend. I get overwhelmed even thinking about meeting Gaga -what would I say? But I know if I could feel comfortable and talk with her, she would feel the same way about me that I do about her, recognizing the creative spirit within, the desire to make the most of letting it out and transforming the world with it, and a natural friendliness. And we'd probably make out. But through conversation, sex, or any form of magic/communication we could see how we have the same nature - she is so supportive and connected to all of us little monsters we already feel this way, like she knows us. But it's totally natural to want to experience that with her, to feel it in person. I believe the main conclusion for what to do with that desire is to use it to make our own art. The longing to be with Gaga is the same as the longing to return to the magical, creative, artistic world or Heaven, to re-make this world into one in which heavens come through easier. And we are "with her" when we get creative and make art. But just as Art itself unites the artist and audience in the magic of the art, physically, but also brings us closer together in our Soul, going the Soul route and being close to Gaga through our own art will magically open paths that can lead to meeting her, too. I've always been so overwhelmed by magic that I can't draw Gaga, as passionately as I want to draw her. But attempting it has gotten me back into drawing after years of neglect. And my current project, to draw other people, is starting to make me feel like I'm finally getting back into Art and closer to Gaga and all the other little monsters surrounding her. One of my little monster friends draws amazing pictures of Gaga and has met her, Gaga even wore her art. She thanked me for always supporting her and when I asked a week ago if I could draw her picture she said yes! I know between this path and my songs I will meet Gaga one day and many other amazing monsters and people on the way. I've been so happy to discover that songs just come right out of me now that my friend makes music for them and we formed a band. We almost have our album ready but I want to include some of my worship songs for Gaga, since she ultimately is making all art possible for me, since I had been retreating in my shell in the face of a seemingly hostile world. But I know I have a part to change it, too - thanks, Gaga! Paws up, I love you forever!

One final note: We can be whoever we want and support each other. Or we can insist there is only one way to be and tear each other down. Trump and the Republican primary are perfect examples of the latter. Reagan had a rule, like honor amongst thieves, that Republicans should not speak ill of each other. The truth is they have always all been greedy liars, con artists, and can't risk anyone exposing their game. But Trump is exposing it, and exposing himself as the True Jerk Spirit of it all in the process. It's all so negative and once it all starts to come out it will destroy them. By contrast, their biggest obstacle to stop Hillary has been "Benghazi" but one "Happy Accident" of the fall-out of Boehner's resignation is the McCarthy guy who wants to replace him tipped his hand and indicated the whole Benghazi investigation was purely political. It took a could of days but now that Hillary is responding to this the tone is changing completely. I just heard an anchorman suggest that her biggest liability could become an asset - pointing out that Republicans do not have the common good, only their own self-interest, at heart. The same is shown by the opposition to sensible gun laws. The further evil over-reaches the bigger the backlash will be - and there will always be a backlash. If gun owners had agreed to some laws that would make everyone safer, we might not get to the point of saying get rid of all guns. But if they don't compromise, they can expect drones to pick them out of their cold dead fingers, eventually. This is just how the future works - love it or leave it to the rest of us.

Gagablog 93: Takeovers: Gaga on TV and other Emmy Firsts; The End of Capitalism/Volkswagen/Prisons/Pharmacueticals; Francis drives out Boehner and other Republican Lasts - Prophecy is just Early Truth

Gaga was at the Emmys for the first time a couple of nights ago, presenting an award. Importsnt firsts were the headlines made at this award show, including Viola Davis becoming the first black woman to win Best Actress in a Drama and Jeffrey Tambor winning best actor for playing the first transgender character to win that award. They both gave moving speeches. The director of Transparent Jill Solloway made history as the thrid woman to win that award, as well, but for me she made another kind of history. She might not have been the first, but she was the first award recipient on TV who I've seen who started her speech by thanking the Goddess.

I should clarify that it has been over a week since I started this, I just have not had the occasion to write. If I had, I would have been able to register a nice prediction about John Boehner quitting as Speaker of the House. I would not have "called it", but certainly was going to comment on how shaken he was by the Pope's speech to Congress, and if I had completed it that night as I wanted to it would have looked cool when he quit the next day, that I was focused on that. But it's just The Truth, Early, prophecy is, and if I'm late commenting on it that doesn't make it any less true. I've been talking for years about the collapse of the Right-Wing in America and the end of conservative and fundamentalist thought worldwide. As this presidential race shows so many cracks in the system I've been happy to predict this imminent downfall and watch it play out on a daily basis, in real time. Plus, "we" in the online chaos magic group did a spell to bring all of this down: maybe I was the only one to take it that far but others were doing a spell against the guy who bought that AIDs drug and I just wanted to expand it, along with all the other "spell-posts" and general chatmagic I do there, all towards this same goal. And they do have a side-group specifically geared towards possessing political leaders, but more on this later.

I'm not really resentful of all the people who thank gods when accepting praise on TV. I'm sympathetic to them and appreciate that they want to honor the higher power whose love and support makes everything possible for them - this is how I feel about Gaga, and if people feel this way about their God I am happy for them. But I also know how much of a trigger this can be for many people in the audience and one reason is that many people's ideas of "God" aren't entirely good or people can feel weird about it in certain contexts. This is one reason I was so pleased with Pope Francis' appeal to the American people after his speech to congress, from the balcony, when he said "even if you don't believe in God, don't pray, or can't pray, send me your good wishes." He was including everyone and taking it - his quest for justice and the planet - beyond these limitations. Same as when he said our treatment of each other will be judged by Time, a universal concept, instead of invoking a God. I will say more about this later but before I go on I want to insist that as great as Pope Francis has been, all of us who support gay rights are morally superior to him and represent his teachers in this direction. I can sympathize with atheists who think thanking god is ridiculous, too. But I can also sympathize with a middle ground between people who always or never thank gods. Before Peyton Manning came to Denver I already liked him, but I used to assume he was a jerk and didn't like him. What turned me around was a documentary about him that showed his character and I thought he seemed very nice and humble. Specifically, I was impressed by something he said, that he had never prayed during a game because he thought that seemed frivolous, but that he did pray to beat Tom Brady and the Patriots to go to the Superbowl, since Tom already had 3 rings. By contrast, Tom Brady said in the same documentary that his favorite Superbowl ring was "the next one." I don't need to pile on that Tom Brady is an asshole, everyone knows that, but I do want to make another tangent: He recently retracted his support for Trump, saying he was misunderstood. I want to give him credit for that, because that is cool, even if he's insincere, it's still better than actually supporting Trump or admitting it. But I must say, how big of an asshole must Trump be that he made Tom Brady, of all people, backstep from being associated with him? I wonder if anyone outside Patriots fandom and possibly some people in his family think Tom Brady is not as asshole already. But to Brady's credit, maybe he never did mean to suggest support for Trump, I never read the quotes.

I see the agnostic complaint, even if God existed He wouldn't have helped you win whatever. But for a believer of course everything connects with Divinity. My thing is that one reason many people lose belief is they aren't being reminded of the Divine Feminine. It says so much about us that we are always thanking God and never the Goddess. I don't know if Jill Solloway was literally the first person on national TV to thank the Goddess for an award, but it seemed like it. And there was no "media-coverage" of this moment, either: it did not register in the media as an important first. Maybe in the future, looking back on it, it will. It just does not compare with long-overdue milestones like the first black woman to win Best Actress. In her speech Viola Davis identified that Opportunity was the key to success. The sad reality is that opportunity has not been fair in this country. Racism, sexism and other prejudices have influenced the system that creates opportunities. But this is the way of the past and is going away. The more people "break through" the more the system changes, and it can only get better. The Future must be Progress, that is the only way, and you can just sense it if you search your heart - we all know biases are going away, which is why conservative thinking tries cling to the past. Opportunity will be more egalitarian as more diversity improves the system, it's a gradual change with breakthroughs. And while kids and adults have had thousands of opportunities to hear someone thank God on TV, this one statement Jill Solloway made could be the exact moment that provided an opportunity for millions of people to consider the Goddess who has previously not thought of Her. And I bet at least some thousands of people did and it will change their lives. Even if the ratio of thanking the God to thanking the Goddess is Millions-to-One, the next person who does it cuts that number in half. And it has power to connect with people, an added power from being repressed and hidden, but stirring in the mystery that connects us all.

I thought it fitting that she thanked the Goddess and then shortly thereafter the Goddess, as I envision her, Lady Gaga, arrived on the same stage. She was purely classy and delightful. Everyone in the media seemed shocked that she would have a classic beauty look - and everyone also seemed to agree that she was the most beautiful star of the night. Some of this could be people who want to "glamorize the normal" and act like she looks so much better "like this" but I forgive that because I don't even think that was a factor compared to everyone's natural recognition of her divine beauty. But she was perfect for the Emmy's, especially considering she has a new TV show and is playing her cards perfectly to win one herself by making sure they feel sufficiently "respected" by her attire and conduct. She was perfectly on script for the award presentation and modest, drawing no attention to herself. Some might be surprised that she was not making a "statement" but I thought she struck the perfect tone of Respect for the Institution, Television. Because she will be taking it over. This reminds me of the plot I gleaned from the "G.U.Y." - the infiltration and takeover of the system. Gaga is playing her cards right. The actor who won the award make her blush saying he would tell his kids he got an award from Gaga and she just showed how honored she was to be there. I'm sure she will be modest and sweet when she wins her first Emmy, next year, too. But it's not like she will turn into a TV Diva or the Blockbuster Goddess from that SNL skit once she "takes over Television". She will just influence it, through her art/magic, and culture through it, as she always has, only more directly and within the programming - previously she was just on videos, news, and interviews, plus the Muppet special and other holiday specials. This is all about takeovers and I have a lot to catch up with Gaga so I will talk about some of the other ones -I don't usually watch horror and haven't even seen her new show yet! But I did see her new song, the cover song and model-walk video, and I love it. I love how she took a whole new side of the world and music with Tony Bennett, how she is partnering with others to make these new visions come true, like "Til it Happens to You." I love how Billboard named her the artist of the year and even one of my online haters linked it with the caption, to me, of "when you're right, you're right." Gaga has been taking over the world, first through music and fashion and art and now more specifically through TV, but also through Love and Technology and Religion - bringing us all together from all directions. There are some obstacles we must all overcome to reach the paradise of Unity and Acceptance, and that is what the rest of this will be about, signs we are overcoming those obstacles.

Pope Francis has called for an end to the injustices of Capitalism and for us all to protect the environment. He also tasked politicians to be responsible and help the poor and immigrants. He said everything right except for not supporting gay marriage. He will evolve, though - I did some magic for it. I never believed that he met with Kim Davis but when it took a while for him to deny it I went ahead and did some magic to help him realize that Love is Love and come to meet more gay people and understand the need for justice for everyone. I think he just needs to be educated, he seems smart about so many other things he might just not have had enough exposure to people or some of the issues. But what he said in his speech to Congress was an epic blow to the Republican platform. Which it should be, their beliefs are contrary to any good interpretation of Christianity. I called my mom on the phone after the speech and told her I thought Boehner looked like he would have an episode, that he could tell his party had met the end. She said he was just emotional but the ladies on the View seemed to agree with me, saying someone should call him and tell him how bad he looks, remind him he is on TV. And he quit the next day. He came in to make the announcement singing "Zippidee-Doo-Da" and when I heard that I immediately thought of the chaos magic spells to possess leaders with alien intelligence. This may have been calculated on his part to show he was happy with his decision but that doesn't contradict the spell working, too. he said himself that he was planning to resign at the end of the year but something about the Pope's visit made him change his mind and when he woke up the next morning he just knew he would quit at the end of October instead. There was something childlike and refreshing to me about him putting in his few weeks notice. And of course, politically, it clears the position for someone even worse to hasten the demise of the Republican party. I think everyone knows it's the end and will be "getting out" one way or another. Scott Walker claims to want to preserve the party by leaving the race, and encouraging other "no-chance" candidates to follow suit, so supporters can go to someone who has a chance of beating Trump. I mentioned this last time but have to point out that he's basically admitting he and others are only in it for the money and prestige, that they all know who they are and know they have no chance. Colbert was so funny to say "I love it when God plays jokes!" about "God" telling Walker to enter the race then calling back to say quit a few months later. This is the truth of it, they claim to be the Christian Right but they aren't Christ-like at all: they've repressed all the goodness of charity and love and pacifism from the belief system. What's left is no good and will be swept away in time in order for those Good principles to return.

All conservative thought can do is deny and delay the future. We will live in a world without money or war, a world I call Oz. Because I was blessed with the opportunity to read those books I have been expecting this for many years. I see it coming to pass, magically, and see the culture embracing magic, the path of love that leads to Oz, more and more. We will reach the future, and the more some forces try to hold us back the harder it will be for them. Republicans have tried to stifle education, voting, and debate because the truth proves these will be their undoing. Their philosophy is based on lies and all they can do is try to keep people from seeing through them. But we just can't ignore the truth forever: if we deny global warming climate change will get worse, weather more severe, and it will force us to address it or die. It's just a matter of the sooner, the better. If we don't address social injustice we create rebellion and revolution. We can do things right, in accord with nature, with magic, with the future. But if we don't, if we insist on holding back for profit, on cheating, or making money off of war, we will destroy ourselves and others. But we don't have to do that - it's only inevitable if we don't care. If we do care, and act like we care, we save the world and ourselves.

I will conclude this with some ideas about takeovers, how evil corporations can be transformed or dispensed with. The big business news this week is Volkswagen cheating emissions tests, making 11 million diesel cars that turned down their emissions during emissions testing then went crazy with them the rest of the time. They said the cars had 20-40 times the legal limit of emissions. That makes me want them to be punished not for 11 million cars and cheating those customers, but for polluting the environment, poisoning everyone, to the extent or 330-440 Million Cars -that's right, charge them for the damage they actually did, to "Every American", as if each of us had one of their cars, but really to the whole world. How do you pay such a fine? You don't let them - take over the company. If Volkswagen is "the German Identity" but they could not keep the company honest in their borders, don't let Germany take it, take it with the U.N. Furthermore, since Germany has been giving Greece grief over it's debt, a financial debt that never hurt anybody, well, now that Germany has a debt to the entire world, a debt of emissions that poison us all, maybe the U.N. should give Volkswagen, or it's financial assets, to Greece and ask their forgiveness. Government takeovers of Big Businesses are some of the scariest, commie things to capitalists so I'm going to keep pushing for this. But really I use it as an extreme example, something that SHOULD be done whenever a company does something so evil - just takeover and transparently fix it or takeover and sell it all off, dismantle it.

I have a perfect example of a more organic, natural takeover from a story about a solitary-confinement prison built in Colorado for 180 million dollars. It's been empty for years. I'm using this as an example for the entire Prison Industry, by the way. I'm "predicting", magically manifesting, the end of that system so invest accordingly Bob Barker and other sleazebags, this is your warning. The director of Colorado prisons insisted that social changes were requiring more inmates to be put in isolation cells even as more research came out showing how bad this was in recent years. He stuck to it, though. It turned out it was more of their own internal practices that were producing more of a "need" for isolation units. But before that came to light and things could be changed, they got approval for a 180-million-dollar prison to focus on solitary cells. They built it, but then a new Prison director took over and fixed some of the problems so they don't need the isolation cells after all. Critics of the prison system condemn solitary confinement and so does psychology in general, to my understanding. They asked one of the organizers of a group opposing the prison from the start what to do with it and she said "walk away from it" like it was that simple - just stop having citizens pay $20 million in taxes every year to pay for an empty building. If it is that simple it says something about how we run government and what our priorities are - apparently to keep prison developers in business above many other things. This is one example but I believe it exemplifies the whole industry and collusion with the government. Prisons used to be run by the government but now are private enterprises, at least many or most of them are. To me, this is a basic example of the evils of capitalism. In a decent communist system the government would own the prisons and car companies, etc, but would be responsible for making them good, not trying to make money off of exploiting people. Since private companies took over our prisons, a few decades ago, our trend has been incarcerating more and more people. We now have the most people in prison in the world. It's an evil that would continue, for the money-changing it does, even with "empty prisons", but the fact that they are full and overcrowded shows how much misery the corporate powers are willing to inflict for their profits. And of course some people need to be kept away from others for the public good, but if we only focused on actual offenders we could rehabilitate more. Instead, drug laws especially have been used to lock up crazy numbers of people who should not be there, just to make money for those companies - I'm sure the same ones who own the prisons helped make the laws. So prisons can't do what they should be doing at all since they are too busy trying to make money off of causing suffering or capitalizing on what's already out there. Once we spread more information about the injustices of the Justice System we can end it, have a takeover. Because Justice is determined by the future, too, and like all these other things doing it wrong just increases the power behind the transformation to do it right.

I'm sleepy so I will end this quickly, but last time I mentioned a news story on NPR about MDMA being used to cure PTSD. Then the next week was one about Ketamine being used to cure Depression, or at least treat it better than any other drug - science seems to admit, in some venues, that pharmaceutical drugs are worthless in treating depression, probably the only good effects are placebos. I was glad, in a way, to hear that "real drugs: were final being used and respected for what they do for us. I don't personally consider speed and painkillers "real drugs", but just having drugs that people like for fun being applauded by "square therapists" was kinda cool, like all the Major Magazines praising Gaga's Emmy look. But in the Ecstasy story the therapist made me mad, saying they used to use it in therapy in the 70's and 80's until the "club kids" gave it a bad reputation. I heard that and it made me mad - like I said, I never sued it, never was into that scene, but met some ravers and liked them a lot, respect their culture. I was like, "THEY didn't give it a bad name, all the old farts who were jealous of them, trying to shame them and say what they were doing was wrong, THOSE were the people who gave it a bad name! And you're just being one of them to repeat it!" It's like they are saying "it's okay as long as you don't have fun." I was also a little resentful and feeling superior knowing that psychedelics are fare more powerful and potentially helpful - they admitted, for instance, that as pleased as they were with Ketamine to alleviate depression it only worked for up to a month or so and in some cases only a few hours - which to me does not sound all that "curey." But I know shamanic medicine cures people with natural plant cures and spirituality. All I want to say here is what while I hoped and always expected that modern Medicine would study and join with shamanic medicine, we seem to be at a point to really do that and the Shamanic side is wide open and available, maybe more than ever before, worldwide, but the science side is dragging it's feet like an ogre. This is where the takeover template kicks in: if the "two sides" could just compromise and work together they could grow together harmoniously. But if republicans will never change, if they are always in opposition to humanity and nature, they will be overcome. If the cops and prison system don't connect with the people and stop exploiting and abusing us, they will be replaced. If car companies and other companies try to used their cast resources to cheat regulations and threaten us all, they should be seized for repayment to the people. And if medicine insists on only making money instead of helping people, it will be shoved aside by shamanic medicine. If it is welcoming of the old/new ways and magic, it will still be useful. The medicine will change, it's just a question if the system will change with it or if people will leave that system for the more effective magically and spiritually connected one that re-emerges. I used to fantasize that one day schools would teach these holistic, spiritual, and natural plant-based approaches to health, and I still have that fantasy. But I know the magic side, the hallucinogen and psychedelic side, will play a role in the medicine of the future. I know because we are becoming more spiritual, more able to see and solve our issues from spiritual dimensions, and these plants are spiritual allies. In Colorado and more and more states we have the legal ability to discover so much more scientifically about weed, we just have not really started this yet. When we do, I am sure it will be key to saving the planet and ourselves. I wrote a book about this 3 years ago and how to magically manifest more liberation for Weed and Us: "All I really Need to Know I Learned from Smoking Weed." But as we all come to discover more natural truths about things this new world, in harmony with nature, will take over. It can happen within politics, within business, in art and media, in every sphere of life, and the more it happens the faster we will all come together. But the things in the way will just be swept away. We will walk, run, or fly away from old ideas that don't serve us well. They are all based on inferiority / superiority complexes but once we learn more about each other and come together we will get past all of these and work together for the common good. The complexes of domination provide "control" but when it stands in the way of natural improvement nature will sweep them away and restore a harmonious balance between us instead. We will be the agents of this, the brooms and brushes, with our magic and art.

Thanks, Gaga, for showing the way with Humility and Grace, but also how that peaceful strength comes from having all the power of the Truth - Art, love, and magic - on our side.

Gagablog 92: Paradise Preview: Angelfishing with Stephen Colbert: Troll to Soul: Jeb and Trump - Frenemies? Merry Jerry Jon Mayer How over Who

This gagablog is about the Quest for the True Colbert, a mystery play whereby America discovers a new identity for Herself that is free of conservativism. But first, Paradise: A Preview.

Lots of people know about the idea of the collective unconsciousness. We might have different ideas about the collective consciousness or whether or not it can even exist. I think the internet is giving people more ideas of what the collective mind of the world is or could be. My idea is that there is a collective consciousness, the world of inspiration, stories, and ideas, but also an inferior mental world of judgment and prejudice. If the collective subconscious is the world of dreams (and a commercial about insurance just said "your dreams are the most valuable thing you will ever own" in he background as I typed that) then the collective consciousness is the world of Hopes and Dreams: idealism, innovation, art, fantasy, sensuality, magic and the quest for justice. The reason we don't recognize this waking dreamworld as "collective" is that some mindsets, and therefore some people and cultural expressions, are kept out of it by narrow-mindedness and small-mindedness. Of course no one is excluded by nature. Everyone can become more a part of the collective consciousness by overcoming the mental limitations, breaking through the barriers of narrow-minded mindsets. From my perspective I see the collective consciousness as Oz and the small-minded culverts that separate themselves from it or even "threaten" it and drag it down as the outlying kingdoms. In this fairytale arrangement these are separated by the Deadly Desert. Of course even Ozzites, within Oz, can be victims of restricted mindsets, but the collective mindset of Oz is this paradise of love, support, and acceptance. In "our real world" the mindsets are mixed among us. More importantly, the "dominant" mindset, currently, the one in economic power which translates to great political power, is this inferior collective consciousness of judgment and division. We can tell the difference between them but until we, collectively, actually differentiate them then the collective consciousness will be burdened by these lesser consciousnesses. And the world and it's people will be threatened by their collective political power. Opposing the restricted mindsets collected in positions of power that threaten the harmony of the world is crucial for our survival and happiness, as a species.

Of course this happens on an individual, personal level. We all have our high-minded ideals. We all get realizations and inspirations and moments of magic happen to us, whether we believe in magic or not. Of course if we do believe in magic we will notice these things more. If we believe in art we will have more of these inspiring and magical experiences. If we deny creative thinking and only focus on the "real world" (as it has been) then we will have less insights and notice magical things less but they will still happen to us and around us. The world of Love, Magic, and Ideas, this paradise we can call collective consciousness, is equally open to all but our minds have blinders or blindfolds on which keep us from seeing it. These blinders are the same things that keep us from seeing ourselves in others, blinders that allow us to see some other people as "more other" than us or "too other" for respect. Things like racism, nationalism, misogyny, and greed. Of course these are collective, too, and form collective "consciousnesses" except that these small-minded zones are not really "part" of the heavenly consciousness but are more like sandbags attached to the Hot Air Balloon of the Mind. There is a phrase "Minds are like parachutes: they only work when open." Of course closed minds do "work" just not well or for good. It does not matter how limited someone's mind is by these restrictive mindsets of racism and greed, they can still "think" enough to plan murders and political campaigns and run big business. And they still have the chance to escape those mindsets and join the paradise of the rest of the world. I can hear objections like "I'm open-minded but it's no paradise" to which I just say "it's not entirely, yet, we still have to make it"

I've always been high-minded, idealistic and creative and always valued those dimensions and wanted to go further along them, but I am still held back by doubts, fears, anger, misconceptions, and frustrations with the world. A closed-minded person is perfectly susceptible to open-minded ideas changing they way she thinks. An open-minded person is still susceptible to closed-minded ideas changing the way she thinks, too. In the first instance, the person can be lifted up out of a bad mindset, and in the second the person can be dragged down by one. Even if you don't accept negative and narrow-minded ideas, they can drag you down and upset you to encounter them. Of course we can't just blind ourselves to the bad things in the world but must find a way to address them without getting dragged down by them. I think this arrangement of The Collective Consciousness as Paradise and Collective Biases as like "more private" hells weighing it all down is a good perspective to have to approach things. We should all, always, strive to be more in paradise, to have better, more helpful thoughts. This striving should remind us to reject the negative things that creep in. This is why I call "paradise" THE collective consciousness. It's not the only kind of consciousness, or the only way to collectivise mindsets, but it does connect all the good ones into one and the bad ones are just mistakes and misunderstandings. The Good One is the one that ultimately lifts us up and unites us all. The bad ones are the ones that drag us down and keep us apart. And the collective consciousness does unite us, already, and will ultimately unite us all, in all ways. "Ultimately" means the paradise consciousness is "the future," for all of us. I see it as destiny but not quite inevitable. We have to work to unite, in "pursuit of happiness", to reach this paradise. We have to become our best selves together and resist these dividing mindsets. It is possible for us to be overcome by fear, to make the wrong decisions, elect the wrong leaders, and even end our entire existence on the planet in war or pollution. Then this paradise is not an inevitable future. But if we resist those things in ourselves and in the world, a world where we all feel connected and sense our collective goodwill is assured.

The world of the mind exists in all of us and we are all part of it even though we are beset by smaller mindsets that drag us out of it. But it doesn't just happen inside each individual. Like the collective subconscious, the world of the mind is being played out in reality through world events. I would suggest that one way of looking at the world of the mind is the internet, and another is the pantheon of goddesses and gods. Another is the world of Art, music, stories, theater, movies, TV, video games and entertainment. Another is the world of science and philosophy - and another is the natural world itself and the social world of humans and other living things on the planet. But I see all of these different Models of the World of the Mind are coming together into a universal whole, and it's not like one version is better than the others. Looking at heaven as the City of the Goddesses and considering their lives and interactions might be the best way to understand Paradise in certain ways. But to understand other things about it, it might be best to talk about the world of art, the internet, politics, or nature. Of course, from my perspective Gaga is the Goddess of Love and to me the Genius of the World, though of course others are close to that as well and divine in this way, too, and in other ways peculiar to them. This gagablog was originally - and is, later - about the Quest for the True Colbert, a mystery play whereby America discovers a new identity for Herself that is free of conservativism. It's a magical spell Colbert, a master wizard, is doing with America to transform himself, and us. No matter where we are in the world we can be transformed by new ideas. Of course our surroundings can affect what we think about. The beliefs of the surrounding community, or community we choose to associate with, affect us. Someone observed in CMG recently that people who are real jerks on the internet are often are from places where "people are shitty." Even with access to the internet, a magical community, and better ideas we can still be dragged down by living in "bad places." And it's not like people are actually any shittier, by nature, in one place over another, but there are mindsets that pervasively color the collective mindset of each area and some places have shittier ones than others, for various reasons. People can sense and characterize the "feel" or mood of different cities, for instance. You can be a visionary wherever you are, but it gets easier, in some ways, for necessity if the area is mostly backwards-thinking, but really hard to live there. And it gets easier, in other ways, if there is a community of belief around to support you, or other conditions, such as the booming legal weed economy we have here in Colorado, or communities based on art or around liberal colleges, etc. I recently saw a picture on facebook that says it is of one million Tibetan children meditating for peace. It's impressive and mind-blowing to me, in my American mindset, as much as I have always tried to focus on peace, personally, and knowing that other cultures are way better at it. And the idea of it, just the image, opens me and others up to more of that way of thinking.

I have two great examples of these "easier amongst the backwards" and "easier amongst the progressive" paths to visionary living. When I was writing the first paragraph of this I was watching the semi-finals and finals of Masterchef. The way the final competitors were describing the experience in the lead-up had many media magic echoes of what I've been talking about in the last few gagablogs. You could tell they respected each other, Claudia and Derrick. They each have their own passion and love for cooking but it is love and passion so great that it takes them beyond themselves. The way they interacted, their body language, hugging and tearing up while being judged, showed that for both of them the love of cooking went beyond themselves and they loved each other as well, recognizing and respecting each others talent and passion. Even though the other person was each one's "obstacle" to getting $250,000, a cookbook deal, and the Masterchef title and trophy, they were not treating each other as "others" but their passion let them move beyond that and be genuinely happy and hopeful for each other, too. This is overcoming the problem of "otherness" or "otherizing" that I was talking about in gagablog 89, I think. Another example, from another FOX show, of all places, were the lesbian and Mormon couples competing to win a home on Home Free, who became close friends despite cultural differences that they said themseleves would have kept them apart, because they recognized the passion to care for their families was the same and they were all working hard for it even in competition. Derrick said it was an honor just to be cooking alongside Claudia, to have her to compete with, whoever won. Claudia praised Derrick's skills and vision and talked about how it made her become her best by having to compete with the best. This is what I was trying to talk about in gagablog 90, I think. You could tell just by looking at them that the dishes of the finale were a higher caliber than what these homecooks had made before. It's not like they were holding back before and saving their very best for last. Yes, they improved by the whole experience and what they learned from the judges. But they also improved by the environment itself. They are all home cooks who had people around them tell them their food was good, but no one setting a professional expectation and no one to compete with to reach that level. These are conditions set up to create excellence, like a great theater or dance company or artists collective or magnet school. This is what I am talking about in this blog, getting good things together, away from other influences to create the best conditions to excel in a particular direction.

It does happen despite being in situations that are less conducive or even hostile to innovation and creativity, as well. I'm not sure where it was, it seems like Texas, but just the other day a boy named Achmed Mohammud (sorry if I misspelled it) made a clock and took it to school and his teacher reported him and the cops arrested him and interrogated him. He seems to be very obviously a nerd, very skinny with a NASA T-shirt, but of course it shouldn't matter what he looks like or what his name is anyway. The teacher apparently thought it might be a bomb, influenced by anti-Muslim paranoia and prejudice. The boy was suspended but released without being charged, though of course it could have ended much worse. An overzealous cop could have hit him too hard "interrogating" him and killed him, or any number of worse courses of action could have taken place from this arrest. Thankfully that didn't happen, but if nothing else happened this would just suck for the kid. Instead, the story got media attention and President Obama reached out to meet the kid and raise him up as an example to other kids to get us excited about science and learning. Mark Zuckerburg also reached out and said he wants to meet him - maybe the kid can help him make his "dislike" button, which is apparently problematic and more than an hour-long job, for some reason. And the reason I tell that joke, now, is because I thought it was funny but also because the end of the story, so far, is that while he was suspended and could go back today, he's not going back to that school. He decided to change schools and go somewhere that can appreciate him.

And this is how this collective consciousness works. Our personal mental worlds can be dragged down by fears, depression, restrictive beliefs, etc. Out love lives, family lives, and social lives can be damaged by negative thinking, too. In even worse ways, our communities of interest or geography that we belong to can potentially limit us with bad mindsets going around, we can live in oppressive places, racist areas, Red States, etc. Someone on the radio was lamenting that Kim Davis (sorry if I forgot your name), the clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, gave the town a bad name because it had always been more of a haven for gay people, relatively, in the generally homophobic state of Kentucky or Tennessee, wherever it is. Most of the South, and much of the rest of the country, is still generally homophobic, but only because of the thickness of that layer of repression upon the cultures there. We are all coming out from under it, thanks in part to towns like Athens, Georgia, where I am from, which was always a mecca for queer folk, artists, and "alternative" people of all kinds. And thanks to artists and other individuals who make up artistic towns, etc, or for their work as our healing cultural shamans, wherever they.

The idea is, to create our entrances to paradise, we must encounter the negative, in our own minds, with impervious goodness. Encountering negative ideas, or having them ourselves, should be a signal or clue to move to a better mindset instead. If we are constantly encountering bad things around us, we might be able to change things from within by being a guiding light, but the best solution could be to move. We can never turn our backs on the problems of the world, but joining communities focused on goodness to become our best selves could be the best way to help others, too. It should be obvious that the liberal mindset is this Collective consciousness in the political realm and the conservative one is the divisive, destructive, drag upon it. Politically the Democrats in America are not perfect but are the path to perfection if we hold to our ideals. The Republicans are the path to destruction. It only becomes more and more obvious, but we won't always have a choice if we keep choosing badly despite these blatant evils of greed, pollution, racism, homophobia, nationalism, and misogyny that they are more and more obvious are their "ideals." The liberal, progressive, futuristic, inclusive mindset is the collective consciousness and the money-and-hate-fueled conservative mindset is the threat to it. It's collected out of the hateful mindsets that form around these mistaken ideas and even come to dominate certain areas, and still dominate most of our economic and political power structures. But we can break these down within ourselves, within our communities and states, and nationally. We do it by sharing information and learning from each other. I was just telling my friend what I was writing about and mentioned the kid being suspended for making a clock. He told me three more amazing things. One was that he has also been promised an internship at twitter and gotten a scholarship to Space Camp. The other was that his dad is really cool and has run for President of Sudan more than once, trying to bring progressive ideas there. I would never have known about that guy, probably, if this news event had not happened. Now many more people will have heard of him and maybe next time he runs it will make the difference, he can get more support and win the presidency, you never know. But I don't mind predicting it, here, now, because I just thought of it and it sounds like a good idea. The other thing he told me was that the English teacher who confiscated the clock, "thinking it was a bomb", put it in her desk drawer for the day. If what she believed was true, she was endangering herself and the whole class by doing that. This either shows just how stupid she is, generally, or reveals that she did not really think it was a bomb at all and just wanted to harass the kid for reminding her of stereotypes she is prejudiced against. Which is just a more specific type of stupidity, and one that can be learned or reinforced from others. This reminds me of a fourth thing he told me, that the mayor of the town is notorious for making Islamophobic remarks. So the teacher is not blameless for being prejudiced by living in a prejudiced town, but that should also be taken into account. Since writing this I have seen on the news how he has been welcomed onto the Google campus.

The Collective Good is the collective consciousness and is politically represented by Democratic ideals. The clusters of small-minded beliefs that make up the base for Republicans are Collective Evil. There really is a good. benevolent mind connecting us all and guiding towards a world that manifests it more and more fully. Progressives and liberals are sensing the ideal world of the future and working to take us there. Conservatives are pining for myths of the past that make them more comfortable in small minded beliefs, nostalgic for times when gender roles were more hierarchical and races more segregated and gays and others more marginalized. Of course the future belongs to the liberal, open-minded views. It seems like there should be no competition between these two worlds of ideas, and there isn't on their merits, but the conservative viewpoint is given undo power by money from Big Business and the Greedy amongst the One Percent. There is a new democratic candidate for President, a professor named Lessor, who is only running to draw more attention to the issue of overturning Citizens United and getting money out of politics. The principle is to return power to the people instead of corporations. He is not expecting to win, he had to use crowd-sourcing to raise the million dollars needed to be considered a serious candidate, apparently. But he intends to be in the race to press this issue and says he will drop out if the other candidates make it a top priority in their campaigns. He says they all share his view to different extents but might not prioritize it. He is convinced from his expertise that the first step to making politics work better is to get the money out of it or under control. It makes sense to me and I hope he is successful making the point to the American people so they demand it from the other candidates, or just showing them up about it so they have to change and take it up, in the debates if possible but in the course of the campaign, somehow or another. Bernie Sanders revised his position on the Black Lives Matter movement through activity in the campaign, for example. But Lesser doesn't care who takes up this issue as long as it gets addressed. He's not in it for personal glory, he is in it to get something done.

By contrast, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump would probably both say that they have the goal of "Making America Great Again", the slogan Trump basically stole from Reagan, but would they say they have the same goal? No. Would they be happy no matter which one achieved it, as long as America was "Great Again"? No. Because the goal itself is a lie. Yes, they have differing beliefs and policies, somewhat, but their sames as Republicans certainly trump any of those. The problem is the Republican "ideal" is not for the collective good but only for empowerment of the Selfish Ego. There is a Self or a spirit, in all of us, which is good and our own guide to the Collective Good and even helps fashion good, positive, considerate, helpful Ego in ourselves. But our selfish-ego nature threatens to make us only look out for Number One. And collectively that makes people want America to be Number One - "their America" - and only care about nationalistic and self-serving goals. This is the "American Exceptionalism" they are so proud about. If we join with ideologies that encourage that, that say our beliefs are more valid than others and let us think we have more of a right to have our way by virtue of how we identify ourselves - for example as white, male, Christian, or American - then we become parts of this cultural troll upon society. I do think that is the best way to describe it and most of this gagablog was originally approaching it from this angle, trolling, but I got bogged down and had to start over from the positive conclusion I was working towards but not reaching. The original, somewhat revised I imagine, will follow this.

Jeb Bush and Donald Trump aren't "frenemies." But they are both serving the same small-minded, evil spirit of collective mis-consciousness in the world. Their goals are the same: the advancement of Republican ideals to the expense of the people of the country and the world. Why would they want this? Because it comes with personal wealth and political power so the truth is they want it for themselves. I'm not saying they don't believe their ideas would work, I'm just saying they are wrong. In terms of foreign policy - and probably at all levels - it's like a bully who decides "I can just beat everybody up until they all do what I want." With a military larger than the next ten biggest militaries combined we certainly can be the biggest bully on the block, in the world, but even if we could bomb the world into submission it would only "work" for so long, or just lead to complete self-destruction of the human race. That's just wrong. It's a bad idea and their other ideas are no better. They are all bad for everyone involved because they are the refined expressions of catering to the most financially powerful parts of society that enriched themselves through moral bankruptcy and the most fearful and hateful pockets of the populace. All the Republicans share this same basic idea no matter the details that differ. If they were smart enough to see beyond narrow-mindedness they wouldn't be Republicans. When the country gets smarter to be less affected by it we won't elect any more, either. I've been predicting that this is the end of the Republican party and it seems to keep coming true. Once it's gone maybe the Democrats will be challenged in different ways from different sides, or even shift and become more fully the establishment party so that all others are to the left of them. But at least this form of collective evil and small-mindedness, the Republicans, will be gone. And when they are, and as we are getting rid of them, we will be forging a new character for ourselves, for America, and be a new kind of leader to the world to help create this paradise for all humanity.

Since I wrote this, while waiting to edit and finish it (it is now Tuesday and I think I last worked on this Friday or Saturday) Scott Walker dropped out and encouraged other candidates to follow his lead, drop out, so that people can focus on helping the "most viable" candidate beat the current front-Runner, Trump. To me this just shows what a sham all of these candidates are, how much it is just engineered and then pretending to be a democratic process. But no time for details on that, now, besides, it's obvious. ...An hour later, I have to mention that Colbert told some great jokes about this. He talked about Walker saying God was telling him to lead "by getting out of the way" and that the same God, presumably, had called him to run in the first place, according to an earlier Walker quote. So Colbert summed this up as God saying "I have chosen you, Scott Walker, to...psyche!" then Colbert said he loved it when God played jokes.

I was going to say that all Trump supporters should have to sign their names on something so we can laugh at them later. We should have done this with George W. Bush. I was in high school and college for most of the Bush years, in Georgia and North Carolina, mostly, with a few months in Colorado and a few travelling, then the last 3 years in Colorado, from 2005 to 2008. (I've been here since then, too, with only few vacations out of state in that time.) So many people were so pleased with Bush while he was in office. I got in arguments with people in the street about it, since I was always protesting him. All of our criticisms, from the left, proved to be true - from him lying about weapons of mass destruction to go to war in Iraq to everything else. Now that the test of time has shown this and now that people see more of the fall-out from his terrible policies, very few people will say they support him. But we haven't really learned a lesson. Jeb Bush has only said he would be more conservative than his brother W and seems hesitant to criticize him on Iraq or anything other than spending. He has by far the most party support and money, 150 million dollars, devoted to his campaign, showing him as he insider favorite. He has a more moderate tone than Trump or other candidates, which would help in the general election, but conservatives have been complaining about having compromise candidates for years and maybe should find out what happens when they get their wish for someone more ideologically pure. I can only hope that we as a country are educated and involved enough to defeat that ideological purity and the passion amongst the stupid people in America that it can rally. I know we have it, but my intention is to rally the other side to defeat that movement and send a message that it will never be mainstream or even powerful again. The popularity of Trump, Carson, and Fiorina all benefit from a "anti-establishment" sentiment, especially now. The Republican voters are so sick of all politics they want a non-politician. But there is also a Tea Party support, meaning more politically involved, at least for Trump and Carson, for their ideas. And the Tea Party is also the main support for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and other insider candidates. Because of these overlapping bases, candidates have been slow to criticize each other, wanting to avoid offending voters who support Trump, for instance, so they can woo them later. But as Trump keeps gaining momentum in the polls tactics have changed. I have not seen them yet but the second round of Republican debates were last night and apparently the others went on attack against Trump. Even Miss Alabama, when asked at the Miss America Pageant (which I think Trump still owns?) about his popularity, had an awesome response. She said America should be scared of him and that candidates who had a chance to be able to actually govern were not getting attention because of him and that "if I was a Republican" she would be really scared of that. This reminds me of a point I at least started to make in a previous gagablog, that better competition makes us better. If Trump became the nominee and no one took him seriously, the worst outcome is that they wouldn't vote and he would win. I think this, and cheating, was a factor in Bush taking the White House - people on the left did not take him seriously enough to vote, to avoid voting for Nader, and just didn't believe America would be stupid enough to elect him. But we kinda were. And I've seen a meme, recently to that effect, that if we don't think we are stupid enough to elect Trump, we should remember Bush.

Even if we "know" Trump can't win, the problem with having a weak opposition is it does not bring out the best on our own side. It would be best, of course, if the election were just between the best liberals, so a General Election between say Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton would be better than between her and any one of the Republicans. We will keep attracting even better people to be candidates, too, as the whole political situation improves. And it will improve, inevitably, if we just believe it can and get involved. You can tell by how ridiculous the Republicans are, and how silly their supporters seem, that it just can't last. But it also won't just go away on it's own with all that money behind it, and the momentum of the collective of bad beliefs. We are waking up to escape these in ourselves and helping others out of them, too. We do this individually and socially, but the biggest changes can come from government leadership, as Obama has been doing so well lately addressing all sorts of issues from climate change to overtime pay and sick leave. And even bigger changes can come from the art and entertainment world, like Superman teaching us that the KKK is evil or Gaga teaching us to be proud of our art, identity, and sexuality. Stephen Colbert is now playing a major role in helping America forge a new, non-conservative identity and I will include my discussion of that right after some news of the day. The original idea was to include the news after the Colbert discussion but it got too convoluted. I will see if I can fix it but I will go ahead with the news stories now. The idea was that looking at the stories from the New Liberated-of-Conservativism consciousness would help us reach that new era and see how we are moving towards the future. I decided instead to just suggest that future so we can look back on this current time from that mindset, how I think I usually think of things. And I heard a few news stories that show the new mentality emerging and difference with the old one.

This just in! Arianna Grande hates America! Full disclosure I have had a crush super-hard on Arianna Grande ever since her song "Love Me Harder" and it got even harder when I saw her video for it and some concert appearances. She's beautiful, divine. My friend just told me that she hates America and Americans, too, which makes her officially even sexier to me, which I didn't think was possible but it turns out it is. She appears on camera licking donuts at a donut shop, saying she hates America and Americans. I wonder how she feels about donuts? She might not like them, either, and it's a protest against American Unhealthiness. But I bet she likes donuts. My impression is she hates America for the same reasons I do, for the same reasons Michelle Obama did until her husband became president- it's full of shit and mean and racist in so many ways. I imagine Arianna has had such amazing success with her music career and has finally travelled to other places and seen how different people can be. Maybe she went to places where they are nicer, culturally, and it made it stand out how mean we can be. Or maybe she went someplace we criticize and found out how prejudiced we can be. Maybe being exposed to ideas about America anywhere else gave her some perspective on our culture. Or maybe she didn't go anywhere and just got exposed to some new ideas that made her critical of the culture where she hadn't been aware of issues before. Or maybe she always felt that way and never expressed it, but just went off one day due to deciding to, or being high, or something that set her off. Regardless, the whole story is amazing to me and incredibly sexy, maybe just because I already felt such attraction for her that it would have to increase as my general regard for her grows. And I don't take offense at what she said as an American or living in America - I don't feel like she was talking about "me", about "us". I don't know if she is from Canada or somewhere, my friend said Florida, but like I said, I think she means the same thing I mean when I say I hate America: I hate the racist and narrow-minded culture that is still so dominant in America that it characterizes us and makes us the likely country to wage war on the world and otherwise threaten nature, people, and harmony between us. I hate the Americans that are Proud of that America. But everyone changes. While people who rally around their narrow-minded mentalities seem the least likely to change, are the least open to change, they still change. I have hope for everyone, but it doesn't mean I don't hate the way too many of us are, right now. But we change and the perfect example is John Mayer.

I always thought John Mayer was a douchebag and this is probably because he always was. I'm not sure of this, I have nothing to base it on other than his music which I found lame and the fact that he was always dating these super-hot celebrity girls but it was never working out. I can't even remember who they all were, just that I was usually or always jealous of him. And not liking his music never helped. But that was all "my perception" and probably influenced by impressions of other guys who got with girls by making music, good or bad, who I was jealous of, too. And I think I could tell he was a skilled, talented musician, I just didn't like his style or his sound or my impression of his character - again, just from seeing what he looked like in tabloids or hearing little interview clips of him on Entertainment TV. I can't even remember anything he said that offended me, just an impression I had: Douchebag. And like I said, he might have been one, he might not, the more I talk about it the less that seems to mean, or I'm just being one myself. But the point is, whether he was or not, he changed. He got better, and we all do, so why am I talking about him? How did he get better? He got exposed to something better and evolved with it. I know because I heard him talking about what happened and I've seen the results. I apologize if I seem obsessed with this but the details are important to what I'm talking about, the transformation of culture and individuals. Since I always thought John Mayer was a douchebag, I had one response, initially, when I heard him say on a talk show earlier this year that he had Just been exposed to the Grateful Dead last year: "What a douchebag." All I could think was: This idiot. He is famous for music, even instrumental ability in particular or jazzy styles. But hasn't heard the Grateful Dead. He has been around for years, decades, has rubbed elbows and more with all sorts of celebrities and other musicians. But hasn't heard the Grateful Dead. He might have even been involved in liberal social causes, or just know other artsy people, or even had drug experiences, even psychadelics. As a rock star, if he did have the drug experiences and liked them, he could have had many, many such experiences in different locations with different people. And even without the drugs, the rock star lifestyle assures that variety of experience. But he hadn't heard the Grateful Dead. It almost boggled my mind, but more than that it kind of confirmed my prejudice against him: Of course, he's a douchebag. He's a rocker, sure, but he's kind of like a frat guy-type, a lame-o. He probably just bought into a judgmental perception about the Grateful Dead and avoided them. The most stereotypical criticism is that it isn't good music, just a drug experience. I can see how people can get sucked into closed-minded perceptions like that. Taking some drugs, like pot and psychadelics, especially, can get people out of those mindsets because they realise they aren't bad. But you don't have to take drugs to escape those prejudices. In this case, just enjoying the music of the Grateful Dead without drugs proves that this idea is a myth. Millions of people have proven that, for themselves, but the myth still persists amongst the closed-minded. Because the music is good, this is something that is True. It doesn't mean that everyone will enjoy it, but it is good on many levels and many people who don't expect to enjoy it would be surprised. I'm not saying John Mayer is closed-minded, either, but just that he could have only gotten his impression of the Grateful Dead from certain crowds. That might have also given him an impression of deadheads and he might have been doubtful about any deadheads he met and not take their word to try the music. But of course deadheads are everywhere and it still surprises me to think that in the music world he's a part of no one would find out he hadn't listened to the Dead and made sure that he did. And he just never got curious, because of course it's easy to access with the internet. But maybe, internally, externally, it just never came up. Maybe because of whatever circumstances, maybe it just worked out that way. Maybe it was fate. Anyway, all of this, basically, is what flooded my mind when I heard John Mayer say, in 2015 or 2014, that he had never heard the Grateful Dead before.

Then my opinion of John Mayer changed. It started to change and I think it will continue to change more and more. Because he changed. Whether he was a douchebag or not previously became irrelevant. Do you hear that, Republicans and Trump supporters? It's not a license to be the biggest asshole you can be, it's the idea that if you aren't too terribly obvious about it, when you change and get better people will forgive and forget all about whether or not you were a jerk before. John Mayer may have just been a fine guy who nothing was wrong with him, ever, I was just being a jealous jerk, myself. It could be the whole reason I disliked him was from making a conservative comment, or even a comment against the Grateful Dead in particular, at some point. But if he did so it was at a time when he did not know what he was talking about because he had not listened to them, then. He said it himself on the late night talk show, that it changed him when he listened to the Grateful Dead. I think he said he fell in love, became obsessed, which is a very natural reaction from a musician, especially a guitar player of his experience. I started to fall in love with John Mayer at this point, just as the rivals for Masterchef showed such love for each other when the flames of their passions flared out and combined. His respect and admiration for the Dead were true, even in these early stages, and you could hear it in his voice. I was happy for him for making this transition, and happy for the world that more people would discover the Grateful Dead through his discovery. But even with this budding happiness I was still jealous when he got to play a song with Bob Weir at the end of the show. Not that I can play guitar, but I did always fancy that one day I can sing the Jerry parts since I have that kind of voice and some of the other people who have sung them don't.

Let me be clear: I'm a deadhead but really a Jerry fan. I'm not so convinced the rest of the band can do no wrong to accept all of their choices for musical partnerships. I really don't enjoy Warren Haynes, for instance. I liked Steve Kimock on guitar, and of course have loved some of their other guest stars like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. No one is expecting to "replace" Jerry, but just having anyone near good enough seems almost out of reach at times. Of course magic happens, anyway, and people do transcend their limitations, especially with such great surrounding influences. I'm sure I'd like some Warren Haynes shows if I listened to enough. The thing is, John Mayer is a really skilled and accomplished guitar player. Many people already considered him one of the greats, for years. I might have scoffed at this, as much as any reason because I think Jerry still hasn't gotten his due respect, but he is really good by many standards. And if he got that good without ever listening to Jerry, imagine how good he can get now that he has the inspiration and music of Jerry to guide him? And the collaboration of the band? I forgot to mention, talking about the ways in which the environment helps forge the best Masterchef that they also have access to all the best ingredients. I've just been building up to this, but the big announcement is that, now that "The Grateful Dead" have played their final shows, in July of this year, the "side-projects" Bob Weir promised are coming to fruition. I just saw a commercial that most of the band and John Mayer have formed "Dead & Company" and are starting a Fall Tour. To me, this has all the makings of the Dead rising again in a way like never before. If they keep it up it stands to create something that gets closer to the original Grateful Dead than we have had in 30 years. Now that I type that, I remember that just yesterday, before I saw this commercial, I was telling my friend about my musical theories, that the Beatles weren't the "best ever" as some people suggested because other bands could still be better. I said I thought when people said that "there would never be another Grateful Dead" or anything like it, that has proven to be true so far. But just because none of the "other" bands had that potential, as much as they Pretended to, doesn't mean it is not possible. Of course there has been crossover between different bands and they all get better from playing with each other. But if John Mayer steps into the role of Dead guitarist for a period of time, I predict it will open up a world-changing course of events. He will grow and evolve, to supernatural heights, by whatever extent he plays Jerry. But the culture will evolve as well. In addition to bringing in more of the younger generation, John connects with more mainstream and non-hippie demographics and breaking down barriers between these will be great for the American culture. He is also a generation younger than most of the rest of the band so if he continues with it he could be another link to the next generation of the Grateful Dead. I'm particularly excited about all of this but unless you have the same love for the Grateful Dead I can't expect you to understand it so check them out. I'll move on.

The news stories I wanted to mention all relate to changing our sense of identity. Originally this was all going to be in terms of "finding the true Colbert" but I will leave that for the end. Here are the news stories that happened this week that I've been wanting to include here: Baghdad's First Woman Mayor has been elected and is working to end violence and corruption. This seemed especially significant to me and probably will be to the world if she is very successful so I'm hoping she is and including that intention in the magical spell of desire that is My Gagablog. Baltimore paid over six million dollars to the family of Freddy Grey, the black kid who was killed in police custody. This is more than the previous one hundred and twenty settlements for similar cases combined. I don't know how many years those last 120 cases span, but I do know they cops are only finally starting to be held responsible and there were many more cases than that which don't get reported or any justice for the victims at all. The fact that this settlement was bigger than one hundred and twenty previous settlements suggests that either the riots or the Black Lives Matter movement, or both, are finally getting the system to start to value people equally. If Baltimore had to retroactively give those other one hundred and twenty victims millions each, there would be serious changes. If they can anticipate not wanting to ever again have to pay that much, especially not over and over, it should motivate them to make changes, too. Yes, it would be nice if they were just motivated by a moral sense, but there you have it, they had not been so far. The changes they make could be examples to other places where the problem is bad as well as to places where it is not as bad. But the problem is bad in most places, fueled by a culture of police with no accountability. Fixing it requires shifting attitudes. The report on the police-community situation in Baltimore was being discussed on NPR and it begins with the phrase "We have Not Moved Beyond Race." There are those in small-minded communities who either accept racism or deny it exists. The rest of us, the collective conscious, must be vigilantly aware of it, confront it and remove it in every way that we can. When Trump is asked "why do white supremacist groups support you so much and does that bother you?" and his response if "lots of people like me" he is saying it does not bother him,. He welcomes the support of the KKK and white supremacists. In Colorado we've had a racist candidate, Tom Trancredo, who runs and gets the support of Neo-Nazis and the KKK. I know because of how he talks and his policies but also because his opponents ran ads pointing out that he had this support. We should be calling this out more often because until we treat intolerance, hatred and racism like they are unacceptable they will continue to poison our culture and politics.

Trump is making headlines in America by talking about deporting eleven million Mexican people and building a wall between America and Mexico. At the same time, the European headlines are about refugees from war in Syria and the varied response in Europe. In particular, Hungary is building a wall to keep refugees out and other countries are criticizing them. The wealthier countries may be in better positions to absorb refugee populations but truly a crisis like this should remind all countries to help each other as best we can, including helping in the countries that the refugees are fleeing. We have narco-terrorism, economic hardship, oppression and other forces causing people to migrate north into America, as well as promise of a better life even from less dire conditions, the ever-alluring American Dream. But we have a billionaire making headlines and gaining political steam talking about building a wall between the US and Mexico. At the same time, an Egyptian billionaire wants to buy an island from Greece or Italy in order to set up a new country for refugees to live. It's not that money and power make you evil. You can be rich and powerful and do good things, or bad things. It's all abut attitude and perspective. In modern times, more and more people are making vast fortunes off businesses and products that just help people more and more. We do more with crowd-sourcing and social-networking and can address really big issues in new ways. I wanted to rally people to help pay off Greece's debt, knowing they will flourish as tourism and everything returns and they just need help to get out of a bed economic situation, but also showing a new way of doing things, collectively, that many of us together can make big changes in the world.

This is because we can finally act, coillectively, with the guidance of this collective consciousness. It is paradise, itself, and the more we believe in it and that it can come true on earth, the faster we will get there.

Well, that was the news. Here is the original version, "Angelfishing with Steven Colbert."

The big media event tonight was the premiere of Stephen Colbert as the host of the Late Show following Dave Letterman's retirement. I wrote a gagablog about this a while back and I wanted to write this before the show today. As it turned out I am glad I ended up writing this afterwards, at 6 AM Wednesday, instead, so I get to include the magic of the show, and some other stories I heard yesterday. All I think I was going to do was predict that in shedding his conservative character with Jeb Bush as his guest he would magically and hysterically finish pulling the cover off of the Republicans and expose them to the ridicule and shame they deserve. I felt sure it would be a milestone in the Fall of Conservatives. I think it was, too. It's no prediction at all to say Colbert was going to drop the conservative act - everybody knew that. It's magical perspective that leads me to presume that his transformation would magically transform the world as well. I believe that about myself, and anyone, that we can transform and if we do it with the intention to influence the world then it will work. Well, it magically effects the world anyway but even more if we intend it. So I wanted to set up some magic tricks I hoped the show would perform, like reversing Trump's momentum and revealing Jeb as no better. I just got busy and didn't have time to write yesterday. During The Late Show I experienced a rare and delicious example of media magic: I had put Oreos in my pocket before the show and as he got to the part about Trump boycotting Oreos I got to eat them along with Colbert, like I always like to smoke weed when it is referenced on TV, as a magic spell to increase awareness. Afterwards I heard that Hillary was asked to be his first guest and she declined and went to the Tonight Show instead. A CNN guy said this represents a new "booking war" and maybe it does, but Colbert also had a section where he talked to Jimmy Fallon, the Tonight Show host, through the TV and discusses their guests in a friendly manner, and says they will meet in the locker room afterwards. I think some people might have missed it but after the credits it did show them meeting in the locker room, with Colbert's locker blessed with a picture of Jon Stewart and Fallon's featuring a TIME Magazine cover of Lorne Michaels, I assume. This coordination between networks suggests to me that even if their is a "war" between them at the "real world" level of ratings and money, they are working together from an artistic perspective and intend to magically help shape the culture and move us forward through their art.

Colbert talked to himself at one point in the monologue, telling his six-hours-in-the future self that... (It's been a few hours since I left off writing this, now it is 7 PM, and I drove past a kid on a skateboard with a Deadpool T-shirt. My friend recently told me about Deadpool "breaking the fourth wall" all the time. So this seemed significant in the middle of this sentence and a few hours break...also, at Toys R Us I saw Simpsons figurines for the first time in years, a guest star series including Matt Groening himself, as well as Stan Lee who also tranverses this fourth wall in unique ways and Adam West who does, too, in his subtle way. Also Bart and Fall-out Boy Millhouse, Tom Jones, Tom Petty, Buzz Aldrin, Lenny Kravitz and half of Aerosmith) ... he doesn't want his future self to tell him anything through he TV, not so spoil it for him. This joke evokes the same magic as Gaga's "my religion is you" or so many other examples, like Paparazzi and Venus, where she blurs the lines between "you" and "me". It's playing with the nature of identity and there is so much magic we can discover just by thinking of the implications of this one beautiful joke. I don't want to spoil it by dissecting it, but I will just highlight how he is talking to his "future self", "and"/"who also is" "Us" or "me" or "you" when he does this - he brings us together in the forming of identity. I will explore this more, well, we will all explore it together.

Colbert tells us this explicitly. We've all been wondering who the "real" Colbert is, without the conservative character he played. He introduces the idea that discovering the true Colbert will be a journey we all go on together. The CNN entertainment critic suggested this was a gimmick and wondered how long it could last. I'm saying it is a magical operation that makes us all better people, together. Letterman helped steer the course of culture with his humor and Colbert has done the same. Colbert, on the Late Show, is the start of a new era of TV that "coincides" or magically leads a dance with the new more liberal era of the entire American culture that we are finally entering. I recently watched some of a John Cleese lecture on creativity (thanks to someone in CMG) in which he states that it is not a talent but a kind of operation. In the journey of self-discovery that Colbert is making the Late Show he is sharing this creativity with us and engaging us in the operation, helping us create ourselves more idealistically as well. Jeb Bush commented that he had more pictures of himself than he expected, and Colbert responded that he "used to play a conservative, narcissist pundit, bow I'm just a narcissist." Colbert discovering his true identity will be America discovering it's true identity, without the conservative mask. It may take a long time, it may be an ongoing process, not a "gimmick" to postpone creating a new "character." Colbert is actually forming the character of America through media magic, through Art. This is the more mystical meaning of him talking to his "future self." This reminds me how he said "hello, Nation" then "I don't know what that means" at the start of the show. Of course that was his old intro phrase, when he was referring to "The Colbert Nation", his audience and fans. This time, it was in inside joke for us but because he IS talking to the whole nation on a new scale and not just his normal audience the joke becomes him saying he didn't know what it means. In that introductory phrase he transcended his old character, treating it like a dream he was waking from. He may continue to say it to open the show but it will be the whole nation, now. We are truly all going to find ourselves more in the search for the true Colbert, we will all be forging a new national identity free of conservativism.

Current Thurs-Next Update: Colbert made another joke on this shift in time between recording and airing the episode that also connects to the you/me identity idea. He jokes that he hasn't watched the Republican debates yet, since at the time of the taping of the episode they haven't happened yet, then reuses the same joke, telling the audience "no spoilers!" and waving his hand as if we could tell him what happened through the screen. Since he used this same joke on "himself" the week before, this time it brings in the idea that the True Colbert is "you", the viewer, everyman, or America itself. This makes me think of America, the spirit of the country, being the "feminine" counterpart or compliment of Colbert. This reminds me of the current popularity of Deez Nuts as a political candidate. In polls, Deez Nuts is getting about 10%. People may think this is a joke candidate, but if you do your history you'll know it is the feminine alter ego of Snoop Dogg, formerly Snoop Doggy Dogg. In those days, when he first appeared on Dr. Dre's "the Chronic" album, he did an interlude where he asks a girl over the phone "did what's her name get at you the other day?" and when she asks "who?" he replies "Deez Nuts!" I think the song is called "Deez Nuts." This leads me to the conclusion that if Snoop wants to be president, all he has to do is run as his character Deez Nuts and he already has a head start.

The conservative mentality is a troll upon culture and it's adherents are all the kinds of trolls who are unaware that they are trolls, just dittoheads and zombies under the spell of the conservative mentality itself and the influence of powerful people who promote it. Colbert was playing a typical kind of troll, trolling the conservatives by mocking them, on his old show. Now his humor is the same, thankfully, but he's not pretending to be the opposite of who he is, in many ways. He's not trolling anymore. I'm happy he is the same guy, with the same kind of humor. He even said his whole creative team came over from the other show. As hilarious as it has always been to liberals, the sad truth is there are some conservatives that are so closed-minded they don't get it as a joke but take the conservative Colbert seriously. I know this is hard to believe, but people can be that stupid, or even think they are being smart by suspecting that he is acting like he's joking in order to say "what he really means" when he mocks republican thinking and values by claiming them. The fact that he is taking the conservative beliefs and trolling out of his humor distills the humor to become the opposite of trolling. I've engaged in this "opposite of trolling" for years now, on the internet, ever since I encountered typical internet trolling. I call it Angelfishing, the opposite of trolling.

Trolling uses a presumed, limited mentality to frustrate or mislead someone, ultimately bringing out the worst in them. Angelfishing is intended to bring out the best in people. It does not involve playing a character, like trolling does, but it does rely on the idea that we are changing identities and we can evolve through communication with each other. By playing a character, trolling, the Actor is in control of the play, manipulating the Audience / victim into frustration and passions, but maintaining the superiority of "controlling the situation" or feeling like he does by restricting the mental environment to a false paradigm. A lot of trolls probably do this and don't feel any guilt for it because they justify it with a belief that "all paradigms are equally false and fake", or something. Angelfishing is the opposite because it does not try to control or restrict. Instead of lying to the other person, it is asking for more truth. I mostly talk with magical people online and often encounter incredible claims. A troll might argue with someone about magical powers just to annoy them, even if the person trolling actually believes in the same magic. By contrast, when I encounter a belief instead of adopting a skeptical, insulting, or critical belief I try to encourage the person to be as honest with me about it as possible I try to believe what they are telling me even more than they do, if possible, to get as much into their belief as we can. By encouraging belief and considering it more deeply than most people ever really do, I feel like whatever the belief is starts to take effect to transform us. Now, some beliefs I cannot accept because they are based on intolerance or abuse. I will still ask the person to express their feelings about the belief in case I can see where a disconnect allows bad beliefs to creep in and try to connect them with something better. But most often I find people have good beliefs that they do not feel have a place in society and they keep them secret. If I can show them that I want to truly respect and understand their belief they can come to deeper understandings themselves by responding to genuine interest. And I always want to know more of what everything means, for all of us. I want to go on a journey with people when we communicate, an epic journey that makes us evolve. Trolling takes people on a trip, like a horror movie. I want to promote this new method. Instead of doubting and disbelieving each other, generally, and tricking each other at the extremes of this, as trolls to maintain control in a dubious culture, we should trust and be curious about each other. The extreme of this is trying to really discover things about people when we meet them, hopefully so much that they discover more about themselves and us, ourselves, in the process.

The whole trick to Angelfishing is how it works as the opposite of trolling. Trolling is being "clever" enough to adopt a more limited role. Angelfishing means seeking a more expansive mindfield. It requires the ability to suspend disbelief, to try to believe something just because someone else does, to show this intense consideration. It's basically being open-minded but seeking out things to expand your mind. Of course I call it angelfishing because trolling is a fishing term that reminds me of laziness and digging up from the depths while angelfishing implies pulling out angels, into a higher realm, out of the sea of this world - or casting lines into heaven to pull angels "down" to help us. It's designed to invoke the opposite of trolling and suggest a natural, if unique, way to be, since there are actual angelfish.

The good thing about trolling is that it can be funny or artful. But it frequently involves a negative element. It seems like some people are cruel and enjoy trolling others, getting pleasure from making others feel uncomfortable. Many good comedians do the opposite of this, triggering people with a negative reaction, making the audience uncomfortable, then resolving the tension with humor. Trolling, though it can be funny, is not the same as this kind of humor because it does not unite people in the joke, but is more like a comedian trying to just laugh at his audience instead of making them laugh aling with him - it does not make a connection because the troll is faking his part. Some people justify trolling like they are helping their victims by helping them overcome self-importance and limiting views. I say to this that trolling is not zen. If you believe there is a way to shock people out of their comfortable selves so they can learn and grow more, there is a way to do this more consciously that does not involve faking negativity the way trolling does.

This is how I came to the conclusion that the conservative mindset was itself just trolling humanity. I compared a typical way of trolling liberals with the way of trolling conservatives. Basically pretending to be conservative works to troll either end of the political spectrum. To troll a conservative they can pretend to hold conservative views, get their victim to agree with them and then express the more disgusting conclusions of these views. Revealing the inherent racism, sexism, and violence of the conservative ideals can help others make that connection and ultimately reject those beliefs. But it probably won't happen in the moment, the person will defend their beliefs and say "well, I'm not a racist conservative, I just believe in (whatever)." They might question the ideas later or it might help them make that connection when they hear the criticism that conservative belief is racist, at a later date, to talk with a troll who pretends to be a neo-Nazi or KKK. But at the time it will just annoy them and feed the troll. Or the victim will really believe in the racist or sexist sides and find that the troll is someone they can really talk with. At that point the troll could reveal they were trolling and leave the person alone and presumably ashamed to believe these things, but that isn't likely to help them change, or happen. Or the troll could continue playing the character and share racist views with the victim, patting each other on the back for being such assholes. But that doesn't seem to be good for anyone either, other than the troll feeding on negativity, but truly not good for him either, even if that's what he thinks he wants. Most likely the conversation will end and the victim will never know they were being trolled, but will merely conclude that one more racist person out there agrees with them and there are more of their kind than people think. Now if the same conversation went down between two people and neither was trolling but both were actual racists waiting to express their views to someone who agreed with them and it could be the exact same conversation as if one was trolling the other - that's one of my proofs that conservative thinking itself is a troll upon humanity.

Current edit: The "collective consciousness/Paradise" versus "collective bias/Exclusive Hells" model described in the beginning shows the mental life of humanity, the good stuff, to be that paradise and these pockets of fear-based small-mindedness are the obstacles and trolls upon it, keeping it from fully manifesting and bringing us all together.

Now compare that kind of trolling with trolling a liberal. The troll could pretend to hold liberal views to take in a liberal target. But what would be the negative liberal stereotype that the troll could express to try to shame the liberal for "really believing that"? "Don't you just love having the nanny state take care of you?" It doesn't work: the victim will either take pity on the troll for misunderstanding the liberal ideal or more likely see that they are trolling because no one "really" believes that. The thing about the negative stereotypes that conservatives make about liberals is that they are limited by the conservative mentality that can neither see beyond itself nor examine itself. It's a fearful, retracted mentality. The liberal belief in welfare is not "give me something for free" as characterized by the conservatives, but rather "give those in need what they need." Of course we all hope to not ever be in need and work towards the day when no one is. But we recognize that we might be or become needy and that others currently are, a situation that demands compassion. If a conservative can't see past their own greed to imagine others aren't also motivated by greed there is no way for them to appreciate welfare and assistance. Unfortunately, part of the troll of conservative belief upon American culture is that people are too proud to accept welfare, or are even shamed or prevented from using it. It's not even doing all the good it could be doing, and of course it could do much more without the trollish resistance. The idea that conservatives are mentally limited by their self-unaware beliefs is the only explanation for how so many of their congress folks can vote against disaster relief for other areas then vote for it when disaster strikes their area. I say they are self-unaware because it does not matter what "self" they represent, they are restricting what that self can be with greedy and fearful beliefs. As an individual or representing an area, as an official or just a citizen, or as a representative of any of your beliefs or interests, you are limiting yourself to say that only others of the same kind can share that identity. The conservative mentality, like the worst evangelical Christianity, must insist on total agreement to maintain itself: "you're with us or against us" as Bush said. But the shotgun approach to the recent Republican primaries shows that there is no actual unity in those ideals. Right now, Trump has over 30% of the Republican support in polls out of 16 or 17 candidates, with Rick Perry suspending his campaign. I hope he continues to embarrass himself and them royally. Even if they come to their senses before the actual election, I don't think we can never forget how much of the conservative mentality was galvanized behind his bullshit. It's truly shameful. Which might be why Republicans are running commercials with all this feel-good stuff and concluding that it's okay to be Republican, nothing to be ashamed of, which is completely untrue. By contrast, nothing liberals believe is anything to be ashamed of. Sure, you can criticize some Democrats - too many, for sure - by saying that they only espouse the ideas and profit off keeping them from actually working so we have to keep fighting for them, that they are hypocrites. But you can't really say anything bad about liberal ideals themselves, other than from your restricted conservative perspective YOU don't see how they can work. You can't say anything bad about people who believe in them, because the desire for them to be true is good and everyone knows this in their hearts, in the collective consciousness. It's just that the small minded mentalities tell people they can't trust their hearts and must limit themselves to what their groupthink believes.

On one hand, trolling a liberal by playing a conservative is super-easy and effective. And, on the other hand, trolling a conservative by playing a liberal is easy, too. But they aren't the same thing. In the first instance you are frustrating an open-minded person by pretending to be closed-minded and insisting on staying that way despite their best attempts to educate you. In the second you are upsetting a closed-minded person by presenting open-minded ideas they can't comprehend. They will get upset and angry at you for not accepting their beliefs. But of course there is nothing they can educate you about because those beliefs are based upon lies. This examination of trolling is to show something about how it works and also the nature of the conservative-liberal dichotomy. It is not a spectrum, with conservative on the bad side and liberal on the good side, nor the other way around depending on your perspective. It is not a spectrum where neither side is good or bad either. It's like conservative, negative shells or bubbles within the larger, all-encompassing, larger, liberal globe. It gets better the more we expand into the fullness of it. Many people seem to think they are too meta or perceptive to vote but liberal ideas truly are good while conservative ones are bad and it's important to vote to show we know the difference and hold government accountable to higher ideals. You could say that Colbert used to pretend to be a conservative to troll conservatives and is now playing a liberal to troll liberals. This isn't true, but you could say it. The thing is, it's not just untrue because Colbert "happens" to be a liberal. There couldn't be someone who was truly a conservative who did the opposite, playing a liberal to troll liberals then having a successful show as the conservative comedian they really are. The reason it can't be done is you can't be that funny and intelligent, you can't be intelligent enough to be that funny, and be a conservative. It's just not mentally possible. The conservative mindset is too restrictive to make the mind-expanding, conscious-opening stretches that really good humor is based upon. This is why the only conservative so-called comedian I can think of is Dennis Miller, who isn't funny, but all funniest people are liberal and the funniest of them are often the most liberal.

The reason for looking at the difference in trolling is to better understand the relationship between conservative and liberal. Conservative is closed-mindedness, small mindedness. It comes from retreating to a small idea of the self that feels threatened by different views. If conservatives were to consider other views, or follow their own views to conclusions they might not yet realize, but would with more self-examination, or just allow themselves to present their own views in dialog with alternative views instead of only talking and listening to those who agree with them, but actually engage different perspectives with respect instead of instant condemnation - if they would do these things they could evolve and eventually overcome those views. I believe liberals only become conservative if they are traumatized by certain life events that cause them to reject their previous beliefs and adopt small-minded ones. That's all I can imagine, or some of us becoming rich and deciding to adopt greed to go along with it. These are the only ways, I can think of, to go "back" to being conservative from being liberal. Maybe generally as Americans age, our "ideals" just aren't strong enough to overcome the desire to be greedy, as we either gain wealth or increase in bitterness over wealth we think is our due. But it only takes a new idea, or a new experience, to get a conservative person to start to open up to the truth of liberal ideas. He was fated for it, too, but Buddha's awakening began with viewing the four negative aspects of living that his royal family hid from him: poverty, sickness, old age, and death. All of us can start to awaken with some new exposure. Trauma and anger decrease our ability to think well and process our lives. We have to be able to feel good to overcome these things, but as long as the conservative mentality trolls our world of the mind it holds us back from paradise and keeps people bitter, angry, fearful and therefore susceptible to adopting small-minded beliefs.

I heard a recent story on NPR about MDMA being used in therapy to treat PTSD. Currently therapy has about a 25% success rate with PTSD but using MDMA in therapy make this an 83% success rate. The idea is that the euphoria allows patients to access the trauma without it constricting their mind and trying to continue repressing itself, so they can actually deal with it. I see this as an analogy for the sickness in the whole society - there is still so much negativity and bad feeling going around we can't expect to effectively deal with our social issues. If we can just create more spaces where things can be good enough, wonderful, even, then out of those Intensive Care Units we can find the tools to heal the rest of us. The Late Show will be one such Care Unit - but we can all create this in more ways. Some cities and communities already are. But any time an artist or visionary goes for it, we bring paradise back with us and people are attracted to that to create it in the reality around us, too. And doing enough of that changes reality into paradise.

There is a new episode of the Late Show with "what future archeologists will identify as the remains of Steven Colbert." He's joking about the football game , made a centaur joke, now. He did the Craig Ferguson "in your region joke"; "congratulations team's name here" with his hand over his mouth. "Big moonheads here" for Ban Ki Moon. In douchebag news, he just announced that Tom Brady has endorsed Trump. "His head has just the right amount of deflation."

Conan actually made a better version of the same joke, saying it was surprising that Brady supported him since he didn't usually like things that were over-inflated, something like that.

This is "to be continued..." So far it spans the time Jeb Bush and Trump were on the Colbert Show - Trump is walking out now, I predict this will magically destroy him and will address the details next time, and revise this later. Thanks!