#ROW80 3RD QTR 2014 – POST 2 – A VISIT TO MY NEUROLOGIST, 1968

I always look forward to seeing my neurologist. She's a wonderful doctor; a kind, caring and compassionate soul and is a mean wit, although I'm not really sure if she's aware of that fact. Since I was diagnosed with e. t. a year ago, visits to her have been more along the lines of a coffee klatsch, minus the coffee, and some witty and very astute observations from her regarding life. Today we critiqued Samuel Beckett plays, and “new music,” some of the forms of Art that I liken to “The Emperor's New Clothes” School of Whatever. This can also apply to Public Art, the sort that is put up in public squares and in open spaces, to guarantee maximum viewage and eye damage to as many viewers as possible.

 Can you imagine sitting in the office with this giant blue bear? What in the hell were these people thinking. . . or smoking. . . or shooting up, when they came up with this doozy? Oh, and I just noticed the upside-down red and white church. WTF? Same goes for the melted blue car in the upper left.

 A giant, metal, paper airplane. People get paid wheelbarrows of dough to come up with this insipid dreck.

Eyesores abounded in Ann Arbor, Michigan; there was one with a group of mannequins climbing a very tall steel ladder and crammed up along the top, as if they had all run into an invisible ceiling. Ant-like, the ones below were just a-climbin' up into the ones stuck at the top, creating a sort of wedge-shaped grouping of arms, legs and bald heads. The title referred to something nihilistic or inane, like “The Futility of the Worker's Plight”. To me, it just looked like a bunch of dummies on a ladder. Somebody paid good money for that and someone else laughed all the way to the bank. On the next block over was the giant metal cube, that was affixed to the pavement on one of it's corners. It would spin easily if you pushed it. I never did so, because I was afraid the monstrous thing would break off it's pinnings and crush me and 17 onlookers. Public Art can be dangerous!

Somehow, during the appointment, during the can-you-touch-my-finger-then-touch-your-nose-really-really-fast test, in which I always, always spazz out and touch my leg, or her ear, or some shit, the subject of Samuel Beckett came up. I had lived through “Waiting for Godot”, coming out on the other end of that play with a general what-the-fuck-was-that? sort of feeling, but at age eighteen, I was pretty much in a sea of what-the-fuck. I still am, but it's more a sort of confuse-a-what, brought on by my brain's own general demand for everything being made crystal-clear IMMEDIATELY and when, as so often happens in the course of life, that demand goes unrequited, my brain supplies its own answer and it's usually no where near anything close to reality on this planet. Maybe Neptune, from which I believe I'm commuting to and from daily, but not of Earth. This just only enriches my life in untold many and manifest ways and I've come to grips with it. But, I digress.

                       courtesy: samuelbeckett.net                                               

These ladies don't look like the bag-lady, hobos that I saw when I saw this at Stanford, but better clothing doesn't make it any more comprehensible. Maybe I'm just dim-mish.

I started telling my doctor about this OTHER Samuel Beckett play, or vignette, “Come and Go” I sat through at Stanford University once, and it consisted of three hobo-ish looking sorts who sat on a plain, wooden bench and said virtually nothing for about 3 or 4 hours, or so it seemed. These three bag ladies, named Flo, Vi and Ru were holding hands in an interlocking style – I didn't know this at the time, I just saw the thing cold – and spout what seem to be meaningless inanities for a total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Lots of pregnant pauses, and pretending to be statuary. Finally, Vi, or Ru, or Flo, I cannot remember which says “I can feel the rings”. Finis. Play over. I had to go back and read the script and see if this still felt as out-of-touch for me as it did, when I saw it in my 'teens. Yep; no clearer. Beckett was odd. So, I'm telling my doctor all of this and about the hobo women, or vagabonds, or whatever, and she blurts out, while she was scribbling out some notes, “Hmmmm, sounds like “Waiting for Godot” meets Arlo Guthrie”.” I don't think she knows how funny she is sometimes, but I sure agree with her assessment.

Anyway, after our little chin-wag, I got my Primodone refills and I'm solid for 6 months. Graduated from e. t. boot camp. But, I certainly look forward to our visits; she's a keeper.

The '60s and 1968, in particular were a time that saw the United States of America turned on it's head and for the first time, we began to question those we had put in power. After LBJ and his Great Society, which gave us a safety net on top of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had started during his Presidency, it began to look like there might be some true equality and hope for people in the lower income strata, who had had none. But, 1968 changed that, quite a bit. We discovered we had been lied to about the true state of the war in Viet Nam.

Robert MacNamara, General Westmoreland (deputy commander of Military Assistance Command, VietNam, or MACV) had been providing LBJ and the oversight committees in Congress and the Senate with falsified reports on the number of casualties of both the North Vietnamese and our own troops. We had been told that we were winning this war, and it was only a matter of time before we penetrated the North, took Hanoi, and unseated Ho Chi Minh, the titular President of North Viet Nam.

In March of 1968, during the Vietnamese New Year, that myth was busted wide open. A carefully laid plan, up and down the length of Viet Nam saw the uprising of North Vietnamese, especially in the South and in Saigon; the Tet Offensive. We took heavy, heavy casualties and for the first time, we really started to look at what we were doing in a country that as Muhammad Ali would say, we “ain't got no quarrel with them boys”. While this was not the undoing of the Johnson Administration, it was responsible for his decision to not run for a second full term, thus we elected Richard M. Nixon, who turned out to be no better, and in many ways worse for Southeast Asia; he claimed he wanted no wider war, but then expanded it to bombing parts of Cambodia and Laos, thus further destabilizing the region, and paving the way for Pol Pot, one of the 20^th Century's true monsters and a crackerjack mass-murderer, when it came to genocide. Within a decade two-fifths of the 5 million people in Cambodia had died in re-education camps or been summarily executed and buried in mass graves.

courtesy: thefreedomagenda.wordpress.com

Two-fifths of a nation of five million, or rather two million people died under the rule of Pol Pot. While we were not directly responsible for his rise to power, we had a huge part in destabilizing Cambodia, which had declared itself neutral, under the regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. America widened the bombing to include the mountains and the Mekong Delta, claiming that North Vietnamese were infiltrating the region. The truth? The Montagnards in the area were fiercely anti-communist and separatist, to boot.

So, where am I going with all of this? Back in the early 60s, we helped to prop up a corrupt leader in Saigon, because there was no one suitable, and rather than see the entire country become communist, we would have crawled in bed with Satan himself, in order to keep this from happening. In a similar fashion, we aided the Taliban in the early 80s, because they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. When the Vietnamese President Ngo Dien Dimh rigged a vote in the South, and won by an astonishing 98.2 percent, including 133 percent in Saigon, the country became “unified” in 1955. Although we did not have troops in the field then, we had “advisors”, most likely CIA operatives, due to the number of assassinations of key North Vietnamese politicians and players who were eliminated. The “advisors” were there to try and assist in establishing a democracy in Viet Nam, which Dimh had no intention of ever doing.

As these things go, it began to escalate; we were backing the wrong horse, and Ho Chi Minh, a true patriot, not just a communist, wanted Viet Nam for, well. . . the Vietnamese. We should have been backing no horse. Not too much to ask for. We all know the terrible ending of this conflagration. Millions of innocent Vietnamese died. We got our asses kicked, and for the FIRST time, we began to question what in the Hell we were doing in this little back water country, that the French (Dien Bien Phu, 1955) couldn't hang onto in the first place.

Now, we've come to this: Afghanistan is once more looking like some kind of quagmire. Despite the quote “Graveyard of Empires” a quick gander through Afghanistan's history, shows that conquering armies do have some success. The problem is as Alexander the Great has put it “It's easy to march into, tough to march out of”. So, we've split our forces there. We're in the 13^th year of a who-knows-how-many-years run, despite assurances from the Obama administration, that we will leave some day.

My main bitch, whine, whinge, whatever you want to call it is that now we have a fairly well-organized islamic group called ISIS, which uses very sophisticated tactics in re-claiming territory in Iraq. Take Tirkut, recently. Not one shot fired; the whole operation was one of propaganda, much like Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany, but that kind of entrenchment goes a long way towards promoting goodwill among the citizens in comparison with the U. S. invasion. Again, we have backed the wrong horse; some guy, who looks more like a used-car salesman, than someone who would be leader of a great country in the Middle East.

Admittedly, I detest Dubya and think he's a tool of Dick Cheney's and stupid, to boot. I highly doubt that they would have approved of anyone who would think independently, or for the common good of his country. It may be fallacious thinking, but Talabani, just by his association with the Bush administration, can not possibly have his country's best interests at heart.

Elections, schmelections; we helped to groom and primp this guy, this Jalal Talabani, fluff him, pat him dry and make him look good, but underneath is the same old corruption and bad politics. Iraq's constitutional government is loosely based on our own, and he is limited to two 4-year terms. But, how great is it when you have still have corruption at every level from the police on up to the highest offices in the Military? By the end of the U. S.'s stay in South Viet Nam, we had propped up a revolving-door bunch of characters; a total of 13 guys in all. I think some of them had a second go at screwing up the country even more than it was already screwed up. All with our help, of course.

I started typing out all these names and then remembered the ole' cut-and-snip thingy. You can imagine what kind of hell it mush have been like in Saigon, during the last 10 years. I think a few of these guys ended up running 7-11s in east Los Angeles.

And we're doing it again; we're sending U. S. “advisors”, along with 250 military boots on the ground are in Iraq, or are headed back there to Baghdad. That means that we will be in a position to. . . do what? Just what are we trying to accomplish there, because I hear nothing coherent coming out of our State Department or from President Obama. It's time to cut the apron strings, the umbilical cord, let that bitch sail and if she sails over a cliff, so be it.

Damn! What a fine looking flag! My Lenin bobblehead and my copy of the USSR or CCCP Men's Chorus singing the Internationale await. Break out the vodka, black bread, cucumbers and sour cream! Naz Strovya!

I never said a word about Ukraine and Russia because I understand both cultures and people involved. Yeah, it's sad that Ukraine is being bullied by Russia, but the fact is there are ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine near the Russian border and in the Crimea, who probably do feel threatened by the ethnic Ukrainians; that's what happens when you go from being the conqueror, to being just the guy living next door. It's human nature. It's also within Russia's weltenschauung and very typically Russian, that the ground the ethnic Ukrainians are living on once belonged to them. They have typically been part of the Russian empire and within her sphere of influence since the Austro-Hungarian Empire and after World War II, Stalin demanded the states of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tadjikistan as a buffer between Western Europe and Russia. I could be wrong about Azerbaijan and the -stans, but am too lazy to look it up.

Russians are extremely territorial in a way we cannot even begin to comprehend. I counted once, and between the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and World War II, when the Nazis invaded on June 22, 1941, Russia was invaded FIVE times, by enemy forces. The United States has NEVER been invaded; It's not hard to figure out the dynamics there, nor their reasons for behaving the way they do on both sides. I'd give my eye-teeth to be there now, but I can watch from a distance and it's going about the way I thought it would.

If you notice carefully, there's a lot of back-pedaling and well, “maybe we want this, maybe we aren't sure”. This is oh, so typical in Eastern European politics. A lot of smoke and mirrors and hollering about having what they don't have, but once whatever it is they want is on the horizon, or knocking on the door, well, it doesn't look so good up close. Thus, the confusion over whom is doing what and who is for Russia and by extension, Putin and who isn't. Their Politburo (I refuse to call it a Duma or a Parliament, because it's not) took back their vote of confidence on what he's doing in Ukraine, on the eve of the rebels' victory. What does it all mean?

Who knows; somewhere I have a feeling a bunch of folks are digging out their hammer-and-sickle flags and Lenin bobble-head statues and wishing for the good old days. It never fails. But whatever it all means, or doesn't mean, I do believe this: we need to stay home and stop trying to be the world's policemen. We're terrible at it, and we're not exporting Truth, Justice, and the American Way. We're sowing greed, corrupting, and hatred, and as a people, we're not like that. We're a bunch of blind bullies, ignorant of the ways and mores of the people we think we are helping, or pretending to help. We don't need the oil. We don't need the hegemony; technology has put that “bullets and bayonets” mentality back in the closet. We need to start acting like members of the human race, not some self-proclaimed Overlords.

#ROW80 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN – UNLIKELY CHAMPIONS AND GOALS

Muhammad Ali pretty much summed up his allegiance with Everyman in his stunning statement in 1967 when he refused the draft and the U.S. Government’s edict that he go to Viet Nam and fight in a mis-begotten war. “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.” I remember this because my parents, particularly my father was caught up in the nuances of this war, as he had flown B-29s in Korea and been in the infantry in World War II – at the tender age of 16 (I thought 17, but I erred); Grandmum had signed for him – and he was deeply concerned that the country was being led down the wrong path, as regards the government’s involvement in all sorts of nefarious things, such as the Tonkin Gulf Incident and was it real or just a figment of Robert MacNamara’s imagination, or another of his lies.

Of course, I had a zillion questions about all of this; my father was the most patient man I knew. And hella smart.

So, Daddy in what was a normal display of the profane mixed with the literary alliteration I was becoming accustomed to, said, “That’s it, kick ‘em in the nuts, Ali. Let Turner (Stansfield) go to the Ninth Circle of Hell and take his gibbering minion, Robert MacNamara, Prince of Lies with him!” All this of a morning, as he readied for work and I watched him shave. Or, my father would just call MacNamara a "traitorous Son of a Bitch," and then cut himself. Well, Ali from the start was a bit of a maverick and a damned fine boxer. Being a family of pugilists (See: Sir William Wallace, and skip Braveheart) we have in the main, been more than able to stand up for ourselves, save but for my own stupidity, but I’m all better now.

Ali went on to regain his license and win several championships. He paid a dear, dear price for it in the form of Parkinson’s Disease, which he has borne with his typical grace and aplomb. In 2000, Stansfield Turner, the former director of the CIA, came out in print and admitted that he committed an egregious error in suspending Ali’s license and was heartily sorry for it. He also admitted that the Tonkin Gulf Incident never happened. MacNamara went to his grave, without ever admitting he was wrong about anything. I sincerely hope that man is paying for it dearly in the afterlife; he caused so many, many wrongful deaths, as has G. W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz.

Ali, in his customary manner, bore no ill will towards Turner. It was what it was. But it made a difference and it made people really question why we were in what amounted to wars of Imperialism, ala the 19^th century. For a while, there was a slim hope that the country might grow a conscience. No worries there.

Eight years of George Bush and the Patriot Act after September 11, 2001 has put to rest any idea of anyone standing up and saying “What we need here is less spying and more trust”! Nope, spies are once more, back under the bed, Joseph P. McCarthy has once more been invoked, lists of the electronic kind are waved around, and the I, III, IV, XIII (Thanks, Detective Tony, for reminding me), IX, and XIV Amendments are routinely breached, Constitutional Law be damned. Again, I am willing to wager that Writ of Habeas Corpus has flown the coop as well. (At the time this was written, there were no examples that this was indeed so, but sadly, it has come to pass.) "Habeas Corpus" when in play, is a safeguard for a person in custody; no law enforcement officer is allowed to just let someone go free, without a paper trail, or just "disappear" them. Since I first wrote this, the former has happened in my 'hood and something like the latter has made the National News. This truly puts us squarely in the realm of a totalitarian state, either left- or right-wing, it makes no difference. Habeas Corpus is our most sacred right. It is what makes us truly different than Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR. D’you remember them?

About the only difference between this country and Nazi Germany are the snappy outfits.

Habeas Corpus, in case you were out getting Twizzlers during the show,is latin “to produce the body” not just a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo when you apply “Writ” in front of it. Then it becomes a court order (writ) that requires a (presumably live) body be brought before the court. This is to prevent a legal agency from seizing a person without probable cause and holding it for an indefinite length of time, or driving said person around, threatening them, and turning them loose, after they've been in police custody. Nor can they be held indefinitely with no charges brought.. During the terrors of the Inquisition, the French Revolution, Nazi Germany, Apartheid in South Africa, Pol Pot’s regime and all throughout Russia’s tragic history, and many, many other dictatorships, the employment of “Nacht und Nabel” or “Night and Fog” as the Germans called it, saw the disappearance of people, never to be heard from again.

These things do not happen in a vacuum, ladies and gents. They happen because a citizenry allows them to happen. People like Nelson Mandela understood this, because he lived it. When he was imprisoned, there was every expectation that he would die in that cell, but a funny thing happened. People began to see that Apartheid in South Africa was hurting the country. Much of this had to do with the fact that almost every other country had trade embargoes against South Africa, but the best and brightest were leaving in droves, to practice their art, medicine, science, literary careers in other countries. I can think of no other firmly entrenched biased class system that lasted as long as Apartheid and when it ended, South Africa benefited immediately.

Mr. Mandela also struck me as someone who understood and took a lot of joy from life and in simple pleasures, much like the Dalai Lama. How many of us can say that?

Nelson Mandela’s passing was sad, but he had lived a full life. I have heard people saying he was a terrorist, but really? This is coming from people who are scared of giving up the status quo; afraid of losing the already too much that they possess. He was fighting for an oppressed people. We are not talking about jihadists who are, by sane moderate Muslim standards, terrorists. Ghandi himself spent time in incarceration. Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionist, politician and philanthropist, who served as PRESIDENT of South Africa. That says something when a black man rises from a prison cell to be duly elected to the Presidency of the state that once put him behind bars, primarily for being black.

The work he did, as does Ali to help and succor those in need around the globe is inestimable; as humanitarians, and spokespersons, they’ve made a huge difference. Ali is also a spokesman, alongside Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s Disease and movement disorders, of which I suffer, and he has been a part of my life since he was Cassius Marcellus Clay.

Dr. Vitali Klitschko is currently the reigning Heavyweight Champion of the world. Oh, and he does have a reason to be minus a shirt, here.

Which brings me to another unlikely champion, Vitaly Klitcshko. This man is a twin. He and his brother, Vladimir are boxers and they hail from Ukraine. They have both held Heavy Weight titles and are world-renown. They both have made their homes in Germany and they both hold PhDs in Sports Medicine. Right now, Vitaly is in the fight he never dreamed he would fight, I am sure. The government in Kiev has decided to forego alliance with the EU and wants to throw in Ukraine’s lot with Russia, i.e. Vladimir Putin. An odd factoid, in researching this, Vitali joined the Ukrainian Parliament on December 15, 2012, my birthday and in some circles, considered the same day as Beethoven's birthday, who was another champion for the poor and downtrodden. He famously scratched out his dedication of his 3rd symphony, to Napoleon and called it the "Eroica" for "Heroic" instead. Dit-dit-dit-dah and Vee for victory during World War II. For true mankind united music, listen to the 4th movement of his 9th symphony, and the "Ode to Joy".

Vlad is 60 years old and girls, he's single. Why in the hell is every despot out of their ever-lovin' minds? And what is this thing with the bears? Is he re-enacting Nic Cage's not-to-be-missed "Wicker Man" scene in the Bear Suit? I have no words, except that this is one dangerous Mo-fo. I had a Russian Language professor once who thought Kruschev was too liberal. I just wonder what he would make of this? сукин сын!

For those of you who were out getting a giant 64-oz. Coca Cola, during the Russian History part, Putin was once head of the KGB and his management style, as President, or Monarch, or Grand Poobah, reflects that. Actually, he may be Stalin (translation: Man of Steel, or Steel) with a bit more subtlety and a lot less shirt-wearing. See, the dude-in-power, Viktor Yanukovych, in Kiev is some jackleg that Putin pretty much installed, with one of those fakey-fake elections. 

There were riots the first time general elections were held, back in 2003, over this same dude, now in power. Now, it’s looking much more serious. The leader in Parliament, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has apparently had enough of Viktor's bff and has organized and been coordinating the opposition. With mass demonstrations of 300,000 people and more in the streets, the country’s militia are having a hard time holding things together. This isn't a Flash Mob, but a Mob that has brought its lunch, dinner and breakfast, plus some hardware and tents. They aim to stay awhile and call the neighbors. They've also brought a lot of Likes to Fight Guys, too.

So, Klitcshko is on the side of the opposition. If Ukraine is beholden solely to Russia, this keeps Ukraine within the Motherland’s sphere of influence and this is not good for Ukraine. Russia can then pay whatever she damn well pleases and there is no open market opportunity for the Ukrainians. 

You can see that without Ukraine, Russia has few warm water ports. After Edvard Shverdnadze became President of Georgia, having served as part of the USSR's apparatus, he cooled relations during the Yeltsin years. Putin does not want a repeat of that.

Ukraine, unlike Russia, is a rich country and has always been so. Stalin starved the kulaks in 1934 and their “wheat bowl” a geographically perfect arrangement of mountains between Ukraine and Russia allows for fertile fields and rich yields. Kiev is home to the oldest center of Christianity on that continent over 1000 years old. The language and culture is much different, and it lies on the Black Sea, one of the warm water ports that Russia has access to.

Klitcshko naturally wants his country to thrive and not be subject to the Russian boot. Putin is hell-bent on retaining all of the SSRs that were part of the USSR and I see this as a re-unification attempt on his part. However, the genie is out of this bottle. Vitaly Klitschko, a boxer of world renown is telling everyone in the world about the unfairness and about what it was like when he lived under the Communist boot.

An interesting update on the Ukrainian situation. They recently held a Presidential Election and the winner by a landslide is a  40-year old comedian, who plays a bumbling president. The guy won by a landslide. He's gotta be better than the pro Rrussian is on tjere/ O
, I <3 you so so so much

Sir William died with no issue. The family line is carried through one of the two brothers and I forget which one. I just know that I belong to this family, since I heard it at my daddy's knee from about 9 months on and wore a coat that me Grandmum made for me from an old Wallace kilt. The argyle wool was a few hundred years old then, and would be great for fighting and ambush, were you in a forest fire. We also possess the standards and heralds that have been passed down from generation to generation. We weren't always the brightest bulbs on the tree. Daddy pissed off the Brits at Heathrow in 1985 and got himself locked up for 48 hours for hollering "Death to the Queen" or some such nonsense. He treated it as a grand lark. Typical Wallace.

Let me be clear. I love the Russians, their culture, their ways. I love Ukraine for the same reasons. I have reason to believe that the Wallaces did not in fact originate from Scotland. Our name in Old Welsh was "Uallace" and means “Stranger” and that we are; we are the only Clan with no affiliation or septs with other clans. We most likely are of Scythian blood and were part and parcel of the Scythian guards of Hadrian’s wall, but we always lived apart from the Scots, after the betrayal by the Bruce family. So, I suspect I’m a bit more drawn to that part of the world, because the blood calls me. But, I hate all States; the concept of freedom for all, and the human dignity that is accorded to each of us is sacred, it is not just for the entrenched powers that be. The idea of the State must survive, because the only reason the State exists, is to ensure the existence of the State, is beyond corrupt, it is evil, because it forces people to do evil things to each other to get ahead, or remain entrenched. Think about it. In the meantime, Go, Vitaly, Go!

GOALS: I did nothing; I have the flu. *hack hack* Actually, I want to tear apart "Music of the Spheres" and start REALLY plotting it out. To that end, I got myself some story boards that are erasable, flash cards to set out sections and characters and make it a teensy bit more coherent. I also have my auto-bio in the works, which is really more a batch of essays of my early life, school, music, computer work and being homeless. Most of it is hilarious. No, seriously hilarious. As Carlin says, even cancer is funny. Trust me, homeless was a laff-a-minute!
 

#ROW80 – 3RD QTR 2013 – SUNDAY CHECK IN – MUSINGS OF AN EX-CIGARET SMOKING WOMAN

"Musings of a Cigaret Smoking Man" Season 4, Episode 7

“I can kill you whenever I please, but not today.” This is the last line of one of the series of the fictional Jack Colquitt adventures, written under the nom de plume, Raul Bloodworth, also known variously, as the “Smoking Man,” “Cigaret Man,” and “Cancer Man,” delivered so very dispassionately, as he makes the decision to not kill one of the “Lone Gunmen,” Frohike, who has some dirt in the form of a cheap magazine article about the Smoking Man, in the “X-Files,” a superb television series that has become a cult classic.

Great show, stories and cast.

I had never seen the show ever, until last year on Hulu+ and then I pretty much binge-watched it. This one episode ranks among the best in terms of showcasing a character, who up until then has been portrayed as something purely evil, or is he?. He and Deep Throat, seem to be in the right places to pass information, or disinformation along that will keep Agent Mulder and occasionally, Agent Scully from being exposed of possessing as much knowledge as they do. The 2 graying men, also lead the agents up blind alleys and plant false clues to ameliorate the suspicions of their own higher ups, from J. Edgar Hoover to whoever is sitting in the President's chair. They play a dangerous game.

               CSM                                                                Deep Throat

As the Mr. Fix-It for any and every unfortunate political development; CSM as the Smoking man is referred to, he begins reminiscing over the course his life has taken and how he never really was able to become what he wanted to do, which was write. His dispassionate observations show him to be responsible for the deaths of JFK because of the Bay of Pigs. He is tapped by the Army in setting up Lee Harvey Oswald, in a scene straight out of "Apocalypse Now," superbly done. "Have you ever seen myself or this gentleman?..." Oswald, determined not to be the patsy, runs out of the theater and ends up shooting and killing a policeman, near Dealey Plaza; his only “real” crime. Jack Ruby and the aftermath of Oswald's arrest are never mentioned during the show's episode.

I was 7, when this happened. My father came home from work; it was a Friday and everything closed. The day of the funeral, my family and my uncle the Mad Scientist (Nuclear Physicist) and his family came over. We all cried.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. begins his call for the distribution of wealth - CSM does the honors because he still respects the man, but cannot support the idea of communism. This is in reference to his own father who was an ardent pro-Trotskyite, who ironically was assassinated on August 20, in 1940 in Mexico City, the day CSM was born only to be executed later in the US for treason – CSM has such a twisted code of honor, but this is oddly fitting; almost chivalrous.

1968 was a horrible year. 4 months after MLK's assassination,  RFK would be assassinated less than 10 miles from where I lived.  That past March had seen the disastrous TET offensive and proved that Robert McNamara and General Westmoreland had lied to the American public for years about the Viet Nam War. The casualties there were horrific. My father had always been calling them "assholes," and told me why, we should never have been there in the first damned place. Daddy was starting to hate his job; he provided logistics for the 37th largest corporation in the world, in weapons manufacturing. Why the FBI never showed up, I'll never... oh, that's right they did, but years later, for something else. Muhammad Ali was the only person telling the truth it seemed. Can you say radical much at our house?

Later, during the televised memorial, a eulogy is given for MLK, by RFK, who first says, “I understand this pain. I lost a member of my family, who was killed by a white man,” referring to James Earl Ray, who again, is never mentioned in this episode. RFK, who would die by the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan less than 4 months later, quotes Aeschylus: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awesome grace of God.”

The scene with RFK begins at 19:26 and it is poignant and chilling. The man who most certainly is responsible for MLK's death and presumable JFK's is well-read, and not necessarily untouched by what he's read. But the life is grinding him down.

CSM recites the passage along with him; the scene fades away on a single taradiddle, a symbol of the death of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy. As MLK's eulogy was being televised, CSM is working on his latest Jack Colquitt adventure. He is a reluctant assassin; a tool, but once in, it's hard to get out. In reading the critics views and the other takes, some see CSM as a purely evil character, but it's not that simple and the portrayal of CSM is enigmatic enough to empathize with his assertion that he's “not a killer.” It is a powerful scene, and it only deepens the enigma that is CSM.

We see other wet ops and dirty tricks through CSM's eyes and the eyes of his compatriot, Deep Throat. Although played with dark humor and seeming contradictory behavior on the part of CSM, I prefer to see him as more of a tragic figure. One who does his masters' bidding, but would have rather tried to find more sophisticated means of trying to subvert MLK's agenda than killing him. When he is unable to convince his superiors, who are leftovers from the second World War, he takes it upon himself to do the deed. J. Edgar Hoover and the Chief of Staff come up with horrible ideas to slur King's integrity. CSM, loses complete composure and patience and tell them they are all unworthy and takes it upon himself to stop MLK. 

Once decided, he is told will be remembered by the President, CSM states “I work very hard to keep anyone from knowing my name.” He doesn't want to go down in history for his shameful acts, but he at least has the decency and intelligence to not besmirch MLK's reputation with white women and dirty tricks. During a speech by King, who utters, “That we as a people, will get to the promised land, my eyes have seen the coming of the promised land...” a gunshot rings out. It's terrible resonance echoes over the years.

The denoument comes when CSM and Deep Throat reminisce over a critically wounded E.T., that has crashed landed. According to U.N. Resolution 1013, any nation harboring an alien life form is responsible for it's extermination. CSM and Deep Throat argue about who is really the assassin and who will really make history, as it won't be them; no one knows their names. Deep Throat taunts CSM, telling him, “you're a killer, you're a dangerous man.” CSM defends himself saying, “I'm not a killer. I'm not the one who made the decisions.” This echoes back to the Nuremberg trials and how so many defenses of War Criminals began, “I did what I was told to do,” is so old and bad and wrong and CSM knows this. Even as he says this, it's a dispirited defense, as he looks down at the ground.

Who knows what they look like? I hear all of this about the greys and the big ones and there's a family of them that trample through my bedroom about once a week, but only when SETI@home, if offline. They look nothing like this, and I think they're ghost aliens. As long as they don't look like and have the personality of that bastard from the 1979 movie, "Alien," I'm cool.

They agree to flip a coin to decide who will kill the E.T. CSM wins the bet and Deep Throat readies himself to kill the creature. CSM no longer wants this responsibility and certainly does not want to exterminate an alien life form. He is increasingly becoming fed up, jaded, sick and feeling that his life has been ill-spent. Any idealism or patriotism has long been ground up by the lies and deceits that the government and his superiors have foisted upon him. CSM stands watching as Deep Throat walks into the chamber where the E. T. is on life support and conscious. It looks up at him, seemingly uncomprehendingly, as Deep Throat pulls the trigger and kills the creature.

CSM's one last out, he feels, is to have his work published. As he returns home to his crummy little apartment and picks up his mail, he walks over to his manual typewriter and opens his desk drawer, prepared to throw his most recent rejection letter in with the others, he stops and opens it. His story has been accepted and in his excitement, he calls the publisher who raves over his “Jack Colquitt adventure,” and says he want to publish it. CSM readily agrees, and the publisher explains that he may have to change a few things, “here and there,” after he finds out that CSM has no agent. CSM excitedly agrees and promptly writes a letter of resignation, to whatever agency he works for. He's just about to take out a cigaret, but instead, he crumples up the package and throws it away.

Another "rendering" of aliens in an episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." Roki and Lord Kinbote, all delivered with straight faces by the cast, which included Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek. It did point out the fallacious nature of viewpoints and how we are easily swayed. 

Later, he goes to the newsstand and starts reading his article. He is dismayed to find that the publisher changed his ending and it ruined his whole story. The newsstand owner admonishes him, saying “Are you going to buy that?” CSM buys the magazine and a pack of Morley cigarets. He wanders off and sits down next to a homeless guy who has scored a box of half-eaten chocolates and gives this soliloquy:

"Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast and the taste is.. . fleeting. So, you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers."

The Lone Gunmen, who in spite of their borderline-Asperger Geekoid behavior, are terrifyingly gifted in all things spook-related. 

He takes back his resignation and stays with his Alphabet Agency, whoever they are. We never really know. He reminisces up to the point when Agent Scully joins the FBI, and then slips back to reality. The Lone Gunmen, knowing their place has been wire-tapped, and knowing that Frohike is most likely the target, have freaked out for the course of the episode, but we never really hear that, as they had deployed their own cloaking device. When they un-cloak, Frohike, says, “Look, it was just a dumb magazine article...” And CSM utters, “I can kill you whenever I damn please, but not today.” He dismantles his sniper rifle and walks away.

I've been thinking about this episode for several weeks, not because there are conspiracy nuts, theorists and all of that. I for one am skeptical and the "Musings of a Cigaret Man, is largely a work fiction. Sometimes, though it is hard to know where lines end and the truth really does begin. I've lived through all of the events depicted and remember them clearly. It's still hard for me to believe the Oswald acted on his own. James Earl Ray I know little about, except that he was a race-baiter and believe that is more clear-cut. I come from a family that has been involved with security-clearance technology and as Scully would say, “we have our own peculiar notions” sometimes. 

There comes a point there things begin to slip into say, martial law, and then totalitarianism. Here in the United States, the Patriot Act was signed in 2001, and then extended under President Obama, as the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011. This includes roving wiretaps, continued surveillance of ”lone wolves,” along with the existing definition of “domestic terrorism,” as opposed to the plain, old imported kind, I guess. Business records can be searched, library records must be surrendered. Understand, warrants or subpoenas are not necessary for this kind of snooping.

The cry of “I have nothing to hide,” is not the point. We are rapidly approaching the event horizon of defying the “Writ of habeas corpus,” or just plain “Habeas corpus.” This is a fundamental right, and it is everyone's right and is immutable. It means that a detainee can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. It is our most basic right. Forget Church, forget State, forget separation of the 2, forget the 2^nd Amendment. If this, most basic of rights is violated and I truly suspect it has been, then we are no longer a democracy, or a republic. We are living under tyranny. But a special kind of tyranny, because, this is not one person; this is chromatic; up and down the spectrum. It takes the cooperation and the willingness of corporations, managers, people who are willing to look the other way. Edward Snowden is just a start. Think about it and think hard for your children's future. This doesn't happen overnight; it takes years, but I fear we are here. All the Teanderthals, the Liberals, Libertarians, Sectarians, Independents and everyone who sell their PLATFORM and not their morality and ideals share this mess. We should be voting our consciences, not platforms.

Not scary, just sad. Master to something he can never rid himself of.

But our friends like CSM, Deep Throat and Agents Scully and Mulder show us something. There is a grain of truth to all of this. The State exists to ensure the existence of the State. They were all pawns and at his deepest level, CSM knew this, more than anyone. That is what makes him such a compelling character. He's like Gollum; tragic.

I want to thank and congratulate William B. Davis for his fine work on X-Files and all of the wonderful cast and writers of the show. Mr. Davis truly brought CSM to life as we are all enigmatic and at heart, tragic in some way. Thank you.