What the world needs now

Forgive me Burt Bacharach and Hal David for borrowing your song title and dipping into some of your lyrics. But in the face of revelations that the Fed laid out secret loans to Wall Street, amounting to 7.7 trillion dollars, netting the banks $13 billion, in the imminent demise of the euro back-dropped by the illegal take-downs of Libya, now Syria, Egypt in turmoil again, GMO Monsanto sucking up patents for all of earth’s foods, the Keystone XL pipeline being thrust up our whazoo, and a million other articles, headlines, sound bites, of imminent disaster and doom, including myself pondering over my bills and checkbook, this simple little tune pops into my head, and revives another thought that it is Seasons Greetings time.

And, as William Blum points out in his 100^th stellar issue of his Anti-Empire Report, “To my dear readers in the United States and around the world—In the spirit of the season, I wish each of you your choice of the following:

• Merry Christmas
• Happy Chanukah
• Joyous Eid
• Festive Kwanza
• Happy New Year
• Gleeful Occupy
• Erotic Pagan Rite
• Internet Virtual Holiday
• Heartwarming Satanic Sacrifice
• Devout Atheist Season’s Greetings
• Possessed Laying-on-of-Hands Ceremony
• Really Neat Reincarnation with Auras and Crystals

“And may your name never appear on a Homeland Security ‘No-fly list.’” And so on.

In other words, it’s time to take a break and smell the roses, even though this awful crap is ongoing and worldwide. And may I add to that, it is at least as “good and maybe even better to give than receive,” though no respectable Republican will agree with me. Yet, I see my lovely wife has pulled out all her rolls of wrapping paper, ribbon, greeting cards, and is wrapping gifts already, and working on the master list, as I, computer man, sit here grappling with the unending issues of the world. I don’t know what to write about next and if I have the stomach and energy to do it. News schmews! Am I trying to stick my head in the sand? Maybe there’s too much sand.

I look out the window and it’s a beautiful day, blue sky, lots of sunshine, Sunday, and for us Christmas on the way. Am I going soft like Scrooge? Am I abandoning the oath I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and to forsake genuine, existential thought for bonbons of felicity. Will I turn on the Bachrach tune soon, or Andy Williams’ Best of Christmas Carols album? I don’t think so. But a break I do need. “The world is too much with me.” And, I might add, “me with it.”

Forty or 50 miles from here there are some woods I love to visit. There’s a stone refuge with a huge stone fireplace where you can build a fire. There’s even a small stand in the refuge that sells some goodies to fire your spirit. I get a cup of tea, sit-down in an old canvas arm chair someone left, and throw a half dozen logs on the fire and sit back and let the warmth ooze through me as the wind cuts through the open space at either end. Put a price tag on this. I’m at peace.

The world is gone. It is what it is. If Congress wants to pass the NDAA bill 93 to 7, or even a more unconscionable 100 to 0, let them go to hell and do it. That’s what they will be in, hell. If Occupy Wall Street and a whole new generation of protesters want to face down the enemy of our liberties, the police who are supposed to be protecting us, I wish all power to them. But really, Burt, Hal, you knew “What the world needs now is love, sweet love/It’s the only there’s just too little of/What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No not just for some but for everyone.” Isn’t that really what the whole ball of wax is about? I mean that lovely tune and seemingly simple lyric nail it. Of course, all the smart money will say, it ain’t that easy. That’s if they don’t want it to be easy.

The tune goes on, “Lord, we don’t need another mountain, There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb/There are oceans and rivers enough to cross/Enough to last till the end of Time.” But we all know, beyond that memorable quatrain, the shenanigans that are going on to waste those oceans and rivers so they don’t last till the end of time, or even our lifetime. Why is it so goddamned hard to get it?

Is it all about money, power? More money, more power, more greed to grab it all, privatize it, ruin it, screw it up one way or the other, and fight another war over it? To DU the world, radiate it, and buy, sell, chop it up into fictional entities on some hedge fund computer and resell it for a killing. Even bears don’t shit where they eat. Why can’t we get it? Have a donut and a cup of coffee. Make a list and check it twice. Don’t be perennially naughty. Be nice.

I’m advising the IMF, the World Bank and Bank of International Settlements to do this. And some single sane legit soul that might inhabit Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan by some whistle-blowing miracle. I’m talking to you, yeah you, the person of conscience and consciousness. Feed your neighbor some love. Feed the beggar a buck for asking. Look at that blue sky shining above, nothing but blue sky, and the distant mountains surrounding you and the endless forest land turning into concrete under it. Down the road, the Rockefellers own a thousand acres of it and turned it into a public preserve. I guess they wants us to know they have a good bone in their body, even with the reigns of the New World Order in their grip.

Why are we such a troubled species? We’ve got it all, legs, arms, a big brain, senses, inventions, imagination, sex, but seemingly not enough, so we have to fight to get more and more if it all, and sacrifice millions of lives as equity for the theft. Why, Mr. Blankfein, do you need so much? And Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Paulson, Mr. Bush, Obama, Clinton et al, why are you so damned corrupt? How do you live with yourselves? I’m sure the answer is, “Quite well, thank you.”

Well, what’s the use of going on with this? You get the point if you can read. And maybe you think I’m senile for saying it, for asking you to be naïve, to realize evil is not a more powerful aphrodisiac than love, that power turns you on, that screwing people out of their pensions and medical benefits gets you hot. Are you hard yet, Santorum? You feel that feeling every time you talk of pushing the seniors off the boat into the ocean? The useless eaters; oooh, it feels so good! But all of us have to fight hard, real hard, to get things really right, for the seniors and everyone else.

Well, maybe it’s just a time to take a rest. And that’s what all the holidays that William Blum mentioned are about. Time out! The half is over. Bring on the cheerleaders. Put down the automatic hunting rifle. Let life be. Love something not just money, power, greed, corruption, taking advantage of every tax and legal loophole, and creating more. Try it for five days and if you’re not fully satisfied return this article and tell me I’m full of it and you’re going back to your old nasty ways. Go on, be Scrooge 365 days of the year. Screw Tiny Tim and his gimp walk. Let Cratchit freeze his butt off. He’s overpaid, and you could probably get a Slope to do his job for less.

Ah, well, have faith, says the prophet. Let a ray of light shine in your brain and know that somewhere there’s The Adjustment Team keeping the world together. Well, maybe it’s a little Hollywood, but you get the drift. It may that there is more darkness out there than the light of the galaxies. It may be that there is more light in a human soul than in all the darkness out there. It may be an untapped resource. We can start hedging and speculating on it tomorrow, doing our inhuman human thing. It may be you have to make a choice and go with it, on your own, till you find more souls like you, and buy a Christmas tree, decorate it, and turn the lights on to shine brighter, even beyond your living room. And when it’s all over, the holiday, the holy day, it’ll be time to hit the deck again, even if you feel it sinking under your feet like the Titanic. So it goes. It seems to be the best we can do . . . though I wonder where are the life-savers.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.