A Plan, A Plan, My Kingdom for a Plan, by Ray Zwarich

Dear All:
We writers are pretty strange creatures. We spend much, if not most of our time completely​ alone, isolated from our fellow humans, feverishly writing down our thoughts, while holding, in our isolated solitude, the intense conviction that other people, complete strangers, absolutely MUST know what we think… LOL… Pretty strange creatures, indeed. (It’s pretty funny when you think about it).
Many writers, likely most, go through cycles of periods of prolific output, alternating with periods during which we fall silent. I see this in many, or most of my favorite contemporary topical writers. For weeks, or even months, they’ll pour out a generous new portion of their brilliance, a new article, almost daily. Then they’ll fall silent for weeks, or even months.
Believe me, a writer who is not writing is NOT a happy creature.
In the very good recent movie ‘Genius‘, about one of the greatest American writers, Thomas Wolfe, (spiritual mentor to Kerouac, and to me as well), Wolfe’s famed editor, Maxwell Perkins, who also edited Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, and other noted writers, tried to cause Wolfe to feel some compassion for their mutual friend, Fitzgerald, toward whom Wolfe felt contemptuous because poor Scott had not written anything for so long. Wolfe died young, at 38, and during his short life of exploding genius, he was never apparently afflicted with that horribly painful disease, ‘writers’ block’.
“How many words did you write yesterday?”, Perkins asks Wolfe. “Eh.. The usual.. Maybe 5000”, Wolfe answers. “Well, poor Scott tortured himself for an entire day and through a long night to write 100, and those 100 weren’t really worth much”, Perkins tells him. ‘Writers block’ is a MUCH worse, MUCH more painful, affliction, close kin to clinical depression, than non-writers could likely appreciate.
Wolfe, who wrote the tremendous short story ‘Only the Dead Know Brooklyn‘, was given to walking the streets of Brooklyn at night, and into the wee hours. He was a big scary hulking 6’ 5″ figure, dressed in threadbare clothes, walking fast like the ‘man possessed’ that he indeed was. Witnesses say that he often shouted out in elation as he walked, “I wrote 10,000 words today”.
I tell this story to apologize for bothering folks so much while I’m in one of those periods when the words flow easily, like a cold beer down a thirsty throat, (I don’t drink anymore, but I used to be REAL good at it), to let you know that ‘it could be worse’. It was not that long ago that I could write 10,000 words in a day, and easily 5,000 words a day for many days on end. But alas… Age catches up with all of us. (I’m 75 today, a BD I share with our nation’s greatest prophet, Dr. King).
When Ed Bradley asked Dylan, during his ‘60 Minutes’ interview, about the prolific genius of his young years, asking him if he was still as prolific, the Great American Bard answered, “Naw, I can’t do that anymore… But I can do other things that I couldn’t do when I was young”. (Something to that effect).
Anyway, ‘it could be worse’… Folks are lucky I can no longer write 10,000 words in a day. I’m an old man now, and I can’t do that anymore, but I can do other things I couldn’t when I was young. (We all surely know the old saying, “It’s such a shame that youth is wasted on the young”). But I DID write three articles yesterday, totally some 5000 words.
One, copied below, was written in response to one of my favorite writers, Patrick Lawrence’s, typical brilliance, which he again displayed in an article on a leftist website, entitled ‘Pessimism of the Mind, Optimism of the Will’. (Even the title reflects this man’s genius).
I haven’t yet decided whether to send out the other two. One is already ‘published’ in the comments section of the above linked website, responding to another brilliant writer, Caitlin Johnstone. The other was a letter to a neighbor of mine, out here in the boondocks of rural America, explaining to her the immense danger to us ALL from the tragic events in Ukraine. I am confident that they’re both good writing, but I’m worried about over-trying people’s patience.
This article by Mr. Lawrence, as discussed below, introduces a subject that is just absolutely CRUCIAL that it be understood, if we, the nation’s Common People, ever hope to throw off the yoke of the cruel, murderous Elites who rule over our lives, and are now prosecuting a war that promises all Humanity’s annihilation.
Hope ALL are well and strong.
Simius C
Cognitius@thecommonpeopleunited.org
1/15/23
A Plan, A Plan, My Kingdom for a Plan
(Paraphrasing Richard III)

The always brilliant Mr. Lawrence writes:

“Confront power effectively and solutions to all else, from the climate crisis to war, famine, corruption and so on, will follow”.

And:

“We can no longer begin with an assessment of what is possible in the present context and work toward it. We begin with what is necessary, and the work comes down to making the necessary possible”.

And:

“…the enormity of the task is a measure of the urgency with which we must assume it”.

These are TRULY profound statements, but to how many will they appear as nothing more than pleasing platitudes? How many of us are serious about confronting the danger we are in?

Addressing the first of these profound maxims, “Confront power effectively”. The truth that I see is that few, if ANY, are serious about undertaking that task. People are only interested in winning personal esteem, they are only interested in serving their own egos, by demonstrating how cleverly or wittily they can talk, and/or write about our dangerous predicament, and/or about the nature of the immense powers arrayed against us.

Everybody just wants to flap their jaws, saying essentially the same things, writing essentially the same articles that I’ve been hearing and reading for over 50 years now. Everybody wants to win glory for themselves, everybody wants to inflate their own egos, by talking about the SAME problem, saying the SAME things about it, over and over, ad infinitum.

Everybody is too busy showing off how well they can talk about the problem to trouble ourselves with talking about how to SOLVE the problem. And if anybody does want to talk about solving the problem, the first thought in all minds is protecting their own turf, guarding their own ego-trips, rather than honestly evaluating any presented proposals for a solution with cold, sober Reason, instead of with the hysterical fear that they might lose some personal esteem if somebody ELSE’S plan should gain collectively reasoned favor.

In actual fact, the immense powers confronting us are not currently being ‘effectively confronted’ by anyone. The so-called ‘left’ is fighting the so-called ‘right’; the so-called ‘right’ is fighting the so-called ‘left’, and thus BOTH factions into which the Common People have been ‘engineered’ are just far too busy fighting each other to fight the Elite powers that contrived, and engineered, and completely control both ‘the left’ and ‘the right’. (Divide and rule. It’s worked like a charm for 10,000 years, as it very obviously still does).

Why? Why isn’t this obvious to ALL? Because our ‘sick’ engineered culture has trapped us in a state of mind in which every ego is competing with every other. We have been ‘engineered’ by a cunningly engineered and cunningly imposed culture to lack the ability to work together effectively in pursuit of collective goals.

A team of ‘stars’ is not an effective team. A basketball team completely comprised of all Michael Jordan caliber ‘great’ players will not be a winning team if every ‘star’ always wants all the glory for himself. A team of merely ‘good’ players, who all know how to work together in true ‘teamwork’, every player playing a ‘selfless’ role, unconcerned about glory, only thinking about the success of the team’s objectives, will beat the team made up of squabbling ‘superstar’ players, all competing for personal glory, most every time.

Confront power effectively? Sheesh! I have a plan that I am very confident will work. I’ve been avidly trying to present it for years now. But no one will listen. Literally, NO ONE WILL LISTEN. People are just too busy trying to inflate their own egos and win glory. Even just listening to someone else’s plan makes their egos jealous for giving away any morsel of precious ‘personal glory’, any morsel of even merely attention and/or consideration.

Who else has a prospective plan? I for one am EAGER to hear it. Let’s have it. Put it ‘on the table’. But no realistic and concrete, step by step plans, one step leading to the next in a planned and properly prioritized sequence, no realistic and reasoned plans to ‘confront the power’, are EVER even presented by anyone.

Why?

Could it be because when anyone tries to even present an actual plan, they will be immediately and generously paid in resounding derision, attacked as ‘enemies’ of the jealously guarded ‘turf’ of pet ‘ideologies’?

Thus we NEVER hear ‘effective’ plans even presented. All we EVER hear, (or so it seems), is the hot air of ideologies specifically designed to inflate individual egos, specifically designed, by own own avowed Enemy, to thus render us collectively powerless, incapable of cooperative collective action.

How about we put any plan we think MIGHT be effective ‘on the table’, to be evaluated with realistic Reason? Ya think maybe if we put our collective heads together we could honestly evaluate any and all plans, and somehow integrate them in a way that we think will EFFECTIVELY confront the immense powers arrayed against us?

I have a plan. A step by step plan, made up of real and very specific concrete steps, each one a stepping stone to the next. I am very confident that it will work. Sure, it needs ‘input’ from our combined ‘collective’ mind. Sure, it can be much improved from such collective effort. But we’re not only NOT capable of engaging in effective collective thought, to evaluate any plans or plans, we don’t ever want to even HEAR them. Our individual egos, jealous and always fearful, refuse to consider anything that does not serve themselves.

Ego, I go, you go, ergo ALL go.

I have a plan that I am very confident will, (or could), be effective, but even after years of trying to present it for collective consideration, NOBODY, quite literally NOBODY, wants to even so much as hear it. All I get is derision, because my plan does not conform with the rhetoric of contrived and competing ideologies that only serve to inflate the egos of the people who ‘religiously’ adhere to them.

Oh DRAT!!… Here I spent too many words addressing only the first of Mr. Lawrence’s three PROFOUND maxims, to address the others now. Oh well, a time for every purpose. Tomorrow will be another day. Each one is ‘brand new’, and teeming with infinite possibilities.

Mr.Lawrence can count me as an ‘optimist’. I believe that every morning “my boot will be well found”, (apologies to me old best buddy, Jack London