phil Rockstroh

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Feel the Bern if it Makes You Happy, but Don’t Hope For a Fairytale Ending

Sanders as president is a dream too far, writes Phil Rockstroh from New York...

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Grieving for Greed Pt.2

'Cell phones and bottled water were proffered to strangers. As night fell, candles flickered in public squares; there was the sound of sobbing and impromptu singing. The scene seemed like a cross...

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A spurious god created by a corrupt elite – Capitalism

dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”A/dropcapfter one presents a cogent critique of capitalism, one is likely to hear the following as a reply from the propagandized, good...

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Of Grief and Hope

Climate chaos. Dying oceans. The degradation of U.S. corporate/militarist empire and the concomitant collapse of the global, neoliberal order. Our child will be born into a world where there will be...

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After the Flood

In the presence of death and in the aftermath of great storms, we apprehend how vainly we cling to the illusion of certainty and permanence. ...

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Zionist Heckles Answered

Why should the neighbors of the Zionist state be forced to live on their knees and give perpetual penitence because of the crimes of the anti-Semites of Europe? ...

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Empire’s Halloween Part 2

The US Empire is dead meat. We should lose the imagery of a noble and lofty bald eagle: rotting road kill should be proclaimed our official national animal, vampires and werewolves offer a more apt...

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Empire’s Halloween Pt 1

The US Empire is dead meat. We should lose the imagery of a noble and lofty bald eagle: rotting road kill should be proclaimed our official national animal....

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Grieving for Greed. Welteschmerz Pt. 1

If the end of the commercialist capitalist empire gets you down, the right thing to do is to grieve for it. Then move on....

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Angry and Distracted Pt2

There exists one requisite trait needed to face evil: The knowledge of one's own capacity for embodying the trait. Inseparable, treachery and redemption arrive together. The human heart, capable of...

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Angry, and Distracted. Pt1

Unless communal space can be reclaimed and our innate humanity re-established, to paraphrase Kafka: There is infinite hope but not for us. Exploitative social arrangements, throughout history, carry...

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Gun Control and the Second Amendment

Restricting the manufacture, thus profit motive, of firearms is a must... to keep them out of the hands of criminals, psychopaths, and idiots, and that includes the cops....

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In the Land of Never Was

In the Land of Never Was: The Last, Desperate Hours of Climate Chaos Deniers‪ and Capitalist Rah-Rahs‬ Often, the world… forever unfolding, recombining, morphing, dying and transforming…...

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After the Fireworks: 4th July, Higgs Boson, and notions of independence

On July 4, the people of the U.S. marked the passing of another year's perfunctory, Independence Day festivities. The date, also, was occasioned by the formal announcement from physicists at CERN...

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The Footlong Hotdog of the Apocalypse: Part 2

'those active in the Occupy Wall Street Movement do have jobs: Our job is to transform the present order' To dwell in the domain of the heart…is to choose to live in a dangerous...

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In the Name of My Father, Part 2

Not too long ago, I had a dream wherein I stood gazing over the atrium of a large complex of multi-story structures. Inadvertently, I dropped my "special" writing pen…It glinted...

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In the Name of My Father

My parents modest, single-level, brick home stands on property that was once part of a sprawling estate owned by the Candler family, Atlanta’s Coca-Cola patricians. Built during the post-war,...

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Requiem and Renewal in the Shadow of Wall Street

In the Name of My Father: Requiem and Renewal in the Shadow of Wall Street On May 1, after a day of May Day activities on the streets and avenues of Manhattan, my wife and I and a troop of other OWS...

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The Big Empty: Eating Cheetos with the Hungry Ghosts of a Corporate State Pt. 2

In a nation defined by vast wealth disparity and the deprivation it causes others on the planet, by means of impoverished lives and ecological devastation, taking more than one's share...

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The Big Empty: Eating Cheetos with the Hungry Ghosts of a Corporate State

Due to the consolidation of wealth and privilege into fewer and fewer hands, thus requiring escalating amounts of officially mandated surveillance and brutality to maintain social order, the natural...

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On The Nature Of Self-Defeating Convictions

A missive to an estranged southern friend Although I have resided in New York City for many years, I was born in the Deep South. On a daily basis, I negotiate Manhattan's gridded streets and...

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Living Beyond the ‘Folded Lie’: Part Two

Wall Street is again flush with the electronic facsimile of the stuff once known as money. But this is a Botox Recovery Both economic depression and so-called psychological depression are engendered...

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Reclaiming The Commons: Part 2

Phil Rockstroh follows up on last week's essay, and applies poetic thinking to the quagmire that is 21st century living. Relentlessly, from early childhood on, our hopes and longings are subject...

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Reclaiming The Commons: Part 1

The USA gets its own version of the Criminal Justice Bill, only there are no riots, merely more faces buried in iPhone screens. Reclaiming The Commons: Human Lessons in the Era of Corporatism and...

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On Regaining a Spirit of Defiance: Part Two

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. — T.S. Eliot The vehemence of the imagination motivates. It rages against oppression, as it, in equal...

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On Regaining a Spirit of Defiance: Part One

 'I'm Worried Now but I Won't Be Worried Long' The course of action taken by the present day U.S. political class in addressing the era's rising tide of economic hardship and...

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End of Empire: Part 2

I ask you this, if the defining aspects of our existence were constructed of concrete, would not the world be made of the material of a prison? Moreover, is this not the building material and psychic...

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A Journey To The End Of Empire: Pt. 1

It Is Always Darkest Right Before It Goes Completely Black "When the poet stands at nadir the world must indeed be upside-down. If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself,...

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Spirits, Madness, and Love.

Life as lived in a late empire, in which one's humanity is deemed only worth its value in dollars to the corporate state. Wherein one's identity is flooded by the come-ons and emotional...

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Negotiating a Landscape of Hypocrisy

When Bill Clinton and his scary, scary libido stalked the public realm, Republicans warned his presence was so anathema to all things holy that his hot breath served to salt the wings of choirs of...

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