Friday Reflection: The Ravages of Ego

The star Gliese, the "sun" around which an Earth-like and possibly habitable planet was recently found revolving (click graphic to learn more)

It was great to see Moyers back on the air Wednesday night, wasn't it? (if you missed it, you can watch it here). Yes, it was very painful to watch, but that's because it was so thoroughly and masterfully done. I thought the scenes with Beinart were particularly compelling: the old teacher, the Socrates of modern journalism, gently but firmly exposing and correcting the peach-faced stripling, one that the I Ching would refer to as "The Young Fool" (Hexagram 4):

Youthful Folly has success.
It is not I who seek the young fool;
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.
Perseverance furthers.

But let's turn off the TV, put down the newspaper and leave the knotted ball of conflict that the neocon tyrants have visited upon our world behind for a little. Congress will (one hopes) go on fighting the President; Condi will go on fighting her subpoena; Cheney will go on fighting himself; and McCain will continue to tell jokes and sing songs about the carnage that he helped to bring into the dawn of the 21st century. Let them go on; they are old men (most of them) being dissolved by time and dying further within, every day.

Or is it really time that kills us? Here's an alternative, from my supply of cheap, dime-store New Age fizzdom:

Time does not ravage us. Time is just a cosmic dimension, doing its job. Time does not degrade or destroy life; only ego does that. So if you would like to remain young and beautiful until the day comes for your transformation beyond time, then turn within regularly and kill ego. Kill it, and then discard its corpse, with the help of the cosmic presences (time included). Once you have focused upon your true enemy, then time becomes your friend, your ally in the life of form and the life to come, beyond form.


Everyday elimination:
Your body does it—
Why not your mind?

If you can feel falsehood and expel it,
Your thoughts will ring true.
If you can clear the code of hatred
That was written on your heart
Amid childhood ambivalence,
Then the quantum breath of love
Will fill you, extending outward.

Diderot told us that we will never be truly free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. I would suggest now, that for each of us who turns within and rips the bowel of belief from the dead body of ego, and with it, chokes the voice of authority into stillness, and finally expels it—for each of us who does that within himself, we will more nearly approach the day of true freedom for all.

Reach Out and Slap Someone

Cherry blossom season in Brooklyn's Prospect Park



Tyranny survives on excess. When there is so much decadence as to overflow consciousness and the sense of right action, there tends to be stasis in response. Who can possibly keep up with this stream of corruption, this endless line of neocon criminals, without a scorecard and a very strong stomach? How many more neocon Congressmen are facing indictment or investigation now? How many more are already in jail or been forced out of their cozy offices to sit on the sidelines, covered in lucre? How much longer can we assume that the poor dumb brushcutter and the clueless quailshooter and the vapidly smiling sycophant general were mere ignorant bureaucrats amidst all this?




Indeed, who can possibly keep up with it all? How can we possibly fend off the dreary resignation of apathy amid this storm of corruption? The President and his cronies all say they know nothing, did nothing, and that we can't prove anything against them. Who could possibly sort through it all to make a case that couldn't be riddled with the man-made holes of reasonable doubt?

So John Q's natural reaction is to fold up the newspaper with a shudder and turn to his one certainty in life, the in-tray or the next meeting or the round of tasks facing him amid his Monday mental haze. Or else he might simply turn the paper over and check the ball scores and the latest sports rumors, about which a safe and sure opinion may be held. That Barry Bonds, at 740: does he even deserve to sniff Hank Aaron's jockstrap, let alone break his records? The Commissioner must do something, put dark asterisks next to all those 'roided up HRs. Oh, but Bonds has lawyers, too, just like the Bushies—he could use threats and the media in his favor, just like they do in Washington...ugh, doesn't anything make simple sense anymore?

This excess, the profusion of folly and deceit, which distorts vision and frustrates every attempt at redress through its mere overwhelming and ever-expanding insanity, is a daily corporate reality for many of us. Our corporate speech is laden with symbols of excess: we brain-storm a situation for which a brain-shower would be amply sufficient (and, in fact, more appropriate). We try to hit the proverbial home-run with our presentation, when our audience would actually be most comfortable with a mere single. We "get all over" a problem that really calls for more of a gentle brush.

Even our warm and fuzzy, touch-someone metaphors are riven with excess. Consider one of the more currently popular phrases, "reach out." I had the following conversation with an office manager last year, as I was starting a new consulting gig.

ME: Do you think they might get a laptop to me by the end of the week? I'm supposed to be on a conference call Saturday that will require a VPN hookup.

MGR: Don't worry, I think you'll be fine. I've reached out to our IT Manager, and cc'd my boss and his VP on the email. Now he knows that if the order's not done by Friday, it's going over his head. Sometimes you just have to scare people, y'know?

Wow, now that's "reaching out", huh? With a set of brass knuckles, that is.

Monday with McKenna: The NeoCon Threat to Good Government

It's been a couple of weeks since we last heard from Mr. Terry McKenna, and I'm sure you've had more than your fill of my New Age nonsense. Therefore, without further prologue, Monday with McKenna:


This week my topic is the Bush Administration’s attack on America’s history of open and honest government. But first, and by way of introduction, a couple of brief comments.

George Bush continues to trumpet alternative fuel vehicles as an answer to our over-consumption of oil.

Comment: NO, asshole, we need to mandate fuel economy, not a switch to a different carbon based fuel source.*

George Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman and the rest of the war mongers believe that setting a date for withdrawal is announcing the date of our defeat.

Comment: We have already lost this one. Neither are we surrendering to Iraq – they didn’t conquer us: if we leave, we are just LEAVING.

BushCo and the Assault on Good Government

America at its heart has been a very successful experiment in self-government. There are lots of reasons for this, one being the entry of millions of energetic Europeans and Asians to a vast and under populated** land full of rich soil and mineral wealth. Another is the absence of a ruling class of petty nobles and landlords who in other societies have been empowered to exact rents and other restrictions upon commerce. Thus, citizens have been able to engage in commercial activity with much less interference than almost anywhere else. We expect our public officials to behave fairly, and for the most part - except when it involves contracts to provide goods or services to the government itself – they do. Building permits, licenses and all manner of government activities are carried out for the genuine public interest. Town engineers practice engineering in a professional manner; geological surveys are genuine; and our national weather service provides solid and sound weather information. By and large, American civil servants have no agenda but to provide service. (To Chomsky-ites, followers of Howard Zinn and old leftists who dote on America’s failures, you are right as far as it goes, but so what—in the scheme of things, America is as good as many and better than most. Fairer as a whole than nations like Russia, China or Zimbabwe, and not quite as fair as places like Sweden and Norway.)

Oh yes, to those who say we are a nation of laws and not men – hogwash! Just think of Iraq and its constitution. Or of the UN and its numerous covenants and protocols. Suffice it to say that it takes a lot more than a signed document to generate a civil society or to inspire good behavior.

Starting with the New Deal, Congress created agencies that took on various roles that conservatives claimed were properly left to the states or to the people. The Supreme Court also took on a more activist role to re-make America into the free land implied by our founding documents. When a conservative president was finally elected after a space of five decades (with the election of Ronald Reagan), conservatives decided to use the executive branch to destroy programs that they were unable to attack directly.

Thus, Reagan appointed James G Watt – an avowed opponent of federal conservation programs, to manage the Department of the Interior. Reaganites especially hated environmental laws, housing programs, the Department of Education and the enforcement of civil rights laws. But Reagan operated before the flowering of modern Right Wing think tanks, so his efforts were not as focused as those today.

Enter Bush II (Really Ronald Reagan II) and cadres of trained right wing professionals, each ready to speak the newspeak of corporate evasion and to hide their mission, which was to bend federal programs into supporting the right wing policy arm - actually, anti-policy arm, since the right wing has no real policy, just newspeak meant to build a consensus against policy. Gail Norton at the Department of the Interior was one example. She was a protégé of James G. Watt and built her career setting up what are known as astro turf groups*** with a fake environmental agenda. And think of the FDA. This formerly proud servant of public health was shaped into an instrument of conservative Christianity when it stalled the approval of the morning after pill.

In almost all spheres of activity, officials have switched from serving the American people to serving the president. Thus Treasury lied to the nation about the cost of the Bush tax cuts; and the Defense Department lied about the cost of the Iraq folly. And when they are not lying to us, the feds are simple nincompoops like Brownie.

So Alberto Gonzalez’s lies are not surprising. The entire executive is bathed in deceit.

But are we ready to conclude that the future is lost too? I don’t think so. At the local level, our civil servants still serve us honestly. And Democrats by and large believe in the government that they serve, but we won’t know how they will act until they win back the White House, which they surely will do in 2008.

And before I go, an expression of thanks to the hospitality of San Francisco and the surrounding towns within northern California. I just returned from a seven day trip to California, my first ever. Now I understand what led many of my generation to extend their stays in this strange but attractive land.

____________________


*If you think ethanol is a solution, then please read up about the cost of raising the corn necessary to produce it. The net energy yield is close to zero. And for those interested in sugar instead (especially as produced in Brazil) the yield and costs are better, but the bad news is, the Brazilians use slave indigenous labor to clear the Amazon jungle in order to get open land for sugar can.

**Yes, I know that North America was populated by millions of what used to be called Indians, but after the European settlements had been established, disease and warfare (especially disease) so shrunk the existing population that the later immigrants felt they were entering a virgin land.

***Astro Turf groups are funded by industry, or sometimes by wealthy right wing zealots (for example, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Move America Forward, and Focus on the Family). They are named to sound friendly, but beware, they have a mission and are to be feared.

—T. McKenna

Practicing Inner Elimination: The Way Beyond Guilt

Yesterday, we suggested that guilt is error's dark companion, and is responsible for most of the resistance to the admission of a mistake, especially from people who have made so many of them, like the members of the BushCo team.

Well, as luck would have it for us, Bush did issue an apology yesterday, on behalf of "the system."

"The system failed you and it failed our troops and we're going to fix it...I apologize for what they went through and we're going to fix the problem."

Apology accepted, Dub. Now, "fix the problem"—fire your VP, your AG, and your rap-dancing marketing director, and then leave office yourself. Then, all of you, get out of the public eye and work on expelling the demons that have driven you and our nation to this desperate point of geopolitical chaos, murder, domestic waste, and pervasive corruption. Get treatment for the disease that has so long afflicted you.



It all begins, as it can for many of us, with a recognition of the falsehood of guilt as a principle of human nature. As I say in The Tao of Hogwarts:

...is there anything, anywhere, in Nature that experiences guilt, except humans? Do animals or plants or rocks or stars or the earth itself feel guilt—do any of these things subject themselves to the punishments and the hideous self-torment of one who perceives himself as inherently flawed and poisoned by Nature with Sin? Or is guilt what makes us who we are—original, uniquely human, the Lords of the Earth and the fullness thereof? If guilt is what makes us special, what distinguishes us from all other forms of creation, then I would suggest that it is time to renounce the distinction and return to our pre-human evolutionary roots.

Fortunately, that last bit is quite unnecessary. We can, in fact, "fix the system," by committing ourselves to a program of "inner elimination." We all value good habits and practices of physical elimination, because we know that if we couldn't shit, pee, sweat, fart, or belch properly, toxins would build up in our bodies and make us very sick. But we often fail to apply the same principle to our minds. That's where the "inner No" comes in. Here is another excerpt from my book, which includes guidance on some basic principles of "inner elimination:"

Say an inner No to the validity of guilt as a principle of human nature. In a brief, daily meditation, ask for help from the hidden world and firmly, yet without bitterness or hatred, say the word "No" three times to the idea of guilt as a natural aspect of your being. Say a further No to any group ideology, pseudo-scientific theory, religious belief, or social doctrine that arises to your consciousness as a specifically intrusive source of the belief in guilt as a natural human trait. Ask the teaching Presence of the Cosmos and the helping cosmic energy of dispersion to dissolve the notion of guilt from within you. Finish each meditation with an expression of thanks to the cosmic energies that are thus clearing you of these destructive attachments and prejudices against your true nature. Many people have found this to be an extraordinarily restorative and cleansing exercise, and the best part of it is that it costs you almost no outer effort and only about two or three minutes out of each day.

Identify the areas in your life where you are bound by group affiliation, and sever the ties on the inner plane. In Hexagram 59 of the I Ching ("Dispersion"), Line 4 has this poem:

He dissolves his bond with his group.
Supreme good fortune.
Dispersion leads to accumulation.
This is something that ordinary men do not think of.
(from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation)


Let this insight lead you to reflect on the aspects of your life—work, national affiliation, an academic, social, religious, or other group allegiance, and even family life—that need to be examined for the limitations they may be imposing on your true nature and the fulfillment of your individual uniqueness as an independent moment within the Cosmic Consciousness. Many of us have spent much of our lives trying to live up to the group self-images projected upon us by collective ideologies—the obedient child, the good and sacrificing husband/wife/parent, the loyal, hardworking employee, the patriotic citizen of a particular nation. The fact is that children naturally behave as adults would like them to, when obedience is not beaten into them as an ideological imperative engraved on the stone of an institution's moral code; we are all of us more natural, loving, and enduring marriage partners when we are allowed to live independently, even as we maintain the inner connection with our beloved, free of the darkly threatening decree to "honor and obey" another; we become more loyal, supportive, and nurturing parents when we give up the lugubrious self-consciousness of "sacrificial duty" towards our children; we are more productive and creative workers when we are liberated from that obsessive and vaguely paranoid attachment to the institutional ethic of "hard work"; and we are far more beneficial to our community and our nation when we consider ourselves as citizens of the Cosmic Whole, rather than as parochially allied to some tribe, clan, or state and its prevailing ideology of the moment.

So consider which of the institutionally-programmed self-images of the collective ego are most limiting you in your inner growth as an individual, and work on releasing these bonds, in the knowledge that you are truly benefiting the natural family, community, business organization, and nation by doing so.

Be led to a more accurate and personally viable understanding of error and its place in our lives. In the I Ching, there is no direct mention of guilt, because, as we have discussed, guilt has no basis in cosmic reality. However, it is understood throughout the oracle's text that error is an aspect of the way of inner growth for humans, and so the I Ching speaks in many places of "remorse" or "regret." This, indeed, is how we are meant to understand the role of error in our lives. In contrast to what the collective ego and its ideologies would have us believe, there are no spots that won't wash out: our bodies, after all, are 75% water—the basic element of the baptismal ritual is already within us in abundance! So when you have said or done something which you regret, and that you recognize as an error, a temporary separation from your true nature, try the following steps in a brief meditation:

♦ Ask for help from the Cosmic realm in understanding the cause, nature, and the correct resolution of your mistake, and apologize to the Cosmos for the error, in a free and open inner expression of remorse that is unstained by guilt, self-blame, or bitterness.

♦ If it is an interpersonal issue that has occasioned your error, then apologize to the person you believe you have wronged, on the inner plane. Simply let your consciousness speak to that person and express your regret sincerely, as if they were right beside you in the room. This practice has a far greater transformative effect than most people would be willing to acknowledge, until they experience it for themselves.

♦ Finally, ask the Sage, the teaching energy of the Cosmic Consciousness, to guide you in understanding what, if anything, must be done, in addition to the above, to resolve the effect of your mistake and return you to harmony with the principle of Te, or Modesty. You may use the I Ching or other oracle, or simply attend to the messages you receive in meditations, in dreams, or through your own reflection. If you feel that any action or communication on the outer plane would be helpful in completing the resolution of your error, ask for help in learning the correct approach in this respect. And remember this: the capacity to say from your heart, "I am sorry" reveals an ability of such greatness as the leaders of the most powerful nations on earth completely lack. As with any meditation, finish by expressing your thanks to the Cosmos for its help in guiding you through this process of self-understanding amid an awareness of remorse.

If guilt, blame, and fear are severely troubling you, seek help from a professional. The guilt and self-blame that are engendered by our futile efforts to live up to the institutional ego's monumental self-images lie at the root of many depressive and anxiety disorders. We are not born to live in an inner state of slavery, ever fearful that we will be deemed insufficient to the self-images that cultural laws, moral codes, religious beliefs, and societal norms define for us and program into us. Your need for help is not a manifestation of something aberrant or weak in your true nature, but is rather a result of cultural conditioning. You can find a counselor, therapist, or other professional through talking to family and friends, or via professional organizations that offer referrals based on your needs and resources.

Oil: A Slick of Corruption

I have a strange feeling that we're not likely to survive as a species on this planet another five or six generations, unless we allow for some ideas and perspectives that we ourselves might have dismissed, some ten or twenty years ago, as "just too strange."

For a living example of what I'm talking about, click the graphic above and watch the film of this historian/comedian at work. The piece is hosted by our friend Tom over at Current Era.


Now this picture to the left is the result of a survey I took at a BP site that I reviewed for the Webby Awards. Think of it as the equivalent of those Philip Morris ads that counsel parents on keeping their kids away from cigs: this is one of the monsters of the oil industry teaching us how to reduce our carbon footprint.

This is why the message that my cat gave us last night is meaningful (for real: she transmits the content, I just type it out and then open a can of tuna). You are surrounded by slick advertising, and the verbal, PR slick is as poisonous and as deadly as the other, Valdez-kind of slick.

Example: on a day where the EU Parliament released a report that virtually closes the case for impeachment (on both sides of the pond, mind you), the Rove spin machine went into distraction overdrive—once again with the puppet sounding another note of provocation toward Iran. All this on the day after the head of the Joint Chiefs—you know, the military expert—had weighed in with an opposite opinion.

The mass media, of course, are reporting it all; but as always you have to read everything in order to discern the truth. Buried in the last paragraph of the New York Times' report on the Bush provocation today, is this:

Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said. “And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested in.”

Well, as long as Bush is in office, we'll never find out, will we? It's Karl-22 all over again: we refuse to resort to diplomacy because we know it will never work; and we know it will never work because we say so. But if it ever does work, you can be sure we'll take credit for it somehow.

Our world today: where Wal-Mart produces ads that tell of "Sam Walton's dream" come true—of a charitable, generous, community-minded empire; where BP with its pockets stuffed with burning lucre says, "let us help you measure your carbon footprint"; and where the Rove machine spins fiction into fact, tragedy into victory, abject failure into Mission Accomplshed.

Marketing is death.

INGSOC Lives

Site Note: Daily Rev is in the process of migrating to the Movable Type platform, because Blogger beta is just too cranky for our taste. We'll have more to say about that come Geek Wednesday, but fortunately, we have alternatives, thanks mainly to our resident geek, Nearly Redmond Nick, who is taking over the technical tasks because I had fouled them up so badly.

We are also fortunate to have Mr. McKenna available for providing perspective amid moments like these. Today, he joins us with the first of a two-part piece on a writer who has suddenly become quite topical these past six years or so...

As Brian said yesterday, we want to examine corruption – money, influence and power. Our focus will be corporate America. But first, I want to explore the means. From my perspective, it was the corruption of language that led us down our current path. Not that we haven’t seen corruption before, we have – but the means have changed. Where corruption was formerly an entirely backroom matter, now it comes out in the open. Who could have guessed?

It turns out, the great writer George Orwell was pretty clear about how language might change to enhance the taking of power. He wrote two works that focused on political language. They were once part of the standard high school curriculum 40 years ago. Are they now?

It was in the middle of the cold war when our freshman English class encountered Animal Farm. His other great work, 1984 was taught later, perhaps in my Junior year. At the time, we thought that the primary lesson of both books was the fairly obvious one about the danger of totalitarianism. Now that the cold war is long over, I’m curious what current day readers derive from either work. Of course, books don’t teach lessons, at least not entirely, and even when they do, the lessons are complex. Still, both focus on political language. If you listen to our 24/7 media, you will see that the era of (1984’s ) Newspeak has arrived.

As I’ve said before, I’m a corporate soldier and have ample opportunity to enjoy modern corporate prose. For those of you who don’t get to read much of this stuff, it has changed a lot in the past 30 years. Corporate speech was once the direct, detailed speech of engineers and financiers. It has since morphed into power point driven bullet points and (it is my thesis) this speech is the father of the sound bites that have replaced genuine political thought.

In both of Orwell’s novels, political leaders use slogans to manipulate. In Animal Farm, the slogans come as part of the novels exposition. In 1984, language is a subtext. The Oceania government is engaged in creating a new language – NEWSPEAK – a simplified English where our extensive vocabulary is replaced by neologism (doublespeak, thoughtcrime, doublethink) or otherwise eliminated altogether. As subtle communication becomes impossible, lies become undetectable – for who can tell if a sound bite is true or false. True in 1984 and true today.

Here are a few slogans from 1984:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Sound compelling, don’t they? A perverted form of Haiku. Juxtaposition creates the appearance of genuine meaning.

To continue with my thought from above, over the past 30 years, business speech has changed substantially. The popularity of the personal computer had something to do with the change. So too did the new software. Thus the Microsoft Office suite temps us with useful hints, spell check and grammar check. Then there is power point. I’ve heard that one mid level commander in Iraq has banished Powerpoint from his operation. It makes it way too easy to appear to say something meaningful.

--T. McKenna

Death By Free Market

Terry McKenna returns to the blog this evening, with some reflections on certain life-defying trends in American economic policy. This comes on a day when we learned that the Pentagon is breaking up its financial orgy with MZM, an intelligence and defense contractor that has long enjoyed the Bushies' largesse with anyone dealing in guns, office furniture, or political favors (in the case of MZM, all three), at the most inflated prices possible. The stated reason for the breakup was a change in procurement law, but the oddly coincidental connection between MZM bribes and Duke Cunningham's recent confession was not missed by some in the press.

Someday, someone with a hell of a lot of time and energy (and some good sources) will have the ability to write the complete history of crime, corruption, graft, and destruction within this Bush administration. It will be an encyclopedic volume; I only hope the publisher decides to print it on recycled paper.

Mr. McKenna will now address the congregation.

Just a note about compassionate conservatism. You know, that softened brand of conservatism that pretends that we can somehow generate a widely prosperous society via smaller government, diminished regulation and low taxes.

Why bring this up just now? Well I just read an article in the NY TIMES that reports how many states have designed easy tests so that their school children appear to be making the required annual progress demanded under NCLB. Unfortunately, a second and standardized batch of tests exposes the fraud. Thus in the worst offenders, upwards of 80% will pass muster under NCLB and yet less than 1/3 will show proficiency under the genuinely standardized tests. NCLB was a cornerstone of GW’s compassionate conservatism. Leading with tax cuts, NCLB and Medicare “reform,” GW’s conservative policies were supposed to move us toward a new era of policy creativity. The plan was to leverage the free market and private charities (some faith based) so that the federal bureaucracy could be shrunk and the legacy of the New Deal destroyed. Oh yes, it was also supposed to work.

With the war a failure, with old folks now confused by a bizarre Medicare reform, and with a mounting federal deficit, it was inevitable that the last of the Bush platform would also fail.

You might think it early to judge GW to be a failure, but his conservative platform is really not new. Conservative pressures have been dismantling the New Deal and Great Society for the past 30 years. The results have been a disaster for working America.

Just a sampling of the trends:

• Real wages of non-farm workers fell from a high in the 1960’s and have stayed low.
• US infant mortality is worse that of any of our peer nations – and has started to rise for the first time since 1958. Cuba does better than we do!
• The destruction of manufacturing employment leaves no career path for high school graduates who do not go on to college or specialized training.

Some of these trends are just the inevitable push of history. For example, as China and the rest of Asia industrializes, there is greater and greater competition for resources (wood, steel, oil). And low value work in the US was probably always doomed (so jobs in garment and shoe manufacturing would have always left the US under the best of circumstances). Still it was not inevitable that nearly all manufacturing would decline, nor was it necessary that our central cities would be made untenable.

Yet the talking heads continue to chant the mantra of free markets and competition as the means to solve all of our ills. Why?

If we look at the delivery of health care, we see failure. Unlike most markets (like that for underwear or computers) prices are not going down, but up.

Let’s look at food. Yes we produce a lot, but our hardened fruits and vegetables are better for the picker than the eater. And our processed foods are making us fat. To generate more meat, we subject animals to concentration camp conditions. We overfeed our animals and give them antibiotics to survive both the overfeeding and the nightmare of their surroundings. And our feedlots are toxic. Mountains of manure become warehoused in lagoons that can get a large as football fields. The conditions have created an environmental time bomb.

How about gas drilling? In western states, new gas drilling techniques involve shattering underground stone such that methane and other toxic chemical permeate and mix with the ground water.

And yet… no one says a word.

—T. McKenna