Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Interview by Kollibri Terre Sonnenblume with Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 30, 2020
“You cannot have capitalism in a democratic society because the money class will always own and control not only cultural societal aspects that are dominant but they will own and control the political class.” — Phil Rockstroh
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 2, 2020
Glaring sign of intellectual dishonesty of a society that has sunken into a psychical pit of fascist depravity: Terming an armed, racist terrorist, intent on murder, a “vigilante.”
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 25, 2020
“Not voting for Biden reveals your privilege.”
Only privileged people seem to believe the US possesses a viable democracy. The non-privileged live with the boot of the extant dictatorship of money/police state on their throats (of which, Biden has spent his life as an ardent operative). Withal, Biden has spent his political career in service to the profiteers of White privilege because, to quote the man himself, he did not “want his children to grow up in a racial jungle.”
Image by Takver via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
Writers, Dandelion Salad
October 13, 2019
PR: Kenn, recently, this observation of mine provoked a measure of ire: Street demonstrations, even large ones, are apropos of nothing as long as they are manifested as de facto state sanctioned protests. A march proceeds, chants are cast into indifferent air, speechifying comes to pass by the usual gasbags then the assembled head home and carry on as usual. Conversely, a strike means job walk-offs — until the strikers demands are met — not walking out and walking back in the next day.
Image by Jill_Ion via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 23, 2019
Will Trump go to war with the Iranians or the homeless? Or both?
Image by RANT 73 – Visual Storyteller via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
Writers, Dandelion Salad
September 13, 2019
PR: Kenn, this question haunts me: Is it still possible, amid constant inundation by the mass and social media simulacrum, for literature, poetry or a music to rouse the heart and foment rebellion against one’s complicity in what amounts to a bondage of sensibility? Naturally, we are given to outrage but, for the most part, it is directed, if we are honest, at our own sense of powerlessness against the mind-stupefying roil of events.
Image by Walt Jabsco via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 23, 2019
PR: What has been of greater service to humanity, the dark vision of humanity, limned in satire, by Jonathan Swift or the positivity-rancid homilies of corporate church of self-actualization? What is more propitious to the psyche, a descent into the underworld by Orphic imagination or the Icarusian dazzle on Instagram or the narcissistic intoxication induced by gazing upon one’s image reproduced by a thousand retweets on Twitter?
Image by duncan c via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 11, 2019
The US is less of a nation than a collective, psychotic episode.
Image by John Englart via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 4, 2019
PR: Recently, the temperature in Paris rose to 108.7 F (42.6 C) surpassing the previous record by 4 F (2.2 C) set on July 28, 1947 of 104.7 F (40.4 C).
Image by Isaías Campbell via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 23, 2019
Kenn, I’ve noticed in your pieces you explore the topic of the myriad and perpetual degradations that capitalism inflicts on the powerless. Thus given the unfolding of recent events e.g., the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein, I’m curious as to your response to my (initial) take on the matter. Withal, the hyper-commodification of the bodies of young women is part and parcel of the economic dynamic of late stage capitalism whereby the earth is degraded to the point of global-wide ecocide and cities are rendered into vanilla cupcake zones of nada by hyper-gentrification.
Image by Peter Kurdulija via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Dec. 11, 2017
November 23, 2018
Humankind, being an inherently tool-making species, has always been in a relationship with technology. Our tools, weapons, machines, and appliances are crucial to forging the cultural criteria of human life. At present, amid the technology created phantomscape of mass media’s lurid — yet somehow sterile — imagery, one can feel as if one’s mind is in danger of being churned to spittle.
Image by Steve Baker via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
January 14, 2018
I remember my first impression of the Reality Television program American Idol. I cringed at the thought, what if, a young Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, or the members of The Clash had been forced to have their talents appraised by the sort of shallow celebrities, supercilious moderators, and gallery of lowest common denominator-giddy cretins attendant to the hype-driven fare.
Image by tq2cute via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 22, 2017
The effects of humankind created Climate Chaos are proving to be more devastating than even the most grim predictions. Wealth inequity is worse than in the Gilded Age. The US empire wages perpetual war, hot and cold, overt and covert, including military brinksmanship with the nuclear power, The Russian Federation.
Image by Petros V. via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 16, 2017
Having been born in a coal and steel company town but destiny delivered, as an adult, to reside, during extended intervals, in the East and West Coast cities of Los Angeles and New York City, and, at present, the continent of Europe, I have come to conclude, people born into situations providing economic advantage, both liberals and conservatives alike, experience difficulty, more often than not, envisaging the lives of those born into a labouring class existence. Worse, a wilful obtuseness, in combination with a supercilious posture is, all too often, evinced, by reflex, towards those scorned as “hillbillies,” “trailer trash,” and “genetic retreads.”
Image by Peter Kurdulija via Flickr
by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 11, 2017
Humankind, being an inherently tool-making species, has always been in a relationship with technology. Our tools, weapons, machines, and appliances are crucial to forging the cultural criteria of human life. At present, amid the technology created phantomscape of mass media’s lurid — yet somehow sterile — imagery, one can feel as if one’s mind is in danger of being churned to spittle.
Dandelion Salad 