02-20-2002
for Hannah, on her 12th birthday
Year of the Horse.
I can feel the energy of the Year of the Horse. The change
from the cautious and stealthy snake to the rearing and charging horse
was almost tangible. Did I say almost? Consider El Prisondente's*
'Axis of Evil' theme, whose arrival on the scene coincides nicely with
the new influence. Yeah. That's about how I feel too.
Like enough is enough already and its time to k1ck 4ss and take down names.
I have noticed some trends I find extremely disturbing.
One is the
tying together in gummint rhetoric of the ecology movement and terra-izm.
Fact: the new law defines terra-izt violence as any kind of political
activity that takes or threatens human life. Why is this a problem?
Picture a tree sitter. Yes. She is placing her life in danger
for a political purpose, one inconvenient to the Butch R3gime. That
makes her a _terra-izt_ under the new law, and so not only are her conztitutional
rights virtually swept away, so are those of any of her friends and family,
as part of a suspected terra-izt netwerk.
Remember Ruby
Ridge? If it happened today, would it even be illegal for federal
agents to just blow someone away if Bush and Ashcroft wanted to?
If people were disappearing into barbed wire detention camps in the Western
desert, would you know about it? How? Some say that the
terrorist emergency justifies unusual measures, and that may be.
But let's remember that it's always easier to give a new power to the government
than to get the government to give up the power, once they have it.
There is a certain ratchet effect to any problem that develops a bureaucracy
to address it: the bureaucracy will use all available resources,
and argue forcefully with facts for more, but the bureaucracy will insure
that the problem is never solved, since that would put a lot of professionals
out of work. So it's no surprise that the loudest voices against
legalization of Marijuana are from people who would be out of a job if
they didn't have the marijuana 'problem' to 'manage.'
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As R.A.W. said, quoting
someone else,
'The
U.S. Constitution May Have Its Faults, But It Sure Would Be Better Than
What We Have Now.'
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Another is that
El Prisondente
seems intent on
perpetual
presidency through perpetual war.
World War 3 is shaping up like a bad
sequel: no ideology, no heart, no cause, just the same old crusader Evil.
The high-tech Yoo Ess Armee is
going to pillage and burn through the poorest countries in the world,
planting land mines, destroying international aid infrastructure, murdering
the rulers, replacing them with Yoo Ess puppets who will let them build
all the NATURAL GAS PIPE LINES they want and allow the Yoo Ess Armee to
remain stationed there _forever_ in an 'advisory role' to the local military,
all of whose equipment will be Yoo Ess Armee Surplus and require replacement
parts from the Yoo Ess. SO when El Prisondente wants to -send a message-
to, say, the gummint of Turkey, why send it through diplomatic channels?
Why not just tell our Generals to broadly suggest to -their- Generals that
if Izlambic radicals can't be made to shut up, Uncle Slam might get
ornery and cut off the flow of
Cewl Armee Stuff.
So then -their- Generals say
to -their- civilian leadership
that if the government does not nullify
an election and refuse to seat those duly elected, then the Armee may have
to
Just Take Over
(with the implicit backing of the Yoo
Ess.)
Remember what that craaaazzzyyyy hippie
radical Dwight David Eisenhower (D-day General and 1950's president)
said:
"Beware
of the Military Industrial Complex."
Well, this is IT. This is the
Day the Music Died. This is the Day America Ended. In less
than 50 years, what was a nascent evil buried deep in the spy/spook/cold-warrior/nazi/heroin
ABYSS has emerged as the Dominant Clique, and in one fell swoop, negated
the entire bill of rights. And the marks are still smiling, patting
in their bags the
Gold
Brick
of Butch's whole 'I'm just an
honest, good-hearted carpet bagger' routine.
They will continue to smile, even as
the bickering begins over who
got
the
biggest
brick of solid gold from that nice guy in the suit and tie.
I can't help thinking, people that dumb DESERVE a gummint that bad.
{acterally lifting a line from Emma Goldman (I think) who said nations tend to get the governments they deserve.} She also said nations get as much crime as they deserve, which is really the same thing... I mean, what 's the difference, really, between theft and taxation, between arrest and kidnapping, between bail and ransom, between a protection scheme and a government, between a National Banq and a p0nz1 scheme? It's like that Woody Allen movie, where he's gonna rob a bank, and these other robbers show up at the same time, and Woody, rather than put his pistol in the other robber's face and tell him to get lost, and rather than offering to split the take, calls a vote among the bank customers as to which gang they want to be robbed by... then he loses the vote. That's kinda like our elections: we are faced by two gangs of thieves: one called Demolican and the other Republicrat. In the last deflection they ran candidates who were less than candid named Bore and Gush, respectively. Gush, Official Backroom Scum Chum, and Koke Bud of Ken and Barbie Lay, and rumors of photos of george in the blue dress on his knees between Ken and Barbie... Oh, for shame for shame.
And what's the difference, between brainwashing
and socialization? Cult and Church? Magick and Easy Credit?
The list is endless... who is the Evil God that does this to us?
His name is LEGITIMACY. In a nutshell, if THEY hurt YOU, it's LEGITIMATE,
which is to say LEGAL, and part of HOW IT SHOULD BE; but if YOU hurt
THEM you're a CRIMINAL.
As Voltaire said, Law
and religion are necessary to prevent the poor stealing by violence what
the rich have stolen by guile.
Actually, I think there is a lot more
violence in the way the rich get and keep their fortunes than Voltaire
seems to imply. I guess it works rhetorically better than 'law and
religion are necessary to prevent the poor stealing by violence back from
the rich what the rich have extorted by violence from them.' That,
or Voltaire might have been sucking up to the man, letting his hard core
go soft...
I feel better now.
I feel better than James Brown.
I feel better.
I feel better than James Brown.
How do you feel?
(was not was)
* This started as a typo, but then it became Art. Tis wise to consider, when making rash statements, that the key-word search is on for those that think for themselves in public, giving rise to a whole new art form: kreative mishpelling, a1ph4num3r1c cr0ss-up and such.
2-28-02 aa7 (96 was
Year One.)
Just for fun, I'm going
to be conservative today. Let's see. That means I believe it's
right that the rich should own the government. The rich are just
better people. That's why they are rich, right? And I don't
think any additional government interference in business is necessary in
light of the Enron collapse. After all, all those employees who lost
out _thought_ they were gonna get rich, and if they didn't know the funds
were being raised in some less-than-honest way, then where the heck did
they _think_ all that cash was coming from? I think they are just
mad because they got left holding the bag. Evidence suggests Enron,
Bush, and other energy big wigs engineered the California energy 'crisis'
in order to make money and get Bush elected. The employees who got
screwed had no real sympathy with Californians. They are just mad
because they didn't get their share of the cut! Look: in any pyramid
scheme, whoever is on the ground floor when it collapses takes a bath.
These employees are only 'victims' because they did not have time to bring
in another 'floor' of suckers below them, to fill their own golden parachutes.
So they are Losers. Plain and simple. All of them, let's remember,
worked for Enron. That means they had already embraced a value system
where there were 'winners' and 'losers' and losers exist to be preyed upon
by the winners. They imagined themselves to be 'winners' and had
no problem sucking the blood of anyone they could catch and hold down.
It's only when they discover they are 'Losers' that all this 'moral indignation'
starts flying around. Morality is the cry of the Loser. "Hey,
that's not _fair_!" Well, welcome to planet Earth. We have
much to teach you.
In
this context, 'Winning
isn't everything; It's the only thing.' as Vince Lombardi said.
It does not matter -how- you win. The other winners will jump to
your side as soon as you do win, and they will accept your story, whatever
it is. Only losers complain, and they only complain because they
are losers.
Since
life begins at conception,
(remember, I'm a conservative today,) and since everybody is either a winner
or a loser, it follows that winner-ness or loser-ness is genetic.
So generally, losers are the children of losers, who are the children of
losers, etc etc. So if loser children drink water with lead in it,
it's no great loss. If loser children get inadequate education in
schools ruled by force and the threat of force, whether from gangs or police,
it's no great loss. Naturally, the better food, water, air, education,
etc is reserved for winners. The greatness of a society is measured,
after all, in how much and how well the winners win. Losers are of
no consequence in history. They turn up to fight wars and build monuments
and cities, but their whole point is to be expendable, and interchangeable.
Think of Temp workers, Napoleon's foot soldiers or Pharaoh's pyramid builders.
They don't ask for any credit, and they don't deserve any. They are
losers.
I used to sympathize with losers. Maybe this was because of how I was beaten as a child. Even though I'm a big, brute, grown-man kinda guy, I feel like most of the violence/force/authority I have experienced in life has been me getting the snot beat out of me. True. The snot used to really run. And I think that made me tend to sympathize with underdogs, with 'the challenger,' as opposed to 'the champion.' I used to sympathize heavily with mythic losers like Prometheus, Jesus and Lucifer, the three-fold godhead of all those who'd like to Stick It To The Man, patron saints of Losers. Prometheus tried to help the losers by giving them fire, a technology of the Gods, the winners in that story. Jesus tried to help the losers too, by telling them the law was made for them, and not them for the law, and that they should not let lawyers and money changers, Pharisees (like evangelicals today) to use the Law to control them and make them losers. Then Lucifer, the Roman version of Horus Apollo, bringer of light, was stolen by the christians to explain all that was wrong with the world. In their story, he just plain stands up to God and tells Him where to get off. Have you ever wanted to do that? Well God, who does not tolerate any lip from anybody, imprisons Lucifer inside the Earth, there to torture loser humans after they are already dead, but mysteriously kept alive to be tortured, until the Last Days, when God finishes off both Lucifer and all the loser humans once and for all.
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They say rage is a bad thing. While it can be unpleasant to be around, rage is one of the main engines for change and improvement in human history. Rage rises past all those human tendencies to go along with whatever is going on. Rage is the cry of the basic free nature of the human animal as against the pointless cruelties of Society.
Pretty big words,
huh.
Well, I
am a Sociologist, and so unlike George Will or El Prisondente, I have an
official license to talk about Society, and how it functions or does not
function with and for the real people who constitute its building blocks.
Society, as I
am using the term, is to a large group of people (say, Western Culture)
what the Ego is to an individual person. Society is our collective
self-image. It's who we define ourselves to be.
Now, just as the
Ego (everybody's but yours and mine) can harbor a self image that's totally
at odds with the actual person, at least as others see him or her, so a
large group (eg. W.C. again) can harbor a self image that seems downright
hallucinatory to just about everyone else.
Just as the Ego
manifests as a constant stream of words through one's head, in which one
tells oneself whatever it habitually feels good to tell oneself, (or whatever
habitually feels bad in just the right way,) so Society manifests as a
constant stream of babble across the narrow screens of our CRT's.
The criterion is the same. After S11 the collective ego was feeling
weak and insecure, and so the media kicked into high gear telling
folks in the US how brave and special they were. Applying a fifteen
inch american flag sticker to one's lincoln navigator became a touching
act of courage and solidarity.
There is some disagreement
about the nature and purpose of the Ego,
And this might
offer some clues about Society as well.
On one extreme,
there are Eastern mystics who say that the Ego is the problem,
and getting free of it is the solution. Some of them think
that the Ego is the _only_ problem, and all the other problems would simply
disappear if all people everywhere got clear of Ego.
On the other extreme,
there is Ayn Rand, philosophical Mother of neo-conservativism, who seems
to think that the Ego is the solution, and the only solution. The
problem, in her view, is anything that gets between the individual and
his or her pursuit of specialness, anything or anyone that blocks one of
her heroes from total narcissistic abandon toward ego gratification.
What creates such blocks? People who know they are not good enough
to compete head to head with the Rand Hero, and so sneakily try to block
the hero's light from shining at full brilliance. On Planet Randroid,
the main problem is inferior people who lack the taste and consideration
to humble themselves before her Heroes. ( I must admit there's a part of
me that really resonates with all this, but it's not my favorite part of
me.)
So
is Ego the
problem or the solution?
Something to
me says 'neither.' Maybe calling it either one magnifies the importance
of the question, the questioner, the questioning, to such an absurd degree
that to answer at all without first pointing this out would be misleading.
It seems we are fairly certain which objects belong in the category of 'real,' and which in the category of 'imaginary/subjective/personal' until we try to find the precise line of demarcation: here is where 'I' end and 'the rest of the universe' begins. Where, exactly, is that? I suggest it is maddening to look for such a line, because you won't find it. Reason insists it should be there, somewhere, and yet it it is not. It seems to be there, plain as day, but only when you don't look right at it.
What about
the collective
Ego, called 'society' here? Is it a problem or a solution?
Is it a tool that
the skilled and powerful use to control the masses?
I have defined
this as essentially a media phenomenon.
I would argue
briefly that one must reclaim one's ego from the collective uber-ego of
media consciousness, by taking control of one's media environment, before
one can 'transcend' the ego. Simply abandoning personal autonomy
and becoming a PC, Pure Consumer, is not Zen.
A million decisions
and revisions go into production of mass media, like the million revisions
that occur in the mind before a thought pops out in its edited-for-consciousness
form.
Many people have
discovered in their own ways that they live in a participatory universe,
that what they perceive as outside them owes a great deal to what they
are bringing to it from inside themselves.
(as much true
of me as anybody... but more on this later)
So if Society is like the Ego, and Rage is a force that rises against the pointless cruelties of Society, then Rage functions like the Shadow, or Id. The Shadow or Id is the interface between the abstract 'box' of the conscious mind and the deeper reality of the body.* So if the fantasies of the ego start to run too contrary to the underlying realness of the human animal, the Shadow, or Id is the channel through which the wake-up call will come. So an increase in Rage against Society is best understood as the equal and opposite reaction against contorted and impossible Societal fantasy.
The
'War on Terrorism' is exactly this kind of societal phantasm.
After
all, the only nation ever convicted of terrorism in a world court was the
US, and the action was against Nicaragua, and many of the major players
then are in the current administration now. So rather than root out 'terrorism'
at its source, namely the Bush White House and the Rumsfeld Pentagon, the
administration is making it harder and harder to find out what happened
in Daddy's years. How convenient. Furthermore, we've had three major
acts of terrorism in the last decade or so: OK City, Anthrax, and 911.
The first of these was committed by a decorated military veteran with ties
to conservative militia and other pro-gun factions, church-goer, Republican.
Are THESE people being hassled at airports? In the case of the second
one, the Anthrax, evidence is mounting that the terrorist is some rogue
operative of the CIA or military intelligence, or an 'accident' by the
same.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/archive/newsid_1873000/1873368.stm
Are
THESE people being subject to more scrutiny? No. Instead they
are getting more money, fewer rules to follow, and less oversight to see
if they are following them. Then, last, there's 911. We have
the word of the Bush administration that they are pretty sure it was Al
Queda, a terrorist network comprised largely of Saudi Arabians, Egyptians,
and Jordanians, with money from sources in those same countries, most notably
the Saudi Royal family. So are any of these people targeted?
No. They are courted to be part of a coalition to go blow up rocks
and refugees in Afghanistan.
So
whatever it is, it's not a 'War on Terrorism.' It's also not a 'new
kind of war.' It's the same old kind of war, with the government
bombing civilians and assassinating opposition leaders and repressing civil
liberties and lying and lying and lying, all to manipulate the price of
oil for the Ken Lays of the world. Same as all the other wars.
*(So, for that matter, is the Super Ego, in some ways: heroic action in pursuit of species preservation is common with most mammals, and yet it's attributed to what is 'highest' in human nature, and often contrasted with 'behaving like an animal.' Think of men saving women and children in an emergency, even if it places them at risk. In humans, we call this heroic, but when caribou do it, we call it 'instinct.' In truth, most animals don't 'behave like animals.' Only people do. Better to say, 'Those prison guards were behaving like Humans! Argh, make it stop! Did they forget their animal nature: 'only hurt to defend, and only kill to eat'?')
Would this be possible
without the intervention of Goddess Prozac and her Seratonin Sisters?
If most (US) people did not use chemicals to numb the pain of daily existence,
what would happen? Would they quit their jobs? Or worse, Go
Postal? Would they get politically active? Would they become
dissatisfied with their shopping malls and rush hours and would their agitation
lead to action? Would they question how their lives could cost so
much in terms of resources and hours on the boss's clock, and yet offer
so little in terms of real satisfaction? Would they adjust their
lives accordingly? Would they work less and recreate with family,
friends and others who are not paying customers more? Would they
reshape their world based on other values, more human values? And
if it happened, who would be the big loser? The BOSS, that's who.
So, at the
very least, make the sorry bastard buy you your pills. He wouldn't
like you without them.
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*
You might
have guessed that there was somebody somewhere who was online but had no
indoor plumbing. I fit that description. A friend of mine suggested
that I write something about what it's like to live at this particular
socio-economic-thechnological nexus.
1. Robert
Anton Wilson says, in _Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy_, that one way to release
power in your life is to find a remaining taboo, and break it. Now,
this immediately sounds kind of scary. After all, what's taboo anymore?
It seems there are no real taboos left in our hopelessly jaded culture
that aren't actually dangerous. On closer examination, though, taboos
are far nearer at hand, and need not be dangerous to break, (though people
will think you're weird, like the cow on the other side of the fence.)
In the first place, to release power in _your_ life, you only need to break
one of _your_ taboos. _You_ of course cannot possibly be as jaded
as the society you perceive, right? Or else you would not perceive it as
jaded. In the second place, taboos do not need to be specifically
sexual or violent, intensely pleasurable, or harmful, to be taboos.
Indoor plumbing is one such a taboo. You have got to have it, or
you just ain't right. There are charities whose sole function is
to track down anyone without indoor plumbing and install it in their house.
If they say they don't want it, they can have their children taken away
by protective services, and they themselves can be sent off to the
loony bin, no questions asked. You'd have to be INSANE not to want
indoor plumbing, if it was free, right?
So without going into an explanation of how or why I have chosen to live
this way, I hope I have gotten you examining the idea of taboo, and what
it is. The Urban Legends website defines the term thus:
Sorry, but I
have to criticize this. This definition applies to -rules-.
Rules are a fairly mundane and ordinary manifestation of what I'm talking
about. A taboo, when the word is used in the magicko-anthropoligical
sense that Wilson uses it in, and in which I am discussing it, means something
far deeper and more basic than that. It means things taught to us
as toddlers as 'big no-nos,' and not 'specific acts with specific consequences.'
Often there's no 'rule' about it at all, and a child is treated with scorn
for even asking about it. There is no 'rule' against masturbation,
as such, but one is supposed to feel intense shame if ever caught doing
it. Why? Let's face it, there's more bytes on the www devoted
to porn than anything else, with folks looking for someone to have sex
with running a close second, and third I guess being people talking about
sex they have had, or speculating about other people's sex. The www
is a funny thing: giving us the illusion of privacy while generating undeniable
statistical evidence that internet users are more interested in sex than
anything else, and some of them might even be masturbating.
Does this discussion
disturb you? Then I have struck against a taboo. Does it make
you laugh? Then I have also struck against a taboo, but one you have questioned
at least a little in your own mind. When we grow up, our aversion to real
taboos feels visceral rather than rational. Real taboos seem to proceed
directly and self evidently from nature, like gravity and sunshine, part
of the architecture of the universe, at least to the people that hold them.
To question them at all is evidence one was not raised right (literally,
since the training is supposed to take place young.) Most folks have
broken at least a few of the taboos their parents placed on them when they
were young, especially if they are going to have anything like a healthy
sex life, and other folks have broken more of them. Some folks have
gotten a taste for the thrill of breaking taboos, surfing against the waves
of inner Freudian disapproval, and hanging ten on the id. But I take
it as axiomatic that Everyone has broken a taboo at least once, and that
Everybody has some taboos left, even if they think they have dispensed
with all of them.
So.
Did you ever
hear about the Ancient Princess who refused to eliminate her bodily waste
unless it was into five gallons of clean drinking water? No?
Me neither. The idea was just too absurd, even in a time when senseless
waste and sadistic cruelty were hallmarks of noble blood. A princess
could feel a pea through nine mattresses, and see whole villages razed
to the ground for her 'honor,' but would she demand clean water to piss
in? Perversion! Disgrace! Someone Not Raised Right!
Even in the 20th century, many citizens of the Empire were still at least capable of loosing their bowels into a hole in the ground as their ancestors had done, all the way back into the mists of legends. But in this enlightened day and age, many Americans butts will simply not open in an an outhouse. That's right. Tests show it's not the porcelin, or the mirrors that trigger the physiological events that lead to a successful jettison of excess cargo. It's the water. Americans just can't shit without water to do it in. And it can't be -used- water, yellow water left in the bowl by some water conservation worker with no children. It has to be Fresh, Clean, water, filtered and guaranteed non-lethal, just like the shower water and tap water.
When you live without indoor plumbing, you become 'ritually unclean,' at least by US standards. You're unfit for indoor work, and usually assumed to be illiterate.
more to come...
New Aphorism/Metaphor.
Religions are like Trees.
God is the Sky.
(c)2002 Arcadia Productions (A)
(the ground, of course, would
be human needs.)