"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Sep 13, 2012

Entirely Avoidable Outcomes

If you don't want to die in a US embassy or consulate, don't work in one.

If you won't want your death to be used to by (a) a fuckhead Mormon Republican, to justify drone wars and Hellfire missile attacks on Iranians who had fuck all to do with your summary execution at the hands of putative allies, or by (b) a callous, rat bastard Democrat, to justify sky death robot bombings and Hellfire missile attacks on Libyan non-combatants, in the name of retaliation, don't put your silly little self in a position to die in a US embassy or consulate.

If you don't want Diane Sawyer staring moon eyed into the camera, whisper voiced and falsely solicitous, while she discusses how you were a gentle ally of the Libyan people, and a peacemaker, examine whatever decision tree it is you use to plan out your next five or ten years. If it leads you towards a job with the State department, and an assignment to the CIA riddled gutter hole that is post-Qaddafi Libya, you get what you get. Plus, there's good money on the wager that Diane won't remember your name in passing three weeks from tomorrow. You're a prop. This was avoidable.

If you don't want your kids to sit in an overcrowded class room, it painted in prison grey and pysch-ward eggshell, being taught on entirely excusable autopilot by an overworked public school teacher who's already picking up the tab for most of the in-class materials, the next time your town or city has an official choice between further militarizing the cops, or hiring more teachers - perhaps your first thought shouldn't whimper along about "rising crime" and "criminal elements."

If you don't want so many people to hate your admittedly underpaid profession, learn to hit back hard enough to make the mayor's head crack on the wall behind him. Nobody likes a loser. More importantly, nobody trusts one. That pity thing? It's always laced with contempt.

If you can't remember what it's like to sit in a hot classroom while the autumn winds beckon, and play, play, play winks at you from behind a distant cloud or hill top, you probably won't avoid a simple failure to understand why a healthy child hates school. Children learn when they play and overcome. They remember when they're boxed into classrooms.

If you don't want to deal with the ramifications of Republican anti-women measures, or the Democrats' anti-labor ones, and you don't want to have to put up with the election season, practice swinging blunt objects. If you aren't willing to make a rat fuck in a suit worry for the security and integrity of his hide and vital organs, he's going to occupy himself with yours.

If you don't think that violence works, please explain the defense department's budget. Please explain the President's Praetorian Guard. Please explain why it is that those who rule can never agree with each other about how to fuck over their subjects, but there's no discord between them on the subject of how to keep them scared and running.

If you let a wrong go unrequited, somebody will always notice. If you don't like the conclusions they draw, about you, learn to requite a little. If the opponent isn't calculating what he can't predict about your possible conduct, he's already moved on to how he's going to take what's yours.

If you don't want to believe that whiteness and maleness are constructed out of the historic victories had over those who are defined by their exclusion from the winner's circle and its inheritances, that's your business. You shouldn't be surprised when people reach the obvious conclusion that you are well off, white, male and blind to fact that you were one of the inheritors. Think for a moment: what would all that unpaid labor look like, in terms of real capital and property, were it not taken from the not-male and not-white people who had to produce it, but could not decide how it was handed down, or what was built, sheltered, hidden away and protected by it. Think about unpaid household labor.Think about all the failures to remunerate. Actually, think. There's no spirit. There's no will. There aren't any numina. It's all just stuff, and stuff made into stuff. So, what would whiteness and maleness look like if it wasn't backed up by violent, brutal, deceitful misappropriation so bold and grand its called History? If you can't answer that question correctly, it's probably fairly unavoidable that you're a dude with pink skin.

9 comments:

gamefaced said...

hey jack - you've got kids right? mind my asking if they go or went to public schools?
brainstorming solutions, more and more i feel that once my son gets into middle school (next year) i won't be able to send him anymore. can't really justify it. not to myself - and not to him.

Jack Crow said...

g,

Public school. One in high school, one first year middle school.

We looked into hs - but around here most of the associations are fundamentalist dominated.

I have a stipulated court agreement with my ex- which has kept my oldest in public school, since she still retains some input into his educational and health development - and she has always declined any alternatives to public school which were within 500 miles of where we live.

I'd like to say that we came up with a novel solution - but we didn't. My oldest takes online (charter, and free...) math courses so that he can focus his in-school time on what he wants to do - music, film production, languages, etc. This year his school schedule has English, then orchestra, band, video production, French, German and biology.

He failed math in the classroom, but is maintaining a high B average online. The adaptation suited him, in so much as grades measure retention (not much, but...if he wants college, he's going to have wheedle his way into; mom and dad are mostly always broke).

The best we were/are able to manage for middle school, for our kids, was/is to give them options outside of the school day, where they get to do what they want (within budget, sadly).

Music helps. Once the kids are in orchestra and band, they get a usually trustworthy core group with which to associate, a kind of buffer from the worst of junior high.

I know that's not much - but it's what we can manage on one and a half incomes and a budget.

gamefaced said...

yeah, our public schools are entrenched with the god fearing southern baptist sort. i feel like such a fucking liar telling him to suck it up, do it right cause that's how you get anywhere in life. it isn't true. so i have to say, suck it up until i can get you out, into something better. but i don't know what that better is, or how to get there. white people problems, i guess.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, what I think people should do is maintain a blog where they pretend to be profound, wise and deep, building a portfolio of massive lies about their background in work and in life, pretending to have experienced this, or done that, to great success. Walter Mitty, you know? The field becomes an eternal wide-open savannah, ripe for fictional creativity. You can emulate better writers, steal their imagery, ape their perspective, parrot their lingo. You can fabricate a life that nobody lived, but call it your own history. And best of all, you can pretend, always, to be offended on behalf of all kinds of people other than yourself. If you're a straight white man, pretend to be offended on behalf of gays, transgenders, cross-dressers, sexual swingers, and paedophiles -- pretend it as if your very existence is torn apart by encountering what you imagine as bigotry. If you're a man, pretend to be offended on behalf of women -- pretend this all the time, making yourself out to be some kind of saint who protects the fairer sex. Please don't mind the condescension toward women which is essential to that perspective! They NEED you to protect them, even though you insist that they are equals! But best of all, you can be offended on behalf of lower-class, uneducated people despite your extensive, multiple-parchment educational background at private colleges and universities and prep schools. Because really, nothing makes you angrier than someone mistaking you for working class, nonwhite, poor and uneducated. You're a progressive, and damned proud of it.

gamefaced said...

mitty has a blog?

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

mitty has a blog?

Maybe yes, maybe no, but he got some free books, anywho.
~

gamefaced said...

err.

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