Of course Putin rigged the elections. He's just more forthright about his shenanigans than the Republican-Democrats, who rig elections with "viability" and money, and all towards the same end, but haven't the decency to be equal to their actions.
Of course, Netanyahu's government is going to wait until the Obama Administration signs off on air strikes. There is so little difference between Israeli and American policy, you couldn't squeeze a molecule's width of ass gas between them. Tuesday's meeting has fuck all to do with restraining Israel. It's a matter of the kayfabe.
Of course, Rush Limbaugh is a misogynist pig-fucking geek hopped up on the power of self-regard and opportunist advertising. And? How is he different from Anthony Weiner, exactly?
Of course, the Shawnee, the Tsalagi, the Fox, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Caddo, Kiowa, Osage and Pawnee peoples built scores upon scores of prefab housing towns on the open plains with no expectation that tornadoes might despoil the sky god's virgin paradise...
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
Mar 5, 2012
Feb 29, 2012
The dead have no victories and the hangman is a friend.
The dead have no victories. The dead do not triumph: not in war, not in resistance, not in peace, not in memory.
First, our memories are lies. Memory is, itself, the first ground of deception. Think of all the times you were wrong about what you remember. You saw a red shirt in your mind, draped over the frame of a friend, cast in the light of a treasured recollection. You know it to be true. You remember it. And then, maybe only days later, you hold a photo in your hand. In it, she wears green.
Or - in the passing of breath and conversation, each person captured in the amber of her own memory retells a shared experience, differently. The details emerge, and they do not agree.
How memory flatters, or torments, or tempts us to believe what we cannot verify.
Second, our memories are truths. They are the truth not of fact, but of our faith in tomorrows. This isn't a fault. Only a fool would lay blame, here. We are formed by others, by pains and pleasures, by fears and desires, many years before memory bubbles up and percolates into the illusions of self. We are made long before we become makers. The self, caged as it is always in memory's prison, is first and last a tall tale. A story. We suffer this disorder. We revel in it. It defines even our boredom. The range of possibilities, the shapes of selfhood, cannot be cataloged. Self varies, with mood, with digestion, with shitting and farting and sleep; but character, that vicious slaver, conceals this variance in the habits of obedience and belief. We are never constant. But memory, and its capo, character, would have their prisoner believe otherwise. They trick awareness into breaking with its senses, inventing a self who lasts. The experience of self is the story of an escape which will never happen. It is the flight into an ever receding tomorrow. Like other lies - history, religion, law.
The living victors would have us believe otherwise, of course. They would have us believe in our selves to the point of obsession, cultivating a society wide disorder of the single personality. A plague, an affliction, and thing which has no age, and is always aging.
Epoch and place vary, and our million million selves come and go. Most of us know nothing of the soil beneath our feet, the lifetime of an ant or worm, or the history of a square foot of air. We know nothing, and that leaves us free to observe. That could be enough, but it's not. A people without the curse of character and obedience - how do you rule them? How do you raise a child into a boy into a man who will congratulate himself as he takes a voluntary step towards his own planned participation in the mass execution of war? How do you thwart a child into being a girl into becoming a woman who knows by twenty that she has a place, and a thousand reasons to trust her fears, and a hundred times as many shapes she should never, ever be?
How do rule? You deny. You forbid. And then you punish. After punishment, not being punished is as good as a reward. It works on those who are clever or stupid enough to avoid the whip. It works, eventually, on the whipped themselves.
And in being ruled in the petty tyrannies of family, in the school house and the workplace, we are shaped into singular and collective acts of deception; into pack animals with a faith in the tomorrow told tales of our invented pasts.
The human is inconstancy and inconsistency. Our obedience is not. Obedience follows the infliction of harm upon memory, until memory lies and its invention, the self, believes it.
The cults of the sacrificed dead are not inconstant. They are firm faiths, clear in doctrine, deliberate in worship, unflinching in punishment, generous in the promise of reward. Consistency is their hallmark. It is their brand mark, as well.
The dead lose everything. They lose even the scars burned into memory. They become, instead, glyphs and cyphers for the living. And the living victors make use.
The living victors - you know them because victory habituates them to the giving of orders and the taking of spoils, because they rule you in small and large ways - enshrine the dead: as reminders, as testaments to their control of shared memory, as icons for adoration and obstructions to liberation.
It isn't nothing that across time and place, spanning the palimpsest sprawl of history's scribbles, those who rule depend upon death, and upon the memory of the dead. Death, as defeat. Death, as surrender. Dying, as the fearful passage into oblivion. Oblivion, as punishment, the black shrouded scourge who hounds the self into its final corner.
The body dies, and for the foreseeable future, all bodies perish. But death also kills the fiction, the self-affliction. And in that awareness, a liberation which is neither flight nor the maddened rush into the walls of our cages. This single personality, this cultivated disorder, this colonization of the accident of memory which believes, and obeys, and marches off to war, and tortures itself into clothing, and approved shapes, and behaviors - it can die at any time, and the body can go on living, aware, enjoying, suffering and shitting and fucking and getting through the day and into tomorrow.
And then, well, the living have no victories. And those who would rule will find they can only order their own twisted husks of memory around, or march off into battles with the ghosts of heroes who never were, never are, and never could be again.
That doesn't stave off dying, prevent illness, negate dread. Shrugging off the single personality disorder doesn't make the nerves immune to pain, or the heart to longing. It won't erase jealousy or any other venality which keeps us interesting. But, it's a first step among many towards a world that's not just easy for everyone, but maybe even half the time, one worth inhabiting.
And all we have to do, in our own individual moments, is walk up the gallows step, greet the hangman with a smile, slip into the noose...and leap. After that, nothing. And everything.
And the world to take back...
First, our memories are lies. Memory is, itself, the first ground of deception. Think of all the times you were wrong about what you remember. You saw a red shirt in your mind, draped over the frame of a friend, cast in the light of a treasured recollection. You know it to be true. You remember it. And then, maybe only days later, you hold a photo in your hand. In it, she wears green.
Or - in the passing of breath and conversation, each person captured in the amber of her own memory retells a shared experience, differently. The details emerge, and they do not agree.
How memory flatters, or torments, or tempts us to believe what we cannot verify.
Second, our memories are truths. They are the truth not of fact, but of our faith in tomorrows. This isn't a fault. Only a fool would lay blame, here. We are formed by others, by pains and pleasures, by fears and desires, many years before memory bubbles up and percolates into the illusions of self. We are made long before we become makers. The self, caged as it is always in memory's prison, is first and last a tall tale. A story. We suffer this disorder. We revel in it. It defines even our boredom. The range of possibilities, the shapes of selfhood, cannot be cataloged. Self varies, with mood, with digestion, with shitting and farting and sleep; but character, that vicious slaver, conceals this variance in the habits of obedience and belief. We are never constant. But memory, and its capo, character, would have their prisoner believe otherwise. They trick awareness into breaking with its senses, inventing a self who lasts. The experience of self is the story of an escape which will never happen. It is the flight into an ever receding tomorrow. Like other lies - history, religion, law.
The living victors would have us believe otherwise, of course. They would have us believe in our selves to the point of obsession, cultivating a society wide disorder of the single personality. A plague, an affliction, and thing which has no age, and is always aging.
Epoch and place vary, and our million million selves come and go. Most of us know nothing of the soil beneath our feet, the lifetime of an ant or worm, or the history of a square foot of air. We know nothing, and that leaves us free to observe. That could be enough, but it's not. A people without the curse of character and obedience - how do you rule them? How do you raise a child into a boy into a man who will congratulate himself as he takes a voluntary step towards his own planned participation in the mass execution of war? How do you thwart a child into being a girl into becoming a woman who knows by twenty that she has a place, and a thousand reasons to trust her fears, and a hundred times as many shapes she should never, ever be?
How do rule? You deny. You forbid. And then you punish. After punishment, not being punished is as good as a reward. It works on those who are clever or stupid enough to avoid the whip. It works, eventually, on the whipped themselves.
And in being ruled in the petty tyrannies of family, in the school house and the workplace, we are shaped into singular and collective acts of deception; into pack animals with a faith in the tomorrow told tales of our invented pasts.
The human is inconstancy and inconsistency. Our obedience is not. Obedience follows the infliction of harm upon memory, until memory lies and its invention, the self, believes it.
The cults of the sacrificed dead are not inconstant. They are firm faiths, clear in doctrine, deliberate in worship, unflinching in punishment, generous in the promise of reward. Consistency is their hallmark. It is their brand mark, as well.
The dead lose everything. They lose even the scars burned into memory. They become, instead, glyphs and cyphers for the living. And the living victors make use.
The living victors - you know them because victory habituates them to the giving of orders and the taking of spoils, because they rule you in small and large ways - enshrine the dead: as reminders, as testaments to their control of shared memory, as icons for adoration and obstructions to liberation.
It isn't nothing that across time and place, spanning the palimpsest sprawl of history's scribbles, those who rule depend upon death, and upon the memory of the dead. Death, as defeat. Death, as surrender. Dying, as the fearful passage into oblivion. Oblivion, as punishment, the black shrouded scourge who hounds the self into its final corner.
The body dies, and for the foreseeable future, all bodies perish. But death also kills the fiction, the self-affliction. And in that awareness, a liberation which is neither flight nor the maddened rush into the walls of our cages. This single personality, this cultivated disorder, this colonization of the accident of memory which believes, and obeys, and marches off to war, and tortures itself into clothing, and approved shapes, and behaviors - it can die at any time, and the body can go on living, aware, enjoying, suffering and shitting and fucking and getting through the day and into tomorrow.
And then, well, the living have no victories. And those who would rule will find they can only order their own twisted husks of memory around, or march off into battles with the ghosts of heroes who never were, never are, and never could be again.
That doesn't stave off dying, prevent illness, negate dread. Shrugging off the single personality disorder doesn't make the nerves immune to pain, or the heart to longing. It won't erase jealousy or any other venality which keeps us interesting. But, it's a first step among many towards a world that's not just easy for everyone, but maybe even half the time, one worth inhabiting.
And all we have to do, in our own individual moments, is walk up the gallows step, greet the hangman with a smile, slip into the noose...and leap. After that, nothing. And everything.
And the world to take back...
Feb 28, 2012
Reich's Fail
Robert Reich: "A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America."
Me: When haven't they?
Me: When haven't they?
Translation
"Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.
Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program."
Source.
Translation:
"Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit."
The "US" is responsible for every decision made by Israeli leaders, in the same way that the head of an organized crime family is responsible for the orders given to his underbosses. Without the head of the racket, there is no underling whose actions can "distance" the boss from the deed itself.
If the leadership of the Israeli suicide cult state starts a war with Iran, wager every dollar you have on the solid bet that Washington has given its approval, its marching orders and its imprimatur to the wholly owned subsidiary that is Israel.
Feb 26, 2012
Program Note
If you are kind enough to read me from time to time, I'm all sorts of appreciative. That I'm not the most original, best educated, or thorough thinker should go without note, but I have the vanity of a self-deprecating nature, and would like to note it anyway. Which is kind of a segue towards a complaint with Blogger. I like blogrolls. Diverse, unwieldy lists of people who have more interesting things to write than I, and who do it with less bravado and fewer instances of cultivated ignorance. Unfortunately, Blogger no longer allows me to update or add to the roll to the right of this page. So, I've been adding new blogs to the "Read" column to the left, where I've traditionally placed blogs that Blogger refuses to recognize as self-updating. There are any number of writers, observers and thinkers there worth your while. Please give them a look.
Thanks,
Jack
Thanks,
Jack
Feb 20, 2012
Monsieur
IOZ hardly needs a link from me, but I'm compelled to nod it off anyway:
http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2012/02/diving-into-dreck.html
Added in Edit:
Commenting upon IOZ's post linked above is Philboyd, who has a corollary formula which really resonates, and which I believe states with elegant brevity a position which is often difficult to understand, especially for those of us with the imperium and auctoritas of acculturated dudeliness:
Source.
I don't believe this is easy for most of us men to understand. I certainly have had difficulty appreciating what it means to live as woman within the confines of a society which authorizes abuse of women as a norm, sexualizes it as entertainment, and politicizes it as a natural order of things.
http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2012/02/diving-into-dreck.html
Added in Edit:
Commenting upon IOZ's post linked above is Philboyd, who has a corollary formula which really resonates, and which I believe states with elegant brevity a position which is often difficult to understand, especially for those of us with the imperium and auctoritas of acculturated dudeliness:
Every piece of subtle macho posturing, every little joking intimidation would not work without the accepted social position of men as powerful studs who take what they want. Likewise, that accepted social position would not make sense without the awful prevalence of men raping women. Here, maybe, is a radfem twist: even if you don't posture, even if you try to repudiate the idea of a strong, rape-y man, your interactions with women still rest on a foundation of rape - just as a policeman who tries really hard not to use his nightstick still interacts with people on a foundation of violence. In our society, that's what a policeman is.
Source.
I don't believe this is easy for most of us men to understand. I certainly have had difficulty appreciating what it means to live as woman within the confines of a society which authorizes abuse of women as a norm, sexualizes it as entertainment, and politicizes it as a natural order of things.
Feb 19, 2012
Trinities
So Jesus and his self-brother, the Spirit, don't give Catholics glossolalia and the shivvy-shakes. Neither do they do the crackers into flesh and cooking sherry into blood magic for Assembly of God pentecostals. God is not an ecumenicist.
Neither is the State. Or the Market.
All three are royal fictions. And each, despite the rhetoric of universalism and transcendence offered by their devotees, is employed to sunder.
Neither is the State. Or the Market.
All three are royal fictions. And each, despite the rhetoric of universalism and transcendence offered by their devotees, is employed to sunder.
Feb 15, 2012
Anarchist
A person believes: I will do this, I will not do that. I have my limits, I have my needs, but I am also the things I must do, or won't do; I will accomplish and I will avoid.
We believe these assertions, a faith common to our humanity. We are certain, and sure, that what makes the mirror of self in our memory unique is nothing short of a devotion to this faith in the obedience of the future to our flesh-wracked now. We devote ourselves to a future we insist will obey.
A person promises a meaning to life, and recalls that promise to fickle memory: this is how I will live my life. This is the story they will tell of me. This is the path, and I am who I am by sticking to it. You are who you are because I see you near to it.
We tell ourselves how will we live our lives. We tell each other. How much of our culture is the telling and retelling? More than we expect.
These tales are mostly lies. Our beliefs are, when examined, a catalog of self-deceptions.
I am an anarchist because I have evidence of the truth of these lies.
We believe these assertions, a faith common to our humanity. We are certain, and sure, that what makes the mirror of self in our memory unique is nothing short of a devotion to this faith in the obedience of the future to our flesh-wracked now. We devote ourselves to a future we insist will obey.
A person promises a meaning to life, and recalls that promise to fickle memory: this is how I will live my life. This is the story they will tell of me. This is the path, and I am who I am by sticking to it. You are who you are because I see you near to it.
We tell ourselves how will we live our lives. We tell each other. How much of our culture is the telling and retelling? More than we expect.
These tales are mostly lies. Our beliefs are, when examined, a catalog of self-deceptions.
I am an anarchist because I have evidence of the truth of these lies.
Feb 14, 2012
Smear the Queer
When I was young, boys played a game. It was called "Smear the Queer," or alternately, "Kill The Man With the Ball." The objet de jeu was simple, compared to baseball or lacrosse: do violence to the "Queer" with the ball. If you are wondering if the Queer was just an odd fellow, within game play, ponder no further. The Queer was certainly the Fag. And he had a handicap, which was the ball. The Queer had to have two hands on the ball, unless he was throwing it away. The point of the game, from the vantage point of the ball clasping Queer, was to get rid of the ball and become not-Queer. Because the only person who could be struck, tackled, knocked down or done violence to was the Queer with the ball.
The Queer was not allowed to just get rid of the ball. There were rules, sort of like with dodgeball. The Queer had to throw the ball to a team mate. Who then became the Queer who tried to get rid of the ball while all the members of the opposing team either attempted to tackle, trip, punch and smear him, or block passes to the new Queer's team mates. Team mates who were not the current Queer could not be hit, struck or touched. Violence was reserved for the Queer. And only the Queer.
Smear the Queer was a rugged game. We all had to take a knee, once, when a Queer was driven to the ground so hard one of his lungs was collapsed. Sometimes players took the Smear part literally. By "sometimes," I mean "regularly." We should perhaps remember that the game was also called "Kill the Man with the Ball." During the course of play, I had a dislocated shoulder, and there were a few broken wrists, noses, fingers and what not.
Smear the Queer was a Boy's Game. Girls never played it. They weren't allowed. Well, publicly that is. We had a few tough chicks who played. They were often the most aggressive players. Something about compensation to male-consistent behaviors in a male dominated environment, and conditioning, I image.
Smear the Queer could be played impromptu, but in my youthful experience, it was nonetheless organized. The game had rules. If the rules weren't followed, it wasn't a game. And most often, it was not only organized, it was sanctioned. I learned to play Smear the Queer in the Cub Scouts. With the Cubmasters as referees. It was more popular than Capture the Flag. It was even more popular than Capture the Flag (with Prisons*). It was surely preferable to Flag Football, which game provides no opportunities for the smearing of Queers, and has the distinct disadvantage of being free of tackling, tripping, nose breaking, lung collapsing and other boyish delights.
We also played a version (sans collapsed lungs or leaping tackles) on school grounds. The nuns, as referees. Girls excluded, of course. They had their own side of the playground. Literally. There was a line painted in the middle. We boys had football, StQ, dodgeball, tag and smash the faggots through the chain link fence, on our side. We also had marbles, jacks, baseball card trading and kickball. The girls had hopscotch. Once, the girls, led by the firebrands M---- S. and one of the many Michelles, organized a soccer game. The nuns were not pleased with this collapse of decorum. For a week, the girls has to spend recesses walking around the perimeter of their side of the playground. Doing the rosary. We boys were not discouraged from watching them. Object lessons need objects of condemnation, and all.
I'm told that if there were no giant leviathan, or world full of competing giant leviathans, society, such as it exists, would devolve overnight into one massive free for all of Smear the Queer.
I imagine that the exemplars, shapers of boys into men, pillars of the community, gum-hating nuns and bastions of rectitude - who organized and sanctioned Smear the Queer, as well as boy and girl divided playgrounds - would agree.
That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point. And the one boy who was (in hindsight, and who is now Out) obviously gay was, I imagine out of self-protection, one of the game's most brutal participants. But, it's not like we learned the game from adult homosexuals. Or from the long-hairs who occasionally passed into the area to pick apples and berries alongside the Mexican, Cape Verdean and Brazilian migrant workers. The potheads couldn't be bothered, and the deadheads wouldn't have tried, and nary a Red could be found to teach us to hunt down the Other and smash him into the ground. Perhaps they were too busy being Others themselves.
Huh.
We learned that game from the same sort of people who are now telling us that, without them, the game itself would spread all of the planet as if by moral infection, and would no longer worry mere Queers. It will even trouble hitherto comfortable white people.
I should note, in conclusion, that the present campaign against Bashar Assad looks like international Kill the Man with the Ball. In Libya, it was definitely more a version of Smear the Queer.
Of course, when exemplary, organized, decent people play it with guns and moral sanction, it's called government. When anarchists try to imagine a world where kids aren't taught to play the game at all, well, obviously the correct response to that What If is that everyone will learn it as if by magic, and also everyone will be a Smear-worthy Queer...
* - CtF(wP) inevitably led to the abuse of the prisoners. This came as a surprise to our elders. It was eventually banned. Prisoners were no longer allowed to be taken. Captured players were instead assigned to a neutral zone, where they could be liberated by a team mate, according to varying rules. Smear the Queer was never banned, at least not when I was a minor.
The Queer was not allowed to just get rid of the ball. There were rules, sort of like with dodgeball. The Queer had to throw the ball to a team mate. Who then became the Queer who tried to get rid of the ball while all the members of the opposing team either attempted to tackle, trip, punch and smear him, or block passes to the new Queer's team mates. Team mates who were not the current Queer could not be hit, struck or touched. Violence was reserved for the Queer. And only the Queer.
Smear the Queer was a rugged game. We all had to take a knee, once, when a Queer was driven to the ground so hard one of his lungs was collapsed. Sometimes players took the Smear part literally. By "sometimes," I mean "regularly." We should perhaps remember that the game was also called "Kill the Man with the Ball." During the course of play, I had a dislocated shoulder, and there were a few broken wrists, noses, fingers and what not.
Smear the Queer was a Boy's Game. Girls never played it. They weren't allowed. Well, publicly that is. We had a few tough chicks who played. They were often the most aggressive players. Something about compensation to male-consistent behaviors in a male dominated environment, and conditioning, I image.
Smear the Queer could be played impromptu, but in my youthful experience, it was nonetheless organized. The game had rules. If the rules weren't followed, it wasn't a game. And most often, it was not only organized, it was sanctioned. I learned to play Smear the Queer in the Cub Scouts. With the Cubmasters as referees. It was more popular than Capture the Flag. It was even more popular than Capture the Flag (with Prisons*). It was surely preferable to Flag Football, which game provides no opportunities for the smearing of Queers, and has the distinct disadvantage of being free of tackling, tripping, nose breaking, lung collapsing and other boyish delights.
We also played a version (sans collapsed lungs or leaping tackles) on school grounds. The nuns, as referees. Girls excluded, of course. They had their own side of the playground. Literally. There was a line painted in the middle. We boys had football, StQ, dodgeball, tag and smash the faggots through the chain link fence, on our side. We also had marbles, jacks, baseball card trading and kickball. The girls had hopscotch. Once, the girls, led by the firebrands M---- S. and one of the many Michelles, organized a soccer game. The nuns were not pleased with this collapse of decorum. For a week, the girls has to spend recesses walking around the perimeter of their side of the playground. Doing the rosary. We boys were not discouraged from watching them. Object lessons need objects of condemnation, and all.
I'm told that if there were no giant leviathan, or world full of competing giant leviathans, society, such as it exists, would devolve overnight into one massive free for all of Smear the Queer.
I imagine that the exemplars, shapers of boys into men, pillars of the community, gum-hating nuns and bastions of rectitude - who organized and sanctioned Smear the Queer, as well as boy and girl divided playgrounds - would agree.
That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point. And the one boy who was (in hindsight, and who is now Out) obviously gay was, I imagine out of self-protection, one of the game's most brutal participants. But, it's not like we learned the game from adult homosexuals. Or from the long-hairs who occasionally passed into the area to pick apples and berries alongside the Mexican, Cape Verdean and Brazilian migrant workers. The potheads couldn't be bothered, and the deadheads wouldn't have tried, and nary a Red could be found to teach us to hunt down the Other and smash him into the ground. Perhaps they were too busy being Others themselves.
Huh.
We learned that game from the same sort of people who are now telling us that, without them, the game itself would spread all of the planet as if by moral infection, and would no longer worry mere Queers. It will even trouble hitherto comfortable white people.
I should note, in conclusion, that the present campaign against Bashar Assad looks like international Kill the Man with the Ball. In Libya, it was definitely more a version of Smear the Queer.
Of course, when exemplary, organized, decent people play it with guns and moral sanction, it's called government. When anarchists try to imagine a world where kids aren't taught to play the game at all, well, obviously the correct response to that What If is that everyone will learn it as if by magic, and also everyone will be a Smear-worthy Queer...
* - CtF(wP) inevitably led to the abuse of the prisoners. This came as a surprise to our elders. It was eventually banned. Prisoners were no longer allowed to be taken. Captured players were instead assigned to a neutral zone, where they could be liberated by a team mate, according to varying rules. Smear the Queer was never banned, at least not when I was a minor.
Feb 12, 2012
How to ask superior questions...
Here:
Is there some serious projection being done by anarchists? Are folks considering their own habits, desires, values, etc.; and the roles that government does and does not play in their own lives; and concluding from this that we’d all be better off without government—but failing to adequately consider the full diversity of people being governed? Are violent criminals and street thugs, for example, out of sight and out of mind?
A couple qualifications are immediately necessary. I readily grant that there is a ton of unreasonable fear of violent crime, and that such fear can be easily exploited by people in power. I also readily grant, more parenthetically, that anarchism can draw on very important considerations of what government does to directly serve corporate interests, to wage war, etc.—and I have no intention of contesting or minimizing such things.
I’m just thinking about how violent crime is, in fact, a reality. And some violent criminals can only be stopped by force. And I’m glad that I don’t have to try to marshal that force myself.
I’m very grateful for the armed security guard at my school. And given the hell that the inner city can be, I’m very grateful for the armed police, and perhaps even the armed prison guards, who help to at least keep it contained in the inner city. (Not that letting it rage there is a good thing, obviously…)
I have seen up close and personal, and for a sustained period of time, a ghetto subculture that places a premium on toughness, violence, and taking what you want; and seldom seems to be given any pause by considerations like empathy, pity, or remorse. I’ve seen a steady stream of theft, robbery, and intimidation. I’ve heard and seen students’ readiness to fight at the slightest provocation, and to mercilessly beat a fallen opponent if given the chance. I’ve heard excited and admiring talk about countless shootings.
Near the beginning of this school year, two college students were walking in a park in my city when two young men robbed them, made them kneel down, and shot them both in the head. The next day three of my students were talking about this—bragging and comparing notes about how they would have done the same.
Can anarchism deal with such realities?
Or might anarchism be under some charitable illusion that cold-blooded violence doesn’t really exist? That the injustices and oppressions and privations of the current social order are wholly responsible for inner city violence, perhaps?
Such systemic issues play an enormous role, no doubt. There is an unbroken chain of oppression and discrimination stretching back to kidnapping and chattel slavery. And those born into urban poverty today have the deck stacked against them—all the more if they are also born into brown skin.
But even seeing these realities clearly, and even assigning most or all fault or blame to those in power rather than those in poverty—present realities still are what they are. And part of the present reality is cold-blooded violence. There are hardened killers in the world, and especially on the streets of the ghetto. These folks didn’t create the war zones they were raised in, and in that sense they are clearly not to blame. But they have nonetheless become what they have become.
And they’re not prepared to tend your community garden. They are prepared to shoot you and take your stereo.
http://fromwinetowater.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/anarchism-and-teaching/
Feb 11, 2012
The School Man
I read a School Man today. Lecturing with his gnomic-stupid voice. Abashed, faux bashful. Contemptuous, as only School Men can manage. A misplaced contempt, the cross-eyed staring down of self-conceived inferiors, inventing lowly adversaries to justify its essential cowardice, to salve itself in the recognition that its slippery comforts, its personal history of compromises and surrender are really an ascent towards truth, and wisdom, and sensibility. A naked act of shamed concealment, this - captured in relief, cold water dripping down a too-scrubbed brow that hovers over a face composed of sly glances and self-loathing.
Fiddling with the numbers, pretending to a grand narrative of history, as if his version of the whole story could account for the termites eating through the wood, or the making-do of broken mothers. All pretense, this School Man, even his contempt. A flaccid little soul, convinced that its wet slobber is a passionate kiss. Persuaded to believe in itself as a pyre, when it never manages to spark.
Missing the entire point. Missing the point of pointed things, all things being equal.
Covered in the dust of academia. Not noticing that his beloved history has moved on to other lovers. That time itself has drawn up its skirts and kicked the dust of its shoes at him. So he sneers instead. He conjures the loathing of the satisfied and the self-assuaged in defeat. A transubstantiation of its bundled small selves into the outward projected great Self inhabiting the nexus of history. Failed magic, and all the more embarrassing for the continued insistence on the publicity of its self-denied deficiency.
That other age, the one the School Man imagines as his gift to the lesser lights, the fantastic era he has peopled with Great Men and prophetic voices?
It's gone.
And it never was. We are venal creatures. Rooting around in the rotten roots of our perfidy, we discover the partial truths which liberate, and succeeding in a fleeting emancipation, chain us once again.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But the School Men can't admit it. So they fabulate. Nicomachean ethics, angels on a pin head, the weight of a soul, being-otherness, alchemical metanoias, the laws of economy, forever fighting rebels and fixed anarchies in their own minds, casting out the bad demons of the wrong uncertainty. Rational to a fault, blind to their monomanias and an obsession with order that reveals not reason, but a faith in the assertion as magic. They are always God Men, these School Men. Fucking priests, the lot of 'em.
And where there's a priest, there's a proctor, and a tithe and inevitably catechisms and sacerdotal vestments and the flagellant's whip. The School man mortifies. He makes dead the ineluctabilty of living.
He hates, and calls his hatred love, or knowledge, or faith.
There's nothing wrong with hate. Hate is a human good. But the school man gets his wet slobber and his dusty fingers all over even the beauty of hatred, and he makes it academic. He's the reducer, and his reduction is always a kind of violation. The shame-faced uncle with his roving hands and the explanations that follow. You know the kind: a careful word, well thought and pre-conceived, to distance his own inviolate self from the violations he commits with fingers and tongue.
He hates futurity. That's why he's always trying to plan it. He hates the now, which is why he must attempt to husband it, to beat it into the submission of a grand order, of a history what behaves.
But it doesn't behave, for all that history really does work, and explain and describe.
So here we are in the now. The School Men are the enemy to the side of our next tomorrow. An immediate one, because they announce themselves as friends. They have no amity to give. The proctor cannot love his ward, and the School Man has, does and will continue to insist on being a warden to time and human frailty.
Frailty colors our immediacy. The democratic age - a gentle fiction - has reached its terminus. We are done with human rights and the pretense of consensus. That's not daybreak's light dawning over the painted stones of the privately held terrariums deeded over from forgotten former Commons. It's twilight. That silvered horizon is the setting sun. Night comes. And the brutality is already cleaner, and more honest.
The Brutal Age begins again, because it has never ended.
The School Men won't brave that night. They've chosen their lot. They already have the company mark. It's self-preservation. No shame in it, but it belies the falsehood of their economies of symbolic motion. It negates their claims.
All they have left now is their shame. And they've earned it. They merit the widening chasm between their modes of existence and their message of history. They deserve the rewards of an enumerated hypocrisy, and the dubious acclaim of the annotated history of their betrayals.
They'll prattle on. That's their mettle, or its antithesis. And they'll probably get louder, and more strident, the closer it comes to the flux-tormented break between the false prophecy of justice and the reality of an enduring and pagan barbarity. See the evidence: their church has no keystone. It has no firm foundation. Do they smash the icons? Do they come out into the street and revel with the upside-downers of the unkinging Misrule? No, they hie closer to the throne, aiming instead to crown a new master, one with proconsular imperium, certain that if only their will is made manifest, and believed, if the prophets are heeded, if the secret keys are turned, if history behaves, this time their golem too will do the noble bidding.
While outside, where life counts, where safety is known for a lie, and security for a miserable deception, the School Men's objects of contempt piece their lives together in spite of insecurity, weaving through the ruins and remains of a dozen dozens of golem projects gone before. Where theory and the plan of the School Man's history dissolves at first contact with the heat death of a immediacy, crumbling into cold ash amid the ruins of a succession of Alesias.
The School Man draws closed his blinds, pulls the shade, opens his desk, retrieves his ink and pen. He scribbles on the fabric of the shade, scratching out elaborate, euclidian landscapes and peopling them with stick figure denizens.
Finished with his doodling, he announces with a flourish, "See! See, ye of little faith! Look out my window. It all fits, the shapes make sense! How bright the future! How rational!"
Absorbed by his creation, praying cruciform to the god in his head, he does not notice, he cannot see, or smell, or hear, the passing of another army on the way to its next Alesia, obedient to another's ranked and ordered reasons.
Outside, casting a shadow like a bird of prey, the next chief dreams of profit, glory and decimation, and his School Men get ready their histories, and the latest set of reasons why the rest of us have to suffer...
Fiddling with the numbers, pretending to a grand narrative of history, as if his version of the whole story could account for the termites eating through the wood, or the making-do of broken mothers. All pretense, this School Man, even his contempt. A flaccid little soul, convinced that its wet slobber is a passionate kiss. Persuaded to believe in itself as a pyre, when it never manages to spark.
Missing the entire point. Missing the point of pointed things, all things being equal.
Covered in the dust of academia. Not noticing that his beloved history has moved on to other lovers. That time itself has drawn up its skirts and kicked the dust of its shoes at him. So he sneers instead. He conjures the loathing of the satisfied and the self-assuaged in defeat. A transubstantiation of its bundled small selves into the outward projected great Self inhabiting the nexus of history. Failed magic, and all the more embarrassing for the continued insistence on the publicity of its self-denied deficiency.
That other age, the one the School Man imagines as his gift to the lesser lights, the fantastic era he has peopled with Great Men and prophetic voices?
It's gone.
And it never was. We are venal creatures. Rooting around in the rotten roots of our perfidy, we discover the partial truths which liberate, and succeeding in a fleeting emancipation, chain us once again.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But the School Men can't admit it. So they fabulate. Nicomachean ethics, angels on a pin head, the weight of a soul, being-otherness, alchemical metanoias, the laws of economy, forever fighting rebels and fixed anarchies in their own minds, casting out the bad demons of the wrong uncertainty. Rational to a fault, blind to their monomanias and an obsession with order that reveals not reason, but a faith in the assertion as magic. They are always God Men, these School Men. Fucking priests, the lot of 'em.
And where there's a priest, there's a proctor, and a tithe and inevitably catechisms and sacerdotal vestments and the flagellant's whip. The School man mortifies. He makes dead the ineluctabilty of living.
He hates, and calls his hatred love, or knowledge, or faith.
There's nothing wrong with hate. Hate is a human good. But the school man gets his wet slobber and his dusty fingers all over even the beauty of hatred, and he makes it academic. He's the reducer, and his reduction is always a kind of violation. The shame-faced uncle with his roving hands and the explanations that follow. You know the kind: a careful word, well thought and pre-conceived, to distance his own inviolate self from the violations he commits with fingers and tongue.
He hates futurity. That's why he's always trying to plan it. He hates the now, which is why he must attempt to husband it, to beat it into the submission of a grand order, of a history what behaves.
But it doesn't behave, for all that history really does work, and explain and describe.
So here we are in the now. The School Men are the enemy to the side of our next tomorrow. An immediate one, because they announce themselves as friends. They have no amity to give. The proctor cannot love his ward, and the School Man has, does and will continue to insist on being a warden to time and human frailty.
Frailty colors our immediacy. The democratic age - a gentle fiction - has reached its terminus. We are done with human rights and the pretense of consensus. That's not daybreak's light dawning over the painted stones of the privately held terrariums deeded over from forgotten former Commons. It's twilight. That silvered horizon is the setting sun. Night comes. And the brutality is already cleaner, and more honest.
The Brutal Age begins again, because it has never ended.
The School Men won't brave that night. They've chosen their lot. They already have the company mark. It's self-preservation. No shame in it, but it belies the falsehood of their economies of symbolic motion. It negates their claims.
All they have left now is their shame. And they've earned it. They merit the widening chasm between their modes of existence and their message of history. They deserve the rewards of an enumerated hypocrisy, and the dubious acclaim of the annotated history of their betrayals.
They'll prattle on. That's their mettle, or its antithesis. And they'll probably get louder, and more strident, the closer it comes to the flux-tormented break between the false prophecy of justice and the reality of an enduring and pagan barbarity. See the evidence: their church has no keystone. It has no firm foundation. Do they smash the icons? Do they come out into the street and revel with the upside-downers of the unkinging Misrule? No, they hie closer to the throne, aiming instead to crown a new master, one with proconsular imperium, certain that if only their will is made manifest, and believed, if the prophets are heeded, if the secret keys are turned, if history behaves, this time their golem too will do the noble bidding.
While outside, where life counts, where safety is known for a lie, and security for a miserable deception, the School Men's objects of contempt piece their lives together in spite of insecurity, weaving through the ruins and remains of a dozen dozens of golem projects gone before. Where theory and the plan of the School Man's history dissolves at first contact with the heat death of a immediacy, crumbling into cold ash amid the ruins of a succession of Alesias.
The School Man draws closed his blinds, pulls the shade, opens his desk, retrieves his ink and pen. He scribbles on the fabric of the shade, scratching out elaborate, euclidian landscapes and peopling them with stick figure denizens.
Finished with his doodling, he announces with a flourish, "See! See, ye of little faith! Look out my window. It all fits, the shapes make sense! How bright the future! How rational!"
Absorbed by his creation, praying cruciform to the god in his head, he does not notice, he cannot see, or smell, or hear, the passing of another army on the way to its next Alesia, obedient to another's ranked and ordered reasons.
Outside, casting a shadow like a bird of prey, the next chief dreams of profit, glory and decimation, and his School Men get ready their histories, and the latest set of reasons why the rest of us have to suffer...
Feb 8, 2012
In Case of Sobriety
The official from the State Department told The Daily Telegraph that while the White House wants to exhaust all its diplomatic options, the debate in Washington has shifted away from diplomacy and towards more robust action since Russia and China blocked a United Nations resolution condemning Syria.
The Pentagon’s Central Command has begun a preliminary internal review of US military capabilities in the region, which one senior official called a “scoping exercise” that would provide options for the president if and when they were requested.
The White House said it was talking to allies about holding a “Friends of Syria” meeting in the near future and was considering delivering humanitarian aid to affected areas in the country.Source.
Y'know, in case the Israeli bat shit crazy fucks sober up and realize that attacking Iran is asking for too many domestic deaths.
Iran is committed to the territorial defense and integrity of Syria.
So, over/under on which anti-BushWar liberal will be the first to give a first-bombs defense of ObamaWar in Iran?
Feb 7, 2012
Whiskey Courage
Shorter Barack Obama: "It's like wicked risky, dudes, to bomb Iran, wink, wink..."
Shorter Netanyahu: "C'mon, dullards, that schwartze...burp...in Wash...Wash...ing...Wash...ton...in't fuckin' gon' risk the Jew money. Let's roll!"
Sure, it could all be brinksmanship. And on the tevye hand, it could be that Netanyahu and the Likud have their asses planted on the sweating dynamite of a sabra population which can still recall with fondness the myth of the golden flower a'bloom in the desert. The kibbutzim may have lost out to the corporate raiders and a wave of privatization, but their children and grandchildren haven't yet forgotten the promise of a socialist homeland.
So, war. Against dirty bird Persians, this time...
Shorter Netanyahu: "C'mon, dullards, that schwartze...burp...in Wash...Wash...ing...Wash...ton...in't fuckin' gon' risk the Jew money. Let's roll!"
Sure, it could all be brinksmanship. And on the tevye hand, it could be that Netanyahu and the Likud have their asses planted on the sweating dynamite of a sabra population which can still recall with fondness the myth of the golden flower a'bloom in the desert. The kibbutzim may have lost out to the corporate raiders and a wave of privatization, but their children and grandchildren haven't yet forgotten the promise of a socialist homeland.
So, war. Against dirty bird Persians, this time...
Feb 3, 2012
Courts Martialed
After nearly two years in isolation and captivity, Bradly Manning has been ordered to face a court martial. The million or so words soon to be written about Manning and his order to court martial have about as much relevance to the conclusion of the affair as your next exhalation does to the luminosity of Betelgeuse. You already know the outcome. Goat, scaped. Every last bit of commentary, including this stupid blog blurgh, is already wasted. If Manning doesn't get the needle, he'll probably never see the outside of Leavenworth again.
Remember that the next time you're compelled to martial your own court of judgment in favor of a misplaced faith in "good law."
Remember that the next time you're compelled to martial your own court of judgment in favor of a misplaced faith in "good law."
Jan 26, 2012
Compromise
I'm not grateful for new employment. The money is terrible, but it's nice to be doing something, and to have a little extra for, I dunno, groceries. There's only so many times you can feed two growing children pasta or chicken thighs before you find yourself face down in a muddy pool of teenaged rebellion. Not that I'm against teenaged rebellion. I just prefer it directed...elsewhere.
The grocery money is nice, all things being equal, which they are not. But I'm far too old to have any gratitude for work, or for being directed around the stock room by a child. Work blows hot dog chunks. Orange-pink flecked half digested kibbles of mechanically separated trademarked meat substance.
Even more especially when what's playing on the overhead is country music. I'm not suggesting to you, by way of vicarious memory, the dulcet melancholy of a blue grass which gets low to the ground and stays there, or the dusty and dirty back shack moonshine fiddling of Appalachia and the bayou. I mean what was coming out of the speakers, all fucking day, was New Country.
If you want a reliable formula for cracking the code of New Country, I'll give it to you.
Aaah, that's a lie. I'm going to type it whether you want it or not. So...
Start with today's date. Dial your mental clock and calendar back twenty years. Try to recall whatever was topping the charts as mainstream pop-rock those long, lost twenty years ago. Remove any bass lines which groove. Add a steel guitar. Stir in one or more white people willing to confuse nasal warbling for singing, and have them improvise a "story" based in dialogue written by George Lucas or Michael Bay.
New Country.
And I could almost ignore it, by hour three, except that it seemed like every twenty damned minutes the station was airing this nasty little gem:
I'm not surprised the god goons of NHforMarriage and the NOFM finished up their moral figuring and settled on a New Country station as the best outlet for the melted butter bigotry of, ahem, compromise. And I'm probably the second or third last person who thinks that a law is the way to keep Teh Gays from being discriminated against, or from being married in the naves of Christ-moldy church-holes.
But fucking aye, you'd think the shitclowns at NHforMarriage - and in all their brother organizations - would have kenned by now that pretty much the only people in New England who give a fuck about the cohabitating and vow-making of homosexuals are the kind of people who also think it's a good gods-be-damned idea to drop tonnage on Iran and send das troops into Syria.
If you're looking for what degrades or corrupts the, heh, marriage bond, you ain't ever going to find it the affections and affectations of homosexuals. But, you will find a whole lot of sundered wedded union in the wake of deployment, military industrial centralization and the austerity which follows war upon war. That shit is disruptive. The gays, not so much.
Not that any of it matters. The same fucking lackwits who can reconcile their affirmations with endless war, and who can even come to believe in it, are certainly capable of scapegoating dykes and queers for their own broken marriages.
Still, by the sixth or seventh time I'd heard it, I wanted to crawl up into the rafters and shake loose the speakers. There's only so much ign'ant a person should allow through the sensory filters on any given day. And then you just got to go find a motherfucker what needs some punching...
The grocery money is nice, all things being equal, which they are not. But I'm far too old to have any gratitude for work, or for being directed around the stock room by a child. Work blows hot dog chunks. Orange-pink flecked half digested kibbles of mechanically separated trademarked meat substance.
Even more especially when what's playing on the overhead is country music. I'm not suggesting to you, by way of vicarious memory, the dulcet melancholy of a blue grass which gets low to the ground and stays there, or the dusty and dirty back shack moonshine fiddling of Appalachia and the bayou. I mean what was coming out of the speakers, all fucking day, was New Country.
If you want a reliable formula for cracking the code of New Country, I'll give it to you.
Aaah, that's a lie. I'm going to type it whether you want it or not. So...
Start with today's date. Dial your mental clock and calendar back twenty years. Try to recall whatever was topping the charts as mainstream pop-rock those long, lost twenty years ago. Remove any bass lines which groove. Add a steel guitar. Stir in one or more white people willing to confuse nasal warbling for singing, and have them improvise a "story" based in dialogue written by George Lucas or Michael Bay.
New Country.
And I could almost ignore it, by hour three, except that it seemed like every twenty damned minutes the station was airing this nasty little gem:
I'm not surprised the god goons of NHforMarriage and the NOFM finished up their moral figuring and settled on a New Country station as the best outlet for the melted butter bigotry of, ahem, compromise. And I'm probably the second or third last person who thinks that a law is the way to keep Teh Gays from being discriminated against, or from being married in the naves of Christ-moldy church-holes.
But fucking aye, you'd think the shitclowns at NHforMarriage - and in all their brother organizations - would have kenned by now that pretty much the only people in New England who give a fuck about the cohabitating and vow-making of homosexuals are the kind of people who also think it's a good gods-be-damned idea to drop tonnage on Iran and send das troops into Syria.
If you're looking for what degrades or corrupts the, heh, marriage bond, you ain't ever going to find it the affections and affectations of homosexuals. But, you will find a whole lot of sundered wedded union in the wake of deployment, military industrial centralization and the austerity which follows war upon war. That shit is disruptive. The gays, not so much.
Not that any of it matters. The same fucking lackwits who can reconcile their affirmations with endless war, and who can even come to believe in it, are certainly capable of scapegoating dykes and queers for their own broken marriages.
Still, by the sixth or seventh time I'd heard it, I wanted to crawl up into the rafters and shake loose the speakers. There's only so much ign'ant a person should allow through the sensory filters on any given day. And then you just got to go find a motherfucker what needs some punching...
Jan 25, 2012
Cat's Paw Choosing
My cats sit at their food bowls off feeding times, certain in the magic efficacy of their own corporeal presences. Looking up with expectant eyes, as if to suggest to me by mystical notions that, yes, their being at the bowl is all the sign I need that they too have a vested interest in the outcome of my actions.
And when I do not feed them directly, even if only an hour after their last feeding, they yet persist. Eyes to empty bowl, and then to me. And back to the bowls again. Doing their cat sorcery.
I do not feed them. Not until it's the time arbitrarily set by the human gods who occupy these rooms.
But they insist on making the show anyway, convinced of their magic prowess. Certain that they have moved me to pity. Sure that their arrival at the place is all they need to achieve their ends.
It reminds me, most of all, of Americans queuing up at the polls on voting day.
And when I do not feed them directly, even if only an hour after their last feeding, they yet persist. Eyes to empty bowl, and then to me. And back to the bowls again. Doing their cat sorcery.
I do not feed them. Not until it's the time arbitrarily set by the human gods who occupy these rooms.
But they insist on making the show anyway, convinced of their magic prowess. Certain that they have moved me to pity. Sure that their arrival at the place is all they need to achieve their ends.
It reminds me, most of all, of Americans queuing up at the polls on voting day.
Jan 19, 2012
Wasted sentiments
I don't understand the outrage over laws. Laws follow power. They do not create it. Everything you need to know about a law comes down to this: can it be enforced?
If yes, then the law is clown paint. If no, an invitation to disrespect.
If the power exists to enforce the law, then the outcome is already given. If the power does not exist to enforce the wasted sentiments on a legal page, those sentiments are as wasted as any written about law.
SOPA, NDAA, AUMF, Resolution 1929 - they mean nothing. If the power exists, the law follows it. If it does not, it's about as useful as Bob Avakian's wishful thinking.
If yes, then the law is clown paint. If no, an invitation to disrespect.
If the power exists to enforce the law, then the outcome is already given. If the power does not exist to enforce the wasted sentiments on a legal page, those sentiments are as wasted as any written about law.
SOPA, NDAA, AUMF, Resolution 1929 - they mean nothing. If the power exists, the law follows it. If it does not, it's about as useful as Bob Avakian's wishful thinking.
Jan 12, 2012
Sacred Monsters
Ours is a peculiar age.
Judging from the mediated outrage attendant upon the revelation that American soldiers lack the proper respect for their recently corpsified prey humans, there seems to be a notion, prevalent at least in the commentariat and corporate media, that soldiers don't behave that way.
I don't know what herbs the outraged have been smoking, or how deep their cynicism actually runs, but I think perhaps that what they are, in the end, is victims of their own propaganda.
We live during a period of history in which populations and their gatekeepers are so medicated with symbolic anodynes that it's quite possible those selling their outrage feel some semblance of it, and genuinely.
But, ours is a peculiar age.
If history can be trusted - and some measure of it reflects old truths, despite the visible hand of the victors in writing it - there are a few constants to civilization:
1. Large populations are ruled through religion, law and force of arms.
2. Usually, the religion and the law are imposed by force of arms, until such time as subsequent generations learn to adhere to the beliefs and attitudes of their masters, and the long sleep of self-policing takes hold upon the somnolent body politic. For any polity or civilization durable enough to last beyond its own founding epoch, an internal enemy is required. This enemy is the social whipping boy. This enemy symbolizes the failures which follow from disobedience, faithlessness or an incomplete absorption of the prevailing moral norm: licentiousness, wanton sexuality, illicit esoteric acts, the stealing or corrupting of youth and perhaps most egregious of all, the formation over time of defensive sodalities. See, Jews in Christendom. Women, in Greece. The capite censi and Phrygian mystery cults, in Rome. Palestinians, in Israel. Et cetera ad nauseam ad infinitum.
In the US of A, the whipping boy has historically been black people. They endure the physical and moral nightmares of the long sleep of peace; they are the receivers of its transference and the scapegoats for the frictions and problems which tend to arise and accumulate in memory, whenever humans pretend that living together in large hive like structures is somehow native to the hominid condition.
And, to do unto whipping boys, a society will need to produce people who want to wield the whip.
3. Whenever a polity, society, region or civilization enters a period of flux, doubt or insurrection, it produces not only discontent, but those who try re-established lost faith by attacking the visible symbols of its decline.
4. This insecure type is already drawn towards enforcement, even during eras of relative quiet. In fact, soldiery and policing depend upon the twin attractions of sanctioned violence and permissible punishment. Whether during flux, when all discontent tends to be folded into the category of internal enemy and scribbled over with the attributes of the whipping boy, or during the decades of peace which punctuate the more common human tendency towards irascibility, those willing to do violence against doubt are made sacred by the uniform. The uniform hides. The uniform reveals. But most importantly of all, the uniform permits.
5. Not surprisingly at some point a population usually develops a healthy and rational disregard for cops and soldiers. Men with permission to do violence and a reward at the end of it will act violently. They are already temperamentally suited to it by a disposition towards acting out their insecurity on the heads and bodies of weaker persons. And they are paid to stay insecure while wrapped in moral and physical armor.
The soldier, like the cop, has not been well received for much of recorded human history. The soldier means death. The soldier, like the cop, is a reminder that this life is lived for the enjoyment of those people who can afford to pay the soldier. The soldier is an ill omen. If you can see him on the streets, somebody in power is feeling dicey. Throughout much of history, the soldier was set apart in barracks and special colonies, for his own good. Quarter the soldier with the people, and the people will eventually cultivate a taste for killing him.
But, ours is a peculiar age. We wouldn't dare...
Because, we are reminded daily, "we" love our soldiers. They are the best of us. The brightest. The backbone of the nation. A soldier is God's special angel with a backpack and a rifle. "We" invent and repeat whole cloth fictions about how the disobedient routinely mistreat soldiers, spitting on them and refusing to celebrate their glorious return, at airports. The soldier, like the cop, is a well armed victim. He is surrounded by lesser men, jealous enemies who would degrade his spiritual orgone and unman his virtues with negative vacuum vices.
It's a liturgy in its own right, this Mass of the universal golden soldier.
It's also background. So look at the foreground. Look at what the be-rifled soldier does. Examine this cult of the noble warrior not for its conceits or its maudlin sales pitch for jingo tchotchkes. Take a long hard gaze at what the showmen are working hard to conceal.
Which is everything that soldiers exists to do.
But, we are a peculiar people living in a peculiar age.
So, instead of taking comfort in the reminder that soldiers are by and large the sacred monsters of this final Americanist age, we get sophomoric sentiment instead. And are expected to mumble it into our own cups, as well. We are told, all over the print, the display and the telly screen, that our soldiers are and ought to be better. That we have to need them to be better.
We are instructed in image and text to need them to be elevated. To perform their wars and occupations as if they were less and more than the human, and anything but the sort of men drawn to blood sport and sanctioned degradation.
The real worry, though, would be angelic soldiers. What we who are ruled should fear perhaps most of all is an age of war and occupation where soldiers did not act like soldiers, in which there is no corpse mutilation, cruelty, disrespect for the dearly departed, cultural ignorance, anomie, adrenaline thrill murder and the disregard for the feelings of the natives sufficient to provide for the dehumanizing distractions warriors and soldiers are wont to seek when in need of provisional entertainment.
I know there's a whole lot of shocked sentiment or bored cynicism about the subject, but truthfully if our lords and masters ever manage to breed and train up a perfectly behaved, respectful, culturally sensitive and gentlemanly species or type of solider, we are well and truly fucked.
Our governing caste of powerful families serves a ruling class armed with imperfect instruments. If they ever manage to produce a well behaved and moral soldier, we can kiss dislodging them from power and from their colonial redoubts within history and memory, for a very, very long time to come...
*
h/ts to:
Rob Payne
Justin
IOZ
Al Schumann
Judging from the mediated outrage attendant upon the revelation that American soldiers lack the proper respect for their recently corpsified prey humans, there seems to be a notion, prevalent at least in the commentariat and corporate media, that soldiers don't behave that way.
I don't know what herbs the outraged have been smoking, or how deep their cynicism actually runs, but I think perhaps that what they are, in the end, is victims of their own propaganda.
We live during a period of history in which populations and their gatekeepers are so medicated with symbolic anodynes that it's quite possible those selling their outrage feel some semblance of it, and genuinely.
But, ours is a peculiar age.
If history can be trusted - and some measure of it reflects old truths, despite the visible hand of the victors in writing it - there are a few constants to civilization:
1. Large populations are ruled through religion, law and force of arms.
2. Usually, the religion and the law are imposed by force of arms, until such time as subsequent generations learn to adhere to the beliefs and attitudes of their masters, and the long sleep of self-policing takes hold upon the somnolent body politic. For any polity or civilization durable enough to last beyond its own founding epoch, an internal enemy is required. This enemy is the social whipping boy. This enemy symbolizes the failures which follow from disobedience, faithlessness or an incomplete absorption of the prevailing moral norm: licentiousness, wanton sexuality, illicit esoteric acts, the stealing or corrupting of youth and perhaps most egregious of all, the formation over time of defensive sodalities. See, Jews in Christendom. Women, in Greece. The capite censi and Phrygian mystery cults, in Rome. Palestinians, in Israel. Et cetera ad nauseam ad infinitum.
In the US of A, the whipping boy has historically been black people. They endure the physical and moral nightmares of the long sleep of peace; they are the receivers of its transference and the scapegoats for the frictions and problems which tend to arise and accumulate in memory, whenever humans pretend that living together in large hive like structures is somehow native to the hominid condition.
And, to do unto whipping boys, a society will need to produce people who want to wield the whip.
3. Whenever a polity, society, region or civilization enters a period of flux, doubt or insurrection, it produces not only discontent, but those who try re-established lost faith by attacking the visible symbols of its decline.
4. This insecure type is already drawn towards enforcement, even during eras of relative quiet. In fact, soldiery and policing depend upon the twin attractions of sanctioned violence and permissible punishment. Whether during flux, when all discontent tends to be folded into the category of internal enemy and scribbled over with the attributes of the whipping boy, or during the decades of peace which punctuate the more common human tendency towards irascibility, those willing to do violence against doubt are made sacred by the uniform. The uniform hides. The uniform reveals. But most importantly of all, the uniform permits.
5. Not surprisingly at some point a population usually develops a healthy and rational disregard for cops and soldiers. Men with permission to do violence and a reward at the end of it will act violently. They are already temperamentally suited to it by a disposition towards acting out their insecurity on the heads and bodies of weaker persons. And they are paid to stay insecure while wrapped in moral and physical armor.
The soldier, like the cop, has not been well received for much of recorded human history. The soldier means death. The soldier, like the cop, is a reminder that this life is lived for the enjoyment of those people who can afford to pay the soldier. The soldier is an ill omen. If you can see him on the streets, somebody in power is feeling dicey. Throughout much of history, the soldier was set apart in barracks and special colonies, for his own good. Quarter the soldier with the people, and the people will eventually cultivate a taste for killing him.
But, ours is a peculiar age. We wouldn't dare...
Because, we are reminded daily, "we" love our soldiers. They are the best of us. The brightest. The backbone of the nation. A soldier is God's special angel with a backpack and a rifle. "We" invent and repeat whole cloth fictions about how the disobedient routinely mistreat soldiers, spitting on them and refusing to celebrate their glorious return, at airports. The soldier, like the cop, is a well armed victim. He is surrounded by lesser men, jealous enemies who would degrade his spiritual orgone and unman his virtues with negative vacuum vices.
It's a liturgy in its own right, this Mass of the universal golden soldier.
It's also background. So look at the foreground. Look at what the be-rifled soldier does. Examine this cult of the noble warrior not for its conceits or its maudlin sales pitch for jingo tchotchkes. Take a long hard gaze at what the showmen are working hard to conceal.
Which is everything that soldiers exists to do.
But, we are a peculiar people living in a peculiar age.
So, instead of taking comfort in the reminder that soldiers are by and large the sacred monsters of this final Americanist age, we get sophomoric sentiment instead. And are expected to mumble it into our own cups, as well. We are told, all over the print, the display and the telly screen, that our soldiers are and ought to be better. That we have to need them to be better.
We are instructed in image and text to need them to be elevated. To perform their wars and occupations as if they were less and more than the human, and anything but the sort of men drawn to blood sport and sanctioned degradation.
The real worry, though, would be angelic soldiers. What we who are ruled should fear perhaps most of all is an age of war and occupation where soldiers did not act like soldiers, in which there is no corpse mutilation, cruelty, disrespect for the dearly departed, cultural ignorance, anomie, adrenaline thrill murder and the disregard for the feelings of the natives sufficient to provide for the dehumanizing distractions warriors and soldiers are wont to seek when in need of provisional entertainment.
I know there's a whole lot of shocked sentiment or bored cynicism about the subject, but truthfully if our lords and masters ever manage to breed and train up a perfectly behaved, respectful, culturally sensitive and gentlemanly species or type of solider, we are well and truly fucked.
Our governing caste of powerful families serves a ruling class armed with imperfect instruments. If they ever manage to produce a well behaved and moral soldier, we can kiss dislodging them from power and from their colonial redoubts within history and memory, for a very, very long time to come...
*
h/ts to:
Rob Payne
Justin
IOZ
Al Schumann
Jan 10, 2012
New Hampshire
Romney: I will give you austerity and war and you will thank me for my lily white face and my squeaky shoe Mormonism.
Obama, from the White House shadows: Yeah, but I'll give you austerity and war and someone to blame for it.
Goldman Sachs: Meh. It's all good for us.
Obama, from the White House shadows: Yeah, but I'll give you austerity and war and someone to blame for it.
Goldman Sachs: Meh. It's all good for us.
Jan 6, 2012
Petty Squabbles
I guess a certain blogger needs occasional reminding that an attempt at an inversion - and one which is admittedly undertaken with a decent chance of failure in mind - is not the same thing as a "rehabilitation."
Jan 3, 2012
Guffaw
"American women face a stark choice in the Iowa caucuses: re-elect feminist President Barack Obama who has advanced equality or caucus for a Republican who pledges to roll back generations of progress."~ The Younger Pelosi
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