What is left in a world centered around centralization? Where once your town, your state, had power to determine the rules and society it lived, now a select few in Washington, Brussels, The UN in New York, they all determine our fates by gestures of their hands. For a Libyan, left meant freedom. To a Syrian, right meant death. Our fates that we used to own as communities are left to the elite to rule.
We think we live in a world of choice and democracy, but in the end, like all civilizations and all systems, what is owned is what is taken. Plunder is the riches of the world, and with wealth comes freedom, even if the laws say otherwise. Everyone may get a trial, but the smallest things may turn a trial into a travesty. Everyone gets to speak, but some can say murder with impunity while others are cuffed for drunken slurs. Some can murder their own without a peep while the simple showing of your skin can get you chased away.
When given the choice, plunder, or risk being another sheep being pushed over the cliff.
I honestly couldn’t give a shit, a fuck or anything else about this kid or the case that’s swept that nation, but the reaction by my co-workers has lead me to this short, but forceful post. And bare with me, I’ve been drinking.
Over dinner at a local, upstate NY sports bar, our leftist director that my last post was a unsubtle attack upon brought up the subject of Trayvon Martin. Black kid shot by racist white gun nut, easy right?
Such things are never simple. Never. From Half Sigma and Gucci Little Piggy, I’ve learned that our Hispanic, not white, devil was bloodied and had grass stains on his back, indicating a struggle. That our victim, by some witnesses, was attacking Mr. Zimmermann. Martin was suspended from school. Zimmermann was a financial consultant. Mortgages, if I’m not mistaken. Details that the MSM won’t release. Details the the MSM gloss over for the narrative of white on black racist violence.
As she brings it up, I mention a single detail unmentioned. A test of the ideology and the ignorance of my crew.
“I heard he was suspended from school.”
“Really?” says our director of photography, a half-Kenyan, half-Polish man with dark skin. A brilliant and gentle soul. A very smart man.
The old woman, our director, pipes up quickly. “You can’t say that!”
“I’m just telling the facts avoided by the other media,” I say. I’m just telling the truth avoided, I tell myself.
She rants. She raves. That doesn’t mean anything. That isn’t what matters. White vs black. Not, he was suspended.
“The school won’t release the context,” I say, as I learned from my manosphere comrades.
“That’s irresponsible,” she balks. That’s not right.
I agree, I say in my head. No context, no truth. But I cannot say it. She continues over me, leftism all the way. Our cute, dark skinned waitress asks us if everything is fine. Our pure white director bitches that she interrupted us. So much for our director’s working class feelings.
It goes on and on until we switch to a new subject. I watched the eyes of the DOP, thinking. I watched the eyes of my good friend, the audio tech, thinking. All the while, as the director rants, they think, she doesn’t.
Later, I talk about race and media, and the audio guy, who is more a libertarian/anarchist like myself, takes me to task for my words. Good. I meant it that way. I was going as far left and absurd as I could to test the thoughts of the people I work for. I talked about race war in LA, 2008, when I left it to move to Utah.
I fucking hate this. This day has been hell beyond hells, and now, on my third Guinness, I’m traipsing around in a suit of khaki and red stars so I can get the mentality of these Toronto based revolutionaries and releave some of the pressure of the earlier fights and grudges that plagued us. I just want it to be calm. The cunt can’t stop pretending her nitpicky, upper class, faux worker’s sympathy has any relevancy to us. Its just talk, talk, talk as I chug my beer, wishing I was throwing up outside just to leave the goddamn conversation.
Aside from the DOP, we’re all white, pure white, whiter than Casper in a flour factory, and yet, its the most obvious example of the so-called white privilege that is screaming ignorance from the taps to the table. Racism this and racism that. White this and black that. Ignorance above and ignorance below. I want to grab my fork, meant for my steak, and stab her through the throat.
But, I remember, this means nothing. Its just another killing, right or wrong, and it has nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to do with me or my job or me getting back home to fuck my girls.
I calm. I drink and I forget. Its all I can do while next to the worst person I’ve ever met.
“Did you hear about that new Rick Perry ad?” my sister said to my mother and I. We were sitting at a tiny restaurant in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I decided to tag along for the trip. They wanted to shop. I was happy just being around the quaint little town.
“No,” my mom said. I had a guess of what it was.
“Its completely homophobic,” Yup. I knew which one she was talking about.
“No, it isn’t,” I blurted out.
“Yeah, it is,” she said and continued. “He’s acting all tough, saying gays are allowed to fight in the war, but I can’t force kids to pray in school.”
Hyperbole. Awesome.
“Are allowed to fight in the war? Like its a privlege?”
“No, um,” she searched for a train of thought. “Like, they’re allowed in the military.”
I speak up again. “Its wasn’t like that. He was making a comparison. Gays in the military, but no prayer in schools.”
“Its still homophobic,” my sister said.
“And if I say I like pork and there’s a Muslim behind me, that could be Islamophobic.” I turn to my mother. “Its stupid, of course, running on social issues in the economy won’t matter.”
The talk continued. Eventually, my mother said, “You’re really out there.” That hit a nerve. Out there? I was saying exactly what he said, in the context of which it was said. It wasn’t “gays bad, god good”. It was a black/white comparison that’ll get social conservatives to vote for him. I used to be a hardcore, flamethrowing anarchist. Out there isn’t critical thinking.
Yet, it seems like that, politically. I’ve got a smart family, but they run into the gutter and toss the shit like they were monkeys when the words Bush, Harper, conservative or Christianity get brought up. Things gone wrong in Canada? Blame Harper. Terrorists? Blame Bush. Economy? Blame conservatives. Religion is pure evil? Blame Christians. Its so reflex I’m surprised their noses aren’t bloody from their knee-jerking so much.
I used to be like that. Kill Bush. Round up conservatives. From socialism to communism to anarchism, I was peace except for the fascist libertarian pigs. Just rhetoric on rhetoric. I was smart enough to follow the news, know where the countries they talk about are, name off leaders, etc. Fuck, I once stumped the Minister of Defense when he met my Air Cadet squadron. “Why is Canada bombing Kosovo when Sierra Leone is a worse war?” Made my far left uncle laugh up a storm before giving me a high five when I told him it. But, with all that knowledge, what use is it if I’m going to just stick my hand up my ass and fling poop at anyone who disagrees?
I’m accused of changing side, but my views have, since 2004, always been focused on one thing: shrinking government. When I hooked up with anarchists, I thought that’s what they wanted, but they ended up shoving me out when I was against the Ontario college teacher’s union (CUPE, I think) because 1) they’re a government union. There jobs are cushy enough. 2) they’re a government union. They’re part of the problem. 3) Their strike was timed so that if it lasted more than 2 weeks it would void our term because there wouldn’t be enough days left to finish out the curriculum. When I told my comrades that the people getting hurt in this aren’t the “low-paid” part-time and student teachers, but the students who pay those wages, they said shut up and join up against the system. I lost my love for the anarchist movement that day.
Eventually, I turned to libertarianism due to, ironically, a book by a left-wing libertarian named Kevin Carson. Studies in Mutalist Political Economy laid out the history of “capitalism” (really its fascist economics, but in the industrial age they didn’t have a name for it) and then went on to explain how free market ideas, like pay-as-you-go roads that charge you by the weight of your vehicle, could be more fair than taxes or communal redistribution. But, to the chagrin of Ron Paulite libertarians, I’m kind of a warmonger. I didn’t agree with the Iraq War when it happened since I was a zombie lefty, but after reading it with a clearer mind, I was still against it and I still think it was a horrible idea. But, I also think that bitching about it years after (2007) and even to today, is moronic. We were there. We were staying until it was good to leave. You do anything you can to win, even if its a bad idea. Unless we’re invading Norway to rape women and steal oil and dance on the graves of the kids killed in that terror attack, the enemy is usually bad people. Bad people that are okay to kill, by the tens of thousands, like we did in Iraq. Terrorists that would have been in Afghanistan or Chechnya or in their own countries stirring up civil strife that would make Libya look like a gay pride parade. Do I think they would of come over here if they weren’t fighting in Iraq? No. Most of these terrorists are morons born of retards. The 9/11 attackers were pros. Good, if not better, than most of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations division. The fear mongering about terrorists is one of the reasons I’ve turned away from conservatism and taken a more eclectic political stance. Fear mongering about terrorists is what passed the new Defense Authorization Act, which pretty much sets the stage for a true to life police state. The war hasn’t come home in 10 years, Congress. We’re doing okay, why fuck it up?
The other reason I’ve turned away from conservative circles and just run around naked in my own little revolutionary meadow is how easy it is to co-opt the movement. The Tea Party began as a anti-tax, anti-bailout, anti-government movement. Mix in Obama’s economic moves and Sarah Palin and you’ve got yourself a darn-tootin’, ye ole subverted political base. What was about the basics now can’t decide if it wants government out of our wallets or police cruising gay bars at 2am looking for immorality. Social conservatism has nothing, NOTHING, to do with the economics of this country. If anything, social conservatism ENCOURAGES the same economic ideas that the lefties do because it thinks it can drive big government in the “correct” direction. Wrong. Big government is big government and it goes anywhere it damn well pleases, no matter if you believe in God or jack off to Richard Dawkins.
I like America. I like the land. I met a lot of great people when I lived there, twice, and I plan on going back when the funds are ready. I like the idea of America: free markets, states rights, guns, God, beer, boobs, cars and all the rugged shit they passed off in the pulp novels of the 1950s. I think the US military’s got some of the best fighters in the world and has a great history of true bravery. I also think that big government, big banks and this globalization shit has fucked it all up and sacrificed it for feeling good when you give a few billion dollars in aid to Africa, hoping the corrupt presidents spend it on AIDS care and not their new golden guns. When the only great speeches of the last 20 years have been during the worst moment and the best moment in the last decade, when troops coming home barely get a hello, let alone ticker-tape parades that troops got coming home from the ignoble imperial bloodbath that was World War One. When the rich liberals sneak by making billions and the hard working middle class gets squeezed like a grape, squish! When you can’t make a simple comparison to prove your point, no matter how PC or un-PC it is, without being shamed for thinking wrong. When all that is happening. When all that is normal. Then that isn’t America. That isn’t even freedom. Its Hell. Ghenna. The heathen hole that the old saints used to point to and tell their kids, you piss God off, you go there.
Its part of the Generation Zero zeitgeist to run the road from idealism to nihilism, but even though I personally have been through tough roads on all fronts, I still hold to the idea that one can break free of all this, even if its just on your own. That one can adapt as quickly as the crumbling histories of man can try to knock them down. I’ve flirted with many other ideologies, including fascism, looking for a way to tear myself, and my mind, from the insane political and social world we live in. And, right now, my beliefs have adapted. I’ve taken a little pinch from all my experiences and created a personal political view not beholden to a party, a red book or a circle of meandering wannabes. My personal views fit me, as does my religion, as does my personality.
Compromise went out a long time ago, as you can see with my family and the rest of the world They believe what they want, as blind as they are to the realities of their enemies, or to be more accurate, the little threat their enemies pose to them. Its a first world problem to worry that Rick Perry’s views will ever truly hurt my sister, or my mother, or anyone else. Its a first world problem to scream bloody murder about a deep underground bitch slap against homosexuals, even if that was his intent, when there is no way he could ever truly bring about the gay pogrom apocalypse that GLADD and the other ninnies keep warning the world about. Its a first world problem wondering who to vote for. They’re all the same thing.
So if I want to believe in God or Allah or believe Christopher Hitchens is in purgatory looking for a bartender, I will. If I think social issues are mostly garbage no matter which side spouts it, I will. If I take some anarchy and mix it with fascism, good for me, good for me for thinking on my own. If I want to defend Perry’s context while attacking his message, fuck you for saying I can’t. This is what freedom is, people. This is how change really happens. Not by jackbooted Democrats calling racism or suited up establishment Republicans beating down their more radical elements. It happens because somebody has an idea, a feeling, a passion, and they tell others, and others listen and others believe. You try to stop that, you’re trying to stop the exact thing you’re trying to defend.
I feel like I’m an old soul when it comes to politics. I’m no wise man, but I’ve encountered more than my fair share of ignorance from the left and the right. Anarchists who support public unions and welfare. Conservatives who want to overthrow every government that isn’t a democracy. Social traditionalists who can’t budge on the state controlling marriage. Social activists who won’t stop until every monument they see is secularized or destroyed. Two movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, at each others’ throats when they should, at some level, unite against the government and the banks. Its a world of factions within factions. No one agrees. No one can comprimise.
The senior of my two young sisters is a socialist and a basic socialist at that. Holds the Nordic social systems in high regard, has a low opinion of America and Americans, despite born there. She’s a smart cookie, making it through school and through her crippling anxiety condition with an A average. When we talk politics, she falls back on the socialist talking points. More money, more government, more social programs. I’ve never tried to convert her to my way of thinking. I even got her a Noam Chomsky book for this Christmas, even though I believe him to be a raving lunatic.
Today, we had a talk about North Korea that turned into a talk about socialism. She fell back on America being a capitalist system. The banks, the economy. I countered with the Progressives and how the American economy is more fascist since fascism is a socialist-born ideology. All she said was, “Oh.” I continued on, talking about the different socialist-based thinking and, at least in my view, guide her to a more libertarian left view.
I let her borrow Our Word is Our Weapon, the book of writings by ELZN spokesman Subcommadante Marcos. It was one of the few socialist books I kept after my swing to the right. Marcos and the ELZN aren’t your typical revolutionaries. Their armed revolt in Mexico’s south lasted months, and afterward they returned to Chiapas to work with the people they were fighting for and since their uprising in 1994, they’ve worked peacefully creating an alternative for Mexico. His allegorical stories and his letters to politicans and others have real passion and real care in them. They have real, new ideas, not the same old socialist crap we see on the streets with OWS and we hear from the White House. Even during my hardcore righty days, I referenced his ideas on long term economics in debates against people who should have been on his side. Irony for the win.
I thought I gave up politics, leaving it behind with everything else, but its dragged me back in. The banking crimes, OWS, North Korea, the world falling apart faster than I thought. Its like the mafia, never letting me truly leave.
I hope she can learn from it. If she can, she will give me some hope for the future generations.
Since Occupy Wall Street started, people left and right have been making points for and against the months long protests. Some call it just a rabble of smelly hippies, others the beginning of a revolution that will change America forever. Fellow bloggers like Simon and Roosh think the starting of the true American police state has come with the many instances of police “brutality” against OWS members. From the videos I’ve seen there have been some overreaction, but I disagree with my friend that getting pepper sprayed is brutality. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it can cause secondary problems, but for a movement that’s wanting to take on the state and its power, getting sprayed is hardly the worst these people can get. Look at Egypt. Hundreds were killed before they got what they wanted. Look at Syria. Thousands are dead and more are dying and the state is still in power. “I fought my government and my eyes got irritated” seems like a first world problem to me.
While Simon is off about the extent of police evil, he is right on point about the reasons for the protests and the reasons for giving them backing. The state and the financial institutions in America have run amok for over 100 years, more if you count the back and forth between Alexander Hamilton’s economic ideology and Thomas Jefferson’s between the birth of the nation to the Civil War. Conservatives and libertarians have an unhealthy love for the banks, despite the obvious fraud and mismanagement that always gets exposed every decade. Instead of taking the accurate road and supporting strict and smart new banking rules, the right has stayed quiet, turning their attention to OWS, Obama and the Democrats. This is big mistake. The people hate the banks. The rage is right in their faces and they could take advantage of it.
The left’s hate of banks stems from the socialist ideology. Rich vs. poor. Upper vs. lower. Right or wrong, the left loves to take the side of the underdog, even if the underdog is strapping bombs to retarded girls and blowing themselves up in crowed markets. They don’t really have any decent suggestions as to truly revolt against the system because they love the system they hate. Without capitalism (or free markets, whatever you want to call it), they wouldn’t be able to use Twitter to communicate, Facebook to organize or buy cheap poster board or find gas masks. If they believe the free market is evil, then they need to quit encouraging it. This is why OWS isn’t taken very seriously by even its anti-banking brothers, the Ron Paul supporters, the anarcho-capitalists and other libertarian/anti-Fed groups. A true populist, anti-bank, anti-Washington movement could arise, but as long as the left is trying to re-create the 60s by stinking up New York or co-opting its message in Los Angeles, nothing will truly get accomplished other than creating jobs for cops and janitors.
If one truly wants to start a broad based, anti-bank, anti-Washington movement with the goal of changing the economic system to a more decentralized, but free system, you’ve got to aim at one thing and one thing only: Washington’s control of the banking system. People fear if the control of the economy is taken from the government, the capitalists will run amok and destroy the country. I’m not talking about removing all economic control from the government, but enough that things like Fanny and Freddie, BearSterns and Goldman Sachs and their crimes won’t be overlooked because of the almighty campaign contribution and the almighty incumbent vote. A few years ago, Senator Schumer let loose that the West Coast banks were failing and created a bank run that took down several local banks, but right under his nose, and in his pocket, was every major failing bank in America, but said not a thing. Something tells me that a nudge nudge was involved for that press conference. To save the economy from the banks, you’ve got to save the banks from themselves and get them the fuck out of Washington.
If somehow that happens, a truly populist movement made up of left and right, and they get people in, the next thing that needs to happen is to streamline and strengthen the regulations on how much real wealth a bank needs to hold. This will buffer any downturns because (GASP!) the banks will still have wealth and not just imaginary money from pieces of paper based on the speculative worth of mortgages (or anything else). Also, repeal the laws requiring banks to lend to this minority or that group. Credit isn’t easy. Credit is a big responsibility and opening markets for capitalists to grab as much as they can is a dumbfuck idea and the government was full of dumbfucks who supported the idea. If you don’t want banks to defraud people and the government to make money, stop opening up markets where you know goddamn well people can’t pay for food, let alone homes. Its not out of the goodness of their hearts that the lenders want people in homes, its because it brings in revenue. Let them rent. Let them live with family. Not everyone needs a home, nor do they need a mortgage that is going to kick them out of it 2 years later. Start with that, then repeal down the line until there isn’t a lending monopoly by the state or the big banks. The best lenders are local lenders, community lenders, and they’ve all been muscled out of their own markets. We have anti-trust laws for a reason, our government rarely seems to use it for things that actually matter.
The next American Revolution, the change from Hamiltonian big banking to Jeffersonian decentralized living, can happen if people would pull their heads out of their asses and forget gay marriage or weed or bitching illegals and unite for a second and taken on the real enemy, the government. If you don’t want to see Syria or Libya in America in the next 50 years, all it takes is some understanding, some forgiveness, some compromise, some smarts and some goddamn balls.
I worked for CBS.
I was paid minimum wage. I worked long hours.
Six days a week.
I got married.
I got into debt trying to make it.
I worked for Guardsmark.
I was paid decently, but treated like crap.
There was nowhere to go.
My marriage broke apart.
I was left with $10 000 debt and no job
I moved twice to find work
Had to leave the country
Now I’m working two jobs
My second job netted me $1000 for 6 days work
Tomorrow’s 5 day job will net me over $800
My first job owes me $165
When I finish my current assignment, I’ll get another $165
I’ve already paid down $500 on a overmaxed credit card
I have two cards overmaxed
I’ll have my credit card debt paid off in six months tops
I have a employers clamoring for me
Setting me up for work next year
I pave my own way
I don’t try to blame others
I bust my ass
I manipulate the system
I don’t try to change it.
I don’t like corporations
The economic system is geared for political connection
But, you don’t change the world with signs
You don’t change the world period, unless you’re armed
So…
I am the 1%
And I’m smarter than you Occupy Wall Street retreads.
If we go by The Chateau, no. There’s no evidence, other than is wife, of the number of women he’s slept with.
Roosh says he is alpha.
The power he has would denote alpha status. Having the military, the fledging economic powerhouse and the loyalty of millions upon millions of people in and out of the government would put him up there.
But, I don’t think he is and here’s why.
Putting my personal eclectic political views aside, the main criteria is getting shit done. Yes, he he barreled through the Republicans early on with the stimulus, health care and other initiatives, but now he can barely get his own party on his side. The more cowbell strategy of speeches is failing miserably. He’s losing key minorities. His jobs plan has been flip flopping more than a DC chicks footwear. His last accomplishment was killing Osama, which may be the crowning achievement of his presidency. One I wouldn’t argue one bit. But giving the common sense order to take out the most hate man in Western civilization isn’t alpha. Al Gore would of done it.
Politically, an alpha needs to get shit done. Reagan and Clinton were political alphas. Reagan more than Clinton because Ronnie humiliated his opponents every chance he got. Obama did very well during the campaign and his first two years, but he was riding the wave of ecstasy the country felt for electing a well spoken, black president. With a problem as enormous as the economy flopping on his desk and no water to put it in, he is, by the right and the left, losing status. Like a player who can’t get 7s after years or scoring 9s.
He was a alpha. He had it and he milked it for all the wrong reasons, I’d say. Upper Beta, at best.
The best way to kill idealism is to shine the light of reality upon it. Then, when exposed to the world, it crumbles and turns to dust like old parchment from under the Holy Land. Lost is the thoughts and ways of idealism, but in the end what does it matter when it can’t survive? What does it matter if reality is too much for anyone or anything?
This is the plague of our generation. We live in a world where everything is subject to the light, but what’s exposed is seen through the darkest of rose colored glasses. Great political revelations are turned on their head, protecting the powerful. Realities of war and culture are suddenly subject to the rules of the game, rules that previously were never enforced. Everyone has a say, yet fewer and fewer people are allowed to speak.
The internet, the great savior of free information, is anything but. Memes, the fads, the virus videos; they prove what has been said countless times: we are a stupid people. We are entertained by shiny objects, small things of no importance. For years, I found myself staring into the screen, deeply entranced by cute cats, laughing babies and odd animals. Hours spent taking myself away from myself. The world of the insane more interesting. For that is what the internet is. The mind of a madman, the human condition, our condition, allowed to be freely accessed. We are entertained by our own decadence.
I come home to an empty apartment slowly being torn apart by my own two hands. Old possessions sold or tossed. Always a mess. Bags full of junk. Sometimes I get excited that I’m going back to my family, settling down from this ride and just resting. Other times, I grab the sides of my world and shake it, hoping for something that makes sense to fall out. The human psyche isn’t a strong thing. Powerful men are taken down by the slightest of personal bruises. Its all about how much you can take and how much you want to come out the other side.
What is the other side? For many, its restarting the whole thing, like the Matrix. Once they come from the darkness, they see the same black cat. Over and over. Failed relationship after failed relationship. The mistakes they made mattered not. They’ll get back in. They’ll find that true love. The ideal will live on. These people are the sad souls. The broken zombies we see at fifty or sixty years old. The ones lost to nostalgia. The world was so much better when they didn’t have to deal with it. The world was so much better when the wool was snug and comfy.
For myself, it can’t be. It just can’t. Like a child allowed to stick his fingers into a socket, shocks like that stay in my memory. Red flags fly higher and brighter than ever before. Clues once ignored for ideals sake are now noted and logged. And, when the mystery is solved, I have the evidence before me. I can walk away knowing I didn’t lose a good thing. Good things should never make you doubt yourself. Ever.
As I return to organizing the end of a chapter, I take note of how much I’m throwing away, and I take remember how distracted I had to be during the whole thing. I remember how I hid or ran or wanted it all gone. I remember that I stayed for the ideal. The promises. The hope things would change.
Things are just that. Things. They are only as important as the value we place on them.
And, as it turns out, the most important thing I have is my diginity.
Sympathy For The Devil 