Transmissions

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily; giving flowers to the cops just isn’t going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

- William S. Burroughs

Greetings Earthlings, check out my favorite internet writer of the moment, Frank Smecker:

The Politics of Awareness, part 2 on Dissident Voice. This article kicked me directly in my ass this morning. Please read it. Read the living shit out of it! (I’ll comment on it later.)

Have I mentioned that me and Soph’s daughter is going to be born, like any day?! More tomorrow.

BREAKING FUCKING NEWS: Mickey Z joins modern civilization (wait..oh no!) and creates a Facebook profile! (I’ve actually had one for a while but it has been managed by Sophia. I’ve now made the transition from MySpace to Facebook if anyone wants to say hola.)

So, tomorrow I want to discuss Mr. Smecker, Bringing Down Civilization, Our beloved daughter, social networking sites and my (late) hatred of the bourgeois yearly fraud “celebration” of MLK. Here is what I said last time.

“Whoever becomes the ruler of a city that is accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a pretext for rebellion in the name of its former freedom and age-old customs, which are never forgotten despite the passage of time or any benefits it has received. No matter what the ruler does or what precautions he takes, the inhabitants will never forget that freedom or those customs — unless they are separated or dispersed . . .”

—Machiavelli, The Prince

So, I was hanging out with Sophia tonight, telling her about an amusing coworker. The coworker (Mellisa) and I both hate our jobs and just cling on to each other because we’re trapped in the same pen, are of similar age, are both from the south and we are the only two people that get each others jokes. [No, she’s not my mistress perverts.]

And the jokes are good!

Lophia–who is always trying to get me to see the “bright side of things”–said, “See, you always say you hate your job so much, but you always have these happy stories.”

Oh, the civilized!

It’s not like prisoners in a federal prison never have a laugh. Its not like the American slaves never invented the blues! Or comedy or jazz!  People always think that because human creativity seems to be thriving and existing in the midst of Capitalism that they must be interrelated. No.

We persist in spite of Capitalism. And domination.

ALL of the good stuff comes from us and/or our experiences with each other and the natural world. Its LOVE! The love of being alive and with each other. Does this make me a silly hippy? Fuck you for asking!

It is not all of these institutions and organizations of the powerful. Joy comes from US looking each other in the eyes with our guards down and being ready to know ourselves and one another!

I wanted to say more. I always do. But its late. Very late.

The essay will be done before April 25th.

To those still paying attention, I’m doing my thing. I’m working on the most ambitious adventure of my tiny “writer” existence. I’ll go into it in more detail soon, but anyway, I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone and in to history and philosophy for the next one.  It has a title, which is usually a good sign that I’ll finish it: The Big Lie: ‘Nothing Has Ever Happened Here and Nothing Ever Will’.

During our move Sophia found this Bad Religion  CD that was the catalyst for writing it. I’ll be myself again soon. Enjoy!

“Boot Stamping On A Human Face Forever”

“Drop dead, it doesn’t matter,” she said
“It only hurts when I laugh,” she said
“Sometimes it’s never a crime
“To spend the day in bed”
She made certain that the curtains were red
To dream better by the light they would shed
She leaned back, tilted her head
And this is what she said…

“You can’t win; think it over again
“I can’t win; look at the trouble I’m in
“We can’t win and we’re stuck here together
“Yeah, I hope it will last forever.”

“Don’t ever dare to hope,” he said
“So I’m never let down too bad
“I know there’s nowhere to go
“So I’ll just stay here, instead”
He knew better than to pull at a thread
They unravel like the thoughts in his head
He looked out; it filled him with dread
And this is what he said…

[Chorus]

With good books and looks on their side
And hearts bursting with national pride
They sang songs and went along for the ride
And the other side complied
They said, “Hey, man, where do you reside?”
“And could it be mother’s superior lied?”
“And is it possible too many have died?”
It’s only natural to reply

[Chorus]

“At this point, we’ve arrived at an understanding of a confluence of interest that utterly transcends the old “three worlds” paradigm, harkening an entirely different praxical symbiosis, one which is not so much revolutionary as it is devolutionary. We don’t want China out of Tibet so much as we want China out of China. We don’t just want the US out of Southeast Asia or Southern Africa or Central America, we want it out of North America, off the planet, out of existence all together. This is to say that we want the US out of our lives and thereby everyone else’s. The pieces dovetail rather well, don’t they? Indeed, they can’t really be separated and only a false analysis might ever have concluded that they could.”

“Hence we must seek nothing less than the dismemberment and dissolution of every statist/corporate entity in the world. All of them. No exceptions.”–Ward Churchill

So let’s start here shall we soldiers…

…So see ya CIA slayer, betrayer of innocents, subversion of solidarity and social economies. See I ate the red pill, and since then, ain’t been able to sit still. So smile, say cheese—Surprise—I’m your assassin at the windowsill.

We are the new serpents come to reclaim the garden. We are patient, yet we are hungry.

ssssss           ssssss           sSSSS!

           ssssss            ssssss

“I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.”–Che Guevara

The last two images were borrowed from Corner Soul

“It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man’s emotional structure, his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself—too late. . ..

(more…)

“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total: it pervades the relationship of man to his work, to the things he consumes, to the state, to his fellow man, and to himself. Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complex social machine to administer the technical machine he has built. Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”

– Erich Fromm

Quote borrowed from Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame.

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“A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks. Its primary target are the “stupid and ignorant masses”. They must be kept that way; marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the TV screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in, to engage in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. This hapless multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.”

–Noam Chomsky

“The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…. The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: “It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war.”

Then the few will shout even louder…. Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it…

Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies…and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.”–Mark Twain 

“The longing for rest and peace must itself be cast aside; it coincides with the acceptance of iniquity. Those who weep for the happy periods they encountered in history acknowledge what they want: not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”–Albert Camus–The Rebel, 1951