Archive for August, 2011

Feeling Good Is Not Bad: How to Stop War, Violence, and Planet Poisoning

Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, Culture, History, life, meaning, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on August 30, 2011

War, Violence, Earth .. and Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing

What’s So Bad About Good?

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

The question posed at the end of the last chapter was whether we would self-destruct bringing death to the entire planet along with us or we would become good citizens of this planet and our species continue on.

What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring?

Most folks would think there would be only one answer to that question desired by virtually all humans. The last chapter, however, intended to show how that common-sense notion would, amazingly, be wrong: It explained how there is a huge percentage of our human Earth citizens, and a part of all of us, that wants to “throw in the towel.” This has always been true of humans, but it is of critical importance only now.

But I will assume anyone reading this will at least consciously be wanting our vital question to be answered in the affirmative. You know as well as I that the folks on the other side of this question are doing vastly different things right now than us and are nowhere to be found around here.

How do we “unlike” fascism?

So the next thing to be addressed is how we might change our fortunes and live. Since continuing on is not just of matter of deciding it–-voting “like” on it or checking its box-–as we saw in the last Part, how can we get around this part of ourselves and our population that wants to do us all in? We need to know how to derail our perpetual cycles of war and violence; we need know how to quit bringing fascism on us. We have to know how we can stop our secret desire to be controlled, how to “unlike” totalitarianism on our inner “profile.”

I have written a great deal on this question, including an entire book in 1999 which I have just updated. [Footnote 1]

For our purposes presently I will focus on the element of all that which is critical to answering our question.

So we first need to look into the place from which emanates our dilemma. I showed in the last chapter that this bugaboo is our Will to Death.

Now we need to get more specific on this negative inclination of ours. Again, the book of mine mentioned deals with this in great detail. But to cut to the chase, this Will to Death arises from human’s unique-among-all-species primal pain, rooted in our singular way of coming into the world, our unique human birth.

This pain surrounding our birth has been termed perinatal, literally, “surrounding birth.” And since this pain is something that as neonates we cannot handle, or face, we repress it and create a perinatal unconscious. This perinatal unconscious-–this part of ourselves that we have pushed out of awareness but that contains a boatload or unresolved energy that affects us anyway-–is what we see manifest in us that Freud called the Will to Death. It is our self-sabotaging part.

We need to look deeper into the elements of that part of ourselves that would have us take us all down. We need inquire into that tendency of ours to choose tyranny over freedom, Republicans and fascists over Democrats and liberators, enslavement over autonomy, oppression over liberty, war over peace, violence over pacifism, misery over happiness. We must derail the cycles of war and violence. We must know how to “like” happiness.

To do so, we must separate the skeins of this inner entanglement and shed light into this darkness within. We need to know specifically, precisely where to place the lever of effort we will apply to truly move the world, to derail it from its current acceleration into oblivion.

So we look now into the elements of that perinatal unconscious manifesting currently as a will to die on the grandest scale imaginable. [continued after audio links]

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

“Part 1; What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

Image of Apocalypse or New Dawn, Ch. 8: Derailing the Cycles of War.and Violence, Pt.1: What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring? by SillyMickel Adzema

“Part 2; Can You Handle Happiness (And the Pain That Comes With It)?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

Image of Apocalypse, or New Dawn?: Chapter Eight: “Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence, Part 2: Can You Handle Happiness? (And the Pain That Comes With It?)” by SillyMickel Adzema

Cycles of War, Cycles of Birth

We find there are two researchers who are particularly relevant to our understanding of the elements of the perinatal unconscious in a way as to avert collective, worldwide disaster. These are Stanislav Grof and Lloyd DeMause. [Footnote 2]

Men Would Rather Be “Manly” Than…Alive…

DeMause writes,

[T]he group-fantasy shared prior to wars expresses the nation’s deep feeling that the increase in pleasure brought about by the prosperity and progress that usually precede wars “pollutes” the national blood-stream with sinful excess, making men “soft” and feminine”–-a frightful condition that can only be cleansed by a blood-shedding purification. [Footnote 2]

Men are more terrified of appearing “feminine” than of losing their lives. Why we invite war.

DeMause is saying we go forever into war because after a while peace makes men feel guilty, “sinful.” Men have uncomfortable, even shameful…homophobic…feelings of being “soft” or “feminine” when their lives are good. So men choose the “purifying,” masculinizing ritual of war to fight off these feelings. Nothing distracts one from looking inward better than a “good, old-fashioned” life-or-death struggle, and war is the most all-encompassing of them.

Men are more terrified of appearing “soft” than having the boot of totalitarianism on their neck. Why we allow fascism.

What DeMause says about bringing war upon us can be said also about allowing fascism, inviting totalitarianism. For whether we are fighting enemies of another nation or struggling to survive against oppression at home, we are involved in a daily struggle. Secret to us, we feel better being engaged in a dramatic battle, though it brings us suffering and misery.

We simply can’t hack peace for very long. We feel guilty, for some reason, lolling on the beach. You ever notice how at the end of your vacation time, you are anxious for it to be over and to get back to work? That feeling-–that one where we feel…guilty?…uncomfortable…tense?…unfulfilled?…(you tell me)–-that’s it. That’s the one I’m talking about.

It happens the same way collectively after we have experienced a “vacation” of national peace-–for example, in the Nineties when we were prosperous and mostly peaceful under Clinton. At the end of it, with Bush, we ended up getting the misery and struggle many in America were driven to want, though no one would ever admit that.

A quick aside. The fact that the majority of Americans actually didn’t vote for Bush and so tried to choose happiness over struggle is a source of hope for us in all this. That’s a hint of what’s coming.

But for now, let us get back to this opening provided us. We can make better use of DeMause’s insight using Stanislav Grof’s delineation of this birth unconscious of ours.

Grof explains we are moved by four specific kinds of drives emanating from our earliest experiences. These specific tendencies in us relate to four different times in the birth process which involve four radically different kinds of experiences.

Grof uses the term, basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), to refer to these four aspects of our inner urges. I will describe them here and refer to them along with DeMause’s cycles of social-historical violence and war to pull apart the roots of our dilemma. [Footnote 3]

Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing, BPM I

The first of Grof’s aspects of our unconscious he terms Basic Perinatal Matrix I, BPM I for short.

Prosperity and progress equal feeling “soft” and “feminine”

Grof’s BPM I is sometimes described as “oceanic bliss” and involves the experiences and feelings related to the relatively undisturbed prenatal period. On the social, macrocosmic level, it is the period described in the quote by deMause above in which there is a period of “prosperity and progress” and feelings of being “soft” and “feminine.” [Footnote 2]

The strong connection between individual experience (personal psychology) and collective realities (social-historical events and elements) is patent here since in BPM I experience the individual is still in the mother’s womb and to some extent shares her identity, which is of course feminine. Being unborn and not having gone through the “toughening” experiences of birth and later trauma, which predominantly create one’s defenses, the individual is also “soft,” i.e., undefended.

“No Pain, No Gain,” Hell, Satan, and Poisonous Placenta; BPM II

“No-exit” claustrophobia

To further review Grof’s schema and its relation to deMause’s cycles of war, I want to remind you that BPM II is related on the individual level to the time near the end of pregnancy when the fetus is no longer rocking blissfully on the waves of oceanic bliss but is trapped in an ever more confining womb. As the fetus grows in size, the suffering becomes greater; no doubt this is the source of the common-sense belief that growing has to involve suffering, for example, “No pain, no gain.” At any rate, the feelings are those of claustrophobia and “no exit.”

There is heavy non-agitated depression here, since there appears to be no hope, no change in the situation that would indicate a way out of the suffering. Indeed, this period continues practically right up to the time of birth, ending only when the cervix becomes dilated and, experientially speaking, there appears suddenly to be a “light at the end of the tunnel” and therefore hope.

Where the hell we get the idea of hell.

However, up until that time there are feelings of being totally unempowered, completely in the hands of an entity (the womb) that imposes a horrifying reality that appears to be unending and eternal. Herein we have the psychological roots of notions of hell and Satan. Feelings associated with this state include despair, victimization, blame, and guilt.

“You’ll wallow in your shit, and you’ll think you’re happy.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

As birth comes nearer, “fetal malnutrition” increases, since the neonate’s increasing size and weight press down on and constrict the blood vessels that carry blood to and from the placenta, when the mother is standing. The decreased blood supply means a reduction of life-giving oxygen as well as the buildup of toxins that would otherwise be taken away by a normal blood flow. So feelings of suffocation as well as skin irritation and other feelings of wallowing in waste matter-–deemed poisonous placenta by deMause-–increase.

“You’re really in a laundry room.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

As I have said previously, deMause has found that these feelings exist to an extraordinary degree in a society and its leaders prior to its engaging in a war. Similarly, they precede, and obviously can be held to be accountable for, individual acts of violence-–including everything from murder and rape to unfortunately all-too-common and ordinary spousal and child abuse in the household, and of course everything in between. [Footnote 4]

Bloody War, Bloody Birth; BPM III

BPM III is birth. Its social analogue is war or violent assault. Feelings that accompany this state on both the individual and societal level include rage and intense aggressiveness, all-encompassing struggle, and sexual excess.

Nothing’s Ever Good Enough, BPM IV

BPM IV relates to the time of actually coming out of the womb and the post-natal period. On the societal level it is the ending of a war.

“Busting out all over”

Feelings of expansiveness, release, exultation, coming finally out into the light and/or being “on top” of things, and victory are feelings associated with this matrix, whether in the individual birth or the collective war cycle.

As I said the societal analogue to BPM IV, or actually being born, is a war’s end. It is no coincidence that in triumph or peace, the two-finger peace symbol is used. What better way to signal we have come from constriction into openness, specifically through the vise of a mother’s cervix, out from between two legs. As John Lennon so aptly put it, using the peace sign frequently, “War is over (if we want it).”

Mission accomplished…not!

Interestingly, just as in recent times harsh modern obstetrical practices and the removal of the baby from the mother can leave lifetime feelings of success not bringing with it the expected rewards and thus a post-accomplishment sort of depression, so also the ending of successful wars sometimes also leaves a society with a sort of letdown. For example, the euphoria following George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War-–which catapulted his approval ratings into the ninety percent range in 1991-–was followed, only a year later, by the increasing agony of a recession and Bush’s defeat at the polls.

Cycles of Birth, Cycles of War

All of this is to say that in society, as in the womb, a period of uninterrupted and relatively undisturbed feelings of growth leads to feelings of depression-–being too “soft” and “feminine,” but also “too fat” in the womb and, therefore, extremely constricted and compressed.

Why women fear becoming fat and men fear appearing “feminine”

Another way of saying this: feelings of expansion are followed by a fear of entrapment. And I agree wholeheartedly with DeMause in saying that it happens this way in a nation’s cycle of feelings because it happened that way to us prior to and during our births. We have these patterns of feelings as collective groups of individuals because our first experience of expansion was followed by extreme depression, guilt, despair, and then struggle and something bloodily akin to war–our actual births.

What Can Be Done?

So knowing this, how can we use it? Elsewhere I explain how and why we see the dynamics of this perinatal unconscious, not coincidentally right now, on the ascendance, just at the time when it is crucial we deal with it to survive. I call this an emerging perinatal unconscious, and I go into detail about why it is happening now, what it means, and how we can take advantage of an opportunity it brings that could aid us in our current dilemma. [Footnote 1]

For now, I only need mention the fact that facing these unconscious forces instead of turning away from and thereby insuring our continued ignorance of them and helpless acting out of them is imperative.

So, how do we consciously participate in these drives not merely be driven by them? Lloyd DeMause, in his article, “R estaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence,” printed in the spring 1996 issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, calls for kinder and gentler birthing and child-caring practices to mitigate the ferocity of these forces within humans and help us avoid an otherwise inevitable planetary disaster. He is restating what other pre- and perinatal psychologists…I am one, by the way…including Thomas Verny and Stanislav Grof assert. [Footnote 2]

However, I believe we need to go further than that. I, along with Grof, call for a larger awareness of and efforts in the direction of healing these perinatal elements in the consciousness and unconscious of those already alive right now. For unless we act to heal the people currently inhabiting this planet, we might not leave a planet that babies can be born into!…let alone people to conceive and give birth to them. Healing the perinatal traumas can be accomplished through, at this point, thoroughly tested and effective techniques of experiential regression and emotional release.

But it is impossible for everyone to take advantage of these techniques, especially in the short time we have to make the changes. But something short of that ideal may be sufficient to stave off otherwise inevitable doom.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Finding the Weakest Spot

Elsewhere I address the question of what might be the result of this emerging perinatal unconscious for our species. And of course only time will tell. [Footnote 1]

Real, not blindly delusional, action is required.

But to get an idea of what we might hope for, given a readiness to actually do something about this, I offer a perspective. This understanding requires we remember some critical aspects of the cartography of the psyche described above. Looking into them we might begin to see where are the openings allowing for realistic action to be taken to bring about true, not just blindly delusional, change for our species.

We can no longer afford otherwise.

For our purposes here, the most important part of the cycle is BPM I. Societies, according to DeMause, go through these cycles of war and peace and have been doing so for as long as we know. But we can no longer afford these wars, as World War I and World War II have shown–with each one being an increase in our ability to destroy and to commit atrocities. We cannot afford to have a World War III as that most likely would end life on our planet. Indeed, as I’ve been pointing out, we cannot even afford the less extreme forms of acting out of perinatal trauma that we have been doing in our poisoning of the earth and air, global overpopulation, and the ongoing regional wars to give just a few of many examples I could have used. These things, along with many other current quite insane tendencies of ours, have the capacity to end our species and possibly all life on this planet.

Feeling Good Is Not Bad

So the cycle of societal perinatal acting out must be stopped. And the most obvious place to derail the insidious cycle is at the point of societal prosperity and progress. Feeling soft, undefended, and feminine are, rationally speaking, not things to be alarmed about. Quite to the contrary, it is rational that prosperity should make people feel good. It is rational that feeling soft should be a source of contentment, sensitivity, and intimacy with others. It makes sense that men should have no shame about feeling feminine because that only means that they have access to sensitive and nurturing feelings that are a source of joy, “color,” and fulfillment in life.

Changing the Patterns of Millennia

But how do we do this? How do we convince people that feeling good is not bad? For these unconscious forces, these cycles of violence, have been pulling our strings for at least tens of thousands of years. How can we change such an engrained pattern?

Chasing the Mirages of the Future

Well, again, we get our leads from the experiences of individuals undergoing experiential psychotherapy.

“It’s never enough.”

For individuals also, if they are to heal themselves, have to learn how to appreciate success and to stop sabotaging themselves in the myriad of ways they do. Individuals act out their mini-cycles of “war” in their struggles to achieve. And people are driven to struggle to achieve because they cannot be pleased with what they have.

Relating back to DeMause’s societal schema, people cannot simply enjoy their “prosperity.” People cannot stop to smell the roses occasionally. We cannot count our blessings and feel contented with what we have. Nor can we enjoy the natural pleasure of being alive in the moment.

“Wrong…It IS enough.”

No, instead what characterizes we humans–-for the most part because of our having birth trauma-–is a persistent drive to always have more than we do. We find that every accomplishment or success is short lived, with inexplicable depression following it. For each new attainment does not bring the expected (unconscious) rewards and leads us almost immediately to a new struggle, a new accomplishment to be sought. Humans are driven to chasing mirages of better times somewhere off in the future, and we fail to live in the present. We feel unsatisfied with what we have and are continually deluded that some new possession, accomplishment, or love “conquest” will bring with it the missing happiness.

Becoming Self-Actualizing Instead of Self-Sabotaging

When people are aware of the way they unconsciously sabotage their happiness, they sometimes seek help. And if they seek help in the experiential psychotherapies, they are enabled to work through their birth trauma so that they are no longer driven out of the moment, with its pleasure and pain, into an imagined but never attainable pleasureful and happy future.

Learning that it is enough

So people derail their cycles of drivenness and their tendencies to sabotage their successes by learning to enjoy their “prosperity,” even if it is the simple pleasure of being alive. And when they act to add to that pleasantness, they do so, not out of drivenness, but out of feelings of flow and the simple joys of acting and actualizing one’s tendencies, talents, and desires. They become self-actualizing instead of self-sabotaging.

Can You Handle Happiness?…
And the Pain That Comes With It?

OK, knowing this, one might ask if I am suggesting that to save our species everyone needs to get into experiential therapy. While that would be nice, it is not practical. But I believe it is not necessary either. There is an element of that societal period of prosperity that can be used and focused on in order to make the societal change of pattern, the societal derailing of the tendency to self-sabotage through war-making.

Getting By, With a Little Help From Our Nature

And that element is this: During times of prosperity, when one is less engaged in a struggle to survive, we find that one’s body will naturally try to heal itself of unresolved and somatically imprinted trauma by bringing into consciousness the repressed traumatic memories needing resolution.

Hierarchy of healing

This occurs in a manner similar to that of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Basically, one’s needs to “grow emotionally”…i.e., clear away the unresolved trauma…can only come to the fore when one’s physical survival needs are relatively taken care of. And arise they unerringly do, given any opportunity to do so.

“Don’t just do something, STAND there!”

However, when these traumatic memories come up seeking resolution, they, also unerringly, bring with them the associated feelings of depression, unease, and pain. But because these feelings are anything but pleasant, to their detriment most people seek to avoid these feelings through addictions and other forms of “acting-out” behavior. So addictions and acting-out behavior emerge after periods of relative stability precisely because that stability allows unresolved feelings an opening for emergence and a possibility of resolution and healing.

Allowing Our Society to Be Honestly, Blatantly “Sick”

So there you have it; that is the crux. The period of societal prosperity can be maintained and added to if that society refuses to run away from the negative feelings that come up with success. As I have said, one needs to get “sicker” in order to get really well.

“Stand in the place where you are…just stand.”

Societally, we need to allow the social, formerly repressed, “sicknesses,” negativities, and the pain that comes with them to arise and be socially worked out, to be hashed out, rather than to escape them by resorting to scapegoating enemies and waging war against them. But can societies do this? Are they doing this? [Footnote 5]

It does not seem so at the moment. For we have extreme acting out going on from Tea Party type elements. The homophobia that characterizes them is an indicator of the degree to which they are fearful of that feeling of being “soft” and “feminine,” I mentioned.

However there is a pattern in change that things can not really change until the negative slide has “hit bottom.” These negative forces cannot be gone beyond until they have wasted themselves in desperate acts. At this time also, positive forces are strengthening in the wings, burnishing their skills, tempering their character and nobility, fully capable when the time comes to take over. There are so many examples of this in social and individual histories, but not to get bogged down, I will mention one powerful one–-Nelson Mandela. You can take it from there.

The more common thing to mention about change is that prior to a major paradigm shift, the forces on the decline always wage a fierce, desperate battle…a bloody retreat, a burning of the fields, near suicidal and totally reckless forays.

We see people do this, too, just before they are about to change. We see people who self-destruct being the ones whose last desperate battle before awareness can dawn being something that takes their life and perhaps others with them.

We currently can point to Gaddafi, Assad, and other tyrants. We can observe reckless tea-baggers willing, as in the debt ceiling clash, to bring down the country for ideals that, however rationalized and spun, are at their roots as simple and crude as jealousy–-of those smarter and more capable; hatred-–of minorities, the poor, the “dirty,” the “slobs,” the “lazy”…basically all the scapegoats society allows them to vent the rage of their inner fears and hurt on; and homophobia–-that fear of being “soft,” feminine, unmasculine, and being willing to kill or be killed rather than to let oneself be seen that way.

Before continuing, one big misconception around that last point needs clearing up: homophobia is at base not fear/hatred of homosexuals, it is terror/hatred of the “feminine” and “softness” inside of the man himself who is homophobic. And this is the result of tens of thousands of years of “civilization,” still continuing, in which men are threatened with disapproval, ostracism, ridicule, attack, or worse for not repressing their softer sides down to the level of the norm of their group. Boys learn they must constrict their potentials and diminish themselves to that which coincides with-–and does not threaten-–the older males in their group or face severe punishment. Boys learn the consequences for not becoming less than they could be are severe, often from their own fathers.

And by the way, something similar goes on with young girls and the reduction of their potentials. We see a blatant example of this in the practice of cliterectomy-–also called female genital mutilation–in some cultures. In this practice the older women-–mother and aunts usually-–are responsible for this brutal and extremely painful and bloody attack. It tells little girls they will have no pleasure more than that which was allowed the older women, themselves, in that patriarchal world. So girls must diminish themselves in order to not be hated and ostracized by the women of the group, who, already having been diminished, would be jealous of someone being allowed to have what they have not. This is an exact mirror image of the process that goes on the diminution of the personalities-–the potentials-–of young boys.

Now to continue: So seeing so much of this pathos, hate, and bitter fear and anger is hopeful for us to be near the end of the cycle. Certainly it could get worse. But I personally don’t see how we could go much further on this path to oblivion without going past the point of no return. Perhaps we are not meant to succeed. Perhaps we are doomed. But I know in my own life, and that is the only true basis anyone can have for knowing how things really work, that, without fail, every seeming “loss of ground” was a prelude to an even bigger “advance.” As Jung said, we need to take two steps backward to make a big leap forward. That is the way individuals are. And societies and populations are just collections of individuals. So we can hold on to that, for one thing.

There is much else to be considered. In the other work of mine mentioned, Apocalypse Emergency, I consider in much detail the factors in the current situation that are the basis for hope, as well as those that are not so but can be valuable as warnings at least.

There I evaluate our current social-cultural scenery for our prospects. I look into whether there are any indications that this standing firm in the face of the rising up of the repressed social Shadow-–allowing the pain of it and facing it foursquare, hashing it out-–is to be currently found around us. If we can find this being done, we may allow ourselves at least the hope for a change in consciousness radical enough to save us from extinction. On the contrary, if we find little or no evidence for this kind of auspicious, fruitful healing activity, we might as well consider ourselves doomed.

Where this book leaves off, then, is where the other book takes up.

But before all that, there is still a few more things to be said in this one about what we have learned and what it means. So next we look at a few prevalent pervasive attitudes of these times that are distinctly and specially self-sabotaging. It is time we at least did our part to puncture these ego balloons. We deal in the upcoming section with the smug attitude many have that politics is somehow beneath them. Afterward, I look into this development emanating still from the Eighties that the human endeavor to do or be good, or noble, honest, have integrity, is somehow a naive, silly, and not truly “real” way to live one’s life…in these woefully non-idealistic, mean-spirited times.

For we need to show the hypocrisy and cowardice of these claims. They are most assuredly rooted in the pathetic egotisms of ordinary souls trying to fend off the insights that would grow and better them. For if we cannot deflate these obvious grand ego stands and convince people that they are self-defeating and cowardly to look down their noses at politics and as well they cannot see the pathos and self-sabotage at the base of being cynical and condescending toward those who would help, well then there is no further to go after that. For how can we improve on our current situation if people are convinced they are above the means of effecting change and lots of people also have succumbed to thinking that being cynical and mean-spirited is the only option for garnering self-esteem through the approval of others…is the only “cool” option. Without effective means and good people then the dark forces truly win.

So I will address this now. [continued after audiocasts]

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

“Part 1; What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

Image of Apocalypse or New Dawn, Ch. 8: Derailing the Cycles of War.and Violence, Pt.1: What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring? by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

“Part 2; Can You Handle Happiness (And the Pain That Comes With It)?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

Image of Apocalypse, or New Dawn?: Chapter Eight: “Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence, Part 2: Can You Handle Happiness? (And the Pain That Comes With It?)” by SillyMickel Adzema

So Did Politics Matter?

As we approach the end of this book-length exposition, I wish to focus on a pervasive attitude in the West of late. I have noticed how many folks in these established democracies, notably among the educated, present themselves in a way as to be above politics…as if politics is a profane activity that only ruffians and crooks get involved in.

Never mind that it has been through the “dirty” political action of their forebears they have been blessed with educational opportunities; unions and workers’ rights; the right to vote for women and minorities; freedoms, opportunities, and jobs; civil rights; relative peace, sometimes, or maybe just the privilege of not living under war; environmental safety; and so much more. No doubt more needs to be done in all these areas, but that’s part of the point: How ungrateful is one to be too good to dirty oneself in those matters that people of the past engaged in, which benefits they enjoy, but be “too good” to do anything to defend, let alone expand, those privileges for those to come after?

At length in several earlier chapters I discussed a “time capsule”—an article I had written just prior to the 2000 election in America that ended with the Supreme Court giving the presidency to George Bush. I related my astonishment at how closely the events that followed that election traced the course I predicted if Bush were to become president.

Now that the “time capsule” has told its tale—and I have related what this perception did to me, how it changed me—I’m curious as to how many others had any thoughts at all similar to mine during that period leading up to the election in 2000. Perhaps more did among the people reading this than in a random sampling, I would guess.

2000 Election Inconsequential?

Still, bemusedly I recall that at the time, as I made posts on international list services, principally on topics of deep feeling psychotherapy, psychohistory, and childhood and parenting, I was especially targeted for attack by non-Americans—several French and a German or two—who wanted to know how in hell a mere American presidential election was a thing of consequence to them, or to any non-American. I was brow-beaten also for daring to insert politics into matters pertaining to how we teach and love our children, or how we can help to love away each other’s traumas. Most often I was told it didn’t matter who won—Bush or Gore, Democrat or Republican—that they were all the same.

Being “above” politics—intellectuals…

More telling even than the attacks and the efforts to muzzle me about such “inconsequential” things was the vast stillness and silence of all the rest who sat watching or ignoring the drama, unmoved by the muzzling of opinion. Perhaps they felt themselves “cleaner” for not knowing, caring about, or in any way allowing their superior intellects to be dirtied by even the slightest rub up against the mud of profane politics. So also they were staunchly complicit in the ostracism that was the end result.

Shocked, I found that only one person out of all the three-four groups I participated in spoke up for me or supported my position. But even then, disappointingly, this woman who did support me spoke not on the grounds of the need to avert a disastrous outcome in the election. No, she aped the prevailing and supposedly “superior” position of neutrality about that. She upheld with the rest that, to me, strangest of notions about intellect and knowledge—that its true nature is detached.

This belief that an authentic quest for knowledge is dispassionate I have seen to be prevalent; I observe and hear it espoused repeatedly all about. Surely there are others thinking this to be strange too, I hope. And is it a mostly American thing somehow? Are those in other cultures more appreciative of passion?

They think that being fair means to not care.

The essence of this view is that intellect, first-hand knowledge, and intense study and thorough research in any and all fields of knowing lead always to a neutral, dispassionate position in the end and an acceptance of all the officially accepted traditional positions-–however dissonant, contradictory, even essentially opposed they might be and crying out for fresh insight and re-envisioning of them.

That stance is a total painful mind-bender to me, as my view is that intense and passionate search for truth and the actualities of events is the path to greater awareness. For I know of no original contributor in any field, especially of the genius caliber, who has not–-by necessity in fact, else it’s not a real contribution–-come out in the end as passionate advocates, committed and fervent articulators of their insights. I have observed them to identify with that specific and thoroughly detailed, often comprehensive, even visionary position, which they having suffered, sweated, and patiently waited, and sacrificed for before arriving at it. I see these truly original contributors to be passionately identified with their discoveries and hardly neutral about their validity!

So I wonder: Is it somehow profane or crude to be passionate these days? Have we become so “cool” as to look down our noses on those who are fully alive and fully engaged in life, not “compartmentalizing” or “managing” it from afar? Not multitasking it at a safe distance?

If so, what has happened to the life force in people? Are these claims to having superior numbness about life-and-death matters ego? Neurosis? Are they perhaps a byproduct of the huge injections of pharmaceuticals that are at present being shot into the veins of our social body?

Not to be smart so much as to be seen as smart

So that dispassionate position secretly says to me that like C-student Bush these people are not so much intelligent as seek to have the position of intelligent, rather, of intellectual. Their motive is not knowledge, but the benefits of traveling and being accepted in such society and circles. Therefore, it seems, the hardest place to find intelligent discourse is among the groups who are avowedly intellectual by definition.

And this stance of neutrality–-sometimes only purported, though, as happens often in the field of journalism-–strikes me as a real howler. For it would have us believe the most intelligent of the bunch were the last ones to adopt the heliocentric universe and the globe-like nature of our home. Wouldn’t they also be the last to position themselves on the side of evolution, too?

Just imagine any of the great and thoroughly established positions of our days, which once were astonishing discoveries, and I doubt you’d of found these neutral dispassionate types as first to the lecture halls to learn it. More likely these disinterested “smart” folks woulda been the stolid types–-the Salieris, hardly the Mozarts–-happy to have a position and eager to pick up its paycheck and then to enjoy the ease of hearth and home, comforting and filling food and drink….happy to be aware of the raskolnikovs, demians, and steppenwolfs in literature but totally nonunderstanding of such a nature and hardly believing that such people even exist, let alone walk among them.

Politics profane?

The person who supported me did not do so on the merits of the warnings I was making about political developments-–remember they ended up proving true. No, I was supported only on the grounds of fairness, individual expression…you know the old Bill-of-Rights type of support talk. Though who knows if she may not have been afraid to express her political concerns after witnessing the way her esteemed and “supposedly” high-minded idealistic–and oh-so-eminently mannered, always appropriate, ever so intellectual and high-spoken colleagues had, in what seemed an immediate and collective and nearly audible harrumph-like reflexive turning away and textual mouth-covering, nose-holding reaction, directly upon my raising the question of politics—and worse, of espousing one position, party, and person over another-–apparently perceived such a thing exactly the same as if I had loosed something dirty, stinky, sensual or sexual, and at least lowly, for certain profane, into the space which of a sudden it seemed all had judged to be reserved for only sacred topics…whatever that could mean.

And keep in mind it was only one person out of the several large groups I was following and posting with that found any reason at all to support me.

So now among those various groups I wonder how many of those that criticized me still maintain that in Europe they are only slightly, if at all, affected by American politics? I wonder this of those who considered their sympathetic and helping actions in person and one-on-one to be the only actions useful in the problem of worldwide human misery.

I wonder, as well, if there are still those–after the last American presidential election of 2008—who are still maintaining it wouldn’t have mattered a twit, in terms of the future of our world and the degree of suffering and dying and torture that it will witness…assuming even that it survives…in the coming upcoming years if McCain had won.

Gore not winning inconsequential?

And I wonder how many catastrophes created by their haughty disinterest around politics it takes to rouse them to interested concern. Just how many are required of tragic Katrina debacles; environmental collapses; massive and increasing species extinctions; stolen elections and rigged voting machines; losses of democracy, human rights, and habeas corpus; governmental mass murders orchestrated to instill fear and hatred enough to wage endless costly wars with the concomitant extinction and suffering of hundreds of thousands of collateral innocents; big-brotherish listening in and recording of all electronic activity; worldwide slaughter and rape of innocents which if not perpetrated then simply ignored or allowed; and worldwide economic collapses, to name just a fraction of the unexpected, unprecedented “dictatorial” actions that resulted from the fact that a Bush not a Gore, a Republican not a Democrat, was placed into the most powerful position on the planet in 2000 by a Supreme Court picked mostly by Republicans and against the will of the majority of Americans-–both popularly and electorally.

How much tragedy does it take?

I wonder just how many such events have to happen to bring about that relatively minor percentage point swing in opinion away from the Republican perpetrators of these atrocities that would allow, at long last, the election of a person from that thoroughly besmirched, maligned, lied about party. You know, that ridiculed and laughed about other party of namby-pamby “bleeding hearts” expressing concern for the suffering; that party who has members espousing useless, profitless, “kumbaya” moments of fellow feeling, community solidarity, and global caring; who have passionate aspirations and allegiances to invisible principles and values which involve the betterment of others—even non-Americans!—beyond just oneself and one’s kin; that party which—as empty-headed , soft, and nonsensical as it sounds—actually values these ideals higher than motives of profit—the dimwitted snots actually deeming a good number of things to be greater than money!

Just how many calamities need to occur in America and the world in order for a Democrat to be elected to the helm? Why else would there be only an infrequent election of someone from that alternative party?

The consequence of this is that the Republicans have managed even greater control, after their decades of entrenchment and ever increasing bloating of power and riches arrived at primarily through the consistent scapegoating and then feeding upon and stealing from the vulnerable, the helpless, the poor, and the different.

The Republicans have maneuvered and bought themselves into actual ownership of so many of the necessary societal institutions–-education, for example, and most of all the mainstream medias. Then as owners they direct the pundits of the popular media. So these talking heads come across as though programmed in their utterances so that the narrowest vision is presented.

We hear this paid-for perspective packaged in snide comments and insulting and misinforming appellations carefully crafted over time by Republican operatives and fed to their lackeys for the purpose of beating down the comprehension of the public through repetition and the total lack of any accompanying informing or contradictory viewpoint.

Notice in this regard the rise and fall the “liberal” moniker, somehow brought to its grave by someone’s strange verbal construction , however lacking in meaning but, having the quality, the crucial thing sought, so as to malign and affect opinion and feeling, of it sounding offensive and wrong and something that nobody, I mean nobody, would find appealing and identifiable to themselves.

By this I am referring to the success of the nonsensical but hugely unappealing epithet of “bleeding heart” which, added to and repeated endlessly along with the word, liberal, has succeeded in the complete and utter destruction of the use of that word. The connotation of this word, even, has been so successfully made to be distasteful as to sully even the words in its vicinity, as in the unappealing and rarely ever talked about anymore “liberal arts” education, school, or ideal.

Mainstream media have managed to convince nearly everyone, somewhat, of the validity of Richpublican-biased talking points—“obvious truths” which are in fact not–-through methods of endless repetition. They have poisoned common perceptions through the trick of the derisive appellation, concocted for the media by Republicans, to be endlessly rained upon their opposition. The opinion-creators have reached unprecedented skillfulness in the practice of mesmerism through the never-ending manufacture of nonsensical straw men which, in the practice of their being pummeled, provide ongoing drama to distract the millions from the issues of real and direct concern to them, to their lives.

How much of this is required? How much suffering needs to occur each time in America and the world in order for at long last a Democrat be chosen?

So, a full eight-year course of Republican fare later, served up for, and often force-fed down the craws of both Americans as well as non-Americans, I wonder now how many of those that criticized me still maintain that in Europe they are only slightly, if at all, affected by American politics.

I wonder how many remain unchanged of those who put up their noses at politics and proclaimed proudly their neutrality or their lack of involvement in it–-thus expressing their superiority in either their not being brainwashed like us others into thinking it mattered or in their purity and elitism above us worldly creatures in being above such roughish activities.

I wonder if they still think such things.

And since some of them also espoused that the personal one-on-one sympathetic and helping activities they engaged in were the only ways one could expect to ever make changes in the world and to alter the global trajectory heading inexorably toward the environmental abyss (among many others), I wonder if by now they’d bothered to do a little math around that concept-–what with people and their needs and their sufferings ever rising at the same time as we rapidly increase global warming, overpopulation, and the like.

Lastly, having heard it so proudly proclaimed before all elections and by personages both public and private and with equal sort of superiority, I wonder if there are still those who think politics does not matter and does not really affect them in their daily pursuits.

But what did it take?

One the other hand, if some of those I refer to have subsequently reevaluated their status as being above such concerns of lowly humans, I ask what did it take? How much suffering is required of us before those who would but for their egos be at our sides descend to join our ranks? And, it being so much misery, why so much? Do they actually feel that empathy for others they seek credit–-and some being “helping” professionals, profit-–for having?

Not to belabor but to expose this perspective so easily shunned and darkened, I ask just how much? As Ted Kennedy roared in the Senate, “Just how much greed is required by the other side? Just how much money does it take? How much is enough?”

And my version of that: I ask just how much is wanted of infinite debt–-burdening Americans and their children for generations without end-–created not out of any spending for healing or the alleviation of suffering of any kind but solely out of the desire of that wealthiest, unnamed one percent of Americans–-since the Sixties, but especially rapidly since the Eighties with Reagan-Bush I and now with Bush II, and controlling sixty percent of all resources…still wanting more, refusing to contribute even the slightest, and in the end result, not merely aligning their riches to bring illegally into power another Bush to redistribute upward the wealth alongside the stomping ever increasingly into the dirt of the poor and working classes?

We must not forget a budget surplus after eight years of Democratic leadership in the Nineties, a hard fought for budget surplus, cavalierly gifted to the least needy and the most greedy, as practically Bush’s first big act after receiving the Presidency…almost like it was a payback.

And how unbelievably outrageously despicable this, continuing with Bush right up to the end, to the final days of Bush’s second term—everyone being aware of Obama’s plans for major changes in health care, the environment, jobs, and so much else to benefit the greatest numbers and the most needy—well, too conveniently to not be suspicious and yet with all the boldness of an outlaw gang of the old West terrorizing the citizens of an isolated town, who unashamedly and in their last looting before moving on, resort to stripping the town bare, removing even the gold in the townsfolk’s teeth, and laughing uproariously, powerdrunk, upon overhearing the sobs of mothers contemplating the feeding of their children, the agonized groans of fathers feeling defeated and helpless to protect, nor even to sustain their families.

We observe the strong arm tactics of the representatives of these greedy elites calling the shots of politicians from their hidden or disguised positions. We hear the Democrats of Congress bullied with another fearful specter, some kind of financial nuclear holocaust at the eleventh hour. With all the temerity to actually employ, undisguisedly, the high pressure, railroading tactics of auto salesmanship, we see an extortion by the rich of such magnitude as if wanting to insure the failure of America’s leadership in bringing forth the society of ordinary opportunity for all, and a health care affordable enough to allow citizens a little respite from the knowledge of their inevitable death.

No, instead we see what seems an attempt to rob the store one last time…and hearing the voices of CEOs like that at Chase who afterwards bragged that they would not loan out even a penny of the thirty billion they received and instead use it buy up their competition, thus insuring even greater profits…it is difficult to believe it was anything BUT what it so obviously appeared to be, this theft.

But its results go far beyond that, handicapping the sincere efforts of good politicians and leaders who would want to make a better situation for us all, and doing it so severely, beyond draconian, as to insure a kind of soft burden or soft cage of enslavement for Americans forever into the future.

So great the theft, so great the extortion over the course of eight years that at least one expert has written a book, whose calculations he struggles with in every scenario having results that all carry one conclusion in common: that America will never, repeat, never again be able to regain the relative material gains and ordinary prosperity for those who worked for it that for a long time it held out to its citizens.

And No Sooner Had…

Yet immediately after the election of a Democratic president we hear the persistent cacophony of Republican and wealthy misconstruction and misinformation. They cry out all the louder now in blaming Obama for the very things they had accomplished during their eight years at the cash register, as if by doing so they could blot out the memory of the much greater outpourings of tax dollars for their rich friends and for ends much less noble.

In fact, we’re already finding the ends ignoble, as the banks took the help and then conducted a campaign to bankrupt and default everyone they could find who was dangling on the edge, not well-off like them, nor yet overboard.

It seemed a calculated attack on Americans by the faceless wealthy elite who for reasons we can’t understand appear to want to actually destroy or weed out of existence all but the very strong—these harder ones who, often, we see, are the very types who have aligned themselves with the multinationals and have no patriotic interests.

It is hard to understand, this assault on ordinary Americans by this unknown faceless enemy and for unknown reasons. But sure enough, with talk of a great depression and about and having received unprecedented handouts to help those struggling with debt, we find that moneyed sliver of us precipitated a nationwide campaign, then ratcheted it to full speed, involving the unilateral, universal, and comprehensive doubling, tripling, and more of credit card interest rates, whose effects, while many are simultaneously facing job layoffs, could only bring about more often than not the loss also of home loans, meaning loss of credit, job, and home all at once. One can only wonder at the designs behind such cruelty.

As for me, my greatest wonder is how it is that some of the American people are still going along with the Republican lies as they cover, still, for the continued looting of the poor by the rich. Eight years long; but still continuing. And, again, I’m wondering at the perverse gullibility of some people following blindly those many in the media who are engaged in the coverup, the bait and switch, the offering up of newly elected Obama for the sins of a secret wealthy class over the course of almost thirty years plundering the poor with Republicans help and now without even connivance, shame, or aforethought. In plain sight.

And we see them continue the plunder, with even more obvious support from the media, as they target job-stimulating “earmarks” many of which are scaled in terms of dollars measured by thousands, while individual bankers so very recently bragged about tens of billion being extorted.

It is incomprehensible to me that after all we’ve been through and with all that we see we must deal with, not only now, but also as far into the future as we can imagine, that a good many Americans are still singing with their “daddies” the Republicans. I mean at one time at least one was rewarded with bread and circuses for such misplaced loyalty.

Even as they suffer, even as they lose their jobs and self-respect in being unable to care for their families, or even themselves, still these are mesmerized, seemingly unconsciously acting against their own interests. One wonders again at how long one will feed on one’s own entrails before at least noticing.

So does politics matter? Did politics matter? Can you guess that I think it does?

Perverse Puppeteering

At the beginning of this Part, I began to address that curious behavior, which is uniquely human, of choosing to punish oneself and to attack innocents—being unable to accept happiness—while the perpetrators of suffering stand untouched and in sight. Indeed, listen up and you hear that it is the voices of these guilty that are still pronouncing horrid acts to be done, spelling out in detail the sufferings to be endured and to be inflicted. Yet people, as I have shown, allow, even wish this upon themselves.

In the next section I look into another aspect of that weird masochism, particularly of many Americans currently, to derail their own well-being by buying into wishes of their puppeteers to go after—to attack, ridicule, and beat off—the very ones who would put out a hand to help them from their suffering, to beat off the very rescuers who swam out to save them from drowning.

I look into the strange success of the “directors” in getting folks to take pleasure in their enslavement by embracing the scapegoating of those with good hearts wishing to raise us all, including them, up, thus ensuring their continued and even increasing agony.

I ask how is it possible that the ones most good of us have been made to receive judgement as being not good? How is it possible for people to be made to feel proud and superior for shouting down our positives instead as bad, stupid, or naïve…even at great cost to their own happiness? How is it possible that cyncism, mean-spiritedness, even covert racism and other hate, has been made “cool,” hip, and more real than that which would actually bring what is wanted?

In the upcoming section I ask, why is good so bad?

Tags: politics,time,capsule,psychohistory,intellectuals,election, Republican, Bush, Gore, American, 2000, Democrat, Obama, McCain, lies, wealthy, filthy, rich

What’s So Bad About Doing Good?

In the last section it appeared that politics might be sort of a good thing to pay attention to if one cares and wants to make a real difference in our world. But I notice in what I see around me that we need also to address the issue of whether to care is even a good idea. I am being serious about this.

Let me tell you what I mean. “The Rainmaker” is a 1997 movie based upon the blockbuster novel of the same name by John Grisham. It is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and stars Matt Damon and Danny DeVito among others. It is no B-list movie.

And while “The Rainmaker” is an extremely well-produced, acted, and directed movie, I vividly remember the first time I saw it. I did not feel good when I left the theater afterward.

Uncovering the layers of feelings that were in me then, I realized I was not satisfied at all with the ending. The movie had a triumphal and climactic courtroom scene, a delightfully sweet love story, and was totally engaging throughout—so much so that I was surprised, upon checking in with my body, occasionally, at how tense and “in suspense” I was because of my involvement with the movie: I found myself caring and pulling for the events to turn one way as opposed to another—just as if these were real events in people’s lives instead of mere fictional events played out by actors with lives totally unlike the characters they portrayed.

Nevertheless, I noticed my body being in suspense, as well as my wet cheeks, replenished continuously by tears flowing freely during love scenes of caring and compassion, and scenes of tragedy and sadness. [Footnote 6]

So why did I leave the theater feeling so dissatisfied? Beneath the more superficial layers of feelings—the disappointment that the “victory” was only a pyrrhic one—that is, it did not reap the expected benefits and was almost as good as a loss; and the fact that the romantic element was left undetermined—you weren’t sure there was going to be a “happily ever after” for this couple—I realized there was the larger disappointment that the “heroic” main character, after this first and only case as a lawyer, and despite his huge though prryhic victory, was considering quitting the legal profession. This, because of the corruption and injustice in it.

I realized this part was disappointing because it fit with a pattern of numerous stories of the Nineties—especially, but in the decades since, as well—whose message was largely that corruption and injustice…or downright evil…was everywhere and that it is hopeless to resist…and that heroic responses, by contrast, were stupid, or naïve, or—worst of all—too…well, “Sixty-ish.” So I was beginning here to notice the generational tie-in –> deeper depressing feelings still!

Among those images of BPM II hopelessness and despair in the face of an overwhelming, insensitive, unjust–and monstrously huge and randomly acting–social system, I remembered “The X Files.” Will Scully and Mulder ever find out the truth? Will any episode ever end with the truth concerning the events portrayed actually being spelled out and affirmed in their “FBI Final Reports” . . . rather than left as “Status: Unexplained” or “Reason-” or “Cause Unknown” . . . when in fact the TV viewer, as well as of course Mulder and Scully, know full well what happened and why. The truth is left always hidden and covered up.

Why? Well, because Scully, especially, cannot put out explanations that do not fit the prevailing paradigm—that do not fit traditional “scientistic” explanations—for fear of ridicule. Hence, she covers up the truth and denies that she’s observed, learned, and experienced what in fact she has. In this way she demonstrates the hallmark of neurosis—denial of one’s own experience, one’s own reality.

I remembered also how popular “The English Patient” was. Talk about a bummer movie!! No hero here either—just random events, tragedy, meaninglessness. Yet a huge box office success it was! What the hell’s going on here?

Used to be that the “good guys” would win in the end and that a promise of real love was gifted, by movie’s end, to everyone in the theater. While not always realistic, what’s so wrong about hope and ideals? What’s so wrong, or stupid, about trying for the best in one’s life . . . or to be the best one can be in one’s life?

There are many other media stories that fit the pattern of hopelessness against overpowering forces, of course. The TV series “Millennium” is a good example. But I think I’ve made my point.

Lest I be misunderstood, however, you should know that I’d be the first to decry a sappy plot that glosses over reality and sugar coats, rationalizing everything as wonderful, happy, and good. Yet, is the truth then that life is always so hopeless? Is reality truly so grim, horrific, tragic…? Is the effort to make a better world or to be a better person really so stupid and naïve because so impossible—with everything stacked against one? Or, instead, can it be true that this hopeless view is actually a paranoid one—”the whole world against me”—a manifestation of BPM II birth pain?

At any rate, then it dawned on me how these attitudes are physicalizing themselves in the furniture of our social reality: adolescents and young adults wearing black, painting their faces to be deathly masks, sticking pins in themselves everywhere—from tongue to genitalia…and the ongoing vampirism craze…simply the name itself, “Generation X”—indicating a generation with no overriding ideals, purpose, meaning, or even profile! So ambiguous and lacking in shape as to merit only an X as a name!

Alongside the above: the scapegoating of the Sixties generation and its ideals. “How Sixties!” “Too Sixty-ish,” and “Old-fashioned”—I’ve already discussed “kumbaya” and “bleeding heart”—have become putdowns for expressions and examples of idealism, hope, visions, efforts to make a better world or to fight injustice.

I realized then why my spiritual teacher, Sathya Sai Baba, often exhorted his audiences to be “heroes not zeroes.” He is not saying people should emulate John-Wayne-ish egotistical machismo and unfeelingness. To the contrary, he exhorts his followers to strive to be as fully human, caring, sensitive, courageous in the service of truth and justice; to be feeling people, caring people and as actualizing of the best in them as they can possibly be. He says it is better to fail at aspiring after high ideals than to succeed stupendously at lower aims.

It’s not that there are no heroes anymore. We still have the movies and stories where good triumphs in the end, against even hopeless odds. Sure we have them. And we even have uplifting and inspiring TV shows like “Touched By an Angel” to watch. It’s just that, when teen suicides are occurring in record numbers, drug addiction is ever rising, and an epidemic of “depression disease” has swallowed our society whole and doctors are scattering antidepressants over the masses like holy water…well, maybe, we should not be reinforcing this depressive attitude.

Writers and producers will choose to write and produce what they will, and they will make the ending whatever they want it to be. But I, for one, have got the point, already, that the Fifties-shlock-pollyanna view was a sham that needed overturning and unraveling because it hid so many social problems that needed to be looked at, addressed, attended to—that is, the Government, and Eisenhower, is not always right; parents do not always love their children, in fact sometimes they beat and even kill them; a newborn’s screaming entrance into the world is not a joyous occasion indicating healthy lungs; women, African-Americans, and minorities are not happily oblivious in their subservient or submissive roles; and on and on.

Yea, I got it. A whole generation got it…in that oh-so-much-maligned Sixties. And because we got it, we exposed it. We fought it. We sought justice; we sacrificed; we strove to start from scratch and build a world on high and glorious ideals. Euphoric in our growing numbers, we grew optimistic… hell, even certain that we could/would change the world. And we would do it “NOW!” You know the story.

OK, so, yes, we did get put down by the moneyed elite who commanded and manipulated the media into stopping its coverage of the revolution and “the greening of America” that was actually occurring and instead instructed and coerced the media into announcing the “big lie” of a “conservative backlash”…which didn’t really exist at first…any backlash occurring only in the minds of the few but powerful moneyed elite, with the actual trend of the masses in the country being toward more demonstrations, more change, more liberalism, and so on. But…eventually, with enough of the repetition in the media that money can buy, enough accompanying discussion of such a “conservative backlash” and other treatment of this fictitious reality in the lackey press…well, sure enough, people began to accept it as the consensus reality—a reality bought and paid for.

And this supposed reality was hammered home by TV shows, funded by corporate and moneyed interests that would benefit by such a view being promulgated. Shows such as “Family Ties”—showing a conservative son rebelling against Sixties-generation parents. A total farce in that, predominantly, children grow up owning not rebelling against, the values of their parents. If they rebel, it is in the direction of being more extreme than their parents in pursuing those values; studies have proven this.

The reality at that time was that the conservative youth of that time were the children of a Presley-Eisenhower generation—late World War Two through early baby-boomer generation—who had their adolescent and formative years during the “Monk-ish” and conformist Fifties. Nevertheless, the show served the powered interests in scapegoating Sixties values by belittling and trivializing them. A generation’s serious ideals and efforts to completely re-create the world on a more humane, just, right, and true foundation became a laughing matter and its proponents a laughing stock, scapegoated. The attitude being put out then about Sixties revolution and values became: “It was all only about youth wanting not to have to go to war, after all, wasn’t it?”

And the conservative forces succeeded. For all of this media reconstruction of reality certainly discouraged the efforts of my generation of youth, as well as all youth since then—including and especially today’s—toward even thinking they could affect the world for the positive. A contract had been put out on optimism; idealism was dead and its scattered forces were ridiculed and scoffed at.

But . . . hey now! We did stop the war. We did improve civil rights for African-Americans, women, and minorities…though it’s a never-ending effort and cause, of course. We did raise consciousness about the pollution of the environment. And, indeed, we did instill an awareness of spiritual reality and values into a heretofore thoroughly mechanical, materialistic, and religiously hypocritical paradigm of social reality and normal human behavior. As Abbie Hoffman, pounding the podium in frustration, bellowed in a speech he gave not too long before his unfortunate death, “Goddamit! The truth of it all is that WE WERE RIGHT!!!”

My point is that reinforcing despair and hopelessness—as in “The Rainmaker” and productions like it—can only serve to undermine the idealistic energy, hope, and enthusiasm necessary to continue the struggle on those, and so many other, fronts, which are necessary to be won if we are to bring in a new era…indeed, if our species is even to survive.

When our species’ survival is at stake, why reinforce hopelessness, which can only lead to apathy and paralysis in the face of injustice and suffering?

And yet, these media patterns and images are merely reflections of our society’s collective psyche. They are produced, and people go to see them, because people recognize their own feelings in them. So they are an expression of self-sabotaging, self-destructive behavior on a collective level…an expression of collective neurosis.

And the only thing that can be done about such things going on are to point them out…for whoever has ears to hear. I, for one, would like to point out that the glass is half full, not half empty…and I’d like to see some real heroes again. (See the movie “Strange Days” as an antidote to the hopelessness and anti-heroism I’ve discussed.)

For life is a game, and we can only lose by not playing it. Since we must act, and must decide—even apathy and indecision are actions and decisions—why not choose a “heroic” path or—to better avoid the negative connotations of the word hero—as Castaneda has enjoined us, why not choose “a path with a heart”? And I would like to see stories, TV shows, movies, and plots that sustain, support, and inspire us in that direction. What have we got to lose by being positive? Hell…what’s so bad about doing good?

Goodbye, Hello

As I bring this topic of culture/class war to a close a new one begins. I have been alluding in this and a few of the chapters just before this to the fact that the political and cultural problem we face in America and worldwide is the most dire because it distracts from attention to and ability to act on a problem of infinitely greater significance…as if that could be possible. But something bearing down on us, actually does have far greater consequence for our lives than a fascism that is no longer creeping, or even “jogging,” but is actually “sprinting” in its advance now.

This thing has far greater consequence for our lives and for future generations, but amazingly also, for all previous generations…indeed all life that exists or one-time existed on this planet…and possibly for any life beyond this planet. The more spiritually-inclined might also say that the divine is intimately involved and intently watching it.

Sound grandiose? I only wish I were exaggerating. I am only saying straight as it is about something that is desperately being downplayed and too often pathetically denied. You probably know what I am talking about.

So this discussion of what is wrong and what can be done about it turns now to the environment, to the rapidly approaching environmental collapse and unprecedented mass extinction of life on this planet. Turning, we face and peer into an even greater darkness about. We uncage our power and bring real hope into our predicament by letting ourselves know apocalypse. First, we must acknowledge our “Apocalypse Emergency.”

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part 16:
Anatomy of Class Consciousness

Footnotes

1. The book published in 1999 is titled “Apocalypse? Or New Age?” It was rewritten in 2011 with considerably more material and titled “Apocalypse Emergency: Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth?“ [return to text]

2. Lloyd deMause, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence.” The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 2. Reprinted with permission on the Primal Spirit site.

Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. [return to text]

3. I explain this in more detail in Apocalypse Emergency, especially Part Seven, “We Ain’t Born Typical” under the heading “Elements of Birth Experience.”

4. “You’ll wallow in the shit and you’ll think you’re happy” and “You’re really in a laundry room” from, and with appreciation to, Kurt Cobain. These are lyrics in his song, “Sad.” The video and lyrics are reproduced again here for your convenience:

Nirvana – “Sad” (also “Sappy” and “Verse Chorus Verse”)

“Sad” lyrics

And if you save yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
And you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh
And if you cut yourself
You will think you’re happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
Then you’ll make him happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll cover you with grass
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room,
You’re really in a laundry room
Conclusion came to you, oh (x2)
And if you fool yourself
You will make him happy
He’ll keep you in a jar
And you’ll think you’re happy
He’ll give you breathing holes
Then you will seem happy
You’ll wallow in your shit
Then you’ll think you’re happy
Now
You’re really in a laundry room (x3)
Conclusion came to you, oh
Alternate lyrics:
And if you kill yourself
You will make him happy

5. “Stand in the place where you are…just stand” from and with appreciation to R.E.M. While it seems no one understood the group’s huge initial release, “Stand,” it is quite meaningful in the current context. A video and lyrics are included here for your consideration:

R.E.M. – “Stand”

“Stand” lyrics

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t before
If you are confused check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
[repeat 1st verse]
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Season is calling
[repeat 1st verse]
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
So Stand (stand)
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand (stand)
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t
[repeat 1st verse]
Stand in the place where you are (Now face North)
Stand in the place where you are (Now face West)
Your feet are going to be on the ground (Stand in the place where you are)
Your head is there to move you around, so stand.

6. I really should not have to mention this but considering the thing being addressed in this section I suppose I had better. For I have experienced our culture changing drastically over the last few decades in its valuing of feelings and emotion. If you are familiar with earlier chapters of this book, you know this is a theme that keeps coming up in our understanding of this culture war, class war—that is, American and Western culture increasingly, in brave-new-world fashion, instilling cynicism, apathy, mean-spiritedness—creating “zombies” and “trolls”—and suppressing, ridiculing, beating down our human qualities—softness, kindness, caring…all that “bleeding heart” “kumbaya” stuff.

So, yes, I am one of those people who feels things. I am not being facetious, for I did deep feeling experiential psychotherapy at one time in my life to be able to handle such capacity to be sensitive and empathetic. I also spent a good deal of my life as a helping professional facilitating others in several of the most powerful and profound methods of healing and consciousness expansion—specifically, primal therapy (that’s the one John and Yoko went through and expressed in their music), rebirthing/vivation, and holotropic breathwork. You can check my bio in “About” for more on that.

So, yes, I cry, and it is not a big f—ing deal or a “meltdown” when I do. I can’t write that last sentence without lmao. Anyway, you got the idea.

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Sixteen:
Anatomy of Class Consciousness

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Panic on the streets of London. London is America’s future.

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, economics, Politics on August 10, 2011

Panic on the streets of London – brilliant article on it

Aug 10, 2011 1:55am by Mickel Adzema in

Politics

This is a brilliantly written article illuminating the events in London. .. really brilliantly….
My take:
London is our future,
the Middle East is our future,
Mars is our future.

Amplify’d from pennyred.blogspot.com

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Here comes the future, you can’t run from it – if you’ve got a blacklist, I wanna be on it…

Read more at pennyred.blogspot.com

Panic on the streets of London.

I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green were looted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of serious injuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is the third consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has now spread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?

In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator has opened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in any doubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That much should be obvious to anyone who is watching Croydon burn down on the BBC right now. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder ‘mindless, mindless’. Nick Clegg denounced it as ‘needless, opportunistic theft and violence’. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge – declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was “utterly unacceptable.” The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

“Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.

Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken down entirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to go out onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is coming closer. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at least fifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, and communities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting on rival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to the disenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight, and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are all about.

Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.

Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.

I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road in Chalk Farm. Ealing and Clapham and Dalston are being trashed. Journalists are being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are in retreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being set alight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wake up to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none of which will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stock market clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.

Read more at pennyred.blogspot.com

Panic on the streets of London – brilliant article on it.

BBC, country, london, panic, people, police, poor, poverty, riot, streets, Tottenham, UK, uprising, violence

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Scapegoating the poor for America’s sins – How we are already a nation of brown shirts to some

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, economics, History, Politics, US on August 10, 2011

Criminalizing the poor. You wonder why London happened? Why it’s going to happen here?

Aug 10, 2011 12:14am by Mickel Adzema

Politics

It’s as bad as I feared…. and experienced. (the mo-fos)

Barbara Ehrenreich speaks out on the issue everyone is overlooking, except for those who have no voice. We are becoming a fascist nation. In the cities, people already live in fear of harassment for just being alive and not looking the right way, having enough money, having a place to go, or needing to sleep or go to the bathroom. It has become illegal to be human, unless you can pay some invisible toll.

Our brown shirts are blue shirts, but they are hardly different. This fascism will spread like poison to the strata above the poor.

In fact, all the outcry from the middle class is only an indication that it is rising, spreading. This is no exaggeration. I have been experiencing it myself and been among and talking to others who have for the last year and a half.

The middle class participates in this scapegoating. They choose it in all the ways they want their communities to hide the truth of poverty in America and so in so many ways beat down and out of sight those who remind them their precious comfort is threatened and their vaunted middle class reality is a precarious house built on the ruined lives of the broken.

But the middle class ignore the totalitarianism that exists on the side roads to their peril. London shows Americans what they are reaping at this moment, even as the middle class seeks to maintain its privileges at the expense of the poor, in the same way that the filthy rich build their castles on the ruins of middle class dreams and portfolios.

Amplify’d from www.salon.com

How America turned poverty into a crime

— Barbara Ehrenreich

The poor aren’t just struggling during the recession; they’re being actively hounded by urban officials

Post-Meltdown Poverty

Media attention has focused, understandably enough, on the “nouveau poor” — formerly middle and even upper-middle class people who lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their investments in the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed it, but the brunt of the recession has been borne by the blue-collar working class, which had already been sliding downwards since de-industrialization began in the 1980s.

In 2008 and 2009, for example, blue-collar unemployment was increasing three times as fast as white-collar unemployment, and African American and Latino workers were three times as likely to be unemployed as white workers. Low-wage blue-collar workers, like the people I worked with in this book, were especially hard hit for the simple reason that they had so few assets and savings to fall back on as jobs disappeared.

How have the already-poor attempted to cope with their worsening economic situation? One obvious way is to cut back on health care. The New York Times reported in 2009 that one-third of Americans could no longer afford to comply with their prescriptions and that there had been a sizable drop in the use of medical care. Others, including members of my extended family, have given up their health insurance.

Food is another expenditure that has proved vulnerable to hard times, with the rural poor turning increasingly to “food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates. And for those who like their meat fresh, there’s the option of urban hunting. In Racine, Wisconsin, a 51-year-old laid-off mechanic told me he was supplementing his diet by “shooting squirrels and rabbits and eating them stewed, baked, and grilled.” In Detroit, where the wildlife population has mounted as the human population ebbs, a retired truck driver was doing a brisk business in raccoon carcasses, which he recommends marinating with vinegar and spices.

The most common coping strategy, though, is simply to increase the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space — by doubling up or renting to couch-surfers.

In Los Angeles, housing expert Peter Dreier says that “people who’ve lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent.” According to a community organizer in Alexandria, Virginia, the standard apartment in a complex occupied largely by day laborers has two bedrooms, each containing an entire family of up to five people, plus an additional person laying claim to the couch.

No one could call suicide a “coping strategy,” but it is one way some people have responded to job loss and debt. There are no national statistics linking suicide to economic hard times, but the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline reported more than a four-fold increase in call volume between 2007 and 2009, and regions with particularly high unemployment, like Elkhart, Indiana, have seen troubling spikes in their suicide rates. Foreclosure is often the trigger for suicide — or, worse, murder-suicides that destroy entire families.

“Torture and Abuse of Needy Families”

We do of course have a collective way of ameliorating the hardships of individuals and families — a government safety net that is meant to save the poor from spiraling down all the way to destitution. But its response to the economic emergency of the last few years has been spotty at best. The food stamp program has responded to the crisis fairly well, to the point where it now reaches about 37 million people, up about 30 percent from pre-recession levels. But welfare — the traditional last resort for the down-and-out until it was “reformed” in 1996 — only expanded by about 6 percent in the first two years of the recession.

The difference between the two programs? There is a right to food stamps. You go to the office and, if you meet the statutory definition of need, they help you. For welfare, the street-level bureaucrats can, pretty much at their own discretion, just say no.

When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”

The Parentes discovered that they were each expected to apply for 40 jobs a week, although their car was on its last legs and no money was offered for gas, tolls, or babysitting. In addition, Kristen had to drive 35 miles a day to attend “job readiness” classes offered by a private company called Arbor, which, she says, were “frankly a joke.”

Nationally, according to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut Law School, “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.” There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welfare fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime.

How the Safety Net Became a Dragnet

The most shocking thing I learned from my research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.

Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.

Most cities, for example, have ordinances designed to drive the destitute off the streets by outlawing such necessary activities of daily life as sitting, loitering, sleeping, or lying down. Urban officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about such laws: “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a St. Petersburg, Florida, city attorney stated in June 2009, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges…”

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty. So concludes a recent study from the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness, which finds that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with the harassment of the poor for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering, or carrying an open container.

The report lists America’s ten “meanest” cities — the largest of which include Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Orlando — but new contestants are springing up every day. In Colorado, Grand Junction’s city council is considering a ban on begging; Tempe, Arizona, carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent at the end of June. And how do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “an indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until December 2008, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants. It turned out that Szekeley, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs, or cuss in front of ladies, did indeed have one — for “criminal trespassing,” as sleeping on the streets is sometimes defined by the law. So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail.

“Can you imagine?” asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Szekeley. “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless?”

The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, leading to the arrests of several middle-aged white vegans.

One anti-sharing law was just overturned in Orlando, but the war on illicit generosity continues. Orlando is appealing the decision, and Middletown, Connecticut, is in the midst of a crackdown. More recently, Gainesville, Florida, began enforcing a rule limiting the number of meals that soup kitchens may serve to 130 people in one day, and Phoenix, Arizona, has been using zoning laws to stop a local church from serving breakfast to homeless people.

For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization, and one is debt. Anyone can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors’ prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can’t pay fines for things like expired inspection stickers may be made to “sit out their tickets” in jail.

More commonly, the path to prison begins when one of your creditors has a court summons issued for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another, such as that your address has changed and you never received it. Okay, now you’re in “contempt of the court.”

The second — and by far the most reliable — way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor succumbs to racial profiling, but whole communities are effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor. Flick a cigarette and you’re “littering”; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect. And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting arrest.”

In what has become a familiar pattern, the government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt. The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.

One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today, exactly the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents. The safety net, or what remains of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

It is not clear whether economic hard times will finally force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment. With even the official level of poverty increasing — to over 14 percent in 2010 — some states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty, using alternative sentencing methods, shortening probation, and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missing court appointments. But others, diabolically enough, are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes,” but charging prisoners for their room and board, guaranteeing they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of a number of books including “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” and “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.”

Read more at www.salon.com

criminal, fascism, harrass, hounded, illegal, london, middle class, officials, poor, poverty, recession, struggling, totalitairanism, urban, working

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Darcus Howe speaks out on London riots and We See America’s Future

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, economics, Politics on August 10, 2011

London is our future, Egypt is our future, Bahrain is our future…

Aug 9, 2011 7:58pm by Mickel Adzema in

Politics

In the category of Things That Want to be Said (so sad. so disturbing media response to heart-rending outcry) ….. mars is our future………

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

London Riots. (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)

Darcus Howe, a West Indian Writer and Broadcaster with a voice about the riots. Speaking about the mistreatment of youths by police leading to an up-roar and the ignorance of both police and the governement. Intelligent black male. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE!

(Also, did anyone notice that the interviewer tried to make him ignorant… Complete back-fire I must say)

Read more at www.youtube.com

London is our future, Egypt is our future, Bahrain is our future….

BBC, darcus howe, insurrection, interviewer, london riots, mistreatment, police, riot, Tottenham, west indian writer, youth

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America turns left — Progressives leaving Dems, and now Americans leaving Republicans

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, Politics, US on August 10, 2011

Americans are sorry now

But it’s a bit late, isn’t it.

Amplify’d from tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

CNN Poll: Grand Old Party Downgrade

Kyle Leighton | August 9, 2011, 12:58PM

TPM has been reporting for weeks about the effect of the debt debate on individual political leaders and the subsequently low ratings of Congress. But new data from a CNN poll shows that there’s been a difference in the minds of many Americans: the Democratic Party is getting a split on approval/disapproval at 47 – 47, but the Republican Party disapproval rating is all the way up to 59%, against a 33% approval.

The GOP approval rating has been going down in the CNN poll since their 2010 victories: in the October 27-30 version, the Republican Party had a small plurality in approval, at 44 – 43. But since last fall’s election they’ve seen a steady downward trend in the survey, to the current low, which is the highest disapproval rating in the CNN poll in the last twenty years.

The Tea Party itself actually has a lower disapproval rating at 51% than the Republican Party, and only a slightly lower approval rating at 31%.

Only 41 percent of people questioned say the lawmaker in their district in the U.S. House of Representatives deserves to be re-elected – the first time ever in CNN polling that that figure has dropped below 50 percent. Forty-nine percent say their representative doesn’t deserve to be re-elected in 2012. And with ten percent unsure, it’s the first time that a majority has indicated that they would boot their representative out of office if they had the chance today.

See more at tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

Americans are sorry now.

2010, american, approval, cnn poll, election, gop, grand old party downgrade, republican party, sorry, Tea Party

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Progessives leaving Dems – Down far enough, The implausible becomes plausible

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, economics, History, Politics, US on August 10, 2011

Down far enough, The implausible becomes plausible

this is a well-written, comprehensive, insightful article. i felt i had a good grasp of our true prospects after reading it. when you’re down far enough, many things you would previously not even have entertained are up from where you’re at

Amplify’d from politicalcontext.org

Progressives urged to leave the Democratic Party

The failure of President Obama and the Democrats to check the fiscally irresponsible and socially heartless behavior of House Republicans in the Debt Ceiling debacle, followed by Standard and Poor’s erroneous but financially devastating downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, has put the Democratic Party in its most precarious position in years. Even before the “deal” was struck last week, and certainly in its immediate wake, articles and declarations appeared in both mainstream and alternative media denouncing Obama and the Democrats as having failed poor and working people, as well as the Party’s progressive base. The question now: Will third parties take advantage of the potential exodous of tens of thousands of Democrats from their party, activists and citizens in search of a movement that truly represents their interests, as well as the economic interests of the majority of humanity?

Popular writer and radio commentator Jim Hightower was particularly critical of Obama in a Facebook note Hightower posted this morning:

In his big battle over the debt ceiling, Barack Obama waved his white hankie of surrender, allowing the loopiest of the tea party extremists in the Republican House to slash some $1 trillion from national programs that ordinary Americans count on. Obama’s bad deal also puts Social Security and Medicare at risk, while promising to make our depressed economy (and even the deficit) worse. And he cravenly conceded to the demand by GOP/tea party extremists that tax-dodging corporations, hedge-fund profiteers and the richest 1 percent of our nation’s plutocratic elite keep every dime of their subsidies, tax breaks and other federal giveaways. Not to worry, though, for Obama now says that stage two of the deficit reduction process will be better. The pampered and privileged few, he insists, will also have to “chip in,” and that he’ll be “fighting for” fundamental principles of fairness. But we’ve all seen again and again that this guy “fights” by backing up and begging for compromise. He talks tough about fighting for fairness “next time.” When will next time be now? I know a bit about fighting, having been a small guy growing up in a small Texas town where confrontations often popped up. I learned early on that you should never hit a man with glasses; you should hit him with something much heavier. The heavy “something” that Obama has at his disposal is the fact that the American people are overwhelmingly on his side in this fight. Rather than playing budgetary patty-cake with Republicans in the backrooms of Washington, negotiating over how much of FDR’s New Deal to throw out the window, he needs to FDR-up, get out of Washington, and rally the majority to go after the greedheads and screwballs with a bold program to get America moving again – moving upward and moving together.

John Atcheson added:

The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory … an industry friendly Supreme Court; a Democratic Party that is either in collusion with the plutocrats, or so cowardly as to be neutered; a press that reports outlandish lies and objective facts as if they were equivalent; and a public that is dazed and confused and convinced the government is their enemy.

The satirical newspaper The Onion chimed in, attributing to Obama the statement that the “Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike.” In the meantime, The Greens and other progressive parties are welcoming disaffected Democrats (and Republicans) with open arms. San Francisco Green Party activist Jack Wagner suggests that Greens should mobilize and host meetings “in every major U.S. city.” A new Facebook group, “Declare Your Independence from the Democrats!” already has 1,210 members and is growing quickly. Although the group is mainly facilitating internal debates about exactly where to go (debates featuring longtime third party activists as well as freshly disaffected Democrats), the quick growth of the group suggests that more than a few people are taking a good, hard look at alternative politics. Many of the group’s members appear to be entertaining socialist-oriented ideas, a trend which has been slowly but steadily growing in recent weeks.

Third and finally, in response to Democrats’ fear that defecting progressives will guarantee a sweep for the GOP in 2012, we might read the words of Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch, who speculates, with good reason, I think, that a McCain victory in 2008 would have been better for progressive politics than the disappointing Obama presidency has been:

Indeed, the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent. McCain! But, you wail, he would have plunged America into new wars, kept Guantanamo open, launched an onslaught on entitlements, surrendered to Wall Street and the banks…
McCain would have tried all these things, but maybe he would have quailed amid a storm of public protest. Under W. Bush’s two terms the spirit of opposition throve; the antiwar movement flourished; the labor movement was active; blacks militant. Amid a brilliant campaign mounted by the AFL-CIO, Bush’s hopes to gut social programs were dead within months of the start of his second term in 2004. But since 2008 a Democratic president has neutralized all these constituencies.

The many progressives now contemplating walking away from the Democratic Party no longer wish to remain neutralized.

Read more at politicalcontext.org

Down far enough, The implausible becomes plausible.

democratic party, democrats, failure, greens, leave, Obama, president obama, progressives, Republicans, third party

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Republicans saw Obama as Easy Mark

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, Culture, Politics, US on August 10, 2011

Republicans and the filthy rich from the beginning saw Obama as an easy mark. Decades ago, supporting my educational pursuits driving a hack, I was advised not too look like a target out on the streets, for “you could be just driving by and they would see it in you…and they’ll be on you like vultures.” Sad to say, I think Obama, radiating his red-state/blue-state enchantment, may have been seen a mile away as easy pickings and someone who could be rolled. It’s even possible his election may have been helped along because they saw a chance to cash in on such naivete. It’s possible they saw Hillary as much more a threat to them and sought to direct events his way.

“capitulation framed as compromise” … “false centrism” .. taking the middle point of two positions is not level-headed if one is an idiotic position

What Happened To Obama? (Devastating NY Times Piece)

A devastating New York Times piece by psychology professor Drew Westen called ‘What Happened To Obama?’ is discussed by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur.

Republicans saw Obama as Easy Mark.

blue-state, cenk uygur, drew westen, easy, election, enchantment, Hillary, mark, Obama, pickings, red-state, Republicans, rolled, young turks

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Auto Salesman Tells Mr. Boehner About the “Real People” and the “Lowlies” – Class Consciousness Allegory, Comedy

Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, Class, Comedy, economics, life, meaning, philosophy, psychology on August 9, 2011

Comedic Monologue with a Twist

I wish to finish this book on a philosophical note. It starts as comedy, which may not either be a bad idea right now after what we have seen together in previous chapters.

Interlude

It seems to me that since this exposition picks up, from here, and ventures into the even more dire, more intense—albeit fruitful and imperative—apprehension of our environmental debacle, this is a good time to step back, to contemplate and assimilate, and to the extent one can, be buoyed up, refreshed, and re-created before the necessary trek into the heart of this darkness. You might consider this the hobbit’s interlude in Elf Kingdom before taking up again the quest, continuing through the devastated land of Mordor to its center, to Mount Doom, where exists the only true brightness in the bleak expanse, the only hope.

Interlude

I’m not Auto Salesman, but I do know him.

This is Auto Salesman’s story. It is he talking. Lest one be confused, this is not me talking. I am not an auto salesman and don’t know the life that he describes for himself.

But I know of it, very well. I was brought up in a very much working class family. I know the class consciousness that auto salesman describes, having it everywhere around me as a child and adolescent…as brothers, father, friends, teachers, coworkers. I also went to a semi-ivy league college attended by many well-to-do students. And I have been a student or instructor at other such educational institutions in my life. I feel I have a little something to say about class differences and perceptions.

Still, this is Auto Salesman’s story, as I said. It came through me from god only knows where. I listen to it and read it with ever more understanding that I did not have when I spoke it a couple years ago. I often perceive it as a stranger would. This is the creation that I feel is the most alien thing that I have ever done, even more a distinct character and different from me than the fawnish character in “Thank You, George W. Bush.”

Not that I am at all unhappy that my muse chose to send it out to the world through me. I thoroughly enjoyed and still enjoy the entire bizarre yet philosophical world this monologue opens to us.

Time for the “eagle’s view”

Still, you be the judge. I can not know very well how others really take this. But I believe it is a powerful understanding, in the end, of the inner worlds that are in play in our national and world dramas at the moment and provides rare philosophical perspective on it all.

Anyway, what this is specifically is a very funny monologue in audio form with the bulk of it transcribed here as well.

Baby, he’s a rich man.

The character speaking is an auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other, a Mister Boehner by name, is a well-to-do man who is there to buy a car. Lest there be any misunderstanding the fact that he was given the name of the current Republican Speaker of the House has only one significance: I see the Speaker as a despicable representative and voice of the filthy rich. I do not mean to insinuate the Speaker’s actual life is in any way like that portrayed for the rich man or is even so by analogy. I am aware that in fact the Speaker’s life is quite different from the one depicted. However, it seems fitting that since Mister Boehner represents the moneyed elite in Congress his name should point to the wealthy here as well.

This monologue is a bit risqué at times, so be forewarned. However, it is not more risqué than you’d hear on cable TV. The well-to-do patron, Mister Boehner, is constantly teased, and sexual innuendos are used. But this monologue is more than just sexual banter.

In spite of ourselves…

In fact, the monologue uncovers more and more of the character. And despite one’s initial reaction to his crudeness—which could be revulsion, and even if that you can’t help laughing at him despite yourself—the listener is forced to have warmer feelings at times, and then more often. This puts one in a position of trying to unravel one’s various feelings about this working class crude person and the “rich” people that are described.

“Stand-Up” Philosophy

This reading is continually funny and becomes more philosophical toward the end and even a bit poignant. Overall it portrays class or people as complex, and the entire thing could be anyone’s Rohrshack Test, as there may be as many reactions to these people as there are listeners. As the dialog unfolds the auto salesman discloses and reveals increasingly more of himself.

The climax is when he tells a story about his boss’s life that moseys into allegory. In that way, the story reflects meaning back into the relationship at the car lot. The auto salesman’s strange push-pull dialog with the rich customer takes on a deeper meaning. The listener may not know what to do with the feelings evoked…may initially label the man as crude and no-class and later come to see a side behind the crudeness that looks more and more familiar. Yet there is absolutely no obvious message or bias apparent. How one views the ending is quite unique to each listener.

Anatomy of Class Consciousness –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is the author’s audio performance of this monologue of comedy, allegory, and analogy. To hear it, click on the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdqhrrmrvm
Anatomy of Class Consciousness – Comedic Monologue, Allegory, Analogy by SillyMickel Adzema

The Transcription – You Get to Laugh Here

“You Really Don’t Want to Leave” Beginning at 1:36 after “oh my mother”:

Now, you really don’t want ta leave without just writin down your name on this piece of scrap paper with this figure on it….

[laughing in background]

What are you laughing about? Ok, well it must be… Ok, as long as she’s with you…

[someone snort laughs]

You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!

As well! You really should snap it up now, but I hear… I hear ya, y’know—wife and kid dead for lack of HEALTH insurance because you lost your job! And they got two different conditions at the same time! And with all the different doctors for each of them, each getting many tests, since it was thought to be something more exotic than it turned out to be!

And, you having medical…and you having medical but you having to pay out of your pocket for the expenses and you had them see as many as you could afford. But it was not enough.

And now they’re up in heaven. And you got the insurance company money from this tragedy but of course, you’re really hurtin. So, I hear ya. Got it all, didn’t I?

C’mon you gotta admit I did that pretty well, right, Mr. Boehner?

Eh, whatever, Mr. Boehner, I understand. You’re down in the dumps…understandably, I say, understandably.

Hey! I also say, If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a suddenly die, all of em, y’know…. Not to mention it bein a lot of it on your head, y’know, cause you’re not being able to provide, as is our job, we men. And darn it I know that’s gotta be the hard ‘en not to think about, I know. I know it would break me, you see.

“Back behind the counter, Mister Boehner…”

Ye, wel…. Uh… Whataya doin there, Miste…. Mister Boehner, come on, man. Now just…. Now, now, na… Ok, now look…eyu….

[long pause]

It’s getting dark out there, yea, I understand that….

[an even longer pause]

[someone sings:] “Oh, my lover…I just…”

Now, Mister Boehner, you just stay away, now. I mean I know you’re… C’mon, man…. The…. I’m just your auto salesman, ok?

En, I know I’ve been awful kind to you, y’know?… And I’ve been talking to you about sex and everything and trying to cheer you up, y’know?… ‘Course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

Mister Boehner, well, that’s where I’m not going to, y’know, no, I’m, I’m not kinky, y’know?…. I’m not that way, ahm kinky, man, y’know? I mean, y’know, like I told you last time, I mean, I’m kinda en I’m kinky in the head! But that’s just in the head, y’know? No it don’t comen out, it don’t come out, I mean, I ain’t got holes in my ears, er nuttin like that, I mean, y’know.

Hey!….

So anyway….

Sorry bout that, and….

Y’know….

Not being able to provide for your wife and, eh I mean…I know how it would break me, y’see?

Yea, ya wish I had a buck fer every time that I’ve told….

Every time I’ve told….

[really, really long pause. Sound of lips smacking at times]

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

“You might say I made the world the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy…”

Ok, now. Ah, I’ll pretend that didn’t happen ok Mister Boehner, now, like….

Shew! Man. You guys are…. Where’d you say uh…. Never mind, never mind.

Ok, anyway.

I wish I had a buck for every time I told people that about your havin a damn right to be sad when your family all die off around you suddenly. Leaving you all alone…tsk, tsk, tsk.

Yep, that’s a bad one, no doubt, but you can see that…all those times I was sayin it…well you might say I made the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy and stuff…right now….

Just a little, of course! I mean…just. Y’know.

I mean, don’t overdo it or anything, y’know.

“Probably doin a lot of…Bible-thumping…”

Hell, I don’t need to pump myself up, I tell ya yer looking at the least of an ego kind of a guy as you’ve probably ever seen. But gotta I tell you, Mister Boehner, we all gotta look out for each another now…don’t you agree?

Like it says in the Bible. It just occurred to me you’re probably doin a lot of…like they say…Bible-thumping lately? Yea, we all get religion when we’re feeling so guilty and sinful, don’t we? Yea, we’re goin to church, Bible groups, and a course we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?

Yea, we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?… yea….

Ummm…. Yea….

Pray-in fer goin ta church! Prayin for our little girl…who lost her chance…to even have a life? And your no doubt loving wife for….

Seen the picture you showed me and she was the hot one!…WHOOOOO! MAN, YOU DOG! You bagged yerself an anilos, or a cougar, I mean…errr…more than a milf! I mean…erright, she…so she musta loved you, lookin that sexy… [chuckling]

Pretty perceptive, your wife…

I’m sayin this only as a complement to your good taste and your obvious qualities…that she saw in you…that nobody else can see, like….

How cu…how could I see them? y’know i mean….

Ha?…

I guess I’d have to be a hot chick er something though, couldn’t na…not of course…I mean, I…

No I hope you did’t think anything about my little joke. Nah, just plays fer me and maaan! I guess I’m a lot like you that way, you with that hot piece you had….

Guess you’re really, really gonna miss sex with her, huh?

Now don’t get tense, I know you’re sad….

Just tryin to cheer ya up is all!

“Not into anything weird…”

But this way, I mean I like sex and all but I’m not into anything weird or nothing not that there’s anything wrong with that if somebody else is [mumbles] but I’m just tryin ta say that I’m not into anything weird myself. I mean…it ain’t my taste….

But when you showed me her picture y’know I just…got to give you all the credit. You must got some…really powerful hidden charms er something [chuckling] only…only she can see like, y’know, I…don’t you ha…they have dog whistles that we can’t hear? Or it’s too loud for us? Or something?

Don’t wanna be saying anything stupid. That first way sounds too freakin impossible I’m sorry I did it, y’know?…said it, but…. But then it’s funny I maybe I…cin get a smile outa you yet!

Yea! The idea of a dog hearin a whistle that humans can’t hear, christ, how stupid!

Oh, sometimes I guess I…. Don’t it just seem that we all get a little…dim, and need to change our batteries, that’s all.

But let’s not be talkin about me, y’know I really gots to tell you that it’s a tribute to you and it’s the…godhonest truth, I’m not shittin jya, uh, believe me, why, why would I say this unless it were the truth cause like I say I ain’t no perv. Nope. Straight as an arrow.

But that hot babe a wife a yours…

Course, what did ya have to do? What did you have…what did you do….?

Heh!

[part removed]

Would ya have to do send out for the Saint Bernards when you’d lose your way in those mountains?

Yow, what I’m saying but…better not use that phrase any more.

These younger folks, y’know. They’d think I’m an old fart now I bet ‘ey got the same the same kind of joke amongst their own, y’know, friends these days.

But ain’t this a trip I guess the punch line is probably something so different I…. I can hear them talkin to each other ‘s like, “Hey, buddy….

[break in transcription]

Preacher Kid

…her own Dad … preacher guy, you say, oh oh, that’s sometimes pretty kinky. There’s all those guys on TV; then you find out they’re leaving the wife at home to be tappin prostitutes or prowlin or something.

No, nothing. It’s just a funny thing is all. It’s kinda like for the P.K and then for the PK kid, they’re all pretendin that, well, It’s like sex doesn’t exist. Oh, there’s birds, and then there’s bees.

“Looking for good bee and bird”

Now I am gonna have to laugh my ass off. I’m thinking of all these chicks , or guys, I’m not prejudiced, you see. And they’re all these PK kids and they’re now adult; and they start having articles in Playboy about how ya got these folks out a lookin in the country to like score… yo’know, like going down to the Southside for us, but they’re out looking for good bee and bird.

“Want cher best B and B,” I can hear them sayin it. Picture it’s like these Amish dudes, they’s askin. You know they’re now making fake fireplaces and making money hand over fist….

The Transcription – You Get to Think Here

37.30 On

So… Why ya mopin your life or begrudging me a little fun I get. I mean, hey, man, ya practically killed them yourself. With all you had you’d a thought you’d taken better care of them.

Listen, here is my gift to you.

“Lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights…”

So.. yea, got hook nose beak face slopey-headed profile…but…and I’m better lookin than you…but…money’s always a problem…and I won’t be sayin I’m too awful smart though I get by. I’ve had lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights. And I took the advice of the song, and I’m getting pretty ok spaghetti.

I learned to be happy for a nighttime…when the light’s out…and on those occasions when I’m in bed with my ugly wife, I’m sure as hell thinkin about something that looks more like yours.

So, you’re sad. That’s bad karma for practically BEING A MURDERER.

Ha, ha…just kiddin, just kiddin, bro…It coulda happened to anybody…it coulda been anyone of us…WHO HAPPENS TO BE AS BRAIN-DEAD AS YOU…

He he, no, I’m just foolin, I’m just foolin on you…got ya good that time though, didn’t I? he he

No, no, I didn’t mean no…I didn’t mean anything by it… I’m just a little goofin with your mind is all, y’know, like your mommie did, y’know

Peek-a-boo

“Where’s Mommie?” yer askin yerself,. You’re startin to cry, maybe, or begginnin to piss your pants…

Yer sayin, “The whole world has come to an end…” but you remember and never forgot it…and never forget it…that napkin that was dangling in the air…

How bright were you then, Mr. Blackberry, heh heh. Well that’s rich. Come on, Grumpy-Face, are you now gonna start cryin about missin your mommie?!

No, man, just goofin on ya. Just havin a little look-at-the-poor-little-geeky-faced-brain-dead-rich-boy fun…fun with you…

You think us poor folks can afford to have such thin skins?

Well, aren’t you lucky again then!? You think I give a shit anymore if a boss of mine comes in and chews me out for bein stupid for some job I did…callin me lazy or brain dead? Ya think it bothers me listenin to him…with his face right in mine and his words…heavier because of the ninety-proof SPIT that’s email attached to every ungrateful word jamming up my inbox? … Nooo. Not really.

The guy’s a drunk…but he doesn’t know what he’s talkin about. The jobs are done perfectly, to a T. Better than he could ever ‘ve done it in his prime.

“Too rich to think…he could ever…not know everything without having to learn anything…“

And even though I’ve never been accused of smart I’d run this business a hundred percent better than this sixty-seven year old snot nose little boy who was born too rich to think that he was just a…human in the end…. Too rich to think that he could ever be so unspecial and unprivileged as to not know everything without having to learn anything.

No. The poor guy’s just a little kid at one time…looks around at himself and his surroundings and then around at every one else and he learns that…what anyone else would conclude…everyone else except the others in his rich circle of specialness is lowly.

So he grows bigger. y’kin see him looking around but ever more down at the other people who are not special and whose lot in life seems to all be about growing smaller and smaller…even as he grows bigger and bigger. He was living on top of this house on top of the hill. He could just see those people far away..and he just never left there. And he just kept thinking, “Man, these people just keep growing smaller every time I get bigger!”

But he thought that made perfect sense. He didn’t know any different. But poor guy actually while gaining in height even grows bigger in girth and, like I said, still comparing he sees even his overweightness as more proof of his specialness and their smallness.

“Magical abilities to know…without cracking a book…divinely inspired…”

His magical abilities to know all the answers without cracking a book…is like intuition or divinely inspired…so his sense of his greatness expanding, his ego swelling like a hot-air balloon…and all the people looking like ants from his place of specialness.

Divine privilege, it is now, and wisdom, and power. As an adult it seems there is but one path, but that’s as meaningless to him as saying there’s only one God…he he he.

But, y’know, he’s surrounded by others who quite magically…it seems to him…and conjuring further is further proof of its truth…as if he needed any, having been letting him know over the course of his life increasingly and then as an adult, without inhibition and doubt, or restraint, amongst themselves that is, letting it be known that in fact they have all the same conclusions…see the world the same way…right down to the tiniest details.

It is so divine, uncanny, wonderful, and more and more just so plainly obvious that he cannot imagine…it simply never occurred to him…that in his infrequent excursions among the Lowly—a term describing the absolutely only way he can see them. And the only way all the so-called real people in his circle can see them too. And it being so obviously true he is sure they all see it.

“They can do no sin…”

So in these infrequent instances of elbow rubbing with the masses, he is confirmed in everything, even by these Lowlies themselves–to their obvious deference to him, their currying of his favor, and friendship, their often lowly, base, slavish lowering of themselves, humiliating themselves in their willingness to debase themselves with a smile and their caving to any and all of his wishes, desires, or lusts, year after year passing, where no longer anything worthy of even a passing thought of this now obviously perfect and righteous structure of the world of living things—God above, but very much alike to himself and the others in his circle…they can do no sin…their decisions are always correct…their understandings of the way of things, always perfectly accurate.

“Below…these…’creatures’…”

And below are these disturbingly base, ignoble, shameless…well…”creatures”…rather. For certainly closer to the hordes of other living things than they are to his kind.

And of course these animal, insect, and myriad other living things being lower still can only be seen as things to be used as resources. For they are eaten as food, forced to do work, to satisfy ‘em… much like the human Lowlies. The needs, wishes, urges, desires, and proclivities of the “real” people.

It’s the universe perfectly in order with all things—animal, vegetable, mineral…everything, indeed, that exists…facing inward as if it were toward the center of this huge circle of everything. And at the center are himself and those like him.

“The only morality…”

The only morality that exists or even could exist he thought once, in a rare philosophical moment, are the things consistent with his obviously truthful, very easy to understand universe.

How perfect. How simple. There is no grief or hardship other than for those in the Circle of Privilege. For anything without had its very reason for coming into existence the fact that it might at some time be brought forth, taken, used, consumed, or in some way allowed to fulfill or play a part in the enhancing of the pleasure, worth, or feeling of experiencing life for those in the Circle.

“No other experience than their experience…”

For in their charity of their truth, there IS no other experience than their experience. No other actually true life, no actually true pleasure, no really existing pain other than those of the Circle.

The other, seemingly living things, in fact, depend upon the ones in the Circle to do the living that they are incapable of…but which as the ones in the circle have observed…they can have a kind of creature or zombie life-sense to the extent that they can mirror, ape, emulate, mimic, fake the experiences of the Real People.

So a phantom kind of experience is that which sustains them and is the goal, source, and reason for their being. But they do not have real experience of their own. They are totally dependent on those in the Circle to live and experience life. As whatever their experience, it is a direct feed from the center.

Thus, the richness of experience in all forms becomes the food for all…the sustenance of life, its only reason.

“Lowlies…place…midway…between lifeless matter and…”real” beings…”

The Lowlies are phantom or creature-like things that have their place in reality, truth, experience, consciousness at about a midway point between the non-living substances—that which is inert, lifeless, matter—and the “real” beings.

There is therefore only two paths in their life. Facing into the world of nonbeing, inert matter, which is obviously their fate at some point; and facing in the direction of the Center, which emanates aliveness, richness, drama, lust, complexity, desire, fear, power, omnipotence, all derivatives of immediate experience.

Morality, for example. Which is defined thusly: What is good is whatever is acted, experienced, thought, or felt by the Reals. So both the Reals and the Lowlies are symbiotically related. The one as source of life. The other as mere resources to serve as the things or toys that can be used or not used.

It is all about what the Reals can desire, imagine, wish for, consume, or want…or make out of things other than them. And that includes the Lowlies.

The Lowlies fix their attention on the Center.

But the Lowlies are capable of a phantom-like semi existence, say, feeding on the actual events and experience, and the sights, sounds, and movements of those in the Center. They therefore face toward the Center, and fix their attention there. For it is the only place from which a vicarious experience, involving the imagining and acting out of that which it is possible for Lowlies to apprehend.

So that was the universe that spawned my boss. One problem in this perfection. Something so horrible that all the seeming benefit of being Real of the Circle of the Source, the Special, became turned upon its head.

“They were the only Deciders…”

You see, in time, gradually, little by little, then more frequently and increasingly, my boss, and others in the Circle, not all–through pure random action or as a result of the events not controllable–who did everything and every resource had as its purpose not just the possibility of being used, consumed, or simply to exist as backdrop for the ones in the Circle, but, for as the Real people saw it, being akin to divinity, perhaps Divinity itself as far as they could tell, they were the only Deciders, Intenders, Planners, Schemers, Desirers, and independent actors.

So it sustained their beliefs of the way of reality to use freely of the resources, either to use lightly, if their intentions, imaginations, and decisions regarding what would happen and exist was of a kind that did not require much of those not them. On the other hand if their desires, intentions, play and so forth involved heavy use, misuse, or destruction, consumption of those not them, it was all the same in terms of the rightness of things.

As mentioned there were things that happened that were not…well, you might say…in the playbook. And this was the big flaw in that entire system.

“What they had to do…is…pretty much stick to themselves…”

I don’t know how long, how many years, it may have been hundreds, that his family and his kind lived that way. But, well, just look around you in this day and age. What they had to do to maintain that idea is they had to pretty much stick to themselves all the time, pretty much not get to know any of the Lowlies. And that was pretty easy, cause if you looked at the Lowlies and you felt that, you know, they were not quite human, you didn’t have any inclination.

But what, perchance, if you’re down at a place in town or something, and perhaps one of the Lowlies is keeping a shop there. And then she should happen to smile at you, or one of the ones in the Circle.

And then she starts…”How ya doin today” and all that. And it’s like, the woman you figure, she’s probably programmed that way and everything but…you got, you see the great smile. And then you realize, she’s like…listenin…and she’s chipper…and she’s…well, that’s the sad thing is that, for all of their drama making and everything, all of their plans of doin this and doin that so that other people could experience stuff…well, the problem with my boss was…and…he had an experience like so many others did or were starting to have, and this was his experience with that girl, y’know?

And he saw her just…in that store…just…singin, being chipper, havin fun…seemin to dance around the store, y’know…as if she was just…happy….

But there was no reason to be happy. Especially not for her. And she didn’t get no happiness from up there…in the Circle. So he was dumbfounded.

“They’d had so many…they thought…experiences…costing lots of money…”

Not only that but the nature of her happiness was so far beyond anything that he’d seen anywhere that was called happiness. They’d had so many, so many…wonderful…they thought…experiences…really well planned out…y’know, costing lots of money and stuff.

And there she was. No money. Nothing. And yet she seemed really happy in a way that seemed more real and genuine than anything he’d ever seen.

Well, that really shook my boss. And…there was a series of those kind of events and….

I don’t know how many people live up in that Circle or even if it exists but my boss got older and he started doing this stuff and I got to be a job with him.

Well, all I can say is there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t seen him…. Heh… funny… Well, he was sayin how they would all say how these Lowlies were livin half lives, like zombies.

“Never seen him as anything but…”

Y’know, it’s the strangest thing, Mr. Boehner, I never…since the day I met him I’ve never seen him as anything but a zombie…bein on booze all the time…

And so… I can’t hate him… I mean, could you? .. I mean…could you? Could your kind….?

I mean…. That’s like kinda like hatin…well…an animal that annoys ya. You don’t go smack a dog around or a cat or nuttin like that just for bein a dog or cat!

And whatever he is, it’s like, he can’t help being himself now, now he’s already it. And I don’t even know if he ever had any choice in becoming it…what he became ‘cause…all’s I know is I never thought much of life and I never…I never…I never so, y’know…thought of myself as close to divinity or maybe God Himself *scoffing* and I never thought everybody around me, oh, could do whatever they, y’know, I could have whatever I wanted. I never thought I had that kind of power or that kind of importance or anything.

So, y’know…so they “Sweep this up here,”and, y’know, “Fix that thing over there,” and, y’know, I say they can say whatever they want I mean, I don’t care.

Perfection in a world like mine…and I get ok spaghetti…

It’s like…I like it, y’know? I like using my hands. I like touching the earth. I like the touch of tools…nice cold tools, and makin nice snappy wrenches and nice snappy sounds as you’re twistin those things around and you’re getting tight, just right perfect snug. There’s perfection in a world like mine.

And, y’know, it’s like, there’s no stress, I mean. Sure, I mean, I ain’t got your kind of wife, I mean. I like got ok spaghetti, like I said, y’know?

And, uh, now how do I compare that…. I ain’t really ever been unhappy really….. Disappointed…. But easy to accept considerin my background and… People around me, it’s like, it ‘s not like, it’s not like I’m any worse than anybody.

So I don’t feel bad really. And…and my boss…I don’t know how it would feel, Mr. Boehner, do you? You’re all the way from up from being a…years and years and years thinkin yer…yer god-like…you’re above everybody…you’re divine, and there’s no…and everybody’s there for your pleasure…and there’s nobody can resist you?

In fact I wonder what happened with that girl. I mean that first girl. I mean, I wonder if she…if he really…he’d ever….

He talked about her a lot. But now that I’m remembering the way he talked about her, it was like, it wasn’t happy after a while, it was like….

“Musta been…she was…happy…said no…had some respect…”

My god, I think that’s what did it. I think it was probably the first time he had an experience where somebody wasn’t fallin all over him, willin to do everything he wanted. It’s…it musta been that she was just so happy and everything and…she said no, and had some respect.

But don’t ya see what all that is from how high…. Can you imagine feelin that superior and dominant? And then comin down and bein..like as if you’re like now like you’re livin with the worms and that’s what you found out you’re more akin to them than the birds in the sky that you were once flyin with? Huh!

So how can I be mad at him?

Is anyone livin’…the real one…?

So what I want ta ask you, Mr. Boehner…you rich folks…pretty wives…unfortunate tragedies… god only knows what kind of sex and imean uh… And you know, us…. And then there’s my boss….

Now, who’s livin the vicarious life? Who’s livin the real one? Or is anyone?

ANYway. Mr. Boehner, you just put that piece of paper down there, and you put your name on it and I’ll have it for you tomorrow, and, uh…. Don’t forget, y’know, guess you’re gettin your ride home tonight, hear it comin….

You’re thinkin about your wife and your kids and everything and…

So remember I’m always on your side, but y’know….

[singin] The dancin’ she do ain’t gonna be with you… hahahahaha….

“Class Consciousness” – Some Important Parts

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors

Description

This is as funny as it sounds. I did it; and I still can’t stop laughing, especially since it was completely unplanned, an improv off of a screw-up in the reading of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.”

When these things come through you in the spur of the moment, when you’re on a roll, you just know that God’s got to be the best comic of all. I don’t know where else this kind of material comes from. I’m still laughing.

Hey, maybe I can do what auto salesman wanted to do, yea! That’s the ticket, “SillyMickel does Perry Como does the Doors.” Yea. They’d wait months for tickets to that show. Yea!

Oh my God, did I just say that out loud. I didn’t did I? No way!! Oh, I did? … (damn!)

Sample Quote

“Oh, man, who the hell, who the hell sings like that, man. That was like the fucking worst I’ve ever sung. Man, where my mind been that I can’t remember the Doors, and somewhere out of the really far past, I’m singing “Backdoor Man” by Perry Como…. Wow….

“But ya know. Somebody’s laughing I think I can make a gig out of this…. Ya know, can’t you see it: ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’”

There’s’ no way that any more can be expressed in text; it has to be heard.

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wxfdxpxcqw
Image of “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” by SillyMickel Adzema

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

Description:

This is just plain nonsense–a combination of vocal gymnastics and memorable one-liners, super-silliness cut from the beginning of “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” The primary speaker is the auto salesman. The invisible non-speaking other is a well-to-do man, called Mr. Boehner, who is there to buy a car. His actions are implied from the reaction of the auto guy.

As far as who is the singer and who is the snorter, that is the riddle for the listener to try to solve. Along with how John Wayne managed to walk through…and how come he can’t see.

Sample Quotes:

“I’ve been telling you about the “filthy rich….”

“You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!”

“If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a sudden, suddenly die, all of them….”

“I know I’ve been awful kind to you…and I’ve been talking to you about sex and all, trying to cheer you up, y’know..course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

“I’m not kinky…. I’m just kinky in the head; but that’s just in the head; it don’t come out; don’t come out; I ain’t got like holes in my ears, er anything.”

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vftvxfgqjx
Image of “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” by SillyMickel Adzema

Others by Auto Salesman

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

The following audio is a takeoff from “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” above. It is not in the larger “Anatomy” audio.

Description

This picks up from the clip “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors.” It takes the story forward to a time after Auto Salesman has tried out his “special talent” in front of an audience tryin to sell his CDs shopping-network style.

Sample Quotes

“You too can have the full 15-CD set. Each one packed with eight hours of Perry Como…er, me…doing Perry Como…doing The Doors…Rolling Stones…and Beatles…and, you name it! Probly got it….”

“Ok, I’ll try something different next time then….”

“I didn’t like those looks I got from the audience…. It was like…I mean…If I was on the G Network or QVC, whatever like that, man. It’s like, if they had anybody in the audience, it’s like… Shit, man, and I’d be, I’d have to go run off the stage, and, y’know…. I’d just, y’know…wow, man…Jee-sus. I mean – if there’d be more of them they’d be throwin up, it was like that bad, y’know…it’s like…Jesus Christ! Specially that one woman…she-sh’ dinu’fess at all, man, she like — Wow, man… How’d you get to be alive, you suck….”

“I can’t seem ta think of the tones… What happened to me…what happened to me I forgot The Doors and I been Perry Como’d and…….they did somethin ta me…when I was a kid…they must’ve injected Perry Como syrup inta me er sumpthin…. I’m telling you they injected Perry Como syrup, I mean they were dishin’ all kinds a stuff fer the kids ‘n… I mean they were conrollin’ those little fucks-i’mean us.. me.. they were tryin ta control us…

“And they would use anything…spankin’ ‘n…sirup…injections… I mean, I believe it…

“We only caught ‘em on the LSD later on… We don’t know what they were doing earlier… to little kids… yea, they won’t tell you that.”

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

To hear this takeoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vrtvpvpdyb
Image of AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

This is the last clip in the Auto Salesman series.

Description

This is not clipped from the long monologue and is another spinoff from “Anatomy of Class Consciousness.” In this one, Auto Salesman tears into the author, SillyMickel, talking kind of like his alter-ego.

Sample Quotes

About SillyMickel, Auto Salesman says:

“What’s his big fucking beef? What’s he got against George W. Bush? What’s his beef anyway…better than that bozo we got up there. I don’t know what’s his beef. He says something like, ‘Oh, he says, oh, he says like, oh, I…why, he says…he says,
‘Why George W. Bush, he, uh, he’s behind the Trade Center bombing and it was a government job, all for the purpose of doing this and that, and it killed thousands of people,’

“and, not only that he said the scientists are saying that we only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.

“And I say, “You call them reasons?” ….

“You call them reasons?” I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocket book one bit! Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care? I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to effect them!

“Now, as far as the children and the grandchildren … are gonna die in a fiery inferno and whatever in the next 20, 30 years and all the planet’s gonna be wiped out, now, I think: THEY should be worried! It’s THEIR problem, right? Ain’t my problem…why should I care?

“So, I said to that erudite little fuck, ‘You stay in your fuckin’ jar…well, stop botherin’ me with this stuff about how we’re all gonna die and everything like that because NOBODY cares…If it’s not them, you know, they don’t even care about their children so…what does it matter!?….”

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

To hear this spinoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdksvpbqyt
Image of Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

Continue with Apocalypse Emergency –
Part One: Trillion-Alarm Fire

Invite you to follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/sillymickel

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

allegory, auto salesman, boehner, Circle, class, Comedy, Consciousness, Lowlies, perry como, Real People, snorter, the doors

1 Comment

Volatile Market – S&P Downgrade for Profit!!

Posted by sillymickel in activism, Class, economics, Politics, US on August 8, 2011

This S&P downgrade is to make money.This volatility in the market IS WANTED by the richest, the investors, filthy rich, esp, hedge-fund managers (the person with the greatest income last year was a hedge fund manager). They don’t want to make money the old-fashioned way by letting it build. They want the market going up and down in wild swings so they can make money on the sweeps up, as well as the plunges down (selling short, buying puts). This whole thing is about churning the market to suck out more money and do it faster.

And where does that money come from? Well, the not-so-rich — pension funds, 401k accounts, your retirement, your portfolio…

Then, of course, that money they extract gives them political and other power to take other things from you–more money, your rights, your health, your happiness, your country. sorry to be the bearer of bad news *sarcasm*

i worked the market online for over 10 years (off and on, full-time). it is set up to suck money out of the unsuspecting (notice those e-trade ads, e.g., they want to attract the “innocents” is the message, not that it is so easy a baby could do it).

There is insider trading, and market-making..outright manipulation. The regulations went out the window, so you have a fairer chance at gambling. (I’m serious. One of the richest gamblers in the world shunned the market after, as he put it, he “got robbed.”)

thr’s shitloads of $$$ to be made in volatility. speculators gonna cash in on just the threat of default… still more if it would happen. there’s no incentive for sanity in our system any more

They make money buying equities at the lower price and selling them higher, but they make money on the slide down, too, buying up puts and shorting the market. that’s how Goldman Sachs came out gold in the big crash of 08. They don’t have to buy low, sell high. they can sell high, buy low. they make money either direction. ALL THE MARKET HAS TO DO IS MOVE. There is absolutely NO FINANCIAL INCENTIVE FOR STABILITY in the market. (i did it with my stash too, till they cleaned me out with insider trading, and such)

default, downgrade, filthy rich, investors, manipulate, market, money, S&P, short, volatile, volatility

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Class War Comedy, Allegory, Philosophy

Posted by sillymickel in Class, Comedy, life, meaning, philosophy, psychology on August 7, 2011

Class Consciousness

Comedic Monologue with a Twist

I wish to finish this book on a philosophical note. It starts as comedy, which may not either be a bad idea right now after what we have seen together in previous chapters.

Interlude

Interlude

I’m not Auto Salesman, but I do know him.

This is Auto Salesman’s story. It is he talking. Lest one be confused, this is not me talking. I am not an auto salesman and don’t know the life that he describes for himself.

Not that I am at all unhappy that my muse chose to send it out to the world through me. I thoroughly enjoyed and still enjoy the entire bizarre yet philosophical world this monologue opens to us.

Time for the “eagle’s view”

Anyway, what this is specifically is a very funny monologue in audio form with the bulk of it transcribed here as well.

Baby, he’s a rich man.

In spite of ourselves…

“Stand-Up” Philosophy

Anatomy of Class Consciousness –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is the author’s audio performance of this monologue of comedy, allegory, and analogy. To hear it, click on the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdqhrrmrvm
Anatomy of Class Consciousness – Comedic Monologue, Allegory, Analogy by SillyMickel Adzema

The Transcription – You Get to Laugh Here

“You Really Don’t Want to Leave” Beginning at 1:36 after “oh my mother”:

Now, you really don’t want ta leave without just writin down your name on this piece of scrap paper with this figure on it….

[laughing in background]

What are you laughing about? Ok, well it must be… Ok, as long as she’s with you…

[someone snort laughs]

You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!

As well! You really should snap it up now, but I hear… I hear ya, y’know—wife and kid dead for lack of HEALTH insurance because you lost your job! And they got two different conditions at the same time! And with all the different doctors for each of them, each getting many tests, since it was thought to be something more exotic than it turned out to be!

And, you having medical…and you having medical but you having to pay out of your pocket for the expenses and you had them see as many as you could afford. But it was not enough.

And now they’re up in heaven. And you got the insurance company money from this tragedy but of course, you’re really hurtin. So, I hear ya. Got it all, didn’t I?

C’mon you gotta admit I did that pretty well, right, Mr. Boehner?

Eh, whatever, Mr. Boehner, I understand. You’re down in the dumps…understandably, I say, understandably.

Hey! I also say, If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a suddenly die, all of em, y’know…. Not to mention it bein a lot of it on your head, y’know, cause you’re not being able to provide, as is our job, we men. And darn it I know that’s gotta be the hard ‘en not to think about, I know. I know it would break me, you see.

“Back behind the counter, Mister Boehner…”

Ye, wel…. Uh… Whataya doin there, Miste…. Mister Boehner, come on, man. Now just…. Now, now, na… Ok, now look…eyu….

[long pause]

It’s getting dark out there, yea, I understand that….

[an even longer pause]

[someone sings:] “Oh, my lover…I just…”

Now, Mister Boehner, you just stay away, now. I mean I know you’re… C’mon, man…. The…. I’m just your auto salesman, ok?

En, I know I’ve been awful kind to you, y’know?… And I’ve been talking to you about sex and everything and trying to cheer you up, y’know?… ‘Course you didn’t have to hit me in the face for that one thing, y’know….”

Mister Boehner, well, that’s where I’m not going to, y’know, no, I’m, I’m not kinky, y’know?…. I’m not that way, ahm kinky, man, y’know? I mean, y’know, like I told you last time, I mean, I’m kinda en I’m kinky in the head! But that’s just in the head, y’know? No it don’t comen out, it don’t come out, I mean, I ain’t got holes in my ears, er nuttin like that, I mean, y’know.

Hey!….

So anyway….

Sorry bout that, and….

Y’know….

Not being able to provide for your wife and, eh I mean…I know how it would break me, y’see?

Yea, ya wish I had a buck fer every time that I’ve told….

Every time I’ve told….

[really, really long pause. Sound of lips smacking at times]

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

“You might say I made the world the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy…”

Ok, now. Ah, I’ll pretend that didn’t happen ok Mister Boehner, now, like….

Shew! Man. You guys are…. Where’d you say uh…. Never mind, never mind.

Ok, anyway.

I wish I had a buck for every time I told people that about your havin a damn right to be sad when your family all die off around you suddenly. Leaving you all alone…tsk, tsk, tsk.

Yep, that’s a bad one, no doubt, but you can see that…all those times I was sayin it…well you might say I made the world a little bit more accepting of your right to be grumpy and stuff…right now….

Just a little, of course! I mean…just. Y’know.

I mean, don’t overdo it or anything, y’know.

“Probably doin a lot of…Bible-thumping…”

Hell, I don’t need to pump myself up, I tell ya yer looking at the least of an ego kind of a guy as you’ve probably ever seen. But gotta I tell you, Mister Boehner, we all gotta look out for each another now…don’t you agree?

Like it says in the Bible. It just occurred to me you’re probably doin a lot of…like they say…Bible-thumping lately? Yea, we all get religion when we’re feeling so guilty and sinful, don’t we? Yea, we’re goin to church, Bible groups, and a course we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?

Yea, we’re prayin like crazy, aren’t we?… yea….

Ummm…. Yea….

Pray-in fer goin ta church! Prayin for our little girl…who lost her chance…to even have a life? And your no doubt loving wife for….

Seen the picture you showed me and she was the hot one!…WHOOOOO! MAN, YOU DOG! You bagged yerself an anilos, or a cougar, I mean…errr…more than a milf! I mean…erright, she…so she musta loved you, lookin that sexy… [chuckling]

Pretty perceptive, your wife…

I’m sayin this only as a complement to your good taste and your obvious qualities…that she saw in you…that nobody else can see, like….

How cu…how could I see them? y’know i mean….

Ha?…

I guess I’d have to be a hot chick er something though, couldn’t na…not of course…I mean, I…

No I hope you did’t think anything about my little joke. Nah, just plays fer me and maaan! I guess I’m a lot like you that way, you with that hot piece you had….

Guess you’re really, really gonna miss sex with her, huh?

Now don’t get tense, I know you’re sad….

Just tryin to cheer ya up is all!

“Not into anything weird…”

But this way, I mean I like sex and all but I’m not into anything weird or nothing not that there’s anything wrong with that if somebody else is [mumbles] but I’m just tryin ta say that I’m not into anything weird myself. I mean…it ain’t my taste….

But when you showed me her picture y’know I just…got to give you all the credit. You must got some…really powerful hidden charms er something [chuckling] only…only she can see like, y’know, I…don’t you ha…they have dog whistles that we can’t hear? Or it’s too loud for us? Or something?

Don’t wanna be saying anything stupid. That first way sounds too freakin impossible I’m sorry I did it, y’know?…said it, but…. But then it’s funny I maybe I…cin get a smile outa you yet!

Yea! The idea of a dog hearin a whistle that humans can’t hear, christ, how stupid!

Oh, sometimes I guess I…. Don’t it just seem that we all get a little…dim, and need to change our batteries, that’s all.

But let’s not be talkin about me, y’know I really gots to tell you that it’s a tribute to you and it’s the…godhonest truth, I’m not shittin jya, uh, believe me, why, why would I say this unless it were the truth cause like I say I ain’t no perv. Nope. Straight as an arrow.

But that hot babe a wife a yours…

Course, what did ya have to do? What did you have…what did you do….?

Heh!

[part removed]

Would ya have to do send out for the Saint Bernards when you’d lose your way in those mountains?

Yow, what I’m saying but…better not use that phrase any more.

These younger folks, y’know. They’d think I’m an old fart now I bet ‘ey got the same the same kind of joke amongst their own, y’know, friends these days.

But ain’t this a trip I guess the punch line is probably something so different I…. I can hear them talkin to each other ‘s like, “Hey, buddy….

[break in transcription]

Preacher Kid

…her own Dad … preacher guy, you say, oh oh, that’s sometimes pretty kinky. There’s all those guys on TV; then you find out they’re leaving the wife at home to be tappin prostitutes or prowlin or something.

No, nothing. It’s just a funny thing is all. It’s kinda like for the P.K and then for the PK kid, they’re all pretendin that, well, It’s like sex doesn’t exist. Oh, there’s birds, and then there’s bees.

“Looking for good bee and bird”

Now I am gonna have to laugh my ass off. I’m thinking of all these chicks , or guys, I’m not prejudiced, you see. And they’re all these PK kids and they’re now adult; and they start having articles in Playboy about how ya got these folks out a lookin in the country to like score… yo’know, like going down to the Southside for us, but they’re out looking for good bee and bird.

“Want cher best B and B,” I can hear them sayin it. Picture it’s like these Amish dudes, they’s askin. You know they’re now making fake fireplaces and making money hand over fist….

The Transcription – You Get to Think Here

37.30 On

So… Why ya mopin your life or begrudging me a little fun I get. I mean, hey, man, ya practically killed them yourself. With all you had you’d a thought you’d taken better care of them.

Listen, here is my gift to you.

“Lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights…”

So.. yea, got hook nose beak face slopey-headed profile…but…and I’m better lookin than you…but…money’s always a problem…and I won’t be sayin I’m too awful smart though I get by. I’ve had lots of Tom Waits Saturday nights. And I took the advice of the song, and I’m getting pretty ok spaghetti.

I learned to be happy for a nighttime…when the light’s out…and on those occasions when I’m in bed with my ugly wife, I’m sure as hell thinkin about something that looks more like yours.

So, you’re sad. That’s bad karma for practically BEING A MURDERER.

Ha, ha…just kiddin, just kiddin, bro…It coulda happened to anybody…it coulda been anyone of us…WHO HAPPENS TO BE AS BRAIN-DEAD AS YOU…

He he, no, I’m just foolin, I’m just foolin on you…got ya good that time though, didn’t I? he he

No, no, I didn’t mean no…I didn’t mean anything by it… I’m just a little goofin with your mind is all, y’know, like your mommie did, y’know

Peek-a-boo

“Where’s Mommie?” yer askin yerself,. You’re startin to cry, maybe, or begginnin to piss your pants…

Yer sayin, “The whole world has come to an end…” but you remember and never forgot it…and never forget it…that napkin that was dangling in the air…

How bright were you then, Mr. Blackberry, heh heh. Well that’s rich. Come on, Grumpy-Face, are you now gonna start cryin about missin your mommie?!

No, man, just goofin on ya. Just havin a little look-at-the-poor-little-geeky-faced-brain-dead-rich-boy fun…fun with you…

You think us poor folks can afford to have such thin skins?

Well, aren’t you lucky again then!? You think I give a shit anymore if a boss of mine comes in and chews me out for bein stupid for some job I did…callin me lazy or brain dead? Ya think it bothers me listenin to him…with his face right in mine and his words…heavier because of the ninety-proof SPIT that’s email attached to every ungrateful word jamming up my inbox? … Nooo. Not really.

The guy’s a drunk…but he doesn’t know what he’s talkin about. The jobs are done perfectly, to a T. Better than he could ever ‘ve done it in his prime.

“Too rich to think…he could ever…not know everything without having to learn anything…“

And even though I’ve never been accused of smart I’d run this business a hundred percent better than this sixty-seven year old snot nose little boy who was born too rich to think that he was just a…human in the end…. Too rich to think that he could ever be so unspecial and unprivileged as to not know everything without having to learn anything.

No. The poor guy’s just a little kid at one time…looks around at himself and his surroundings and then around at every one else and he learns that…what anyone else would conclude…everyone else except the others in his rich circle of specialness is lowly.

So he grows bigger. y’kin see him looking around but ever more down at the other people who are not special and whose lot in life seems to all be about growing smaller and smaller…even as he grows bigger and bigger. He was living on top of this house on top of the hill. He could just see those people far away..and he just never left there. And he just kept thinking, “Man, these people just keep growing smaller every time I get bigger!”

But he thought that made perfect sense. He didn’t know any different. But poor guy actually while gaining in height even grows bigger in girth and, like I said, still comparing he sees even his overweightness as more proof of his specialness and their smallness.

“Magical abilities to know…without cracking a book…divinely inspired…”

His magical abilities to know all the answers without cracking a book…is like intuition or divinely inspired…so his sense of his greatness expanding, his ego swelling like a hot-air balloon…and all the people looking like ants from his place of specialness.

Divine privilege, it is now, and wisdom, and power. As an adult it seems there is but one path, but that’s as meaningless to him as saying there’s only one God…he he he.

But, y’know, he’s surrounded by others who quite magically…it seems to him…and conjuring further is further proof of its truth…as if he needed any, having been letting him know over the course of his life increasingly and then as an adult, without inhibition and doubt, or restraint, amongst themselves that is, letting it be known that in fact they have all the same conclusions…see the world the same way…right down to the tiniest details.

It is so divine, uncanny, wonderful, and more and more just so plainly obvious that he cannot imagine…it simply never occurred to him…that in his infrequent excursions among the Lowly—a term describing the absolutely only way he can see them. And the only way all the so-called real people in his circle can see them too. And it being so obviously true he is sure they all see it.

“They can do no sin…”

So in these infrequent instances of elbow rubbing with the masses, he is confirmed in everything, even by these Lowlies themselves–to their obvious deference to him, their currying of his favor, and friendship, their often lowly, base, slavish lowering of themselves, humiliating themselves in their willingness to debase themselves with a smile and their caving to any and all of his wishes, desires, or lusts, year after year passing, where no longer anything worthy of even a passing thought of this now obviously perfect and righteous structure of the world of living things—God above, but very much alike to himself and the others in his circle…they can do no sin…their decisions are always correct…their understandings of the way of things, always perfectly accurate.

“Below…these…’creatures’…”

And below are these disturbingly base, ignoble, shameless…well…”creatures”…rather. For certainly closer to the hordes of other living things than they are to his kind.

And of course these animal, insect, and myriad other living things being lower still can only be seen as things to be used as resources. For they are eaten as food, forced to do work, to satisfy ‘em… much like the human Lowlies. The needs, wishes, urges, desires, and proclivities of the “real” people.

It’s the universe perfectly in order with all things—animal, vegetable, mineral…everything, indeed, that exists…facing inward as if it were toward the center of this huge circle of everything. And at the center are himself and those like him.

“The only morality…”

The only morality that exists or even could exist he thought once, in a rare philosophical moment, are the things consistent with his obviously truthful, very easy to understand universe.

How perfect. How simple. There is no grief or hardship other than for those in the Circle of Privilege. For anything without had its very reason for coming into existence the fact that it might at some time be brought forth, taken, used, consumed, or in some way allowed to fulfill or play a part in the enhancing of the pleasure, worth, or feeling of experiencing life for those in the Circle.

“No other experience than their experience…”

For in their charity of their truth, there IS no other experience than their experience. No other actually true life, no actually true pleasure, no really existing pain other than those of the Circle.

The other, seemingly living things, in fact, depend upon the ones in the Circle to do the living that they are incapable of…but which as the ones in the circle have observed…they can have a kind of creature or zombie life-sense to the extent that they can mirror, ape, emulate, mimic, fake the experiences of the Real People.

So a phantom kind of experience is that which sustains them and is the goal, source, and reason for their being. But they do not have real experience of their own. They are totally dependent on those in the Circle to live and experience life. As whatever their experience, it is a direct feed from the center.

Thus, the richness of experience in all forms becomes the food for all…the sustenance of life, its only reason.

“Lowlies…place…midway…between lifeless matter and…”real” beings…”

The Lowlies are phantom or creature-like things that have their place in reality, truth, experience, consciousness at about a midway point between the non-living substances—that which is inert, lifeless, matter—and the “real” beings.

There is therefore only two paths in their life. Facing into the world of nonbeing, inert matter, which is obviously their fate at some point; and facing in the direction of the Center, which emanates aliveness, richness, drama, lust, complexity, desire, fear, power, omnipotence, all derivatives of immediate experience.

Morality, for example. Which is defined thusly: What is good is whatever is acted, experienced, thought, or felt by the Reals. So both the Reals and the Lowlies are symbiotically related. The one as source of life. The other as mere resources to serve as the things or toys that can be used or not used.

It is all about what the Reals can desire, imagine, wish for, consume, or want…or make out of things other than them. And that includes the Lowlies.

The Lowlies fix their attention on the Center.

But the Lowlies are capable of a phantom-like semi existence, say, feeding on the actual events and experience, and the sights, sounds, and movements of those in the Center. They therefore face toward the Center, and fix their attention there. For it is the only place from which a vicarious experience, involving the imagining and acting out of that which it is possible for Lowlies to apprehend.

So that was the universe that spawned my boss. One problem in this perfection. Something so horrible that all the seeming benefit of being Real of the Circle of the Source, the Special, became turned upon its head.

“They were the only Deciders…”

You see, in time, gradually, little by little, then more frequently and increasingly, my boss, and others in the Circle, not all–through pure random action or as a result of the events not controllable–who did everything and every resource had as its purpose not just the possibility of being used, consumed, or simply to exist as backdrop for the ones in the Circle, but, for as the Real people saw it, being akin to divinity, perhaps Divinity itself as far as they could tell, they were the only Deciders, Intenders, Planners, Schemers, Desirers, and independent actors.

So it sustained their beliefs of the way of reality to use freely of the resources, either to use lightly, if their intentions, imaginations, and decisions regarding what would happen and exist was of a kind that did not require much of those not them. On the other hand if their desires, intentions, play and so forth involved heavy use, misuse, or destruction, consumption of those not them, it was all the same in terms of the rightness of things.

As mentioned there were things that happened that were not…well, you might say…in the playbook. And this was the big flaw in that entire system.

“What they had to do…is…pretty much stick to themselves…”

I don’t know how long, how many years, it may have been hundreds, that his family and his kind lived that way. But, well, just look around you in this day and age. What they had to do to maintain that idea is they had to pretty much stick to themselves all the time, pretty much not get to know any of the Lowlies. And that was pretty easy, cause if you looked at the Lowlies and you felt that, you know, they were not quite human, you didn’t have any inclination.

But what, perchance, if you’re down at a place in town or something, and perhaps one of the Lowlies is keeping a shop there. And then she should happen to smile at you, or one of the ones in the Circle.

And then she starts…”How ya doin today” and all that. And it’s like, the woman you figure, she’s probably programmed that way and everything but…you got, you see the great smile. And then you realize, she’s like…listenin…and she’s chipper…and she’s…well, that’s the sad thing is that, for all of their drama making and everything, all of their plans of doin this and doin that so that other people could experience stuff…well, the problem with my boss was…and…he had an experience like so many others did or were starting to have, and this was his experience with that girl, y’know?

And he saw her just…in that store…just…singin, being chipper, havin fun…seemin to dance around the store, y’know…as if she was just…happy….

But there was no reason to be happy. Especially not for her. And she didn’t get no happiness from up there…in the Circle. So he was dumbfounded.

“They’d had so many…they thought…experiences…costing lots of money…”

Not only that but the nature of her happiness was so far beyond anything that he’d seen anywhere that was called happiness. They’d had so many, so many…wonderful…they thought…experiences…really well planned out…y’know, costing lots of money and stuff.

And there she was. No money. Nothing. And yet she seemed really happy in a way that seemed more real and genuine than anything he’d ever seen.

Well, that really shook my boss. And…there was a series of those kind of events and….

I don’t know how many people live up in that Circle or even if it exists but my boss got older and he started doing this stuff and I got to be a job with him.

Well, all I can say is there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t seen him…. Heh… funny… Well, he was sayin how they would all say how these Lowlies were livin half lives, like zombies.

“Never seen him as anything but…”

Y’know, it’s the strangest thing, Mr. Boehner, I never…since the day I met him I’ve never seen him as anything but a zombie…bein on booze all the time…

And so… I can’t hate him… I mean, could you? .. I mean…could you? Could your kind….?

I mean…. That’s like kinda like hatin…well…an animal that annoys ya. You don’t go smack a dog around or a cat or nuttin like that just for bein a dog or cat!

And whatever he is, it’s like, he can’t help being himself now, now he’s already it. And I don’t even know if he ever had any choice in becoming it…what he became ‘cause…all’s I know is I never thought much of life and I never…I never…I never so, y’know…thought of myself as close to divinity or maybe God Himself *scoffing* and I never thought everybody around me, oh, could do whatever they, y’know, I could have whatever I wanted. I never thought I had that kind of power or that kind of importance or anything.

So, y’know…so they “Sweep this up here,”and, y’know, “Fix that thing over there,” and, y’know, I say they can say whatever they want I mean, I don’t care.

Perfection in a world like mine…and I get ok spaghetti…

It’s like…I like it, y’know? I like using my hands. I like touching the earth. I like the touch of tools…nice cold tools, and makin nice snappy wrenches and nice snappy sounds as you’re twistin those things around and you’re getting tight, just right perfect snug. There’s perfection in a world like mine.

And, y’know, it’s like, there’s no stress, I mean. Sure, I mean, I ain’t got your kind of wife, I mean. I like got ok spaghetti, like I said, y’know?

And, uh, now how do I compare that…. I ain’t really ever been unhappy really….. Disappointed…. But easy to accept considerin my background and… People around me, it’s like, it ‘s not like, it’s not like I’m any worse than anybody.

So I don’t feel bad really. And…and my boss…I don’t know how it would feel, Mr. Boehner, do you? You’re all the way from up from being a…years and years and years thinkin yer…yer god-like…you’re above everybody…you’re divine, and there’s no…and everybody’s there for your pleasure…and there’s nobody can resist you?

In fact I wonder what happened with that girl. I mean that first girl. I mean, I wonder if she…if he really…he’d ever….

He talked about her a lot. But now that I’m remembering the way he talked about her, it was like, it wasn’t happy after a while, it was like….

“Musta been…she was…happy…said no…had some respect…”

My god, I think that’s what did it. I think it was probably the first time he had an experience where somebody wasn’t fallin all over him, willin to do everything he wanted. It’s…it musta been that she was just so happy and everything and…she said no, and had some respect.

But don’t ya see what all that is from how high…. Can you imagine feelin that superior and dominant? And then comin down and bein..like as if you’re like now like you’re livin with the worms and that’s what you found out you’re more akin to them than the birds in the sky that you were once flyin with? Huh!

So how can I be mad at him?

Is anyone livin’…the real one…?

So what I want ta ask you, Mr. Boehner…you rich folks…pretty wives…unfortunate tragedies… god only knows what kind of sex and imean uh… And you know, us…. And then there’s my boss….

Now, who’s livin the vicarious life? Who’s livin the real one? Or is anyone?

ANYway. Mr. Boehner, you just put that piece of paper down there, and you put your name on it and I’ll have it for you tomorrow, and, uh…. Don’t forget, y’know, guess you’re gettin your ride home tonight, hear it comin….

You’re thinkin about your wife and your kids and everything and…

So remember I’m always on your side, but y’know….

[singin] The dancin’ she do ain’t gonna be with you… hahahahaha….

“Class Consciousness” – Some Important Parts

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors

Description

Hey, maybe I can do what auto salesman wanted to do, yea! That’s the ticket, “SillyMickel does Perry Como does the Doors.” Yea. They’d wait months for tickets to that show. Yea!

Oh my God, did I just say that out loud. I didn’t did I? No way!! Oh, I did? … (damn!)

Sample Quote

“But ya know. Somebody’s laughing I think I can make a gig out of this…. Ya know, can’t you see it: ‘Perry Como Does The Doors’”

There’s’ no way that any more can be expressed in text; it has to be heard.

Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does The Doors

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wxfdxpxcqw
Image of “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” by SillyMickel Adzema

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

Description:

As far as who is the singer and who is the snorter, that is the riddle for the listener to try to solve. Along with how John Wayne managed to walk through…and how come he can’t see.

Sample Quotes:

“I’ve been telling you about the “filthy rich….”

“You lost your wife and you come up with her, a snorter! Aaaaa haaaa! Well, I’ll tell ya. Well, we’ll talk about karma later, Mr. Boehner. Anyway, oooo weeee!”

“If you’re not allowed to be sad when your entire family all of a sudden, suddenly die, all of them….”

“I’m not kinky…. I’m just kinky in the head; but that’s just in the head; it don’t come out; don’t come out; I ain’t got like holes in my ears, er anything.”

“Mr. Boeh-ner, get back be-hind the coun-ter.”

The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman

To hear this clip taken from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vftvxfgqjx
Image of “The Snorter, Mr. Boehner, and the Auto Salesman” by SillyMickel Adzema

Others by Auto Salesman

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

The following audio is a takeoff from “Auto Salesman Does Perry Como Does the Doors” above. It is not in the larger “Anatomy” audio.

Description

Sample Quotes

“Ok, I’ll try something different next time then….”

“And they would use anything…spankin’ ‘n…sirup…injections… I mean, I believe it…

“We only caught ‘em on the LSD later on… We don’t know what they were doing earlier… to little kids… yea, they won’t tell you that.”

Auto Salesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

To hear this takeoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=vrtvpvpdyb
Image of AutoSalesman Does Como Doing Doors, Update – Aftermath, post-Gig

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

This is the last clip in the Auto Salesman series.

Description

Sample Quotes

About SillyMickel, Auto Salesman says:

“and, not only that he said the scientists are saying that we only got 20 to 50 years to save the planet, and that we’re all gonna die.

“And I say, “You call them reasons?” ….

“You call them reasons?” I mean…..

“I didn’t see where that affected MY pocket book one bit! Now where does he come from? Just because people, just because the whole world’s gonna die…

“I’ll be dead by then, probably…so what the hell do I care? I don’t think anybody should be caring if it’s not going to effect them!

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

To hear this spinoff from Anatomy, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xdksvpbqyt
Image of Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

Continue with Apocalypse Emergency –
Part One: Trillion-Alarm Fire

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allegory, auto salesman, boehner, class, Comedy, Consciousness, Lowlies, perry como, snorter, the doors

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Archive for August, 2011

War, Violence, Earth .. and Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing

What’s So Bad About Good?

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring?

How do we “unlike” fascism?

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

Cycles of War, Cycles of Birth

Men Would Rather Be “Manly” Than…Alive…

Men are more terrified of appearing “feminine” than of losing their lives. Why we invite war.

Men are more terrified of appearing “soft” than having the boot of totalitarianism on their neck. Why we allow fascism.

Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing, BPM I

Prosperity and progress equal feeling “soft” and “feminine”

“No Pain, No Gain,” Hell, Satan, and Poisonous Placenta; BPM II

“No-exit” claustrophobia

Where the hell we get the idea of hell.

“You’ll wallow in your shit, and you’ll think you’re happy.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

“You’re really in a laundry room.” – Kurt Cobain, from the song, “Sad”

Bloody War, Bloody Birth; BPM III

Nothing’s Ever Good Enough, BPM IV

“Busting out all over”

Mission accomplished…not!

Cycles of Birth, Cycles of War

Why women fear becoming fat and men fear appearing “feminine”

What Can Be Done?

Finding the Weakest Spot

Real, not blindly delusional, action is required.

We can no longer afford otherwise.

Feeling Good Is Not Bad

Changing the Patterns of Millennia

Chasing the Mirages of the Future

“It’s never enough.”

“Wrong…It IS enough.”

Becoming Self-Actualizing Instead of Self-Sabotaging

Learning that it is enough

Can You Handle Happiness?… And the Pain That Comes With It?

Getting By, With a Little Help From Our Nature

Hierarchy of healing

“Don’t just do something, STAND there!”

Allowing Our Society to Be Honestly, Blatantly “Sick”

“Stand in the place where you are…just stand.”

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence Audiocasts

So Did Politics Matter?

2000 Election Inconsequential?

Being “above” politics—intellectuals…

They think that being fair means to not care.

Not to be smart so much as to be seen as smart

Politics profane?

Gore not winning inconsequential?

How much tragedy does it take?

But what did it take?

And No Sooner Had…

Perverse Puppeteering

What’s So Bad About Doing Good?

Goodbye, Hello

Continue on this site with Culture War, Part 16: Anatomy of Class Consciousness

Footnotes

Continue on this site with Culture War, Part Sixteen: Anatomy of Class Consciousness

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Panic on the streets of London.

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How America turned poverty into a crime

The poor aren’t just struggling during the recession; they’re being actively hounded by urban officials

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CNN Poll: Grand Old Party Downgrade

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Progressives urged to leave the Democratic Party

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What Happened To Obama? (Devastating NY Times Piece)

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Comedic Monologue with a Twist

Interlude

I’m not Auto Salesman, but I do know him.

Time for the “eagle’s view”

Baby, he’s a rich man.

In spite of ourselves…

“Stand-Up” Philosophy

Anatomy of Class Consciousness – an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

The Transcription – You Get to Laugh Here

Can You Handle Happiness?…
And the Pain That Comes With It?

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part 16:
Anatomy of Class Consciousness

Continue on this site with
Culture War, Part Sixteen:
Anatomy of Class Consciousness

Anatomy of Class Consciousness –
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema