This is now officially the old (as in never again updated) page. The new page is here. RIP.
This is now officially the old (as in never again updated) page. The new page is here. RIP.
This space is left intentionally blank. This entire site will come down soon, I think.
I am getting less stable by the day. Something has to give. Something has to give. Sorry, everyone who is expecting me to be aware, I can’t talk to you right now, things are not well… I have to straighten my head out, I have to… see where I am.
The whole world is a lie. I hate everything. I hate everything. People are going away, people are hating me because I hate them, because I hate everything. Everything.
Life hurts. Time passes and passes and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. Everything you ever cared about has come and gone, and you never know if you will ever care about anything again. You are left with nothing but your memories and a few faded, creased dreams that you’ve nursed along in your pocket since you were a small boy with wide eyes and dirty hair.
At what point do you give up, lose it, climb into a bottle, into a syringe, onto a bus bound for Mexico? At what point do you start throwing all the bills in your billfold into the ocean, just to watch them float away, in hopes that they will help someone on a distant shore more than they have helped you?
How many more people must I offend, and how many more must I throw away before I move on… before I am lost in distant lands myself…
Then, as it was, then again it will be
and though the course may change sometimes
rivers always reach the sea
The US is a hypoctritical totalitarian nation at heart. We argue vociferously, in the most loaded terms possible, for the self-determination of other peoples. Then, we say to them that if we don’t like their leadership, we will ignore their votes or the popularity of their leaders, and will refuse to acknowledge them as such.
Well, do we want people to have self-determination or don’t we?
The answer is that we want self-determination for the population of the US only, and we want dictatorial control over other populations, including the right to insert and prop up whatever regime we prefer — whatever regime is convenient for us and most specifically, for our incomes.
“Democracy” — what a joke! We want democracy like we want peace — for ourselves, and favorable to us, only!
A.Keyes: (toward televisionc camera) “All God damned heathen darkies must die. Women and children especially, the Satan spawn breed like flies! What I find really interesting is that so many people refuse to read the Bible correctly — a bible which clearly says that all God damned heathen darkies must die.”
Phone rings on Keyes’ desk. He picks up.
A.Keyes: “Hello?”
Cut to White House.
G.Bush: (into telephone) “Shut the fuck up, you ugly nigger! I already got one of you who won’t keep his black ass shut. I’ll lose the darkie vote! I wish I was still in Texas, we know what to do with folks like you down there! Hmm, I need some barbecue…”
R.Cheney: (stepping into oval office) “Mr. President, I think we need to moderate our statements, or the negroes and the Red Lobby may swing the next election away from us. Damn gooks —Oh! Oh! My heart! (yelling) Get me back to the medi-bunker, quick!”
C.Powell: (running into the office) “Mr. Secretary, lay down! I’ll call an ambulance! Here, let me start CPR!”
G.Bush: “Oh damn, now I got two niggers to deal with. Get your black hands off him, G! Just get that ambulance. Hey, where the fuck is Ashcroft? How many turbs he kill today? (looks at Cheney, on floor) We got a bet goin’, you know. More than a hundred in a day is an extra side of beef on the barbecue!”
Why do conservatives refuse to acknowledge the economic colonialism inherent in the spread of American capital?
For years, the right wing spewed fire, brimstone and treatises on the damage caused by a kind of imperial Japanese investment in US markets and the dangers of a neo-empire-of-the-rising-sun which would suck wealth out of the US and into the pockets of wealthy Japanese tycoons who were (as they so cleverly pointed out) not Americans. One even heard murmurs of “damn Japs” here and there from these conservatives.
But all the while, and doubly or triply so today, American investment around the world — especially in so-called “emerging markets” — has been many times higher. While Japan is now in dire economic straits (and could potentially represent the PR disaster capitalism has deserved to suffer for many years) US investment around the world continues unabated. Compared to the degree to which we suck wealth from many emerging markets, Japan’s ’80s investment in the US markets was absolutely nothing, a petty pittance.
And yet when local populations spew fire, brimstone and treatises on US investment in their markets, we call them radicalized, miseducated, marginal, brainwashed and so on and so on.
Why are we so different from what we accused Japan of being?
1. Racism/ethnocentrism. Favorite American pastime.
1a. I think it’s also to do with the (still very central) US ethos of “manifest destiny,” which today has expanded to encompass the globe and all people on it and runs something like this: ‘We are a “Christian nation” and the only unshakeable, uncompromising political and economic representative of God in the world today. Therefore, God has in his mind’s eye given this world in its entirety to Americans and it is our duty to ensure that we fulfill this destiny and Americanize the Earth for God.’
Every American knows this attitude well and has grown up hearing it in schools, from politicians and on the street amongst pedestrians in various forms, perhaps reformulated or stated in a backhanded way, but always the same. It is the effective “national ethos” of the US and that presents something of a problem: what would happen if this conceit were to be damaged in any way? The day Americans become convinced that it is not a matter of sustainable destiny to maintain an Americanized globe, the US will fall entirely to pieces, having lost the mandate of its existence, throwing the “capitalist world” (now nearly the entire world — really just a collection of US economic colonies) into a complete state of collapse and creating devistation all around.
Perhaps most interestingly, this national ethos is not unlike the message Americans so dislike hearing from the extreme corners of other religious movements…
§ Under the leaves, soil. Under the soil, stone. Under the stone, souls.
§ Radically empowering individuals in society may be the worst mistake we ever made.
§ Want to be a radical? Refuse to suffer. Then, wait for the assault.
§ Goodbye 2017, part two. (The real part.)
§ Sometimes you find home where you’ve never been—and you dwell where you aren’t.
§ The self can’t play Atlas for postmodernity because science is now supernatural.
§ Rehab is universal. So is history.
§ Identity, transcendence, and tactics.
§ Untitled. (a.k.a. Pretty faces, new old photos.)