#500

So here is the problem. The problem is simple, and the solution is simple. It's just that no one wants to see it, I guess, out there where they wear suits and ties and have nice timepieces to wear on their wrists.

The problem is you see a dictatorship destroying your country. 

They are actually doing everything you have ever read about dictatorships doing in Africa, in Eastern Europe and Russia, in Latin America, in Indochina and the South Pacific, in all these places that used to be comfortingly somewhere else, all these magazine article places and Hollywood movie trend places--it is finally happening here, as was always warningly spoken but never followed through, like, never a "and then the thing to do is..." because the idea was the warning should be enough.

Kids have been hurting themselves in spite of the dire warnings provided by their parents for 500,000 years bare minimum and STILL somehow we think warnings are ever enough.

Anyway, it's happening, and the reason no one seems to know what to do is they seem to be looking for a legal solution to the problem.

But though the problem is simple, sadly, there is no legal solution. That time was before. The Rubicon lies some ways behind us.

When dictators are in power, acting against them, trying to deter them in any way, even to disagree with them, is immediately framed as antisocial and from there, criminal. That's why the news people and the congresspeople and the feds that suddenly aren't feds anymore don't want to see it. To actually resist this process is to risk that precious bank account, that vaunted feeling of safety and accomplishment that comes with having been favored and eventually beatified by the system.

That is over now. 

To resist autocracy is to be a criminal. There is no other way. This is because in an autocracy, to say that the law is more important or more powerful than the people in charge is to break the only law that matters anymore.

If you are not a criminal, you either will be in due time, or you are on the other side of things, for as long as that is allowed to last.

That is why the executive and the sycophant bloc in "congress" turning against the judicial system has been so swift and complete. It is why they can never again admit wrongdoing or weakness, no matter the blunder or callous disregard--those days are past. It is why our intelligence security and military power was so immediately and swiftly compromised--so that the instinct of wounded animal is awakened within that institution, and it can be turned towards conquest, and the deterrence laid upon other conquerors might be lifted.

Dictators do not deter, they only aggress. They only take vengeance. They respect only strength, for awhile, but in the end they respect nothing, and will destroy themselves in their attempt to destroy the world, for the world is God's, not theirs, and that is unforgivable. 

That's the kind of people that they are.

When it comes to the type of people that are currently brandishing their chainsaws and putting other people on lists, the only reason not to fuck you today is to fuck you later.

Redress for the failures of the political left is not forthcoming. They will continue to fail. To hope otherwise does not strike me as prudent, though, as always, I could be wrong in each particular and the general sense, too.

Not that I concede that. It's a dictatorship now, and shit is very bad. This here, all this, I am calling it. I'd call it at this point anywhere else geographically, and we the American people have proved something beyond the final shadow of a doubt: there is no exceptionalism here. We are all of us the same shitty primate the world over and there is no soil or water that will cure any of us of our human, all-too-human marks of hubris, hatred, pettiness, and self-annihilation.

When it comes to the type of people that are currently brandishing their chainsaws, the only reason not to fuck you today is to fuck you later.

*

So. So! The solution is simple: join or decline. I hate the word resist; it has been truly stripped of every last shred of its meaning or resonance by modern pseudo-activism, coupling the word as it does with lawful obedience to the status quo in all things, every habit of mind and deed.

To decline means to risk everything you have and everything you are, while you are alive. But that's all right, because the chances are extremely excellent you will be executed by the state. It's never been a more flatly impossible time to rebel against state power--the technology that me and the boys dreamed would free the world and help us achieve a heroic new stage in human evolution has been completely and entirely consumed and weaponized by predatory wealth mechanisms and fascist surveillance ghoul-and-devil butcherwork--a mechanism to turn the clock back rather than bravely step forward. 

Guess it's the only reasonable thing to do, though, unless you just want to pretend it isn't happening or pretend acting normal long enough will mean it blows over like most bad things do. I know it is very idiotic to be told that everything is against you and there is no advantage and you should still fight.

Hey, shit. Maybe. 

Declining really is the only thing, though. So it goes. It doesn't feel great to me either. Nobody wants to be told that it's time to choose to die. 

*

Hey, you know what? I'll offer an out. I like Heidegger, and he turned in his mentor Husserl to the Nazis so he could live in Nazi Germany and teach in Nazi universities in hopes he could renounce it all later--if he is to be believed. He was a cuck, and his choices made him a Nazi even if he wasn't one in his heart, and he was never sorry because he made an admittedly impermeable philosophical argument that showed no one ever has to be, for anything.

And I can accept that. Dying is final, and sometimes we have to choose life, not for ourselves alone but for those who cannot choose, for a distant but more vital hope than I have in my own life. I just can't accept it from myself. But I can accept it, for reals. I am not a person of blame or recrimination. And I am asking a lot after laying out some stark terms. I can be an asshole--even a hypocrite. I don't like hypocrisy, but I don't think anyone's immune.

*

Yeah, it should be recognized that I'm stepping forward with some real big talk for a no-account rascal. I realize that. What are any-sized words worth, coming from an unemployed paranoiac artist with no social life, no social gravity or pull, and no resources beyond the house he increasingly has problems leaving? I have never joined a protest or march of any kind because I do not believe in such things and plus because crowds of that type freak me out and I am allergic to being subsumed by group dynamics. I am not a member of any party or movement or club or lodge or anything at all resembling that. 

Still, I have my dignity and my principles, even if I don't have shit-all else. And I have my words and this stupid blog. So.

*

Donald J. Trump is no king of mine and the cadre of sycophants and stormtroopers under him are criminals and fascists. I demand their recusal from their positions, I deem them unfit to serve the public, and I name them renegades who speak and act in bad faith and a spirit of spite and underhandedness. I do not accept this government as legitimate and do not trust that it will loose its grip on power at the duly appointed time. 

Nothing I can do except say so, but I do say so, in the strongest possible terms.

Further, to repeat: I decline. I decline to abet or aid in word or thought or deed the actions done in this cruel and vengeful spirit, this waking nightmare that dogs our shared reality and our collective unconscious.

No. Fuck that. It is paramount to act against it and vote against it and speak against it and think against it. 

I am an American citizen and I recognize no king and no tyranny of any kind, not of any oligarchy or theocracy, not of the economy, not of the masses, not of any person or party, and in no uncertain terms I want to state that no man is my master simply because he has wealth and I do not. As a citizen I am free in body and mind and spirit and will not be compelled to submit to any other justice than the true law of this land, as laid out in its constitution. The law which though imperfect seeks justice, not the scribbled writ of tyrants or the jingling of some robber baron's pockets. The law. 

No tyranny of any kind. It will not be borne.

*

Kind of wish I could have had fun with the five hundredth post of my shitty stupid blog, but times being what they are, futile gestures come first.

--JL

#417

A furtive guilt nags at me when I consider how much I enjoy extremely hot weather. It leaps to the fore when I read about how drought is driving millions and millions of people into food-insecure and unsafe conditions. How much food got thrown in the fucking garbage last year? 

As a matter of fact, it gives me decent guilt just to be typing when I know there are people running from gangs and cartels and inexorably advancing armies, that they don't get to keep their houses, that they don't have money for shit and nowhere to buy it, and here I stand. Even if I only have five dollars in my wallet and debt and whatever the fuck else, it's not fair. It's not fair that I should look upon a peaceful, well-feed street of housed and clothed people, because it is literally at the expense of others. It is built upon their backs. It is provided by a system that relies on creating and sustaining conditions of inequality. 

Do I sould like a child when I say that it's not fair?

Good.

My instinct has always been this, and never deviated: none of us should sit easy while there exist those with less than us. I was born on a capital city located just barely north of the Equator--the global south, what was once known as the third world. A democracy, but an unstable one after a string of dictators. There, I lived way up in a tall building while hundreds of thousands of children not ten miles away lived in a carpet of hovels; slums like nothing that exists north of the Rio Grande. Now it's dictators again. I live up here in the U.S., now, first world par excellence, first world with a raging erection and a finger in every pie on the planet--and we might have ourselves a dictator soon. 

Life, huh! It is nothing but a fucking joke.

Anyway.

When something is not fair, we can't just shrug. I knew it was simply not fair, simply inexcusable, that I lived in a building while other kids had to live in slums. I was not wrong. I still feel that way. Children are correct. Things being fair and equitable--it's not some childish thing, some unrealistic pipe dream. That they are not, after all this having of civilization, all these vast piles of wealth circulating the planet and accumulating in vaults, always more, ever growing, and poverty only ever grows with it?

It is not fair.

*

We act like bad things happening far away are only happening because the people there deserve it for not making economies and governments as strong as ours. But we had fuck-all to do with how strong our government and economy is. Getting born in some shithole--as we like to say--instead of America is your own damn fault, we think, because we ourselves did nothing to deserve getting born here. And so we protect ourselves with "well, what do you want me to do about it?" Because after all, we may be lucky, but we're not in charge, and we didn't make the world, and it's all very complicated anyway, and you're bothering me and you should fuck off because I don't like thinking about it actually.

Honestly, I just need you to not be cool with it. That's enough for me. Because making up justifications and deluding yourself on purpose about the actual costs of your lifestyle and the actual ramifications of what your government does with or without your consent is the path not only to this sated, distracted, rationalizing life of self-compromise and consumption and complicity, but to actual secret police shit, actual gulag and torture shit, actual sitting in an office signing documents that authorize things like Final Solutions. I am saying that there comes a point where you're not just a citizen anymore, because you don't live in a state anymore. Something else is happening, and you didn't want to notice, and a very important choice was made for you when you weren't paying attention. 

When you go from a republic to a dictatorship, there are those whose positions do not change that much. It is a condition of class, but also a condition of attitude. It is a condition of the required complicity for a transfer of power that is legitimate not in fact but after the fact. All you have to do to put your seal of approval on it is to keep going to work, keep going for opportunities whose cost is not discussed up front, keep acting like what you do is justifiable because you deserve to have what you have.

But it isn't. And I'm telling you now it is because it is a sin to have while others want. And it is that sin that has driven climate change and fascism and the attitude that industry justifies anything in the name of industry, that profit is the sacrament which washes us clean, and the comforts of our earthly rewards are proof of our righteousness.

But they aren't. 

And frankly, blessedly, it is factual that all you have to do is not be cool with it. Because if you're not cool with it, you have a chance to at least stay awake and keep your eye out. And when the opportunity comes to make a difference, the difference you are suited to make, you'll see the opening. You'll know.

*

Anyway, it was too cold to ride my bike yesterday. I need it to be hotter. That's why I was guilty.

Easy enough for me to go all the way with guilt that I do it most days. Today, I brought you along for the ride.  

What can be done? What is that difference that we should seek to make, and how to make it, and how to know the moment, the opening, the chance?

Well, I've been thinking about it for a long time. Hopefully I've made progress. You'll be the first to know if I figure anything out.

All I know for sure is that hope is what is needed above all. Keep your hopes alive, burning bright, daring, free.

--JL

#393

393 is an incredible number. Don't even have to explain how cool it is probably. In honor of the graceful mathematics inherent in this integer, my goal for today is to reach deep, deep within, grasp with all the strength I have and try and draw forth something that skews positive. Today I must ignore the prancing demons and rapacious dragons that work hard and smart every day to make the world a grindhouse of misery.

*

Jesus Christ, it's fucking difficult. It even hurts. I cannot raise sword or spear and slay these shadows, and typing furiously is the next-best thing. To say nothing, to try and think about something else these days generates a feeling reminiscent of my flesh being eaten by parasitic worms. I assume. It's the flesh of my spirit, which knows a universe of pain my body can only approximate.

That cuts both ways, though. What we mean when we say joy is transcendent is that it forgets the body, as the spirit is illuminated and warmed by a more complete light than exists in the material world.

Sunlight on the skin is just a game mechanic. Light radiating unto the spirit is real, the real thing. 

To paraphrase Master Yoda: luminous beings are we, not these crude vestments.

*

It is true that rain falls on the just and the unjust. It follows that light shines on them with that same universal impassivity. What can we learn from this? That the universe is not concerned with fair portions or what we think of as justice. There is a higher justice corresponding to a larger picture, to more complete datasets, subject to a wisdom we cannot comprehend, limited as we are by current hardware.

*

What has always struck me ever since I was a child, which so profoundly bothered the nuns and priests I discussed it with, was how in the world human beings can pretend to know the mind of God, if God is God. They would reply that Jesus was man and God, and the word of God was made manifest through him and through his chosen disciple Peter, but I knew enough to know that a bunch of dudes decided that at a meeting, basically, hundreds of years after the fact, and the question stood. They would tell me that I was being  bad boy, that these questions and arguments were heretical and trended towards atheism, and I would reply--directly in some cases, to myself  that Jesus did the same thing with the elders and if Jesus asked difficult questions of his masters, it was my duty to emulate the act. For are we not to imitate Christ in all ways? And therefore, why do we possess and luxuriate and earn and spend while there are slums full of poor people not ten miles from this chapel? Shouldn't we all be as poor as the poorest of us? Shouldn't we spurn the gross material and seek the end of man's dominance over his fellow man? Doesn't almost everything in this book you say is the word of God contradict how we choose to live our lives, admonish us to act upon the very things we ignore, push us to be better than the mere Word and enter into an Act? Isn't God beyond language, beyond morals, beyond history, beyond the future? Isn't the infinite inifinite? If it isn't, how can it be God? And if it is, how can we act this way, as though we were not God, and everyone we meet is not God, and the world we live in is not God? Because we act as though God is dead, even as you force me to pray and sing at him in chapel. But who is this God you make me sing at? Some old man? Just a dude making rules and telling only certain other dudes? A zombie, a corpse's voice from beyond the grave, a mannequin? One that watches only me, and only I have to feel bad and watch my step, only me and the other little people who really care, and lets people who don't care do whatever they want, including wage wars and raise empires and buy and sell human beings? In the name of the Lord? Because if in our ignorance we fuck up our lives literal eternity will be unimaginable torment? Impossible. Impossible. Horrifying on so many levels.

Apparently not. This accumulation did indeed build and resolve in a long stretch of atheism before a return to facing the infinite. All that time since childhood, all that time since then: I still don't get it.

*

Preceding is why I'm never surprised when kids are about fifty times smarter than grownups. Some kids are already grownups when they're kids, and they're the only kind of stupid kid, because they have learned quickly to act like they have all the answers. At least most kids still know enough to ask the right questions, while grownups have trained themselves to be satisfied with easy answers. And that satisfaction, that complacency, is what Jesus was trying to disrupt with his most oblique parables and radical pronouncements. And it is what I encountered in so many of the priests and nuns of my childhood--behind an implacable, enameled wall of starched certainty, which was an insult to the spirit of inquiry they professed to inculcate. 

I do not get along with those who have left childhood behind them as a cast-off thing of little if any present significance or value in general or particular. I am still a child. I hope to remain a child, and fight constantly to preserve myself. Children have a right to be children and be as children are, which is, frankly, quite a huge, frightening, and complex endeavor. A journey fraught with peril. 

There is absolutely no advantage whatsoever in modifying yourself to be a grownup. Grownups have ruined everything. I suspected this as I asked my childhood questions, and everything I've seen and learned confirms it. There is very little defense for the world they have built; the worthwhile bits exist in spite of the main event, and the main event constantly tries to eliminate or pervert them.

*

Damn, did it again. Let's try again tomorrow or sometime, whenever. 

--JL