#325

Let me preface this part of my post by saying that it's not like I think democracy is so great or that I think governments that are not democratic are helmed by gibbering rats. I know enough to know that everything is different everywhere, and that the underdog is not always necessarily the hero simply virtue of opposition to a power that is clearly oppressive. However, I will always be out in favor of more freedom as opposed to less freedom, and Chow Hang-tung, formerly of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, is sentenced to jail along with a couple of others, and what she had to say to her judge resonated with me enough that I'd like to quote her here, not something I have ever done and not something which will happen often.

“Sir, sentence us for our insubordination if you must, but when the exercise of power is based on lies, being insubordinate is the only way to be human,”

Regardless of the context, I can get behind this statement. I too have bared my neck to punishers in this way, for this reason. 

Personally, I would love for China to relax its more authoritarian policies just enough to, I don't know, be considered human. Also for genocide to stop would be awesome. It would also be super optimal if the U.S. could stop treating China like an entity whose behavior materializes from nowhere and try for a less racist perspective on exactly why their government behaves the way it does, reformulating its diplomatic efforts with that knowledge at the fore. I truly believe the possibility for an entente with China is real, culturally, economically, and politically. It would be an amazing start if western powers didn't expect China to merely sit, and heel, like some canid perversion of a superpower, and obediently produce all the stupid plastic shit they want to sell to their citizens.

When reading policy and intelligence reports regarding China, and when listening to economic cross-talk about China, I always find that the size of the country warps and shifts based on the speaker's prejudice. When they want something from China, it's a small place, like Bulgaria or some shit--just so happens it's filled with factories, only factories and nothing else. The acquiescence of the "third-world" is assumed, and when China does not meet these expectations, a truculent and baseless animosity on their part is to blame. When the speaker wants to conjure some devil with which to fight shadow wars, then China is as some alien race, poised in their planet-shattering dreadnoughts, waiting only for the calculation of their firing solutions to be complete ere their red lasers set our own meek and innocent world's atmosphere ablaze. 

Wonder what the dialogue would look like if we modified our notions and expectations just a touch towards the sane and rational. 

*

Anyhow! Peoplefortheworldwideabolitionofprisonssaywhat

WHAT

what

--JL

#112

Man, I'm gonna take the ads off when I finish this post. I saw them on a friend's phone and they were just nasty. Not aesthetic. I don't need that shit around at any price or advantage.

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Inevitable as the pandoria of ills that uniquely plague the human organism may be, the sublime element is just as inexorable and everpresent. 

*

Thinking specifically of rape, suicide, murder, torture, war, genocide, and enslavement (fun post today, folks), the arrangement can be seen as helical: each consistently interfering and interweaving with one another and with the life of everyone I have ever known in brutal, undeniable, and direct terms, and each constantly interweaving themselves into and defining the life of the world, that thing we call history.

That the political is personal has always seemed to me an unnecessary statement. That information is in definition one of the word "political" and also in a very popular and apt definition of what a human being is, which is a political animal. Presented as a sinecure for the attitudes of apolitical or politically apathetic people, I don't understand who they're kidding. People know that. They understand exactly why they don't give a flying fuck. They take it personally.

I am much more interested in the human as a historical animal, in human beings as subjects for whom the historical is personal; the animal with a historical sense for whom the history of the world--not the history of the nation or the family or the tribe or the state, but for whom the history of all humankind is personal. Apolitical attitudes are whatever to me, but ahistorical or historically disingenuous or apathetic attitudes seem to me far, far more damaging and poisonous. 

Our political lives would, I think, improve dramatically if more people were exposed to and understood more history from more places about more people, and took it seriously. 

*

For a while, at least. There is no permanence in any improvement, victory, ground gained, or agreements reached. Sad fact, but even the very best and seemingly eternal of our words and deeds can only last but a little span of time, are born as doomed to the fate of the temporal as any one of us. 

Gotta believe that little while is worth it while it lasts, though. That this terrible, implacable DNA adds up to something that can transcend its nature even for a moment. That the whole thing can work because it is mirrored by another helix, one of kindness, healing, respect, peace, freedom, creativity, joy, honor, wisdom, generosity material and of thought and spirit, and numberless other proteins. 

Because of who I am, I believe the latter helix carries more weight, bears more significance than the former. I hope this is true in general, that the math checks out, but for me, it is the truth.

*

Okay, try to have a good day, everybody. I am excited to go to work and to walk in the pretty snow to get there. It is cold and February is hard and this climate thing, well, dang, but spring's still coming.

Be well.


--JL 

#75

Didn't tend towards the Girardian lens until I read a complete history of the world from cover to cover. Penguin, sixth edition, J.M. Roberts & Odd Arne Westead. I'd read lots and lots of history books before, but there was something about having it all splayed out like that. My faith in the power of world fiction to tell truths beyond truth was already in place. I have many complex feelings and ideas about envy and violence. He was a smart dude. Why do I bring this up? I saw an article about him, remembered the last article I read about him, and read today's article about him. 

By now I shouldn't have to clarify, but I will, in case: I've never one hundred percent agreed with anything, not my own senses or thoughts, no authority, not any writer or speaker, nobody, nothing. Only little practicalities, like, "I one hundred percent agree that is a ninety-degree angle. I one hundred percent agree that this noodle is boiled. I one hundred percent agree to work an extra shift this week. The noodle was not boiled? I one hundred percent disbelieve you. I checked its status myself. The noodle was unmistakably boiled."

Hey! For seven dollars, you can order up the good shit. My books are not long, but contain a great many ideas for the volume. Good word per ounce ratio. See for yourself what I pretend the truth is.


--JL