The other day I watched the movie version of John le Carre’s The Russia House. I haven’t read all of his novels, but I’ve read most of them, and the premise of The Russia House may be my favorite of all time. If you love your country, sometimes you have to commit treason to save it.
While I have no current plans for treason, this is the grand political end of a tip I once got from a favorite art teacher. “If you are struggling with a piece and there is something in it that is too precious for you to change, it is that thing that is fucking you up. Get rid of it”. It works for paintings and essays and political theories too.
But what does any of this have to do with my bitchy little blog? I keep saying the same thing to people lately “If you love the Democratic Party, the only way to save it is to NOT VOTE FOR IT”. I know, it sounds so wrong. I know, it’s hard to part with such a precious thing as party identity. But it is that refusal to ditch the broken part that keeps us from fixing the whole. It’s not as sexy as giving up the secrets of the Soviet Union’s military lie to the Brits. But you won’t get arrested (yet) for not voting for(or volunteering, or donating to) a legacy party.
The problem can’t be solved by erasing the edges of the existing parties and redrawing them in new places. It takes a dramatic act, the erasure of a precious thing, to effect change. That is how you can “be the change you wish to see in the world”, not by doing the same thing over and over and calling it progress.
I don’t need a passport to walk on this earth Anywhere I go ’cause I was made of this earth I’m born of this earth, I breathe of this earth And even with the pain I believe in this earth so I wake up every mornin’ and I’m steppin’ on the floor I wake up every mornin’ and I’m steppin’ out the door I got faith in the sky, faith in the one faith in the people rockin’ underneath the sun ’cause every bit of land is a holy land and every drop of water is a holy water and every single child is a son or a daughter of the one earth mama and the one earth papa, so don’t tell a man that he can’t come here ’cause he got brown eyes and a wavy kind of hair, And don’t tell a woman that she can’t go there because she prays a little different to a god up there, You say you’re a Christian ’cause God made you, You say you’re a Muslim ’cause God made you, You say you’re a Hindu and the next man a Jew And we all kill each other ’cause god told us to? NAW! Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa! Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa! Follow me, follow me let me take you to the dance hall now to come on, rock this rhythm (rockin’ rockin’) Follow me, follow me, follow me let me take to the dance hall now now to come a skankin’ Follow me let me take to the dancehall now to come a rock this rhythm Follow me let me take to the dancehall in a Spearhead style Now hear this! So you dance to the rhythm bounce to the rhythm shake to the rhythm and you roll the rhythm sweat to the rhythm get wet to the rhythm make love to the rhythm clean up to the rhythm when you movin’ you come alive and when you grooving in rhythm we survive, so don’t panic, don’t panic no drum machine, this is all organic just Sly and Robbie on the drums and bass Sticky on percussion and we mashin’ up the place givin’ you a beat you can rock and roll to givin’ you a sound you can shake your soul to, so hip-hoppas, punk rockas roots rockas, even Woodstockas don’t need a passport, just send a postcard send me a message, let me know how you are whether you’re walkin’ or drivin’ in your car throw your hands high, tell me who you are Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa! Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa! Boppin’ from Nigeria to Botswana Bop from Botswana to Ethiopia Bop from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe, now Bop from Zimbabwe to Mexicana Bop from Mexico to Braziliana Bop from Brazilia to ‘mericana Boppin’ from America to Japan Boppin’ from Japan to China Boppin’ from-a China to a Pakistana Boppin’ from-a Pakistan to Australia Boppin’ from Australia to Palestina Boppin’ from-a Palestine to Israel Boppin’ from-a Buyaga [Buyaga], Jamaica Boppin’ to Italia [Italia], España [España], Britania [Britania] Boppin’, boppin’, dance to the sound Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa! Hello, hello! (Hello, hello) Bonjour, bonjour! (Bonjour, bonjour) Hola, hola! (Hola, hola) Konnichiwa, konnichiwa wa!
Or at least it means I have to jump into that “let’s be totes obnoxious for the good of humanity” role way more often than I actually like to. And i’ve got nearly 2000 posts where I do jump into that role, so I ain’t chicken.
Y’all I am tired, dead fucking tired, of having racist drivel pop up on my facebook page. I find myself, after reading yet another thing hating on brown people (but not really, they all say) with hands shaking in anger and my stomach doing flip flops of revulsion. And for a second, just a second, I debate saying something. Just drop it. Let it go. I could you know. I’m white. I could slink past it and not give it another thought and no one would know. That’s privilege for ya.
But I don’t. I make myself obnoxious. I call it out for what it is. That is what I can do as an ally. It is my one small teaspoon.
I do need a fucking stiff drink though. It would be so much more fun to play obnoxious do gooder if I could do it with a vodka tonic in hand. And it’s still early.
I don’t understand people who cling to failed philosophies. That’s not true. I do understand that they all think that their own brand of special little snowflakeness will make them king of the castle if only they didn’t have to follow these stinky rules. But it does make them look like 30 year olds making wish lists for Santa. Libertarianism fails every hard and soft science. It fails economically (see Iceland for a microcosm of libertarian failure). It fails physics because unlike the universe economies cannot expand pepetually. It fails biology because every single selfish aspect of it is diametrically opposed to how we actually evolved, through cooperation. It fails anthropologically for the same reason. And it fails mathmatically. If you don’t pay your slaves, or erm employees, enough money to feed themselves then they die of starvation, but without minimum wage laws there is no incentive to pay them better. The numbers in libertarianism add up to death. Add that to your wish list.
I finally watched Hard Candy. Holy fucking shit batman. I don’t know if men could understand how much the world changes for little girls. I can’t even nail down the threshold. For some of us it’s when you first get boobs, for some earlier. But suddenly you’re public property and men put their hands and mouths in places they shouldn’t. Men, old enough to be your father, start saying things about how they could split you in half. So i loved Hard Candy. 11 year oldme wanted to do the same thing to the family friend who thought my having breasts meant he coud stick his tongue down my throat. 15 year old me wanted to do the same thing to the male teachers who looked down my shirt and then made me ashamed because they got hard. This movie should be on the horrible/awesome list and Ellen Page’s character is my new favorite vengeful girl. There’s even a Polanski reference. If you inner teenage girl is feeling a bit bruised and silenced, and your stomach can take it, you should watcht it.
Seems like a simple question, right? It’s worth 100 pennies. But dollars aren’t real things. I mean the paper and ink they a printed on are real, but their value is made up. Think about what you can buy with a dollar. Roma tomatoes are about 2 bucks/lb right now. 4 toms are about 1/2 a pound. So all the seeds, dirt, water, the labor to plant and pick and ship, the gas for the tractors and trucks, the floor space in the store, the stockers and the clerks, even the plastic bag that you put your toms in are worth less than a buck (gotta leave room for profit). Or for a more simple example, if you pay 1000 bucks a month for 200 hours of childcare (Less than minimum wage at 5 bucks an hour but a good average) a buck is worth 12 minutes of childcare. Have you ever wondered why we hold things that are crucial to our existance, like food and clothing and childcare, to such a low value but give much more weight to people who do jobs that aren’t crucial to our existence?
You might think from the title that this is an anti religion post. It’s not. I am gobsmacked on a daily basis by folks who think that things like national borders and money are real, concrete things. They are no more real than the words i am typing are. These words are symbols, they represent an unspoken agreement between you and i in order to share ideas. But that doesn’t make them real. I could type the word sportscar or steak or toothbrush, but none of those things will appear. You can draw whatever lines on a map you want, but it wonk make an impenatrable crack in the earth appear. If people think the piece of paper with a dead president on it is just a piece of paper, then it won’t spend anywhere. Perhaps that is the point. If we hold on to magical thoughts like ‘i have x amount of money’ or ‘my country, sweet land of liberty’ then they don’t have to admit to the giant con game we’ve all been played by.
I dreamt that i was the mayor of a small town in the post apocalyptic south of france. It was all going pretty well right up to the point that i had to explain to the former white collar workers that yes, they were required to do farm labor too. Even in my dreams the creative class is a bunch of lazy, whiny blowhards.
