hating freeom, hating America
The word "freedom" has become a burning cigarette in my eye. Every time I hear it spoken by a politician, my muscles become tight like an overwound watch spring. For the last few days, I've turned on the Republican convention for a few minutes each day and nearly vomited every time. Since Bush and his gaggle of gangsters started chanting "freedom" in every speech, that bit of boiling tar in my stomach has gotten bigger and each time they say it, I become closer to exploding.
I hate the word because they use it to keep us shaking, shopping, and plastering our trucks with yellow ribbons. It is a magic word, it is the electrified floor that Pavlov had to shock his dogs into behaving and, in some cases, turning them into helpless heaps of fur and tissue...not unlike many of the American people.
Oh, Obama and the Democrats are no better. What is the change that Obama keeps invoking? What will it look like? What is the quantifiable measure of the change? I say this to illucidate that it is not only the republicans that make me want to spew.
Anyway, lately, I've been thinking about the meaning of freedom, what it means to me, what it means to the bag of lipo-suction still in it's human host sitting on the bench in front of Wal Mart, and what it has meant in the past.
In my personal ponderings and search for some other perspectives, I came across these two articles:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
http://michaeldorf.org/2008/07/um-if-i-throw-you-under-bus-is-it-well.html
Not only did it cause me to consider the current pile of monkey feces that Shrub et al have been throwing on the American people, but it made me think of how rich my own writing used to be and how my time in the world of retail (back in the 90s) and my temporary job assigments that required me to parrot the same sort of nonsense have taken that away.
If you've been a friend for a long time on LJ, you may remember "liquid obsidian" as my second screen-name. It came from a poem I wrote describing Lake Erie at night. The smooth, empty blackness reminded me of obsidian and the liquid came from the lake being water. Granted, in the last 2 years or so, I've been steamrolling through some emotional problems, but as I think about what I've written, I ask myself, "where did all that richness go?" As I ask myself this question, and after having read the above essays, maybe we should all be asking ourselves that question.
I went to Wal Mart today. It was the first time in years, and my first time in a Super Wal Mart. 75,000 square feet of space filled with fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and acres of trinkets. What do the trinkets do? They fill our empty apartments and houses, they distract us from the concrete reality that makes us tremble, and they enable us to rob ourselves of rich and fulfilling lives.
We buy the speeches, we buy the trinkets, and we all seem to be speaking the same language.
As I've been typing this out, I've been making an effort to be as concrete as possible, but it's tougher than a cheap cut of overcooked meat to do that. I've been infected with the monkey feces.
My last thought, something else I've been pondering for some time:
What is a dollar? Show me what a dollar is. The ATM machine says I have $500 in my account, but there aren't 500 dollar bills, or even 5 $100 bills in an evelope at the bank with my name on it. But I still have $500. How can that be?
Think about it both questions and send me your answers. I want answers that are solid as lead, not some abstract monkey feces like "the base unit of US currency" and if you are going to give me that, then define currency.
I hate the word because they use it to keep us shaking, shopping, and plastering our trucks with yellow ribbons. It is a magic word, it is the electrified floor that Pavlov had to shock his dogs into behaving and, in some cases, turning them into helpless heaps of fur and tissue...not unlike many of the American people.
Oh, Obama and the Democrats are no better. What is the change that Obama keeps invoking? What will it look like? What is the quantifiable measure of the change? I say this to illucidate that it is not only the republicans that make me want to spew.
Anyway, lately, I've been thinking about the meaning of freedom, what it means to me, what it means to the bag of lipo-suction still in it's human host sitting on the bench in front of Wal Mart, and what it has meant in the past.
In my personal ponderings and search for some other perspectives, I came across these two articles:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
http://michaeldorf.org/2008/07/um-if-i-throw-you-under-bus-is-it-well.html
Not only did it cause me to consider the current pile of monkey feces that Shrub et al have been throwing on the American people, but it made me think of how rich my own writing used to be and how my time in the world of retail (back in the 90s) and my temporary job assigments that required me to parrot the same sort of nonsense have taken that away.
If you've been a friend for a long time on LJ, you may remember "liquid obsidian" as my second screen-name. It came from a poem I wrote describing Lake Erie at night. The smooth, empty blackness reminded me of obsidian and the liquid came from the lake being water. Granted, in the last 2 years or so, I've been steamrolling through some emotional problems, but as I think about what I've written, I ask myself, "where did all that richness go?" As I ask myself this question, and after having read the above essays, maybe we should all be asking ourselves that question.
I went to Wal Mart today. It was the first time in years, and my first time in a Super Wal Mart. 75,000 square feet of space filled with fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and acres of trinkets. What do the trinkets do? They fill our empty apartments and houses, they distract us from the concrete reality that makes us tremble, and they enable us to rob ourselves of rich and fulfilling lives.
We buy the speeches, we buy the trinkets, and we all seem to be speaking the same language.
As I've been typing this out, I've been making an effort to be as concrete as possible, but it's tougher than a cheap cut of overcooked meat to do that. I've been infected with the monkey feces.
My last thought, something else I've been pondering for some time:
What is a dollar? Show me what a dollar is. The ATM machine says I have $500 in my account, but there aren't 500 dollar bills, or even 5 $100 bills in an evelope at the bank with my name on it. But I still have $500. How can that be?
Think about it both questions and send me your answers. I want answers that are solid as lead, not some abstract monkey feces like "the base unit of US currency" and if you are going to give me that, then define currency.