Death of the American Dream of Independance

I watched the Oscars tonight, which although a good show is nothing remarkable in and of itself. I was however quite dismayed, nay horrified at one particular ad.
It was for the General Motors car-line, in particular advertising the "OnStar' feature.
On the surface the ad is purely positive, with a fractured rush of children recounting a car accident they were each in, just different snippets from each little somber (but alive and whole, "bless the lord") face, finally culminating in all them saying how the OnStar rep came over the speaker and said an ambulance was on the way. And then, those earnest little faces, asked the viewer if there shouldn’t be someone there watching out for you - and this little caucus of freckles and dimples told us all that yes, there should always be someone there watching out for you, and OnStar put that one step closer to being the case.
I was struck dumb by this, and could only sit there wracked with horrible cold-chills for some time.

On the surface, this sounds like a wonderful idea - a safety net for everyone. But it’s not a wonderful idea.
Human beings are independent animals, built to survive on our own strengths or to die on our own weaknesses. Same as every-other biological creature on this large plot of real estate called Earth.
For thousands of years the human animal has done just that, survived on strength, died on weakness. In the "new world" (the Americas) it has only been in the last five or six hundred years that civilization, cities and the associated social supports, have come in to disrupt this process. Even thus, as recently as 70 years ago people lived hand to mouth, lived tough and died hard, during the great depression. Tough people survived, and the weak got tough or some them died. Life, well being, depended upon the independent capabilities of each person.
During these periods my grandfather was a bare-knuckle boxer when he couldn’t find manual labor jobs during this period. At that time in history boxing was a much different sport than it is now, and bare-knuckle boxing was even further removed. As the name implies gloves were not used, the men fought without any protection at all and very often without any formal ring. A circle of men around two fighters stripped to the waist, swinging blows and dripping blood over hard and dusty earth. Punches were not the only techniques used, and many fight’s involved savage kicks and knee blows, biting, open-hand smashes, eye gouging and fish hooking. It was a bloody, rough and cruel affair, but a solid enough way to make a little money, or to literally beat another man out of a good job. Not that my grandfather was a mean man, although he developed a taste for fighting and was quite good at it, he was by all accounts a caring man and good provider for his family, but he simply did what he had to do to survive in a time when the society could not support most of the people.
This is a behavior displayed in other organic organisms as well: the most successful survivors are the ones whose genetics prosper. For example, a century and a half ago Syphilis (yes, the STD) caused horrible deformity to those who suffered it, its symptoms ravaging the flesh over their entire bodies. Consequently, those who suffered from what was then the common form of syphilis did not have much opportunity to spread it around, where-as those who suffered what was then the relatively mild and uncommon form of syphilis, that did not ravage the body, had ample opportunity. A hundred years later, the syphilis that destroys tissue no longer exists in the modern, or most of the third, world. The form that survived was that which was strongest for propagation of itself in its given environment.
These little evolutions, survivals of the fittest, can be seen in many other different species and organisms, both recently and in the distant past.

The idea that we should have someone else watching out for us, taking care of us, all the time is in direct opposition to the ideas of evolutionary progress, and beyond that is in opposition to the ideas upon which this country (United States of America) was founded: Those of the individuals independent right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. Individuals have the right to live until they die as free men and women, pursuing their own survival and happiness. But this is an individual right, and like all rights it is also a responsibility.
The individual responsibility to take care of yourself, protect yourself, and be able to rely on your self, alone, is among the highest responsibilities we have. Once we have families of our own, those responsibilities to self extend to them as well. This independence is the only sure guarantee between this world, and the shadowy slip of death. In the end, no one but you is responsible for you.
Yet, we live in a culture where we are taught completely differently – although if we look around we can see how people without a robust skill set for personal independence are left out in the cold, all alone and essentially helpless. Our culture tells us not to rely on ourselves, but to rely on other people first, foremost and in many cases always. This is the death of the American dream of rugged individualism. The one thing that has always given us our strength, our versatility and our flexibility, is our ability to survive through thick and thin, deal with change and bounce back strong and not only are we losing it, we are throwing it all away like it is a wretched piece of garbage.
It makes me sick to my stomach.

As much as I like this template, it has problems and it is time for it to come to an end. I am tired of having my text warped by coding I cant find the bug in, soo, time to move on.
Some spiffy looking ones here: http://www.facesofyve.com - dont you think?

Few things...

First: http://www.wickedjester.com/ has some of the best t-shirts I've seen around.
Check it all, but the No-Mercy, Anti Conformity and Sarcastic shirts are particularly rockin'.
Need to spend some money...

Second: I'm seriously thinking about getting some ink again. I want something that means something to me, something that in twenty years I wont regret it. I have an interesting though about tattoos though, one in particular - the dominant hand/arm Forearm-tat. Not sleeved out, just a forearm tat. This is an interesting thing - in short sleeves, when you shake hands with someone, its right there and it says "You need to know, this is what I am, forever and always".
If I ever nail everything that I am down to a small enough idea to put into a forearm tattoo... I'll probably get one.

I was going to say some other things... but not tonight. This is enough.

More thoughts on the great gone Gonzo.

February 22nd 2005

After Midnight:
So I’m thinking about Thompson, and wanting to read him again but a savage fear is overtaking me, the more I think about his insight and wit. It will still be great, it will still be insightful… but how much of the funny will still be there after this dark end? I cant really say.
I read on the internet, and I must agree, sometimes it just becomes too much, Hemingway, Hart Crane… there will be firearms discharged. All too strange and terrible. I feel in the grip of some loud and powerful sickness as I keep rereading the news stories.
Death is not unexpected, but the suicide shocks me to the bare raw core. I see people claiming chicken-shit and coward for it, and I’m just not sure how I feel about that savage act.
It beckons at times, especially these times, one mighty Fuck You to everyone on your own terms.

After 6 AM
Slept a few hours and its still true… shit.
I started FLLV again last night, after I’d stayed online too damn long, and its still funny. The mojo wire may be strangely silent… but HST’s laughter is ringing out through the pages with our own.

I want to run into the wilds and pretend that this is not true…

After 9 AM
Death was expected, but the suicide… call it “anti-surprise”, initial surprise but it all makes sense.
I never imagined him dying, not dying in the normal sense of laying sick, dying, and then finally slipping into the dark. Frankly, I doubt he ever saw that end for himself either. This was as quick and clean as it ever got and he was as in control of it as he ever was.
Guiding a too light, crazy fast, Ducatti down a wet Colorado mountain curve, finally feeling the speed of it when it crosses 95, its like a bullet from a gun, there is a point where you cant turn back the thing you started, the thing you controlled – all will be lost if you do. I can only feel that Hunter S. Thompson died like he lived, fast and hard, answering only to himself.
Everyone is going to speculate why, wonder, demand answers and at times I’ll probably join them but its not ours to know, or really to question. Like so many other things, he made his stand and followed up on it. He was never a fake.

I think HST meant more to me, than he did to my parents although they are more “his generation” than I. They lived through all that, sometimes the explanations just aren’t needed then, but I didn’t and I guess that’s the greatest thing I’ve gotten from HST, some further clarity of the times, an understanding of what we lost, that great tide he spoke of and its breaking and rolling back. Forever, I think I will appreciate that the most… that and the laughter.

HST RIP

Tonight, Sunday February 20th 2005, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. It must be true I’m reading it on ABC, MSNBC, CNN and the Aspen Times. I try to deny it, but it doesn’t work. I’m a nobody from nowhere and I haven’t really done enough drugs and this upsets me.
HST became an inspirational force for my writing in the past few years, since I really started paying attention. It seems a much darker and savage world without him.
As I write this, I hear a ruckus outside and run out with a rifle and a flashlight. The cold high desert air is still, and I can see for miles in the clear night. No coyotes, any running cars are 40 miles away, and drifting to me in an odd sort of way I can hear a lock rattling on a gas tank, a shotgun blast, and peacocks crying.
I don’t really have words right now… I’m just sad. I hope that whatever peace Hunter couldn’t find here, he has found now… or that he got out while the getting was still good. I will miss the illustrious and entertaining Doctor.












"It Never Got Weird Enough For Me" Hunter S. Thompson

The current administration has done a beautiful thing to the divisions in America. They have driven the Left further from the Right, as both Left and Right administrations will do, but they have also driven the Right from itself.
The division line between the more Libertarian right, and the hardline "The Party-Way, or the Highway" fools, is growing more and more.
As the administration faces its last possible four years in office, they have much less to fear than before. 2001 - 2004 they had to worry about re-election. Now, they have no such constraints. With a republican controlled Congress and Senate, and no fears of damaging themselves by alienating the people, everything is fair game.
Revolution, in any form (although I dont mean armed uprise) is much harder now, because of their "devil may care" position, and because of the divisions lines widening and changing.
The traditional model of "one side vs. other side" is no longer true. The right is divided against itself now, and although the disenchanted-right has similar goals to the left, they still have a war with one another.
Divide and conquer - we are all going to get too busy fighting each other, and the administration is going to get away with whatever they wish. By the time we realize, if we do, it will be on a downward spiral that will take decades to pull out of, if we can.

Some generations witnessed the birth of our nation (the Revolution), some witnessed its coming of age (the Civil War), some witnessed the Great Wars (WW-I through Vietnam), but we are the children of the Fourth Generation of warfare, here to bear witness to an uncertain age.
There is battle on so many fronts - there are tears and there is tyranny, more often unseen than not.

We must have strength, mind body and spirit, if we are to survive in any meaningful way. No end is ever the end - it is always a new beggining - but begginings are chaotic, dangerous and often brutal, and new-eras need to be born and shaped even after.
A friend said to me that this would be the time of Warrior-Priests... strong leaders, who can protect and guide. He may be right.
Our designated leaders are not these men... make no mistake.

The greatest ally tyranny has in our society is our perception of place.
The Nazi's on TV, the Maoists in the movies, the Big Brother and Police Robots in our novels, are never placed into wide open fields with farm houses and flowerboxes, they are never put into the broad sunny avenues with colorful shops all around. Their environments are dark, brooding and oppressive; The nazi's have stone walled castles and forts built into cliffs, they have dark grey or black uniforms, torture chambers and smoke covered camps, the Maoists have rainy gray days in close urban environments of poverty and violence, Big Brother and the Police Robots have modern, futuristic, urban cities, with windowless factories, artificial lighting, and all the naturalistic elements removed from the environment. While some are dark, and others bright and sterile, they are all presented as oppressive, gloomy, sensory deprived environments. This is the image we have of tyranny, jackboots marching below black stormy skies on the grounds of an ancient castle hewn of gray and black stones, red revolutionaries burning books and musical instruments in small smoky gardens under oppressive gray sky, all-powerful overlords telling us what’s better for us from on unseen highs of futuristic urban-industrial society while their storm-troopers micro-manage, abuse and kill on the gloomily sterile streets below.
The problem with that is, it’s never happened this way. The redcoats weren’t only oppressive tyrants under the cover of the forests, or in smoky battlefields. The Nazi's didn’t just rape and murder under gray skies, inside castles or in smoke covered camps smelling of burning human flesh. But no one can see that.
We cant look at the happy painted houses, with open spaces around them, green grass, sun shining, birds singing and imagine that iron hand of tyranny reigning over it all, with storm troopers and militarized police marching through it, making sure it all conforms to the governmental ideal of "right" and "orderly" and "well behaved". Everyone looks and they cannot fathom it happening within what they see. If they even begin to wonder about it all they can say is "Its not dark, its not visually oppressive, the sky hasn’t turned black and begun to rain - how can their be evil, how can their be tyranny?"
Our society, our popular culture, has lead us to develop a schema for tyranny that is dependant on the classic features of dramatic environments, storm clouds, rain, oppressive construction, fire, smoke, ash, rock walls, iron bars. Breaking free of this schema is incredibly hard, because we (as Americans from birth at least) have no exposure to anything different we have no way to assimilate this idea into the existing schema, and many will not be able to develop an accommodation for it either, at least not until it is suddenly thrust upon them by storm troopers breaking down their door, or marching down their sunny streets. Even if that level of tyranny suddenly became reality, many would continue to categorically deny it except on rainy days.
It is because of this misconception that tyranny is able to make its slow encroachment upon our lives in small forms. People are blind to it because their idea and understanding of the world is warped through their exposure to nothing but “pop culture tyranny”, and they cannot see the reality for what it is.
Flower lined streets, with trees and boys on bicycles riding in front of brightly painted houses, seems to be a place that is free of tyranny. Unfortunately, it is the exact opposite. Such illusory places are the perfect breeding ground for tyranny, because they dull the senses and kill the perception that anything bad might happen.

”If you want to build an escape-proof prison, there is a way. Just don't tell the prisoners that they're in jail. Make them compete with each other for life sentences...Call it home."
Chad Oliver, Shadows In The Sun, 1954.

"I’m only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn’t accidentally tell you that
I’m only happy when it rains
You’ll get the message by the time I’m through
When I complain about me and you
I’m only happy when it rains"
Garbage

Leaving

It had drizzled all day and a layer of clouds lay low between mountains and mesas, covering the city. The red glow of the urban sprawl reflected off the sky, a sickly aurora on a rainy night. The yellow glow of the streetlights shone off the wet pavement like the amber fires of the underworld burning through the ground.
My breath fogged slightly as I stood on the curb, watching the empty parking lot. She slipped out of the wet darkness to stand next to me, staring out. Pale skin, wrapped in a heavy black coat, a beautiful sprite cum wraith of the night standing there, breathing in time with the city around us.
She shifted slightly on her feet her look growing more worried with each foggy breath, a chink in the heavy armor of this vixen of the night. Looking outward across the lot, rain soaked pavement and cars being lit and unlit by a flickering light above, waiting for someone. A familiar traveler in the night, offering warmth and shelter, even the bewitching need a safe haven. A soft moan of fear slips through her lips, an unconscious slip of the tongue, as she keeps trying a phone that no one will answer.
I would speak, offer a kind word on this cold night, but my own traveling companion approaches, slipping silently through the rain wet dark. I leave her standing there, staring fearfully into the empty darkness.

The gas station lot is dark too, and the smell of gasoline and grime never washed away by the rain assaults the nostrils. The old machine keeps time to the silent music of the streets, making desperate thumping sounds as it slowly pumps the fuel.
People moving about on the sidewalks and down the middle of the streets like ghosts in the night. Drunks passing their bottle as they stumble back into the shadows, kids on scooters out for a ride in the cool air free of their dark lives, men leaving the porn shop across the way with furtive glances and dirty leers at the whores.
One girl crosses the street and moves slowly down the sidewalk, looking toward the station for her man. He comes across the lot, baggy clothes rippling in the sharp breeze, and demands the money she’s made for the night. I can hear him yelling when she tells him there isn’t any, “Lying puta!” he rages.
The gas pump clanks to a stop, and I replace the nozzle into its slot. The pooled water beneath my feet splashes as I step back to close the tank-cap. I watch the pimp and his whore as I get back into the truck, slamming the door behind me, sealing out the cold and the stink of the stains never washed from the city.
I drive out of the parking lot as the first blow lands, an open hand slap that knocks her staggering on her high heels. I look back once, his fist balled up to take the wind out of her, and then I’m on the street, moving into the dark… leaving.