Liberal Laughter
“You well know that I’ve frequently neglected my appearance, I admit it, and I admit that it’s shocking. But look, money troubles and poverty have something to do with it, and then a profound discouragement also has something to do with it, and then it’s sometimes a good means of ensuring for oneself the solitude needed to be able to go somewhat more deeply into this or that field of study with which one is preoccupied.” -Van Gogh
“The finest fury is the most controlled.” — Christopher Hitchens
As someone who is delusional enough to purport himself as a writer, I question if there resides anything more internally painful than watching society eat me alive, and not being able to find the words to defend myself. No, not writer’s block, its befuddlement. What’s happened to Americans? What’s happened to my compassion for Americans?
The torrent of flames which stoke my political will have never burned with such a fervent tumultuousness however, I have never felt so disjointed from the two-party political system we are imprisoned within the United States. Strangely, I have more appreciation for The Republican Party than any time terrestrially previous. This doesn’t mean I’m running down to the Cato Institute screaming for a job. I would still steal 98% of Republicans house pets and deport them to El Salvador. I was going to say Anthony Gonzalez ( R ) from Ohio can keep his goldfish but he went to Ohio State so, no, the goldfish will need to learn Spanish too.
“I like when a little flower or tuft of grass (2%) grows through the crack in the concrete. It’s so fucking heroic.” — George Carlin
“I don’t have pet peeves — I have major psychotic fucking hatreds.” — George Carlin
The Democratic Party on the other hand, I cannot put it any other way, I’m sorry, Jesus Fucking Christ! My family has been lifelong Democrats. The love for Gov. Robert Ray (IA.), The Kennedy’s (Dead with Syd or not) and all things Plains, Georgia was institutionalized into my family as much as the song “Low Rider” by War and “Sticky’s” 2X4 Tap burgers in Clinton, Iowa. My first political coordinator campaign, at the ripe age of 18 years-old, was Bruce Babbitt’s Presidential run in 1988. Yes, The Biden Campaign (’88) was synonymous with cocaine, I can attest, firsthand. Hunter, you are excused. That year, much to my dismay, Governor Dukakis (MA) won the Democratic nomination. Mr. Enigmatic. His daughters would make great Gen Zer’s today. They were absolute humorless stiffs on the campaign trail. This isn’t to say they were puritanical, they were just Skull & Bones about their affairs. Dukakis had the lead over Bush the First, in ’88, then fucked it all up by jumping into an army tank for a joy ride, looking like a complete idiot. The Bush Campaign seized on the moment, ate him alive and stole an election they should not have won. Damn, this family has a knack for hijacking elections that were not rightfully theirs. I would not see a “liberal” America as an adult until Billy came stumbling drunk into D.C. in 1992. The Clinton Administration’s run from ’92 to 2000 was the last vestiges of America having a collective good time.
One could surmise the 21st Century has been a Greek tragedy where the mask of Melpomene has commanded the stage while Thalias lays in ruins. If we in America are going to be capable of exercising our wills to the extent of manifesting our democratic destiny, fuck, let us not take each other so seriously, and have a bit of fun at our own expense as we watch Rome, Kentucky burn, drown or go broke and run out of Cheetos. Our existence is not a zero-sum game. We have turned it into a video game against Mother Nature and she is a beastly opponent. We have two American contestants. The Right who are flat-out delusional science deniers and The Left “woke” (wokeness is simply political correctness on a crystal meth binge) that leads the so-called “progressive” wing of The Democratic Party at avoiding showing any sign of knowing anything about what being a human being represents — infallibility. Sorry Gens at the end of the alphabet, we are not biorobot just quite yet. Humans err. We are in dire need of the return of Pagan village celebrations of hallucinogenic brews, orgies, wife swapping, public sex acts, dancing, dancing, dancing, fire, fire, fire, strobe lights and beer. The next day The Chiefs play The Colts on Sunday followed by Monday, and Bob goes back to work selling insurance at State Farm while his wife educates your 5th grader. Life goes on after decompression, madness paves way to a rejuvenated sanity.
“A rule of thumb with humor; if you worry you are going too far, you have already not gone far enough, if everyone laughs, you have failed.” — Christopher Hitchens
“Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.” — Christopher Hitchens
To the top, to the top, finding those elusive words. Why oh why is my sense of belonging feeling like an empty cannoli? How is it that all I want to do is be as politically engaged in planetary survival, until I drop dead, simply for the sake of my daughter’s (age 19) generation and those younger, yet my daughter wants nothing to do with me? Long story. The onus for this separation is on us both.
Why is it I want to be as engaged as politically as humanly possible but American adults (80%) annoy the piss out me. On face value, most are fine, we are fine, a passing in a grocery store — no problem. However, stretch this engagement into a kid’s soccer match or a school superintendent’s meeting — oh shit.
And if I disassemble the demographics, a whole entirely different frustration arises when I ponder the anal-retentive madness of the 18–35 demographic. I am such at a loss for why one would let their youth be consumed with such bitter dreariness. The state of the world is no excuse. This is why drugs were invented. Street drugs. The escape, the INTENTIONAL deconstruction of the ego to find other OPEN spaces of consciousness– properties in the brain to pitch a tent and have some fun. My daughter uses the they/them pronouns but I could virtually guarantee she has never tried to explore sex on psychedelics or has a clue as to what an orgasm is. Choosing an alternative label does not make one counterculture or sexually promiscuous, go right ahead LGBTQ and sometimes Y community and tell me my tailpipe is spewing male toxicity and being insensitive. I will love my daughter vociferously no matter who she identifies with or chooses to be. I am angered and pained by watching a generation being so wrapped up with being more obsessed with gender fluidity than the importance of generational cooperation as their environmental future hangs in precarious balance.
It never stops astonishing me how synchronicities are sprinkled my way when writing my gibberish. Here is a tweet I wrote this morning. The event is most certainly true –
I was waiting for some carry-out last night next to a trans male and a woman by gender (??) or whatever she identifies herself as, the WGM (woman gender maybe), says in that annoyingly immature load voice so others overhear; “Being straight is the easy way out.”
From my heterosexual perspective:
1) I had close friends die of AIDS and these kids have no idea what that period of time was like to live through.
2) (Blue) Gen X has always had your back, so grow the fuck-up.
3) I have no idea how you feel you are doing your movement any favors by persecuting everyone but your own.
It is number three which truly perplexes me? Why would you not want to build a generational coalition when your environmental future hangs on such a fragile balance? What’s my theory? What’s my take? Back to “Hitch”, I feel relieved someone far more intelligent than myself tells me I don’t need one.
Within my whimsical theism happy-hour, I muse, “I’m an atheist teetering on an agnostic if you catch me on a good day.” Built within this BS (sometimes referred to as belief system) is my preferential, default spiritual practice — Buddhism. Contained within the practice of Buddhism is the discipline known as the “Don’t Know Mind.”
“We want to know, we think we know, we think we’re supposed to know. There’s all of this bias toward knowing. But we don’t really know. We have this radical teaching — how about admitting the truth that we don’t know and go from there. If we really live that, it changes everything.” — Zen Master Bon Soeng
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I bought into this principle thirty-years-ago. I’ve practiced maybe 10 minutes; the mindfulness is easier said than done — undoubtedly. Yet, I am convinced, if Western Civilization is ever going to learn how to play nice, share its toys and contents in its lunch pail — it’s going to have to learn all over again that inquisitiveness is better than endless acquisitions. When one is being inquisitive freedom permeates. When one is focused on global hegemony there always resides an end game which never ends well.
Kids, the “Don’t Know Mind” is not a closed-hearted, distrust of humanity and others — a belief in Grandpa and Grandma Google over the sometimes “uncool”, “incorrect” memories of your fellow Earthlings. It’s an ease, a laughter of enjoying the ride of your youth, knowing that you have the time to enjoy living with no idea what the fuck is going on. Believe me, through natural osmosis, age will impose enough truths upon you in which you will wish you would have not lived with so much earlier self-restraint.
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it
thinks.” — Christopher Hitchens
“If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies, and charge admission.
I’m not a comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce.” — Lenny Bruce
As the doomsday day clock is 23 ticks from the Magic 8 Ball reading, “run for your lives” and the neighbor who mows his lawn in the design of a Confederate flag chases your eleven-year-old around your streets with a chainsaw, I hear your wife yelling at you, “Why the fuck didn’t you listen to me Roger!” And she was right.
Mama, the anti-Karen, wanted less capitalism, less consumption, less accumulation, less trying to keep up with “that guy” mad with the chainsaw…
This meant less things called Mustangs, Johnson Outboards, John Deeres, Harley Davidsons, Taylor Made & Titleist, and designer leaf blowers.
Labels, labels, labels…
YOU FUCKING SOCIALISTS WANT US TO LIVE OFF OF BREAD & BICYCLES! No. we don’t. More sharing, less envy — cheers.
As a child, my family had a community swimming pool in the neighborhood, a large public neighborhood, inclusive not exclusive, and for a modest fee families enjoyed this amenity all summer long. It is one of my most endearing and enduring memories of childhood. This country needs to reestablish community once again. How do we do this? By losing labels of selfish identity.
“Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.” -Christopher Hitchens
One of the first responsibilities we learn as children is to share. For many children, this is a difficult behavior to habituate, particularly when the ask is raised towards our favorite toy or subject. As we become teens/young adults this difficulty mutates to our ideological believes. Our perceptions of the world begin to crystalize, many times in contrast to our elders believes, and we rejoice in carrying forth the contrarian mindset. In this blip of galactic existence, we begin to solidify our identifies and codify our sense of belonging in the world through a series of believes and theories. Ironically, coming of age, many of us lose the youthful ideology and slip into the familiarity of the consensus norm our parents held that we rebelled against fifteen years earlier. (Not all of us!) Which brings me back to our first significant lesson as a child — sharing.
Affordable housing for everyone? No,
Socialized Medicine? No.
Desegregated neighborhoods, corporate jobs or school districts? No.
Free college? No.
Equitable policing and incarceration? No.
The church accepting a secular state? No.
Enough demonstrated. Yes, I’m heavily insinuating, America we are infantile. We never learned the most basic states of compassion to be a decent human being. Under this malaise, our adult brains became wired to become defensive, irrational, reactionary when another human being questions our believe system or identity. My idealistic, individualistic examples could run for days and would liking be littered with bias. It is easier to equivocate that I am certainly not excluded from our collective detriment. I am lucky the police state has not burned me at the stake. It has taken me fifty-years to realize, place into practice, the behavior of allowing my believes to flow like water and treat my identity as an absolute mirage. It’s meh with heart. For many “meh” may sound far to lackadaisical. So, find your own way, your own language. The message is nothing sticks. Labels hold no adhesive. Theories are just that–theories, fun dinner conversation. The French intelligentsia will argue ideologies over three-hour, wine soaked, dinners to the point of insults but, after the dishes are cleared and the cigarettes are lit the party returns to gaiety and community. We could learn something from them.
I’m an Atheist, I just say this to note this was not my family’s household mantra, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” However, an American would have to live in a cave or a cult not to have this slapped in your face repeatedly by theism. My ask is; Why have the Christians failed so miserably to learn this toddler creed? (See above bullet points) I’ve morally held up this principle rather well with no God. It doesn’t really fucking matter — now. Moving forward, my point being, we have free will to wear our labels but choose them wisely and refrain from obsessively defending them. Learning is fun, weaving theories can be similar to assembling a jig-saw puzzle but treat your discovery with liquidity, flexibility — refuse to turn your findings into objective truths. The Earth will thank you by not being so temperamental.
The two basic foundations-again, one, you are who you are; please, please feel no need to defend your idiosyncrasies unless we fall into an Orwellian dystopia. Live and let live. Two, theories are just that. Think big. As Buckminster Fuller stated, we live on, “Spaceship Earth”, our cosmic theories are infantile projections, our Freudian psychological theories are infantile, how long have we been wrestling cancer (?), who has the answer to our environmental crisis (?), and what the hell is a political theory? We don’t know shit, and it’s time to rejoice in the fact that it’s time to explore, rather than wrestle with who’s theory is the most absurd or dangerous.
As I am writing this, I am constantly being reminded off my childhood in the northern suburbs of Chicago. This was the late 1970’s. My grandparents possessed a small plot of land — maybe two acres at the most. Three houses surrounded their property. My grandfather and uncle were avid snowmobilers. Our family would spend our nights racing around their “yard” raising hell and having fun. There was not one neighbor that complained. The neighbors to the north were elder recluses, we never would see them. The neighbor to the south raced stockcars and made all kinds of noise, no one ever complained about him. The neighbors to the southwest had two very young kids which I imagine had an early bedtime, they never bitched. We used to play with their kids from time to time. The whole neighbor was friendly and would share beers with each other from time to time. This was my favorite America. This is an America I wish to see again. We remove our concern for labels, treat our theories like clouds, suddenly what our neighbors are doing matters little and hell — we may even enjoy it. This freedom looks better than the one foreseen so psychically precise by Lenny, charging admission to see the extinction of our children.
