Jeezis FUCK! This the same fucking, meliorist, "be-nice, and don't offend the morons" rhetoric that GOT us TO this place. ALWAYS the "Singular" Question: What (whom) are you willing to compromise to reach an accord with those who we know from long experience won't concede a fucking thing? If a woman can't go to PP for a pap smear w/out hassles by "Pro-life" fascists, why should the fucking fascisti get to eat a quiet meal? Answer: They SHOULDN'T. There HAS TO BE SOME social price to be paid for such enthusiastic complicity in so much cruelty, harm and damage. Yer ol perfesser is growing increasingly irate at shit-head, "moderate," Vichy-press pundits in comfy gigs inside the Beltway or Manhattan, and no worries, telling us that, in effect, when rape is inevitable, we just gotta lie back and enjoy it... I say again: Civility is the puke-soaked ball-gag the powerful force onto the powerless to rob them of their only weapon, their rage. Just fucking stop, already! I mean, Chuy jodido, esse!
In yer ol' perfesser's opinion, the MAIN reason Gandhi was successful and the British didn't suppress him was that they had just emerged from WW II and they had neither the manpower nor the will nor the resources for a prolonged, murderous visible struggle half the world away. Britain lay in waste. They had to rebuild at home. They let India go, and India developed its own particular brand of murderous strife. As to MLK's successes, the time was ripe, in '64 and again in '68. He won gains. I hope they are strong and resilient enough to withstand the attacks that I foresee, as the crisis of legitimacy unfolds, and White Supremacy and skin privilege struggle to hold their status. With regard to Mandela vs. Apartheid, the struggle was hardly peaceful. It was long, bloody, brutal, cruel and murderous;, and Mandela participated fully, before Robben Island. One of the secrets of the success of the previous resistance movements, globally, has been the ability to publicize what would be private/secret outrages. A significant difference in our Junta is their willingness to act out their outrages in public, and in effect, brag about them. Pacifism is an instrument which utilizes shame to reduce opposition and forstall excessive reaction. These motherfukkking fascists have NO shame. Nixon more or less ORDERED Ohio Gov, Rhodes to have the Guard open fire at KSU. They DO have it in 'em... The Lord Dampnut junta might be providing enough outrage among ordinary, non-drooling but also non-voting citizens to propel them, in numbers, to the polls and perhaps to the streets. Whether pacifistically or not will depend on them.
Happy Birthday! First thought up as a "public relations" tool by Freud's favorite nephew, Edward Bernays, in the late Teens of the last Century, the "Big Lie" was based on the cynical, but accurate observation that everybody lies. Most people tell only small lies to ease their passages through civilization: Honey, do these jeans make me look chubby? Most people are careful NOT to lie in matters that can be easily checked, or in BIG things being caught at which could be disastrous. A certain stigma attaches (or used to) to being known as a liar. And most people believe that most people believe and act as they do. So that when some agent with nefarious purposes tells a BIG lie, most people--believing they wouldn't tell such a lie--are inclined to believe the BIG lie, the more so if that lie is repeated regularly by "reputable" sources/authority.. Bernays, who invented it, and Goebbels, who perfected it, called it "The Big Lie," making it seem as though there were only one. But that was somewhat disingenuous, because the Big Lie involves MANY lies about MANY things--possibly, potentially EVERYTHING! But the same old rule applies: Keep it simple and repeat it endlessly. Make EACH LIE simple. But tell MANY of them. In the age of the internetz, they are instantly repeated and legitemated. The opposition--US--cannot counter all of them. And every criticism repeats the falsity. People will soon weary of the job of telling fact from falsehood and hopeless complicity ensues. This is what "the Epistemic Crisis" is about. These are the terms and this is what's at stake. It's no less than a concerted attack on the possibility of "public truth," and the Good Guys are losing.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet. I was 15 in '61. It wasn't a great year for "bands," unless you were living in LA or NYC. Not in Santa Fe NM. Most of the pop music in the hinterlands consisted of TOP FORTY hits, and in '61, it was still overwhelmingly solo performers: Elvis, Rick Nelson, Ray Charles, Del Shannon, Brenda Lee. All had 'hits" in '61. Even the Miracles, who had a hit, weren't really a "band," as much as they were an "act." Mostly our tastes were limited to what came in on 1520 KOMA, in Okie City. 50KW, E/W directional; way up on the high side, that signal bounced off anything. XEROK in Juarez, too (150KW, 800 AM; allegedly, water boiled within 50 feet of the transmitter/tower). And only at night. My family lived 10 miles north of Santa Fe, which didn't have "pop"--"rock'n'roll"/Top 40--music until Karl Goodwin, a friend of my father's, hired me to play it on his radio station, KTRC, in the Winter of '62. And my JOB was to play Top 40, 4 hours nightly, 5 nights a week. And I sold the show, and wrote the ads. I also ran the board and played elevator music and paid, religious programs on weekend days. Those days and nights I sat in that control room, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, I started to think how to organize senses to accomplish certain conditions. And, because the station got all kinds or albums from producers, there were lots of genres to select from to my weekend shows. We were on the Capitol Records mailing list, and so we got Stan Kenton albums, and George Shearing albums, and Sinatra, and Ella and Nancy Wilson and the whole plethora it their catalogue, as well as other labels' releases, too. Nobody ever offered me payola, but other thatn that, it was fabulous fun and an excellent education! For your information, recollection, and reflection, the link HERE is to the official, Billboard #1 hits for the year 1961.
Lay-deez and Gennemuns! Step right up! Watch real "history" unfolding before your wondering eyes! Get the kiddies, and set 'em down to watch. Historians in the future (if there is one) will write scores of tomes about this time.
They're "toppling" y/our fucking government! AMAZING! AND YOU CAN WATCH while it happens before y/our very own, helpless, horrified eyes! Hell, you can capture it for posterity in your fone. THIS is/was the right-wing coup that the plutocRats and corpoRats have been plotting and arranging since the 1930s. Remember General Smedley Butler? They didn't start it then. They wouldn't have started it NOW--wouldn't have brought it into the open--if they didn't think they could finish it. They think they will and can "succeed." In MANY ways, they already have! And they don't NEED Lord Dampnut, anymore. So even if "we" expel him, the Agenda will continue. Nobody is gonna "do" ANYTHING about "it," because nobody CAN do anything to stop it.
