Ruptures/Raptures

I'll get back to the Grand Jury characterizations soon. I think. I have really mixed feelings about it, but I see that there's some potency regarding power here, more specifically in the linking with corporate power with white thinking and the illogical leap that if one thinks critically of corporations then one must somehow be other-than-white. It's an intriguing direction that I accidentally stumbled upon in talking with a coworker who is African-American and is constantly seeing her observations be conflated with a racial bias. It's a strategy to keep people in denial, I think, and when white folks say the same things, it really rankles those whose denial is three parkas thick. It explains why, when I once said to my brother-the-cracker that I worried about the direction of the country because I thought we needed to rein in the corporations, he said "I think black people get what they deserve." I thought it was a non-sequitur, but now I see it's a conditioned response, and ultimately the racial aspect is an inept sort of window-dressing on the whole Empire having no Clothes to put over its necrotic, wheezy body-without-organs.

Enough of that for the moment.

I wanted actually to write about the upcoming election and my fears, get them off my chest. I need to acknowledge that I'm projecting into the future and that my projections hopefully are wrong. Mercifully I hope they are wrong. But where I sit today is inside an expectation of violence in some form to emanate from the Republicuntvention in New York. I felt months ago that I needed to get out of the city, and lately I've been wondering if I shouldn't also take my Kitzelbitzel with me to NoDak. I wrote about that yesterday. It might be silly, but I'd rather have my cat be safe than sorry. I still haven't decided, I have a few days yet. I have a friend who's ready to look in on the animal, but I think it might be a better thing to have the cat stay with a friend at least.

It's the form of the violence that I wonder about now. There won't be a North vs. South or Rich vs. Poor Civil War going on. The violence I fear will be undifferentiated, a little like the bizarro sequence at the end of Stephen King's Needful Things where the evil man breezes into town and short-circuits various individuals to one another to lead to all these individual life-and-death struggles between two people, most of which end in the deaths of both persons. I see that I'm being manipulated--I even think I need to stop listening to Air America for the time being, no matter how much I might agree with Al, Kathryn, Rachel, Chuck D, Liz, Randi, etc. The thought came to me that I might be as vulnerable to manipulation von der linken wie von der rechten when I heard an advertisement for a study regarding shift-workers such as myself, who might have difficulty sleeping.

Like most shift-workers, guess what? I have trouble sleeping! Is it a disease I have, as the study seems to project? I have a different kind of answer to that: It is a socioeconomic disease, not a physical one, that is causing the problem. The disease involves the idea that some individuals think they must have 24-hour access to . . . . EVERYTHING! It's the disease of greed ultimately that is the cause of shift-workers' insomnia. Outside of a few unusual people who naturally have a nocturnal rhythm rather than a diurnal one, people are generally diurnal. It isn't a disease to have difficulty going against one's essential nature, O Wise Scientists, and to foist the idea that we are somehow "sick" because we are going against our natural rhythm and having a problem getting what we need reflects a deeply obtuse and out-of-it viewpoint.

There are other ads on AAR about driving drunk and speeding, and they also help to ratchet up the fear factor. I've wondered if they aren't parodies, but its probably that they're a commercial enterprise and they're happy to get whatever ads they can. Still, I can't stand those ads and I wish they'd dispense with advertising in general. I think I'll either go back to my classical station to be the bringer of wakefulness or better yet, return to an old-fashioned ringing alarm clock. (Welcome to 1904! Ah, technology...)

Nonetheless my fears have gotten me to think about the nature of the violence that surrounds us all. It is an undifferentiated miasma permeating our entire culture. It seems that most people have at least one specific group they're afraid of. Speaking for myself, it's angry born-again Christian rage-aholics. There are others who spark fears and rage inside me as well, but these are of course at the top of the list. I have this dawning awareness about rage vs. anger. I have more hope when I feel angry, but when I'm in rage that's all I see. It clouds my thinking to total disruption and distortion. I can't see what's real. It's a drug. This drug affects and addicts people across the political spectrum. I'm sure there are even "wild-eyed moderates" though that might sound like a contradiction in terms. I forget which Greek philosopher said it though--"Everything in moderation, including moderation." ("Hi, I'm Jenny and I'm a modera-holic. Don't go extreme on my ass, or I'll cut you!")

It feels like there's a whole lot of victimhood going on, on all sides to me. Right now, we see the real pros at victimhood-- poor little rich cunts, persecuted dominating Christofascists, whiny arrogant neocuntservatives-- having a field day with their "poor me, poor me, pour me a drink, Jeeves"ism. (And make sure that it's exactly like Cunty-Cunt likes it, Jeeves! He's been slaving at the Excel Spreadsheet for ten whole minutes!) There's so much resentment, it feels like spirituality has left the city. The resentment escalates left-right-moderate-left-right-moderate, and also paternal-maternal-humor-paternal-maternal-humor and other sorts of escalations going on. No wonder I want to get to the flat windy plains of NoDak.

I'm only speculating, but I see all sorts of scenarios taking place re: our violent near future. The potential for all sorts of mass murder takes the breath away. We have been a nation locked in a civil war for I don't know how long. There have been the long stretches of years where we've been able to play at getting along, and we look at our attempts to jerry-rig other nationalities into "workable nations" (Iraq? Yugoslavia anyone?), when we ourselves have only barely been able to withstand one another. It seems our schicksals are coming home to roost, but I don't know what the process will be. Anyone care to guess? Personal combat nationwide perhaps? World Wide Wrestling Federation meets Howitzers? I don't know. I feel scared, but I try to remember that Gaia's already decided all our fates. We will enter into them whether we want to or not.