This country’s church failed my mom, its state failed her and its industries failed her. And I do not have the luxury of forgetting her pain, her humiliation or loneliness. All of that was left here. I want the smoke inside of me, and not awash o’er me. By words and by deeds the more sin I eat the fewer there are for all those around me. I spare everyone.
Mom used to find a lot of chances to say things like “I see said the blind man to the deaf mute as the lame man came walking by”. She would breathe her life onto every idea she met with, I think partially to frame it so that she herself understood it better. And not to assert some authority or ownership over the sentiment or moment, but to make it be all the more charismatically pronounced for others who meet with it. She was never praised enough for how self-sufficient she truly was, not when everything else in all of communication online and off is just reaction and repetition. She very sincerely observed the world around her, sharing private jokes with each and everyone she communicated with rather than just the obligatory memes and emojis and movie quotes. Business calls with petty people faraway in cubicles always ending with personal conversation when most of us can’t even stand our neighbors, should we know them at all. She never pushed, and she never pulled. And so was she as weightless as smoke.
What follows was a thing I posted to her facebook account some weeks after her passing, and just days before said profile got memorialized beyond my control. This I typed out for all she knew online to read, with the understanding that the very people who upset her the most were always the people she agreed with the most. It crushed my mom, having to settle for me being the one and only to care for her livelihood and to sacrifice for her well-being throughout her final years. The actual insult to injury. I do not give a flying shit who says they have their own problems in life, they were not and are not dying. My mom found means and methods to help others while on her deathbed for fucksakes. Her family and friends giving nothing but excuses. So for the benefit of folks who loved her like they love an episode of some old tv series, a love obligating nothing be offered by them or provided by them,
The compassion of Christ that all are compelled to aspire after does not extend only towards those who share the same biases, desires, fetishes, quirks, whims or wishes as ourselves. After all, Jesus purportedly surrounded himself with liars, whores and thieves. In the same sense, and as no chain is stronger than its weakest link, Americans should want their fellows to be healthy, educated and free of worry, instead of rationalizing who gets space on the lifeboats. If patriotism is love of country, what is a country minus its citizenry? Same sense again, corporate entities can exist without their executives, but they cannot exist without their workers.
I saw a post today condemning those needing the financial assistance to come from Social Security, my mom’s primary source of income in her later years. As adults they should know that those making over 250k per year are actually under no legal obligations to pay SS taxes. We are informed this is so because they can afford their own retirement, but we are also informed that we do not pay into SS for ourselves but for those Americans requiring support in the here and now, with the understanding that the next generation will cover the costs for when we need that same support. So not only were the commenters condemning those living examples that the American way of life is bogus marketing, but they are defending the very class responsible, those born into entitled privilege or those who prioritized self-interest at cost to all those they should encounter in life. Bipartisan media hero-worships those who’ve hoarded or inherited resources, for trading a tiny percentage of their holdings to whichever philanthropic thing for further tax leniency, yet never observes how the aggregation of the rest of their hoard is what caused those societal ills requiring assistance to begin with. There is no good form of entrapment or extortion or exploitation, no matter how much we like the benefactor. If might makes right and the ends justify the means, then no rapist or murderer is ever in the wrong. Who wants to live by that pathology?
American patriotism is measured today by one’s eagerness to see fellow Americans suffer. From supporting gun ownership to any war, every war, you are no patriot unless willing to risk the lives of Americans. From pandemic masks specifically to universal free healthcare generally, if you want to save every life in this country you are clearly no true patriot. So I am not a patriot, because I personally believe that nobody anywhere holds ground to devalue the lives of others. Let people do it for themselves. God supposedly has a whole day set aside for judgement, and if you feel he needs your assistance in the matter, then you are not much of a believer. And so am I no Christian either, as thoughts and prayers are simply not sacrifice, and truth unto itself does not exist to flatter anybody. Its function is bigger than any ego, no matter how fragile.
Morality, ethics and virtue are not color coded. There’s no exceptions or exemptions or workarounds no matter how much comforting you think you need to get by. That peace of mind was always intended to come after the fact.
It bothers me to see just how many of my mom’s FB friends and family are racist and/or sexist and/or homophobic, and I am positive that realization explains some of her absences from here over the years. I don’t think we are under any moral or legal obligation to love everybody everywhere, but that is no invitation to lie to those different than ourselves, to cheat them or to steal from them or to condemn them for the crimes and sins committed by centerpieces to personality cults which bought and sold you, the self-serving authorities of Church or State or Industry. I have always been a failure in the eyes of the family tree for never using my wits to get rich and famous. I was raised to prioritize matters other than what I may want or need, because I am not alone in this world and it was not created to service me.
Bullshit memes talking about sharing more love in the world, from persons also posting about the huge swathes of humanity they wish could suffer more, that’s hypocritical. I am a mere 43, but I insist that each and every complication we meet with in this life, when not a gift from whomever or whatever we elect to follow, arrives from trying to justify the irrational nature of the ego. Your comfort, your pride, your sensibilities, do not trump the life or death needs of others, not ever. Nor does the comfort, pride or sensibilities of the persons you wish to be, to befriend or wish to sleep with. Waaay too many words for 99% of the FB lot, but life is about problem-solving, not making friends or enemies, and problems do fester and grow explicitly because symbology of god and country and capital conveniently shelter their biases, desires, fetishes, quirks, whims and wishes, masquerading them as anything but side-effects to the root of all evil.
Non serviam to those who want our time and resources up to and including our very own and what happens to please us; serviam to those who desperately need the help whether we like them or not and whether we agree with them or not. Even before I could express that for myself, it was always how I lived my life, no matter the difficulties to come of it. I’m not saying all poor people are victims, I’m saying it doesn’t matter. If someone fails because of circumstances beyond their control, you help them, and if someone fails over bad choices on their part, you help them no less. Or, you stop pretending to be a patriot, stop pretending to be a Christian, stop pretending to be a good person altogether. It was actually clergy who coined the phrase “power corrupts”, and he wasn’t saying just some of the time or only with some people. Wealth, power and authority, none of these things come from good intentions, not when all of them are entirely codependent upon continued suffering by somebody somewhere.
If others survive with less than you, less resources or less opportunities, then how can that excess be rationalized as necessary to your own survival? If power corrupts then none must have it, so why is there any need for dominance at all, in our culture or our society? And if just rewards are for the afterlife, then what need has anyone for more than others in the here and now, more resources or more opportunities? Isn’t that wanting a paycheck without completing the work? I do not believe equality means shared riches, it means shared burdens, which in turn would negate the creation of riches. And as that has never seriously been tried on a collective level, then it cannot possibly be held to blame for any of society’s issues.
And that my readers, is how one goes about telling an entire family tree to get tossed. Who the hell am I?
previously: cashing checks from heavy metal magazine at the liquor store; the only film I worked on was demonstrably prophetic as both myself and this country surrounding me grew sicker and poorer; getting quoted 5x across four episodes of a news show on RT; establishing a barter and trade system among denizens of the government housing bloc in town a full year before the pandemic or quarantining became a thing; serving as local crank for the Bardstown true crime pod; never honestly understanding semicolons
currently: suborbital, hubba hubba
The most crucial freedom is the freedom to learn from our mistakes. Especially when we do not actually break any laws or commit any crimes, then we have no legal consequences to face and should be free to live wherever we choose. Many homeless are unintentional marathoners. Tired of being shewed from neighborhood to neighborhood they begin trekking from city to city and state to state. For if they are not allowed to stop anywhere, they may as well just keep on going then, and at least see as much of the world as they can. I have heard that exact sentiment from easily a hundred different unhoused over the years, across diverse counties. Strangely, bipartisan media at regional or national levels never observes such authentic sentimentality. Contrary to the private or public perversions of self-appointed gods, we can’t persecute people simply for thinking or feeling as they do, and we cannot legislate opinion, lest we conflict directly with the fundamentals of liberty and the mechanics of self-determination and thus undo relationships and empires alike. Actually endangering life is not at all the same thing as disagreeing with the brand loyalty of others, and in fact my own experience informs me that brand loyalty, any and every brand loyalty, prioritizes something other than the preservation of life. Being made to feel unwelcome is harmful enough to extents of lethal force, but always being unwelcome makes living itself impossible. Yet the organized religions are obsessed with redemption and the public loves it in their fictions, just never with the people who they agree to disagree with. I spare everybody, that.