This is a continuation of the line of thought where, if we may either willingly or coincidentally find cause to disregard the actual life or death needs of others, then others in turn have no cause to care for ours. And if that is not your cuppa then boy howdy are you in the wrong place. What you want is everywhere but here, to the extent of serving what I would describe as the shit-stained underlining to all things Capitalism. Denying it is what defines rightwing ideologies both Neoconservative and Neoliberal. Denying it is what empowers Judaeo-Christian orthodoxies to legally trample the civil rights of their neighbors and competitors, and denying it is what permits dipshit video game writers to use their social media hideouts to lambast Capitalism without any trace of irony, what any self-deprecating Scotsman would see as a fucking legend.
In what is looking to be the only positive news of the last week or so, excavators of mountains in western China have found evidence of the ritualistic smoking of cannabis, dating back to around 2500 years ago. As the modern, digital incarnations of the Collective Unconscious are by design self-destructive, they will not be in play for such perpetuity, or any perpetuity really. The contrast of this story, with the massive protests in China occurring at the same time, is profoundly unacknowledged as near as I can tell. Taken together it has shades of my not-online potluck social network, as true leftists, should they exist, climb clock-towers to fire one up, not to fire away. But “Entertain me!” scream the bloodless masses, who would prefer to impose than to help anybody anywhere. As above, so below indeed. Not a cult worth joining.
In a recent episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, the comedian’s research team this time focused on equality here in the states, where regards the service of telecommunications companies and especially the lack thereof. The gross discrepancies permitted by the FCC against minority, tribal and other small communities as detailed in the show, from all the usual brands, were not too surprising, though disturbing nonetheless. What particularly struck me was Comcast’s lawsuit against the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for daring to deliver to its citizens what the company refused to by viewing the internet as a public utility worthy of a municipal broadband rather than unreliable privatization. I question the urge to get everybody online, what with Facebook, Amazon, Google and the Pentagon all exploring everything from weather balloons to satellites for the express purposes of manufacturing global access to and from the internet. I question this when actual utilities such as clean water are lethally contaminated in hundreds of domestic cities right now, and when overlooked communities like trailer parks experience blackouts and power surges with far more regularity than any penthouse suite. I question this as there was never such a governmental push to get free radios or televisions or phone landlines into all homes when informing the masses in times of emergency is and always has been an issue for civilization. But Comcast was so infuriated by the people of Chattanooga wanting to hold the company to account for the broken promises of its offerings, wanting what they were simply paying for, that the company sued. Presumably over its inalienable right to profit being infringed upon, even oppressed. Libertarian sorts would defend this as big government getting weaponized to deny free enterprise, but in reality it’s a matter of anger that the company’s dominance goes unrecognized by disgruntled consumers informing potential customers. Something I wish the show had addressed was how this is the same lingo utilized by the trio of global trade treaties of recent years, wherein governments could face fines, trade embargoes and worse for providing for its citizens any service which a multinational corporation might otherwise profit from.
From the kindness of their hearts, the same hearts which objected to Chattanooga wanting the company to follow through with its contracts and provide acceptable speeds to every community regardless of affinity for white collar crimes, Comcast is now offering eye control tech to assist physically-impaired persons in their TV viewing. With the company’s newly documented history of suing for the right to contradict its own terms and services agreements, I see this as among the early wave of new tech verifying the actual, malevolent intentions behind TV’s big switch from analogue to digital several years back. They will keep them watching alright, controlling for those helpless their fields of vision and points of view with amazing products so benign and clean that Fight Club soap would blush. Susceptibility to marketing is nothing to be proud about, just as sometimes, female porn stars sincerely do love what they do for a living. I think it’s actually everybody else who feels deserving of getting a victory cum-shot on the big screen.
The internet has only been successful with one objective, leaving its users distracted and misinformed and perversely grateful for the experience, and so the Powers That Be seek to spread the distractions and misinfo to everybody else, regardless of the ample cost to human life and dignity in our world offline. With reins maintained by very particular sets of hands. In this light, what is most remarkable about the protests in China, is that some 2 million people organized in real life and away from keyboards, communicating not by digital or electronic or virtual platforms but rather largely by word of mouth. For all its sense of self-worth, those in the USA have thus far shown themselves to be too melodramatically unintelligent to manage such a glorious debacle. The closest comparison are the homeless, who possess no gadgets or widgets for self-surveillance. And, the homeless are readily demonized, both in the eyes of the law and in the court of public opinion, explicitly because they cannot or will not play the game. Popular consensus is that it is far more preferable to blather on and on with either adulation or condemnation about the most maudlin of bullshit than even remotely consider what humans might actually be capable of when they are not focused on distraction or misinformation. When they exchange the meticulous banners and haphazard brandings of their masks for tactile thought, and indulge only in the raw, firsthand experience of life, carpet burns and all. Marijuana can be an effective tool for deprogramming away from the cultism nonsense, by allowing users to note the absurdity of perceived normalcy inside and outside their gourds.
Maybe, Americans despise foreign homeless, the refugees, for serving as a living embodiment of America’s relationship to its trivialities, by pursuing escapism instead of confronting what prompts the need to escape to begin with. Fleeing for your lives only ever seems to leave a trail, either digital or physical or both, for that threat to continue its own entertaining. You will die trying to escape it, but you could die trying to fight it, so that hopefully others need never flee themselves. No matter the obvious appeal of suicide bombers at sci-fi conventions, self-sacrifice is absolutely never fashionable, for a reason. Running from problems is what humanity owes its longevity to, and all that it cost was everything. And the people itching for immigration reform exist in a deep denial over just how murderous the majority of their fellow citizens truly are, from people who immediately grow livid and defensive at the suggestion of taking the time and money spent obsessing over comic books and giving it instead to persons in need; to people who would be fine and dandy with a very public re-branding of the domestic concentration camps as full-on death camps. Distraction away from that and misinformation in regards to that is never going to come close to solving the problem. Huge societal issues persist because most people see no fault in atrocity, thinking it better to have death, depravity and destruction imposed on the well-being of strangers than for themselves to ever be even remotely inconvenienced.
But the sacrifice necessary for a better world is negligible. All that you must go without is your ego.
Do not care to lazily express to your most desirable judges, juries and executioners how cultured you and your optics are by remarking on a contrived meme, but instead focus your psychic energies on sorting how exactly you yourself can go about physically stringing up the last king with the entrails of the last priest. Lest nay-saying outsiders see how small is your metaphorical bell-end after all.
But what are your favorite TV series? Could you make a list? That would be so helpful, you have no idea.