informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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26.10.05

I keep having this urge to hiss "Hail Satan" whenever I see these guys on the TV. In that whisper/shriek the death-metal guys are so fond of. It's cathartic, but I worry the neighbors won't understand, not to mention the Mormon guys on the monitor feed.
I figure with my gimped up leg and all I must be way lower priority than before, so probably they don't run the really insightful crew, just the standard Panopticon bit. So, because of the neighbors, I don't do it all the time. But I do it.
Frist was spieling on "dependence on foreign oil" - his nuanced emphasis. Just that little teensy edge in the voice that says if you're good boys and girls you'll memorize this, because it's going to be on the test.
We're not worried about being dependent on oil, that's not it, no. Foreign oil. There's the dilemma.
Also, in keeping with our recent exposure here of the insidious NASCAR false enthusiasms - this business about Mexicans creeping through the SouthWest desert to steal our jobs?
Same guys, same tune.
It jacks up the rednecks and refocuses their anxieties, and anger, away from the real perps, the guys doing the "sic 'em" on the wetbacks - Chertoff, Frist et al. - and onto a pretty much voiceless and defenseless group of "foreigners".
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And Rosa Parks is gone. Enough progress got made that now most kids think of overt social racism like they think of the highways back then, when they're told there used to be a two or three foot band of trash all up and down the shoulder of the road until the anti-litter laws got passed, and enforced.
Tell 'em families used to drive along flinging their waxed paper and dixie cups out the window and they won't really believe you. It's true though, I was there, I remember, it was like that.
The local paper in a small California town, as late as the mid-sixties, would print the race of soldiers from the nearby Army base when they got arrested for D&D downtown. Not the white guys, just - "Pvt. Luther L. Washington, a Negro, ...". Otherwise it was - "Pvt. James T. Ankleford, arrested on charges of drunk and disorderly..."
That was forty years ago. Couldn't happen today. Too overt.
Rosa Parks did her move fifty years ago.
So who's going to do a Rosa Parks now? And what would it be?
How about some single mom on welfare refusing to take a scornful tone of voice off someone at the store when she uses her food stamp card?
How about a homeless guy refusing to put up with a snotty attitude from someone on a city bus?
Too nuanced, but there it is. It isn't race anymore, it's class.
Kenye West, and all that.
It hasn't been directly addressed by anyone official I've seen.
It's more like wait until the news cycle rolls around again, and we can forget about it.

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