foxtrot tango whiskey

In the movie The Dark Knight starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, Michael Cane's character sums up the Joker's actions with a single, iconic sentence, saying, “Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn.” To some degree, my desires mirror those of that green-haired maniac; on some level, I think that the most expedient and the simplest way for us to return balance to our world and to curtail mankind's dangerous over-expansion is to stop trying to control things that are wholly out of our control (such as human economic and moral behavior) and return to a state of blessed anarchy.

Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.

Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.

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occupy the commons

Roads, meadows, highways, bridges, seams of coal and ore, airwaves, forests, streams – all these things and more make up the Commons, meaning that they belong to each person equally, and that persons have the inalienable right to access them in times of need. Under the capitalism-driven corporatization that has of late transformed America into a sterile and desolate place hostile to individuality and intangible value alike, however, these things that were once the common property of all persons are now harvested, packaged, and sold with the purpose of making just a few hundred thousand of the hundreds of millions of citizens who live here rich beyond reckoning.

Fellow lovers of liberty, if we aim to free our common property from the stranglehold of money-lust, making it accessible to all, the way it used to be, we must occupy it with our bodies. Camp out on your local bridge! Ride your bicycle in out in the street, right next to the pitiable fools trapped inside their cars! Fill the radio with static, and jam the television signals! Only by making our presence known can we even begin to effect change, and only by putting our bodies in harm's way can we ever prove to a candid world that we deserve freedom, equality, and justice. Do we we have the guts to stand up in the face of inequality and injustice and demand that things change? Do we dare put down our tablet computers and switch off our cellphones and look around for the first time in a decade and marvel at just how bad things have become for persons who choose not to live the cookie-cutter, debt-fueled, consumption-oriented life?

Recent legislation is turning America into a police state (the Patriot Act, NDAA 2012), and I suspect that talking as I am talking here and examining ways to reclaim the Commons will be viewed by law enforcement as a crime, and that the federal and local police will try to paint me as a rabble-rouser and a corrupter of the minds of the youth. If, however, a love for Nature and an interest in the happiness and well-being of my fellow homo sapiens is a crime, then I am a criminal of the worst and most dastardly sort! Let us fight to keep the Commons the property of all persons equally, reminding the gullible and the television-addled people of this world that they do not have to live their lives under the cruel lash of wage-slavery, a lash that never ceases to strike. If we do not fight, if we do not bring our struggle out into plain view, then the capitalists and their cronies in the world's national banks and national legislatures will have won. They are already effecting their subjugation of liberty, equality, and justice, enveloping average persons in the false comfort of a mass-produced, corporate-designed culture of conspicuous and continuous consumption that rewards executive officers and majority shareholders for exploiting the Commons and selling back to us that which was already ours, all along.

Dear friends, we are not subjects, and we are not slaves – we are proud and self-sufficient people who work hard without complaining much, who come up with new ways to do and to make things, who protect Nature and care for our neighbors, and who know when things have gone too far. And gone too far they have – too far, certainly, to be remedied without massive societal upheaval and lots of bloodshed. If we must reclaim the Commons by force, then let us do just that, take matters into our own hands, and fight. Strassenkampf, Strassenkampf, alle auf die Barrikaden. Mahalo.

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on the lack of a bogeyman

For a good portion of the second half of the 20th century, the United States had a clearly defined bogeyman, fall-guy, and nemesis: the pinkies, reds, and commies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (CCCP). Then, in the early 1990s, the CCCP crumbled, unable to keep underwriting the avarice and greed of its ruling class, unable to enforce its will upon an oppression-weary populace, and unable to keep up with the sheer might of consumption-centered capitalism coupled with the rapid mechanization and robotization as was taking place in such nations as chose to oppose it. All of a sudden, after decades of silent struggle against a highly demonized foe (see the inclusion of the phrase Under God in the pledge of allegiance that was added to show what godless heathens were the commies), America found herself without a clearly defined enemy.

Into this gap came the 9-11-2001 attacks, after which the branches of the U.S. government that were charged with defense and intelligence focused their various highly-sophisticated and well-tuned apparatuses for covert surveillance, espionage, murder, and sneak-thievery not onto an external foe but onto the very individuals whose Safety and Happiness they were supposed to bring about: the American people. We, the People, are now the enemy. We, the People, are now spied upon, listened to, and watched more closely than any terrorist or friend of terrorist who might yet be foolish enough to use means of electronic communication such as radio, cellphone, or Internet. Worst of all, however, we, the People, as a whole, do not seem to mind this oppression, preferring rather to walk the walk we have always walked it, dutifully participating in presidential elections (over which, because of the electoral college, we have little power and less influence), dutifully watching five hours of television a day, dutifully reporting to work and then, as if we were mindless automatons hardwired to strict obedience, spending our hard-earned cash on such superfluous bullshit as we were told – in multiple, exquisitely-crafted television commercials the previous evening – to buy.

There is a balance that the federal government must strike between keeping us, the People, Safe and Happy; but that balance has tilted (and not just during the Obama presidency, but also during the Bush2 and Clinton presidencies) drastically to the side of Safety at the cost of most of our Happiness. We, the People, must find a way to regain the balance that our nation seems to have lost; but, since we are rotting our minds by watching TV, and racking up consumer debt because we cannot control our own impulsive materialism, there is, I think, little hope that we might accomplish much of anything beyond become more fat and more lazy. So, with Osama Bin Laden dead, the regime of those pinkie-commie bastards long since withered away, and our worth as a people plummeting daily, perhaps we truly deserve our bogeyman status. Hrm.

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ordered chaos at Lot 1 show

  It is evening in Angelino Heights, and Lot 1 is thick with jumpy, snorting alcoholics. The third to perform after Passionweiss and Fat Tony, Amigo the Devil mounts the stage confidently, with the booze on his breath and his heart filled with a joyous rage. The crowd, already raucous and grinning with the bravo charlie, hoists upon him waves of ragged applause. A girl passes out – she is draped unceremoniously over a torn couch in the rear. Members of different and opposing urban youth organizations mingle together peacefully, each man sizing up the next, each man primed and ready to rape, pillage, and destroy. Locally brewed beers flow freely and at decent prices, the barkeep rushing to keep up. Another girl passes out, this one an attractive blond – she is carried carefully outside and placed in the Devil's tour van, where she lies, waiting, to be consumed by him later. Just as the mood inside is nearing its peak of wild-eyed, skin-clawing frenzy, Freddie Gibbs steps from the shadows spreading good cheer, his eyes flashing with visions of the Devil strumming his banjo hard. Via con diablo, amigos.

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