"How Trauma Grows with the Telling"
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"Ego" these days is frequently a self-justifying "parlour game" when the silence has no answer, except for the "ka-CHING" of a big pay-off when gangs of the downtrodden-- emotional invalids, in other words-- clap you on the shoulder for striking back at the amorphous "evil empire" and winning one "for the little guy", whoever he is supposed to be in this onerous burden of existence when it's far easier "to tear down" than "build up", pilfer than save in an orgy of greed with the black, downward suck of the universe's "lower instincts".
Water certainly does not flow uphill, and it is in the nature of an agitated beast's instincts to lash out in the poverty of want, the desert of self-esteem, the rotten truth of the soul "exposed" when everything is not "a joyous Christmas morning" of sugared plums. . . . . when even so-called litigious "class action" public defenders bring back "table scraps" for agonied, howling bandage-mummies or pus-oozing diabetic fat-bags while keeping multi-millions for themselves with the smug, lionly satisfaction of grifters and courtroom con-artists.
Yes, even as Hollywood runs false either/or populist stories on a flickering projector and stirs up the masses into the syrupy clutches of the Democratic party, as much a problem with corruption and big money as ever, but only with "a teddy bear" pollitboro full of whipped, socialist dogs, fat, gelatinous African-American "soul mamas", and "progressive" schwartzers of the New World Order "student council" like unwanted do-gooder'ism. . . . . skulls made pulpy with liberalism, like a soft-bottomed paramecium "gorping" after a trail of pleasure-chemicals is enough to face the howling void, red in tooth & claw.
When some character metaphorically finds himself on a darkening night of whipsawing events, "a hell-bound train of consequences" when he's "on a drag strip", "playing chicken" with some toughs and loses a leg in an accident. Well, not all of it. . . . . probably just below the knee.
As terrible and traumatizing and pathetic as all this is in the recovery unit as he learns to walk again, finding the courage to be more than the shivering wreck he was the night the paramedics wheeled him in on "a crash cart", "the story only grows with the telling". Yes, of how selfless he was. . . . . how heroic. . . . . such "a martyr" as he figures out that he can "play this up" and get things to lean in his favor if he adopts "this role", almost "what is expected of him" as society leans in with great solicitude and compassion, sorry that they could not have done more "to have headed off this misfortune in the first place".
Pretty soon, he's walking around with a bandage on his head "as a point of pride", exaggerates his limp, "plays to the crowd"-- or even for a cash settlement "in a court of justice", when it's far more about "slanting your story" to convince the judge and jury than "the truth of things". You might even remember the course of events on the night differently, with a bit of "the embroidered handiwork" of a folk tale that carries far more emotional resonance than what a seasoned cross-examiner would particularly respect, or even your favorite "devil's advocate".
I don't intend to take out one's "little sliver of ground" out from beneath them, but only to shock them with the realization that no one has to be any longer "painted into an existential corner" by either A) intellectual laziness or B) being too spooked to do otherwise. . . . . that is, when all of this "is purely psychological" and can be overcome with a thrust up toward "the life force" of honesty and valour. And even I, as your half-Jewish bullshit artist, nod my head at that. . . . .
More for your consideration. . . . .
Most of history, show business, media, or what you read in the text-books is far less about "objective truth", per say-- but oftentimes is essentially a form of superstition, Voodoo, and the importance of human legend-telling and how it makes the tribe feel, "and what they must believe" in order to get by, or even to be led more effectively. To the extent that all of storytelling requires a little bit of illusion and stagecraft, some details are omitted and others "smoothed over" for the sake of simplification, but the point is "to hopefully point the audience in THE RIGHT DIRECTION". But sometimes problems can arise when folks begin to believe their own stories and get carried away with the exultation of collective group outpourings of self-serious rapture.
For instance, 9/11 was certainly a major event but the monopoly on the terminology itself became a bit distorting. For instance, calling the site of the World Trade Center rubble "Ground Zero" as if an atomic weapon had gone off there and millions had died. Or calling the police and firefighters "heroes" when they had been caught flat-footed with bad equipment in the chaos and din-- and in the self-serious momentousness of the occasion, "feeling as if they couldn't back down" with the city staring at them, many jogged up the steps of a dodgy and unsafe structure despite the worries of many.
Or taxi drivers who still had to insist "that New York is still the bestest city in the woild" and would get very angry if you rolled your eyes.
What is particularly destructive is when folks are being strung along by a slender little shoestring "because it's all they have", and whether or not "the storytellers" mean to-- they perhaps keep them stooped over in that emotionally-arrested position. And then, pathetically enough-- that misfortunate soul "may get the beating of a lifetime", when someone tears away "that little bit they have" and descends down like a gang of hooting street toughs, or maybe Palestinian kids throwing rocks.
The real purpose behind the founding of Israel was more than the victorious Allies rewarding a magnanimous prize to a long wounded and persecuted nation of Anne Frank-types, as the tissue boxes are broken out with PBS specials. Whatever the mechanics of what many refer to as the Holocaust, which mass hysteria akin to "Satanic panic" or many unfounded rumors crept out akin to that time when America bombed Yugoslavia in the late 1990's over "ritual slaughter" when A) it was greatly exaggerated; B) the other side was just as guilty; and C) we had our own vested pretext for what we were already planning to do anyway for political and economic reasons.
The Zionism movement had been building up in Britain for decades and winning increasing sway, and once it became apparent that the Empire could no longer support its holdings, and with millions of people displaced with their homes destroyed and no where else to go, moving the refugees to Israel to settle "a new Wild West" would fulfill their needs while presenting a stop-gap projection of British military and oil power with surrounding Arab satraps, set up with the aid of British intelligence.
"Minding the store", in other words. . . . . which is a far more practical currency than that of the slender flame of victimhood, which only "got roaring" once there was enough middle-class prosperity and free time to dwell upon the unpleasant and perhaps "get a bit carried away", when the actual truth about history is far more muddy-- and potentially embarrassing-- for what it says about us.
How World War II was a total war between ideologies, and belief systems-- what came down to a bunch of caveman fighting for a primeval struggle of existence, where one thumps the other one good and then goes back to his cave to growl on about how that guy was "100% in the wrong", when he was yet the guy who threw the final punch and told a story of propaganda "so even those back in the cheap seats could get it", and be further mislead by such reductionist thinking that only thinks in "black & white", when the social math "no longer adds up" and folks are out of answers, except to turn their wrath on those whom they feel mislead them in whatever you want to call this system, a democratic/capitalist "pyramid scheme" that's getting "awfully wobbly" these days. . . . .
If you build with the unshakable fundamentals, then no one can call you "a bullshit artist".
"AUTHENTICITY AS MARKET-SHARE"
Unfortunately enough, "no voice from the sky" tells us what to do in our lives when we find ourselves going about our day-- sometimes moping, sometimes sad, sometimes pushing around "an old tin can with a stick". Apathy, depression, anxiety, fantasy, a head hung down with low self-esteem when "the blues" was once described as "the scum and bathtub ring that collects around the drain" as you find yourself staring and staring, when not moving only leads "to a diminished presence and life vitality". All folks feel this, but say if this manifested in a particular cultural pathology of slowly gathering souls clumping together "and trying to find a reason" for their suffering, and someone figures out that this could be "a marketing segment". The din rises with chest-thumping "and survivor's stories", everyone trying to get on this "rocketing band-wagon" of moral self-righteousness and agonied flagellation and passion plays, until pretty soon the mob fools itself "into believing it" like something out of a Mark Twain story. Pretty soon folks start acting "far less like themselves", but with a role "that is expected of them" with competing authenticities distilled "as essences", with raptures and kitsch-- even a young punk like me trying to get out of doing his homework "so he could read 'The Diary of Anne Frank" (-- but listening to "Slayer" instead). And as an already hard-working, influential group-- this grievance narrative can be hot-wired into lobbying "and bringing home largess", until it becomes far less "of an authentic feeling" but an industry when folks "just go through the motions" until even they among themselves think "it's secretly ridiculous", but they're too embarrassed "to say so". . . . . GET A LIFE. I did, so why can't you?!
Slayer-- a fine heavy metal act for a young, half-Jewish teenager. . . . .
"ANGEL OF DEATH!!!!!!!!! 400,000 MORE TO DIE!!!!!!!!"
Even as I gritted my teeth and thrashed my head up-and-down with a record company niche in our society, that even so-- "fetishized evil" and made it seem "cool". . . . .
"Huh-huh, huh, huh-huh,
hey baby--
Come to this Beverley Hills "Museum of Tolerance" often?
(I think my brother's, like GAY or something)
-- SHUT-UP, BUTT-MUNCH!!!!!!!
d
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ON THE ANTI-FREE SPEECH LAWS IN
MUCH OF THE WESTERN WORLD
There is oftentimes this urge "to punish the messenger"-- and many characters who voice unorthodox opinions surely are hateful, ugly souls with malevolent, onerous intentions "when they go against the grain". But no matter how unpleasant and gunky they may be, there is yet usually "some glimmer of truth" that shines through their issues, no matter how distorted with "bad feeling" or "mixed motivations". And to say that deep down somewhere in these grubby, gnarled, deeply-flawed individuals-- despite all else-- there is yet something trying to tell you "that 2 + 2 ='s 4". Otherwise, negating and outlawing "this right to exist", or even "to say the obvious" highlights the crisis and embarrassment "for what it says" about the state of a semi-decadent Western civilization becoming evermore authoritarian out of "high-minded principle", even while becoming far more barbarous by turning the wheels of the state-- either justified by the ignorant hoots of the mob or elites ever bound by a bureaucracy as the individual looses power before "the creator" and answers to the downward drag of the crowd.
And remember-- "clarification" is not the same thing as "denial". . . . . and why can't anyone ask questions if what you say "is so true"? Yes, even as the culture otherwise dabbles in shrugging moral relativism, thrift-rate doodle-thoughts through hashish-clouds "of cosmic import", and cheap, "pin-the-tail-on-the=non-human" artistic convention "in order to get praise", to gratify the supposed intelligensia's flitting, bored, lower instincts as some kind of counterfeit transcendence "in the slow, postmodern death-fuck" which is just really an excuse "to behave terribly" and to turn somebody "into a chump". And after all of this CULTURAL ROT-- you have "a worse problem" with THE TRUE DISSIDENT who challenges you?
ON CRUDE PARTISANSHIP
Evidence can exist like a tree along the side of the road. What perhaps is always going to be "the real show" are the kind of characters who come along "and what they have to say about it". Oftentimes, difficult or controversial subjects are inherently going to bring a gathering of screwballs, conspiracy theorists, con artists, drifters, and whomever else would wish to see the world through such a bitter, sensational, extreme filter "with petty victories" and small emotional comforts taken at the expense of others with their low-down, trashy thinking-- either chawin' tobacco or reading "Rolling Stone" magazine to justify "their wretched station in life", or rationalize "the status quo" of not otherwise "moving along". But to say that crude, somewhat-irrational partisans "of a general stripe" who always follow "what's emotionally-true" aren't considered useful by the establishment-- or even "loyal, decent Americans" who vote the party-line in elections-- is to fool ourselves, oftentimes about the nature of mass illusions and a substratum of "hostile sniping" so dense, you can do little for except to hope that "the whole pyramid of credibility" can slowly be reformatted "brick-by-brick" so it doesn't vanish in one foul shout of public outcry.
"Equality" is for morons. You'd better believe it.
(Death to the Liberal
Insect)
& throw our dimmer underclass "nachos & circuses"
(If not a Rob Zombie movie, stroking his goatee in the interjection-plucking argument of "devil's advocate" controversy that stirs up the "gleefully naive", whether "pro/con" and laughing all the way to the bank with we promoters, free-speech hucksters, magicians, and "bullshit artists". . . . . we know "the game")
rt
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
("I heard that, Missy!")
Drop "The Bard" a line at
michaeladams_s@yahoo.com