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6 January 2009: AN OLD EUROPEAN TRADITION Historically, whenever Europeans have entered a territory intent on colonization, we have undertaken a campaign to exterminate the native population. Always claiming to be on the defensive, the victim of the attacks of the uncivilized, we in fact were the aggressors in every single case, and, thanks to Western technology, we held the advantage of superior force. We did this in the New World when we destroyed the American Indian population. We did it in Africa, where we invented the concentration camp. We did it in India, going so far as to enlist famine as our ally, and asserting in the process that any famine in that country could only be alleviated by actions that were in keeping with laissez-faire principles. When we invaded Eastern Europe and European Russia in Operation Barbarossa, we did it there too. When the Zionists came to Palestine, they could have come saying, "We are Semites. So are you. You are our brothers and we have come to live on this land with you in peace. They did not. They said, as Europeans always do, "We are a superior people, a superior civilization representing centuries of enlightened progress. You are not. Thus, our claim to this land is greater than yours, and you must flee or die." None of this had anything to do with barbarism, or with weapons of mass destruction, or bolshevism, or antisemitism, or the heathen Chinee. It is simply an old European tradition. All that talk about a "threat" is propaganda tailored for consumption by the rubes, the naive, the bourgeoisie which must be reassured in its childish vanity that everything its class does is not only good — it is goody goody. The results may be viewed below. If the video doesn't play, click here. 12 February 2006: WHO IS SQUARE JOHN? I used to drink alcohol and do drugs and break the law. I did all this as long as I could get away with it, and my idea of getting away with it is probably a good bit lower than you think. Anyway, for a nice middle class boy I picked up on a lot of, shall we say, esoterica. Now I'm a writer, as I have been since shortly after, as my father puts it, I "decided to be good." I've done a lot of trade magazine work. I'm working on a novel now, and as it develops, I show the work to other writers in workshop situations. This novel is about people on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta in the 1970s who drank alcohol and did drugs and broke the law. And one of the workshop readers recently commented that a number of the characters use the expression "Square John," and asked me what it meant. Now, with the naiveté of the criminal, I had assumed that everyone knew what a Square John is. The term originated in prisons, where it was used to refer to anyone who earned a living honestly and was not part of the prisoner culture. But now that the prison population has come to include any number people of "white-collar criminals" (those whose collars are the same color as their skin), this definition may need some refinement. What follows is my attempt to make Square John, in the words of Dwight Eisenhower, perfectly clear. Square John does what he does not because he wants to but because he is supposed to, because it is "good," or "good for you," not as defined or discovered by Square John in the course of his own experience as a man, but as taught to Square John in the course of his existence as an eternal boy or girl. Square John is the ultimate neurotic. He has no will. He is compelled to do things, by force of circumstance, by force of bosses and employees, by force of penis and clitoris and mysteries of the blood and fire, by force of arms, by force of "peer" pressure, by force of feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, by force of envy of all the adequate and superior models of people he sees in magazine advertisements and on television, by the force above all of things, things just beyond his reach that he must have in order to be what he has been taught he must be and to feel what he has been assured by paid experts that he should feel. Square John says, "You've got to make a living." Square John says, "Respect has to be earned." Square John says, "Somebody's got to do it." Square John is secure in his superiority to other races, creeds, and codes, no matter what is demonstrated to the contrary, even unto the evidence of his own senses, since Square John's paid experts have assured him that his own senses are usually wrong and not to be trusted. Square John's own senses are, unlike his life, merely subjective and unscientific. Square John wants what is best for everyone concerned, so long as he doesn't have to change and so long as he can get what he needs, what he wants, in the magazines and on tv. Square John does not know who "we" are, but he knows the world will be good once we can get enough other people to change. The other people all live far away. They live downtown or they live in the suburbs or they live up north or they live down south or they live in a foreign land where the peasants are troubled by some force of circumstance. The other people are all different. They make different money and they have different feelings and they listen to different radios and they look at different magazines, if they can read at all, and they envy different things than Square John does, but the perversity of the different people is that they will not get what they want without forcing the loss of something to Square John, or without forcing Square John to have to change, or both. The other people are simply bad. They are simply weak. But the other people have a will. They have a choice. They are not compelled. Square John believes in decency as if no one else did. Square John believes in family as if no one else did. Square John believes in hard work as if no one else did. Square John believes in "what is right" as if no one else did. And Square John believes that the sum of his responsibility is to believe in these things, because Square John has other work to do, to get the money that he needs to buy the things that he needs in the magazines and on tv, because you've got to make a living and respect has to be earned and somebody's got to do it. Square John believes that belief is having opinions, is thinking things, is nodding with what someone says on the television and saying words. All this is expressing himself. Square John expresses himself: "You're damn right." Square John has rights. But they are all consumer rights. Square John consumes everything he can buy with the money that he earns because he has to make a living. Square John won the cold war. Square John has a 401(k). He says, "The rules of the market have changed." Square John does not read Adam Smith or William James. Square John does not read anyone who received an advance of less than half a million dollars or who hasn't been published within the last fifteen minutes. Square John wants up-to-date information delivered in a timely manner. Square John listens every night to the news, and because of this, he knows that other people have been murdered and robbed and raped and left for dead, and he knows that this was done by other other people from far away. Square John knows the latest scores. He knows that there will be weather tomorrow, and this timely, up-to-date information makes him feel good, because now he will not be caught by surprise. He is prepared for whatever will come. 2 February 2006: GLOBALIZATION IN A NUTSHELL Thoughts on W's State of the Union refrain of "keeping America competitive" . . . 1) You will lose your job, which requires a finely-developed set of skills, to someone in a Third World country. 2) Someone in a Third World country will do your job for one-third your present salary. That is why it is called the "Third" World. 3) You will get a job in The Service Sector, i.e., retailing. 4) Your salary will start at minimum wage and top out one dollar later. 5) The minimum wage will be minimized, i.e., lowered, to "fight" inflation, aka, The Worst That Could Happen. 6) You will get to vote. Your choices will be: All Of The Above and Inoperative. 29 January 2006: FIGHTING TERRORISM So I have one of these stickers on the back of my car, a 1991 Mazda:
(You can buy these from Pro-Democrat Progressive.) Anyway, I'm stopped in the left-turn-only lane at a redlight at the intersection of Piedmont Road and East Rock Springs Drive in Atlanta, The City Too Busy To Hate, and the second the light turns green, the guy behind me beeps his horn. |
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