Market Theocracy

Claire Wolfe is saying goodbye to blogging and active participation in online political rabblerousing:

Now it’s also time to put Wolfesblog into suspended animation — with thanks and fond farewells to my fellow blogistas, Debra, Ian, Penguinscareme, Silver, and Thunder.

But I’ve changed. After a whole lifetime of being “political,” I’m just not anymore — as I think has been apparent for quite a while.

I’ll miss her pithy, often sarcastic, always well observed posts on Wolfesblog. Many were the moments when a just-timed-right glance at that blog could cheer me up or put me in the mood to do something other than sit and be mopey.

But I’m happy that Claire is placing her attention where it truly belongs: on her good individual self. The only proper ‘Freedom Movement’, I’ve long maintained, is the movement of individuals away from the mindless masses. Away from group think and group feel. Into their own interests and wants and needs.

Claire has meant alot to me since the day we officially ‘met’ several years ago: she has been a supportive fellow writer, an example of a fellow writer who made a living from words without compromising her principles, and an unabashed champion of my own writing. She was, in fact, the first professional to ever tell me I had the stuff to make it in this madhouse of a vocation. She kindly wrote a flattering and interesting introduction to a collection of mine that will be released soon.

More importantly, she was there when I needed personal advice and plain, old fashion cheering up. She never failed to be my ‘Sister in liberty’, as she put it once.

I haven’t heard from Claire since I left TCF, but that’s not such a big thing. We were never daily chat pals or anything. But she knows where I am and how to get in touch. She also knows that if she needs anything, I’ll be there. And, soon, I hope to give her a hug and talk to her face to face.

Take care and keep in touch, Claire. Here’s a word from my favorite poet, to make the trail a little lighter:

THE ROAD AND THE END

Shall touch my hands and face.

— Carl Sandburg

I love you, sis.

Sigh. This is the kind of crap that makes me feel old. Decrepit. Ancient and cranky:

13 year old suspended for drawing of imaginary gun

Let’s ignore for a moment that the damn picture isn’t even showing the gun (which is quite obviously what the kid says it is — a quick sketch of a laser gun) involved in any sort of violence. Let’s ignore for a minute that the kid was quietly sitting in class bothering no one. Let’s even ignore the fact that
–regardless of anything else — at least the kid was doing something creative.

This kid is being punished for something someone else did years ago that he has absolutely nothing to do with. He is being punished for a freakin’ microscopic level of this-might-possibly-in-a-bizarre- alternate-universe-lead-to-a-possible-maybe-bad-situation.

In other words, it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.

And it makes me feel so old.

I’m 34. 24 years ago I used to sit in math class and start a game. I’d draw something and pass it to the person behind me. They’d add something to the drawing and pass it along in a similar fashion until it went through the hands of every bored kid in class who felt like adding something to the group picture.

Nine times out of ten, these drawings became elaborate fight scenes. Depictions of utterly ridiculous and impossible combat situations. Giant flying armored chickens with death rays on their beaks.
Superman in a dress attacking robots with a spiked mace. Snoopy storming a cliff with a machine gun and a knife clenched between his teeth.

And it wasn’t just the boys. Some of the most insane and violent additions tended to come from the sweetest and quietest and most lady-like of the young women in the class.

And none of them went crazy. None of them shot up the school. None of them, as far as I know (and barring things like drug possession charges) even have a criminal record to this day.

Drawing scenes of violence is something that kids do. It isn’t a sign of repressed rage. It isn’t a warning. It isn’t a precurser to mass murder.

It’s something kids do because they think it’s funny you clueless morons!

And this poor kid didn’t even go that far. All he did was sketch a laser gun. Probably sitting there daydreaming about space battles and alien invasions. About being a hero. About all the silly, grandiose shit you think is cool and exciting when you’re a kid and you’re stuck in a boring classroom fighting sleep.

You weiners are — by taking this zero-tolerance approach to expressions of anything even remotely thematically related to violence — doing two things:

1) You are also cutting out the drive of children to imagine themselves in heroic situations. 

2) You actually are repressing the normal thoughts and feelings and simple, innocent daydreams of these kids who are stuck by your law in a place they don’t want to be. Day after day, year after year.

And you don’t even want them to have the basic escape of imagination?

Shame on you.

Stop repressing our children.

And stop making me feel old.

Dammit.

I try to avoid the news. It has the annoying habit of slapping my optimism in the face.

Here I am trying to write a joyful paen to human-society-as-communication and what do I get from mainstream media sources?

Dissapointment that the recent bridge collapse wasn’t as deadly as first thought.

Of course, none of them will come out ans say that they’re bummed about this. That would be a little too honest and forthright. Instead, it’s an inescapable conclusion of attitude and body language and the look in their eyes.

Be glad, you fucks, that you’ll never have to worry about running into me at a party when I’ve had a few too many beers. Disgusting pigs who can’t break through their own cocoons to see those dead as fathers and sons and mothers and sisters who will never come home always look like they need an ass whipping when I’ve had a few too many.

Be happy, fucks.

Are you (or someone you know) on “The List”?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032602088_pf.html

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

Yet anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply. The law’s scope is so broad and guidance so limited that some businesses would rather deny a transaction than risk criminal penalties, the report finds.

And:

Saad Ali Muhammad is an African American who was born in Chicago and converted to Islam in 1980. When he tried to buy a used car from a Chevrolet dealership three years ago, a salesman ran his credit report and at the top saw a reference to “OFAC search,” followed by the names of terrorists including Osama bin Laden. The only apparent connection was the name Muhammad. The credit report, also by TransUnion, did not explain what OFAC was or what the credit report user should do with the information. Muhammad wrote to TransUnion and filed a complaint with a state human rights agency, but the alert remains on his report, Sinnar said.

What strikes me about this story is that it highlights a little thought out aspect of the State using computer/internet tech in its various ‘Wars On _‘. The incompetence of beuracracy almost gaurantees that mistakes will be made in such endeavors. When the private sector is forced to imitate and co-operate with the State, it generally imitates the incompetence as well ‘just to be on the safe side.’

In other words: not only is trying to kill a bee with a baseball bad ineffective, it’s downright dangerous to everything else around.