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Anarchist Bomb Stereotype

CEE

    We stereotype, to simplify, and we simplify, to dismiss. We dismiss, to be done with something, and we want done with it, as it’s no concern of ours. Not really, it’s not. If pundits or comics so badly needing to live again as pundits, wish us to see fully, completely, and of people as well, let them. It’s of no concern; we have laundry in the dryer, and have to move on. Thus, everything, everyone, is in a box. As cartoon, preferably, as then it—They—are imbecile, and cannot touch us, in any way. Except, maybe, if the merry go-round broke down. Or was blown to bacon bits.
    Stereotypes exist, of every human image, at least. Santa Claus, a sinister figure of old Europe, lives now, timeless warm and jolly, as Thomas Nast would have us know him. The boxer, thanks in main to Cus D’Amato, is a thunderous presence, with a “0” under “Lost”. A local policeman, is usually Irish, walks a beat, kneels to truly hear little Jimmy. Those east of Moscow and west of Wakiki, do not say their articles (karate teachers, especially). The anarchist we now upgrade to “terrorist”, shouts complex drabble and has arcane thinking, He carries a bomb shaped like a beach ball, and its fuse can be heard, sizzling.
    You know the image. In my childhood, that America where only the older kids went around forever apoplectic, it was a device which found its way into light, frothy, educational animation, on Sesame Street. Then, in snickering British irreverence, through the work of Terry Gilliam. The beach ball bomb, silly, goofy, stupid, was godchild of the Looney Tunes cannon. It blew to make its point, and we all went on living.
    The anarchist holding the ball-bomb, or lighting fuse, was, mostly, a fun maniac. He was all about the 4^th of July enjoyment of his own spectacle. Crazy Harry with plunger, on The Muppet Show, shrieking his nonthreatening word association. Destruction as random riposte, minor counterpoint, or revised “gimme” of the Frito Bandito, with legal risk nullified. The term, “anarchist”, in the context, was culled from days of George III, and every halfassed attempt on his life or family or kingdom’s peace. An episode of Blackadder the Third, featured such an anarchist, replete with beach ball bomb. Both, overdone and overdoing. Stereotypes each, of the driven and politically invested. The kind who are through talking. Kind of like we are, in this country. Where Everyone is apoplectic, now. Where few want to talk, anymore. Where none wish to hear anOther talk. Where people fly, away, heat tiles lost from the spaceship, every day.
    You have to wonder, about an avalanche, beginning. About the whole of “us”, finally melting together, in death. And near everyone alseep at the wheel, defaulting to “well, that’s just them!”, i.e. sad as it is, and terrible, human disaster is but one or a few and their nightmarish lives, therefore explosions do not beget more. Or more and more. However bloody, the statement is made, and Yosemite Sam will be back, next scene. The acts of humans, creative, destructive, can never be multiplicative. Man, is not a dandelion.
    In my expository writings, I often hold out as a given, America’s “death by populace”. A favorite quip, tweaked various ways, is, “the shooting’s about to start”—but, Is It? I mean, for real? When set to paper, it’s in rubber plant-lifting high hopes, the sociopath’s version of “C’mon, Seven!” Those learned among you, now grimace, wanting to grille me, Pharisees, e.g. “How well do you think you’d get on, if things broke down to light and heat being lost, an empty cupboard or no police force at large? This would affect YOU.”
    Uh! I knoooow...but, b’blahblah, ya hafta break a few eggs. Had it been more than straw man, Y2K would have been the finish of me, but 17 years later, one’s gained perspective. Trust me: it’s the one’s with all the apps, who aren’t ready. Most of ‘em, think that hunk of crap they bled souls out to Steve Jobs’ estate, doubles as communicator and triples as phaser. Too many, probably think James Doohan will answer, from Heaven.
    But if Scotty with wings, is the intellectual price of a dumb’d America, how drooling are your neighbors and coworkers, or the crowd down at the watering hole, if the center’s about to blow? People poopoo, to make themselves feel good. I did, too, in days of the Soviet Union. Oftentimes, I quoted Lithgow, in The Day After, right before all buttons got pushed, “Well, they may contain it...after all, I’ve still got symphony tickets for tonight.” Flip as it was, even then, I knew We Personally, Control Nothing. Certainly not the Big Picture. But, hey! Do we control ourselves? We’d like to, and most of us try (meh), but, it’s like the Lincoln maxim, re: “Some/all and all/some, but not all/all.” Given copycat murders, even copycat terrorist acts, what happens when there’s a bad one (pick your upsetting national tragedy), and I mean something closer to Man With Gun at McDougald’s or Man With Gun at Playground, or Business Day Ends With No Living Employees. Or Dog Day Afternoon. Then, like blackest magicks, some Best Supporting Me Too, fast births another bloodbath. And someone else. And a couple, few, several more. Cue the National Guard, whereupon well prepped teenagers convert troop transports to gravy. As Dennis Miller said of the effect of hunger upon society, “it can get weird, quickly.” Likewise a platoon of Feds go down before a militia who at last say Fuck All. Or a Bureau helicopter downed like a stone, from WW2 surplus owned by Mrs. I. Canso Discriminate. These are fanciful, okay, but I told you in “The Sacred Heart of Your Buckshot ‘I’”, that, once our country’s primary response, its first string, its A-Team (pardon me) was broken and half dead on the canvas, we were candy. Like the used car guy who can’t lie fast enough when you notice the refit. “Y’know, ya got me!” An invading foreign power, once GONE FISHIN’ hangs from the outer checkpoint of the Pentagon, would be grave robbers in time of Rutherford Hayes. We would fall, stumblebums, upon swords marching in. Could we be sans medication, enough, to fall upon our own?
    I read a treatise in some gutter forum, which outlined the destruction of America from within—collapsing it into a state of anarchy and gang rule—predicated on nothing more, than doggedly going about town in the wee hours, smashing traffic lights to the point of requiring replacement...at local, municipal expense and overburdening of manpower, and you begin to appreciate the Simon Bar Sinister beauty of this plan. Granted, it couldn’t be accomplished in one night, or, it damned well shouldn’t! As well, it would take more than one of you, and more than one of you and Muttley...but the proposal, is sound. I asked myself upon reading, why such a thing hadn’t happened, yet. We’ve had the necessary vandals since the first gaslights began frightening all mythic creatures into alleyways and eventually, into legend. Intelligence, in a villain-twirling-handlebar-moustache-sense, was ever thus—the WWW, didn’t cause it to spike. Why No Anarchy (the nonmakee stinky handicrafts kind)?
    Guy Fawkes, or perhaps his elf thief character, would throw to the “sheeple” cliché, or drag out the line, re: lemmings, but though cliques and groups and social strata stick together like Men in Black around ex-Presidents, the rote accusation, is not enough. It takes only a handful, to kickstart such a process (then pocket the proceeds and hike the goal). The fact of anyone realizing the populace lives as zombied, means Not All The Populace, Does. This is little to do with trances, and depending upon one’s complexion, Adam-12 and Mannix and Monk himself, must hang back or go to prison for upholding the Law (I feel like I’m writing a Benny Hill sketch, when I read that; this truly is The Snake Pit-Earth). Very little long term risk, high yield of No More Nation or ruuules maaan! If you don’t accept spacious skies, amber waves of gain, purple mountains’ majesty, a fruited plain or a shining sea, if you want to call them names and scream at them...and you want to laugh as burly Goliath before the puny blue uniforms, for they are nothing to you, in your glory...and if you’re not one to get lip-trembly about “The Children”, as your hatred of structure or belief in a Tomorrow by way of add black powder, touch off and serve, means oh-so much more...then, get smashing, and save me a blinking red! What are you waiting for?!
    Some, might need to consider that one. I’ll fast forward: the reason things like this never get off the ground, is because it takes stringent organization and dedicated teamwork, for more than 10 minutes or ten days. Your answer, is Laziness. Sloth.
    Americans, cannot sustain anger long enough, but for a lone wolf here or there, to approach “nuke the system”, as a cold blooded plan. Americans, confuse “bring it down”, with “burn it down”, and blur the resolve of the revolutionary or the underground or a terrorist from any hemisphere, with the malevolence of “I’m gonna kick your ass!” they witness at a downtown bar. Your average “I HATE thus-and-so-CEE-grew-up-with-as-normal!!”, can never maintain whitehot zeal long enough to destroy whatever it is, so he usually destroys a person. That’d be one person, two at most, not random bombings as taunt to gauge worldwide reaction. The latter, which for some time has had me yelling, “Get On With It!”, is carefully scripted but barely adult, in focus—it smacks of Patty Hearst’s SLA buddies, wishing full, rapt attention of the multitudes, 1948 Berlin before Ernst Reuter as heroic, as their gnashed theses are put in a blender with crank, as this will illuminate everyone to a personal, brain-insectoid copy/paste. In short, as Dryden put it, “There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but mad men know.” Today’s failed super youth on Main Street, their pit hair’d aunt or raging grandpa, can’t get it together, in a Free French-way. It’s either stove in the head of that one or those two you don’t like, or...or, just rant. Bitch, whine, spew, complain. Crab, oink, cry foul. Americans are lazy. Sleep farmers, but for the odd wunderkind. And one miscreant, the cops will remove. Even if that means a grand jury trial for he who drops the hammer.
    Sloth, thus, covers Anger, and Rock then watches TV. No matter marches, even with a few bullets fired. You didn’t change anything, much less overturn it—it takes a 40-foot jumper at the buzzer in the final game, to get anything upended, in this country. Which, is why I favor 4 ton cars from the Cold War. Singing “We Shall Overcome”, actually overcomes nothing but noise ordnances, not a big “badge” priority, depending on where you live. People need to vent, as not everyone can afford Hityouintheforeheadwithahammerzac (ask for it, by name!), hence, sometimes, whole blocks go up in smoke. Think of such smoke, as opening a pressure valve. And Order is maintained, as emotions come and go. There’ll be no Tricorn 2. Ever. The Powers That Be, blue uniforms, black robes, Hugo Boss suits, know what they’re doing. Bobby Fischer rarely lost, because he saw 7 moves ahead.
    I went into all that, to make the point that actual “revolution”, whether sung quickly, or slowly with key subliminal, isn’t something we’re going to see in our lifetimes, barring a comet no one’s charted. This doesn’t mean Americans won’t, at some point of engulfing discontent, begin that process—impure in caste, slapdash but contagious, akin to the whispered phrase of lore guaranteed to render one insane...because there exists an inescapable domino effect, that “step on an ant”-thing, classic Ray Bradbury payoff but in DSL, the Norman Rockwell painting (my favorite), “The Gossip”, whereby a single skewed or stand pat move, effects Others and They, more, until, here, it has potential of the mightiest scythe. I’ll take it you recall the mythic figure who carries one.
    We can’t count on Sloth, to stifle such initiative, or we’d have a somewhat larger issue with overpopulation, and public schools would have retained somewhat more of their enrollment figures. The secondary confidence we fall back on, Sartre as street profane, is the tautology of “Shit Happens”. We admit these things will occur, it’s a grim reality, but, it can’t really spread too far, no, as there are too many people, a point I made, Above. Too many, will opt out. They’ll be horrified as though they have 18^th Century morals, or armchair-it, since the game’s coming on in a few minutes. Bread and circuses, yes, indeedy-do. But, this is a pleasing shackle to stay any real “organizing”, by inducing sleep. Boobs and butts and the new cheesy cherry-flavored 10% real amazingly addicive shit, aren’t The Great Wall of China against blind meltdown of the moment. Stuff like the giant zesty sugar spiced yummy you can swear just says, “EAT!!”, and hatefilled hacks unfit to clean Johnny Carson’s wiper blades, don’t exist for when other lives end or vehicles blow flames as they fly, not for buildings pancaking or subdivision infernos setting off annoying crawls under “Fun With Flags”. They’re for your special time. Or, they were...
    This theory, that things cannot snowball in a country of daily living as chaos theory, has room to walk, but may be comprised of sand. It’s too easy to stereotype “crazy” as social burnout and let media shoot the wounded. And too easy to fall back on the safe side of it taking 500 monkeys 500 years before things align just so. The whole construct of “random” as a Jupiter Effect that actually obliterates, is that, akin to waiting for the errant comet, it isn’t a playdate on the frig. It won’t necessarily happen in so-and-so many centuries, but like the sweet title of Mr. King’s shorties, a decade ago, “everything’s eventual”. Shit does happen, yes, though larger, nation busting shit, can be avoided, averted, pushed Way The-Hell Back...but, you can’t do it unaware, falling back on cliches, stereotypes or probability theory. Believing, devout, and chanting mantra of our country’s people as a whole, “it’s too big, it’s too big...”, is sheer gamble, and again, done lazily. As a victim of jai alai, Muhammad Ali, my state’s various lotteries and The NFL Today, I tell you as though I had commandments in my arms, Gambling, Fails.
    Again with throw to King, zombies overrunning the planet, can happen in a paragraph, just when you were about to put the sad story to bed and dream of the better life you wished for. The Jupiter Effect of disasters lining up, so 500 incidents bring down, eventually, 500 Chinese regiments on you and your friends enjoying half-good coffee in Circle-Slash-Christ cups, isn’t specified, in terms of the Farmer’s Almanac. Nostradamus, only said so much. Ditto, St. Malachy. Ditto, Coptic papyri fragments. What you take cues from each day, here and now, is a pattern emerging from odd fringes and random, unrelated, extreme acts. The logic, is base level. The math, you learned by 3rd grade. You need only grey out King George III as history, Blackadder walk ons as representing history, and count Jim Henson’s original Muppet focus (in the 60’s, late night and suggestive), as another part of my stronger world, plowed under. And while you’re greying out, nonfriend, remind yourself that the funny, sizzling thing, is not a beach ball, and that if you’re buying Darwinism’s entire cable package, then, Natural Selection means some—perhaps many millions, in probability—die, so the strong (not necessarily “better”) survive.
    I strode the world atop my VHS collection, when Y2K was the boogeyman. The mere idea of that crap, upset me, intensely. Now? I’ll be waiting with ordnance, hands in Roman cestus’, domicile boobytrapped like it’s the mutant familys’, in The X-Files’ “Home”. I suppose you could default in lazy confidence, to my ranking among the Top 100 Suckiest Gamblers, but you’re committing suicide, if you cop to another cartoon image, because as the line goes, “Everybody’s due.” As everything is indeed eventual, and every dog has his day or Pacino-freak-crime afternoon. A person doesn’t need to be Bobby Fischer, to see YHWH slapping Target logo-graffiti on the wall. Or know that pasta boils over, only when you turn away from the pot. No heat or down to ketchup packets, I have no stake in this but personal space. You Others, if nothing, should be shoveling green at your local Police Benevolent Fund, until your door is so caked with stars, it’s glitterdipped and Drew Barrymore walks in by mistake. Just sayin’.

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