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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “the Statue” cc&d, v270 (the April 2017 issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:  |
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“Personulism” (My Own Private Kansas)
CEE
“But, there are many people who would say, ‘If you let me keep my gun and you stay out of my church, I don’t want any more help from you, thanks. I’d rather live as if the government wasn’t there.’ That’s the point of being an American. They don’t want to hear from Washington. ‘It’s my right to live in this part of Kansas, unmolested.’”
—Christopher Hitchens, at the Sydney Writers Festival (clip undated)
I first discovered Christopher Hitchens through Dennis Miller’s HoBO run, in the late 90’s. I have listened to him hold forth, against friends as well as enemies, targeting threats, targeting seemingly personal bugbears of his own, targeting imponderables and unproveables. Targeting piddling trifles. Usually, with an unveiled attitude of “sod the proles, you’re all drooling idiots, I would laugh in your face if I wasn’t so deeply bitter, mmmm, good booze...”. Yet, this column isn’t about Hitch, or about burying him. I wish he hadn’t had to be buried. Of all the assholes on screens and tubes, and no matter he nuke a sacred cow, I never hated him. I never held a grudge. You might know, he’s the one who died early. Rare is the human, who pisses on my worldview—something Hitch did comparatively rarely, FYI—whom I don’t spend at least an occasional quiet moment, weighing odds of killing them and getting away with it. I never wanted to saddle up and ride down Christopher Hitchens. Not once. I’m unsure ‘why’. I want to say it’s that he was British, but, that’s stupid. Bill Maher hosts shitholes from around the world.
The opening quotation, part of a clip less than 4 minutes long, leads into a “nyaah, nyaah” at the Tea Party, the rise and decline of which, I slept through. I believe in Populism. I am in my thinking, a Populist, but no populist movement succeeds so to dominate, unless it bears its doubled cross before it...and That One, ain’t comin’ back for another century, as I wrote in Gunther. Your greatgrandchildren may well spout vile murder, and wear its uniform. We, Here, Now, may only monitor the Present. As The Great Ellison put it, “nobody can see beyond the veil.” My point made, is that Populism, for Me, is (trumpet fanfare) personal. It’s not a movement as motion, but philosophy in action. POV. CEE’s gestalt. My populism, is mine. And, I don’t live in rural Kansas, but you are not going to molest me. I assure you. Ink that down.
When my Dad passed and it became clear I as prince had hit The Promised Lotto at last, my fiancee and I embarked on a mad rush to get our dream life jumpstarted, and this included driving hard a hungry realtor, going to the whip as though she hauled us in a rickshaw. There were, as with our choice of new automobile and the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham I never got to own, certain compromises. Where and what neighborhood. You know.
After conceding a lakeside community, its nearby, Green Acres-town, or indeed moving away from our city At All, I stumped 4th choice, for a bright, wide neighborhood surrounding a Reconstruction-era manse which rose commanding and 19th Century above all humble, low-lying ranches around, dark-feeling and silent-sitting and “I am a Past which will never go away.” Terrifying and wonderful, as Salieri might say. My betrothed, called point of order.
The mansion, the home of a contemporary, friend (and I daresay mentor) of Lincoln’s, was “protected”. Though the man himself had faded from a culture which glories in its amnesia, his home, before either of us were born, had been acquired by the State...and, as I discovered years later, historic preservationists as a species, don’t just think they own what they own, control what they control, hold sway over great mansions of forgotten Americans, not just those, specific buildings and properties, no. Such people, can tell you when you can’t park in your own driveway. Or what windows you “have to” have. Or why there can be no through traffic or even through foot traffic, during the annual Apple Crap Festival or semi-annual Dancy Crap Shivaree or the monthly meeting of the Daguerreotype Lovers of America, where punch is served and there’s ceramic crap for sale. Or whether you can aim a camera from “yours”, in the direction of “theirs”. And they actually retain lawyers who’ll take their money. And judges don’t laugh them out of the courtroom.
I couldn’t believe what she was tellin’ me. Any person coming to my door with that load, I said, was going to reacquaint with the door knocker, very quickly. These long years on, I know better, the black pit-horror of intervention. We simply don’t answer our door, anymore. Ever. If the visitor looks unofficial, we blast “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”. Usually, the Bananarama cover.
My sole rule of brotherhood, comes down to “live and let live, and be allowed to live.” I don’t point fingers. I believe in full bore-accountability. I call myself “a Frank Zappa American”, i.e. “I will walk on the grass, if I want to—I will also Not walk on the grass, if I do not wish to.” I alone, tell Me, and you receive no pass to sweat your small stuff. Not to my face, anyway. I opposed the “V-chip” and subsequent ratings system—devices, I can switch Off or unplug, bingobango. It’s on me, if I focus on poison or come looking for trouble. Just don’t come at me. My personal space is my temple. And if it’s not a felony which gets even occasional serious press, maybe you need to chill out and have a snack.
That stated, I’m only a soldier if in retreat at Little Big Horn. Aside from staring into the middle distance with darkest thoughts imaginable, I’m not likely to ever put on my Wallabees, shoulder my knapsack and walk out the front door, into history. If even I began to make a list and check it twice, The Enemy, I promise you, is perso(okay, you know this part), not some “pick ‘em” opponent of Lost America. That’d be pretty unsatisfying, IMO. Michael Palin, in “The Argument Clinic” sketch, trapped into diminishing returns of quality conflict. An anarchist-friend said in 1985, “To CEE, if it isn’t personal, it’s meaningless.” Not exactly a surprise, I guess...but, I root for armed revolution, and the lone wolfs, too! I just never grew beyond Bart Simpson jeering Super Bowl halftime, “Aw, this sucks! Come on, snipers, where are you?!” I’m much like our black cat in my fight, a champ in defense, at risk moving forward. As the threatened farmer or usurped property owner, or residents of the Tennesseee Valley’s depths in the 30’s and 40’s, if backed to rock, I’m all in. I’d add (which will lose me the few friends I still have), I’m nothing to do with guns. I’m far more smashing machine than Jesse James. When the eventual collecting up of firearms transforms this nation, I shall be found blameless. Instead, a semi-pro baseball bat of dark wood, bearing the name of our true, undrugged, seasonal home run record holder, one Roger Maris. It’s testament to me as force of nature. This artifact thus far, gathers dust. Though poetic as vision, I have no wish to actually be General Custer. At core, I believe, wish-fulfilment, as Rodney King did, re: “getting along”. So you take care now, Clarice, to extend me the same courtesy...
Many of you are frustrated to bitch-snipe level, fed to the teeth with my obsessing, stuck tone arm, on the personal...but, it’s hardly just me. That’s populism on Chomsky’s “atomized” level—Dodge City disputes, with the bar set at “Individual”. These, are not even Page Six stories, they’re so common. They happen everywhere, every day, often for little more than peanut butter in chocolate or someone not liking Sara Lee, or not saying, Stepford, the accepted cadence, re: “lives mattering”...every “pick that up”, “let go of the girl”, “you bastard, I’ve always hated you” we’ve crunched popcorn to, all our lives. I keep waiting for incidents like these to kick off a Big Bang of 28 Days Later rage (minus needles or fluids) and overtake the televised map as fast as King’s killer flu, in The Stand. I plan to then set a kitchen timer, gauging speed of the Red Chinese invasion. Except, to mix cultural references, I don’t think the Chinese government gives a damn, about Lebensraum. We don’t represent enough of a fat prize, to be worth the 7 or 8 years of guerilla warfare. Yes, we can be made go away and in droves, every lippy student gone unspanked, every pit-haired prof crying foul, every confident nouveau riche with reservations who stops smiling, when they realize Darth Tse-tung altered the deal. Shot down, beaten to death, tortured to death. Gassed. There are whole websites which show how frail we all are. And “fairness” isn’t fairness, where older cultures have harder peoples. It’s not compassion—it’s the bother. A mop job of that scope? For what? Hybrid grains ala Earl Butts, to rot the bowels? Farmlands drenched in multi-generations of insecticide? Target stores? K-Marts, maybe?
No, when dawns the morn a Viking rooster crows, it’ll be surgical missiles after all. The East, doesn’t concern itself with winds of dampened, lessened poisons of irradiated things which have blown a long way, and boy, are its toxins tired... Chernobyl, happened over There. The gulags and uranium mining by slave labor, happened over There. Avian shit-diseases, etc. There are millions and more millions being born. The universe, is uncaring. Life is cheap. Make your way, or anOther, will pave his over you.
The rest of the world, civilized or uncivilized, are amazed at our amazment. Life, to the East, though an holy gift, is that in itself, no more, and not to be over-appreciated. Sacred, is the intrinsic, period, not an ongoing WARHAMMER 40K mutation that nets us freebie raspberries when an opponent makes a miraculous dice throw. We don’t have any special abilities, save those which move us a bit more easily or faster or further on a board we will not lap. Whether Life’s a bitch, the East, certainly power elite, know it’s finite, and that one or a million die, that ten or a billion thrive. Actual Trek’s, “the needs of the many”, in unapologetic, unspun terms. If We as red, white and blue blowhards go away in main, what troubles that a thousand or ten or forty or eighty sicken, perhaps die? If, rubber to road, The Law of Natural Selection is truly The Law of Existence, then...thin the herd. Start with the United States. They’re rude assholes, and won’t shut up.
Yes. I agree. And Fuck You. Whore. And get off my land. And leave me alone. The acronym from An Enemy of the State (F. Paul Wilson), KYFHO = “Keep Your Fucking Hands Off”...in the book, certain, remembered neighborhoods. In America, certain locales of certain thought. Yet Law, if federal, if permitted as such, must cut broadly, and no tree of pioneers or field as blessed by Boone or Lewis & Clark, may be spared. The lines, the jots, the tittles and their corollaries, must level the playing field, flat...which, CEE would rubberstamp and salute, but the plan, the map, the outline, theory, concept and visualized structure, is never, evereverever the way it plays. My township, many rains ago, banned all signs of certain types, certain heights, certain intent and(or) nearness to street, in a baby-oink at urban blight—then, following a few respectable rounds of the JEOPARDY! theme, the waivers began to be applied for, and were dutifully granted. Every proclamation as framed, is pitted with holes and lives mocking the very books they’re on, like a bad, sprayed-on tan. Peppery, not solid. As such, flawed and, yes, biased. Useless, to anyone who believes in any sort of absolute. Most, have had their absolutist bone removed, until a neighbor or employer or GoodDoBee group they dislike, is in their face like the Cobra Kai. Somehow, the old “justice nerve”, begins sympathy pains in that moment. Our Spidey-sense of “I am right and righteous.” And in the personal, in conflict with Other Of No Stake, all the agendaite “critical thinking” and Wallie World indoctrination as cheered, will not fix the problem. That societal breakdown could “never” happen sequentially, spread Zika virus of personal freedom, I covered for you, recently. That those who protect and serve, embattled, made the assholes, shot down or driven from jobs and cities for defending them, might choose not to fight such Fuck You-enemies of a Hate State, instead have a beer and watch it on PPV, I allude to, often. As with a masked vigilante I created, in the late 80’s, and an alternate plotline abandoned:
In my novel, Actions of the Just, the local, star public defender, a confident, charismatic, wellspoken woman, was firm in reaching out to the well-meaning but mad vigilante (my antihero)...in my original notes, she deplored his reported actions, denounced him publicly as self-appointed judge and jury. Spoke glowingly of reforms, and of the suffering of the poor and undereducated. Spoke of choice, and the ability to change. Near the end of what had been my plotted manuscript, she is attacked, the m.o. being rape, in her offices, after hours. The vigilante is nearby, had come at last to parlay. He sees the perpetrator, blindsides him, threatens him, fully purposed to dispose of this very personal threat to his ethical enemy. The lawyer, committed to principle, rails against the masked gunman to his face, repeats all her platitudes, chants the old bromides. He is silent in the face of this appeal, then answers only, “Well, counselor...you have convinced me.” He then holsters his pistol and exits, leaving the idealogue to her fate. Which, guess what, nonfans, happens.
If you remove Hoover Dam, FLOOD. If you remove all Launch On failsafes, NUCLEAR WAR. If you remove capital restrictions as punishable without appeal, RAMPANT CRIME. If you remove those hired to stem the tide of that crime, GANG RULE. At that point of decay, whether or not I shoot a preservationist for pissing about “non-compliant windows”, is not something for which I would be arrested. Or receive a fingershaking, for that matter. The preservationist could then too, throw bricks through my windows, until I installed the “right” kind...but, gee, that’d be violating rules—which, ironically, is itself a violation of No More Rules. It is today, spit-distance close to This: If you do not live as feral being, you are prey, a mute pestilence, and must die. As with Ali daring, ca. 1975, to “fight both Frazier and Foreman on the same night!”, I don’t think much of your chances.
It’s impossible to not see “Other Populism”, as whiny buttholes overcorrecting, as I’ve met too many with pinched sphincters, who live for clipboards and lists. Such people have bowel movements, over the siding you installed, fair pee the street, at sight of your unraked leaves. They’re fire gods, on your doorstep. Looking down a barrel then into an empty eye, they’re puddles. They exist, to nanny you; they’re no good at defending you. And it isn’t like Man can truly ascend. In Bonanza’s “The Crucible”, a bitter, desperate miner played by Lee Marvin, torments Adam Cartwright throughout the episode, obsessed with proving no man, pushed far enough, is anything but a predatory beast. Adam, driven in the end to temporary insanity, keeps upping the ante through at first stoicism, then by elevating behavior...by the end, at the point of death, a kind of Christ-figure. Intense, beautiful. Holy, compelling. Not what Man is. Man is neither a weirdo, telling you to rub the lotion on your skin. He’s akin to old, gun-slinging radio, 1) interrupt, 2) insult, 3) hang up, but for the real, blued metal item in his grip, any termination being not of mere, rancid conversation.
There are no advocates still taking calls, nonfriend, and nearly no hired guns. To quote an anarchist-friend, “Only YOU can protect you.” In this light, the horns of your patticake dilemma, “taking away all guns and killing on the spot, all who resist” or me as Frank Zappa-American removing aggressive voices of nitpicking strangers, as they meet The Rajah before meeting the King of Kings, are clear. This clarity, comes from the Headline truism larger and Lindbergh Baby-LARGER each day, that more and more will not obey, will take what and as they wish and unto death, Attica, Attica, nannananna-booboo. If Marshal Dillon stops this, he must die, and Chester and Festus, too, or take The Walk of Shame as criminals scream for blood. Those killing and taking and swilling the blood of Law, will not sit upon your spread blanket of Peace, and hug and have an epiphany. Beijing, would say you’re a fool for dreaming that up. Maybe send you to a May 4th farm.
We bought in a different neighborhood altogether, back in ‘99, just to let you know. I was anxious to begin our life together, and certain monies were dragging out in transfer, an old Heinz ketchup commercial with Carly Simon making me grit my teeth. Impatience alone, bought me the time machine in which I sit. I’m here instead of an ‘historic’ neighborhood, by way of “Get on with it!”, not because I believed my new bride. Strangers with no stake and no name on your title can’t direct your life or your legal future, where are you from? No man tells another, sans blue uniform, black robe or shades and lightning-fast ID, and only then, if You Know You Did It before they speak. I don’t give a shit about your Apple Crap Festival. That’s your festival. Your rights stop, one inch from my driveway.
Shoulder the packs like a good animal, nonmule, or build your very own wall. Hitchens, btw, in the clip cited, went on to say Americans believe Life should be risky. Irrespective of his destination, the man is now dead. That’s why Life is risky. It ends. His did. Yours, will. It’s not up for debate. Screw your opinions. Everyones’. Maybe not mine. They’re useful.
