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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/book “the End of the World” cc&d, v279 (the January 2018 issue) Order this as a 6"x9" paperback book:

The High School I Never Attended in Your Nation Which Doesn’t Exist

CEE

    In my Scars chapbook, The Blazing Hands of 100 Drummers, there’s a dear remembrance of Pop and I, titled “Old Penny”. I set within it, the warmth and safety and hearth and home, the paternal and the bonding and the security of America in the early 60’s, against the bugfuck rebellion of the late 60’s, which became the dancy crap of the 21st Century, which, though it nauseate, provided a nice cushion to fall into, once we’d been stupid enough to take my inheritance (and hers—the local community in part, owes its unusual liquidity, to my household) and party like it was 1999...which ended in 2013, to give you an idea ‘how much’. I used to go to eBay and click about, just to watch my Feedback number climb.
    The imagery in “Old Penny”, placed me next to my Dad on our forest green couch, junior numismatists looking for the VDB...but beyond this, was my societal model unseen, as the camera pulls back, crane shot, from our quiet, Cold War neighborhood, and pivots, sighting past chasm dug for the new interstate (no fences, yet...I imagine our sandlot baseball, contributed to the need for those...like we couldn’t climb them, geez), and we see the oldest downstate high school in my humble state, a place of proud tradition and lengthy PBS docu, a school stuffed like a mall Santa with lore and dusty Was as Is. As Pop and I sat there, sifting what was still made of copper, the nearby high school I was supposed to, eventually, attend, had a strict dress code. It was a public school, sure, but those who did not previously live life in my corner of America tend to, and on forums yet today, have a Super Bad Reaction, to it. My response to badmouthing local as “I don’t like it here!”, has never altered. It’s very Richard Nixon, and its logic cannot be assailed, without verbal tricks. Word to the Wiseass: Logic 101 sounds like a cool course, but you’d learn the same thing, watching Penn and Teller.
    The 2nd half of the 1960’s, when Der Beatles ditched their cool, Edwardian suits, Kennedy was toast and Ho Chi Minh oddly was not surrendering, when HATE as I ever understood it became hard-marbled within the meat of our country, began in my hometown with a lawsuit by a kid from another land. Said kid didn’t cott’ to the high school’s dress code, bitched to his parents (who were not poor—in America, the salient issue, is always class), and subsequently appealed it all the way to the State Supreme Court, in those years of Earl Warrenesque appeasement. The kid from another land got his way, the high school became as mod as any you’d find in my corner (meaning not very, but a veritable be-in, compared to “dressing like our parents”, as one old grad said on DVD). I’ve always lived in my head, and did not know about this at the time. Vaguely, if I sit and stare into the middle distance, I’m riding past the high school as a tiny kid, and yes, I see a regimented look, boring but proper. If I listen to the silence, I hear...more the sound of my parents’ disgust, something Bye, Bye Birdie, re: discontent, impropriety. If I close eyes long enough, there are colorful clothes and leisurely dress and stance and behaviors, as Mom and I roll past the high school, later. And, that, to me, is wrong.
    Dress codes, I would concur, are annoying—you’ll notice many work places have them, now, and Fuck That. Even Fran Liebowitz, on record as early as I know, by 1995, re: “no fashion consciousness among children”, applauded dress codes, but by CEE, that’s telling me I can’t walk on the grass. One solves the problem, by Not Attending The Offending School. Spock was correct, e.g. “there are always alternatives”. We just want it our way, early Burger King before corporate realized that didn’t work so well. I’m not big on a mouse that roars changing an entire system. Tank Man, died. As did our Nathan Hale. Philosopher kings of any cause, should do exactly that. If you won’t get out of the way of personal dilemma, then insist on speaking out to the point of spearheading societal change, all right...but, it’s going to cost something. Something very dear. Otherwise, STFU. If your folks have buchu bucks, stop playing the “class” game, and go to another school. Using the judiciary to assrape tradition in a city you just sort of moved to, is itself criminal. As is our court system. You don’t want to know about my thoughts on replacing it. It might help to google the histories of the states, prior to even the 13 colonies, when “provinces” was the term of use. Yeah. That’s who you’re dealing with. Man, is not a god. Pretending we’ve evolved, is a child’s game, one I refuse to acknowledge. If you’ve no nimbus, pick up a stone. Yes, I know whom I’m contradicting. You heard me. Imperfection, can only be primitive.
    Now, if you won’t meet me in that arena, if you strike absolutes, wonderful, but then, strike all of them, and across the coordinate plane. And if there remains now only the relative, there exist no rules but as arbitrated, Marvin. This, then, becomes a useless system, and the ‘92 LA riots are daily “go to the store”. If you can say NO, I WON’T and the State must bow down, you don’t have a State. The State, exists to limit, curtail, no, stop, less, cut it out. The State, denies, and according to parchment already there, Wow!, how ‘bout that? As with Mrs. CEE not grasping we didn’t need landscaping because there was a planted yard when we moved in, I don’t get overhauling System Entire because you personally have a surfboard up your ass. I empathize. No one digs being ordered about. I was a huge “no one tells Me” boy, teen and callow youth. I paid my dues. You don’t scoot, on yours. And, maybe you didn’t have any right to complain, from the jump. If Earl Warren had never been born, perhaps there’s a dress code at Oldest Downstate High, this very school day. You probably began your crusade, building your nucleus with the buzzterm of “free speech”. And if, nonfriend, you aren’t already shrieking at the page, brace for impact: Free speech, in the proper, powdered-wig sense of the word, means STFU and go along with your community. The kid from another land, was wrong. He should have been ignored to the point of community-wide silent treatment, no matter how asshole school uniforms are.
    When the Nazis Came to Skokie by Philippa Strum, more so than the prime case it illustrates, lays out in mostly-free-of-legalese, the Chubby Checker Twister game of free speech in America. As with Man being unable to ramify YHWH’s omniscience with Man’s free will (the secret being, free will as such, is a human misinterpretation...in the cosmological, you’re anything but “free”, and horrifying though it seem, John Calvin had all the ducks in a row), Free Speech doesn’t actually mean “say what you like with one foot on Free Parking while you look to steal 2nd faster than Maury Wills”. It doesn’t mean, “Most every statement is comped, but circle-slash-Hitler”. It doesn’t even mean “drown out the politico with impunity, then jump up on the platform, or said candidate is a racist in tomorrow’s news”. Free Speech, isn’t being allowed to particularly say anything, let alone everything. In fact, you kind of have to suck the school uniform and again, STFU. Two hundred years ago, a hundred, even 70 or so, repayment for the fight for unguaranteed freedoms, was dangling from an orchard tree, in the rural part of the county. We’ve been made to weep like babies about that, but if you’d like to ‘tube voters kicked to death in 2016 for their choice, I don’t see a lot of difference. Then again, I’m not compassionate. “Compassionate”, often gets killed, first. I notice the video bloggers all seem alive, and full of cake.
    Free speech in the personal, nonfriends, carries a rider against criminal libel. Libel is almost always applied against an individual, btw, not a group (good luck with filing it; though anyone can sue anyone, you won’t be able to sustain the anger, and the suit you rent will order the prime rib). There is a societal function to free speech, it’s really the only one denoted with any protection involved, but it’s neither “murder the other party” nor Reading Rainbow in its focus...and, once you introduce precedent commentary like “words likely to cause an average addressee to fight” or “if speech is unrelated to a search for truth, it can be prohibited”, that’s finished. The early South Park episode, where Philip Glass minimalism and gray blob outfits, replace the Christmas pageant. Everyone Hates something or someone or some idea, and they exercise “fair comment” (formerly actionable in days of our Founders, hello, versus remarks unfavorable to the government), and Others Hate Them for saying it. Look out, duck, hide, here comes Manichee, again: Everything’s Offensive, which means nothing’s offensive. If in a game, a card says, “Everyone loses a turn”, no one loses a turn. My mother believed “everyone has {mental} problems”, but never understood that meant No One Did. Noam Chomsky, and his “overinclusiveness”. Overinclusiveness, is overinclusive. In the end, universalism of any sort, cannot be managed, as it is chaos as order. Which, is ridiculous. Man does not love, as he will not love, as he cannot love. “What is ‘happy’, Bobby?” A concept. As is “love”, “truth”, “freedom”. These, are packaged in Law. Law, must needs cut a straight line, and in all cases, or it’s nothing but cronyism, Tammany Hall with black robes. I’d add that in American jurisprudence, The Truth, originally, was not considered a legitimate defense. It became one. And then, “truth” became relative, and yeah, maybe it always was, but as applied in court? As a friend used to intone, re: scrapping bits of rules no one enjoyed, “Why even play the game, then?” Either jail offenders, as THIS SAYS THIS, Law book = Holy Book, Judge = God, or fuck all you more limp regulators, I’m riding with Billy the Kid!
    I’ll further state, 800-year old haddocks like Chomsky, or Albert Maysles and Studs Terkel earlier on, come down on the simple, as “simple”, encapsulates as summation, itself...it isn’t supposed to, but Man is awfully busy, and would prefer a tweet, twart, twinkydink, maxim or Poor Richard’s one-liner to throw like a Molotov red herring. It saves time, and American Human isn’t generally concerned about the American process. Truth told, if a conflagration 86’d the Internet, tomorrow, free elections in this country would die within one midterm. No YouTube, no blogs, no crappiest comic Alan Moore ever shat out = No Free Elections, sad to say. And free speech, while not free at all, has a very real flipside: Him and Her as Not Free, have to say what they don’t believe. If they’re truly blessed, they one day believe it; if ‘no’, there’ll be a late night slam at the door. American freedom of speech, provides only a muscle relaxer. It’s not a killer sedative ending in “pam”.
    We look at The Age of Reason, at The Founding Fathers as a magnificent oil, or as construct or holy relic, Castle Films Religion, and it’s rare to escape our Revolution as innocent citizens shot down and Sam Adams as God, the notion of “NO” to the will of the potentate. Tea into the harbor, now greying out Indian minstrel getup. Martyred citizens, now greying out Crispus Attucks as hey-the-country-was-racist-in-1770, what a shock, take a powder. Mostly, we learn the model of “‘free’ as taken, and taken via revolt...therefore, freedom lived each day, is revolt, rebellion, a fight...WAR”. The Signers, though, no, nonfellow citizens, not many of them, personally, but The Signers’ less established neighbors and groomsmen, the townsfolk and their stinky friends, fought. Fought a war. For the right to not be oppressed by government dictates. To say an antiquated, terribly polite “Fuck You”, to...it was really mostly about money, you know that. Taxes. Which, now we get screwed on, every April 15th, HONK-HONK. That, and privacy. The 4th Amendment, is the important one...except, we have the WWW, today, HONK-HONK. And, freedom of assembly, of course...though, most municipalities demand properly filed paperwork for issuing any such permits, HONK-HONK. I can keep doing this. It bodes not well, for churches. It bodes not well, for free-anything, let alone speech. Ya see, the Revolution ended in 1781, mostly because England didn’t have the gold to keep throwing at bayoneting stubborn assholes over here. That’s how all wars used to end. Keep America out of WW1, and it’s Kaiser Bill’s Dance Party in a Hohenzollern world. Again, money. Not ideas, ideals or identity. Anyway, the war was over and the nation got formed, and any problem one had with said fledgling State, was best kept to oneself, as “say what you want, soak the tea barrels, blow uniforms the-fuck away and shout platitudes whilst ya fire”, is the verb of becoming. Once the old regime is gone, calm down and punch a clock. Shut up and put your back into it. It’s barge toting time. The verb of doing. It’s not exciting. And it has rules you and your homies did not fight for, or create.
    Don’t confuse the tools which gave America to We The Gentry Who Represent The People, with the pick, spade, hammer or plow in your hand. And don’t confuse the discourse that Hulk Hogan’d us all to the point of getting where we are. That, is now over. It had its place. We don’t each get a personal paradise, 40 acres and a super model of our choice. No more fighting. Just do your work. Free as argument, is catalyst made redundant, by goal (mission?) accomplished. Free as argument, is correctly seen as destructive, as it removes That Which Currently Is, wholly. There’s work to do. You’re burnin’ daylight. ‘Fighting words’, waste time, impede, and constitute a breach of the peace—and they’re also back to taking serious numbers of lives during an election cycle. A free society, merely means “free from forced viewpoint”. This would include I Don’t Want To Hear YOU. How the legal dovetails with it, I don’t pretend to calculate. The math of Must and Can’t, those twin evils, the Frick and Frack of balance, erases freedom in legal practice...and you begin to see, as with theological free will, you’re just yelling to get an echo. Also ‘tube “I’m a Marionette”, by Abba. It’s not as inconvenient as the meteorology of Albert Gore, Jr., but methinks you’re stuck with it.
    Law students should have a singularly clear idea, of why Free Speech is no big deal, nothing exciting, and not barely free in the least, but if the Extreme Right of Today, let alone George Lincoln Rockwell, ca. 1967, correctly pigeonholed American post-secondary education, perhaps children and grown children and all the children having more are indeed decades into indoctrination of a kind which streams to the point of streamlining—to cut it sweet, Chomsky’s loathing of simplicity, must cut both ways. If broad terms like “free” are butt-adjective-up against daily human actions like “speech”, then “positive characterizations, Only” or “must be nice” or “can’t hurt no one, Maynard”, let alone Python peasants having “Don’t you oppress me!” spasms, limits via oversimplification, which is kind of ironic, isn’t it? The State as schoolmaster creates a What-You-Should-Say, as though American Human is working the McDougald’s drive thru. Thou Shalt Not, isn’t really ever headed to Lover’s Lane for a nice, naked parking with “free”. You can burn the papyri and teach that “Moses” means only Robert Moses of Beat New York City into Something Else-fame, and “NO” will never mean “get to”.
    We treat speech as the typical male treats sex. “Get to”. That’s “privilege”, it would appear. Yet marriage forums condemn this as a false license, and one which dehumanizes; they postulate sex in reality as a willing embracing neither demanded nor meted as reward, a kind of Arthur Dent missing the ground in order to fly. If gooey naked shit is natural, normal human relating as open and free, without deception, without force or propaganda or harm...then, there exists no “get to”, as that as understanding, is itself a regimentation. You’re putting sex in a breadbox, that way, like a first year divinity student limiting God. That’s not only wrong, it’s idiot...and, subsequent to the sufferings of the late Greta Rideout, it’s now very legally pursuable. There exists, perhaps, no entitlement of any kind in a Free Society, but Castro’s summing the peoples’ “right to live, and to work, and to eat”. Maybe but for the status quo, you’re supposed to shut your yap. Perhaps Marxists grasp what “build your own America” Socialists only tilt at. Fiddler on the Roof, factory jampacked with truisms full of ache, the unfun Life and living it. That traditional, through its many generations, didn’t get that way, via The OkeyDoke. Maybe it just works, and dissent as lone wolf or coffee group, is a dangerous game to be playin’. The solitary tightass holding the sign, ruins it for everyone, forever. They end up sticking it to all of us (you have no idea, what Indian-related sports stuff costs me, on eBay). If you’re pissed, pack your trash. I laid out for you in “Salvaging America the Valkenheiser Way (Vote for Judge Alvin)”, there are 50 states. Live somewhere you can Sieg Heil with a smile, okay? One of these things being not like the others, is again rapidly spiking hemp sales. I do not refer to weed, Roy Bean.
    It isn’t the Boss Lady’s favorite practice of mine, to stick poems into columns to make a point (space considerations, etc.), but a goodie published elsewhere many rains ago, a lil’ CEE From the Vault 5-liner, sums up Free Speech in America. It’s Pleasantville as the-boring-people-should-never-have-had-their-shit-disturbed. It’s Fiddler on the Roof as the whole ball of wax, Page One of The Kabbalah. It may indeed be a corollary in the Criminal Code of Shut Up and Sit Down Nation. To my mind, it explains why Man is never happy, why he creates Hitler to destroy Stalin, Franco to vanquish the king, Obama to tear Bush from power and Trump to erase Obama’s memory. The poem, tells us what we’re given. And, it’s All we’re given. There’s no “get to”. There exists a very boring Way. It, alone.

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