"When someone you love has been taken away from you, the way to make
them live forever is to never stop loving them." I would add to that
that the way to make them not only live forever, but live forever in
you, is to take on the qualities that you loved in them, but to take on
especially their inspiration and passion and that on which it is based.
Pete Turk told me something I needed to hear: That admiration is
morally supine – that, if I admire someone (I called Julia a
superwoman), then what I should do is see what it is in her that I love
– and see if developing similar qualities would be worthwhile ("then
you’re not Superwoman and SubWorm, but two friends having a ball"). I
said that I will never be a ravishing beauty like her, but other stuff
I could work on.
So I figured that people think you smart if you speak their language
but stupid if you do not speak their language, and of course that is
the greatest stupidity. The greatest stupidity of all, however, is to
think people stupid for having religious beliefs or nonrational modes
of thought. The logic elite is moronic; worse, it is malicious. As
Catbrier said, "As if there was anything rational about hatred."
It occurred to me that Orwell’s concept of totalitarianism was
inextricably linked to the concept of the machine. The machine-talk
("doubleplusungood" etc.) and the machine making the song that everyone
sang was an inextricable part of his concept of totalitarianism. In
other words: Machine in totalitarianism; totalitarianism in machine. It
occurs to me that the concept was not limited to USSR.
I said this before, and I say this again. To prosecute people for
thinking differently from you, or having different personality from one
you would like, is to prosecute what Orwell defined as crimethink.
Quite simply, it does not matter what you think of the person’s
character traits or personal structure; to proclaim that as criminal or
pathological is to prosecute someone for thinking differently than you.
Which puts a lie to any concept of liberty that your civilization
espouses and takes away from it the moral subtext on which it claims to
be based and which it claims to offer the immigrants.
I elaborate. Liberty cannot exist within the context of emotional,
mental and personal similitude. To tell people how to think, how to
feel, how to be – and to subject those who do differently to
prosecution – is to put a lie to everything on which America claims to
be based. Liberty? Then make people free to be who they want to be and
to think how they want to think and to emote how they want to emote. To
make it the worst sin to be different, or to think and feel in a manner
you don’t want people to think and to feel, is to create an effective
totalitarianism in America. A totalitarianism that, just like
Communism, constituted very much "dictatorship of the masses" – though
unlike the Soviet dictatorship, being not even honest enough to present
itself as such.
I said this before, and I’ll say this again. The overtly totalitarian
states tell people what to do. That is wrong, but understandable. The
conman’s totalitarianism of America tells people not what to do, but
what to WANT, how to FEEL and what to BE. Which is a far more
insidious, far more sinister, far more dishonest form of
totalitarianism. What I call conman’s totalitarianism – one that
formulates people from the inside and then tells them to "take
responsibility" for "lives" within these formulated selves. And to the
people within these formulated selves who claim they are free, the
question to ask is,
If you are all so free, then why are you all the same?
Why do you all look the same, think the same, act the same, believe the
same sets of lies?
And who is truly responsible for what you became?
This question especially needs to be asked the people in Midwestern and
Southern societies, who claim to represent the true American
principles. What we have there is something I’ve seen in the Soviet
Union, and that is: Societies deriving their legitimacy from claiming
to provide people a happy and principled existence – and accomplishing
this pretense by committing unspeakable injustice, brutality and
atrocity against their citizens, and silencing through threat or
emotional blackmail or worse the people against whom these atricities
are committed. Whether the oppression comes from the government or from
– community, media, church, academia, etc. – means nothing whatsoever.
The fact is that both sets of entities commit atrocities in order to
sustain their pretense; and that makes both sets of entities dishonest
and totalitarian.
There are many people in America who find incomprehensible the European
criticism of America. Allow me to break it down in a way that an
average reader can understand. America presents itself to the world as
a free country. But it goes to a greater length than just about any
other Western country to squash actual liberty. That means, first and
foremost, the freedom to be who, and what, one chooses to be. That
means, first and foremost, the freedom to think and to feel the way one
chooses to or in the way that to one is the most natural. That means
the freedom to develop one’s intelligence, personality and belief
structure the way one chooses to develop it. That means the freedom to
whatever eccentricities one chooses to have; to dress how one chooses
to dress; and to have whatever personality one finds most right for
him.
True freedom does not mean the freedom to consume what one wants to
consume. True freedom
means freedom to be what one wants to be. And for me, freedom means the
freedom to think great thoughts; to feel great feelings; to read great
books; and to live life to the fullest.
And above all it means freedom to be myself. Whether that be popular,
or not.
And by fighting for that, I do my patriotic duty as a US citizen. And
yes, my demand on that is unconditional. As Alvie Hoffman said,
"Democracies are judged by freedom they give their dissidents, not by
freedom they give their assimilated conformists."
Going back to Orwell. In machine, totalitarianism; in totalitarianism,
machine. The two form each other and are necessary for each other. And
indeed in the machine-talk espoused by pop psychology – referring to
people as "adequate" and to relationships as "functional" – we do very
much see the same thing in play. "Functional"? What’s functional? A
car, or a computer. But the passion between human beings?
What we’ve seen – and I say this quite clearly – is denaturement of
humanity. To pathologize every great feeling and every great thought –
to pathologize everything that is profound, and passionate, and real –
is to rob humanity of any experience that is worth having. It is to rob
humanity of experience of life itself. And that is a far greater
wickedness, a far greater crime, and a far more malicious thing to do
to American people than can be credited to any number of BTK’s.
So I was thinking these thoughts and walking through the shopping mall,
and I ran into two Toyota Matrix cars, one next to a Highlander SUV.
This happens to me a lot. When I run into an Accord I pass it on the
right (allowing it to give me the spirit of accord and agreement), but
occasionally on the left when I feel I have enough good energy that I
can create accord and agreement. Hybrids I pass on the left; SUV’s
usually on the right (reasons obvious).
I find it interesting when I see a lot of Plymouth’s. These cars are
not common any more, and of course they represent the spirit of
pioneering – both the good parts and the bad parts. The trees, I like
to go through the middle, or on the left if they are beautiful and the
right if they are sick, but ultimately with the theme of where I’m
politically – four-fifths to the left. In cigarettes I like to take
out according to position corresponding with an American city (when
I’m in a bad mood, middle of the three rows, third from bottom –
Oklahoma City; when I’m in a good mood, something corresponding to
one of the places I like).
I especially like it when I run into an Infiniti, because that is the
car that MLR drove. And on the days that I see a lot of Infiniti’s I
am very happy. I am also happy when there are plums on the ground under
the plum tree. Funny it be Infiniti and correspond with experience that
put me so completely into that realm?
My priest friend tells me that he sees special numbers too. He says
there’s a marker in the head of what you want to see, and it
manifests. He says that when he needs an answer God tells him the Bible
verse to check (he would guide you through whatever you need to hear by
going through the Bible). He is also the first priest I know who says
not only that God loves you but that he loves you. Layo said that’s
what they should do. That’s what he is doing. (Hi Layo!)
So there’s me at the AA meeting and there’s Cinderella sitting with
a salesman type dude. During the meeting I make big gestures and then
they’re leaving and I bow and say "Good night Cinderella" and
Cinderella says "good night." I come in a couple weeks later and
they sit together and he shares and then I say that I get a lot of
reality in these meetings and learn a lot about the way that people’s
emotions work & how they go through whatever is bugging them, so the
salesman dude comes up to me after the meeting and gives me this
mindfuck (one of the better ones I’ve seen, though I’ve seen
better), and I recognize that these people are trying to be ROCKETs
too. And another thing I recognize is that American Cinderellas tend to
go with salesman type dudes but Russian ones with ROCKET type dudes so
the ROCKETs of America should look east for their Cinderellas (and
leave the dissident American Cinderellas to the Russian ROCKETS like
me). After taking lots of economics classes in college I recognized
that a significant part of making good things happen constitutes of
putting resources or pieces together in a way that makes best result,
so
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