Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

“America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” said Newt Gingrich last Saturday, in a public denunciation of religious freedom, scarring the pride I feel with being an American. His comparing of the building of the proposed mosque and community center in New York, to the putting of a Nazi ‘sign’ (a swastika) next to the holocaust museum, is a dangerous symptom of the media and the political pundits gone mad. We are in an embarrassing period in our nation’s history. There are daily vitriolic ‘two minute hate’s’; openly bigoted rhetoric fests, and vapidly contrived controversies spewing out, fouling our country with the cancer of intolerance and hate. All across our country, via the internet, and from out of the mouths of the media, there are daily examples of a decay taking place in our society. There are those who work tirelessly, pursuing a constant campaign to frighten and subjugate us all. They stir up irrational and reactionary fear, playing to an ancient and embarrassing tendency of us to move along with the herd, without complaint or the effort of thought.

The controversy, for example, surrounding the building of a mosque near the site of the hideous attacks of 9-11, has been fueled by a round table of ludicrous assertions, xenophobic rants, and caustically divisive posturing. This country was founded on an idea that all persons can live in peace among one another in this country, respecting each other as fellow Americans, in an environment of mutual safety and liberty. Now I know this smells of a ’Pollyanna’ish’ ideal, where the birds chirp peacefully, and the flowers are always in bloom, but the reality is that this is a relatively easy and attainable goal. But it requires that we all keep a firm grip on our humanity. There has been a lot of anger these last few months. Arizona’s reaction to immigration; the desire by the vocal majority to subjugate the silent, with draconian and restrictive policies and ideas, that undermine our liberty and our ability to decide our own fate; such as with the gay marriage ‘non issue’ debate, the perpetuation of the failed and long suffered war on drugs, and the rapidly eroding rights of the individual. These are all nasty symptoms of a sickness that has produced, in the past, powerful and charismatic leaders that bent the will of the people to follow a national course of hysteria.

We are losing our precious grip, our strength seems to be fading, and we are headed, it seems, toward an uncertain and bleak future. The loss of the individual, at least for a time, is the inevitable result of this current trend toward the irrational, the hateful, and the stupid.

Nice essay, stinky...

I believe much of the unrest we are experiencing this year (in particular) has to do with the economic situation. When money is plentiful ( be it thru cash or credit), we tend to overlook the problems that beset us as a nation.

But this unrest seems to be global. Brought on by many factors including extreme weather conditions which are beyond our control, we at times seem to be grasping at literally any excuse as to what brought on our problems. From our first black President to the banks and mortgage companies, to unions and the wars, from high tech to higher taxation, from a conceived belief in some sort of tyranny to an idea of socialism creeping into our lives... the excuses are many but so little have any firm foundation to place the blame on. But we people have to talk... to complain and gripe... for those fields are rich with opinions and Im sure we'll continue hearing this and that in various disguises in order to make sense of something that I feel is far beyond our control at this point in time.

[btw: were you not in Asheville originally..?]

Perhaps the environment and our demographic is a catalyst for our mounting unease and vocal dissatisfaction; but, I see, that hidden in plain site, is a volition of influence, with an agenda of subjugation of the human spirit.
I consider myself to be fairly rational, and I eschew the role of active bystander in the insanity of charisma, which stirs up the crowd and inspires an ubiquitous cognitive dissonance, wherein belief in the ludicrous feels comfortable alongside the glaring falsehoods of the ludicrous. We are, it seems being victimized, however, by those that wish to perpetuate the status quo.
When we, as a people, took to the streets, in times past, there were those that took notice, and were displeased. Their closest glimpse of change came in the 60's and 70's, when people felt responsible for their world and were willing, collectively and communally to be involved on some level in their futures. They had come from families and communities that had enjoyed the affluence of post-WW2. They had been brought up with a sense of entitlement, and had been given free reign to determine their direction and pusue their interests; they had been given opportunities, as a result of an ease that fortune had granted them, to enjoy their lives, and be free from an urgency of responsibilities that had been such a mainstay in their parents lives. The young eventually rose up in anger, fueled by a dissolution of a faith that was once possible, in the time of their parents, before the cold war, and before the possibility of planetary destruction. They wanted to change the then current trends that propelled them all, inevitably, toward death or dystopia. An emergence and ubiquity of cultural existentialism, gave rise to dissatisfaction with the status quo, and led, ultimately, to vocal dissent.
For far too long, they noticed, the path that America had taken was a diversion toward tyranny, where injustice, inequity, and intolerance were the norm; where racist, sexist, classist notions were perpetuated, so as to preserve the status quo; and where exploitive and imperialistic national policies brutalized the world and made a mockery of the American ideal. And so they got up from their chairs, went out of their homes and on to the streets, and marched, and pointed, and screamed, determined to knock out the underpinning from the culture of lies and secrecy in which they lived. They almost did. And they scared the hell out of the gentry. The rich and powerful families, the corporations, they all took a lesson from the unrest that held the country for nearly two decades in the shadow of revolutionary change, and they knew that it had to be prevented from ever occuring again.......

.......and so here we are.......

pretty much right on. the events of today are depressing as hell, not unforeseen by me, and not without historical precedent in this fine nation. sometimes I wish these damn bigot, WAR ON THIS, WAR ON THAT mind-fuck bastards would just die off already and let the rest of us get on with life, and maybe the occasional joint or two. of course, all the CORPORATE MOB has to do is just blame it on the CONSUMERS... you MADE us do all these hideous, planet-raping things with your insatiable DEMAND (that we insured). Yeah, the people are going to go out and march and change the world. Yeah right. Well, maybe they did help kill the draft. Only to be left with a more insidious "Orwellian" draft-in-effect? Sign with us, poor folks, and get paid, get an education? Well anyway, maybe, despite all the incredible explosions in everything about us and around us, and the heightened confusion and stress, maybe the whole thing has no choice but to "grow up in a hurry," and maybe these fucks like Newt will finally, actually start to fade away some day.