I Have Seen the Light! Glory Gee to Beezus I Have Seen the Light! And since being filled with this Grand and Glorious Light I feel compelled to share The Good News of my Epiphany to everyone I know.
Pretty scary opening eh? I remember hearing similar words coming out of the mouth of a friend of mine after he had accepted Jesus Christ as his own personal redeemer and new invisible best friend. It was abso-freakin'-lutely terrifying. One day he was just a regular guy kickin' around Hollywood trying to pick up a job here and there when -- WHAMMO!
The next time I ran into him his eyes were all glittery with newfound madness. He had a goofy vacuous grin plastered on his face and he was clutching a cheap copy of the New Testament. Something terrible had obviously happened to my ol' pal Danny. And whatever that terrible thing was ... the escape route he took landed him smack dab into the arms of The Lord.
Or ...
Someone slipped a seed pod from the Planet Jeebus under Danny's bed. And during the night, as Danny's body was slowly drained of its life force until he was reduced to a crumbling gray husk, the seed pod burst open and a Danny-thing took final form as a new recruit in the alien army of Jeebus.
Or ...
Maybe that last shot of Wild Turkey snapped, crackled, and popped a crucial synapse and now Danny was brain dead deep in Neuron Town. Regardless ... my ol' pal Danny went away and never came back.
So I understand the trepidation one has when faced with the evangelical fervor of the freshly epiphanized. But trust me. There ain't no god lurking behind my enthusiasm nor am I going to throw a demented pitch for becoming an Amway distributor. This is the Real Deal Brothers and Sisters. I am going to share with you something I heard that Changed My Life.
Disclaimer: I am perfectly aware the Jeebus pushers and Amway zombies routinely use the word "share" in their recruitment patter but I just couldn't figure out another word to use and the online Thesaurus wasn't helpful.
I had just had a hard couple of days of paying attention to Current Events when I decided to wind down and watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I hadn't watched the show since Condi Rice was the guest and Stewart allowed that war criminal to tell all of her old lies that led to the slaughter in Iraq without even a faint challenge. It seemed like I was watching an interview with Heinrich Himmler but instead of talking about The Final Solution, the joke-monkey host was more interested in Himmler's recipe for strudel. So I swore off the Daily Show. Until last night.
I hadn't watched the show since Condi Rice was the guest and Stewart allowed that war criminal to tell all of her old lies that led to the slaughter in Iraq without even a faint challenge. It seemed like I was watching an interview with Heinrich Himmler but instead of talking about The Final Solution, the joke-monkey host was more interested in Himmler's recipe for strudel. So I swore off the Daily Show. Until last night.
Filling in for Stewart was guest host John Oliver. He was about to kick off a routine about Sarah Palin returning to Fox News when he stopped himself and said ..."Hold on. I think I've just realized something. Eff it! This is exactly what she wants. Just because I walked into a turd supermarket doesn't mean I have to buy anything."
Those words blasted me back to The Shining, and I heard Jack Nicholson say to the ghostly bartender, "Words of wisdom, Lloyd. Words of wisdom." I turned off the TV and repeated the words, "Just because I walked into a turd supermarket doesn't mean I have to buy anything."
Now I'm not going to make a hand-stitched sampler and hang it on the wall, or get out my wood-burning set and burn those words of wisdom onto a wooden plank, but I am going to repeat them when I come across the latest headlines on or off The Internet.
Here's the deal: I could use the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and get screenshots from Bartcop, Counterpunch, Raw Story, Crooks and Liars, OpEdNews, TV NewsLies, or any other progressive website you want to name, that stretch back for years. And what would I see? I could even use my own memory and take myself back to the day Ronald Reagan affably strolled into the Oval Office. But what would I remember?
Republicans do horrible things and Democrats let them get away with it. That's the story. That's the story in 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012, and this morning's headline. Lately, the headline's changed a little. Republicans do horrible things and Democrats do too.
Those are the only items for sale at the turd store and we have got to stop complaining about what we're buying into. Maybe we could organize a boycott and sign stacks of petitions and demand un-turd-like products but what would that accomplish? Remember the Nestle boycott? Nestle pushed their baby formula to the poor mothers in third-world countries, which led to unnecessary suffering and deaths of infants. The boycott started in 1977 and in 2011, Nestle was listed No. 1 in the Fortune Global 500 as the world's most profitable corporation with a market capitalization of $200 billion. I think we can say with absolute certainty that my going without Butterfingers candy bars for 36 years didn't bring the multi-national corporation to its knees.
Hey ... I wonder how that Nike boycott's going? Seen any of their shoes lately?
The system in which we live is insane. The honest reporters investigating the system write stories illuminating the madness. If we pay attention to them, and possess some degree of morality, we cannot help but react to the insanity with outrage. But we can never believe that our outrage will somehow tweak the system towards sanity. I only say that because there is no proof to be found anywhere that Capitalism in any form can become sane. Capitalism is never universally benign. We've had a pretty good ride here in the Western World while other people in other countries were stomped into the dirt. That's the way it works. Somebody -- somewhere -- always gets it in the neck.
So when we read about the Latest Moments of Crazy Capitalism, it's best to put that crap down and walk away. That doesn't mean we all collectively put our head in the sand. Not At All. And now I'm going to get all quasi-Zen on you. The only way to change the system is to ... Change The System.
Yes it's true ... I smoked too much weed and watched Kwai Chang Caine in every single episode of ABC's Kung Fu.
Now that everybody's gone to deepgreenresistance.org and read everything there is to read, and ordered and read the book, Deep Green Resistance, Strategy to Save the Planet, the next step is to do something. Join a Deep Green Resistance chapter. You can find one near you by sending an email to: deepgreenresistance at riseup dotnet
As Jerry Garcia said, "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."
