Friday, September 14, 2001 :::
Moronic Pseudo-Intellectuals Take To Makeshift Podiums
There are some who confuse having a point-of-view with having a transponder in their head, a transponder whose sole purpose is to regurgitate, word for word, the opinions of the broadcast set. No thanks pal, I’ve heard it already.
I work in a building that has in excess of 800 people. As I have walked these halls I have yet to hear anything approaching independent thought. All I have heard is the latest from CNN once removed and through the mouth of an unenlightened echo-box.
We must accept that people grieve in different ways. Some do it silently while others gather together in bands (I think is the phrase) and talk, share, rumormonger, and work themselves into a frenzy of speculative and unfounded trauma. These bands need a leader. The leader, as in some of darkest entries in history’s living encyclopedia, are not those whose rhetoric is the truest but whose voice is the loudest.
I find myself, in the wake of these events that barley fit into the scope of my comprehension, silent and reticent. While some around me scream for blood, I hold my words. When people with more luck than common sense scream for justice; I turn inward and have conversations with my own better angels. Blood will spill, bones will
crack and crush under the tonnage of our military might, but I question if justice will be done.
I stand the risk of sounding unpatriotic. I can handle this perception because it would be a perception held by uneducated minds. Minds that confuse bloodletting with justice and prejudice with patriotism. These are the minds of the Soundbyte Regurgitating Pseudo-Intellectuals that round up the usual suspects of mindless servitude and preach a doctrine not founded on anything beyond fear, ignorance, and conjecture. They are all accomplices to that push-and-shove, stampeding herd mentality that degrades the ordered democratic process into mob rule.
There is no simple fix to our current position. We are ramping up and engaging. Those in power react and respond leaving the rest of us to wonder. I am fearful that the before mentioned degradation of order will find itself on more and more lips. Lips that transform from whispers to screams into the ears of our leaders. I am fearful of the result when our capacity for restraint is expended and the collective thirst for blood from our nation becomes the guiding principal of our foreign policy.
I am not a pacifist. I, like millions of my countrymen, need decisive and unequivocal action to bind my parts and to be the tunicate that stops my psychological bleeding. But I don’t want the description of our decided action, when broken down to its bare elements, to mean “An Eye For An Eye”. I do not want us to use our superior weapons of mass destruction to take lives that are just as fragile as the ones we lost Tuesday. We cannot act in such a way that we mimic the actions or terrorist while hiding behind a shield of righteous justice. The old proverb says that you cannot wash innocent blood from your hands with more innocent blood.
Very little, if anything, can be done to halt the Soundbyte Regurgitating Pseudo-Intellectuals from shrieking and wailing. They are as much a part of this as anyone else. They will march on. They will spread fear and misinformation, not always to be malicious but always to have something to say. They will warn of plummeting financial
markets, of economies in ruin, and of $5/gallon gasoline. And just as we cannot prevent their speaking we cannot prevent their being heard. A great many sheep in this flock will follow. They will sell stocks, they will withdraw money from their banks, and they will line up around the block and on for a mile to get gas “before the hammer is lowered”. Ignorance is and always has been its own reward.
So, preach on, preach on, preach on. Once your canned goods supply has dwindled, your bottled water has run dry, when you crawl out of your bunkers we will be here to welcome you back.Yes planes fall out of the sky, and yes buildings crumble, but No chicken Little, the sky is not falling.
::: posted by Mike at 8:27 AM
Note This is being written on 9-14-01
I was originaly planning on writting a funny little piece on how I loved to watch Religious programing. How I always get a chuckle when I see These guys with $1000.00 suits stand in front of a flow chart on how to get in to heaven. But as I was getting ready to come in to work I saw a religious nut on T.V. saying that the attacks on New York were the results of Americans actions. And what got my blood boiling was that the nut was not some on the other side of the world, It was Pat Roberts.
This tool had the nerve to say that " God was lifting his protecting from America" because of porn on the internet and that women have the right to abortions and that's why 5000 people are in a concrete tomb. I had know that Pat was a little off ever since I had seen this man diagram the lyrics to the song "Imagine" and point out how it was the most damaging rock songs in history because it ask people to the unthinkable and question God.
I'm Not quite sure how to file a complant with the F.C.C. but I think This jackass needs what ever broadcast license he has pulled. He doesn't seem to realize that it is this same mindset to blind unquestioning fath in who has the "Stronger Kung Fu" that would lead someone to fly a plane into a sky scrapper.
I know a lot of people reading this find a comfort in the Idea of a God, and in small amounts I have no problem with that. But as far a large organized religions go. Fuck um. For the last 2000 years the only things we've got from them were holy wars, and bake sales, And I for one can make my own cookies.
::: posted by Anonymous at 2:59 AM
Wednesday, September 05, 2001 :::
Combat Wear this. Don't wear that. Buy this. ...and that. ...and the other. Look like this. Don't look like that.
Do this. Do that. Organize. Re-organize. Accessorize.
Be different. But not that different, goddammit.
Think for yourself. But don't go out on a limb where there's nobody to catch you when you fall.
Don't be ugly. Don't be fat. Don't be mediocre. Don't be angry. Don't be naive. Don't settle. Don't build castles in the air. Don't be out of style. Don't be too "in" style. Don't show outrage at the Machiavellian manipulations of your own government. Don't believe everything you read. Don't jump off the Brooklyn Bridge even though all of your friends do it. Don't sass me. Don't walk by yourself after dark. Don't be afraid of your death. Be afraid of everybody else's.
Make sure at the end of your life, you can look back at the zombie that was you and say, "I led a full life".
...but don't ever wonder what it was full of.
Stop arguing with yourself. You have to be your biggest supporter.
::: posted by MetalCat at 2:15 PM
