(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.A wise punk rocker once said, "The Nazis used to say 'when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.' The trouble with a liberal is that when someone mentions guns, he reaches for his culture." Let us call ourselves radicals, let us pick up the mantle of the great Progressives, let us be petit-bourgeois anarchists, but please let us not be "liberals" any longer, who have confirmed themselves as callow wankers who cringe and waffle if only the bullies will leave them alone. We do not abandon this word to the dust-bin of history because of its debasement by the right, but we scorn the word 'liberal' because of it's debasement by the left. Imagine Harry Truman or Harvey Milk or Tony Benn in the same situations as Reid and Pelosi and you'll see what I mean.
I have spent almost 20 years in an incremental effort to make children a little less mean, a little more curious, a little less bullying, cannier about con-men, broader-minded, more willing to be themselves and allow others to do the same, less willing to settle for the world as it is-- and if right wingers do everything they can to drag us back to 1905*, well, that's to be expected-- but it's been 20 years without any help from "liberal" academics. They are mostly accomplished at "deploring conditions", something done from a distance and at a higher salary.
* [ 1905 is an arbitrary point chosen as the year before the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, child labor was still en vogue, Plessy v. Ferguson was de rigeur, Harper's Weekly was calling Governor Altgeld a Communist and apparently, Reagan Republicans think they would have been as happy as pigs in shit.]
Attached please find (again) my favorite monologues from Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. The second monologue, in which he warns the human race that if their performance doesn't improve, he's going to have to let them go...
"It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one."
The character of Valerie answers the question "Why we fight" in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, dramatized here:
If Valerie is the heart of the thing, my other favorite scene never appeared in the film -- a film Alan Moore sniffed at as "a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives— which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about."
My other favorite is a sequence showing V speaking over a pirate broadcast to the audience of a fascist "news" program. As he speaks, the screen shows scenes of human misbehavior, some straight to the point, some ironic. It's more Jonathon Swift than Orwell-- it's Alan Moore, actually, and it might be the kind of literature you can only pull off in a comic, giving you time to consider the justapostion of word and image. It's the kind of dark laughter Twain used to pull off in The War Prayer and Letters from the Earth, and the kind of thing I don't ask anyone but myself to laugh at, but you might:
Good evening, London. I thought it time we had a little talk. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin... I suppose you're wondering why I've called you here this evening. Well, you see, I'm not entirely satisfied with your performance lately... I'm afraid your work's been slipping and... and well, I'm afraid we've been thinking about letting you go.
Oh, I know, I know. You've been with the company a long time now. Almost... let me see. Almost ten thousand years! My word, doesn't time fly? It seems like only yesterday... I remember the day you commenced your employment, swinging down from the trees, fresh-faced and nervous, a bone clasped in your bristling fist... "Where do I start, sir?", you asked, plaintively. I recalled my exact words: "There's a pile of dinosaur eggs over there, youngster", I said, smiling paternally all the while. "Get sucking". Well, we've certainly come a long way since then, haven't we? And yes, yes, you're right, in all that time you haven't missed a day. Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Also, please don't think I've forgotten about your outstanding service record, or about all of the invaluable contributions that you've made to the company... Fire, the wheel, agriculture... It's an impressive list, old-timer. A jolly impressive list. Don't get me wrong. But... well, to be frank, we've had our problems too.
There's no getting away from it. Do you know what I think a lot of it stems from? I'll tell you... It's your basic unwillingness to get on in the company. You don't seem to want to face up to any real responibility. To be your own boss.
Lord knows you've been given plenty of opportunities... We've offered you promotion time and time again, and each time you've turned us down. "I couldn't handle the work, Guv'Nor", you wheedled. "I know my place".
To be frank, you're not trying, are you? You see, you've been standing still for far too long, and its starting to show in your work... And, I might add, in your general standard of behavior. The constant bickering on the factory floor has not escaped my attention... nor the recent bouts of rowdiness in the staff canteen.
Then of course there's... Hmm. Well, I didn't really want to have to bring this up, but... Well, you see, I've been hearing some disturbing rumors about your personal life. No, never you mind who told me. No names, no pack drill... I understand you are unable to get on with your spouse. I hear that you argue. I am told that you shout. Violence has been mentioned. I am reliably informed that you always hurt the one your love... the one you shouldn't hurt at all.
And what about the children, its always the children who suffer, as you're well aware. Poor little mites. What are they to make of it? What are they to make of all your bullying, your despair, your cowardice and all your fondly nurtured bigotries? Really, its not good enough, is it?
And its no good blaming the drop in work standards on and management either... though to be sure, the management is very bad. In fact, let us not mince words... The Management is terrible!
We've had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them?
It was you! You who elected these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.
You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines.
You could have stopped them. All you had to say was "No". You have no spine. You have no pride. You are no longer an asset to the company.
I will, however, be generous. You will be granted two years to show me some improvement in your work. If at the end of that time you are still unwilling to make a go of it... you're fired.
That will be all. You may return to your labors.
(Alan Moore, V for Vendetta)
"It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said." (Twain)
3 comments:
fantastic.
>>but it's been 20 years without any help from "liberal" academics. They are mostly accomplished at "deploring conditions", something done from a distance and at a higher salary.
Feh. That is easy for you to say. If by 'accomplished at 'deploring conditions'...from a distance and at a higher salary' means working an average of 65 hour weeks, under constant surveillance from any number of state and governmental agencies demanding 'accountability' to make sure we're not promulgating Marxism while trying to get kids to try and write a freaking coherent sentence or think a thought they haven't been told to think, while entire programs are being cut and there's more and more noise mostly from the right but not entirely, about shutting higher education down entirely because of how worthless it is at generating revenue, than yeah, right. I'm just polishing my ivory dildo. In between grading mountains of papers, multiple committee meetings, dozens of conferences per week, and in the meantime trying to squeeze together a few freaking hours at a time to write the research I need to write in order to ever hope to get a raise, from a salary that actually, in fact, is much less than the average high school teacher in many places in the country. Fappedy fap.
In the meantime, here is what the liberal academics I know do: fight and _win_ the battle for recognition of gays and lesbian pastors in the Lutheran church. Teach local kids how to read. Take up collections for families whose houses have burned. Make sure that the local grade schools, middle schools and high schools have decent, thoughtful teachers (or that they in turn stay open at all). Write report after report after random report to the various bodies constantly surveilling us for signs of incipient Marxism. Helping students get their degrees--often kids who are the first in their families ever to even try for college.
Distance my fucking ass.
Working in the trenches is always hard and sometimes stinky. Accountability is for the bean counters, who don't want to spend the money on the children. It drives me kookoo when a parent of a disabled child complains that there aren't enough therapists yet they don't want their taxes to go up....
How do they think I get paid?
I am state funded and I know it...when I work for a school, I am again state funded...and responsible to fill out the forms so the school gets reimbursed for teaching the kids how to write better and/or how to sit still.
My spare time is spent finding ways to help find equipment and things my clients need without breaking the bank --usually my own.
No, there is no distance for liberal academics --the few I know are also active and motivating not sitting in an ivory tower.
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