The Politics of Culture

Another thing people
really need to understand
is that the New Fade
works in terms of culture, too.

Countries were originally
built around the idea
that culture was mainly
what a country was built around.

That simply isn't the case anymore.

How many times does America
have to fight a war over this
for people to realize that?

Culture no more identifies
a country in the 21st century
than does the concept
of a breakdown for a music group
assumed to have become a
permanent part of the "mainstream."

Swimming in the same direction
doesn't make everyone the same.

You can't win or lose "culture"
by joining a new community.

You can't define "culture"
by the same concepts
that define a religion,
a family, an ideology.

Culture is now only
a means to define
what the majority
of a people are doing.

Heck, that's probably
what it always was.

But now we seem
all the more concerned
with "losing" it,
as if somehow culture
is immune from the same
basic laws of constant
permutation, of evolution,
as everything else in nature.

Doesn't it seem silly now?

I have a hard time
when supposedly learned people
discuss this topic
and think they're right
when they speak of
doom and gloom,
of the children of men
destined for doom
and to live in gloom
because progress
loosens borders
and causes problems,
as if all opinions
are to be taken as fact
and connections that
can be made are to
be made as fact.

You cannot come to the end
of anything, you cannot
split every quark to
nothingness, you cannot
find the end of a rainbow
with a pot of gold beneath it,
because that, folks, was only
ever something culture created.

I am living in a world
that has been changing
around me. I am only
near 30 years of age,
but already some of the basic
terms of my youth I wonder
to see still exist,
as if a new language
sprouts up around me,
constantly, flows forward,
bursts free without
my permission.

Do children still see
rainbows with the luck
of the Irish? Hell,
I already know that a
new Red Sox Nation exists
that does not need
a curse of the Bambino,
that someone watching
Lost today
will never wonder
what kind of show
it will be (it
is every show),
that a theory of Relativity
is more relevant to me now
than Einstein himself.

Culture is a fickle -
hammer & sickle -
and quaint creation,
nothing more.

It defines me
as much as
I define it,

and only as useful as that.

Why Good Minds Must Struggle (The Chance for All to See)

It sounds awfully backwards
but good people suffer
because they're willing to.

That's the ridiculous truth.

Good people suffer
because they choose
to see the world
differently, as a
case of possibilities
rather than in limited
and selfish terms.

They suffer because
they want to give others
a chance to see things
the same way.

Good people don't suffer
because of random events -

well heck, if you want
to see it that way,
you're probably not
all that good a person.

Things will always happen.

Things happening aren't
what cause real suffering -

that's nonsense.

Suffering for a good cause
is persevering in the face
of adversity, refusing to
believe what's wrong
can be allowed to stay wrong,
for mere convenience's sake.

Good people suffer and struggle
to provide the chance for all to see.

It's as simple as that.

It's another thing everyone knows
but few are willing to accept.

The Right to be Wrong means Right can come from Wrong (The Judgment of Morality)

The most difficult
thing to understand
is that it's actually
okay for people
to be wrong.

I don't mean in
a subjective sort of way,
but in a blatantly
objective view.

Being wrong doesn't
mean that wrong
is the only outcome.

That's the real bitch.

It doesn't mean
that being wrong
is okay, but that
you've got to understand
that wrong doesn't
just mean wrong,
that just because
you don't agree, say,
that you won't end up
with the same results
from opposite ends
of an issue.

So let's use the word,
perspective. It's all
about understanding that
positions and opinions
almost don't matter,
because you can work
the same angles
from opposite ends,
and never realize it.

We've got too many people
ready to assume the opposite,
and that, my friends,
is what's really wrong.

The Psychology of Natural Selection

While we're at it,
we might as well
discuss the concept
of natural selection.

No please, tell me
about it.

The theory goes, what,
survival of the fittest?

Or is that just what
we've been saying
all these years?

Personally, I think
natural selection
refers simply to
an ability to adapt,
and maybe it's nature
and maybe it's nurture
and maybe it's both.

But to call it a thing
strictly determined
by "winning" or "losing,"
then you start making
judgment calls, which
can no longer be
considered objective.

And we're talking
about an objective thing,
natural selection.

You can't really be
natural and be artificial
at the same time, right?

I think it's far easier
to just look at the
subjective surface and
say survival of the fittest
because you're not
really paying all that
close attention
to what's going on.

Because I haven't seen
much of anything end myself.

The Politics of Globalization

Yeah, so explain to me
how globalization really
can be so bad. Go ahead.

Tell me how it isn't
inevitable, that the world
doesn't get smaller by
the day no matter what
we do, and so it is
probably better to embrace it
than fear it. Please, tell me!

Does a culture remain so pure
if isolated, free from
stagnation, from alienation,
harmful no matter how you
describe it? Does not the free
exchange of ideas make us all better,
no matter how big or small
the transition? Does it not
begin from individual to individual,
from parent to child, anyway?

Who's to say you can really
repress change without
causing more damage than
what you hope to prevent?

Don't you become more like
what you fear when you avoid it
than you would if you embraced it?

Globalization is about
new possibilities, new ideas
built upon old ideas, which
is the true source of progress.

But I guess it's more
politically advantageous,
no matter who's trying
to prevent it, to fear
a bigger world filled
with bigger families,
because then you can't
hide so many of your secrets,
you begin to lose
your "advantage."

Snikt!

Part of the reason
I like Hugh Jackman
is because he's a
genuinely relatable,
like when he was
recently promoting
his new Wolverine
movie and recounted
how his wife had
originally rejected
his first script
with the character,
mentioning the familiar
comic book phrase "snikt!"
as a primary reason why.

But seriously, Mrs. Jackman,
"snikt!" is a bad-ass
comic book term, admit it!

Smick! Smick!

I wish I could
remember where
I read that
description of
someone enjoying
what they were
eating, because
it's an impossibly
adorable and
endearing character
detail that deserves
better than that.

Oh well!

Ten Years of SpongeBob!

Mr. SquarePants
represents a huge
cultural transition,
insofar as he made
it safe, along with
Rugrats, for cartoons
on cable to be cool.

He's legitimately
as big as Looney Tunes,
and what he did
was basically ruin
network cartoons forever.

The bastard! Do we
really needs a thousand
anime shows? Seriously?

But without SpongeBob,
I wouldn't be able to
suggest any number of
pets live in a pineapple
under the sea, and that
would be tragic.

I just love the theme,
and it's great to hear
at a ballpark.

So what if the Simpsons clan
ushered in the wave of the
future, where cartoons
are geared toward adults,
virtually ensuring that
kids would have to migrate
to cable, which is where
everyone suddenly realized
they could dilute
everything else?

But we got SpongeBob!

Help Control the Polite Population - Have Your Bitch Spayed or Neutered

First off,
why the fuck
is it still
okay to use
the word "bitch"
so liberally,
or even the
alternative,
"son of a bitch"?

Can we not take
women seriously yet,
seriously?

***

I'm suggesting
in all fairness
that if we are
to practive
eugenics for
any reason, it's
to free up more
of the world for
people who actually
care about other
people, not in
the way that they're
not willing to kill
everyone else, but
in the way that
they're willing
to consider the
interests of someone
else while they
go about their
public business.

I don't think
this is so much
to ask.

It would save me
many headaches, anyway.

Seriously, can't
we pretend to know
other people exist?

And if we can't,
can't we just keep
those people whom
we know don't care now
from having more people
who most certainly
won't either?

Pretty please?

The Politics of Courage

When Kennedy wrote
Profiles in Courage,
he chose to spotlight
a number of American
Senators who'd
risked their careers
on matters they thought
more important than
their own political
well-being. It's
interesting, is all,
that for a party that
has so often virtually
deified him, the Democrats
don't seem to actually
share his value.

Now would be a great
time to remember that,
when we're considering
the weight of history,
not just in favor
of someone who can
be popular, but the
man who came before him,
who persevered, turned
every cheek, for
ideals he thought
worth fighting for.

That's the kind of
courage I care about,
the kind of politics,
not purblind doomsters,
but that sees Value
even when it seems
like a challenge.

The New Intellectual

The problem faced
by the New Intellectual
is that in order
to change the world,
they need to change
the world to be heard.

It sounds like
circular reasoning,
but that's why it's
a constant challenge.

No one wants to
listen to the person
who has their own ideas.

Okay, maybe you could
tell me where to find them?

The problem is,
the New Intellectual
is in a state of
constant flux,
perpetual development.

Even if someone
were to notice,
what use would it
really be, and how
much would they
really notice?

I guess what I'm
really asking is,
does the New Intellectual
learn best by the trial
it takes to change
the world? Is it better
to change the world
than to let the world
change you?

Well, the New Intellectual
gets to ponder that, too...

We're in a period
that's beginning
to support the New Intellectual,
but we're not there yet.

Not Fade Away

My love for you
(and damn it
let's finally
call an elephant
an elephant)
won't fade away
no matter the obstacles
that seem determined
to stick around.

You really are
an extraordinary girl
in an ordinary world.

Drowning

III.

If people really want
to know how Obama
became president, if
anyone opened up a
legitimate opportunity
for a black man to win
significant political
office, they only need
to look to his predecessor,
G, who put Condi and Colin
front and center, more
than anyone else had done
before him.

But G's a martyr more obviously
than his own predecessors,
because he stuck to an unpopular
course as far as he could, even
though just about everyone
by the end said he was dead wrong.

No, he didn't actually pay
the full price, but he might
as well have -- at no other
point in US history has a
president become such a
pariah in his own time, not
Johnson, not even Nixon,
who at least knew a mandate,
but his own paranoia did him in.

No, G's problem developed from Dick,
but it was entirely his own burden,
a course he chose to take because
he knew it was right, despite
what everyone around he grew
to think, no matter how ugly
the world became for him, and
seemingly for his counry.

No, he was never out to make
an empire, just a better world,
do the best he could. Maybe
he wasn't eloquent, or a great
statesman, but he was better
than that, he was a man,
the last man in the room,
who knew principle when
he saw it, and it wasn't
even about his own country,
but about the world around him.

He had been bitten, so he
sought to make sure, no
matter the snake would not
bite again.

He didn't drown, not
even when the levees broke,
but rose above.

Mission accomplished indeed...

Drowning

II.

As a historical figure,
it strikes me that
JFK isn't getting his due.

Lincoln's logical successor,
he had a few years to work
on important issues, and
as a man in pivotal times,
he set a bar no one has
approached since.

The 60s, even if he lived
only for three of them,
were still defined by
JFK's work. He was
influential in getting
civil rights codified
for black Americans, one
of several important men
in a time when the nation
became keenly aware of itself,
in the one issue that
united everyone, and
eventually on his side.

As a politician, he achieved
more than anyone else,
with the greatest display
of statesmanship before
or since, at the coldest point
in the Cold War, the Cuban
Missile Crisis; who knows
where he would have ended
up in Vietnam, which started
before him, and ended with
the man he defeated for
the presidency?

He was a troubled man,
and a wounded man, much
like FDR before him,
but he did more than
build toward some
fabled New Frontier
from a storied Camelot,
he spent all his energies,
and for his reward did not
live to see accompished
what he set in motion,
even though his dream
for the moon came so quickly.

Without him, everything
seemed to come apart;
a country set about a road
to disunion, let us say now,
which must be the true fight
today; the space program
is no longer so glamourous,
without real support; true,
a black man sits in the
White House now, but like
all great men, it's
not for the reasons you think.

JFK choked on his own success,
drowned in the sea of turmoil
he strove to calm, and for that
he deserves to be held
in an eternity of respect
and admiration.

Drowning

I.

It's strange to think so now,
(especially in a celebratory
year), but Lincoln wasn't
always so popular.

In fact, the thing he's
most regarded for he did
so with reluctance, almost
a measure of last resort.

It was a terrible time
in American life, and
a direct culmination of
circumstances that had
been bubbling since the
second presidential
election. In fact,
Lincoln couldn't even
resolve it himself,
and a later president,
Andrew Johnson, became
the first of the persecuted
chiefs because he tried
to defend Abe's last wishes.

When Lincoln freed the slaves,
he was making a last ditch
effort, an extreme power play
that his Confederate rivals,
for all their bluster,
could never approach, and it
was this final knowledge that
ended a terrible war.

But it was only the beginning.

Great men, and great sacrifices,
always lead toward change,
but the change they seek,
and the course they pursue
will always be divisive,
so that in their wake,
the course floods and
the people find themselves
drowning, not knowing
what to do, even though
the water is, in effect,
exactly the solution.

We trouble ourselves
to find our way.

Better Than Inadequate Isn't Always Good Enough

Sometimes it's
great, just about
good enough,
when the support
you can find in
a place that
otherwise supports
inadequacy is
better than the rest,
who will listen to
your frustrations
and agree with them.

But sometimes,
better than inadequate
isn't good enough.

Sometimes, it becomes
apparent what that
really means.

The ability to recognize
and the ability to actually
handle inadequacy are not
always the same thing;
it's the difference
between tacitly supporting
and abhorring it, really,
and sometimes it's okay
to overlook that,
and sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes you just
can't deal with it.

Of course, I would rather
be able to deal with it
than lose my own head,
lapse into crippling
complacence, because,
as I've discovered,
everyone's more happy
when they can believe
everyone's happy,
and that's more helpful
than if they don't.

I don't really get that,
since to my mind, in
the best of all possible
worlds, people would
understand at least to
some degree that when
someone's not happy,
they're actually not
happy for a reason,
and so the only reaction
would be to try and
find out why, and what
you might do to help them.

But the truth is,
most people aren't like that,
and most of them are happy
to be inadequate, because
by their reasoning, life
can be accepted for what
must be rather than
what might be.

There may always be
possibilities, but
for some, it's okay
to decide there aren't,
apparently.

To my mind, the best thing
to advocate isn't so much
hope but a belief that
you simply don't have to accept
everything so rationally.

Let go. The Buddhists have
that much right; let go of
empirical facts, and make
your own, tell the world
that it's better than it knows,
that sunshine isn't lethal,
that you can be countercultural
but not conventional, that you
can find acceptance and still
be your own person, that you
can do for others and still
satisfy yourself, that the self
in the world doen't have to be lost,
but, yes, in the end can be found.

You don't have to fall in their place.

The Damned Generation

A writer for The First Post
journal I'm subscribed to
in my gmail account used
this term, "The Damned Generation"
to describe the adults
now transitioning from college.

He meant to imply that
it's our sorry fate to
inherit a world that
doesn't seem to have
a use for us, and hey,
it's basically what
I've been saying in
my poetry for the past
nine years, so I'm
fairly happy that
someone else has pointed
it out.

We're the Damned Generation.

No one seems to have use
for us, our ideas, or our
potential. Oh, our
culture is more ready
for us than it has ever been,
but the truth of the matter is,
when you get right down to it,
is that Obama's Message of Hope
basically negates us.

Obama's Message of Hope
is basically a lifeline
to the failures of the past,
even though the Message
says everything but.

Obama's Message of Hope
really is a message of hope,
but no one really understands
it yet; they're still
clinging to the hope that
Hope merely means we can
still salvage what came before
rather than set about the
business of the radical new.

We're the Damned Generation
because we're the product
of the radical new, but
the failure of the Watchmen
film, of our basic failure to
really acknowledge genius
like Grant Morrison and
ability to appreciate Lost
only when it's shiny, is indication
that the radical new
may be ready, but the New Fade
isn't.

The horrible secret of
the New Fade is that it's
really more conservative
than it is liberal, not
good conservative but bad,
not good liberal but bad.

The New Fade is picky,
like the messy public interests
of the public, when private
hopes don't really mesh with Hope
and time is our enemy
just like we always feared it was.

Time, the Metaphysics of Time,
the Economics of Time,
the Politics of Time,
even the Psychology of Time,
really amounts to the Final Frontier.

In Star Trek, which I can
talk about because it's
finally popular again,
the Final Frontier really
only ever was the New Frontier,
bigger, better, but no one
liked to say why, because
it spoke about real hope,
not just the Politics of Hope,
or the Politics of Courage,
though courage is a thing
about as thankless as
trying to remain dry
in a land quickly filling up
with the water broken levees
never really could hold back
for long, drowning on dry land,
like the martyrs do.

The Damned Generation
will not be televised,
though it is a product
of that time; it's far
more cool to walk around
with portable devices
and pretend to be plugged in
while all you're really being
is alone, the new cool
of the New Fade, the old fool
of past times when, hey,
Star Trek was cool.

The Damned Generation
is a product of the New Intellectual.

The Damned Generation
will someday get its due,
but probably in an index,
like all good people do,
a product of real perspective.

Jeff Probes

Part of the reason
anyone should have
been a dedicated
fan of Survivor
for the past decade
is Jeff Probst,
the host of the show,
who finally got
to do the reunion
specials after only
a few seasons.

You want an expert
of the series,
you want to talk
about this guy.

You want the best
perpective, you want
Jeff Probst, both
when he's actually
there with the
contestants and later,
especially since
he's recently
starting blogging at EW.com.

The dude's all right.

He's the smartest person
around, asks the right
questions, sets the right
mood, and always knows
better than the tribes do
what's really going on,
even when they don't.

He may not know who's
going to win (because,
after all, he's the show's
biggest fan), but he
usually knows who should,
and that makes him
easy to identify with.

Survivor is a better way
than all the talk shows
and self help books out there
to find out what people
are really like, better than
magazines, better than radio,
better than blogging and Twitter.

And the man who helps
everyone get that is
Jeff Probst.

Capitalist Swine!

Where capitalism
goes sour is when
people assume that
with great power
doesn't necessarily
come great responsibility.

I'm just a little
sick of revisionist
history. Let the facts
fall where they may,
not where you'd
like them to, or
how the popular voices
would interpret them.

The Clintonians sat
on one of America's
greatest eras of
prosperity, and took
it all for granted.

They sat by and
played politics
while the New Fade
started to chug
along by itself,
willfully guiding
a train to globalization
without representation.

The corporate machine
took over, and made
good on the slogan
"Greed is Good."

It was around this time
that Scott Adams
first envisioned
the cubicle slave
Dilbert, the man with
the upturned tie,
who began a narrative
of the culture as
it steamrolled to
the current depression.

It astounds me that
we debate the ethics
of war and the need
for global prosperity
while Bono tries
to be a rockstar and
a humanist, and no one
much cares for either one;
he may be Lennon's
successor, his better,
but you would never know it.

Money over happiness,
"realism" over optimism,
the needs of the few
past the needs of the many,
demand over supply,
the idea that gross natural product
must be gross, it's hard
to look up when the sky's
always falling.

Sometimes it's difficult
to admit I'm American.

Yay Capitalism!

I'm all for the rampant
indulgence in society,
at least when it comes
to things that don't
really matter.

I'm all for people
buying things that
will actually make
them happy, and not
just serve as some
psychotic status marker.

I'm all for a market
that allows for an
open exchange of
information and ideas,
in whatever form
they take.

I'm all for capitalism,
the idea, which seems
to me a better one
than communism, which
is why I think we ought
to lay off of Joe McCarthy
after all these years,
at least for the principals
he defended, if not
the extreme methods
he pursued.

To recognize not
just a threat but
a terrible way
to run a society
is a basic tenet
of democracy, something
that exports as well
as imports, and while
it's not an ideal,
it's a reflection
of a free will state
we have all lived in
from time immemorial.

I'm all for trying
to make things better.

In My Sister's House iii

Something I left
out of the non-Index
high school reunion
index a few weeks back
was mention about
how my relationship
with the owner of
all those pets
from last week
evolved over the
past ten years.

Truthfully, there
wasn't much to speak
of by the time
I shipped out to Erie
in the fall of '99.
I had waiting for me
a reunion with my brother
Pierre that first year,
and by the end of it,
strange new encounters
with the stranger who
had taken my sister's form.

I think it was one
of the last family trips
to Rhode Island that
brought us together again
briefly, and it put our
relationship into a
whole new dynamic,
which is to say perspective.

By the time the offer
was made to room with
her in Burlington, I
realized a new transition
had come, in many ways,
but mostly a new opportunity
to know her, and become
real family again.

That's what happened.

When I realized that
moving to Colorado Springs
was not only economical
but an extension and
evolution of our
new connection, it
was something to spark
an affirmation that
this time had not
been wasted.

It hadn't.

A Poem for Ariel

Fish are a fairly
private species,
so they work great
as a blank canvass.

Needing to come up
with an explanation
that absolves Boo
of the suspicion
that she frequently
drinks from his tank,
I like to say that
Ariel is a suicidal
jumping fish, or
perhaps a piranha,
generally the reason
the top of the tank
becomes eschewed
or water loitering
around it.

Ariel wants to leap
out, but Boo's there
to knock him back in.

Ariel attacks Boo,
and Boo knocks him back in.

Regardless, fish are our friends,
not food. I like to
consider myself his sponsor.

And make funny faces
back at him.

A Poem for Boo!

In many ways,
Boo was the perfect
transition from Freckles.

Prior to moving from
home, and thus the
final time I would
see Freckles alive,
my sister had arranged
for Boo to live
at my parents' house
while she completed
her tour of Texas.

During those weeks,
I found myself
amazed at how easily
I found myself grow
attached to this cat.

Of course, it was
also hilarious
watching Boo and
Freckles interact -
cats & dogs, y'know.

So by the time
we were all in Massachusetts,
I was primed to infuse
Boo with all the imaginative
powers I had once reserved
for Freckles, the pet phrases
and affection.

Being a cat, she
took it all
in stride.

I won't go into
everything tat
has developed
since, because
it is all
just so much,
but suffice
to say:

Boo's fur
is taking
over the
same role
Freckles
assumed:

an omnipresence
that can
never
go away.

She's not your
typical cat,
and I know
that's what
people say
about their pets,
but Boo really
is
one of a kind.

Perhaps one day
I will index how,
but for now,
all to say
is

Boo!