Black Sun Gazette

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2008-12-15T20:21:00.001-05:00

In Defense of Elitism, Part II: Education vs. Ignorance

2008-12-12T11:29:00.005-05:00

I may be misleading a bit by labeling the IDOE parts as if I have some kind of arc laid out. I don't. This is part an unfolding chain of thought that I am currently entertaining in my head almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is as much informed by the things that people write in the comments as it is with conversations I have with friends about this, as it is by what I see in the popular media. To that end, I would like to continue my defense of elitism, and go back to the heart of what I had originally intended to talk about, stripped of the specifics of recent political and economic events. In the final analysis, what I'm talking about is only concerned with the most recent corporate bailout in the most tangential way possible.

So what exactly am I on about? In the last election, particularly after the selection of Miss Gidget Goes to the Reichstag as Juan Songbird's number two, there was a lot of talk about "elites." At the VP debate the moose-hunting cheerleader even made a reference that I thought was as politically outdated as nuclear freezes, desegregation busing, and the Equal Rights Amendment; a reference to "East coast politicians." For anyone under the age of 30, some historical background is probably necessary to even understand the turn of phrase, and for those old enough to remember when it was standard political boilerplate, no small amount of deja vu must have occured.

It is of course no mistake that the east coast- particularly the northeast- is home to not only the most elite (meaning most selective), and prestigious (mostly meaning best funded) universities in America (if not the world). There are also more Universities per capita than in a place like, say, Wasilla, Alaska. Having grown up in New England, I can tell you that "college town" takes on an all new meaning when nearly every town has some kind of college or university, even if it's just a satellite of the local community college. Nearly everyone that I know has gotten at least that level of intellectual attainment referred to euphamistically on forms too numerous to mention known as "some college." And no one that I know thinks that having more education somehow makes you less authentic, or less entitled to have an opinion about something. If anything, people tend to overestimate the degree to which their two semesters of 200-level psychology makes them an "expert."

Of course that's really dumb and limiting. But you know what's even more dumb and limiting? Acting like knowing something about the world is some kind of detriment. I don't think it's too much to ask that our world leaders have seen other parts of America, not to speak of other parts of the world. Thinking that shooting wolves from an airplane is gross isn't the mark of eastern elite pretention, but the mark of an intelligent mind revolted by practices more at home in the more barbaric parts of the Middle East than in a Western post-enlightenment culture. And when you marry a high school dropout, have two kids that don't finish high school, seem utterly unconcerned with your two school-aged children's education, and think it's just peach keen, yup, yup, also that your daughter is marrying a self-proclaimed "fucking redneck" who also couldn't be bothered to sit his warm little buns at a school desk for 13 years it says something about your values that all the speeches in the world won't. It says that you're a Grade A nimrod with no sense of shame who revels in stupidity and ignorance as marks of authenticity.

But is it just western politicians who engage in this kind of posturing? I think the jury is still out on whether or not 3rd Runner Up, Miss Alaska is engaged in demagoguery or speaking in earnest. Her own academic record of five schools in four years says more about that than anything else, barring perhaps the few pictures we have of her from those years. Anyone that went to college can probably place her firmly in the sociological spectrum of college. Again, though, I'm deviating from the point. The point is that politicians like this exist because of a resentful (in the Nietzschean sense) current in American life that not only questions the utility of education (perhaps, but only perhaps, a useful topic to consider) but is aggressively opposed to learning. This manifests not only in rhetoric which rails against those smarty-pants experts with their college degrees coming here to tell me and the other dirt farmers how the economy works, but also in very concrete examples like the teaching of creation science in public schools, or rabid opposition to the scientific consensus of anthropocentric climate change.

Again, we're back at the notion that not only is common sense remarkably uncommon, but it also leads one to believe that the Earth is flat. I'm not sure that I think there's much to be done about any of this except stocking up on guns and preparing for when the "Hills Have Eyes" masses begin to descend on the more educated folk in the country. And not give any fuel to the anti-intellectual ideological currents stinking up the joint.

Androphilia Review

2008-12-11T12:13:00.002-05:00

The following is a reprint from Just Out , a weekly queer newspaper serving the Greater Portland Area. This was my first "real" paid writing gig, so I figured I'd share it with the readers. More new stuff soon.

It might be hyperbole to say Jack Malebranche has written the manifesto queer men have been waiting for, but manifestos invite overstatement and require little justification. Rather than argue a position, they claim ideological turf.

The author of Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity explicitly states, “I didn’t write this book for gays.” Rather, his target audience is “men who love men but who are sick to death of the gay community.” Gay culture, Malebranche claims, has less to do with sexual preference than it does subculture, slang and stereotypes. Far from being a harmless diversion, the gay subculture imposes a false separation between heterosexual and homosexual men. This sexual apartheid not only negatively affects homosexuals, but also heterosexuals who acquire homophobic ideas in reaction to what Malebranche considers a small, vocal minority of “queenie” gay men grabbing all the attention.

In a scant 120 pages, Malebranche savagely deconstructs the gay community from the intimate perspective that only an insider can offer. A former New York City club kid and go-go dancer who did time in post-Stonewall Greenwich Village, he is no stranger to gay culture.

Androphilia does not argue for reforming the gay community. Instead, Malebranche argues for secession, seeking to create a loose fraternity of men who love men, free from the constraints of recent history. Its proclamation that “Gay is dead” might be premature, but Androphilia certainly represents another nail in the coffin. While Malebranche grants that the gay rights movement was “a successful tool in liberating same-sex-inclined persons from very real oppression,” he posits a clear vision of how the gay rights movement degenerated. Organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation inflame fear and paranoia while presenting an inaccurate and (above all) neutered version of homosexuality. “Having brought an end to police harassment and widespread discrimination, the gay rights movement has turned to nitpicking” and maintains “the illusion of oppression and victimization so that hundreds of thousands of checkbook revolutionaries can believe that they are fighting for their own freedom.”

Same-sex marriage, according to Malebranche, represents the ultimate in nitpicking. He uses the 500-pound gorilla of perennial gay infidelity as evidence for the absurdity of such a campaign. “I’ve spoken to many gays who, while angry about the fact that they can’t get married, have never really even had a successful long-term relationship,” he writes, championing the libertarian solution of “moderate domestic partnership and civil union laws that would be more flexible and more satisfactory for a broader range of people.”

However, he’s clearly interested in more than just thumbing his nose at gay liberals. “The stigma of effeminacy” forced Malebranche’s pen to paper. He begins his discussion of the stigma with Bishop Alexander of Diospolis, who was castrated and forced to walk the streets as a stark warning to homosexuals (and, apparently, an offering to Yahweh). While attempting to explain ancient and medieval stigmas against effeminacy—somewhat spuriously, as in antiquity “effeminate” referred, ipso facto, to weakness and a shirking of male responsibility—he also reminds the reader of history’s diverse homosexualities, paying special (if not obsessive) attention to the role of same-sex-attracted men in martial contexts both East and West.

While admitting a selective presentation of ancient history, his recent history is far less so. Malebranche crafts a brief history of the gay rights movement and its genesis in the “born gay” theories of German Enlightenment figures Ludwig Casper and Karl Heinreich Ulrichs. Their legacy in the gay rights movement “made a Faustian bargain…trading away the masculinity of all homosexual men.”

But what’s the alternative? Malebranche maintains: “There’s something to this ‘being a man’ business. It’s not just some completely constructed social identity.” His choice of words is important. He does not posit a hormonal overdeterminism to combat cultural overdeterminism. For Malebranche, masculinity represents a nuanced interplay among physical masculinity, essential masculinity and cultural masculinity. Men necessarily inhabit a specific phenomenological reality.

Malebranche further claims (without reference to either the hard or soft sciences) that physical masculinity causes men “to be more naturally aggressive or assertive.” Still, it’s hard to argue with his contention that “being manly essentially means being different from the majority of women.”

Cultural masculinity seems most problematic, though his most succinct statement of what cultural masculinity entails (“What a man will and won’t do is more often than not related to what he personally believes a man should or should not do”) is hard to dispute. While acknowledging masculinity “can be problematic,” he also claims, “It’s not a problem, it’s a solution.”

Ultimately, Malebranche argues for adult values within the gay community. Not mere philosophical abstraction, he outlines specific behaviors that express masculinist values. His values can be attacked as semi-arbitrary constructions. However, it seems harder to attack the substance of his argument. Responsibility, for Malebranche, means merely accepting responsibility for one’s actions. Achievement is the antidote to widespread superficiality that esteems appearance over action. Respect means treating other adult men—regardless of sexual identification—as brothers. Finally, masculine honor has nothing to do with blood feuding and grudges. Rather, homosexual men would do well to keep their mouths shut about who their sexual partners are and what goes on between them. After outlining the values of his nascent movement, Malebranche offers suggestions for reclaiming masculinity.

Androphilia is not without problems. Malebranche has a tendency to universalize his own experiences. He claims political neutrality, but a cursory glance at his influences betray this—as is often the case—as a code word for conservatism. His obsessive emphasis on martial homosexuality similarly belies an essentially conservative and traditionalist worldview. Further, his critique of homosexuals affiliated with the Democratic Party seems bizarre considering it is the only major party not using homophobic bigotry to win votes. Perhaps Malebranche’s shrewdest observation is that it is patently fallacious to suggest that all homosexual men can or should organize under one banner and that all who fall without are self-loathers, equivalent to Jewish Nazis.

Androphilia is relevant and timely, tapping into the same energy as Brokeback Mountain, That’s Revolting and the novels of Chuck Palahniuk. It is also a pleasure to read, as Malebranche writes with an easy, relaxed style that is informal but never amateur. I have no doubt that Androphilia will soon be required reading for young homosexual men looking for an alternative to disco balls, rainbow flags and celebrity gossip.

Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked

2008-12-09T12:40:00.004-05:00

I'd like to welcome everyone to what I hope will be a regular feature here at Black Sun Gazette. "Some of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked" is a public service announcement from Ulysses Lazarus to you where I identify which aspects of culture are acceptable for consumption and which are not. Often ahead of the cultural curve, I know the stuff that you will be into in six months and what stuff you're into now that will embarrass you in six months. To that end I have decided to, once a week inform you of something that has entered popular culture and fails so hard that it passes through failing so hard it wins territory right back into failing so hard it fails.

This week's entry...

Hula Hoops

You know at least one of these girls. The Hula Hoopers. How the fuck it became popular for girls in their mid-to-late-20s to take up the hobby of a fucking five year old is beyond me. I don't claim to have answers to those kinds of questions. All I can tell you is that it makes me rage at an almost uncontrollable level. Every girl that is into it seems to think they're so fucking brilliantly original for mining a part of their grandmother's childhood. I keep expecting to meet bitches who collect Lisa fucking Frank folders and think that's the latest in edgy, post-adolescent, alt consumerist behavior.

On the other hand, the evolutionary appeal of the activity can't be denied. What is going to land a man more than a hobby that says "I wish I were five, I like ribbons and bows, and I don't think too much about anything... that's like, BOY STUFF! Ew!" It's sure to land you a virile man with a raging hard-on and a total lack of respect for women.

It's also a further example of something referenced a couple weeks ago. The 20-something hipster is a spiritual eunuch. It has literally no connection to the creation of culture, preferring to latch onto things from previous eras with no substantive content. Where the 60s generation was shallow to be sure, they at least had the connection to their decadent and shallow "youth movement."

We've got... hula hoopers. Yes, you're a fucking cultural genius for rediscovering the hula hoop. No, you are not suffering from general cultural paralysis of the inane. No, your lack of adult hobbies is not indicative of stunted intellectual and personal development. No, you're definitely not part of the general buffoonery of your generation for having stupid, ironic passtimes- you're the trend setter.

Got it? Good. Now go bang some dude with dishevelled hair.

In Defense of Elitism, Part I

2008-12-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

Another election cycle over, another fevered couple of weeks listening to claims of elitism and arguments against it. William F. Buckley, Jr. once famously quipped that he'd rather be ruled by 100 names randomly picked from the phone book than by the staff of Harvard University. When separated from the political context of the time, this seems incredibly imprudent, particularly when you know 100 people from the Greater Boston White Pages. Indeed, I'd like to argue that the entire anti-elitist sentiment in American political life is not only misguided, but indeed, anti-American.

As someone who spent the greater part of their youth shilling newspapers for what counts as "the Left" in modern day America, I am intimately acquainted with your typical four year radical. Straight out of a suburban, middle-class home, they are shocked (SHOCKED!) to find out that injustice still exists in the world after having it brought to their attention by a college professor. You can smell the stink of the middle class on them as they whinge about things they're never seen in action, let alone been victimized by. Often times their heart aches for a laundry list of "unfair" phenomenon in the world ranging from systemic urban poverty to coffee being an abundant crop. They typically radicalize and de-radicalize quickly, leaving their affilitations behind with beer bongs.

This is an excellent example of bad elitism. The type of elitism that most intelligent people, Americans in particular, recoil from. It's ill-informed, classist, big city chauvinist, anti-worker, anti-farmer, and anti-poor. It's rhetorical method is often billed as "consciousness raising," the watered-down, milquetoast liberal version of Lenin's revolutionary vanguard. The basic belief is that the problem with these fucking working class people is that they don't know what's good for them. That's why they're generally in favor of abortion restrictions and gun rights. If only they would listen to the faculty at Harvard / revolutionary socialists they would know what their best interests are.

On the other end of the socio-economic spectrum there is the populism of the working classes themselves. While raised in a blue collar household, my family never engaged in much of this and so I'm able to view the phenomenon with the lens of a fly on the wall observer. There are those who are immediately distrustful of experts of any kind, or any opinion which comes from alien class forces. Who are these economists / sociologists / evolutionary biologists to tell us what's true? We know our own interests and can form reality without their telling us, thank you very much. This is what passes for anti-elitism in America, and a number of my friends who are otherwise operational elitists fall prey to the snares laid by this type of rhetoric.

What it essentially comes down to is that not only is common sense not very common, but it also leads you to believe that the Earth is flat and that the sun literally "rises" in the east and "sets" in the west, turning a convenient verbal metaphor into a scientific truism. The fact is that an economist with a Ph.D. from Harvard whose dissertation was written on the steel industry in western Pennsylvania not only knows things about how the industry operates that a welder in Pittsburgh doesn't know, he probably knows more about it, regardless of the fact that he's never laid a single bead of weld. You wouldn't go to the welder to craft a corporate culture in the best interests of workers (though you might want to ask him what he needs) any more than you would sit the economist on the line to assemble I-beams. Such class drag is popular among up-and-coming bureaucrats in the People's Republic of China, but it's just that- class drag, adopted for expediency and dropped when inconvenient.

I don't want to make this more simplistic than it is. There is nothing about going to Yale that automatically makes one an expert. Nor is attending a top-notch university a necessary pre-requisite for being an intellectual elite. But it's not a bad start. And one would be hard-pressed to make a case that several years of close study don't give one an intellectual advantage that cannot be gained intuitively from quotidian work in a field. Succinctly stated, being an iron worker for 30 years may give you a firm grasp on the grosser and finer points of structural engineering and design, but it will teach you next to nothing about urban planning and a city's needs.

It's not just that you go to a doctor when you want to be healed. You also go to a hairdresser when you want to look nice, and you know where the extra $20 you spend at Bishop's over Supercuts goes when you look in the mirror. In a sense, all but the most ploddingly stupid of human beings are not operational elitists in the same way that nearly everyone is an operational materialist- they walk through doors without even attempting to "will" a hole in the wall to appear. But for some reason nearly everyone bristles at the idea of letting experts make decisions that effect them. I'm not talking Soviet-style micromanagement here. Talk to some of your coworkers and ask them what they think of Ivy League educated economists deciding how the latest government bailout gets spent. For the sake of argument, disregard cynicism and assume that they will spend the money in the most utilitarian fashion possible. Methinks there will be very little support for letting the experts make decisions about things that many of them have literally studied for decades. Are the experts sometimes wrong? Of course. But letting the masses make decisions about subjects they know little to nothing about is tantamount to throwing an AM radio steered dart a board and letting the chips fall where they may.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that the word "elitism" gets thrown around as a political epithet around every election. It gets lobbed like a fresh cow turd from one side of the political spectrum to the other, as if a first-class education and millions of dollars in corporate financing aren't prerequisites to obtaining office in the first place. Setting aside the issue of corporate financing of elections (something I'm opposed to) why is it imprudent to expect that the political leaders of the nation would come from a class of men who are (as were the royalty of old Europe) quite literally groomed for leadership from the time that they are born. Much as I would like to see education opportunities expanded such that the hereditary nature of such a class wanes over time, that does not provide an excuse for intellectual slack any more than the availability of cheap media manipulation tools provides an excuse for lax aesthetic standards. Everyone is more than welcome at the party, but that doesn't guarantee that everyone gets laid.

Reverse the question. Would you stick economists on an assembly line? Would you trust them to hand toss your pizza, cut your hair, deliver your food in a timely manner, take well frame photographs, or even pour a pint of Guinness properly? One of the most basic achievements of human civilization is the division of labor, letting people who know how to do something do it, freeing up the masses from having to make their own rugs or what have you. A society as complex as ours requires not just the production of goods and delivery of services, but also a massive bureaucracy which ensures that trains run on time, buildings are set up to code standard, and yes, that bailout billions are distributed properly.

But really, there's a bigger question here. Both sides of the political aisle have, probably since the days of Jackson, made a lot of political hay extolling the virtues of a mythical "common man." While I certainly appreciate the contribution made to society by people putting up buildings, cooking my food, and driving buses around in such a way that no one gets killed, I don't put a great deal of stock in their ability to make decisions about things. The common man seems fair to good at making decisions that affect themselves and their family, and dismal at making decisions in the greater interest of society.

Still, though, all of this misses the point. America's- and humanity's- greatness has never been in the unwashed masses who toil and toil keeping the ball rolling so that we can all eat and have roofs over our heads. Our greatness lies in... well, greatness. There will always be Joe Blows to make sure that the coffee gets made on time. What makes life interesting and what gives our greatest contributions are the Nikolai Teslas, the Paul Laffoleys, the J.G. Ballards. We should be striving towards that kind of achievement rather than engaging in idiotic platitudes about how great the average is.

Chinese Democrazy

2008-11-20T22:25:00.012-05:00

I can't think of anything I've waited for quite like I've waited for the latest Guns N Roses release Chinese Democracy.

Let me set the scene. It's 1994. About two years ago I stopped caring that I occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder because I became comfortable with myself, because I had friends, because I became aware of things outside the sphere of my New England mill town existence, because the four chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blew the fucking lid off of everything that I thought was possible to do with my life. Of course, like a lot of young people irritated with their lives and finding a balm via subculture I went too far in the other direction and lost appreciation for the simpler pleasures of life. A lot of stuff that I previously liked was now verboten under my new found self-imposed orthodoxy.

One thing never became uncool. Guns. And. Fucking. Roses.

What the Sex Pistols were for Generation X, Guns N Roses were for me. Sure, Nirvana appealed to my inner non-comformist. But Guns N Roses were always way more dangerous. Nirvana didn't sing songs about the day to day life of heroin addiction. Nirvana didn't look like they'd cut my mother's throat for a fix. Nirvana didn't have lyrics like "You get nuthin for nuthin if that's what you do / Turn around bitch I got a use for you / Besides you ain't got nuthin' better to do / And I'm bored." Christ, GnR's idea of a love song is fucking "My Michelle," a disturbing tale of heroin and cocaine addiction, suitcase pimps, and unconquerable desire. Despite epitomizing every reason why grunge had to happen and being some sort of strange equal opposite quantity of Nirvana, Guns N Roses never stopped rocking my socks.

But back to 1994. First of all, I feel like, if for no other reason than the almighty lulz I should share with you what I looked like when the last Guns N Roses release The Spaghetti Incident? (a collection of punk and hard rock covers and the only album to include 80s LA glam rock mainstay Gilby Clarke on rhythm guitar) hit the streets. Like a naked baby photo it's semi-embarrassing, but cute as fuck.

This was, as I have said, a point in my life where everything I liked two years ago "totally sucked." Metallica sucked. Iron Maiden sucked. Judas Priest sucked. And somehow through all that negativity and mindless conformity to a new standard, Guns N Roses escaped unscathed.

At a certain point between then and now waiting for the next GnR album became less of an anticipation like Christmas and more of a game like seeing how high you can let dishes pile up before you decide to actually fucking do them. I'll confess that until this morning when I heard that it was being released (only at Best Buy for some reason which is beyond my understanding) I had basically decided that it was never coming out. Every couple of years Axl would claim "No, really guys... this is the year." Every couple of years our hopes were dashed until we just gave up hope. Guns N Roses was done, and that was probably for the best as a revolving cast of characters including Replacements alum Tommy Stinson, NIN touring guitarist Robin Finck, shred prog guitarist Buckethead, to name only a few, slowly replaced the classic lineup leaving only increasingly bizarre frontman W. Axl Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed.

So it's fair to say that I've been waiting half my life for Chinese Democracy to finally hit the streets if only to see what Axl Rose has been driving himself mad over the last fourteen years. And to be frank, it's a very difficult album to review. In the first place, the hype about the record is impossible to live up to. It is arguably the most anticipated rock album of all time. It is possibly the most expensive rock record of all time. And through it all, it's hard to tell if Axl is trying to strike a balance between his new vision of the band and giving the old school fans something worth waiting for or if he can't decide to pursue the future or the past. The album has a schizophrenic quality befitting the stewardship of Axl Rose, arguably the most troubled frontman in the history of rock. Sometimes it sounds like the album after the two Illusions ("Chinese Democracy" and "Scraped"). Sometimes it sounds like dated Nine Inch Nails outtakes ("Shackler's Revenge", "If the World", and "Better"). Sometimes it sounds like a bad Queen song ("Street of Dreams").

One thing it doesn't sound like is a cohesive album. There are elements of all of the aforementioned bands, influences that Rose wears on his sleeve like his favorite old Devo t-shirt from back in Indiana. But there are also hat tips to the past which are not so much homage as they are pathetic attempts to recapture the old magic. You can't help but notice that the guitar work of Robin Finck in particular sounds as if Axl instructed him to "sound like Slash." Ditto on the drums and Matt Sorum. While the rest of the original lineup have moved on to other projects, most notably the recently defunct Velvet Revolver (featuring the guys who made Axl Rose something other than a fifth rate hard rock singer by giving him a band to front and featuring the only man who looks as good in a leather cop hat on vocals) Axl seems to be the only one still stuck in 1996, two years after Spaghetti. It's easy to get the impression that Axl has become a sort of rock n roll Gil Gunderson, sure that he's headed straight back to the top with just the right alchemical mix of the old sound, alternative rock influence, and big pop hooks.

Ultimately the joke is probably on me. I'm sure that Axl will get himself a fleet of new cars, an even bigger house, and a series of super model girlfriends to beat the piss out of for the crime of causing him to stub his toe by asking him to come talk to them for a second. But Axl, listen, and listen well. If you wanted to make a solo album you could have done it a lot easier, with less pressure, and without the pretension if you'd just fucking done it. This sham GnR masquerading as the real McCoy doesn't do anything but tarnish the reputation of the band and more importantly (to you and your overinflated ego in any event) your reputation as one of the most vitriolic forces to ever grace the world of rock n roll. In the final analysis Chinese Democracy isn't bad. But we should expect more from the band that made rock dangerous again.

I'll try and remember you as that beautiful, violent, angry, frail-looking thing in chest protectors and kilts that I fell in love with so many years ago and not the bloated dinosauric monstrosity that you've chosen to become. And forgive me if I don't bother to listen to the next overproduced nightmare you painstakingly craft out of the frustration of your fans.

Games Assholes Play

2008-11-20T12:13:00.010-05:00

"I guess there's just two kinds of people- my kind of people, and assholes." - Connie Marble

One thing never seems to change. The world is filled with assholes. No matter where you go, where you live, what groups you ally yourselves with, the world is filled with assholes.

Some definition seems in order. There's a difference between creeps and assholes. Creeps are quiet, unnerving, and you just want them to go away. They are relatively few and far between. Assholes are loud, obnoxious, and they can stick around if they want as long as they change. Sometimes people wear the "asshole" label as a badge of honor. These people are possibly the biggest assholes of all. Calling yourself an asshole and being proud of it is sort of like calling yourself a rapist and thinking it's something worth telling mom about.

In the spirit of helping assholes to change, I have compiled this handy list of signs that you, your friends, and your associates may be assholes. Consider this a public service.

Assholes Believe in God

It's not so much the belief in the Invisible Sky Monster that distinguishes assholes, though you'll certainly find legions of assholes in the pews of your preferred denomination on any given Sunday. No, what distinguishes the asshole from your run of the mill religious son of a bitch is the desire to believe in something more than themselves in the face of all competing evidence. Pagans have their metaphors, occultists have their science, deists have their appreciation of nature, shamans have their magickal thinking. Assholes stand reason on its head and argue that the mere existence of a stream through a mountain indicates the existence of a supernatural personage. Often times this leads assholes to senseless acts for altruism for other assholes which neither deserve nor appreciate them.

Assholes Are Perfect

Assholes never seem to do anything wrong. They're incredibly adept at perfection. No matter how many times you point out to them where they've fucked up they always have another person or a set of circumstances to blame. No matter how many times they get basic facts wrong they still shoot their mouth off like they're the bloody Pope in Rome, infallible on all matters period, the end, full stop. The most obvious sign of an asshole is that when you confront them on their stupidity, failure, or creativity with the facts their first reaction is to generally get angry and defensive. They don't even appreciate the rudimentary effort you're taking to make them not look like an asshole in the future.

Assholes Share Old Memes

I'm trying not to be a dick here (totally different from an asshole, and not out of bounds in many situations dealing with assholes. Sometimes when you encounter an asshole the only response is to be a dick and fuck them). I understand that not everyone can exist at the Luciferean memetic vanguard like your present writer. That's why I perform a public service in the form of disseminating my vanguard memes to the masses in a myriad of media. There's nothing wrong with not knowing about something. But what there is something not just painfully irritating, but downright wrong about is sharing old memes like you're the first person in the world to hear about them. We all know this person. They start talking about something, you politely interject that you know what they're talking about and they then proceed to go ahead and tell you about it anyway even though you started being bored with it at least 100 years before they knew what the fuck it was. What fucking assholes!

Assholes Write Poetry

"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits." - Robert A. Heinlein

You're not T.S. Elliot. You're not Ezra Pound. You're not Bukowski. You're not even Richard fucking Braughtigan. You're just some asshole who thinks that arranging his mundane thoughts in the most pretentious way possible makes you look deep, interesting and mysterious. You're wrong. It doesn't. It just makes you look like an asshole.

Assholes Don't Do Anything

Of course not. It would give you the opportunity to point out that they're an asshole. They gripe, moan, bitch, complain, but never create an alternative for people to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on.

Assholes Think They're Smart

You know this guy. He quotes lots of stuff he hasn't actually read. He talks about concepts that he doesn't understand. He probably spends a lot of time creating art in various media for the purpose of inflicting his painful ignorance and stupidity on the rest of the world. Assholes never tire of the sound of their own voice, but the bigger the audience the better. They love pontificating at length about a mish-mash of half-digested concepts like the asshole in tenth grade who knew a little bit about everything and ended up looking really smart. Assholes never progress beyond this point because synthesis of real knowledge will put their smug self satisfaction in peril.

Assholes Don't Like Anything

The thing about an asshole is you can give them a cocaine-filled pinata made of solid gold and they'll bitch about how they wanted one in the shape of a dog and not a burro. Assholes will always find a reason to complain, no matter how good the situation for them. You take twenty people out to the titty bar and there will always be one complaining about the color of the stripper's thong.

Assholes Blame You

Perhaps the fastest way to pick an asshole out of a crowd is to not like them. Their reaction isn't accepting that there might be something about themselves that rubs you the wrong way. It isn't that you can't like everyone. It isn't that you don't know them well enough or that they didn't put their best foot forward. It isn't that they don't care about your opinion of them. The assholes finds out that you're not interested in intellectual intercourse and companionship and blames you for being an asshole. You need to ignore their glaring personality deficiencies, total lack of social skills, and psychic vampirism and just be best friends.

Your Homework

Everyone reading this knows at least one asshole. You're probably even friends with this person. Give a call and let them know exactly how they're being an asshole. Not only will it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, it will also make the world a brighter place by lowering the asshole quotient. Then sit down in front of the mirror and ask yourself how am I an asshole?

The Modern Hipster is a Spiritual Eunuch

2008-11-19T13:25:00.002-05:00

"Hipster," a term which is bandied about like a generic insult with all the meaning and weight of "douchebag" or "dickhead" once had a single, clearly defined, specific meaning. It meant a white person with an appreciation of Black culture so deep that they often didn't even have white friends. The exemplar of this period was jazz clarinetist / saxophonist Mezz Mezzrow who, by the 1920s, declared himself a "voluntary Negro." The term still carried a fairly specific meaning into the 50s and 60s when the racial connotations of the word were mostly lost. "Hipster" still meant someone who was... well, hip. This not only meant that they knew how to dress but they were also hip in the sense of wise or "in the know." The hipster of the 1950s and 60s generally had an interest in countercultural thought, alternative historical paradigms and no amount of ego testing through the always popular means of sex and drugs. He knew more than a thing or two about jazz, poetry, mystic traditions, and things you couldn't get at the local Woolworths. Of course by the 1970s the term was as much of a joke as the culture that spawned it. The dream of the 60s was dead in the face of the Manson Family, Altamont and the landslide re-election of arch-reactionary Richard Nixon.

I remember first hearing the term bandied about with its present meaning about ten years ago. Its present meaning is a narrowly defined, predominantly white subculture filled to the brim with refugees from the emo scene trying desperately to figure out what Rolling Stone will be writing about in five years so they can bitch about how everything they love is becoming mainstream. In one sense it is the logical conclusion of the counterculture. The revolutionaries of the 60s got married, had kids and now talk about teenage rebellion in the context that they have created- the semi-necessary individuation period gone through by adolescents and young adults. But nothing to get terribly bothered about or take too seriously. And in a sense they are correct as most mammal species undergo a similar period. However, I'm going to suggest that there is something more going on here.

The contemporary hipster is a spiritual eunuch. Raised in a society of decadence, their main refuge lies in the realm of irony, whereby they are able to detach themselves from all emotional interaction with art. It seems worthwhile to point out the difference between irony and kitsch. Kitsch is the appreciation of the sublimely bad in art, that which transcends its place as a cultural artifact and becomes a sort of high folk art purely by virtue of its' own tastelessness. Lawn jockeys are an excellent example of kitsch as is Googie architecture. But the contemporary hipster is incapable even of appreciate the beauty of the base. Rather the contemporary hipster abdicates all emotional and spiritual connection by setting his sights on the gutter of middle America a frankly racist appreciation Black ghetto.

The specific examples of the modern hipster's total lack of spirit, soul, anima, psyche or whatever one chooses to term it are plentiful. They have built an entire subculture specifically revolving around not the rejection of decadent art and culture, but a celebration of it and in its worst forms. Perhaps the most damning accusation that can be made against them is that, rather than following the pattern of young people coming of age since time immemorial and creating a new culture with its own, secret semiotic cues and the secondary benefit of horrifying squares, the contemporary hipster has instead cannibalized the past. Whether it be garage punk, classic rock or the dated sounds of indie rock, even the music and culture which the hipster ostensibly "takes seriously" (assuming that they are even capable of such aesthetic connection and analysis) comes from their parents or older siblings generation. With the odd exception (for example the harsh noise and breakcore scenes) much or all of the hipster's cultural consumption is from a bygone age. And he likely cares not at all.

Take as an example of the spiritual bankruptcy and soullessness of the contemporary hipster fascination with religious (particularly Catholic) art. The paintings and prints are stripped of all meaning and context, instead becoming the punchline to a non-existent joke. Indeed, much of the furnishings around the contemporary hipster's dorm room exist merely as visual cues of meaninglessness, as funny and intelligent as the green monkey befouling David Brent's work place in The Office. Or perhaps the more current fascination with the worst of pop rap radio. Rather than connecting with an existing, vibrant culture like hip-hop the contemporary hipster chooses instead to ironically enjoy a racist and misogynist lampoon of that culture, often coming with the explanation (common among hipsters as an explanation for their taste in anti-culture) "it's so BAD... I love it!"

The hipsters' attempting at appropriating blue collar culture speak volumes about their massive insecurities. Trucker hats, once ubiquitous and now a tired cliche verboten for any self-respecting hipster worth their Mogwai bootlegs, serve as an emblem for the culture that even my grandmother could process. Your average hipster has, of course, likely never actually created anything grander than a cup of coffee with his bare hands and feeling that emptiness deep inside themselves offset it by turning the legitimate and authentic culture of hard working people into a joke, an ironic statement meaning absolutely nothing. See also the fascination with Bukowski, one of the few working class poets to emerge in the 20th century and easy enough to alphabetize between Ballard and Burroughs on one's MySpace page.

"By their fruits you will know them." Spend ten minutes talking to a hipster if you can stand it. Count the number of ironic references to subjects that only a depraved person would take any pleasure in. Their politics, if extant, are largely a mish-mash of misunderstood Chomsky, Marxist sound bite sloganeering, and no small sense of entitlement. They know of no avant-garde art or culture, because such phenomenon are truly difficult to obtain and even to understand.

The modern hipster is so depraved that meaningful connection with culture and society is an absurdity, a non-sequitor. Seeing a world filled with the so-called "art" of the mob, debased and decadent culture so completely corrupt that it believes its own pretenses at aesthetic validity, the hipster eschews the hard work of finding or creating an alternative, opting instead for ironic detachment. Indeed, ideas of "culture" and "society" are so much nonsense to them, armed only with a simplistic misunderstanding of critical theory, postmodernism and deconstructionism. They exist in a world entirely devoid of any meaning or value. They are soulless, ball-less and deserve little more than your contempt or a good stiff kick in the teeth. I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of several years of capriciousness, callousness and cocaine abuse on my generation whose bourgeois excess and academic flights of fancy exceed anything thought possible by the baby boomers at the depths of their depravity.

Preliminary Thoughts on Sociobiology

2008-11-19T11:07:00.003-05:00

On Humanity

"Fundamental principle of justice: do not make equal what is unequal." - F. Nietzsche
Human beings are primates capable of both flight and destruction. We didn't just spring from the breath of an ancient Hebrew deity, we are the product of literally billions of years of evolution. Evolution is a funny thing, caring little for parliamentary procedure, Christian morality or Marxist notions of "equality" (read "slavery"). Mother Nature and Father Time, in her quite literally unquestionable wisdom, has built us from violence, hatred, fear, and rape.

Perhaps the only Christian / Marxist virtue that has been built into nature is that of cooperation. The tribe is far smarter than any of its individual members, and individuals who set themselves apart from the tribe rarely fare well. Nature rewards individual excellence, to be sure. But to crib an idea from Robert Anton Wilson, The Jews are more intelligent and capable than Einstein by himself. Any society producing a surplus automatically begins dividing labor up among the tribe. The collective is indisputably more efficient than the individual, regardless of how much one may hate group projects.

Still, the superiority of collective organization doesn't do away with a number of unpleasantfacts. Recent developments in biology show that female primates are just as murderous and violent as male, preferring to restrain their bloodshed to the traditional domain of woman, the home. Lady Macbeth is not the only primate female who destroyed children in the name of asserting the dominance of their genetic lineage. Infanticide is a fairly common behavior of primate females, as it gives them a way to eliminate the genetic progeny of their rivals, assuring the best food, shelter and social position for their own children. Further, women inspire men to violence by rewarding aggressive and violent behavior in men with those most quintessential of evolutionary rewards- coupling and mating.

According to recent empirical, scientific observations (a thing far more powerful and meaningful than the mamby-pamby theories of the so-called "social sciences") Jung was right. Human beings basically exist to do two things- destroy (i.e. kill, cripple or otherwise incapacitate) their enemies and fuck anything they can get their hands on. What this means is that liberal notions of a humanity that is basically good but made corrupt by a materialist world has a massive fallacy built in. Science just doesn't square with such optimistic visions of what human beings are. Indeed, it seems to only be the western world, infected with the cancerous memes of Christianity, Marxism and liberalism, which strives for the unattainable (and I would argue, undesirable) goals of peace, equality and unity.

The fruits of these collective delusions should be evident to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the last two hundred years of human history. The crimes of fascism and communism with forever be etched onto the human psyche, even if middle-class college pricks too numerous to mention crow about the liberating potential of discredited ideology. Christianity, the disease of western civilization which aggressively encourages weakness and stupidity, guilt and shame, has left a trail of bodies miles long and deep in its insane quest to impose a particularly perverse brand of brotherly love on those who would follow the ways of strength. Contemporary political liberalism (which has little to do with pluralism, tolerance, and the marketplace of ideas) has finally borne the fruit of its sick project on the one hand enforcing an unjust "equality" between wolves and sheep and on the other hand gleefully bombing into oblivion anyone that dares to question the wisdom of such a project.

Simply put, Marxism, liberalism and Christianity are not "good ideas gone wrong" as is the common claim of the sheeple. They are antithetical to the human condition and the sooner that we can cut them out like a cancerous growth the better. Only a weakling or a fool would oppose the principle of rule of the strong and worthy. It is only the insecurity and fear of the white, western world which forces it to recoil at the reality of biology and allows forgetting that those who beat swords into ploughshares will soon become the slaves of those who did not.

A final thought: chimpanzees- human beings' closest genetic "cousins"- were recently observed making tools, a first for them. They have long utilized the objects they find around them, such as taking a stick, putting it down a hole and eating the ants that cling to the stick. However, the creation of a spear is a new skill for the pan genus. These creatures, devoid of any human social conditioning did not use their spears for hunting or even for defense against other tribes during times of war. They used them to senselessly kill smaller primates for the pure fun of it. Human blood lust is not socially determined. It is hard wired into our DNA, as essential to our primate existence as the drive to socialize, live in communities, and strive for the stars.

How different can you pretend to be from something with which you share 99.4% of your genes?

10 Reasons Not To Drink the Hope Kool Aid

2008-11-10T16:57:00.019-05:00

After eight years of the worst President ever, Americans are correctly excited about the changes coming to Washington. Finally, after eight years of the worst kind of frat boy back slapping, anti-intellectual jihad, and shady back room deals, America has a President who seems capable of forming intelligible sentences and gives at least lip service to the idea of transparency in government.

I think that Americans are also rightfully proud of having elected a Black President. Race was a near non-issue in the general election. America did not elect an "affirmative action candidate." Quite the contrary, they rejected a candidate who enjoyed the type of affirmative action reserved for the sons and grandsons of Admirals. Exit polling consistently showed that Barack Obama even enjoyed an edge among those with negative opinions of Black Americans. So America, while not fully moving beyond the legacy of slavery and segregation can feel free to give itself a big old pat on the back for electing a Black man to the Presidency with very little muss and fuss. And that is certainly a much better thing even than replacing Mr. Bush and the Keystone Kriminals that accompanied him to the White House.

But I've become increasingly alarmed by the words and attitudes of many of my friends, particularly those who consider themselves progressives. I've started calling it the Hope Kool Aid. Simply put, there is so much jubilation over the election of a Democrat who at least pays lip service to the notion of progressive political values, that any legitimate critiques of Mr. Obama and his nascent administration are deemed irrelevant or nit-picking. There are very legitimate reasons to criticise President-Elect Obama. Here are just ten reasons to not believe the hope.

10 Reasons Not To Drink the Hope Kool Aid

Civilian National Security Force

"We cannot continue to rely on our military to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

No one really seems to know what Big O means by this, but it seems to be distinct from his universal, mandatory public service for college credit. The words "national security force" send chills down my spine by themselves, but the modifier "civilian", particularly when coupled with the notion that it would be "just as strong, just as well funded" as our military smacks of the German Stasi. While the language used is vague (what else is new?), the notion that America needs more cops is never one that sits well with me. Mr. Obama comparing them to the military in terms of strength and funding is downright terrifying.

Record on the Right to Bear Arms

Mr. Obama's voting record shows a contempt for private ownership of firearms and the right of private citizens to defend themselves. While in the Illinois Senate Mr. Obama voted against allowing women with domestic violence protective orders to carry concealed weapons. He voted against allowing the sale of firearms within five miles of a school or park, which would prohibit the sale of firearms within almost all of the inhabited parts of the United States. He is also in favor of a nation wide ban on the right of private citizens to carry concealed weapons.

Wall Street Bailout

$700 billion dollars with almost no oversight for the foxes guarding the financial hen house. He could have opposed it. He could have stood up and said that the sky wasn't falling, the world would keep spinning, and that Congress should move with all deliberate speed to create a bill that didn't reward the neo-robber barons of the last two decades and moved aggressively against the corporate criminals who destroyed the retirement accounts of millions of Americans. But he didn't. He bought into the Chicken Little atmosphere in Washington. Rather than providing leadership, Obama followed. And we'll be paying the price- literally- for decades to come.

Support for FISA

Rather than refusing to support a bill which granted immunity to telecommunication companies who gave information about your private communications to federal spooks, Mr. Obama caved in fits and starts to the Bush Administration's demands. He could have simply voted against the bill. He could have supported a bill that did not grant immunity to the telecom companies and led the Democratic party in repeatedly only sending such a bill to Bush's desk. Instead he engaged in the type of milquetoast, conciliatory liberalism we've come to expect from Washington politicians.

No End to the Drug War

Barack Obama is for decriminalizing possession of marijuana. Except he doesn't know what that means. And sometimes he isn't for it at all. He has waffled on eliminating the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. And the selection of War on Drugs Hall of Famer Joe Biden as his running mate should give pause to anyone looking for meaningful change in federal drug policy. Again, this is another example of President-Elect Obama being just another typical Washington politician, changing the drapes at the White House without bringing meaningful systemic change.

Takes AIPAC's Line on Israel

I am aware that Israel is a third rail of American politics. I do not expect politicians to take a line even approximating mine on the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Barack Obama has consistently kowtowed to the far-right AIPAC line in an attempt to prove his pro-Zionist bona fides. He supported Israel during their illegal invasion of Lebanon, an invasion designed to combat a political party and not the government of Lebanon. He is the first presidential candidate to back Israel's position on an undivided Jerusalem as the perpetual capital of Israel. He has repeatedly described the ruling government of the Palestinian Authority as a "terrorist organization" and says that "no options are off the table" (for those unaware, this is a long standing coded phrase meaning "nuclear strike") in regards to deterring Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Energy Policy

A hardcore proponent of ethanol subsidies from a corn-producing state, Barack Obama has chosen political expediency over truth. The facts show that ethanol is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels and does little more than drive up food prices- particularly in the developing world. He also supports liquid coal development and has been inconsistent on offshore drilling. His energy policy has largely been lurching from one politically expedient opinion to another.

Vacillation on the Cuba Embargo

In another example of changing his position for political expediency, Barack Obama was originally in favor of normalizing relations with Cuba and ending the embargo which has crippled the island nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, when he entered the general election Florida was in play with its large, ultra right wing Cuban exile community. He then hardened his stance, coming out in favor of continuing the embargo until such time that all political prisoners were freed. We have little reason to expect anything but status quo on Cuba from the Obama Administration.

The Afghanistan War

Mr. Obama not only plans to continue the War in Afghanistan but to increase the troop load there. It seems important to be very clear on the history of the War in Afghanistan. America was never attacked by Afghanistan. America was attacked by an extra-governmental force whose base of human resources is in Pakistan and whose financial support comes largely from Saudi Arabia. A criminal pursuit of the perpetrators of 9/11 is not only the sensible response (similar to how the Israelis pursued Black September), it is also the preferred response everywhere outside of the United States and Britain. It is unclear how Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy differs from that of the Bush Administration other than being "bigger, better, more."

Unprecedented Corporate Moneys Raised

The Democratic Party is not a labor party. It does not draw the majority of its resources from the people of this country, their labor unions, or civic organizations. Much was made of the small donors that supported Barack Obama in his pursuit of the Presidency. Almost nothing was made of the fact that wall street investment banks were among his largest donors. Also noteworthy is support from telecom giants and insurance companies- which of course have nothing to do with the President-Elect's positions in favor of immunity for illegal spying and against single-payer health care.

Why Does This Matter?

The British labor movement gave critical support to the pre-New Labour Labour Party using the slogan "Vote Labour With No Illusions." The intent was to remind the British working class that Labour may have had advantages over Tories, but this alone wasn't saying much. Further, the Labour Party needed a militant labor movement to hold their feet to the fire to ensure that the demands of the working class were acted upon.

Anyone with doubts that this applies just as much in America as it does in Little Britain is encouraged to look at the activities of the present Congress, elected with a clear mandate to end the War in Iraq, and arguably a mandate to impeach the Vice President. Simply cheerleading for what passes for "the left" in American electoral politics is woefully insufficient to affect social change. In fact, it is probably counterproductive. While the desire to remain optimistic is understandable, it is far more important that Americans remain vigilant and demand more of their government. This must begin with a hard, thorough look at the record of Barack Obama and a realistic evaluation of where he stands on the political spectrum. Slightly to the left of Bill Clinton is an improvement over Bush 43 to be sure- but not much of one.