Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Anyone remember that Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, who had been out in the jungle, patrolling a small island in the Philippines on behalf of the Emperor, then wandered out one day to discover World War II had been over for 29 years? There was a docu-drama about it called "Gilligan's Island" season 1, episode 15.
Well, that's me, but inverted. I've been in the jungle trying to hold down the territory for no one but myself, or so I thought, and I'm wandering out right now, only to realize World War II is still going on, that's what's been itching and aching and stinking so bad all these years, that where all that noise and smoke was coming from, the workers and poor people and crushed and dehumanized need my service, such as it is, because the enemy is still attacking, so I refuse to surrender.
Or if it's not World War II, it's another Civil War. Or the same one. Or another peasant revolt. Every war is always a civil war, because the borders are imaginary, one of the enemy's tactics in their strategy of divide and conquer. There was civil war over slavery, or was it more than one? In any case, it's sure not over. The one over labor began in the 1800s, and that's still going, labor had a few early victories but now the fascists are winning. The one against poor people, don't even know when that started. Probably when the first rich person sat in his palace on the Euphrates, saw some folks doing work and got paranoid. The one against black equality beginning in the 40s – the 1440s. And there's the formless, asymmetrical, unconventional, continual one against black people, children, poor people, old people, weirdoes, the essentially queer, and just about anyone who isn't a congenital asshole.
All I know is, there's some war, it started a long time ago, and it's still raging, like the most durable priapism in history. White profiteers and their bigoted supporters have been the enemy for a long long time now, fighting against whatever group can be stigmatized as a threat to white people's dainty little picnics. Oh, they love their picnics and their white linens, those white people. You're right, Whitey. We are coming for your frilly Ku Klux Klan church socials. We're going to pee all over them. You will not get the dark stains out of that linen because we all have kidney problems. Maybe if you stopped holding health care hostage in this asymmetrical war, you could just spray a little Shout! on it. Probably bleach would do it. You know bleach, right? That's what you've put all over everything to get rid of the germs of the Other, what you pour on your food garbage so that people with no other way to get something to eat won't be able to avail themselves of that either. Well, we're gonna rain down some germs on your picnics. You'd best have them indoors, at Medieval Times or Chuck E. Cheese. Except we're already there. Working for less than a living wage. There's no escape, Whitey.
You might say to me, but Jeff, you're white. To that I say: Shut up, fascist! You might say, You're also straight, male, and a tad on the bougie side. I would add, what part of "Shut up, fascist," is too vague for you? Do you need me to suckerpunch you while you explain Pepe to me? Shut up, fascist! "But my freedom of speech—" Your freedom of speech ends at your molars, which is the point at which my freedom to swing a bat at Nazis collides with your fascist face.
So, yes, sweet and gentle flower people, there will be violence. It's a war, didn't I just say? I'm not saying we can win on violence. We can't. But we don't have to. We just have to know that it's coming, and if some of us decide we need to resort to it, to defend ourselves against Whitey, or Fascist Freddie, or Margaret Thatcher, I hope all you peaceniks, Pollyannas, and Sugarplum Gandhis out there will cut us some slack.
Violence never solves anything for long, except the most limited of problems. Look at all the bombs we dropped on Europe, and we still couldn't kill fascism. Here it is again. Yes, for real. We got fascism creeping up our buttholes like spiders. Yes, it's that annoying. For now. Wait till they start biting and laying eggs.
You can never kill enough fascists to kill fascism. Even the greatest engines of genocide couldn't kill all they wanted to kill. They tried to kill the Armenians, the First Nations, the Jews, the Roma, the Africans – the resources brought against us were immense, it was the wealth of nations, and it still couldn't stamp us out. So how can we expect to ever eradicate fascism, even with sparing, clever violence?
Thanks for reminding us of the slavery, owners. We cannot forget that wealth disparity has increased insanely. Last year, all new wealth went to the owners of the owners of the owning class. The bottom 90% of people got dick. And the top apes like it that way. They've been able to keep it that way by attacking environmental progress, socio- economic equality, science, public wealth, attempts to structure finance fairly, attempts to avoid armed conflict, attempts to move away from fossil fuels, and by consolidating media and information gateways – by working against anything that might nibble away even a tiny bit at their global domination. And so far they've been able to convince those white people beneath them in the economic power hierarchy that infringement on the owners' owners' owners' global domination is a threat to all white Christians. Basically we've got evil masters manipulating deluded, hateful, fearful suckers. When the dominant demographic can be manipulated into believing it's being oppressed, you have the soil in which fascism takes root.
But forget about taking root. It's grown. It's a forest. A forest on fire. A jungle on fire. Even the war against Vietnam isn't over. Indochinese immigrants, who came here as refugees from the countries we destroyed and drove into the arms of a paranoid, often murderous communist backlash against that destruction – some of those immigrants are now threatened with deportation, because it's housecleaning time in Whitey's America. And we're the dirt. They come over and sweep us into one room, and then come to that room and sweep us somewhere else.
There are people fighting against slavery, and those fighting for it. It's now. I had no business patrolling that forgotten jungle for so long. The fight against slavery is never in solitude. That's what we have to remember – or I do – they want us alone and lonely.
Community is always what has defeated them in the past – not permanently, but defeated them for a time. People sticking together. Knowing your neighbor. Eventually they'll be using the police and army against us, they already are against some of us, because they need us to remain slaves. One of us may even rise to a level of benevolent slaveholder and make some concessions, in an attempt to give slavery a human face. We might even mistake that for a victory.
The human face FDR and his concessions to human decency put on capitalism did look damn human, even attached to its tentacled torso and iron-hooved extremities. But it took only two generations for that face to dissolve entirely. Slavery is a monster maker. It makes monsters of masters, and the masters make monsters of the slaves. The masters make monsters of the slaves and pit them against each other in the arena, and the prize is a few dollars a month for food, at little extra heat in the winter.
We are gladiators, albeit freakish gargoyle gladiators. And as soon as we can all band together and turn on the privileged season ticket holders, smug in their skyboxes, as soon as we can organize to swarm out of the arena into the risers, shred and devour those who find our struggles amusing – when they're even paying attention, bothering with a little perverse mindfulness on their unconscious way to destroying our lives – the sooner we butcher them and take our world back, treat it and each other with respect – if we can ever band together and eat the rich, we might be able to say we've won something. And even then it will remain to be seen if we don't just create our masters all over again.
If God didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him. Is the same true of masters? A good thing to keep in mind, for later. Someone once asked me what I would replace capitalism with. What will capitalism replace the world with when it's used it up? What will it replace water and air with? What will it replace winter with? What will it replace the ocean with?
It's not wrong to think ahead to the time when capitalism is to be replaced, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're under attack. We got all we can handle keeping what little we have. What are you going to replace my home and my school and my food with? If you think you're going to replace me with a robot, you've got another thought coming. People don't go away just because the slave master thinks they're worthless. You can't even get the most worthless people, the fascists, to go away. How are you going to get worthwhile people who are trying to educate, nurture and heal to go away? You're not going to do it. It's us verses you, slave master. And you are not going to win.
This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!