Open Letter to Local Media re. Racial Tensions

I'm asking you to reconsider your belligerent agitprop stance regarding inflamed racial/ethnic tensions in this country.

I've struggled with prejudicial attitudes in my adulthood, specifically my negative attitudes toward blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, and the LGBT scene. It always boiled down to negative personal experiences and cultural differences inciting the xenophobic instinct we all inherited from our brutal hard-scrabble evolutionary past. But I refused to let this base inclination sway me; on an individual basis, rationality and empathy always triumphed: I cracked jokes with my Latino co-workers, affably compared notes with black patrons at the jazz club I used to have coffee in, snorted coke with my Lebanese bosses, gossiped with the Korean convenience store owner about the latest episode of city hall ineptitude, and befriended a genderqueer couple who almost melted my brains in their dab bucket.

And, that's what it's really all about: acknowledging one's own fallibility, recognizing the darkness that lurks inside every human heart and refusing to grant it any further purchase. Just because I felt nervous walking down the street in an all-black neighborhood (which I've done when I was stationed at Ft. Gordon), that doesn't make me racist. Like I said, we're instinctively geared to see differences in others and to view them as a threat. Males of all stripe and color are also evolutionarily pre-programmed to be violent thieves and rapists, yet save for an appalling fraction of us we've ascended that base nature and instead flail like buffoons at courtship. The civilizing process is a painful climbing up the rungs of Jacob's Ladder, from out of the desert of being a survival machine to the Elysium of compassionate camaraderie and cooperation.

You're undoing this process by inflating passions with cultural yellow journalism. Now people who were once trying to get along have become antagonistic, no longer willing to work past their fears on an individual basis. The Zulu were rotten neighbors, as were the Aztec and the Han; colonial Europeans didn't think or act any differently than anyone else did, they just happened to be egregiously successful at it. Not only that, but it helps to remember who emigrated to this country up until recently: desperately impoverished and oppressed illiterate. Such people are easily manipulated into dehumanizing others; you see such barbarism on a much smaller and local scale on the streets of downtown Portland.

But, that's not what it means to be White, any more than scalping is what it means to be a Native or binding feet what it means to be Chinese. Revisionist history and racist propaganda work both ways: instead of perpetuating a neo-Thoreau set of myths sanctifying non-white people and demonizing the history and culture of whites of European descent, tell it like it really is — people are animals, and each and every successful culture, ethnic group, and [insert label of choice here] has committed xenophobic travesties of an opportunistic nature. But, we know better now, or rather we're learning better. In this modern era we can live, learn, love, and grow together; and while there will always be differences and disagreements, they don't need to dominate our dialog and drag us down into the depths of Phlegethon.

Unless, of course, that's what you want. Which I sincerely hope isn't the case; the Almost Good Enough of prejudiced people being polite to different-hued folk is surely superior to the vicious cycle of madness and fury we're caught up in now! Did the race riots of the '70s, the '20s, or that other '70s following the destruction of the Civil War engender any positive change, any understanding and healing? I'm no stranger to the catharsis of violence, but I'm also well acquainted with the indignity and injury of receiving it. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil was a curious post-apocalyptic film from the '50s, but I don't want to live it, nor do I think any of us deserve to.

In conclusion, I implore you to stop stirring the pot that is already boiling over. There comes a time when ratings and circulation numbers must give way to journalistic integrity, and that time is now — on the brink of too late. Be a reasoned and compassionate broker of peace. And maybe, just maybe, at the same time examine who is benefiting the most from this hot-blooded anomie.

100% Intoxicant-Free

I quit smoking weed, finally and somewhat surprisingly. Which means I'm now absolutely clean and sober, even more so than AA cultists who chain-smoke and cling to their coffee cups with the desperate attention sailors aboard sinking ships do their bilge pumps. (Okay, I, too, ingest caffeine, but from tea instead of coffee — much better!) The reason why I say it's somewhat surprising is because up until the day I quit I sincerely believed the only way I could through the monotony and stress of life was by being high at least a significant fraction of each day. In retrospect, however, it's not THAT surprising: I'd been getting tired of my dependency on the stuff for a while.

Because marijuana IS addictive. As such it IS a destructive force in people's lives, even if only minimally so when compared to addictions like alcoholism and gambling. It's just another way for people to avoid the hard work of deriving fulfillment from and coping with the stresses of life, when you boil it down to its essentials. Furthermore, it's physically damaging: inhalation of its smoke damages the throat and lungs, and daily use causes fatty deposits to form on the myelin sheaths of brain cells. It exacerbates depression and anxiery, and it hinders relationships. It impairs decision-making, and doubtless will prove nearly as dangerous behind the wheel as all the other intoxicants.

The only thing good you can say about it is that it's not as bad as booze or dope. Well, wars were less destructive when fought with swords and bows, too! I'm sure I sound like a Reefer Madness alarmist to some of the folk grateful for its legalization where they live, but I've ravaged my body and psychology with decades of severe alcoholism and smoking tobacco products, so I can't afford to play so fast and loose with my now noticeably mortal self. I quit drinking, then I quit smoking cigarettes, and recently I drastically curtailed my consumption of processed sugar; this is simply the logical next step. I was smoking daily, thinking I needed to in order to keep my head on my shoulders — and the result was a constant shortness of breath, never having money to spend on projects I only talked about engaging in, being bored whilst watching TV and playing video games (because I didn't have the brains to read), and eating fast food because I was too lazy to cook healthy meals.

Meanwhile, dispensaries all over the place are encouraging people to abuse a life-diminishing substance, flying the false flag of medical efficaciousness while simultaneously creating a connoisseur market from the corpse of a moldering Hippie counterculture. In states where it's legal, we now have Big Pharma and Bogus Pharma pushing their legal dope; both are just as corrupt, just as societally benevolent, and just as accountable — the difference lies only in scale.

---

I'm referring specifically to THC, not CBD, which is a medical boon for ailments such as inflammation and anxiety. It's also not what's being aggressively marketed and sold for consumption, probably because intoxication, not well-being, is what inflates profit margins. Because capitalist business models appeal to and encourage the baser elements of human nature, and because of this can only result in some form of exploitation and a resultant unhealthy society.

A New Blog for a Glorious New Era

...of fear and loathing, that is! Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are do-si-do-ing alongside the nuclear precipice that drops off to the abyss of World War III; the Yellowstone Caldera's pregnant with 240 cubic miles of Gaia's bastard children, while closer to home the Juan de Fuca plate is expected to annihilate the Pacific Northwest in a paroxysm of tectonic fury; and, well, even if none of that occurs there's always China casting its shadow over the future. Good times, indeed! Anyone who isn't choking on ash or having his organs sold to Party members will languish starving and disease-infested in a bleak nightmare desolation that will make Mad Max's Outback look like a weekend at Macau. And to think, for a while there I thought The End would be so kind as to transpire after my death.

"So, Corwin, what's up with Effin' Plastic?" you're not asking me, right? Watch America 3000, another one of the best worst movies ever to grace the proliferate low-budget post-apocalyptic fare. "Effin' plastic!" roughly translates as "Fucking great!" and is how I'm sure most decent folk with brains respond to every drop of bad news that falls from the carcass of Human Destiny, impaled on the World Tree years hence — yet distressingly present in portent. This used to be my Welfare Hotel blog, but since I'll probably end up dying on the streets I no longer feel that's an appropriate title for a blog that's all about living desperately on a world that's been on its last legs ever since the formation of insurance companies and stock markets.

Pretty negative, eh? I can only smirk at how quailing and dim-witted a person must be to embrace credulity and delusion in order to get out of bed in the morning; I have more respect for an embittered derelict, who for all his tiresome vitriol isn't blind to the rain in the clouds. How did Americans, who used to be tough-as-nails pioneers and bandits, become such self-gratifying pusillanimous shirkers? Not this cowboy! I respond appropriately to the donkey when he kicks me in the nuts, I don't project soft vibes whilst gasping out positive affirmations! And I'm still getting out of bed and doing my daily thing, my blood pressure's great, and my neighbor's cat still thinks I'm the coolest ever. Not only am I doing just fine, I also won't get broad-sided by the Dutchman when it finally slips through the fog.

Which I'll tell you all about; I'll regale you with tales from the outskirts of Sheol. I'm living in what will likely be one of the last remaining bastions of some sort of civilization, when the dark waters of Doom crest over our miserable masses. lol Unless of course the Juan de Fuca plate decides to bury me alive in my unreinforced masonry building ... that local lobbyists are busily encouraging city hall not to seismically upgrade. (Fucking businessmen!)