It sounded real good at the time, the fix that was actually possible. Also, collectivist, egalitarian, all that great stuff that looked popular back then, and all of this good stuff over and above the joke, which, the second meaning, well, I never found it easy to argue with that either! It seemed pretty airtight.
Of course everybody must get stoned!
All my life, I figured, cantankerous as he may be, Bob was on my side with that one. But I have switched sides, or rather, I have found a line that separates me from the meme in that song. I’ve seen that Bob was on the usual side of some lines there after all. The cantankerous side, of course.
The fighting side.
The theory at the time, for me at least, was that some folks are getting off easy, that the rich and powerful aren’t taking their share of the stones, and, yes, in a sense, but no, and not ‘no’ in the sense that they’re not winning the game, only in the sense that no-one wins this game because they are unabused and happy. That, to use a popular expression these days, is not how any of this works.
Put yourself in Barron’s shoes, for instance.
The guy who insisted that Puerto Rico receive no help and gets no power, so that many brown coloured people die, three thousand or so, they are saying, that maybe the last thousand would have died anyway or something. Now imagine it is that guy who is telling you brush your teeth and go to bed, or else. That guy inspecting your report card.
Anybody jealous?
Not the point, at some point Barron grows up enough to be the problem and not the victim, and that is Donald, and I am not sympathetic to Donald, I’m just saying, everybody is already getting stoned and that is the human problem, not the adjectival solution. And I don’t mean to single out the Trumps. Your dad’s plant explodes, killing half the town and he walks, your parents have half a million employees all in poverty on minimum wage and part time work, and he thinks you had better eat the damned carrots . . . this is the same conversation I have about the origins of “morality.” The in-group is already getting stoned, in-group prosocial behaviour is a measured dose of abuse – well, measured when in public, anyway.
Again, not a bid for sympathy, this is not “leave the rich alone, they’re suffering too,” this is “they are not the evil parasites they are because someone loved them too much and didn’t beat them enough.” Again, not how any of this life stuff works. Bob put his finger on it, though! Voiced the unconscious directive all humans are instilled with deeply, and by force, early in life: everybody must get hurt!
Bob never gave a damn about the revolution, did he? I kid, I’m sure he did, he’s just sort of emotional, and well, it’s feelings troubadours sell, isn’t it, and I understand the feeling in that song, as I said, no doubt.
We need better feelings is all.
The revolution always fails immediately when the new boss and the old boss agree, though, that violence is any sort of solution and they only disagree about to whom it is to be applied.
Jeff
October 1st., 2019
Abuse with an Excuse 
updated, I had mentioned the Trumps, but that wasn’t the point, singling anyone out, the point was the rich, the dominants generally.
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I went into town when I was last out in the outback and you know the little kids of that town were doing the strike! I couldn’t believe it so I jumped out of the huge government ute and joined them. I work for the man now instead of being the man’s toy – which is working for him in another way.
I never understood that Dylan song or people who liked him sing. Way past my era that but anyway at least there was protest.
My god-daughter (yep funny thing for a hard-core atheist to have) is really into Greta Thorenburg which made me feel pretty good – I’ve done my job of raising my mate’s child in a moral manner. She and her friends have been on that strike every week despite all the backlash in the land of oils and money.
Once upon a time before I went mental I had ‘faith’ in people but then when I recovered I realised there was none left, now she – and that lovely Swedish young woman make me feel better. It’s too late now, as far as I can tell but when the aliens dig us up they’ll at least know some of us tried not being evil – for a while.
One of the things that reminds me the world is mental is this – the conservatives generally represent and mostly hate the poor – the poor are convinced by the rich that the left who fight for them are rich elites who shit on them – by a man who is rich and shits in a gold plated loo.
I keep thinking about that last scene in Terminator 2 “Miren, miren! Allá! Viene una tormenta!” You know when the kid says to Sarah about the storm coming.
Toppling power is not a solution, it’s never worked, you have to have something that replaces that – otherwise the Terminators reassemble. Drugs for my gen was always about oblivion not rebellion which is probably why I like the outback – it’s endless and quiet – peace out there is governed by a array of deadly ends, in that I see everything, the inner, the outer. Humans have this idea that survival is a right not luck, that someone is looking out for them not stalking them, they rather listen to the priest than the scientist.
My favourite stoner song is either High by the Beach by Lana del Rey or Heathens by 72 Pilots – I have a whole bunch of playlists I listen to staring at either the night sky or the endless landscape out in butt fuck no where. I think of it as my treat for escaping the madness of the human race.
Hope you’re well x
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