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March 6, 2005
Rant #546
I know what I'm about to say is extremely unpopular. It will get you stabbed in the wrong part of town. Men in masks come and take you away. Yada, yada, yada.... I have no disclaimers. I simply must say what I feel to be true in my heart and soul.
I do not like the common man.
No, make that, I do not want the common man to be the barometer of my country or my culture. Because he, in the last thirty or so years, has been made into a barometer. His tastes are our own social dictator.
He is driving us to ruin in his Ford truck.
Imagine a land, a country, a culture that praises the intellect. Yes, France, but we are not going there at the moment, mes petits cheeseheads americains. Science, reason, the arts, mass meeting with people discussing Kant and Hegel over cigarettes and black coffee. Yes, New York City, but sans Staten Island. (Not a true borough. You have to drive to get take-out.)
Not everyone needs to be... intellectually curious and worldly. The common man can bath in castor oil and his commonness, but he needs to leave me out of his cheddar fantasies. Me and my pinko buddies should feel free to applaud mass homosexuality and drug use; we are not inviting him to our party.
Can there not be at truce in which they stay on their side of the sandlot? And let us take things back to thirty or so years ago where we actually ran the fucking country. Because we egghead types really NEED to be running the fucking country. The Harvard intelligentsia of the sixties did shoehorn us into Vietnam. They also brought us SDS, Black Panthers, LSD and Joan Baez.
What has the new revolution brought us? "Desperate Housewives" and Paris Hilton? The 00s are just the 80s with the cocaine and Oliver Stone films. Susan Sontag is dead, my friends, and we have found nothing to replace her. There is no commentary. There is no dissent. You can't burn your draft card, bra or flag anymore, but burning books will soon be back in fashion. I read it in "US" magazine.
You red, red, red motherfuckers out there in that vast middle.... I'm not about to rip down your gold crucifix. Please continue with your "Christian Rock." But you cannot be running this thing anymore, because you have no idea who Emile Zola is or what "J'accuse" means and you're scared of it, either way. America to you is a flag, a Bible, a gun and the misguided notion that you will someday be rich. America to me is a complex system of interwoven cultures and beliefs, guided by a document, transforming, mutating, growing. You are turning in into a one-man band dancing towards the beer truck. J'accuse!
Stay in the church. Huddle in your pews. Look away from the light. We'll let you do what it is that you've always done. Enlightenment is not for everyone and we well understood this after the sixties. The sixties, when we tried to open your hearts to great fantamatastagoria China Cat Sunflower out there being held hostage by the man. You voted for Richard Nixon instead. Sometimes the crime punishes itself.
But you have to let us take over. We will improve network television. We will make sure you get your daily bread. We won't give your children condoms, but they know all they have to do is ask. We will be reading "The Brothers K." in class. Let freedom ring.
Posted by emily at March 6, 2005 11:34 PM
Comments
The revolution will not be televised!
Posted by: triv ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.triv.org/fat-charlie/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 7, 2005 2:51 AM