N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , MA Y/JUNE 2004
PAGE
10 STICKY & NICELY
BLASPHEMOUS THINGS
TRUE PATRIOTS CAN
DO RIGHT NOW TO
KEEP AMERICA 4 FREE
BY MARK MORFORD
It is a time of great need. It is a time of national teeth-
gritting and resigned fortitude and wine-infused bouts of very
heavy collective sighing.
It is a time when a single false war against an already
decimated ragtag terrorist opponent is not nearly enough to
satiate the delirious military-industrial complex and arouse Dick
Cheney’s defibrillator and hence we launched another one.
That’s right, two full ostensible wars, Osama and Iraq,
simultaneously, but thanks to sinister White House PR every
one seems to think they’re basically the same war, even though
they’re almost completely unrelated, but hey, why split hairs.
Many ask what they can do. How can they contribute,
how can they best aid the faux-war effort and support our troops
in a whole new way, never mind our massive multibillion dollar
budget-crushing macho superiority.
And given how it’s all for oil and power anyway, and it
has almost nothing to do with Saddam being all evil and brutal,
even though he was, which is as convenient an excuse as any.
I have compiled this short list. Things you can do, right
now, this minute, to feel more connected and support the nation
sans money or blood or prefabricated force-fed rage, and more
fully lick the fingertips of your fervent unrequited patriotism in
this time of need. Call it a checklist. Call it a spiritual perspective
frappé. SUV antenna flags not included:
1. Choose not to believe much of the disinformation
spinning forth from the White House at this time. Look at Donald
Rumsfeld’s shockingly beady and pitch-black eyes and realize
this man, these people, they are deeply convoluted and power
blinded and do not have your best interests at heart.
2. Choose, furthermore, not to believe the world is really
full of these vile power-mad slugs and lizards and prevaricators
and fools and Rumsfelds. Stop thinking this is all there is, war
and suffering and apparently very pale egomaniacal and spirit
less men running the world into the ground.
Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage
and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi self-government
plan, there are a thousand counterbalancing acts of staggering
generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over
the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to
cathedral.
3. Resist the great surges toward nihilism about the
media, in seeing them all as either a bunch of depressing, snick
ering pansy-assed gol-dang liberal scum or corporate-controlled
sensationalistic J-school lackeys all parroting the same old pro-
Shrub war stories and beating the same thudding pro-violence
drum.
. Seek out nuance and counterargument and subtle
irony and contrarianism and balance and perspective. Realize
it is never as one-sided as they want you to believe. Read more
out-side your normal box of viewpoints and interests. Find out
for yourself.
RECORD & TAPE SHOP
POPULAR M USIC FROM THE 17TH TO 21ST CENTURY
4 Remember the world does not consist of simple-
minded and reductive good/evil polarities, but, rather, is a
living organism, interconnected and breathing and dying and
renewing in constant flux, religions interflowing, beliefs inbreed
ing, crammed full of ecstatically bejeweled people who are just
as contradictory and confused and gorgeous and kaleidoscopic
and baffled and sleepy and horny and lost and desperately
craving of juicy unfiltered spiritual nourishment as you are,
in this very moment, as you read these words.
5. Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake
your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel and head
for the mountains with a case of Grey Goose and a box of
ADD ME TO
YOUR LISTS
BY ALAN MORSE
Add me to your lists Mr. Bush.
Send my name to Mr. Ashcroft. Forward it to the FBI,
the local police, the INS and the IRS.
Make sure your Secret Service takes note.
Copy my name to every blacklist, enemies list, security
list, and watch list your scribes scribble.
While you detain activists at airports, I am ashamed to
travel unchallenged.
While you abduct untold, unnamed foreign-bom Ameri
cans, I am ashamed to sleep in my own bed.
While you steal food, not just rights, from millions of
families, I am ashamed to eat.
I am ashamed to wear new clothes; ashamed to drive;
ashamed to share ill-gotten wealth with your kind;even ashamed
I can provide better for my little daughter than almost any father
on earth.
I am no, a threat to you, but I stand with billions. God is
no, on my side — or yours — bu, the best traditions of freedom,
right, and non-violent resistance are with me. I stand alongside
the Senator your intern calls senile. I stand with the Congress-
woman your operatives unseated in the primaries. I stand with
the loud but lonely voices of those in print and broadcast media
who are no, afraid to challenge you. I stand with the growing
number of principled government clerks who quietly undermine
you. I stand with countless noble people across the world who
are no longer cowed by bully-America.
I am bu, one speck you can blow aside, but even your
family and friends can’, ignore legions of us. In your ignorance,
you have wakened forces that will bring you down.
You remind me of forgotten traditions, ancestors who
fought non-violently for peace in 18,h century Virginia; ante
cedents who broke 19,h century laws to help slaves to freedom;
my parents’ siblings who aided conscientious objectors during
World War 2; my own non-violen, resistance to Vietnam, and
more recently, to Reagan’s adventures in Nicaragua.
Your adept predecessors persuaded with honey and
intelligence, bu, your ignorance now shakes us. For that, and
for that alone, I thank you Now we will resist and topple your
kind.
You have guns, bombs, but we have the power of
non-violen, resistance. Those who read know tha, firepower
is laughable in the face of such force. Be afraid, Mr. Bush, and
all who serve yourselves in backing this fragile regime, for you
have germinated the seeds of your downfall.
We do no, threaten your person or your pathetic toys,
bu, we will cast you on the trash-heap of history. You can lead
only by our consent — that, you have squandered.
Add me to your lists, Mr Bush. I may be insignificant,
bu, wait, I have time, history, and numbers on my side, and I
am no, the tiniest bi, afraid of you.
Scharffenberger chocolates and the entire DeLillo collection
and ‘‘Baraka" on DVD. No, that's necessarily a bad thing.
And instead you can more fully engage and openly
celebrate and share the items you happen to love — vodka,
chocolate or otherwise — as tools of knowledge and power
and luscious imbibing of life, throw them right smack in the
face of all the Ashcroftian scowling and limpness, upping the
vibration instead of merely enduring it, thus countering the
urgent federal mandate to please live in a constant state of
shuddering obedient paranoia and fear.
6. Realize the divine is not quite what you think it might
be, that old methods of imploring, say, a cantankerous bearded
patriarchal figure to please please let you win the lottery and
help you have better orgasms and oh yes smite your enemies
might be a bi, antiquated and prohibitive and just slightly lacking
in vita, ancient sordid chthonic feminine power.
Realize, further, that it is just these very outmoded
and fervid mind-sets that are fueling a great many current
hatreds and arming a great many warheads, and tha, maybe,
just maybe, blind devouring adherence to any narrow doctrine
— Christian, Muslim, Jew — is potentially fatal to the soul,
bad for the skin and also jus, no fun a, all.
7. Change the way you pray. Choose to believe in true
orgiastic, energetic, self-realized divinity inside the self and
emanating out, as opposed to an angry vengeful righteous God
out there, one who demands that everyone must pay and suffer
and kill and die, in His name, same as it ever was.
After all, it is your intention tha, sends the energy into
play, that directly affects the world, every single person and
every single soul, and your hate and fear and self-righteous
belief does nothing to up the patriotism no, just for country bu,
for the entire plane,. You have so much power. More than you
know.
8. Realize tha, this is the perfect moment to change the
energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal
volume, right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive
and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious, right when the
snakes and pi, vipers and squinting finger-pointing cowboy
wanna-bes are all distracted — there's your opening.
9. Remember magic.
10. And, finally, believe you are a part of a groundswell,
a resistance, a seemingly small bu, actually very, very large
impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of some
thing important and potent and unstoppable You can breathe
like this is the most lucid thing there is to believe. You can walk
down the street like you are full of divine free we, secrets.
The nation needs your help.This is a time of warmonger
ing and bitterness and semi-li,erate Texas cowboy wanna-bes
who wan, nothing more than to careen us down the path of
perpetual violence and isolationism and dread.
You can do something You are being implored. Now is
your chance. Please help keep America free. Please show your
love for your country. This is jus, the beginning Thank you and
Shivaspeed.
Mark Morford is an SF Gate columnist His e-mail
column 'Notes & Errata’ appears twice weekly. He also writes
‘Morning Fix', “a deeply skewed" thrice-weekly e-mail column
and news-letter.
& ALLEY C A T ESPRESSO
389 12TH ST. ASTORIA 3338-6376
M U S IC N O N -P R O FIT TO THE
SPAY * NEUTER H U M A N E A S S O C IA T IO N
Alan Morse lives in Phillips, Maine This article is
reprinted from Common Dreams.
t
Cannon Beach, Oregon
3