True Perversion (Kind of a Movie Review #7: Milk)

...went to see this movie called Milk which, as it turns out, has little or nothing to do with the dairy industry...instead, Sean Penn plays a guy named Harvey Milk who lived a long, long time ago, in an era far different from ours, when, in the state of California, pompous ignoramuses and cowardly bigots hid their hatred and stupidity behind cynical readings of the Bible and ludicrous homilies about protecting the family while pushing meanspirited ballot initiatives meant to deny basic civil rights to people based on sexual orientation....like I said, it was a long time ago....

More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.

Hope will never be silent.
Harvey Milk

A blogger friend reamed me in a comment on that last post for using the word paranoid a bit too loosely in these days of ever watchful eyes....and, of course, she’s got a point....far be it from me to say that reality isn’t crazier than even the craziest among us can imagine....and yet...looking at the situation, I see concentric circles of crazed fear...with small time would-be radicals vaingloriously imagining themselves important and dangerous enough to the powers-that-be to be watched, and those very powers seeing danger everywhere, and vaingloriously imagining that they can and should watch everything....Michel Foucault wrote it is not on the fringes of society and through successive exiles that criminality is born, but by means of ever more insistent surveillance, by an accumulation of disciplinary coercion....I’ve read enough of Foucault to see that a) there’s wisdom in what he writes, and b) he’s full of crap...and can only hope that readers of this blog will think the same of me....

Possible Yoga Terrorists and Paranoia Striking...Somewhat Shallowly

...back when I was a serious political activist, my friends all thought they were being watched...positive all the vegan potlucks were under tight surveillance...spies in every circle of self-affirmation....the international combine quaking in fear at the thought of kids temporarily out of school knocking on doors to save whales, smoking bongs till they couldn't form coherent sentences, talking about but not actually reading Marx, and blasting early Zappa at three A.M....one guy I knew went for months telling all the freaks at the local co-op the CIA was watching his every move, getting little in response but yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re watchin’ me, too before finally being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic....

Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you....
Kurt Cobain

...which is not to say that I don’t think anybody’s out to get me...hell, every time I get stuck behind some jalopy going ten miles under the speed limit, I’m sure it’s part of a conspiracy to mess with my life...for that matter, in the late 60’s, when I was a little kid, my dad, a psychiatrist—yeah, I know, that explains a lot...shaddup—ran into a guy he’d had committed...on the street...and the guy said I know where your children play...and, as it turned out, he did...Rittenhouse Square in Philly...whenever I’m down that way I keep my eyes out for that guy, likely in his eighties or so, possibly moving about with a walker, still looking to abduct me after all these years....

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
George Orwell, 1984

I’ve been asked to be a community organizer for my local yoga friends...or sangha if ya wanna get all spiritual, sanctimonious, and Sanskrit-like about it...creating some kind of on-line entity, I think, and maybe more...might have to hug people or something...not too clear on that point at this juncture....anyway, I know what yer thinking...how might this community organizing crap impact any plans I might have to run for the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America?

Jesus was a community organizer...
The Internet

It’s a real concern, too...just who are these people?...how do I know none of them have dark pasts as yoga terrorists? how do I know, a few election cycles from now, I won’t be seeing video clips at every commercial break showing a seemingly mild and benevolent yoga teacher saying as you move from uttanasana to utkanasana, visualize death to America...?