Tiny Cities Made of Ashes
Monday eve, March 31st
Wear Our Shame So Proudly
A stanza from the song Blame it on the Tetons by Modest Mouse set me off a’writin.
In American mass culture, ignorance is labeled as strength, impenetrability. Learning to treat others well is seen as equivalent to obedience to the state. Cue flag-waving and other people take my freedom to do whatever I want, etc.
Boys in particular are often pampered to indolence. Boys, especially wealthy boys, are taught to believe their decisions were the right ones because they are supposed to be the deciders. They are sheltered and given power before developing a responsibility for others. They are then further coddled by society, where their abusive behavior goes unpunished by their communities and families.
Boys grow into men having not faced the real requirements of society, and allowed to continue on in whatever mindset suits their personal interest. Because we can do a thing, and want to do it, does not mean it is right that we do it. We can cut down national forests…but we should not do it as, “we need oxygen to breathe,” (Cowboy Dan, Modest Mouse).
Often Americans are proud that we cannot be persuaded. This I would label a deep shame. It is the similar mindset to thinking that what anyone else thinks, needs or wants does not matter as much as what we think, want or need. High school was supposed to be the average education level of a citizen. That promise has already been hollowed out by apathy and the promotion of ignorance.
Oh, we mumble loudly
Wear our shame so proudly
Wore our blank expressions
Trying to look interestingBlame it on the Tetons
God, I need a scapegoat now
- Blame it on the Tetons, Modest Mouse
Being uncaring and ignorant is a strength if you believe it protects you. We are bombarded by unregulated pushermen in the form of corporate products and services. We are numbed to being used. Corporations are ‘equal’ to people politically. Ignorance is produced by this numbing. The numb carries over to every inch of our lives-in-common, and puts a thick gauze between people.
Reconsider a bad choice? Do right by others? Weakness.
The rich and the famous show us that taking responsibility for your mistakes, lying, stealing, making up excuses for yourself, and not considering others is standard, expected behavior. It is looked at a strength to deceive, connive, and get what you want no matter the cost. Our future generations may live in a wasteland for the apathy, indolence, and work-obsession that our ruling classes have cultivated like a cult (a la Severance).
In America, if you don’t get arrested or charged, or you settle in court, then it’s like it never happened, and there’s no need for pennance or behavior change. Our communities often aren’t strong enough to protect people from predators. It is allowed to happen that if you have enough money, you can buy your innocence, buy yourself out of prison time, purchase the behavior of the poor. Often, the worst punishment we have are fines that for the rich are more like a small fee for breaking the law and getting caught.
The message that coddling sends is that it does not matter if you hurt others as long as you have the dosh. But the rich ought to be more like the shields of the weak—“light enough to carry”.
Cruelty, self-serving world-views, money-orientated mind-sets are abound. Most of our cities and towns have been overrun by businessmen that own everything down to the land that everything rests upon. They have been greasing the palms of the local police, and judges, for a century already, in fact they are often related by blood.
And just to strike out, “Make America Great Again” is a farce because it pits people’s petty opinions against each other. “MAGA” is a satire too, because America never was great. The idea of a country being great comes from reading History without considering the individual experiences of people in those histories. Playing with country caricatures, they make America dance and sing as if it were a real person. But it’s make-believe. There’s no central identity to America, it’s all an advertisement.
The content of the music that we hear, our TV shows, our movies, and our habits display the values of our society. I think Modest Mouse put it best:
I'm wearing myself a t-shirt
That says, "The world is my ashtray"
Our hearts pump dust
And our hair's all grayAnd I just got a message
Saying that hell has frozen over
Got a phone call from the Lord
Saying, "Hey, boy, get a sweater. Right now"
- Tiny Cities Made of Ashes by Modest Mouse
And hey, it’s all good too, you know. Just cause something is true does not mean plenty of better things are not also true! And you are loved, and you have things to live for, and there are good words to say every day, and good things to do, and groups to join, and people to hug. Get out there and join the community you live in!
Love, Billy Halibut
p.s. Below, you can get a free time to see more in the form of poetry and painting, rather than just rants and political commentary through Modest Mouse quotes. Or if you’re a subscriber, you are literally amazing and imagining you reading my work is what keeps me going, and striving to connect to you through my work. I hope you are enjoying it! Leave me a comment or a like!
We would rather things were good instead of fret about whether they could become great
by Billy Halibut
Souls for sale.
Sell an elaborate tale!
Crass balls get what they want fast.
Whoever doesn’t give a shit the best will last.
Gotdamn, the Pusherman…
Dolan J. Tramp often reminds me of Andrew Jackson. A South Carolina boy, he was orphaned in the civil war, then became a lawyer and slaveowner, and then a military commander. He brutally put down the Creeks, who had killed whites, and then used that military victory to cow five other tribes into surrendering their lands.
He then later initiated an ethnic cleansing by campaigning for the Indian Removal Act of 1830 wherein the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw were forced out of their native lands in a forced march dubbed the Trail of Tears.
Andrew Jackson was the first president to campaign personally, to paint himself as a ‘political outsider’, and to be swept into office by campaigning on his celebrity status.
They disgust me in similar ways, though even Jackson, who was responsible for genocide, somehow seems better than Dolan J. Tramp. In any case, the above is how I feel about Jackson…he’s got some kind of brutal H.R. Giger alien hiding inside a human skin.
(That was a very brief overview leaving out a lot, but highlighting what stands out to me. All humans can probably be said to have duality of good and evil, but not as many are responsible for ‘legally’ killing great numbers of people...More detail on Jackson history here.)